Daniel Miessler has a confession that sounds like a complaint but isn't. He's noticed that the people most excited about AI — himself included — are working more, not less. The standard take on this is that AI failed us: it was sold as a way to shrink the workweek and instead it expanded it. Miessler thinks that framing misses what's actually going on.

"AI was supposed to let us do way LESS work, but somehow it's made us work MORE."

His explanation is that the hours went up because the activity changed. Building things — writing, coding, making tools, producing work — became enjoyable enough that it stopped registering as work at all.

"What's happening is I and all the other crazy AI people have stopped seeing work as work."

"Because of AI, building things has become fun."

The argument underneath this is about which parts of a job AI is actually good at removing. Not the making part — the part around the making. Meetings, process, status updates, the administrative wrapping that fills a day without producing anything. When an assistant handles the drudgery, what's left is the part people liked in the first place, and they do more of it. Voluntarily. That's why the hours go up rather than down.

"AI has opened the door to humans spending more time making things instead of being crushed by meetings and process and bureaucracy."

Who this is for. If you're burned out — not by hard problems, but by the layer of coordination and busywork sitting on top of them — this is a useful reframe. The question to ask about AI stops being will this cut my hours and becomes will this cut the parts of my hours I hate. Those are different questions with different answers. Someone whose job is mostly the draining parts might get their evenings back. Someone whose job contains work they'd happily do for fun might just... do more of it, which is what happened to Miessler and the AI enthusiasts he's describing.

One honest caveat. The "building things" he means leans heavily toward building software and tools — the fun he's describing is a maker's fun, and it's most available to people whose work already involves producing artifacts, which in practice often means developers, writers, and founders. If your job is relationship work, caregiving, operations, or managing people, "spend more time making things" maps awkwardly onto your day. The insight about removing drudgery still applies; the promise that what remains will feel like play may not.

Where this stands. This is an idea, not a tool or a study. There's nothing to install and no data behind it — it's one person's observation about his own working life and the people around him, offered as a lens. Nothing in it tells you whether the effect generalizes beyond AI enthusiasts, who are a self-selected group of people predisposed to find this stuff fun. Take it as a hypothesis worth testing against your own week: if you delegated the parts of your work you dread, would you work less — or would you just finally get to the work?