Why the AI productivity trap might be about our relationship to work, not efficiency
AI is often presented as the answer to our workload problem. It can draft, summarise, organise, design and speed up work that used to take much longer. But if we use the time it saves to add more tasks, more content, more visibility, work and more pressure, then AI may not free us in the way we hoped.
This article is about the AI productivity trap and why it may have less to do with efficiency, and more to do with our relationship to work.
In this article
How I learned that more freedom did not mean less work
What Parkinson’s law has to do with AI
Why AI-generated posts on LinkedIn may be a sign of this trap
What gets missed in the AI productivity trap conversation
A different definition of the AI productivity trap
How I now use AI differently
How I learned that more freedom did not mean less work
I moved from full-time to self-employment in 2019, and while I gained a lot of freedom, control over my diary, control over my direction and activities, there was one thing that I didn't change:
I still made work the central thing in my life, letting it drive my weeks and structure my days. I wanted my new business to succeed, so I immersed myself in everything it takes to build one. And there are as many strategies and opinions as there are fish in the sea. So I dove in. I went down rabbit holes about how best to go about this new professional path I have chosen. I tried out different strategies. I added more tasks to my to-do list. It worked. My business was thriving.
And then I hit the wall. Somewhere along the way, I missed that I took the wrong turn and went down a path that wasn’t my energy signature; that wasn’t me. I had buried myself in long to-do lists that kept me running the hamster wheel, so I didn’t see what wasn’t working. And so, at some point, my body and my soul said, "Stop."
Interestingly, this happened just before the influx of the new capable AI models that are now able to take real tasks off our plates - designing your presentation, writing your e-mails, fleshing out your idea into a fully-fledged post. If I hadn’t hit the wall so hard, I would have likely built AI agents to take on the work that I didn’t have time in my day to complete. After all, I had too much on my plate. What better solution than to outsource some to AI and keep going?
What Parkinson’s law has to do with AI
Well, enter Parkinson's law.
"It is a commonplace observation that work expands to fill the time available for its completion." British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson, The Economist, 1955
While Parkinson's original observation concerned the bureaucratisation of the British Civil Service, the law has since been studied in a wider context: Are we wasting time and taking longer to complete work without the strict time constraints? A 1999 study on time limits and task completion found that people may stretch a task when more time becomes available, without improving the quality of the work. In the study, taking more time did not improve the quality of their work, suggesting that Parkinson’s law can happen quietly and without much benefit.
How does Parkinson’s law relate to AI? Well, if I outsource more work to AI, Parkinson’s law suggests that I will fill the rest of the time (that I gain) with more work, i.e. adding more things to my to-do list. The more I outsource to AI, the more new activities and tasks I add to my plate.
Why the AI-generated posts on LinkedIn may be a sign of this trap
I completely empathise with the idea that outsourcing to AI seems the only solution. If you are self-employed, you get bombarded with messages about what else you should do to run a financially sustainable business.
Let’s look at posting on LinkedIn as an example. Something I am familiar with. Let's say you notice your visibility on LinkedIn has dropped. With a bit of research, you find out that you need five posts a week to stay visible. But you genuinely don't have the time to write 5 posts a week. You turn to AI to help. You feed it some thoughts, and it produces five posts for you.
The first-order effect is immediate and easy to see: AI saves you time. The second-order effect is what this 'saved time' causes next: Are you taking that time you save off? Or are you filling the space with more tasks, more visibility work, more content, tasks to grow your business/career?
But this second-order effect doesn’t only apply to the self-employed. Most of my clients struggled with workload even before AI. So is AI going to free up that workload? I haven’t met anyone (yet) who said so. Much of the AI productivity conversation suggests it will free up our time to do the things we want. Joyful humans will emerge just by introducing AI. Uuhmm, wait a minute. What about the culture that demands more output? What about a culture in which we are seen as relevant proportionate to how productive/useful we are to society?
The AI promise says: "You'll have more time."
The productivity culture says: "Great. What else can you fit in?"
What gets missed in the AI productivity trap conversation
In current definitions, the AI productivity trap is associated with efficiency: if you do not use AI well, you increase your workload by using it incorrectly. Fyxer’s June 2026 AI productivity trap report highlights this: “Almost everyone is now using AI. Today's challenge is helping people use it in a way that actually saves them time, significantly boosts their productivity, and genuinely transforms the way they work."
The AI productivity trap is presented as an efficiency problem.
I want to suggest an alternative view. What if the AI productivity trap is not about how we adopt the technology at all, but it's all about our relationship to work?
A different definition of the AI productivity trap
The real AI productivity trap isn't how efficiently we adopt it. It's using AI to do more without ever questioning why we feel compelled to do so. When we believe that worth, safety, or success (or another measure of value) depends on constant output - when productivity becomes the goal - then AI will only accelerate this.
As a coach working with people who are rethinking their relationship to work, I often see this pattern: the pressure to prove ourselves. AI will not be the solution we are seeking if our inner operating system is built around "do more, prove more, stay visible, keep up." The freed-up time that AI gives us won't become rest, creativity, or joy. It will focus on creating more output.
We cannot install a new operating system on a computer with a virus.
(You might also enjoy this article on when worth becomes tied to doing enough - The hidden difference between confidence and self-belief (and why it matters for your career) — Simone Anzböck)
How I now use AI differently
As a result of hitting the wall, I re-evaluated everything I did in my business. I had to examine the inner workings of the operating system that led me down this road. And I noticed all the activities that didn't give me any joy. I was doing them because I thought I had to. Because someone else was doing them, or someone told me this is the way. I was trapped in the cycle of output and productivity, hoping this would lead me to the pinnacle of (whatever I was looking for).
What did I believe about myself that made me act this way?
I had to dismantle a lot of uncomfortable truths by asking this question. And then ask myself: What would I love? What is important in my business? How do I love to work?
All of this came down to one clear insight: Clear the decks. Remove the complexity from my business. Yes, the irony of that is not lost on me. I am clearing out all the complexity that I have built into my business in the last three years. The stuff I thought I needed. All of this is currently under the microscope: my marketing, my website, my CRM, my systems.
And I use AI to help me with that. I am not anti-AI. I do want AI to improve my efficiency at the things that are genuinely needed. Not so that I can add more output with the time I have, but so that I can do the things I enjoy.
For me, that means using AI to remove friction from work I have consciously chosen, not to create a longer to-do list as a result of introducing AI into my business.
Are you seeing that AI is not really freeing up much of your time right now, because you're just adding other activities to fill the gap that AI has taken on?
