The machine is a mirror.

AI promises to free up your time, but history tells us otherwise.

The Saturday Essay is a weekly email on living and working on your own terms. Real talk on money, freedom, and work that fits your life.

Want to get The Saturday Essay in your inbox? Join 200,000+ other readers here.

This essay was originally published here.

---

That’s the promise, though. That AI will clear the busywork off your plate, open up your calendar, and give you back all that time you’ve been losing to work you never liked in the first place.

You’ll have more space and more freedom to do whatever it is you love doing.

So when Sam Parr posted on X a few weeks back, arguing that none of that is going to happen, it caught my eye. He basically said that whenever we invent something that frees up our time, we end up cramming that free gap full of new stuff to do.

He used an example of the washing machine, which, because of its enormous time-saving capabilities, should have freed up countless hours for 1950s housewives, who were the primary users. Same with vacuum cleaners and other appliances that arrived during that time period. But guess what? The free time never showed up.

The extra hours got absorbed by other tasks. Turned out that the number of hours of American housework stayed flat, at roughly 50-55 hours per week. Even with all of that technological advancement! Sam figures AI is headed the same way. We won’t get more free time. We’ll just be busier.

I think he’s sort of right.

The free time won’t show up for most people in the ways we imagine. But I don’t think that has much to do with AI. I think the reason is a lot simpler, and harder to accept.

The time savings will be real. But the saved hours will get traded in for whatever your priorities already are. And I think most people will find themselves in one of three buckets.

The first bucket will undoubtedly be the biggest one. These are the folks who will fill their newfound time with more of the same. More tasks and output, more projects to work on and keep track of. They were busy before AI, and now they’re busy with AI’s help. They’ll crank out more per hour, open up a few hours of free time, and find three new things to dump into the new hours. The treadmill speeds up, and their work speeds up to match it. A 2x version of their old selves, likely with very little to show for it as the rest of the world does the same. They think they’re advancing, but in reality, they’re only keeping pace.

The second bucket will be the “moon-shotters.” People who use that free time to take big swings. A brand new business, a difficult new project, or that one idea they’ve been shelving for years because their days were always too full. They’ll look at the new hours on their calendar and see an opening. So they’ll shoot their shot, and some people will change their lives for the better.

The third (and smallest) bucket will actually do what most of us envision when we hear the words “free time.” They’ll slow down. They’ll spend more time with their family and friends, take longer lunch breaks, and go on walks with their phones charging at home. They’ll treat the open time as truly free, and not more room to produce.

And AI won’t pick which group you’ll join. You already did that a long time ago.

Because an amplifier like AI doesn’t care who you are or who you become. It will only help you do more of whatever it is you already prioritize. Point it at noise, and your life is going to get a whole lot louder. If you’re already learning to take it easy in your free time, you’ll probably find yourself doing more relaxing. And the person drowning in busywork will find fancier and faster ways to sink in the quicksand.

The machine is the same no matter who’s using it. But the machine requires direction. And the direction giver is you.

Of course, none of this is new. We’ve been sold the same productivity promises since the washing machine. They said email, the smartphone, Slack, and software would hand us more of our time back. But, for most of us, our lives only became bigger versions of how we were already living. We became bigger caricatures of ourselves.

Because, hopeful as we might be, the tools don’t reach in and change who we are.

That’s why I think the suggestion that more free time is going to fix everything isn’t quite right. You may work to become more productive, and maybe you’ll do more than you ever have before. But, in the end, you’ll probably be left wondering why the dream life you were sold never quite materialized.

So I encourage you to be aware and be prepared. Because the extra hours are indeed coming your way. And if you’re wondering how you might possibly spend them, just look at the millions of small choices you’ve already made in your life about what gets your attention and what doesn’t.

The tools are new. But you’re the same old you. And all that free time is going to land in the same hands that have been running your life all this time.

And, if you’re anything like me, those hands already know what they’re going to do with it.

Cheers

Justin Welsh

---

Want to get The Saturday Essay in your inbox? Join 200,000+ other readers here.