Does This AI Automation Spark Joy?

The Marie Kondo guide to curating digital life with intentionality

🌸 ikigai 生き甲斐 is a reason for being, your purpose in life - from the Japanese iki 生き meaning life and gai 甲斐 meaning worth 🌸

I wouldn't let a stranger rifle through my wardrobe and decide which clothes to keep. I definitely wouldn't hand over all my personal photos to someone else to organise. Yet somehow, when it comes to AI and automation, we're expected to embrace every efficiency idea that comes our way without question.

Marie Kondo taught us that keeping only what sparks joy transforms not just our homes, but our lives. The same principle can also apply to AI. Every automation decision shapes how you spend your days, what skills you maintain and ultimately, who you become. This deserves the same thoughtful curation you'd give to anything else in your one wild and precious life.

A quick note on terminology, because it shapes how much control we hand over and I am talking about all this in the broad sense; things we choose to do ourselves with or without AI help, versus, things we let systems do for us.

[Automation is for repetitive tasks with rules like auto-filing emails. Workflows chain automated tasks together into larger processes, like welcoming new customers after signup. Bots range from basic scripted chats to smarter customer-service helpers. AI agents, such as OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Agent or Perplexity’s Comet browser, aim for greater independence, interpreting broader goals and making decisions along the way.]

Truly agentic AI tools are still early-stage with lots of challenges ahead (verifying their own outputs, building trust, confirming identities, handling nuanced tasks without oversight), we need robust checks before handing over decisions we can't easily reverse.

I'm puzzled by the rush to remove humans from tasks they enjoy and are important to clarify thinking, for minor time savings. Sure, ChatGPT Agent looks like it can create a slide deck while you go off and do something else, whereas currently I research and ideate back-and-forth before asking for output I can paste into Gamma, but that saves maybe a few minutes while making me far less likely to spot issues, and frankly, transforms what feels like co-authoring into something that's just done for me by AI. What’s the point?

The art of AI curation

Picture this. You're reading your favourite AI newsletters each week, scanning for insights to share with your network or add to your training content pipeline. An AI agent could easily read these for you, extract key points, even draft your LinkedIn posts. Technically brilliant. Practically efficient. Does automating this spark joy?

For me, the answer is a firm no. I love reading. I'm fast at it, good at discerning what my audience will find valuable. More importantly, this weekly ritual keeps me connected to my field, sharpens my judgement and maintains the personal touch that makes my content authentically mine. Automating it would feel like asking someone else to have my conversations.

Compare that to wrestling with disconnected feedback systems, copying customer insights from three different places, reformatting surveys, creating summary reports. This sparks about as much joy as folding fitted sheets for me. Here, automation feels like a gift, not a theft.

No sweat, no glory

There's something deeper happening when we resist certain automations that technically could make our lives easier. We're human beings who happen to need to do things, not just be.

Achievement is fundamental to psychological wellbeing.

When AI handles tasks wholesale, we risk being left with "earned success deficit." The hollow feeling students get when ChatGPT writes their essays, or the emptiness that comes from pressing a button and watching a fully-formed project report appear. None of our sweat went into building it, so our brains don't register it as ours.

My gut feel is that agentic systems will often feel less satisfying than AI that works alongside us. A coding copilot that helps you think through problems? Energising. An agent that spits out finished code? Strangely deflating, even when it works perfectly.

Your brain needs challenge the way your body needs movement. Automate too much of your thinking, and you risk intellectual atrophy. Keep everything manual, and you're needlessly exhausting yourself with digital busy work. The skill lies in knowing which mental muscles need regular exercise and which tasks genuinely deserve to disappear.

When you're deciding for others

When you're making automation decisions that affect other people, whether you're a team leader, business owner or someone whose choices ripple outward… the Marie Kondo question becomes more complicated.

Does this automation serve everyone's purpose, or just the balance sheet?

I think about the teams I've worked with where someone absolutely loved creating those weekly reports that everyone else found tedious. Or the customer service representative who found genuine satisfaction in personally crafting responses, even though a chatbot could handle 80% of the queries. Automating these roles might look efficient on paper, but you're potentially removing sources of meaning and mastery from people's working lives.

I would never advocate for resisting progress or keeping inefficient processes just for the sake of them, but we must recognise that humans aren't productivity units to be optimised.

The false economy of automation kicks in when you automate away something that was actually contributing to job satisfaction, team cohesion or individual growth. Unhappy people leave. Disengaged teams underperform. Skills atrophy when they're not used.

