List what you actually do in a normal week with rough time shares, score each task against repetitiveness, rule-governance, volume and ease of verification, then check what proportion of your week sits in the exposed group. That number is far more informative than any published figure for your occupation, because it accounts for the fact that two people with your job title do different work.
Why an occupation score cannot answer this
An occupation-level score cannot tell you anything useful about your week. Scoring your own tasks takes about an hour and tells you a great deal. The published number describes an average nobody actually is.
Published exposure indices attach to job titles, and two people with the same title spend their weeks completely differently. One accountant does reconciliations all day while another spends most of the week advising and signing off. Nothing in the shared title distinguishes those two weeks.
Same title, opposite exposure. That variation is exactly what the shift to task-level analysis was about, and it is why any number you find for your occupation is at best a starting point. At worst it is actively misleading about your position.
Step one: list what you actually do
Write out a normal week, task by task, with rough percentages of time attached. Nothing else in this exercise works without that list. Everything downstream depends on the list being honest.
List activities rather than achievements. Producing the weekly reconciliation is an activity; improving financial accuracy is an achievement and it cannot be scored. Achievements describe outcomes and only activities can be assessed.
Most people find this uncomfortable because the list comes out shorter and more repetitive than they expected. That discomfort is part of the finding and it is worth sitting with rather than rewriting the list into something more flattering. The unflattering version is the one with predictive value.
Step two: score each task on four properties
Score every task on four axes. Repetitive or varied, rule-governed or judgment, high volume or occasional, and easy to verify or expensive to check. Each axis is a yes or no rather than a matter of degree.
Anything scoring exposed on all four will get faster soon regardless of your industry. That is the clearest signal the exercise produces and it needs no interpretation. Four exposed scores is an unambiguous result in any industry.
Anything scoring low on verification is protected for considerably longer than its raw capability suggests. A plausible wrong answer nobody catches is a much bigger problem for an employer than a slow correct one. Detection cost buys more protection than difficulty does.
Step three: total the exposed share of your week
Add up the time shares of everything that scored exposed. One number comes out of that addition and it is the point of the whole exercise. Everything before it was preparation for that single figure.
If it is a small part of your week, the technology is a tool that makes you faster. The honest response is to learn to use it well and get on with the rest. Being faster at the routine part is a genuine advantage.
If it is most of your week, the question becomes where the rest of your value sits. The uncomfortable possibility is that you have never needed an answer to that, because the exposed part was always enough. Nobody has ever had to ask you that question before.
Step four: the accountability test
Ask who is answerable when your work turns out to be wrong. That single question adds more than the four properties do. Accountability overrides several of the task scores at once.
If the answer is you, your position is considerably more durable than the task scores alone suggest. Accountability is a legal and social arrangement rather than a technical one. Better technology does not resolve who is answerable.
If the answer is somebody who reviews your output, then their role is the durable one and yours is the reviewable one. That is worth knowing plainly, because it points at exactly where to move. The reviewer’s position is the one worth occupying.
What to do with the result
Do not panic and do not enroll in a course about the newest tool. Both are common responses and neither improves your position. Both feel productive and neither changes your task mix.
Move toward the tasks that scored low: the non-standard cases, the escalations, the client-facing part, the decisions somebody has to own. Those are the parts every automation property protects. They score low on repetition, rules and verifiability together.
That move is usually possible inside your current job and costs nothing. It is also far easier while you still hold the standing that comes from being good at the exposed work, and that standing depreciates quietly. Credibility earned on the old work is a wasting asset.
The version of this exercise that goes wrong
The most common failure is listing what you are good at rather than what you spend time on. Those are different lists and only the second one predicts anything. Competence and time allocation are genuinely different measures.
The second failure is scoring generously, which usually means deciding a task involves judgment because you exercise judgment while doing it. That is not the test. Skilled execution of a defined task is still a defined task.
The test is whether the task has a right answer that follows from the inputs, not whether a skilled person does it better. Plenty of work rewards skill and still has a defined correct output. Difficulty and discretion are genuinely separate properties here.
Doing it with somebody else
Swap lists with a colleague and score each other’s rather than your own. The reason is a well-documented asymmetry in how people assess themselves. Self-assessment runs generous in one particular direction consistently.
People are systematically generous about their own judgment content and reasonably accurate about somebody else’s. Reading a colleague’s list, you will spot the routine they have described as analysis. Distance makes the categories considerably easier to see.
It is also a better conversation than it sounds. Two people comparing which parts of their weeks are exposed usually surface the same two or three tasks, and that agreement is worth more than either assessment alone. Agreement between two observers is the strongest signal available.
Repeat it annually
Your task mix drifts without anybody announcing it, which is the whole reason a single assessment is not enough. Nothing marks the moment it changes. Drift is invisible precisely because it has no event attached.
The same exercise a year later shows the direction of travel, which is more useful than any single score. A week that has become measurably more exposed over twelve months is a clearer signal than any published index will ever give you. Direction of travel beats any single snapshot for planning.
It takes about an hour. Set a calendar reminder for it, because the year in which you most need to do this is the year you will be busiest. Busyness and rising exposure tend to arrive together.
Common questions
How do I assess my own exposure?
List your weekly tasks with time shares, score each on repetitiveness, rule-governance, volume and ease of verification, then total the exposed share.
Why not use a published score for my occupation?
Because it treats everyone with your job title as doing the same work, and they do not. Your task mix is the thing that matters.
What does a high exposed share mean?
That much of your week will get faster. The question becomes where the rest of your value sits, which may not have been tested before.
What is the accountability test?
Ask who is answerable when the work is wrong. If it is you, your position is more durable than the task scores suggest.
How often should I redo it?
Annually. Task mixes drift without announcement, and the direction of travel is more useful than any single score.
How do I assess my own exposure?
List your weekly tasks with time shares, score each on repetitiveness, rule-governance, volume and ease of verification, then total the exposed share.
Why not just use my occupation's score?
It attaches to a job title, and two people with the same title spend their weeks completely differently. One accountant reconciles all day; another advises and signs off.
What is the accountability test?
Ask who is answerable when the work is wrong. If it is you, your position is more durable than the task scores suggest. If it is your reviewer, theirs is.