You Weren't Hired to be a Human Spreadsheet
- Aamir Qutub
- Mar 31
- 2 min read
Ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up. You’ll hear psychologist, architect, AFL star, maybe even a YouTuber. You’ll never hear: “I want to spend my life formatting spreadsheets and writing weekly status reports.”
Yet here we are. Buried in browser tabs. Copy-pasting updates. Naming files “final_FINAL_v3.pdf.” Whether you’re running a business, serving coffees, managing a team, or answering phones—you probably spend too much time doing work no one gets excited about.
We were meant to lead, solve, invent, connect. But somewhere between the dream and the job description, we made peace with being busy instead of being impactful.
I see it everywhere. My cousin, a support worker, told me she spends more time on reports than actually supporting anyone. An electrician mate spends half his day quoting and chasing invoices. A CEO I work with spends six hours a week preparing board packs.
Do they enjoy it? Of course not. Is it necessary? Maybe. But is it the best use of their time, energy, and talent? Not even close.
We’ve accepted this grind because, for the longest time, we didn’t have a choice. Now we do.
In my book, The CEO Who Mocked AI, I call these tasks ROBOTs: Repeated, Obligatory, Boring, Operational Tasks. Tasks that drain you but don’t grow you. The kind that sit in your calendar like concrete.
You know them. The Monday sales report. The customer follow-up email. The schedule you manually rebuild every week. This isn’t the work you’re meant to do. It’s just the work that’s piled up around the work that matters.
And here’s the good news: you can fire your ROBOTs.
Today’s AI tools can take on this work—accurately, affordably, and without complaint. No burnout. No excuses. Just done.Start small. Pick five boring tasks. Automate one this week. Reclaim your time to lead, serve, create, grow.
You weren’t hired to be a human spreadsheet. You weren’t born to push paper. So stop settling for work that drains you. Find your ROBOTs. Fire them. And get back to what you were built for.
