CHAPTER 12 GUIDE
Your First Weekend
In short
We've covered a lot in this book. Calendar, health, shopping, houses, cars, spam calls, money, errands, routines and privacy.
Friday evening: pick three
Get out the list you made in Chapter 1. Every life admin job you could think of.
Saturday morning: the calendar and the rules
Start with the scheduling bot from Chapter 2, even if the calendar isn't one of your three. Every other bot leans on it.
Saturday afternoon: job one
Pick the first of your three. Make a bot for it, or give it to the scheduling bot if it's a small job.
Sunday morning: job two
Same again with the second job. By now you're getting the hang of describing jobs and checking drafts.
Sunday afternoon: job three, and one routine
Do the third job. Then set up one routine.
The week after
Live with it for a week. Each morning, read the brief.
A sensible order after that
Once the first three are running, many people add jobs in roughly this order:
- Bills and subscriptions (Chapter 8).
- Errands and packages (Chapter 9).
- Shopping (Chapter 4).
- Health admin (Chapter 3).
Where this fits in the series
This book is one of a few in a series. The Ultimate Starters Guide to Grok Bot for Beginners covers the basics: setting up, staying safe, connecting apps, routines and teams.
One last thing
The point of all this isn't the bots. It's what you do with the time.
Back to that week
Remember the week from Chapter 1? Here's the same week at the Parks', a couple of months in, as an example.
Your first-weekend checklist
- Write your full life admin list.
- Circle your three most hated jobs.
- Set up the scheduling bot and your Ask first rules.
- Do job one by hand with a bot.
A prompt for your first bot
- "I'm setting up a bot to help with [job] in my household. Help me write its description. Ask me what it needs to see, what I'll give it, what I want back and what it must never do. Then show me the description to approve."
A last story
A few months in, the Parks went away for a week. Before they left, they set the morning brief to weekly and paused the house watch.
A worked example: the second month
In their second month, the Parks added two more jobs: the subscription audit and the data broker clean-up. Each took one evening to set up.
The household's weekly ten minutes
Once things are running, most households settle into a short weekly check. At the Parks', it's Sunday evening and takes about ten minutes:
- Read the weekly errands list.
- Approve or change anything waiting.
- Glance at the calendar for the coming week.
- Add anything new to the pile, by telling the bot.
Questions people ask
What if three jobs is too many for one weekend? Do one.
One more prompt
- "Look at my original life admin list. Tick off what my bots now handle, mark what I still do by hand and suggest which one to hand over next."