The Speed-Up
Better, or Just Busier?
AI made everyone faster. Faster was never the problem.
Updated October 2026
A question I keep asking at work
I have spent twenty-five years in data and analytics. In the last two years, every room I walk into is faster than the room I walked into before it. More output. More decks. More analysis produced by fewer people in less time. By every measure we track, we are winning.
So I started asking a question in those rooms, and I have yet to get a fast answer:
Are we better because of this moment in time we all live in — or just busier?
Nobody answers right away. There is always a pause. And the pause is the answer.
This is not an argument against the tools
The tools work. That is the whole point. If they did not work, nothing here would be worth writing about — you would try them, they would disappoint you, and you would go back to your week.
But they do work. The thing that took three hours takes twenty minutes. And when something that expensive suddenly becomes that cheap, the interesting question is never about the tool. It is about what you did with what it gave back.
What the speed-up does to the three tensions
The Zombie Score measures three tensions. The speed-up pushes on all three, and it pushes every one of them in the same direction.
Presence vs Pace — the friction is gone
The workday used to end because you ran out of you. You got tired, the writing got worse, and the tiredness was doing something useful — it was a brake. Now the second wind is available on demand. Nothing gets tired at nine at night except the person sitting at the desk, and they are the only one who has to decide to stop.
Balcony vs Dance Floor — synthetic altitude
The balcony used to be expensive. You earned the aerial view by paying attention over time. Now you can generate the summary, the framework, the tidy explanation of what is going on — in a minute, without leaving the floor. It reads like altitude. It is not. Nobody ever understood their family better by reading a good summary of it.
Margin vs Momentum — you spent all of it
This is the one that gets people. The speed-up hands back real hours. Those hours do not become margin on their own — nothing in your week is designed to catch them. They get absorbed by the next thing, because there is always a next thing and now it is cheap to start. Capacity is not the same as space. Capacity gets spent.
The four-hour test
Here is the version you can run tonight, and it takes about ninety seconds.
Estimate the hours AI saved you in the last week. Be generous with yourself — say it was four. Now name where those four hours went. Not in general. Specifically.
If you can point at them — you left at five, you were on the floor when the kid wanted to play, you closed the laptop after dinner and it stayed closed — then the speed-up made you better, and you should know exactly what you did to make that happen, because it will not keep happening by itself.
If you cannot name where they went, they went into more work. That is not a character flaw. It is the default. The hours do not come back to you unless somebody takes them, and the only person in a position to take them is you.
What better actually looks like
Better is less impressive than people expect. It is not a philosophy or a system or a morning routine. It is boring and specific and small.
Better is: one thing came off the list this week and nothing replaced it. The laptop closed forty minutes earlier than it used to and stayed closed. There was an afternoon with nothing in it, and something unplanned walked into the gap. Somebody in your house noticed you were there.
Busier is also specific, and easier to recognize because most of us are living in it. Busier is: more output, more open loops, more things half-started, and a vague sense that you are running well but running behind. Faster than you have ever been. Further behind than you have ever felt.
It is the same question the assessment asks
My six-year-old called me a zombie once, while I was on my phone and she was holding two Barbies. She was right. That was before any of this got fast.
The thing I have learned since is that the patterns we drift into are almost never chosen — they are inherited from a season that has already ended. The speed-up did not create that problem. It just made drifting a lot more efficient.
So the question is the same one it has always been, only louder now: is the shape you are in the one you would pick on purpose? Or did you just get very fast at something you never actually decided to do?
Common questions about the speed-up
Is AI burnout real?
The exhaustion is real, but it is usually not caused by the tools themselves. What AI changed is the amount of output a single person is expected to produce in a day. When capacity goes up and expectations rise to match it, the work expands to fill the new ceiling and the person underneath it gets tired in a way that looks like burnout and behaves like burnout. The fatigue is a symptom of a raised bar, not of the software.
Why does AI make me busier instead of giving me more free time?
Because nothing in the system returns the saved time to you by default. When a task that took three hours now takes twenty minutes, the two hours and forty minutes do not get handed back as free time. They get absorbed by the next task, because there is always a next task and now it is cheaper to start. Time saved is only time gained if someone deliberately protects it. Otherwise it is just capacity, and capacity gets spent.
How can I tell if AI is making me better or just busier?
Use the four-hour test. Estimate how many hours AI saved you in the last week, then name specifically where those hours went. If you can point to something — you left earlier, you were in the room for bedtime, you finished at a reasonable hour and did not open the laptop again — then it made you better. If you cannot name where the hours went, they went into more work. That is not a moral failure. It is the default outcome, and it takes a deliberate decision to change it.
Does the Zombie Score assessment measure AI use?
Not as part of your pattern. The assessment is eighteen questions across three tensions — Presence vs Pace, Balcony vs Dance Floor, Margin vs Momentum — and none of them ask about technology, because those tensions existed long before AI and will outlast it. There is one unscored question at the end, called The Speed-Up, that asks whether AI made you better or just busier. It does not change your shape. It only adds context to your season, and the paid profile explains how the speed-up specifically distorts your pattern.
Which one are you right now?
Eighteen questions, four minutes, free. It ends with The Speed-Up — one question that does not count toward your pattern and tells the truth about your season anyway.
Find your pattern — freeOr read about the three tensions and the nine patterns.