In the age of AI, how much work you do matters less than it used to. Here’s what matters more

The most important skills in today’s workplace are judgment and discretion. This is because the cost of output has never been cheaper. With models like Fable producing yet another step-function increase in capabilities, it’s easier than ever to run a million miles per hour in any direction, so that means you better be running in the right one. Productivity at work used to be measured largely by output. Yes, results and impact have always been the flagship markers of success, but you could get pretty far in yesterday’s world by producing a high volume of just-fine output. That’s because output used to be expensive—you had to think and devote energy towards what you were creating. The effort itself signaled that you cared enough to think through what you were putting into the world, and visibly caring about your job was typically good enough to keep you from getting fired. So because of that, most of us, to one degree or another, are hard-wired to believe that output equals good. Or at least productive, and productive equals good. But that mental model starts to break in a world where you can chat with Claude, paste in a co-worker’s proposal for a new strategy, type “Nah, let’s try …