Last month, AI saved me four hours on a single Tuesday.
I know, because I counted. A client workflow that used to take me half a day was done before my second kava. I felt very clever. Very 2026. Very look at me, working smarter, not harder.
By Friday, I had no idea where those four hours had gone.
I hadn’t rested. I hadn’t written. I hadn’t sat on the balcony staring at nothing, which, by the way, is a deeply underrated business strategy. The hours had simply… dissolved. Like sugar in coffee. Still technically there, impossible to find.
So I started paying attention. And here’s what I noticed: AI doesn’t save you time. It moves it. The hours don’t disappear. They relocate. Quietly, without asking, into three places.
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1. Into checking.
Part of my week is HR and payroll. Numbers, deadlines, people’s salaries. AI can draft, sort and summarize faster than I ever could. But I would never send anything payroll-related without checking it line by line. Not once.
So the time I saved on making turned into time spent on verifying. That’s not a flaw. That’s responsibility. But it’s also not “saved.”
2. Into choosing.
Before AI, I wrote one headline. Maybe two, if I was feeling fancy. Now I generate twelve. Then I compare them. Then I mix the third with the seventh. Then I ask for five more “with a little more soul.”
Forty minutes later, I pick the first one.
AI made producing options nearly free. It did not make deciding free. Decision-making still runs on the same old hardware: me, a cup of coffee and a limited amount of patience.
3. Into the next thing.
This is the sneaky one. The moment a task gets faster, something else slides into the gap. Another project. Another tool to try. Another “since I’m already here, I might as well…”
Saved time has a vacuum effect. If you don’t decide what it’s for, your to-do list will decide for you. And your to-do list has never once suggested a nap.
But here’s the part I almost missed
Not all moved time is lost time.
Some of the hours AI took from me were hours I never wanted in the first place. Reformatting the same document for the third time. Rewriting an email until it sounded “professional enough.” Copying numbers from one tab into another and praying I didn’t skip a row.
Those hours didn’t vanish. They moved into thinking. Into deciding what a client actually needs, instead of what they asked for. Into writing sentences only I can write.
That’s the trade I’m happy to make. Less typing, more judgment. Less producing, more choosing on purpose.
So the real problem isn’t that AI moves our time. It’s that we let it move without looking where it lands.
What my Baka knew about this
My Baka made coffee in a džezva every single morning. You can’t rush a džezva. If you turn up the heat, it boils over and you start again. The waiting wasn’t wasted time. The waiting was the coffee.
She never needed a productivity system to understand that some time isn’t meant to be saved. It’s meant to be spent, on purpose.
I think that’s the question we skip with AI. We ask how much time can this save me? We almost never ask and where do I want that time to go?
The one-line fix I’m trying
Before I hand a task to AI now, I write one line in my notebook:
“If this saves me time, the time goes to ______.”
That’s it. One line. Sometimes it says rest. Sometimes a walk. Lately, it often says the novel, because a lot of the hours AI handed back to me this year went into finishing a book I’d been circling for ages.
It doesn’t always work. Some days the to-do list still wins. But at least now I notice when it does. And noticing is where pomalo starts.
Your turn
Think about the last time AI saved you real time. Where did that time actually go? Checking, choosing, or straight into the next thing?
Hit reply or leave a comment. I read every one, usually with a kava, usually way too late at night.
— Anita
P.S. You might notice fewer emails from me from now on. That’s on purpose. Fewer posts, more depth, more coffee in between.
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