One of the issues with the use of AI in the workplace is lurking beneath the concerns about ethics and the environment. While many people (rightfully) worry about the theft of work from artists and writers, the impact on the environment, and the errors that AI regularly makes on its workflow, we should also be concerned with its impact on productivity.
AI is often pitched as a tool that will increase productivity by doing a lot of the menial, repetitive work like writing emails. This is certainly how it was sold to many businesses with the theme being that it would free up employees to do more ‘high-level’ work (and often resulted in mass layoffs, but that’s a discussion for another day, especially as that ended up being a double-edged sword too). But new studies have been coming out about how AI has impacted productivity, and the results are surprising.
Ignoring the fact that humans have to fix the errors that AI made (which means the work effectively got done twice), there is another impact that was harder to predict and that is that the menial, repetitive ‘low level’ work may have actually been important for employees to make those higher level work connections, get inspired, and be more productive overall. Here’s how it works.
High-Level Work Leads to Burn Out
While doing a lot of higher level work like analyzing complex data or managing multiple meetings may seem more useful and productive, doing it all the time leads to faster burn out. It’s simply very tiring on the brain to be constantly in problem solving, analyzing, people managing mode. Taking breaks to do mindless things like answering emails and managing files for a bit may seem tedious and boring, but more and more studies have found that it is in these tedious, boring tasks that the brain is freed up to unconsciously make connections and get inspired. It also gives the mind a bit of a rest since you don’t usually have to think too hard about straightening out papers.
It’s certainly not something you want to do all the time, any more than you would want to do ‘higher order’ tasks all the time. A balance between the boring, easy stuff and difficult, rewarding stuff, is pretty important.
The other issue for burn-out is that since AI makes people more engaged and at least in the short-term, excited, work hours get longer because the volume of work goes up since employers assume you are offloading a lot of it to the AI. And then you must correct everything the system botches up, which makes your workload less efficient overall.
Relying too Much on AI Makes More Work
The use of AI in businesses is still relatively new; as a result, many people are using it without knowing how to use it very well. Toggling between prompting AIs, working on its outputs, making corrections, and then going back to prompting means that our brains are juggling information and that’s not something it’s very good at. In fact, research has shown that it can take at least twenty minutes (often more), to fully recover focus between different tasks. With the addition of things like meetings and other tasks, it becomes harder to get work done in a day, reducing productivity and increasing stress.
Less Productivity = More?
So, if the tools that weren’t meant to make us more productive are actually doing the opposite, what should we be doing instead?
Experts are saying it may be time to go back to the basics: Taking time every day to quiet the brain. Moments of inspiration and creativity don’t happen when our brain is noisy and overloaded – they happen when the brain has a chance to work on an unconscious level and are quieter.
In the workplace, this can come about as a result of a few things, but they all require carving out deliberate time for it. Employers should encourage employees to do things like:
- Take daily time for solo, heads-down work that doesn’t have interruptions
- Free-associate their work
- Do something physical such as cleaning or going for a walk
- Measure work by outcomes rather than inputs and hours worked
- Encourage employees to take regular breaks and let their brains recharge
- Teach people how to use AI properly so that they aren’t wasting as much time on prompts and corrections and instead use it as a partner that helps with metacognition instead of something to just offload work to
Using AI can be beneficial in the workplace, but only if you’re using it appropriately and not using it to replace your own abilities. It’s also important for employers to encourage downtime for the brain to prevent burn out and reduce the number of small errors that everyone makes.
