How I Used a Simple AI Strategy to Build SOPs and Get Two Hours Back Every Week

Author: Dr. Cari DeCandia, CMPC

In our recent masterclass, "Why Urgency Undermines Flow and How to Reclaim What Matters," [access the recording here], we covered how urgency and importance are not the same thing, and why confusing the two tends to pull your attention away from the work that actually moves the needle.

One of the tools we highlighted was the Eisenhower Matrix. It is a straightforward framework for sorting your tasks by urgency and importance, and one of its most practical applications is identifying what should not require you at all. Specifically, the quadrant of tasks that are urgent but not important. That work should be delegated.

Knowing what to delegate is one thing. Having a clean way to hand it off is another.

Most of our repeatable work lives in our own heads. Whether you are running a business, leading a team, or managing your own workload, there are tasks you do regularly that exist nowhere except your memory. Client onboarding, weekly reports, updating tools, sending proposals.

And if you have ever tried to delegate a simple workflow and realized you would need to walk them through it anyway, you know the trap. You hop on a screen share. You write a quick checklist from memory. And it still is not clear enough for someone to follow entirely without you getting involved.

And if you are someone who has thought about bringing on a virtual assistant but is not quite sure what to hand off or how, undocumented processes are often exactly why that decision stalls. You cannot delegate what you have not defined.

It is not that the work is complicated. It is that it lives only with you, which means you stay the bottleneck, whether you have a team or you are still building toward your first hire.

Documentation would fix this. The issue is that turning a real process into a clean SOP (standard operating procedure) feels like a whole separate project, so it never makes it to the top of the list. The process keeps running through you, and nothing changes.

Start With a Simple Awareness Check

Before you document anything, it helps to spend five minutes gaining awareness about where your time is actually going during the week.

Look at the tasks that filled your last few days. Which ones required your specific judgment, relationships, or expertise? And which ones were routine, repeatable, and executable by someone with the right instructions?

Those second ones are your low-hanging fruit. They are the tasks that are pulling your attention away from the work that genuinely benefits from you. An executive assistant, a contractor, a team member, or a freelancer could likely run them well with one solid set of instructions. But creating that solid set of instructions is where most people get stuck.

I recently learned a strategy using AI that helped me document three repeatable tasks in my own business. Over the last few weeks, it has saved me an average of two hours per week. Two hours may not sound like much, but it is two hours I can now reallocate to the work that lights me up, get an extra workout or two in, or simply be more present with the people I care about...every week. Which is exactly why I wanted to bring it to this community.

The Approach: Record Once, Let AI Build the Document

Instead of writing anything from scratch, you are going to do the process exactly as you normally would, once, on a screen recording. Then you are going to let Gemini (Google's AI tool) watch that recording and turn it into a structured, shareable SOP.

This works for anyone, whether you are delegating to an EA, a contractor, a team member, or outsourcing something for the first time.

Here is how it works.

Step 1: Record Your Screen While You Do the Process

Open a screen recording tool on your computer. Most operating systems have one built in, and tools like Loom, Zoom, or Google Meet work just as well. Hit record, then run through the process start to finish exactly as you normally would.

As you go:

• Move slowly and hover over buttons before you click them

• Open every tool, tab, or app that is part of the workflow

• Talk out loud about what you are doing and why

• Call out the decisions that feel obvious to you, because those are the ones someone else will most likely miss

The recording is the only input AI has. The more complete it is, the cleaner the document will be. When you are done, save the file.

Step 2: Upload the Recording to Gemini

Go to gemini.google.com and open a new chat.

Click the attachment icon, select Upload Files, and choose your recording. Wait for it to finish uploading before moving on. Depending on the file size, this could take a couple of minutes.

A few things worth knowing:

• You can upload up to 10 files, each up to 2 GB

• Smaller files upload faster

• If you are on a free plan and your recording is longer than about five minutes, split it into shorter segments (Part 1, Part 2, etc.) and upload them together in the same chat

Step 3: Send This Prompt

Paste the following into the message box and hit send:

You are an expert operations manager.

Your task: Watch this screen recording carefully. I need you to turn what you see into a clear, step-by-step SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) that anyone can follow, even if they are doing this for the first time.

If multiple videos are attached, treat them as parts of the same process and combine them into one single, cohesive SOP in the correct order.

Format the output like this:

Title: [Name of the process]

Objective: [One sentence explaining what this process is for]

Tools Required: [List of tools needed]

Steps: Numbered list. Each step should include: what to do, where to click or navigate, and any important details to get it right.

Notes: Any warnings, exceptions, common mistakes, or things someone might miss.

Rules: Use simple language. Do not skip any action shown in the video.

Gemini will generate the SOP from what it observed. Read through it once, refine anything that needs more detail, and then save it somewhere your team can access it such as Notion, Google Docs, or a shared drive.

That process no longer lives only in your head.

The One Mistake That Undercuts the Whole Thing

Moving too fast during the recording.

If you skip steps, forget to open part of the process, or do not narrate your decisions, the SOP will have gaps. And a SOP with gaps still requires you to fill them in personally, which defeats the point.

Treat the recording like the hand-off itself. The care you put into it determines whether someone else can actually run with it.

Where to Start

Pick one task you repeated at least twice last week that someone else could run with the right instructions. Record it. Generate the SOP. Save it somewhere accessible like Notion, Google Drive, or Dropbox.

One process documented is one fewer reason someone needs to come to you. That time adds up. And my invitation to you is to put it toward something that genuinely replenishes you, not just the next thing on your list.

If you are a leader, a founder, or an individual contributor who finds yourself repeatedly pulled into work that does not require your specific judgment, it may be worth looking at that pattern as a structural issue rather than a time management one.

Not a discipline problem. Not a prioritization problem. But a systems problem.

Because when the right work is protected by design, and the repeatable work has a clear home that is not your calendar, your attention tends to find its way back to what actually matters.

If this resonates, The Flow Lab is a good place to start. We welcome high performing individuals who are ready to take a closer look at the systems that shape how they work.