Voice messages instead of a task tracker: how an owner can clear their head

A business owner’s tasks appear anywhere: in the car, in a meeting, between two calls. By the time you get to a computer, half of them are forgotten. Trackers, spreadsheets and notebooks are good, but they assume you will sit down and write everything up neatly. A busy person usually has no time for that.

Why tasks get lost

To create a task in a tracker, you need to open the app, choose a project, come up with a title and set a deadline. Each step is small, but together they discourage you from doing it. As a result, tasks stay in your head, in phone notes, in a chat with yourself, and keeping all of that in memory is tiring.

How it works

You send a voice message in a messenger, as you would to a colleague, and speak as usual: “Remind me on Thursday to call the contractor, and have the accountant send the acceptance certificate by Monday.” The AI recognizes the speech, picks out tasks, deadlines and people, puts them in a calendar or list, and replies with a short confirmation.

The confirmation shows exactly what was recorded, and you can correct it if the AI understood something inaccurately.

What you can delegate to such an assistant

It can be set up, for example, to do the following.

• accept tasks and reminders from voice and short messages;
• add meetings to the calendar;
• sort through email: what is urgent and what needs a reply today;
• remind you to send holiday greetings to clients and partners;
• send a short summary in the morning: what is on for today.

You do not have to launch everything at once. To begin with, one function is enough, for example only tasks from voice messages.

What it can look like during the day

For example, on the way to the office in the morning you say: “I need to agree the estimate with the client by Friday and not forget to congratulate Ivan Petrovich on his anniversary.” By the time you sit down at your desk, the calendar may hold two items, each with its own date. After lunch you send a voice message about a contract that needs rereading, and get a confirmation for that too. In the evening you can get a summary: what is done and what is left for tomorrow.

You do not have to open any app. You simply say out loud what was already going around in your head.

How this differs from the voice assistant on your phone

An ordinary voice assistant can set an alarm and call a number. It does not know your work or your people, and it cannot tell your client Ivan Petrovich from your neighbor. The assistant we are talking about is configured for a specific person: how it phrases tasks, where it puts them, what counts as urgent for them.

What to keep in mind

Be careful with data. Voice messages can contain names, amounts and contract details. Decide in advance which information may be processed in external services and which must not be sent outside and should be processed only on your own side. This can be configured, but it has to be decided before launch.

Such an assistant will not replace a person in everything. The assistant records, reminds and sorts into tasks. You still make the decisions.

Who it suits and who it does not

The most benefit goes to those with many scattered matters and little time to sit down and organize them: owners of small companies, managers, lawyers, contractors. If you have a couple of tasks a week and they do not weigh on you, there is little point. An ordinary notebook works perfectly well in that case.

If you like to keep your affairs in a spreadsheet, you do not need to give it up. The assistant can put entries there as well. It is enough to remove the awkward step where tasks get lost.

Where to start

Try dictating tasks as voice messages for a week, even into a chat with yourself for now, and see how many of them you would have remembered without it. If it makes things easier, the idea suits you, and you can think about an assistant that sorts everything into place by itself. We build such assistants around the owner’s tasks.