The most forward-thinking organisations I see aren't asking "what can we automate?" but "how can we use AI to help our people do more of what they're brilliant at?" They're automating the boring bits so humans can focus on the creative, strategic, relationship-building work that actually energises teams.

Every automation choice we make shapes the future of work. When we choose efficiency over human agency, we're voting for a world where fewer people have meaningful work. When we choose thoughtful integration, AI handling the drudgery while humans tackle the nuanced, creative challenges… we're helping create a future where technology amplifies human capability rather than replacing it.

Your automation decisions matter beyond your own experience. They're small acts of stewardship for the kind of working world we want to live in.

Creating your automation hierarchy

Start by auditing what you currently do. List everything; the weekly reports, the social media scheduling, the customer follow-ups, the research, the writing, the connecting. Now ask yourself Marie Kondo's magic question about each one… does this spark joy?

But add a second layer, does doing this myself add meaningful value? Not just any value, meaningful value. Value that connects you to your purpose, grows your capabilities or maintains relationships that matter to you.

Here's how I've learned to think about it;

Automate with abandon - Repetitive data manipulation, scheduling, basic formatting, reminder systems, simple decision trees you've already thought through completely. These are your digital fitted sheets, hardly anyone finds joy in them.

Automate thoughtfully - Research gathering, outline ideation, basic analysis, routine communications. Let AI do the heavy lifting, but stay involved in the thinking, refining, and decision-making.

Keep precious - Creative work, relationship building, strategic thinking, learning in areas that matter to you, any task where your personal judgement adds irreplaceable value.

The boundaries will be personal. Some people love data analysis and find deep satisfaction in building spreadsheets from scratch. Others find creative fulfilment in community management that I might find draining. Your automation choices should reflect your values, not Silicon Valley's.

Having the luxury to choose which tasks to automate is itself a privilege. Not everyone gets to decide whether their work sparks joy. But for those of us who do have this choice, we have a responsibility to use it thoughtfully. Because automation decisions aren't just personal, they're cultural. Every task we hand over to AI shapes what we collectively value as worth human involvement. Every efficiency we embrace influences what skills future generations will develop or lose.

When you choose to read those newsletters yourself instead of having AI summarise them, you're not just preserving your own cognitive abilities. You're maintaining human involvement in knowledge curation. You're keeping alive the subtle art of discernment that comes from lived experience, not pattern matching.

Living intentionally with AI

The goal isn't to resist all automation out of some misguided nostalgia, but to approach AI the way Marie Kondo taught us to approach our possessions, with gratitude for what serves us and the courage to release what doesn't.

Sometimes that means keeping tasks that could be automated because they connect you to your work's deeper purpose. Sometimes it means automating ruthlessly so you can focus your finite energy on what truly matters.

The future doesn't have to be about AI doing everything for us while we gradually forget how to do anything ourselves. It can be about AI handling what drains us so we can lean fully into what energises us.

Your automation choices are declarations about what kind of human you want to be and what kind of world you want to live in. Choose with the same care you'd curate a life you love.

The question isn't whether you can automate something, it's whether you should, and whether doing so helps you become more of who you actually are.

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I'm curious about your own automation journey, what's one task you've chosen NOT to automate even though you could, and what's one you've gladly handed over to AI? What drove those decisions?

Sarah, seeking ikigai xxx

PS. Some journal prompts to help you create your own automation hierarchy;

• What tasks in your work or life genuinely energise you, even when they're challenging?

• Which repetitive activities drain your energy without adding meaningful value?

• What skills do you want to maintain and develop rather than outsource?

• How do you want to spend the time that automation frees up?

• What would you miss if it disappeared from your daily routine?

PPS. Try this AI prompt to audit your current automation opportunities;

"I want to thoughtfully evaluate my automation choices. Here's a list of my regular weekly tasks: [insert your list]. For each task, help me consider: 1) Does this require my unique judgement, creativity, or relationship skills? 2) Does doing this myself contribute to my professional growth or personal satisfaction? 3) What would I gain vs. lose by automating this? 4) How could AI assist with this task without completely taking it over? Please help me categorise these into 'automate fully,' 'automate partially,' and 'keep precious.'"

PPPS. Today's soundtrack;

"Digital Witness" by St. Vincent. A sharp, playful reflection on society’s fixation with technology, efficiency, and the superficial snapshots we sometimes mistake for real life. It's the perfect companion track for exploring how intentionality helps us reclaim our digital lives, and reminds us that just because we can automate, doesn't mean we always should.

🎧 Give it a listen while you ponder your automation choices!