NOT EVERYTHING WORTH DOING IS A TASK

It’s raining. You’re late. A small autonomous rover is waiting outside.

It knows the route. It avoids the terrier at number 14. And noticing a change in your dog’s gait a little earlier than normal, it returns after 25 minutes with a happy, pleasantly tired animal.

Would you use it? Of course. At least on a wet Wednesday. When your task list is massive.

Now imagine that Wednesday becomes every day. Your dog still gets its exercise. And it doesn’t seem to miss you. The outcome has been preserved.

But did you miss the first warm morning of spring? Have you stopped noticing whose tulips are coming up? Has the half-hour where problems seemed to rearrange themselves evaporated?

When automation makes the task disappear, a small place - where life used to happen - often disappears with it.

What does this reveal? Some activities are valuable because of what they produce. Some are also valuable because of other changes that happen while we’re doing them.

A first draft produces words. It also reveals what you think. Explaining something to a junior colleague gets them an answer. It also develops their judgement. And yours.

There’s plenty of work we should be delighted to lose: moving information between systems, chasing forms, reformatting documents, assembling reports from data that already exists.

But not everything that looks like a task is only a task. Sometimes it is an activity with deeper consequences. Ones which, perhaps, we should keep doing.

The dog can go with the rover on Wednesdays. But maybe you keep the Sunday walk. Not because you can do it better. Not even because the dog needs you to.

But because some things are worth doing because of what else they add.

So, something to ponder as you use AI this week: Which tasks are just tasks - and which are activities with valuable hidden outcomes? Perhaps we need a list.

Happy Monday all.