5 Workflows That Save Me 10 Hours a Week

I used to spend half my day on tasks that felt productive but were really just... maintenance. Checking email, updating calendars, monitoring Slack, compiling reports. Important? Sure. But worth doing manually? Absolutely not.

After setting up OpenClaw, I built five workflows that now run on autopilot. Together, they save me roughly 10 hours a week. Here's exactly how each one works.

1. Email Triage — 3 Hours Saved

This was the first workflow I automated, and it's still the one that saves the most time.

The problem: I get 80-120 emails a day. Most are noise — newsletters, notifications, automated alerts. Maybe 10-15 actually need my attention. But I was spending 30+ minutes per session, multiple times a day, just scanning and sorting.

The workflow:

My OpenClaw agent checks my inbox every 30 minutes via a heartbeat. For each new email, it:

Categorizes it: urgent, needs reply, FYI, or noise
Summarizes the content in one line
Drafts replies for routine messages (meeting confirmations, simple questions, etc.)
Flags truly urgent items and sends me a notification
Archives noise automatically (promotional emails, automated notifications I've seen before)

The key insight was teaching it my patterns. In SOUL.md, I gave it context about what "urgent" means for me:

Urgent emails: from clients, anything mentioning deadlines within 48 hours,
payment issues, or anyone from my top contacts list.
Everything else can wait for my daily review.

Now I do one email session per day — a focused 15-minute review of what my agent flagged as important. The drafted replies are usually 90% right; I just tweak and send.

Time saved: ~3 hours/week

2. Calendar Management — 2 Hours Saved

The problem: Scheduling meetings was a constant game of back-and-forth. "Does Tuesday work?" "How about Thursday at 3?" And I kept getting double-booked because I'd forget to check my calendar before committing.

The workflow:

My agent handles scheduling through a few mechanisms:

Morning briefing: Every day at 8 AM, it sends me a summary of my schedule — what meetings I have, prep materials for each, and any conflicts to resolve
Scheduling requests: When someone asks to meet, I forward it to my agent. It checks my availability, proposes three time slots, and drafts a reply
Conflict detection: If I accidentally agree to overlapping meetings, it catches it and asks me which one to reschedule
Pre-meeting prep: 30 minutes before each meeting, it sends me a brief with the attendees, the agenda (if any), and relevant context from my notes

The morning briefing alone is worth the setup. Instead of opening my calendar app and mentally processing the day, I get a clean summary while drinking coffee:

📅 Wednesday, Feb 14

09:00 — Team standup (recurring, 15 min)
10:30 — Call with Sarah from Acme Corp
        Context: Discussing Q1 partnership renewal
        Last email: She asked about volume pricing
14:00 — Deep work block (protected)
16:00 — Podcast recording with TechTalks
        Prep: Review their question list (attached)

⚠️ No conflicts. 3.5 hours of focus time available.

Time saved: ~2 hours/week

3. Slack Monitoring — 2 Hours Saved

The problem: I'm in 15+ Slack channels across three workspaces. Important stuff gets buried, and I was spending hours just scrolling to stay "in the loop."

The workflow:

Instead of me monitoring Slack, my agent does it. Here's how:

Priority channels get real-time monitoring. If someone mentions me, asks a question I can answer, or posts something that matches my interests, I get a summary
Low-priority channels get a daily digest. My agent reads everything posted that day and gives me a 2-minute summary of what matters
Action items get extracted automatically. If someone says "hey can you review this PR" or "we need to decide on X by Friday," my agent catches it and adds it to my task list

The daily digest is a game-changer. Instead of reading 200+ messages across channels, I get something like:

📱 Slack Digest — Feb 14

#engineering: Deployed v2.3 to staging. Two minor bugs reported (non-blocking).
              Jake needs code review on PR #847 by EOD.

#marketing: Blog post about AI trends published. 2.4k views in first hour.
            Lisa asking for customer quotes for case study.

#general: Office closed Monday for holiday.
          Team lunch next Thursday — vote on restaurant in thread.

🎯 Action items for you:
- Review PR #847 (Jake, #engineering)
- Send Lisa customer quote (she DMed you too)

Time saved: ~2 hours/week

4. RSS & News Digests — 1.5 Hours Saved

The problem: I follow a lot of blogs, newsletters, and news sources to stay current on AI, tech, and my industry. But actually reading through everything was taking forever, and I'd still miss important stuff.

The workflow:

My agent compiles a personalized news digest every morning. Here's how it works:

I gave it a list of RSS feeds, Twitter accounts, and topics I care about
Every morning, it scans all sources for new content
It ranks articles by relevance to my interests and current projects
It summarizes each article in 2-3 sentences
It sends me a digest with the top 10 items

The ranking is the secret sauce. My agent knows I'm building a SaaS product, that I care about AI agents, and that I'm interested in indie hacker stories. So it doesn't just give me the most popular articles — it gives me the most relevant ones.

If something is particularly interesting, I just reply "save this" or "read later" and it files it in my notes.

I also set up a weekly deep-dive: every Sunday, my agent picks the three most important developments from the week and writes a longer analysis. It's like having a personal research analyst.

Time saved: ~1.5 hours/week

5. Scheduled Reports — 1.5 Hours Saved

The problem: Every Monday, I compile a report on key metrics — revenue, user signups, feature usage, support tickets. It involves pulling data from Stripe, my database, and Intercom, then formatting it into something readable. Tedious as hell.

The workflow:

My agent generates the weekly report automatically every Monday at 7 AM:

Pulls revenue data from Stripe (new MRR, churn, net revenue)
Queries the database for user metrics (signups, active users, retention)
Checks support tickets for trends (common issues, response times)
Compiles everything into a clean markdown report
Highlights anomalies — anything significantly up or down from the previous week
Sends it to me and optionally posts it in the team Slack channel

The anomaly detection is huge. Instead of scanning numbers looking for problems, my agent flags anything that's more than 20% different from the trailing average. Last month, it caught a signup spike from a Reddit post before I even knew about it, which let me capitalize on the traffic with a quick landing page update.

The report looks something like:

📊 Weekly Report — Feb 7-14, 2026

💰 Revenue: $14,200 MRR (+3.2% WoW)
   New: $1,800 | Churned: $340 | Net: +$1,460

👥 Users: 2,847 active (+156 this week)
   Signups: 312 ⬆️ (+47% — investigate!)
   Churn rate: 2.1% (stable)

🎫 Support: 23 tickets (avg response: 2.4 hours)
   Top issue: OAuth login errors (7 tickets)

⚠️ Anomalies:
- Signups 47% above average — check referral sources
- OAuth errors trending up — may need engineering attention

Time saved: ~1.5 hours/week

The Compound Effect

Each workflow on its own is nice. Together, they fundamentally change how I work.

I start my day with a coffee and three summaries: email highlights, calendar overview, and news digest. That takes 15 minutes. Then I have the rest of my day for actual work — building features, talking to customers, creating content.

The meta-lesson here is that automation isn't about replacing yourself. It's about removing the friction between you and the work that actually matters. Every minute your AI agent spends triaging emails is a minute you spend shipping code or closing deals.

Getting Started

If you want to set up similar workflows, here's my advice:

Start with one. Email triage has the highest ROI for most people.
Be specific in your instructions. The more context you give your agent about what "important" means to you, the better it performs.
Iterate. Your first version won't be perfect. Tweak it for a week, then move on to the next workflow.
Share your setup. The ClawMakers community is full of people doing this. Steal their ideas shamelessly.

You don't need to save 10 hours in week one. Even saving 2 hours is life-changing when it compounds over months.

Now go automate something. 🦞