It’s 8:00 on a Monday night, and I’m sitting at my computer.
My partner’s away on a work trip.
My dog’s been walked and fed.
The house is quiet.
I could be on the couch watching Netflix, but here I am, at my desk.
Not because I have to be. Over the past few years I’ve worked hard to build the long-sought-after work – life balance. My calendar is tighter. My boundaries are clearer. I don’t glorify busyness.
I’m here because AI makes work… fun.
It turns ideas into prototypes in minutes. It helps me test angles for a keynote. It automates drafts, debates, refines. It feels like intellectual sparring at scale. And when something is interesting and frictionless, you naturally do more of it.
You stretch the edges.
You explore possibilities.
You run “just one more” experiment.
Clearly, I’m not alone.
AI Doesn’t Reduce Work. It Intensifies It.
That’s the core argument in a recent piece in Harvard Business Review titled “AI Doesn’t Reduce Work – It Intensifies It.”
The researchers embedded generative AI tools inside a tech company for eight months. Productivity went up. Output increased. Tasks were completed faster.
But here’s the twist: work didn’t shrink. It expanded.
People didn’t take the time saved and head home early. They filled it. They took on more. They moved faster. They stretched their capacity. They blurred the lines between “done” and “could be better.”
In other words, AI didn’t create slack.
It created intensity.
The Productivity Paradox No One Talks About
We’ve been sold a narrative:
AI will automate the mundane so humans can focus on the meaningful. And technically, that’s true.
But in practice?
When you make something easier, cheaper, and faster, you don’t usually do less of it. You do more.
It’s the Jevons Paradox of productivity.
If you can produce a draft in five minutes instead of thirty, suddenly:
- You write more drafts.
- You refine more aggressively.
- You say yes to more opportunities.
- Expectations quietly rise.
What was once exceptional becomes baseline.
And because AI reduces friction, we fill every micro-gap in our day with productive activity. The tiny pauses that used to be mental recovery now become “quick iterations.”
The result? Cognitive load increases.
This Is Bigger Than Busyness
From my Future-Proof 2035 lens, this isn’t about tools. It’s about systems.
AI is an amplifier.
It amplifies:
- Organizational ambition
- Cultural expectations
- Leadership behaviour
- Individual curiosity
If you operate in a high-performance culture without clear boundaries, AI doesn’t free you. It accelerates you.
And acceleration without redesign leads to strain.
This is one of the reasons I keep saying we are not just facing a technology shift. We are facing a work design shift.
The workplace is evolving.
The workforce is empowered and questioning meaning.
And leadership must mature fast enough to keep up.
Why I’m at My Desk at 8:00 PM
I’m not there because someone told me to be.
I’m there because:
- AI makes exploration addictive.
- The feedback loop is instant.
- The barrier between idea and execution has collapsed.
The danger isn’t that AI replaces us.
The danger is that it removes friction so effectively that we overextend ourselves.
And at scale, organisations will do the same thing unless leaders intervene intentionally.
What Smart Leaders Should Do Now
If you’re rolling out AI across your organization, don’t just measure productivity gains.
Measure:
- Cognitive load
- Work intensity
- Expectation creep
- Boundary erosion
Ask:
- What work are we deliberately stopping?
- What does “good enough” mean now?
- Are we reallocating time to strategic thinking — or just increasing throughput?
Because if you don’t consciously redesign work, AI will redesign it for you.
And it will default to more.
The Real Question
AI makes work more powerful.
It also makes it more compelling.
Which means the real leadership challenge of the next decade isn’t adoption. It’s restraint.
Because the future of work won’t be defined by how much we can do.
It will be defined by what we choose not to.
And at 8:00 PM on a Monday night, that choice is sitting right in front of all of us.
Hi, I’m Kim — Award winning Business Futurist.
I help organizations and humans stay relevant, resilient and ready for what’s actually coming (not just what’s trending on LinkedIn).
Keynote speaker. Advisor. Trainer.
Professional dot-connector. Semi-professional future-nerd.
Planning a conference or leadership offsite this year? Let’s chat!
p.s. Thank you Matthew Baker for sending me the HBR article!
