The guilt of killing time with AI

"The end of the world" by Maria Rosales Gerpe

When I first started my current job, there were many lulls. “Enjoy it,” my co-worker said. “It will get much busier and you will miss it.” I resented her words. For me boredom is akin to suffering. And I’m not the only one.

When I was doing group therapy, a young father would often talk about his struggles—nay fear—of boredom. He and I are like nearly half of people in 11 studies, for whom doing nothing for more than 5 minutes is misery. 

After all, idle hands are the devil’s workshop. But are they? Copywriter Eddie Shlyener in his book “Very Good Copy” alludes to an episode of Mad Men where an accountant complains about the writers messing about instead of actively writing to discuss the importance of doing ‘nothing’ for the creative brain. 

In those very same studies, where people were hating doing nothing anywhere between 6 and 15 min, more than half noted that their mind wandered when sitting in a room with nothing to do, even though they were told to actively do nothing. And that, argues Shlyener, is where creative ideas come from: disparate connections made by a wandering mind.

As I get asked to do things faster and faster at work because we now have AI to ‘enhance’ us, I’m afraid we’re losing that humanity of being useless, and bored, for the sake of constant productivity.

In some ways, I’m experiencing deja-vu. When I was 16, and I returned to Cuba for the first time after immigrating to Canada, I had a tough conversation with my then boyfriend’s mom. 

“What do you mean by ‘awkward’?” She asked incredulously. I explained that awkward meant the silences, the anxiety that came from not knowing what to say. She repeatedly said she didn’t understand. Awkward was just lulls in conversation and those were normal.

That’s the first time I can remember fearing time standing still. Fearing the expectation of not performing adequately, and I don’t exactly remember this coming from my childhood but rather from my teenage years being raised in Canada.

This “idleness is bad” is a Western construct, and one that is eroding our humanity bit by bit. It’s the fuel kindling the notion of productivity. 

Am I advocating for laziness? Perhaps. I’m not sure. All I know is that I’m not a robot; I’m prone to being overwhelmed, bored, exhausted, distracted, disengaged. And I’m tired of chastising myself for these things that make me human, with or without AI.