There's a Downside of Using AI For Those Boring Tasks at Work --- Companies are discovering that productivity gains come with an unexpected cost

 

 

“Workdays without busywork are closer to reality than ever, thanks to artificial intelligence. AI tools that can sort and summarize emails, take meeting notes and file expense reports promise to free us to concentrate on the important stuff.

 

This sounds great. The catch is that our brains aren't capable of thinking big thoughts nonstop. And we risk forfeiting the epiphanies that sometimes spring to mind while doing easy, repetitive job functions.

 

Aflac Chief Executive Dan Amos dots his calendar with low-intensity tasks that could be delegated to an assistant or a bot. After meetings, he takes a few minutes to digest key points and reflect on what he said. He sends handwritten notes to employees who receive bonuses or retire, often following a familiar script but never taking a shortcut past paper and ink.

 

These practices are partly about old-fashioned habits and personal touches. They are also about taking mental breaks, or leaving space for creative sparks to fly.

 

It's the same principle as thinking in the shower -- putting your brain on autopilot until it goes, "Aha!"

 

Amos's favorite idea incubator is the steam room after a workout. He often steps out of the fog with a clear thought and dashes off an email about it.

 

His commitment to short breaks is so strong that Amos, a man who makes about $20 million a year, recently declined to pay a few extra bucks for the ad-free version of a streaming service. Commercials offer a moment to think about what he just watched, grab a snack from the fridge or let out the dog.

 

"I like a little lull time," he says.

 

"Lull" is a four-letter word at most companies in 2026. Perhaps you returned from the holidays to a memo about hitting the ground running in the new year. If not, your boss may have figured the steady stream of news about layoffs and AI efficiencies sends a strong-enough message.

 

Roger Kirkness, CEO of software startup Convictional, tried something different this week. He sent his 14-person team a Monday morning email outlining goals for the first quarter but didn't assign immediate action items.

 

"One thing I've noticed for myself and for engineers on our team is people have really good ideas when they come back from vacation," he says. "So, I'm deliberately not telling them what to do in the first week back after the holiday break."

 

The seed of a breakthrough might sprout if employees warm up their brains with some busywork, like clearing inboxes or organizing calendars. Jumping straight into a list of major to-dos would leave little time for ideas to germinate.

 

Kirkness became attuned to the value of slack time, his preferred term, around the middle of last year. That's when he noted meaningful productivity gains from AI, about 20% overall. But he observed that team members often seemed mentally exhausted and unproductive by Friday.

 

He thinks this is partly because AI took so much scut work off people's plates that their days became consumed by high-level thinking -- and they were burning out.

 

Convictional transitioned to a four-day workweek in an effort to keep employees fresh and promote innovation. So far, the same amount of work gets done, Kirkness says.

 

He got the idea from Boston College economist and sociologist Juliet Schor, whose book "Four Days a Week" chronicles companies' experiments with reduced schedules.

 

Automating busywork isn't necessarily problematic on its face, she tells me. If people are free to use the time savings to exercise, get outside or enjoy an extra day off, that could be even better than taking pseudo breaks on mundane work tasks.

 

The trouble is that it's tempting for businesses to simply reallocate employees' time. Instead of mentally downshifting for something easy like data entry, which can often be performed by AI, workers may now be expected to focus intensely through longer stretches of data analysis.

 

"If you just make people work at a high-intensity pace with no breaks, you risk crowding out creativity," Schor says.

 

Busywork remains a tough sell, even if we understand its potential benefits. On a recent episode of NPR's "Wait Wait. Don't Tell Me!," Grammy winner Lucy Dacus said she was most prolific as a songwriter when she worked a "mindless" job at a camera shop. She quipped that she has thought about taking a McJob to recapture her creative mojo, but instead she is launching an international concert tour.

 

Business leaders may be even less likely to truly embrace busywork as a catalyst for innovation. That's why executive coach LK Pryzant employs a euphemism: "white space."

 

"Busywork sounds low-value, but white space sounds creative and it sounds strategic," she says. "The outcome is the same. I also use the term 'no-input time.' "

 

This means resisting the urge to take a phone call on a walk, listen to a podcast in the car or otherwise multitask while doing simple things. The idea is to leave room for something brilliant to cross your mind.

 

To be clear, there is no guarantee of finding magic in your dullest job duties. But we live in a time when everything from ad-free streaming services to self-driving cars can supposedly liberate us from the mundane. We ought to be careful about ridding ourselves of all boredom, lest we lose our creativity in the process.” [1]

 

1. On the Clock: There's a Downside of Using AI For Those Boring Tasks at Work --- Companies are discovering that productivity gains come with an unexpected cost. Borchers, Callum.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 12 Jan 2026: A12.