The Subtle Art of Looking Busy in the Age of AI

I’m a Gen X employee, so I had long mastered the art of appearing productive by strategically carrying manila folders around the office and furrowing my brow at Excel sheets. But in the new AI-powered world, I find that my methods have evolved into that of an aspiring method actor in the daily performance of "Looking Like We Do Things."

That colleague who suddenly became 300% more efficient? They're not having a productivity breakthrough – they've just mastered the art of making AI assistance look like old-fashioned human effort. It's a delicate dance. The goal is to appear competent but not suspiciously capable. After all, nobody trusts someone who never seems to struggle.

The first rule of AI Club: we don't talk about AI Club. When someone asks how you produced that pitch-perfect presentation in record time, don't mention LLMs, or (god forbid) Canva. Instead, you mutter something about "process improvements" and "workflow optimization." These phrases hit the sweet spot of sounding both professional and vague at the same time.

The real expertise lies in the subtle art of artificial struggles. When the AI generates a flawless report in seconds, resist the urge to immediately share it. Instead, wait an appropriate amount of time (calculated as: how long this would have taken you × 0.7), then present it with a slight frown and mention that it "still needs some tweaking." Nothing says “human effort” quite like performative dissatisfaction.

For advanced practitioners, there's the counterintuitive "complexity downgrade." When asked about your methods, describe them in the most boring terms possible. You're not "leveraging cutting-edge AI" – you're "using some new features in our existing tools." The key is to make technological revolution sound like filing paperwork. Remember: enthusiasm is suspicious. Treat AI like the office printer – a mundane tool that occasionally jams.

Some veterans of this new workplace theater have developed a sophisticated technique known as "strategic confusion." When someone asks for details about your process, adopt a slightly puzzled expression and say, "Oh, it's pretty standard stuff, really." Then immediately change the subject by asking them about how they handled the recent monsoon surge.?

But perhaps the most crucial skill is the art of the strategic deliverables dispensing. When you've used AI to complete a week's worth of work in an afternoon, resist the urge to share everything at once. Drip-feed those deliverables like a productivity IV. After all, you're not being paid by the task – you're being paid by the hour.?

The truth is, we're all navigating this strange new world where real efficiency must be carefully masked to maintain the illusion of traditional work. It's really not about deceiving anyone – it's about maintaining a comfortable fiction that helps everyone sleep better at night: like a corporate version of the Santa Claus story: everyone knows what's really happening, but nobody wants to be the first to say it out loud.

So the next time you find yourself preparing to explain how you achieved the impossible, remember: the best explanation is often the most boring one. You're not an AI guru, you're not an LLM whisperer, you're just someone who's "trying to work smarter, not harder." It’s like how I worked smarter, not harder, on this article that definitely took me all day to write.

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