Technology was meant to make our work easier. Hand over the reins to artificial intelligence and let it do all the work for you.
But rather than working less, people are busier than ever. We are available 24/7 thanks to emails, Slack notifications, endless meetings, and AI-powered dashboards. Technology makes things far more complex than they need to be.
Are we actually more productive, or simply doing more work that resembles productivity?
Let’s reimagine the idea of efficiency in the digital age.
🚀 Why Does More Tech Mean More Work?
When something like this comes along, there is always this promise of efficiency, but what you get—really—is a compounding of work to do, expectations, and noise.
- Email was supposed to replace slow communication, but now we all get hundreds of emails a day.
- The reports are AI-generated and offer immediate analysis, which means that in this world, companies now expect decisions to come even quicker.
- Virtual collaboration tools make working together easier, but they have also created an “always on” culture.
Rather than reducing workloads, technology tends to increase them—because the more we are able to do, the more we’re assumed to do.
A hundred years ago, economist John Maynard Keynes foresaw that technological advances would shorten work hours to a 15-hour workweek. Instead, work has filled every hour to be had.
But the problem is not that we don’t have enough productivity tools; rather, we haven’t changed our minds about what work itself is.
📊 Productivity: Are We Looking at It Wrong?
For decades, companies tracked productivity in hours worked and tasks completed. But in the digital realm, output isn’t always a great indicator of success.
Consider two workers:
- Worker A answers 100 emails, attends 10 meetings, and generates 20 reports in one day.
- Worker B spends the day solving a really complicated problem that improves efficiency for everybody on the team.
Who was more productive?
A traditional system would say Worker A, because they completed more tasks. But in fact, Worker B provided more value.
The issue is even more pronounced with remote work. Visibility—who responds immediately to emails, who stays logged in the longest on Slack—seems to be an informal metric on which managers often evaluate employees, rather than actual contribution.
Real productivity today is not about doing things; it is about impact.
- They want to know, “How many hours did you work?” → Did your work have an impact?
- Rather than “how many emails did you send?” → Did that communication lead to improved outcomes?
- It’s not “how quickly can you respond?” → Did you not have information?
For the future of work, better productivity metrics that reflect real, rather than busy, impact will be needed.
🤖 AI & Automation: Are They a Shortcut or a Trap?
AI and automation have known benefits in eliminating repetitive work, but they do carry risks:
More Data = More Decisions
Instant access to analytics can result in decision fatigue, where employees are spending more time analyzing than doing anything with it.
Marketing teams always used to make decisions based on a couple of reports a week. Then they had real-time dashboards with thousands of data points—but instead of streamlining the process, it tends to paralysis by analysis instead.
Automation 101: Too Much Over-Automation Masks Creativity
While AI is great at following processes, it has a hard time when faced with outliers or situations where human intuition is required.
AI-backed customer support proactively handles 80% of tickets. That works fine—until an unusual case comes along, and human employees discover they no longer have the knowledge or experience to manage it effectively.
When utilized properly, automation is incredibly advantageous, but when it comes to AI, it is a slippery slope that will destroy your adaptability if you become overly reliant on it.
The Burnout Effect
Always-on systems put pressure on humans to be always-on as well, which makes deep work and being creative more difficult.
A lot of companies will use AI to measure how well their employees are doing, but once workers feel that everything they do is being monitored, they begin optimizing for visibility rather than impact.
The purpose of technology is to make work easier, not harder.
💡 The New Energy of AI: Forget Efficiency
Rather than doing more, faster, we should work smarter.
✅ Less of the Busy Work, More of the Deep Work
- Focus is broken by notifications, emails, and instant messages.
- If it does, tools are there to magnify, not create, distractions.
- Employees should be encouraged to block off time for deep, undistracted work.
✅ Not More Automation, Smarter Automation
- AI ought to automate repetitive steps but invite human intervention when necessary.
- Everything should not require absolute complexity.
- Over-automation can make simple processes too rigid.
- AI is most powerful when enhancing human abilities, rather than replacing them.
✅ Do Not Count Hours; Measure Outcomes
- Efficiency doesn’t mean maximizing every hour—it means maximizing value.
- Working more doesn’t always lead to working better.
- Companies should reward problem solvers, not just busy people.
Many technology leaders say the best employees are the ones who spend time thinking rather than reacting. Deep thinking is an undervalued skill in a world that prioritizes speed.
📌 Is Human-Centered Tech the Ultimate Productivity Band-Aid?
The next generation of innovation should center on helping people work better instead of just faster.
- Humans should be served by AI; AI should not replace humans.
- Technology must reduce cognitive overload, not increase it.
- Work should be measured by impact, not activity.
More companies are also shifting toward a results-oriented work culture—a focus on goals, ingenuity, and long-term strategy rather than short-term output.
We need not productivity tools that create new to-do lists, but rather tools that make us do less—but do it better.
We don’t need more productivity—we need better ways to work.
TL;DR
- Technology was supposed to lighten the burdens of work, but all too often, it adds to them instead.
- AI and automation assist in these tasks, but they also drive greater expectations and complexity.
- All productivity means is getting things done—and if you succeed, it should also improve life outside of work.
- The future of work must become more human, not only tech-driven.
Thanks for Reading!
What’s your verdict—does technology actually make us more productive, or just busier? Let us know what you think in the comments!
