From Lily Chambers: I genuinely do not care if AI tools make...

From Lily Chambers: I genuinely do not care if AI tools make me more productive. I am tired of seeing, "increased productivity" as a selling point. I do not want to be valued for my productivity. I do not want "more" of anything related to work. I like doing things meticulously. I like using my hands. I like manipulating data that an LLM could interpolate for me because it helps me learn. I like making to-do lists by hand with a fountain pen on the thick paper in my planner. I like that my brain moves slowly sometimes because I'm thinking deeply. I like that I need to pause and stop and start before knowing how to write something. I don't want to read another bullet-point listicle-style LinkedIn status update that is in ChatGPT's exact voice and tone. I want to read about how you are doing in your own voice and tone. I want to read your typos. I want to pick up on the little bit of dyslexia that shines through in your writing. I want to see the little people-y flaws that pop up because your toddler is pulling on your pant leg while you work or your dog keeps trying to get you to play fetch. I want to finish my job each day and sit in the grass with my son. I want my nails to have dirt under them and my cheeks to have freckles from being in the sun. I want to do less. I want to produce less. I do not want the weight of my value to be measured in the complexity of my prompt engineering or how many things I packed into an agenda with productivity tools and hacks. I recognize the argument is that AI-enabled tools "make time" for me to do this, but the rhetoric I so often see says otherwise. We cannot at once embrace that AI makes us more human and that AI makes us more productive, unless of course, what it means to be human to you is how much you do and produce in a day. For me, being human is simply enough.

From Lily Chambers:

I genuinely do not care if AI tools make me more productive.

I am tired of seeing, "increased productivity" as a selling point. I do not want to be valued for my productivity. I do not want "more" of anything related to work.

I like doing things meticulously. I like using my hands. I like manipulating data that an LLM could interpolate for me because it helps me learn. I like making to-do lists by hand with a fountain pen on the thick paper in my planner. I like that my brain moves slowly sometimes because I'm thinking deeply. I like that I need to pause and stop and start before knowing how to write something.

I don't want to read another bullet-point listicle-style LinkedIn status update that is in ChatGPT's exact voice and tone. I want to read about how you are doing in your own voice and tone. I want to read your typos. I want to pick up on the little bit of dyslexia that shines through in your writing. I want to see the little people-y flaws that pop up because your toddler is pulling on your pant leg while you work or your dog keeps trying to get you to play fetch.

I want to finish my job each day and sit in the grass with my son. I want my nails to have dirt under them and my cheeks to have freckles from being in the sun. I want to do less. I want to produce less. I do not want the weight of my value to be measured in the complexity of my prompt engineering or how many things I packed into an agenda with productivity tools and hacks. I recognize the argument is that AI-enabled tools "make time" for me to do this, but the rhetoric I so often see says otherwise.

We cannot at once embrace that AI makes us more human and that AI makes us more productive, unless of course, what it means to be human to you is how much you do and produce in a day. For me, being human is simply enough.

Saved by sari and

RelatedCollectionsNotes

Use the tools if you must. But a better use of your extra energy — such as it is — is to live the gap between human and AI. Can an AI gather, synthesize, calculate, and even speculate faster than we can? Yes. Can it do all those things better than we can? Maybe. Can it be more interesting, unexpected, artful, or meaningful? Well that’s just a matte... See more

It’s a little depressing that these days we mainly use computers to consume fast and react fast. Task management turns us into more productive human machines. Rather conveniently for managers, human machines have higher predictability and lower inherent value – they’re easy to automate, replace, and erase.

Productivity is important, but it’s just on... See more

pketh • Productivity vs Insight, Tools for Reflection, and Other Questions Answered

An over-dependence on artificial intelligence is often just lethargy disguised as efficiency, and the “outsource everything to AI” crowd ignores the fact that the work is often more valuable than the output.

I have two predictions regarding the broader use of AI as a crutch:

First, folks who are willing to go out of their way to add a human touch to... See more

Jack Raines • The Purpose of Things Isn't to Stop Doing Things.

What would it look like if, in a McLuhan-esque, medium is the message sort of way, our tools said to us:

It’s gonna take you a while.

It’s normal to take a while.

It’d be weird if you made something beautiful so quickly.

The problem isn’t that you’re not working fast enough.

The problem is your expectations are not realistic.

Our AI helps you slow the ... See more

Sari Azout • What Does Slow AI Look Like?

Today’s knowledge workers carry a growing sense of anxiety. We have more tools than ever, but these options rarely match how we actually create. Rather than build more technology that keeps us on a miserable hamster wheel of churning out more shallow content, we have a unique opportunity to design tools that encourage us to slow down and create wit... See more

Sari Azout • The End of Productivity

I believe there are two plausible scenarios for the future of knowledge work. There’s one in which as machines become more human-like in their capabilities, we paradoxically become more machine-like in our pursuit of productivity, focused on efficiency and keeping busy above all else. But there’s another where we lean into ways of working that are ... See more

Sari Azout • The End of Productivity

I think productivity is really a race to the bottom um it's I think that the that a lot has been said about how humans uh or machines are trying to be more human but I think less has been said about how humans have for decades uh been trained to be machines

and we have a lot of unlearning to do because if we focus on efficiency and optimization and

Sublime • How I Build My Personal Knowledge Library W Sari Azout

I think one of the main reasons many of us feel anxious is because we have more productivity tools than ever, but these tools rarely match how we naturally want to create.