Permission to procrastinate with AI.

Forget the frameworks and roadmaps. The most valuable AI solutions are the ones you build by accident while avoiding real work. Here’s my confession.

Author

Pallas Advisory
October 08, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

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Welcome, AI Strategists

💫 Current thoughts: This is a confession post/blog. Sometimes, don’t you just want to goof with tools and not work? (no? me only? well, okay). Anyway, was poking around for new features, ran across a cool one, Claude Imagine. Essentially an AI app builder for dummies.

I was actively avoiding a client proposal, saw a shiny new feature in Claude, and 20 minutes later, I had accidentally built a tool that solved the timezone chaos that has plagued my US/Netherlands work life for months.

No roadmap. No ROI calculation. No stakeholder buy-in. Just pure, unadulterated procrastination.

This week's post is the story of that tool, but it's really about a bigger idea: giving yourself "permission to play." We're so focused on enterprise-grade AI transformations that we forget the immense power of solving small, stupid, everyday problems.

This is your official permission slip. Go build something simple that makes your life 5% easier. You'll be amazed at the impact.

This Week's Breakdown

Weekly Blog

I've Written 44 AI Strategy Posts. My Biggest Win Came From 5 Minutes of Procrastination.

Is your AI strategy stuck in endless planning? Discover why my biggest business win this month (so far) is not from a complex framework, but from a 20-minute burst of procrastination using a new AI feature. Sometimes the coolest outputs come from procrastination and something that has been bugging you.

pallasadvisory.com/2025/10/07/productive-procrastination-ai

AI News Roundup for SMB Decision-Makers and Marketing Professionals

The Rise Of Reverse Automation: What It Means For The Future Of Work

Reverse automation reveals automation's true nature: it's reorganization, not replacement. Smart leaders will design hybrid roles where humans handle what machines can't—judgment, creativity, adaptation. The companies winning tomorrow are already building these human-machine partnerships today.

www.forbes.com/sites/dianehamilton/2025/10/05/the-rise-of-reverse-automation-what-it-means-for-the-future-of-work

What does it mean to democratize AI?

True AI democratization shifts from access to ownership. When domain experts build their own solutions, you eliminate the translation layer between problem and solution. The real value isn't faster deployment—it's that the people who live the pain points daily become the architects of relief. (hello? time zone math!)

zapier.com/blog/democratizing-ai

Are AI agents finally good enough?

While agentic AI promises transformative productivity gains, the gap between capability and practical deployment remains significant. Smart companies should pilot carefully now while building frameworks for when this technology genuinely scales to business-critical applications.

www.theverge.com/podcast/789772/ai-agents-anthropic-claude-sonnet-autonomous-coding

AI isn't really moving the job market compared to bigger economic factors

New data shows today's weak labor market is driven more by economic and policy factors than AI.

www.axios.com/2025/10/03/jobs-crisis-artificial-intelligence-economy

Digital Tool Fatigue: How Too Many Apps Hurt Work and Well-Being

The real culprit isn't tool proliferation—it's strategic fragmentation. Organizations are automating broken workflows instead of fixing them first, creating "pilot purgatory" where 95% see no AI ROI. Success requires consolidation around fewer, better-integrated tools and proper change management, not chasing every shiny new platform that promises salvation.

www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2025/10/04/digital-tool-fatigue-eroding-mental-health-and-career-productivity

Stop Chasing Every AI Tool Available — Focus on These 3 to Grow Faster, Smarter and Without Burnout

AI won't build your brand for you — but with the right tools and focus, it can help you scale faster, work smarter and free up time for what really matters.

www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/stop-chasing-every-ai-tool-available-focus-on-these-3/491044

This Book Will Change the Way You Think About AI

The strategic advantage isn't in AI-powered task automation—it's in workflow elimination. Companies like Shein and Uber Freight didn't optimize existing processes; they designed entirely new operating models where old bottlenecks simply don't exist. That's where competitive moats are built.

www.inc.com/howard-yu/this-book-will-change-the-way-you-think-about-ai/91246852

Prompt of the Week:

Use this prompt with a multimodal AI like Claude to brainstorm a simple, custom tool you could build in under 30 minutes to solve one of your own recurring, daily annoyances, just like my timezone converter.

I want to identify a small, recurring annoyance in my daily work and brainstorm a simple software tool I could build in under 30 minutes using a no-code AI tool generator like 'Imagine with Claude' or 'Replit Agent'. My goal is "productive procrastination"—to solve a real personal pain point quickly.

My professional role is: [Describe your job role, e.g., "a freelance graphic designer," "a marketing manager at a tech startup," "a small business owner who runs an e-commerce store"]

Here are 3-5 of the most frequent, annoying, and repetitive manual tasks I do every single day:

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  • ⏰ Scientists create quantum stopwatch that doesn't need a starting point—a timer as confused about time as I am.

  • 🍟 Finally, a crime that makes the getaway truck smell like McDonald's.

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