Here’s your ONE drop:
Washing machines were supposed to free women from domestic labor. They didn’t.
Historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan studied this. Her findings are brutal: Before machines, laundry once a week. After machines, laundry after every wear.
Standards shifted. “Clean” became “perfect.”
The machine didn’t save time. It weaponized perfectionism.
Same thing happened with email. We used to check once a day. Now it’s 150 times, because apparently we might miss something earth-shattering between 2:47 and 2:48 PM.
AI… same trap. It doesn’t make you faster. It just makes “fast” the new normal. (And slow now feels like a moral failure)
Every efficiency gain comes with an efficiency tax.
You save 2 hours of scrubbing. Then spend 3 hours sorting, pretreating, folding, ironing shirts that never needed ironing before. You streamline your workflow. Now “streamlined” is the floor.
You get faster. Now everyone expects faster.
The trap isn’t the tool. It’s thinking the tool changes the game. It doesn’t. It just resets the rules.
Real efficiency isn’t doing more faster. It’s deciding what doesn’t need doing at all.
But good luck selling that productivity hack.
// Ann