What are you doing with your freed time? | Human Reinvented | Frank Ng & Ryan Ng

BCG's 2026 AI at Work survey found that 42 percent of frontline employees who regularly use artificial intelligence save at least eight hours a week.

Yet 66 percent receive limited or no guidance on what to do with that time, and more than half are not redirecting it into more strategic work.

That raises one of the most important questions of the AI era: What are you doing with the time the machine gives back?

Imagine a business development manager who once produced one proposal a day. With AI, she produces three. Her company rewards volume, so she triples her output, beats her target, and becomes a model AI user.

It looks like success, until the company redesigns sales around AI agents that can prepare proposals at a scale she can never match.

She did not use AI badly. She used it well for work that was becoming less valuable.

This is a pivotal moment for many of us. Efficiency may still matter, but it is no longer safe ground for navigating what comes next. If everyone can do the same work faster and cheaper, greater efficiency may simply keep you moving with the crowd.

A better use of those freed hours is to invest them in what the machine cannot simply hand you. Strengthen your judgment. Widen your horizon. Study the best work you can find until your own standard rises. AI should not only help you do more of what you already know how to do; it should help you become capable of doing what was previously beyond you.

None of this means every saved hour must be poured back into work. Taking some of that time back is reasonable. The point is to choose, rather than let habit or yesterday's key performance indicator choose for you.

AI will keep making today's work faster and cheaper. Getting unusually good at work whose value is already falling is not much of an advantage.

The machine can give the hours back. What you become with them is still yours.

Frank Ng is a retired NASDAQ CEO, who co-authors this column with his son Ryan after publishing their book Hey AI, Let's Talk!

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