“If you don't decide where the saved time goes, the inbox will.” — Nadina D. Lisbon
Hello Sip Savants! 👋🏾
Where does the time go when AI makes people faster? In a Gallup analysis published yesterday, 63% of AI users surveyed earlier this year said it helps them do their job faster, and 31% said their AI use has led their employer to ask them to take on more responsibilities [1]. The speed is good news. Read side by side, though, those numbers suggest that where it goes is often decided without anyone quite deciding. The three items below offer a few clues.
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⚡ Faster first, better second
Gallup’s AI users were more likely to say AI makes them faster (63%) than to say it gives them more time on the most interesting parts of their job (47%) or helps them produce higher-quality work (46%) [1]. These answers are self-reported and the survey ran January to March, but one reading is that the speed is showing up more readily than the better work.
🌱 Less airtime for growing people
In Workday’s job-posting data from roughly 550 employers, mentions of basic AI skills peaked in January and then fell 25%, while hands-on skills like automating workflows climbed 51% [2]. Over a similar stretch, mentions of management and leadership skills fell 7% and training skills fell 13% [2]. Postings are giving more airtime to building with AI and less to the people who help others grow into it.
📋 AI in the reasons column
AI was cited in 3,961 of September’s 43,281 announced U.S. job cuts, about 9%, behind market and economic conditions at 8,789 [3]. Year to date it remains the most cited reason, at about 21% of announced cuts [3]. These are the reasons companies give, so they tell us how decisions are being described more than what’s driving them.
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🧠 The Last Three Asks
That 31% is about what employers ask once people start using AI [1]. Some of those asks come from us, and a quick look at your own can show whether they were a choice or a habit.
Scroll your sent messages, chat, or 1:1 notes and find the last three times you added something to a direct report’s plate.
For each, notice whether “they’re faster now” played a part in your thinking. Count the yeses.
For each yes, jot what that time could have gone to instead: better work on what they already own, or something that helps them grow.
Pick the one you’d handle differently today.
Write one line you might bring to that person this week, framed as a question. For example: “If you got an hour back each week, where would you want it to go?”
Zero yeses is worth celebrating. Anything more is simply a default you can now see.
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💡The Idea That Waited 38 Years
This morning the Nobel Prize in Physics went to Francis Halzen of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for the discovery of high-energy neutrinos from space with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the South Pole [4]. The detail I keep coming back to is a date. Halzen first presented his vision for catching neutrinos at the South Pole in 1988 [4]. That’s 38 years from an idea to today’s announcement.
Very little of that time was fast, and the vision grew well beyond one person. IceCube was completed a decade after the collaboration submitted its proposal, when the last of its 86 strings was lowered into the Antarctic ice on December 18, 2010 [5]. Today about 450 physicists from 58 institutions in 14 countries make up the collaboration [6]. When Mark Pearce, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics, described the achievement, he reached for a very human word, tenacity: “His tenacity and scientific vision has paved the way for a new kind of astronomy.” [4]
Most of our work runs on a much shorter clock, and AI is making that clock faster. My guess is that most of the speed shows up in the near-term work: the draft, the summary, the ticket closed by Thursday. The work that compounds in an organization tends to look more like IceCube. Growing a manager. Moving someone into a role they weren’t quite ready for last year. In Workday’s data, moves to new roles inside the same company fell at 57% of employers year over year [2], a reminder that this kind of patient work rarely happens on its own.
Workday also found that 40% of business leaders expect AI to help them get more out of the employees they already have [2]. I find that phrase interesting because it can mean two very different things. “More out of” can mean more volume from the same people. It can also mean more of what those people are capable of becoming. The speed doesn’t choose between those. We do, usually one small request at a time.
Somewhere on your team there’s probably a 1988 idea: a person or a project that would grow into something remarkable with patient, steady room. If AI is handing back a few hours a week, it might be worth setting a small share aside for something that’s allowed to take years.
What’s the long-horizon work you’d protect if some of that speed were yours to spend? I read every response.
P.S. If a colleague has a launch coming up this quarter, share this newsletter and help brew up stronger customer relationships.
P.P.S. If you found these AI insights valuable, a contribution to the Brew Pot helps keep the future of work brewing.
Resources
[1] AI Benefits at Work Unevenly Distributed (Gallup, October 5, 2026)
[4] University of Wisconsin Professor Wins the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics (Forbes, October 6, 2026)
[5] The IceCube Detector (IceCube Neutrino Observatory)
[6] IceCube Collaboration Overview (IceCube Neutrino Observatory)
Sip smarter, every Tuesday. (Refills are always free!)
Cheers,
Nadina
Host of TechSips with Nadina | Chief Strategy Architect ☕️🍵