AI Saved You 5 Hours a Week. Where'd They Go? | Businessing

Businessing with Pat Miller · Aug 31, 2026 · 24m

AI is handing small business owners more than five hours a week back, so where did the time go? If you're still as busy as you've always been, those hours got redeployed and nobody wrote down where.

Pat digs into the 2026 study that says the average AI user gets 5.6 hours a week back, the Harvard Business Review finding that we just took on broader tasks and stretched work into more of the day, and the two habits eating that time before you ever see it. Then the Idea Slam, where an owner asks how to market a business without turning into the person whose every post has fireworks on it. Pat…