I’ve recently been reading Robin Sharma’s excellent book The Everyday Hero Manifesto. There’s so much to recommend it (for those looking for a good read about self-improvement and being the best version of yourself, check it out), but one chapter in particular stood out to me. In “How Heavyweights Work,” Sharma digs into the fallacy that the best way to work is to keep putting in more hours and more effort.
As he points out, this is a dated belief born out of the era when most workers spent their weeks on the assembly line. In that kind of work, more hours spent on the job really do translate to more work accomplished.
These days, though, most of us are valued far more for our intellectual and creative contributions. So why are we still so focused on putting in all the hours? Why are we measured on time instead of performance and productivity?
Accepting this shift in workers’ and leaders’ mindsets is so freeing because it allows each of us to recognize where value really resides and where we’re putting in useless time and effort. Once we see work for what it really is in the modern economy, there’s far more space for us to rest, relax…and even see where AI can most benefit business.
The Art of Leisure
According to Sharma, “legendary producers are professional resters…after they’ve expressed their mastery in a hot burst of gargantuan glory, they go dark.”
The best work, then, is done in “bursts” followed by periods of rest. This is a perspective I’ve held ever since seeing the results of that mindset during my years in France. As I detail in my book, The Paris Paradox, the French are keen vacationers. Unlike American workers, who, according to the Harvard Business Review, waste millions of vacation days each year, taking a break is required in France. Traditionally, they take the whole of August off.
While that isn’t quite as common anymore, they still make sure to rest for several weeks every year. And for good reason. Working nonstop wears down the body and the mind. Our health suffers, and so does our productivity.
Contrast that with the French idea of la rentrée—the feeling of returning to work refreshed and reinvigorated after time away.
With more energy, more focus, and more motivation, workers are able to produce those bursts of creative, impactful work that really drives results and business forward.
Optimized Rest and Results
Everyone’s trying to do more with less these days, and AI is playing a big role in that. But while the big headlines all focus on the potential for job cuts (which, for the record, aren’t showing up that much so far in most businesses, at least directly due to AI), the real potential with this technology is our ability to create more space for rest while still improving productivity.
If AI is optimized to reduce cumbersome tasks like organizing calendars and scheduling meetings, workers can focus on the work that truly matters in their jobs. At the same time, AI can also be used to maximize the value of the time each of us spends away from work, allowing for more and better rest.
I have a friend who has trained an AI agent to find the cheapest flights and best vacation deals. AI can also be used to optimize when each worker takes time off, so everyone gets a break without slowing down production. It can step in and cover many tasks while someone is away.
Far from replacing people, it may enable more of us to experience la rentrée—and provide more of those “hot bursts of gargantuan glory” for our companies.