I'm on a train, writing a book about machines that take over the work, and I'm using pen and paper.

Cold drink, salty snack, the manuscript on the tray table, not a screen in sight.

This is the most useful hour of my week.

It should feel ironic. It doesn't.

The more of the doing you hand to agents, the more your job narrows to the part they can't reach: deciding what is worth doing, and why. The drafting got faster. The thinking didn't, and it shouldn't. You can't steer an agent toward an outcome you haven't thought through yourself.

So the work doesn't vanish. It concentrates. The afternoon that used to disappear into typing now goes to the harder thing, the thing a blank page, a whiteboard or a face to face discussion still does better than a chat window.

That's the paper part of the job. It was always the valuable bit. The agents just cleared away enough of everything else that you can finally see it, sitting there, waiting for you.

I'm currently writing a book about Agentic AI. Follow me on this channel to get updates.