If you’re like me, you probably stare at your to-do list and realize that more than half of what’s there shouldn’t be in the first place. Welcome to modern work, where “productive” means updating a status doc, scheduling a Zoom, or copy-pasting an email from last week.
We’ve automated everything except the things that exhaust us. Every workplace is drowning in busywork. It’s death by a thousand pings, and the worst thing about it all is that we act like it’s normal.
We romanticize it. We celebrate “grit” and inbox zero and the person who always “gets it done.” But what we’re really doing is punishing human potential.
It’s time we say it plainly: These tasks are stupid. They’re beneath you, and they need to die.
Look around most offices and you’ll find high-functioning adults doing low-functioning work. They are probably rewriting the same five Slack messages, organizing screenshots of bug reports, chasing calendar links, responding “yep” to email threads that could’ve been solved with a Google Form, and so on.
These people are capable of so much more, but we’ve chained them to mediocrity.
AI today has a narrow window open, an escape route, so to speak.
But you have to be willing to take it.
Here’s a brutally honest list of tasks that should have been buried years ago:
“Just checking in on this…”
“Circling back on my last message…”
“Per my previous email…”
Stop.
No one wants to write these. No one wants to read them. And now, no one has to.
AI can come up with polite nudges, track context, escalate tone, and personalize follow-ups in seconds. The “polite persistence” part of your job just got offloaded to a machine (good riddance).
You’re in a strategy meeting, trying to contribute while also scribbling bullet points, writing initials, and marking action items.
Why do you have to take yourself through all this pain?
AI transcription tools now summarize entire conversations, assign follow-ups, and even tag owners.
You weren’t hired to be a court reporter. You were hired to think. Let the machine handle the log. You take care of the insight.
Whether it’s Notion, Trello, or some Frankenstein mix of Airtable + Slack + Google Docs, everyone’s duplicating work.
You finish the task.
Then log it in a doc.
Then update the card.
Then ping the PM.
Operational excellence isn’t in play here, no matter how much you may want to believe so.
Modern AI tools can already detect changes across systems and update boards automatically. So unless your job title is “Status Coordinator,” stop treating this like it deserves your brain.
You’re rearranging bullets, nudging logos, and adjusting font sizes. Meanwhile, the actual story goes untouched. This is busywork in flesh.
Why go through all this torture when AI can now generate entire decks based on prompts, structure reports, and apply consistent styles across documents?
Let it take care of the alignment. You take care of the alignment of vision.
“Didn’t someone mention that in the thread on Tuesday?” Now you’re 40 messages deep, hunting for a sentence you half-remember.
That is not work. It’s some bad form of forensic archaeology.
AI can summarize entire channels. You can ask, “What was the outcome of our product pricing conversation last week?” and get a clean, usable response.
Repetitive work doesn’t just kill time, it kills thinking too. When your day is filled with shallow, reactive tasks, you don’t have space for strategy. You lose the edge required for judgment, taste, risk-taking.
Ask yourself:
When was the last time you wrote something from first principles?
When was the last time you felt energized by your workflow?
When was the last time you solved a real problem rather than organizing one?
If you can’t remember, it’s not your fault. You’ve been busy doing what AI was born to do.
Think about a fast-scaling startup. The ops manager is up to her neck in dashboards, updates, and internal requests. She has an efficient team, that’s a fact, but they were deeply burned out.
If the task doesn’t require judgment, taste, or creativity, don’t do it manually. Let AI carry the cognitive boulders. Use your brain for the stuff that can’t be templated.
Here’s what actually deserves your attention:
This is how smart work scales. This is how teams win without burnout.
If you’re doing work a machine could do faster, cheaper, and better, that’s not something to be proud of. It’s a warning sign.
Don’t wait to be replaced; replace the nonsense yourself. Because the most dangerous people in the workplace aren’t the loudest. They’re the ones who figured out how to work smarter, quietly, relentlessly, and with a machine in their pocket.
Are you ready to ditch the dull and rediscover the joy of meaningful work?
We’re building something cool. Keep an eye out for ALBIS , your AI-powered twin designed to take the tedious off your plate. (Yes, it’s launching very soon!)
GENIE AI fosters growth with a conscience through a complete visibility ecosystem, uniting software, education, and community.
77 King St W Ste.400, Toronto, ON M5K 1A2
