> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.ridiculouslyefficient.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Sovereignty Test: Where Did the Hours AI Freed Go? - URL: https://www.ridiculouslyefficient.com/technology-human-sovereignty-test/ - Published: 2026-09-07T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-07T15:59:59.000Z - Description: A simple test for technology and human sovereignty: did the hours AI freed go into more work, or back into your life? - Author: Marissa Brassfield - Tags: Energy & Alignment In November 2022, when ChatGPT came out, I took the next month to offboard all of my clients. ChatGPT's release was the first time a non-technical person could use a large language model and build something useful with it. I spent three months unlearning my own working patterns and relearning how a knowledge worker's workflows and habits change with AI. Then, symbolically, on my birthday, March 16, 2023, I asked myself what my ideal rhythm would feel like. My favorite periods of time had been the stretches between clients when I didn't have to work a five-day work week. I decided on my birthday that I am the kind of person who makes decisions that support my goals. I declared a three and a half day work week. **TL;DR: If you adopted AI in earnest, you're measurably faster, AND you still don't feel free, that gap is the test of technology and human sovereignty. When AI frees up your time, do the hours get reinvested into your life, or reabsorbed into more work?** ## Something in you already knows what needs to go. One email a week that helps you find the thing to stop doing. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ## The Leverage Trap I work with AI daily and coach people who do, and the same pattern keeps showing up. The markers that I've been noticing in people who work with AI daily and aren't yet getting it: they are getting leverage, and they're just doing more work. The mechanism is 160 years old. In 1865, William Stanley Jevons observed that as steam engines grew more efficient at burning coal, total coal consumption rose, because cheaper energy found more uses. The [Jevons paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons%5Fparadox?ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com) runs straight through knowledge work. Every hour AI saves makes the next hour of work cheaper to attempt, so the week refills. The hours AI saves come in fragments. [Brigid Schulte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid%5FSchulte?ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com), the author of *Overwhelmed*, coined the term time confetti for leisure fragmented into scraps too small to use. An hour saved between two meetings rarely survives the meetings around it. Fragments that small get filled with more work. ## The Productivity Paradox In a 2023 working paper, [Noy and Zhang](https://www.nber.org/papers/w31161?ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com) found that professionals using ChatGPT finished writing tasks faster and produced higher rated work, with the biggest gains going to lower-skilled workers. That same year, [Dell'Acqua and his colleagues](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=4573321&ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com) put 758 BCG consultants through a set of tasks and found AI raised speed and quality on the work inside its frontier. [McKinsey](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/mckinsey-digital/our-insights/the-economic-potential-of-generative-ai-the-next-productivity-frontier?ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com) estimated the productivity gain at trillions of dollars a year, mostly through productivity. And in the [2023 Work Trend Index](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/wti-2023?ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com), most workers said they would delegate work to AI to lighten their load. Every one of those studies measured what got produced and how fast, and none of them tracked where the saved hours went. Before AI, I was really good at the work. I typed fast and I think in systems. I was crushing it. But the manual work demanded meticulous attention and took a long time. I did have systems. I didn't really have time to think. [Economic Policy Institute](https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/?ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com) researchers tracked US productivity and typical pay rising together for decades and then diverging after the 1970s, generations before AI, while [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours?ref=ridiculouslyefficient.com) shows annual working hours falling steeply across industrialized countries for 150 years and then flattening in recent decades, and neither series tracked where the saved hours went. ## The Sovereignty Test The Sovereignty Test asks one thing of your week: where did the hours AI freed go? If they went into more work, the tool is serving the work. If they went into your life, the tool is serving you. The byproduct of partnering with AI was open time freed up, and I chose to reinvest that time into my capital-S Self: mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and financial flourishing. But it's tempting, and short term probably responsible, to focus that freed-up time on work. When the time opened up for me, it was natural to start going into business development: what's the *new, better and different* version of my business model, who am I becoming? I don't want to fill it with more travel, more stages. I don't want