76% of knowledge workers using AI at work are saving at least 30 minutes a day. 43% are saving an hour or more.*
And what are they doing with that time? Going to the gym. Taking a longer lunch. Leaving a bit early. Without anyone giving them permission.
That's an interesting story on its own. But I think the more important question isn't what workers are doing with the freed time. It's what organisations aren't doing with it.
In this week's essay I look at the three options every leadership team is facing right now about what they do with the tme AI frees up, whether they've articulated it or not...
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Reinvest everything into more output and watch your people burn out.
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Quietly let people keep the time for themselves.
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Or build innovation sandboxes, a structural commitment to channel a portion of freed capacity back into learning, experimentation, and capability building.
I walk through what innovation sandboxes actually look like in practice, share a simple starting point that turns AI savings into a virtuous cycle, and pick up a quote that I haven't been able to shake this week: "Recovered time without design is a vacancy. Vacancies fill fast."
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* Survey link, here.
