Tools and systems can help us automate our tasks and routines, and much of the time, we should do exactly that when the opportunity arises.

We perform many labors because someone has to (and the responsibility somehow fell on our shoulders), not because we want to, or because they help us learn or grow.

Thus, we do the laundry, we juggle that spreadsheet, we attend yet another cookie-cutter meeting and in countless other ways expend our time and energy on things that are perhaps necessary, but not in any other way valuable or fulfilling.

I would argue that once flagged and mapped (so they can be reliably and beneficially automated), most of these responsibilities should be. In an ideal world, we humans would be spending all day painting and writing and making movies, and our technology would be folding the underwear and politely nodding their way through yet another PowerPoint about KPIs.

As we foist these responsibilities onto our agentic software and increasingly dextrous robots, though, we have to be really, truly, meticulously careful about what we give up in the process.

Some tasks, some responsibilities, some cumbersome efforts, are (as it turns out) psychologically vital to our health or continued development.

Maybe doing the laundry actually was important because of the role it played in breaking up our day, or as a quick little jolt of accomplishment that helped us power through the rest of the day.

Writing is often difficult, and even people like me who happily do it for a living don’t always find it enjoyable. But the process of writing is fulfilling. And writing allows us to extract our thoughts into an external medium, where they can then be assessed, reworked, and weighed in a manner that’s impossible when our cognition is limited to our skull-based wetware.

I could do away with the difficulty of writing, then, and by some measures that would be a productivity victory. It would certainly save me a lot of time.

But in doing so I’d be denying myself a process that, while at times tedious and draining, also makes me better. Not better because of the final written product, but because I invested the time and energy to make it.

Automation can be a wonderful boon when applied thoughtfully, but it should also be approached with care, lest we accidentally unload the burdens that strengthen us, leaving only the low-effort, superficially enjoyable fluff.

If you enjoyed this essay, consider supporting my work by becoming a paid subscriber, buying me a coffee, or grabbing one of my books.