Are you looking for ways to level up in your freelancing work? As AI technology advances rapidly, there are a number of ways to automate certain tasks and free up extra time to complete projects. Here we take a look with independent AI Strategist Justin Tan at some interesting ways to save a ton of time each week.
Freelancing offers you a wealth of flexibility and autonomy, but it also demands efficiency. With time as your most precious resource, managing all of your tasks and balancing client relationships can be challenging, to say the very least.
Enter automation and AI agents – powerful tools to revolutionize your workflow. In a webinar with the Malt team, independent AI Strategist and UCL Adjunct Professor Justin Tan shares how he leverages these technologies, offering insightful advice for freelancers who are looking to raise the bar and make most of their time.
In this deep dive into a handful of different tools, we'll highlight their benefits and use cases for freelancers.
The world of AI is still new to some of us, and the terminology can be confusing depending on your level of experience. To get started, we need to understand the difference between workflow automation and AI agent - two different concepts in the world of AI. "Automations are systems that perform repetitive tasks," Justin explains, “and do so in a way that is largely defined by preset rules.”
Think repetitive, predictable tasks – the kinds of things that are fairly easy to do or highly consistent but tend to eat up lots of time throughout the workweek.
AI agents, on the other hand, are a bit more advanced and adaptable in terms of what they can do. "You don't have to give them step-by-step instructions," Justin explains. "Using natural language, you can give them a goal to achieve, as well as some do's and don'ts to follow, and then they try to work out the problem for you."
Of course, AI agents are a relatively nascent technology and are far from perfect, but freelancers are already starting to benefit from a surprising number of day-to-day applications.
"Automations are systems that perform repetitive tasks, and do so in way that is largely defined by preset rules.”"
An ever-curious consultant, Justin is the first to test out new tools as soon as they hit the market. Here's his roundup of must-know tools freelancers can master in order to optimize their time and improve their workflow:
First up, Justin shows us how he uses ChatGPT. If you have the paid version, you can select different models of ChatGPT, or as he calls them, “different brains.” Why o3? Because “it's good at advanced reasoning, and it's an agentic model in its own right,” which means that it can figure out how to use different tools to get the job done. Upload a spreadsheet and assign a general task, like creating a financial forecast, the o3 model can do independent research, analyze data, and generate reports.
For freelancers, this means saving hours on research and data analysis. Imagine generating detailed reports or financial models simply by feeding in raw data and broad instructions. Justin insists that tools like this still require human oversight to be truly valuable. "Your role is still very, very critical - to review the assumptions, catch the blind spots, and refine the work," he cautions. “This tool handles the heavy lifting, allowing you to focus more of your time on strategy and refinement.”
Why use o3? Because “it's good at advanced reasoning, it's an agentic model in its own right.”
You may be asking yourself, as one of the freelancers in the audience did, “How do we evaluate the output of such models?” Justin's recommendation is to build up your experience by using multiple tools, getting into the habit of cross-checking results with other models, as well as tailoring your prompts to reduce hallucination.
Another tip from Justin: use markdown formatting for longer prompts to help AI break down the text more easily. “Some of my prompts are, like, ten pages long … If you put in a huge block of unstructured text, the machine (just like any human) is going to get confused.” Justin suggests denoting sections with hashtags (“#”) as a starting point, such “#Context” or “#Instructions”.
To save time on web-based tasks, Justin uses Manus: a browser-based agent. What does that mean? “It's basically like a human navigating the web.” The tool can perform tasks for you on various websites once given instructions: saving you the time of clicking through menus, filling out forms, running searches, or writing code to create reports or dashboards. One caveat: the tool currently can't complete “CAPTCHA” forms, which can occasionally stall a search you've launched.
One particularly interesting use case Justin shared is using Manus to help freelancers find potential clients. He demonstrated how to use the tool to generate a list of prospects for an AI consulting firm, extracting data from various websites and compiling a dashboard with company details. While browser-based agents are flexible and powerful, Justin notes they "are still not fully reliable." Even so, they demonstrate serious potential for automating time-consuming web tasks and freeing up valuable hours.
Manus also has a vibrant community of users that share use cases and organize meetups in cities around the world. When you first sign up, you receive a set number of credits to test it out, after it's a paid tool.
Next up is Zapier, a well-known no-code automation platform with thousands of pre-built integrations. "Zapier makes it super easy to build workflows with a simple drag-and-drop interface," he explains. One particularly helpful use case for Justin is using Zapier to process receipts: by emailing photos of receipts to a Zapier email address, the platform automatically extracts data, formats it, and adds it to both Google Sheets and Dropbox. "It's reduced the time I spend on receipts by ... 80 to 90 percent," Justin shared. "The amount of time (and stress!) it saves me is incredible.”
For freelancers looking to automate administrative tasks, Zapier offers a seamless way to automate data entry, processing, and organization. No coding knowledge is required, making it accessible to everyone.
Justin's favorite tool at the moment is n8n, which was recently highlighted in our Malt Tech Trends report as a top tool to watch for 2025. Justin highlights its user-friendly, visual interface and its ability to customize agentic workflows logic. One example he shared: an automation that updates his CRM using meeting notes from Fathom. n8n picks up the meeting summary from the automatic email that Fathom sends to his Gmail account, then summarizes the notes, checks the word count (to ensure that the notes are under the 2,000-character limit in Notion, which Justin uses as his CRM), searches the CRM, creates or updates entries, and finally archives the email into the correct folder. "That one saves me at least 15 minutes a day, easily.”
Another use case: automating content creation and posting to social media. While Justin doesn't personally use Twitter or Facebook, he noted that this could be especially helpful for content creators, highlighting just how flexible the platform is.
At Malt, we know that freelancers invest a lot of time upskilling and training. We're committed to helping you discover smarter, more productive ways to work. Stay tuned for more webinars packed with useful tips and tricks for freelancers!
And for more information about Justin's courses and offerings, don't miss his website and newsletter here.