to fill it with more strangers and a stump speech that I'm repeating. You don't *have* to perform if you don't want to. What you're not changing, you're choosing. Every no I said gave me confidence to say no again. Holding that boundary and allowing myself peace and quiet made the decisions that didn't fit stand out for their lack of resonance. ## What Sovereignty Over Time Feels Like When I feel sovereign over my time, the way I describe it is effortlessly on time. I'm not rushing and racing to get from meeting to meeting. I'm doing everything that I want to be doing and that is important to me, and I'm not behind. When it is the opposite, I'm back-to-back in meetings, I feel like I'm constantly rushing, and these meetings are not necessarily chosen, they just land on my calendar, and they aren't with people that I love. Effortlessly on time has been a mantra for years. I would watch how other people moved, white-knuckling from meeting to meeting, and I hated how it felt to feel rushed out the door. The reason was an adversarial relationship with the clock and the calendar. So often people book themselves back to back on calls. No. You need five to 10, maybe 15 minutes of buffer, because a conversation runs long and you need to go to the bathroom or refill your water. The feeling of being behind is terrible, and the only way around that is giving yourself grace and space. ## What I Did With the Time Since March 2023, a four-day weekend is enough time to do all the laundry, the logistics, rest, recuperation, a little adventure. It's just the perfect amount of time. By the time Tuesday came, I was recharged. I was able to hit it hard on the energy the weekend built. And because I had those three and a half days to spend on generating revenue, I also had one and a half to two days a week freed up to focus on evolving my own skills and capabilities. Thinking, learning, connecting, and a number of other things. Journaling and meditation are some of my favorite ways to process and reflect. I took a page from Greg McKeown's book *Effortless* and asked his question: what would it be like if this were easy? I got my sticky notes, went to the side of my wall, and started assembling all the different workflows. What would I do if I had 30 people at my disposal helping me? That space let me look at all my past experiences again and bring them new life, new value, and new financial opportunity. When you need something done, ask a busy person. For years I was the busy person who got asked to do more things because I was ridiculously efficient. The time I reinvested now goes to raising my son in my little family. I wake up rested. I train in my little home gym. There are some things I solve for that money can't buy. It's the quiet in my head. I am peaceful. A lot of the overextended founders I work with are so used to working 70 hours a week that it doesn't compute, so I could never tell them, I only work Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. I say here's my calendar link, let's book when it's convenient for you. If I work Monday, I don't work Friday. I tried time management many times before this and it failed, largely when I was working inside someone else's work week, matching a client's 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. hours. I would burn out, and when I reflected back on why, I burned out because I forgot my own rules. I laid inside someone else's system instead of following my own. [Personal sovereignty](https://www.ridiculouslyefficient.com/personal-sovereignty-liberation-not-optimization/) starts with deciding who the freed time belongs to. I told my Work Your Way students back in 2023 that in an AI-augmented world, work will be based on outcome rather than time, because the time it takes to produce the work is so much shorter than it was. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is the Sovereignty Test? It is a single question you pose to your calendar: what became of the time AI handed back to you? When those hours flow into your own life, the technology works for you; when they get swallowed by extra tasks, you are working for it. ### What is the Jevons paradox, and what does it have to do with AI? In 1865, William Stanley Jevons observed that as steam engines grew more efficient at burning coal, total coal consumption rose, because cheaper energy found more uses. Every hour AI saves makes the next hour of work cheaper to attempt, so the week refills. ### How do I run the Sovereignty Test on my own week? Track how you spend each workday across one full week so the actual distribution of your hours becomes visible. Next, identify the task that AI could automate or speed up enough to return an hour or more to your day. Once that hour appears, choose its destination yourself rather than letting the calendar claim it. ## One nonessential to eliminate before next week. One insight every Tuesday for ambitious professionals navigating major transitions. Five-minute read. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ## Running the Test on Your Week Audit your workday for a full week, just so you see exactly where your time is going. Then ask: what task, if automated or accelerated with AI, would free up at least an hour of your day? When the hour shows up, decide where it goes before the week decides for you. Put the freed time somewhere in your life and put it there first: rest, the laundry and the logistics, a little adventure, a workout in your home gym, journaling, an afternoon with your family. AI is going to keep getting faster, and it's going to keep handing you hours. Where did yours go?