A robot has been trained to do 80% of your job. What’s your next step?

Have you noticed an ever-increasing shift toward automation, promising to make our lives simpler?

Machines will do what humans once did…

The promise is: you can free up your time — no longer working on lower-level, mundane tasks and instead work on higher-level challenges…

At the same time, we are obsessed with becoming more productive.

Productivity hacks — how to get more done in a shorter period of time…

Do these 3 tricks and you can accomplish in minutes, what once took you hours!

This all sounds nice and dandy.

Please sign me up for less mundane tasks and getting stuff done faster. Where is the sign-up sheet for that?

However, I don’t think we spend nearly enough time now thinking about what we do AFTER that.

What do we do AFTER we automated to the point where we don’t have to do pedestrian things anymore? What do we do AFTER becoming so productive we do things in minutes versus weeks?

Should we work even more? Play video games? Watch Netflix?

I’ve talked to older sales guys who reminisce about the days before the mobility era.

They talk about how nice it was going on the road completely untethered from the office and home.

Similarly, older office workers in general talk about how on the weekends, they unplugged. There was no email or cell phone to check.

Is the point of ever-increasing productivity to WORK EVEN MORE?

It seems that up until now, the answer to that question has been YES.

YES, now that you have more tools, go work more.

I think more people are questioning the wisdom of that philosophy.

As Americans, from a health perspective we are more stressed, suffering from more anxiety and depression, and fatter than we have ever been. From a personal finance perspective, we are broker than we have ever been.

Considering how technology has changed our lives for the better and made it easier to do work, it appears we do not have an approach to life that changed with the times.

It’s time to start consciously deciding how you want to live in this new age of information, automation and productivity.

With the future of work going this way, it’s essential to think about the value and impact you can make with your human mind, body, and soul.

Embrace the future, don’t be afraid of it.

You can’t change it. You can’t cling to the traditional ways that worked before. Those aren’t relevant anymore.

There are grand challenges all around us that we can solve as humans, using artificial intelligence (AI). It requires developing new skills, thinking about life differently, and adapting our lifestyles.

Also, the point of all this technology is to make life better, not worse for ourselves. That means having the ability to unplug from work. That means spending more quality time with loved ones, traveling, and experiencing new things. Work to live. Don’t live to work.

Here are my questions for you:

If you had more free time because of technology and productivity, how would you use it?

How would you change the way you worked and lived?

Please leave your comments to this article to begin the dialogue.