In the AI Era, Why Leisure Matters More Than Busyness

I recently found myself trapped in an anxiety loop: every time I open my social feed and see others learning AI, tracking fitness goals, or hustling side gigs, I feel like my life is falling apart. As if only being insanely busy counts as “deserving of this job”—no, deserving of myself.

Until this weekend, when I put down my phone, went to the library, borrowed a copy of The Right to Be Lazy, and sat by the river reading for two hours. That’s when I realized: this is what I actually owed myself.

Honestly, talking about “leisure” in the AI era seems a bit out of place. Claude Code writes your code, your weekly reports, your prompts every day—everyone’s shouting “efficiency above all.” But the more things get automated, the more I question: Are we actually creating more leisure, or manufacturing more pointless busyness?

Idleness Is Not Laziness—It’s a Form of Resistance

Let’s talk history. Don’t worry, it won’t be boring.

In the late 19th century, a Frenchman named Paul Lafargue (the great Marx’s son-in-law) wrote a pamphlet called The Right to Be Lazy. The title alone was rebellious—in an era of booming capitalist mass production, he actually advocated for “laziness.”

│ 📝Notes: Lafargue wasn’t the type to lie around doing nothing. He was actually Marx’s son-in-law and later served prison time for his involvement in the Paris Commune movement. His notion of “idleness” was more of a critique of workers being alienated into machines, laboring 12–16 hours a day.

He proposed a core argument: Technological progress should shorten working hours, giving people more time to develop their potential and creativity—but capital chose to use machines to extend working hours instead.

150 years later, we have AI, automation, and lights-out factories—yet how many people are still working late into the night? It’s not that the technology isn’t good enough; it’s a matter of choice.

Why Do We Choose Overwork When We Could Relax—Even to the Point of Chronic Illness or Sudden Death?

I read an article that offered a key insight: Modern production methods already have the capacity to provide relaxation and security for everyone, yet society still chooses a model where overwork and unemployment coexist.

│ 📝Notes: Parkinson’s Law states: Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

Take the DevOps team at my former company as an example. We rolled out an automated deployment pipeline (GitOps + ArgoCD + Helm), originally expecting it to reduce ops headcount and free people up for higher-value work (like SLO optimization and observability improvements). What actually happened? After the project launched, management said: “Since automation saved time, take on a few more projects—don’t just sit around.”

😱 Isn’t this a textbook case of technological progress making people busier?

That article also mentioned: “Reducing working hours requires simultaneously raising wages and strengthening government welfare safety nets for workers to truly benefit.” I couldn’t agree more.

If you only think about deploying automation without redistributing the gains, the end result is: a handful of people profit while the majority become busier or unemployed.

May we all live long enough to collect our pensions.

Leisure in the AI Era: A Right or an Obligation?

Many people see “leisure” as a moral luxury—you have to first prove you’ve been “hardworking enough” to earn the right to relax. This is especially pronounced in East Asian workplaces: not working overtime means you’re not trying hard enough, and not trying hard enough means you’re disloyal.

But here’s the thing: AI is changing the definition of “effort.”

A programmer’s value used to be measured by lines of code written or services deployed. Now that Claude Code writes 80% of your code, do you still care about line count? If a significant portion of someone’s work can be replaced by AI, they should:

1. Use that freed-up time for more creative, more human endeavors;
2. Release productivity by reducing working hours (not reducing income);
3. Embrace leisure as an exploration of life’s meaning.

Lafargue’s resistance against “merciless old age” is even more relevant today. He said: “As long as people labor for survival, they cannot be free.” And AI offers precisely this possibility: Let machines handle survival labor so humans can pursue existential meaning.

My Practice: How to Put These Ideas Into Action

1. Deliberately Create “Unavailable Time”

One workday each week, I either arrive early or block out a 2–3 hour “do not disturb” window in the afternoon—no emails, no tickets, no messages. I use this time to think about architecture problems, read a non-technical book, or simply zone out—spin a fidget spinner, build small block sets, do bead art, chat with colleagues, drink tea, or take a walk around the park or sports field.

│ 🐾 Note: This isn’t slacking off. It’s about staying clear-headed in an age of information overload. You never know which insight will emerge from that blank space.

Think about it—we’ll be working until 60, 63 (for now), and for our generation maybe 65? 67? 70?
Deliberately creating “unavailable time” is how you make it to the finish line.

2. Reject “Obligatory Busyness”

I used to have a bad habit: whenever a new tool came out (like Crossplane or Temporal), I’d chase after it, terrified of falling behind. Eventually I realized: not every new tool needs to be learned. Rather than blindly studying a bunch of things only to forget them a month later, it’s better to spend time mastering one or two core tools.

My principle: Unless necessary, don’t learn it. If necessary, learn it thoroughly.

3. Treat AI as a “Colleague,” Not a “Tool”

My current habit: every Friday afternoon, I have AI IDEs (Kiro, Claude Code) handle the week’s grunt work—writing tests, organizing logs, generating release notes, compiling weekly reports. This makes Monday mornings feel much better.

│ 📝Disclaimer: This isn’t encouraging laziness—it’s encouraging the liberation of human energy from mechanical labor, so we can focus on things that truly require human judgment.

Final Thoughts

“Picking chrysanthemums by the eastern fence, I gaze serenely at the southern hills.”

Technological iteration is inevitable, but what ultimately determines quality of life isn’t the technology itself—it’s the choices we make with it. The AI era offers us an unprecedented opportunity: to redefine the relationship between “effort” and “leisure.”

Not being busy isn’t a sin, and being idle isn’t necessarily wasteful—if you’re truly living, living for yourself.

📚️ References

• The Dilemma of Going to Work: Is Not Being Diligent a Right? — LatePost Weekend
• Paul Lafargue, The Right to Be Lazy (1883)
• Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness (1932)
• The Importance of Being Idle
• Appearing Productive in the Workplace