How to Inventory Honestly

The honest inventory requires separating a few things clearly. First: separate the tasks that are actually part of your job from the ones that feel important because you've always done them. Not everything on your plate is core to your role. Some of it is because you're good at it, or because it landed on you, or because nobody else will do it. The core tasks are the ones that directly move the organization toward its goals.

Second: for each core task, separate the execution from the decision. Writing a report is not the same as deciding what question the report should answer. Running an analysis is not the same as knowing which analysis to run. Implementing a feature is not the same as deciding that the feature is what the customer actually needs. The execution is Tier 1 work. The decision is Tier 2 or above.

Third: ask, for each task: what would need to be true for AI to do this well? Not perfectly. Well enough that you'd no longer need to do it yourself. Be honest. For some tasks, the answer is "not much." For others, it's "a lot." For others still, it's "something that might never be true." That honesty is where the useful information lives.

Fourth: notice which tasks made your list. Are you mostly doing Tier 1 execution work, or are you mostly doing Tier 2+ decision and judgment work? The answer tells you something important about your current position and your actual vulnerability.