The cure for "execution tax" | Notion

Summary

Brainlabs CEO Dan Gilbert describes “execution tax” as the gap between a decision and its outcome, where meeting action items are recorded, chased, or lost. He argues that AI has improved engineering productivity while leaving strategists, account managers, and operators with fragmented context and a wide gap between thinking and doing. Brainlabs chose Notion as a company-wide context layer and built “Get Stuff Done,” a factory of Notion Custom Agents that captures action items, assigns owners, and executes suitable work. Its automation uses Notion Custom Agents for native tasks, Notion Workers for external integrations, company-specific Skills and selected LLMs for complex tasks, and human-in-the-loop workflows when judgment remains necessary; Gilbert says some decisions now become completed work in minutes rather than weeks.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Get Stuff Done captures meeting action items in a Notion database, assigns owners, and starts work on tasks that can be automated.

2. 2

   Notion Custom Agents handle native tasks, while Notion Workers connect to external platforms for actions such as creating Slack channels or scheduling Google Meet.

3. 3

   Brainlabs uses company-specific Skills and selected LLMs for complex work, with human-in-the-loop workflows for tasks requiring judgment.