.png)
November 1, 2026
46% of AI users say the work expected of them went up after they started using AI. Only 5% say it went down. If AI is saving you time and you still feel busier than ever, this newsletter is your next move.
It has been two weeks since my last newsletter, and I missed you.
The last two weeks were back-to-back speaking engagements. First a week in Punta Cana, in the Dominican Republic, where Nikki and I were invited to speak about AI at a conference, and then the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) conference. So technically, Punta Cana was a business trip. Then we decided to take advantage and stay on for a few days where we did relax and have vacation. It was a little bit of work and play, but for founders, that's a way of life.
Here is what was different this time.
In the past, we just knew a full day or two of any vacation would go to work. And yes, it is a luxury to work from a tropical office. Under the thatched tiki-hut umbrellas made of palm leaves, at the beach or by the infinity pool, looking out at the ocean. It's luxurious. I don't take that for granted. I am grateful, blessed, and privileged to get to experience it. But you're still working.
However, this time, vacation was different...better. In Punta Cana, the work took 1 or 2 hours in the morning. We got things going, closed the laptops, and relaxed. We jumped in only when our judgment was needed. In the evening, we came back to review and make sure everything was good to go.
What made that possible was several agents, projects, and workflows handling the tasks that used to need us in front of a laptop.
Onboarding participants into our FlipWork Sprint™, for our enterprise clients and our public cohorts, used to be a manual, tedious process. Most of that is now automated. Client work that used to take hours of my full attention, gathering the data, synthesizing it, and pulling together reports, now runs through workflows we built and refined. My time goes to reviewing the output, making sure it is high caliber, and adding our own taste and preferences to make it authentically better.
And this newsletter? We have tools that help us research and draft it. We still chose to take a break from writing it. That was a human choice, not a tool limit. Hence why you didn't hear from me over the last two weeks.
That is when it clicked for me. The hours did not disappear. They moved, from labor to judgment. For years, Nikki and I were Labor-in-the-Loop: we were the ones gathering, drafting, formatting, and chasing. On this trip, we were Judgment-in-the-Loop, which I first wrote about in my past newsletter, Sharp, Not Dependent. AI carried the labor, and we stayed in the loop to decide, review, and approve.
Then we made one more decision. We chose where the freed-up hours would go. Some went back to work. Some went to rest.
AI didn't decide where our time went. We did. If you don't decide, someone else will.
My mom used to say this whenever she saw me trying to do too many things at once, or too much too fast.
"Poco a poco se anda lejos." (Little by little, you go far.)
You don't cover a long road in one jump. You get there one step at a time, and every step counts. Her point was that rushing to do everything usually gets you less far, not more.
That is exactly the trap with saved time. AI lets us do more, faster, so we pile on more. The hour AI saves you today is small. So is the one tomorrow. Little by little, those hours add up to a different kind of week, or to more of the same work, just faster.
That is the real promise of moving from Labor-in-the-Loop to Judgment-in-the-Loop. Not only fewer hours of labor, but the chance to choose what those hours become.
Saving time with AI is the easy part. Deciding on purpose where that time goes is the real work.
1. AI is saving time, and expectations are rising to swallow it. Hubstaff's State of the Workweek 2026 surveyed 1,068 full-time US employees in computer-based roles in October 2026. Among AI users, 46% say the amount of work expected of them has increased since they started using AI. Only 5% say it has decreased. And 28% of all respondents worked during their most recent vacation. Hubstaff sells time tracking software, so it has a stake in the answer, and the numbers are self-reported. Still, the direction is hard to miss.
2. Work is growing, not shrinking. For its WorkLife 2026 report, Jabra surveyed more than 6,000 knowledge workers across six countries. 85% said at least one area of their day-to-day work increased over the past year. Jabra reads that as time saved being reinvested into new tasks and expectations. Nobody sat down and decided it. It just happened.
3. The person you report to shapes how you use AI. In the same Jabra study, daily AI use was 65% among people who see their manager as competent with AI, compared with 27% among those who don't. That is 2.4 times higher. If your manager has never talked about where saved time should go, the default answer is "more."
Put those together and the pattern is clear. AI gives people time back. Expectations rise to meet it. Work spreads into new areas. And the person who could help direct that time often hasn't said a word about it. Leaders feel it too. Gartner reported on October 20 that 44% of CEOs struggle to show financial returns from AI. Time that nobody directs is hard to see and harder to measure.
