Would We Be More Creative If We Had More Time?

One of the promises of artificial intelligence is that it might give us time. Not just speed things up, or make tasks easier, but genuinely relieve us of things we don’t want to do. What if your phone didn’t just ping you with reminders, but quietly took care of things before you even realised they were due? And if it did, what would you do with that extra time?

Not time in a vague, dreamy sense, but tangible hours that used to be spent chasing refunds, rescheduling appointments and cancelling subscriptions we don’t use. We spend so much of our energy not on creating, or even working, but on the in-between. The quiet flood of small, unpaid tasks that have to get done simply to keep the engine of everyday life running. And if we’re honest, it’s those things, not the lack of talent or ideas, that often separate us from making something meaningful.

This is where the question of AI gets interesting. Because beneath the headline innovations in image generation or code writing, a quieter shift is happening. One where AI assistants start to shoulder the burden of these low-grade, high-friction tasks. Not in the corporate sense of automating spreadsheets, but in the deeply human sense of nudging you to finally clean the gutters, and maybe even booking someone to do it for you.

And if we manage to mobilise AI to get rid of our life admin, we’ll find a lot more free space. That’s the utopian vision. More time to think, more time to make, more time to be. But here’s the harder question: If we had more time, would we use it to be more creative? Or would we just find new tasks to fill the gap?

Are We Creative By Default?

We like to think of ourselves as creative beings. And in some essential way, we are. Children sing, draw, imagine, build. Creativity is part of the operating system. But so is busyness. We are addicted to doing, and checking the next thing off the list. Somewhere along the way, many of us stop making and start managing. And there’s always an endless list of stuff to manage: our emails, calendars, to-dos, and reputations. We become organisers of our own lives, rarely pausing to ask whether the organising is in service of something meaningful or simply a defence against stillness.

It’s not our fault. It’s the culture we’re in. Productivity is rewarded, and creative hesitation is not. We’ve been taught to value the visible output more than the invisible wandering that leads there. So the idea that more time equals more creativity? That’s not guaranteed, unless we all collectively decide it’s a good idea.

We sometimes act as if this is a brand new dilemma, but it isn’t. As societies have modernised, leisure time has increased. The 40-hour work week, paid holidays, early retirement. These were all revolutions in their own way. And yet, when people get a weekend, do they paint? When people retire, do they write? When the kids leave home, do the guitars come out of the attic? Not often. The time gets filled with errands, with scrolling and with different forms of doing. This is often down to the fact that having time is one thing, but feeling permitted to use it differently is another.

The Restless Present

Even now, we’re getting glimpses of what AI can remove from our plates, expecially at work. Small tasks are already being outsourced. Drafts are being pre-written. Images are being generated in seconds. Meetings are being summarised before we’ve even processed what was said. But are we slowing down, or are we just taking the time we save and investing it back into the same mental treadmill? These tools are supposed to give us our time back, but we so rarely do anything beneficial with it.

There’s a difference between having time and having presence. One is logistical. The other is psychological. AI might give us the first, but it cannot give us the second. Most people don’t burn out from doing too much hard work. They burn out from the constant switching between types of work, modes of thought, and unresolved mental tabs. Life admin is a browser with 42 tabs open, most of them loading slowly, none of them closed. It clogs the pipes of creativity. It steals your Saturday. It makes you feel guilty for resting, because there's always something waiting.

And then Sunday evening comes. You had plans to write that short story, sketch that idea, finally start the thing you've been putting off. But the groceries took longer than you thought. The flat needed hoovering. You got stuck on the phone to customer service. And now it’s 9:30pm, you’re tired and the window has closed. So you tell yourself: next weekend. But next weekend looks a lot like this one.

This is what modern life does. It fragments your time into shards too small to use meaningfully. And over time, it erodes your belief that real focus is even possible. AI, if we let it, might change that. Not by giving us more time in theory, but by shielding us from the time-thieves that slowly bleed us dry.

Boredom and Space

So the question becomes: if those things were handled and if the white noise of life were tuned down, would we find ourselves creating more? Would we dare to be bored long enough for something beautiful to come knocking? Because boredom has always been one of creativity’s great allies. But in a world full of friction, urgency, and obligation, boredom gets crowded out. Our minds don’t get the chance to wander. They don’t get to follow weird paths, sit with strange thoughts, or daydream an idea into form.

This is the quiet promise of AI that rarely makes headlines: not just optimisation, but liberation. A technology that might eventually do the boring stuff not to make us more productive, but to give us back our humanity. Our time. Our stillness. And it matters more than we think. Because creative expression is not a luxury, it’s how we metabolise the world. How we process grief, joy, confusion, and change. When people say they don’t have time to be creative, what they often mean is: "I don't have the headspace to reflect." And that is a deeply modern crisis. We’ve been conditioned to chase productivity for so long that the sudden gift of time can feel like a void, not a gift.

It’s not that we’re idle. It’s that we’re mentally waterlogged, so weighed down by low-grade obligations that creative thought struggles to float. This is the part people don’t talk about enough. Creativity doesn’t just require time, it requires psychological margin. Space. Slack. A clearing in the woods of the mind. That’s probably why we were more creative as kids. We simply had less stuff on our minds.

A Second Renaissance—or Just Better Laundry?

The potential is there. If AI truly begins to lift the daily burdens we carry, not just at work but at home, in life, in the small print and fine details, then we may for the first time in generations have the chance to reimagine what human time is actually for. Not just for output. Not just for hustle. But for exploration, expression and play.

Maybe we’ll see an explosion of creativity, like we did after the printing press or the camera. Maybe people who never thought of themselves as creative will suddenly find space to make things they care about. Maybe the barrier between “artist” and “ordinary person” will finally dissolve. Or maybe we’ll just use the time to do laundry more efficiently. That part’s up to us.

Creativity requires more than time. It requires permission. It requires a culture that values depth over speed, stillness over urgency, presence over performance. So if creativity returns, it won’t be because we have more time. It will be because we finally decided to use it differently. No AI can do that choosing for us. And maybe the question isn’t just whether we’d be more creative if we had more time. Maybe it’s: would we be more human?