Instinct Is Clearing My Backlog

I've been chasing the perfect AI executive assistant for ages. Well…since December. Feels like decades in AI time!

I've tried OpenClaw, Hermes and assistants I built with Codex and Claude Code. I still use all of them.

But my business still had too many projects, too many follow-ups and too many places where the work could disappear.

This week I've been using Instinct through WhatsApp.

I send it a message or a voice note, it works through the job and comes back when it needs a decision. Sometimes the entire reply is a thumbs up. Honestly, that's a relief after years of chatbots writing War and Peace whenever I ask for an update…

It just works. It’s very good.

It's the closest I've got to texting a human executive assistant.

It's invite-only and free right now. Totally free. Don’t even need to add your own AI.

Aaaaand here’s an invite link: Join Instinct

I'm not sponsored or affiliated with Instinct. It’s just very very good.

Before you go rushing in though - let me outline what you can do and where you should be careful! This is important!

What it's doing with my backlog

Sometimes with these AI assistants it’s hard to know what to use them for.

Because they can do everything!

Personally I asked it to look across the work I've been carrying around: ideas I wanted to start, projects that stalled, follow-ups somebody was waiting on and old plans I should probably bury. There were plenty of tasks recorded. Ownership and finishing were much weaker!

Stuff wasn’t getting done basically.

We sorted them by who should do the work: me, my team or AI. Then I made the call on each project: keep it, pause it or kill it. Direct revenue work stays on my desk. Nice-to-haves can wait. Dead projects stop reappearing every time I review my list.

Now it brings me today's commitments and a few old items at a time. Three or four decisions are manageable. Six hundred things on a list just sit there. Forever. Trust me…

If your own project notes are scattered, my AI second brain guide shows how I keep that context where an assistant can use it. I’ve basically given Instinct access to that AI brain like with my other tools but it gives me a much easier way to work with it on a daily basis.

Monday morning as an example it found a conference invitation, checked the travel against my schedule and brought me the details. I decided against it, so it drafted the reply. For an accountant request, it looked at last year's emails to identify the documents and asked permission to retrieve them. That second job still needed my approval. Good. That's where I want to be involved.

But it’s doing real work. Valuable work that would normally cause my day to chug.

I've also had it collect the invoices I usually spend a couple of hours chasing for bookkeeping. If you want another starting point, I wrote about four jobs worth giving Astra. It’s still very relevant here - just give them to Instinct instead! But give it actually life improving work not just “write this email for me”.

Give it less access first

For Instinct (or any AI assistant) to work best we need to open it up to tools.

Our email, our calendar, our Slack channels, our social media, our business systems.

Even, gulp, our passwords and credit cards.

Giving more access gives more power.

But.. also give it more chances to make a mess. Great power great responsibilities and all that.

What I’d recommend is starting with it raw, connected to nothing. And then as you feel more confident providing some access.

And please read Instinct's current privacy policy and check what you're connecting.

Also heads up: you can start without connecting Gmail. Instinct gives you an address- basically creates a brand new inbox for you.

Share a few files or publicly available information, check the result and decide whether it has earned more access.

I personally keep my password manager and payment access out of it. But I have given it my email and calendar. To your comfort level as always - I’m not going to tell you what you should be comfortable with.

I've put my own examples, other people's reported results and the longer privacy discussion in the video.

Including three really cool examples:

The first of which is wild...someone who wanted to herself on a Jumbotron from the US Open. Instinct searched ESPN footage and then contacted the production company to ask for the footage. Got told no. Worked out how to re-approach. And got the footage 18 hours later!

Watch it here:

To the task,

Kyle