How I Got My Fridays Back (And You Can Too)

Every Friday at 2 PM, like clockwork, I'd sit down with a cold brew and a sense of dread. Ahead of me: 3-4 hours of the most soul-crushing work imaginable. Not coding. Not strategizing. Just... admin.

I had to compile notes from a week's worth of meetings, chase down action items that people forgot they'd agreed to, and send "per our discussion" emails that nobody would read. By the time I finished, it was usually 6 or 7 PM, my brain was fried, and another Friday was gone.

The Breaking Point

The moment I knew something had to change was after a particularly brutal week. We'd had our sprint planning, three client calls, two internal reviews, and a stakeholder update. That's 11 hours of meetings.

On Friday, I opened my notes doc. 47 pages. Most of it was verbatim transcripts I'd frantically typed while trying to also participate in the conversation. The irony wasn't lost on me: I'd spent so much time documenting discussions that I barely remembered what was actually decided.

What I Tried (That Didn't Work)

Before I found my solution, I tried everything:

• Better note-taking apps: Notion, Evernote, Obsidian. They're great tools, but they didn't solve the core problem—I still had to take the notes.
• Recording meetings: Sure, now I had hours of audio to review instead of pages to read. Not better.
• Delegating: Great idea until you realize nobody else wants to do this either, and now you're the jerk who's making someone else suffer.
• Just not documenting things: Tried this. Resulted in three "Wait, what did we decide about X?" conversations in the next sprint.

The Solution I Didn't Expect

I stumbled onto TellMeMo kind of by accident. A colleague mentioned it in Slack, saying something like "This AI thing actually doesn't suck." High praise from an engineer.

I was skeptical. Every "AI-powered" tool I'd tried was either hallucinating facts or producing summaries so generic they were useless. But I was desperate enough to give it a shot.

"The first time I uploaded a meeting transcript and got back a summary that actually captured the nuance of our discussion, I literally said 'holy shit' out loud at my desk."

— Me, apparently easily impressed

What Actually Changed

Here's what my Fridays look like now:

1. 2:00 PM: Upload the week's meeting transcripts (takes 5 minutes)
2. 2:05 PM: Review AI-generated summaries (15 minutes)
3. 2:20 PM: Send out action items that are already formatted and assigned (10 minutes)
4. 2:30 PM: Done. Actually done.

That's 30 minutes instead of 4 hours. I've reclaimed 3.5 hours every single Friday.

The Unexpected Benefits

Getting my Fridays back was great, but there were other wins I didn't anticipate:

Better Meeting Participation

When you're not frantically trying to capture every word, you can actually think about what's being said. My contributions to discussions improved because my brain wasn't split between listening and typing.

Fewer "What Did We Decide?" Questions

The AI summaries are searchable. When someone asks "What did we decide about the database migration?" I can find the answer in 10 seconds instead of re-reading pages of notes.

Team Actually Reads Summaries

My old meeting notes were comprehensive but exhausting to read. The AI summaries are concise and focused. People actually read them. Which means people actually do their action items. Wild concept.

The Skeptic's Concerns (Addressed)

"But what about accuracy?"

I was worried about this too. The system isn't perfect, but it's better than my tired brain on Friday afternoon. More importantly, it cites sources, so I can verify anything that seems off.

"What if it misses important context?"

This happened exactly once in three months. I added a note to the summary and moved on. Compare that to how often I used to miss things because I was too busy typing to hear them.

"Isn't this just making you lazy?"

If spending less time on admin work and more time on actual value creation is lazy, then yes, I'm extremely lazy.

How You Can Do This Too

You don't need to use TellMeMo specifically (though I obviously recommend it). The principle applies anywhere: find ways to automate the grunt work so you can focus on work that actually matters.

Start by asking yourself:

• What recurring tasks eat up your time but don't require your unique skills?
• What work could be done just as well (or better) by automation?
• What would you do with 10 extra hours per week?

For me, the answer was clear. Those 10 hours went to actual product work, strategic thinking, and—radical concept—going for a walk while it's still light outside.

The Bottom Line

I got my Fridays back. Not because I found some productivity hack or learned to type faster. I got them back because I stopped doing work that a computer could do better.

If you're still spending hours on meeting admin, you're not being thorough or dedicated. You're just being stubborn. There's a better way. Use it.