I did the math recently and it scared me.

The AI tools I use daily save me roughly 250 hours per year. That's six full work weeks. Not theoretical. Actual hours I used to spend on email, screening resumes, and reviewing my own performance.

Six weeks. Gone from the grind. Reallocated to building product, recruiting, writing this newsletter, being present with my family and loved ones.

Here's what scared me more: Most people are still doing 2019 workflows in 2026. Same inbox habits. Same manual processes. Same meetings they never review.

The gap between AI-native operators and everyone else isn't growing linearly. It's exponential. Every week, the people using these tools pull further ahead.

This isn't a productivity hack. It's a divergence.

Here are three tools that created that gap for me:

1. Superhuman: Email That Doesn't Suck

I resisted this one for years. Another email app? $30/month? My inbox was fine.

It wasn't fine. I was just used to drowning.

Let me put a number on my stupidity: My time is worth at least $200/hour. Superhuman saves me an hour a day. That's $200/day in recovered time for $1/day in cost.

A 200X return. And I hesitated over thirty bucks.

Superhuman is an email client with AI baked in. Not bolted on - baked in. Hot keys for everything. Archive, snooze, reply, done. No mouse. When I need to respond, I hit a key and it drafts a reply that sounds like me because it's learned my patterns. It. Just. Works.

Inbox zero by 8 AM. Every day. This used to take me until lunch.

2. Claude for Hiring: My Resume Screening Partner

We're hiring at Edgevanta. That means resumes. Lots of them.

Reading resumes is tedious. Your eyes glaze over. You miss things. The first five get careful attention. The next twenty get skimmed.

Here's what I do now:

I upload a batch of resumes to Claude and give it context: "We're hiring a Customer Success Manager for our company. Here's the job description and hiring guide. Here's what matters most to me. Review these resumes and give me your assessment of each candidate."

Claude doesn't make the decision. I do. But it catches things I miss:

• "This candidate says they have construction experience, but it's actually construction software experience - no field time."

• "This one has a gap from 2021-2023 that isn't explained."

• "Strong communication background but nothing suggesting they can handle technical product conversations."

• "Ask about their tenure at this company and what they learned handling renewals.”

It's like having a screener who never gets tired, never loses focus, and doesn't have bias toward candidates who went to the same school as me.

3. Call Transcripts: My Personal Performance Coach

This one stings. But that's why it works.

We use Gong to record sales calls and customer conversations. There are also tools like Granola that come with you to any meeting. Either way, you end up with transcripts of your actual conversations.

I run my transcripts through Claude and ask for feedback.

Am I listening or just waiting to talk? How's my ratio of questions to statements? When the customer raised that objection, how did I handle it?

The feedback is brutal. "You interrupted the customer three times." "You asked a question and answered it yourself before they could respond." "The prospect mentioned onboarding concerns twice and you didn't address it until the end."

Ouch.

But I'd be a fool not to listen. Most people never review their own performance. They just keep making the same mistakes year after year. This is game film. You don't get better by hoping you improve. You get better by studying what you actually did.

The Divergence

Here's what I believe: Two years from now, there will be two types of professionals.

Those who figured out how to use AI as leverage. And those who are still doing everything manually, wondering why they can't keep up.

The tools aren't hard to learn. The gap isn't about intelligence. It's about willingness to change.

250 hours. Six weeks. What would you do with that time?

The people who answer that question - and then go find the right tools to make it happen - are the ones pulling ahead.

Six weeks is waiting for you. Go get it.

Thanks for reading this week!

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About the Author

Tristan Wilson is the CEO and Founder of Edgevanta. We make AI agents for civil estimating. He is a 4th Generation Contractor, construction enthusiast, ultra runner, and bidding nerd. He worked his way up the ladder at Allan Myers in the Mid-Atlantic and his family’s former business Barriere Construction before starting Edgevanta in Nashville, where the company is based. Reach out to him at [email protected]