The Hidden Cost of Work Isn’t Time. It’s Energy.
Or: Why AI helps us begin.
There are tasks that take five minutes… and yet sit on our to-do lists for five weeks.
We tell ourselves we’re too busy.
That we don’t have the time.
But often, that’s not true.
The task doesn’t take long.
It just takes too much energy to begin.
That’s the part we rarely say out loud.
Because we’ve been taught to measure productivity in minutes,
not in momentum.
We think in terms of duration.
But the real bottleneck is friction.
Time is visible. Energy is not.
You can see how long something takes.
You can track it. Plot it. Optimize it.
But the weight of a task – the psychological drag – is invisible.
It doesn’t show up in any metric.
And yet it’s often the real reason we get stuck.
It’s not the 20 minutes it takes to write the email.
It’s the emotional load of figuring out how to start.
It’s the blank page. The mental switch. The low-level dread.
In physics, we’d call this the activation energy:
the amount of energy required to start a reaction.
In work, it’s the energy required to get going.
AI doesn’t just save time. It lowers activation energy.
This is the part that most discussions about AI miss.
We talk about speed.
Automation.
Productivity gains.
But the most transformative effect of AI isn’t that it helps you finish faster.
It’s that it helps you start.
A suggestion.
A first draft.
A structure.
A way in.
That’s all it takes.
Once the barrier is lowered, the task flows.
Momentum takes over.
The difference isn’t marginal.
It’s existential.
Because a task that never begins
is infinitely longer than a task that takes a while.
Don’t ask what people are doing.
Ask what they’re avoiding.
If you’re building AI features, that’s the shift that matters.
Everyone’s asking:
“What tasks do our users spend time on?”
That’s fine for optimization.
But if you want to create transformation, ask:
“What tasks do our users wish they could do… but never start?”
That’s where the energy is.
Not in saving 10% of a task.
But in making possible what used to be avoided entirely.
The real value of AI isn’t speed. It’s momentum.
It’s not about shaving seconds off what you’re already doing.
It’s about unlocking what you’ve been postponing for months.
When energy drops below the activation barrier,
your entire behavior changes.
You go from avoidance
to action.
From friction
to flow.
From intention
to motion.
That’s not an improvement.
That’s a threshold.
So here’s the quiet insight:
AI, at its best, doesn’t just make work faster.
It makes work lighter.
It doesn’t just get you to the finish line.
It gets you past the starting line.
And that’s where everything begins.
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If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you:
What’s one task you used to avoid – until AI made it doable?