Why we believe it: It sounds logical. Less busywork should mean more breathing room. Most of us have been promised that every new tool would give us our evenings back, so we wait for the extra time to show up on its own.
Reframe: Saved time doesn't go anywhere on its own. It goes wherever the loudest request is. An open hour on your calendar looks like an open slot to everyone else. A meeting, a new project, or one more round of edits will fill it.
That isn't AI failing. It is a decision nobody made out loud.
What to do: Find out where your saved time is going today before you try to redirect it. The test below takes 30 minutes. In my past newsletter You Want More AI Than Your Job Allows. Now What?, I suggested telling your manager what saved time would be for. This is the step that comes before that conversation.
You don't need a new app for this. Use the AI chat tool your company already approved, plus your calendar. Describe your tasks in general terms and leave out client names, financials, and anything confidential.
Run this 30-minute test:
Prompt to steal:
I want to see where the time AI saves me is actually going. My role is [TITLE AND A ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION]. Here are the tasks AI helped with last week, with how long each used to take and how long it takes now, including my review time: [LIST]. Interview me one question at a time about anything that is unclear. Then estimate the total time I saved and help me figure out where that time likely went. Suggest one hour next week that I could protect for [THINKING, PEOPLE, OR REST]. Keep me in charge of every decision. Do not ask me for confidential information.
Don't let your saved time become someone else's cleanup.
The same Hubstaff survey found that 45% of AI users spend an hour or more a week reviewing, editing, or correcting other people's AI-generated work. That is the hidden cost of skipping the human check. The hour you saved by sending a fast AI draft becomes an hour your colleague loses fixing it.
This is what Judgment-in-the-Loop looks like in practice. Read it, check it, and own it before you hit send. Real time savings are the ones that don't land on someone else's desk.
1. Say it out loud once. In your next 1:1, tell the person you report to where one hour of AI-saved time is going this week, in one sentence. A plan that only lives on your calendar is easy to overrule. A plan someone else has heard is not.
2. Catch the first request that tries to take it. Something will land in that hour. When it does, pause before you say yes. Sometimes yes is the right call. Just make it a choice, not a reflex.
3. If you lead a team, answer the question for them. Tell your team what the time AI saves them is for, or they will assume it is for more. Ask each person where an hour should go and agree on it together. If you want a shared starting point for how your team works with AI today, FlipFactor™, FlipWork's proprietary diagnostic that measures AI readiness, gives everyone a baseline. You can take it at flipfactor.ai.
Here is one more place an hour could go: into yourself. I have a special invitation just for you as a ¡Ay, Ay, Ay, AI! reader.
Our next FW Sprint kicks off this Wednesday, November 4, and we are taking late registrations through November 11, so there is still time to join. We meet once a week for 60 minutes, and you put additional time into the FW Sprint work between sessions. That work is the point. Each system you build with AI frees up more capacity for what matters most to you: the thinking, the important things, the work only you can do. You invest a couple of hours a week and get back a multiple of them.
We are bringing together accomplished leaders, including executives from Fortune 500 companies, who are ready to redesign how they think, work, and lead with AI. Over eight weeks, you will turn your expertise into AI-powered systems for real work, finish with a Capstone that shows the before and after, and earn the FlipWork Certified: Agentic Leader credential.
Seats like these are rare. Most of our FW Sprints are closed cohorts for enterprise clients. Only about once a quarter do we open a public cohort that individuals can join on their own. Most participants are sponsored or reimbursed through their company's professional development or education benefit.
Want to know what it is really like? Hear directly from past participants.
Two weeks away taught me something I thought I already knew.
AI did save us time. That was never the question. The question was whether that time would disappear into more work, or whether we would decide where it went. For a few days, we decided. And the laptops stayed closed.
You don't need a trip to try this. You need one hour and one decision.
Poco a poco se anda lejos. Little by little, you go far. My mom said it to slow me down when I was trying to do everything at once. She was right then, and she is right about AI now. Take your next hour, choose where it goes, and go far on purpose.
¡Hasta la próxima, un abrazo fuerte! (Until next week, a big hug!)
P.S. ♻️ Know someone who is saving time with AI and somehow working more than ever? Send them this newsletter and invite them to subscribe to ¡Ay, Ay, Ay, AI!. If they are ready to invest an hour in themselves, share the FW Sprint invitation with them too.
