Jevon's Paradox: Why using more tech won't make you more productive (but distorts even more your attention)

These results from Microsoft 2025 Work Trend Index are shocking.

How does anyone get anything done when...

- employees are interrupted every two minutes

- over half of the meetings are happening without any schedules

- people do everything last minute

- and talk even more frequently than before?

Gotta be wondering, why in spite of the abundance of productivity tools and especially AI we are even more confused, busy and fragmenting our attention?

Here's the uncomfortable truth.

Adding more technology to your day is not going to solve your overload problem, no matter what tech companies are promising to you. We've heard this before - being told since 1980s that tech will free up our time. This never happened.

This is called Jevon’s Paradox - and in a nutshell, it shows that greater efficiency increases consumption, not decreases it. In other words - the more digital tools you'll be using to optimize your time... the busier you will get.

Originally observed in the 19th century by economist William Jevons, it describes a simple but uncomfortable truth: the more efficient we become at using a resource, the more we end up consuming it.

Now let's apply that to digital "productivity".

The more tools we introduce - calendars, task managers, AI agents, focus apps - the more we think we're optimizing our time. But in reality, we’re just expanding the volume of work we’re expected to handle.

Why?

Because every new technology creates more capacity:

More tasks you can say yes to.

More meetings you can squeeze in.

More messages you can reply to instantly.

More tabs, more tools, more demands on your attention.

The result? We’re not becoming freer - we’re becoming busier than ever.

That’s the paradox: the very tools that promise to save our time often accelerate our pace, inflate expectations, and leave us feeling like we’re falling behind. Adam Alter describes it very well in his TED talk Why our screens make us less happy.

So how can we get anything done (and ideally also not go crazy) in the times when everything is asking for our attention?

I am a big believer in starting from within, from our own brain and attention resources. Only by mastering how our brain works, adjusting your work based on your attention cycles, and changing your routines would you be ready to master the tech tools - and not be mastered by them.

This is why I am running a 5-Day Attention Detox Challenge for busy professionals. The next edition is 1-5th September 2025, just after you'll be back from holidays (risking to lose all the benefits of the rest if you jump into the crazy workflow without any change).