Hello friend,
Occasionally, some technical advancement arrives that gives us more time. Historically, these advances were hundreds of years apart. Now they come a lot quicker. Right now, we’re going through the disruption tumble dryer once again with the arrival of agentic AI.
The upside to these things is that once we get our arms around the new thing, some things that used to take a lot of time now take very little. That gives us, in theory, extra time.
In other words, a boon.
A lot of us are getting our arms around AI now to actually start realizing that boon. I am! I don’t know how this whole AI thing is going to shake out, but I can’t deny AI’s taken a lot of donkey work off my plate.
The question is how we spend that boon.
When we talk about getting time back, we all give lip service to the idea of spending it on ourselves. Because in our heads, that quality-of-life moment is always just around the corner, right up until the moment they put you in a box.
But too often, what we actually do is the opposite. We look at our increased capacity and take on more work. The space opens up, and we immediately fill it by putting more on our backs.
At the end of the day, we’ve gained productivity and lost quality of life. Somehow, the boon that was supposed to give us breathing room has left us with even more to do. This keeps happening to us all.
This time, I’m actively trying to spend the boon on myself.
I’m using my AI boon to become more analog. By that, I mean more time in the woodshop, in the garden, reading books, taking care of myself, and spending time with my family.
Those are the things I want the extra time for. I want to get the necessary work done and then go touch grass.
This is a lot more difficult than it sounds.
These technology jumps are like catnip to me. The more I play with them, the deeper I want to go. I get one thing working and immediately see three more things I could get it to do. Before long, I’m spending the afternoon investigating how to save myself an afternoon.
And even when the technology does save me time, there’s still that temptation to fill the space with more work. I could make more content or take on another thing. After all, things are fun.
This time, however, I’m not ensnaring myself. I’m making a sincere effort to let the saved time stay mine. I want my AI boon to be a particularly well-built cabinet or a trip with my wife.
How about you? Have you thought about how you’ll spend your boon?
As these tools become more capable, we will all have opportunities to make this choice. If we don’t think about it, we’ll fall right into that more-at-the-grindstone trap.
So when something gives you an hour back, decide where you want that hour to go.
Don’t squander your boon.
Your pal,
David
This Week in the MacSparky-Verse
Here's what ran at MacSparky.com this week.
- My iPhone Duo review is now live on YouTube.
- Apple Notes: Easier Direct Links from the Share Sheet puts a Share a Link option within reach on iPhone and iPad, with a reminder to check who can open or edit the note.
- Creator Studio Early Automation Tests looks at John Voorhees’s first tests of agent access in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
- Live Rewind and the Awkwardness of What explains why an Apple Watch transcript could make noisy conversations a little less awkward for me.
- Early MacBook Pro PROLED Reviews rounds up first impressions of the screen, reduced weight, touch controls, battery life, and price.
- On Mac Power Users 874: iPad mini Review, PROLED MacBook Pro, David Got a Duo, Stephen and I review Apple’s latest hardware and I explain how the iPhone Duo is fitting into my setup.
In the MacSparky Labs, we covered a lot:
- We got together for the November meetup to talk about the iPhone Duo, 3D printing, local AI, and putting robots to work.
- I wrote about my first iPhone Duo impressions and a better way to find Keyboard Maestro macros by their shortcuts.
- I made a video on Siri Recap and Live Rewind.
- Ward Roef joined me for a Friends of Dave video and podcast on turning voice notes into tasks and book notes.
- I published The Lab Report podcast on the new MacBook Pro, the iPod at 25, owning your music, and the original Star Wars radio dramas.
Next week, we're getting together for a Deep Dive on securing your digital life.
That was a single week, and the Labs run like this every week. If that sounds like your kind of place, come join us.
This week's newsletter is sponsored by DEVONtechnologies.
DEVONthink To Go 4.3 is out for iPhone and iPad, with some useful ways to spend less time tending your document collection. You can now attach a reminder to a document or group, either once or on a repeating schedule. A document you need next Tuesday can bring itself back to your attention, and a reminder can even run a shortcut.
The app also keeps working when you leave it. Syncing, OCR, and AI chats can continue in the background, with progress shown in Live Activities. You can start the work and switch to something else without keeping DEVONthink To Go on screen.
Shortcuts support has been rebuilt, too. There are new actions for summarizing documents, suggesting names and tags, and turning scans into searchable text. Those new AI, summary, and OCR actions require iOS 27 or later; the app itself runs on iOS 26 or later. A Shortcuts Gallery gives you ready-made examples to start with. And when it's time to read, the new reader view removes distractions from web pages.
See what's new in DEVONthink To Go 4.3. My thanks to DEVONtechnologies for supporting MacSparky.
