Executives keep asking me the same question: if we automate away the boring work, will our people lose their creative edge? I understand the concern. A recent Wall Street Journal article captured it perfectly, arguing that delegating mundane tasks to AI eliminates the very boredom that sparks creativity. Fewer dull moments means fewer breakthroughs.
The logic seems sound. Boredom lets the mind wander. Mind-wandering produces insights. Remove boredom, lose creativity.
But that’s not how it works.
The Real Mechanism
Creativity doesn’t need boredom. It needs slack.
Slack is unused mental capacity combined with agency over your attention. It’s the cognitive breathing room that lets your brain make unexpected connections.
Boredom can accidentally create slack, but it’s a terrible way to get there.
Here’s the difference:
A software engineer debugging code for six hours straight doesn’t have creative slack. She has cognitive exhaustion. That same engineer with a 30-minute buffer between meetings and autonomy over her afternoon? That’s slack.
An accountant processing expense reports while mentally checked out isn’t incubating ideas. He’s training himself to disengage. That same accountant given ownership of redesigning the expense workflow? That’s where creativity happens.
The mechanism the WSJ article identifies isn’t wrong. The brain does need downtime to process and connect. But boring work rarely provides that. More often, it produces:
- Energy drain
- Reduced agency
- Learned helplessness
- Fragmented attention
Getting people to stay engaged and creative while doing mindless work isn’t a management challenge. It’s a contradiction.
Why AI Creates Risk (And It’s Not What You Think)
The danger isn’t that AI removes boring tasks. The real danger is what organizations do after they’re gone.
Most companies will:
- Automate repetitive work
- Fail to redesign roles
- Leave people with fragmented tasks and no ownership
That doesn’t preserve creativity. It destroys it.
If you automate boredom without upgrading responsibility, you get disengagement. If you automate boredom and elevate agency, you unlock creativity at scale.
AI should remove:
- Low-judgment repetition
- Attention fragmentation
- Cognitive tax from context-switching
And replace it with:
- Problem framing
- Strategic decision-making
- Systems thinking
- Creation, not just execution
The Question Leaders Should Actually Ask
Not: Should we keep boring tasks so people stay creative?
But: What do we give people once the boring work is gone?
More autonomy? Bigger problems? Clear ownership? Real decisions that matter?
That’s where creativity actually comes from.
Slack through boredom is accidental. Slack through design is intentional.
The organizations that understand this distinction will unlock creativity at scale. The ones that don’t will automate their way into a more expensive version of disengagement.
That’s the real work of leadership in the age of AI.
