The AI Productivity Paradox

I have a list of projects that have been sitting in my head (and various note apps) for years. Not because they're bad ideas. Because the grunt work to get them started always killed momentum before I got to the interesting parts.

AI agents changed that for me. Not by doing the work perfectly, but by handling the grunt work (the scaffolding, the research) the tedious first 60% that used to drain my motivation before I got to the interesting decisions. Projects that were just ideas six months ago are real things now. Some are shipping.

I'm not alone in this. Simon Willison recently highlighted a developer who spent eight years wanting to build a tool and three months actually building it once AI agents could handle the tedious parts (400+ grammar rules for a parser, exactly the kind of work that kills ambition). AI didn't replace his expertise. It got him past the starting line.

But here's what nobody warns you about: I'm not working less. Not even close. Every project I unblock reveals three more that suddenly feel possible. My to-do list didn't shrink. It tripled. A product manager in China reported the same pattern — she automated 60-70% of her daily operations with AI agents and now works until 2am instead of midnight.

This is the part that doesn't make it into the vendor sales pitch. AI agents won't give your team their evenings back. What they do is raise the ceiling on what your team attempts. Projects that sat in "someday" for years start moving. That's genuinely powerful (and I'd argue it's the real value proposition).

So if you're thinking about AI agents for your business, here's the honest pitch: your team isn't going to work less. They're going to attempt things they never would have tried before. Set that expectation from day one and you'll actually keep the momentum going.