The Not So Breakfast Show
Listen, laugh and learn as we share our latest thoughts about staying relevant, contemporary leadership and doing life right. Ish Cheyne is the Head of Fitness in New Zealand for global fitness juggernaut Les Mills. Sacha Coburn is the COO of Coffee Culture, a leading group of boutique coffee shops, and the co-founder of The Company You Keep.co.nz.
The Not So Breakfast Show
AI Was Supposed to Save Us Time. So Where Did It Go?
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Episode 275
Ish and Sacha dig into the slightly uncomfortable reality of AI and productivity: technology keeps promising to save us time, but humans are remarkably talented at immediately filling that time with more stuff.
From AI-generated reports nobody really needs, to 15-page emails nobody wants to read, they explore the difference between using AI to make work better and simply using it to create more work.
Sacha introduces a useful question, “to what end?” as a way of challenging the endless drive toward greater output. If an AI tool saves you an hour, does that hour automatically need to become another hour of productivity? Or could it become thinking time, recovery, learning, creativity or simply space to do the important stuff better?
There’s also a WHOOP watch that mistakes public speaking for tennis, a Dyson battery rescued by ChatGPT, suitcase-packing marital commentary, billionaire ambition, the strange guilt of not looking busy between nine and five, and a warning for anyone currently forwarding enormous AI-generated emails to their colleagues.
The big message: AI should help us work differently, not just help us cram more work into the same day.
Key Learnings
1. Don’t automatically fill the time AI gives back
2. Ask “to what end?”
Being able to produce more reports, more analysis or more output doesn’t automatically mean you should.
3. More data isn’t the same as better decisions
AI can make information easier to produce. Human judgement is still required to decide whether that information matters.
4. Use AI where it genuinely removes friction
Sometimes the best use of AI isn’t an enormous strategic project. It’s taking a photo of the bottom of your dying Dyson battery and asking where you can buy a replacement.
5. Leaders need to teach what “good AI use” looks like
Telling people to use AI and then criticising them whenever they use it badly isn’t particularly helpful.
And crucially: if AI makes someone more efficient, don’t automatically reward them with another mountain of work.