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  • Leadership & Strategy

Don’t Waste Your Time, Own it: 4 Ways AI Can Actually Help

Michele McGovern
By: Michele McGovern
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About the Author

Michele McGovern writes. A lot. These days, she covers HR, digging deep into company culture, DEI, leadership, management and the everchanging world of work. In the years between getting a BA in journalism from a state school and writing about HR, she wrote about big-city crime for a wire service and small-town life for local newspapers. She’s a mediocre mom, decent wife, wannabe athlete and consummate pursuer of fun - on land, snow and water. Find her on LinkedIn @michele-mcgovern-writer.

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Last Updated: April 7, 2026
3 minute engagement
A flat Corporate Memphis style blog graphic from Women's Leadership Today and HRMorning titled "Regain Your Time With AI." A large robotic hand is shown fine-tuning a clock and gear mechanism, while two female leaders engage in conversation below. This visually represents the integration of artificial intelligence into leadership workflows to automate tasks and free up valuable time for strategic human connection.
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The demands of your career can easily start to feel all-consuming, making it difficult to find time for activities you truly enjoy. Between endless meetings, overwhelming inboxes, and pressing deadlines, days slip away without a moment to reflect on why you chose the work you did in the first place.

But what if you could get your time back and reconnect with your purpose and values? AI can actually help.

How AI Can Help Regain Your Time

Smart task automation, intelligent assistants and predictive analytics are just some of the innovations that can maximize your productivity and empower you to focus on the rewarding parts of your work. Here are four ways AI can help you be more authentic, creative and energized in your career:

1. Delegate the Busywork

Mundane administrative tasks like scheduling meetings, filing reports, and managing invoices drain precious time that could be spent on purpose-driven work. AI-powered assistants can handle these repetitive chores, freeing you up for more strategic initiatives.

Virtual assistants like Clara can act as your personal secretary through email, while scheduling tools like Calendly automate the tedious back-and-forth of meeting coordination. You’ll gain back precious time in your week to devote to more meaningful and fulfilling responsibilities.

2. Cut Through the Noise

Email overload is one of the biggest time bandits today. AI can help analyze and prioritize your inbox, reducing the constant anxiety of overflowing messages. Tools like Edison Mail use natural language processing to identify your most important emails by type and topic so you don’t have to spend time scrolling and sorting.

And tools like Google’s Smart Compose can help you write emails before you can even think of the subject line. Stay focused on the emails that truly require your personal attention while AI handles the rest.

3. Get Insights Fast

Reading through lengthy reports, manuals and articles to find the info you need is time-consuming. AI search and summarization tools can cut right to the key facts, figures, and insights so you can make decisions faster.

Whether you need to analyze customer data, study up on a new topic, or prepare talking points for a big meeting, AI can help you get up to speed quickly. Try using Perplexity for refined and personalized search suggestions and webpage summarization, or try Claude for quick overviews of reports and documents. Spend less time hunting for details and more time pursuing creative solutions.

4. Refine Your Unique Ideas

Bouncing ideas off colleagues helps spark your creativity. But constant impromptu meetings can derail your focus. An AI writing assistant lets you brainstorm and refine ideas seamlessly, without pulling others away from their own work.

A tool like Rytr lets you describe a rough idea and will help expand on it by providing outlines, draft text, and creative recommendations. You can use this to brainstorm concepts, develop frameworks and get new perspectives. You’ll gain clarity faster, enabling you to devote attention to developing winning concepts.

AI Webinar Resource

While AI will never replace human relationships, selectively integrating the right tools allows you to maximize your precious time for more meaningful collaboration, thoughtful work, and creative growth. When the busywork and chaos are lifted, you’ll have a greater capacity for the activities that spark passion, purpose, and joy in your career.

Want to learn more about utilizing AI to gain time for what truly matters? Check out our workshop “Reclaim Your Time with AI: Tools to Work Smarter, Not Harder.” AI expert Marissa Brassfield shares strategies, tools, and scripts that help you reclaim your time. Optimize your productivity, set realistic boundaries, and reignite your professional purpose. You’ll walk away re-energized and empowered to thrive in today’s 24/7 work environment.

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