Hey everyone!
If you were asked to name the fastest land animal, you’d probably say cheetah without blinking. And you would be right.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
Scientists have long believed, at least in North America, that the story of speed is not just the cheetah’s, but something else entirely – the American pronghorn.
The general explanation was something like this. Millions of years ago, an animal often called the “American cheetah” roamed the continent. and hunted pronghorn.
Pronghorn, on the other hand, had to run faster to survive. Over time, this evolutionary feature made the pronghorn one of the fastest land animals. A proper predator and prey story that feels like a movie.
However, new research suggests that may not have happened at all.
A recent study from the University of Michigan took a closer look at the fossils of an ancient relative of the pronghorn. They specifically studied a bone called. Astragalus The ankle area plays an important role in movement and running efficiency.
And what they discovered overturned that old story. The fossil was unearthed from the Dove Spring Formation in California’s Mojave Desert, where ruins from around 12.5 million years ago have been preserved.
At that time, American cheetahs did not exist. In other words, pronghorns were fast long before they outran anything resembling a cheetah.
That alone changes the story. But it gets better.
When researchers compared the bone proportions of these ancient species and modern pronghorn, they were strikingly similar.
So how could they run so fast when there were no predators to outrun them?
One possibility is that speed was not important for outrunning a single predator, but rather flexibility. In a changing environment, being able to travel long distances efficiently can mean finding food, water, or safer habitat faster than competitors.
Yes, pronghorns are not cheetahs that were forced to become faster. This was fast because the world at the time rewarded this long before predators appeared.
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flinch by Black Letters Recommended by Saran Menon
What caught our attention this week
Why I think AI jobs will increase
When you first started using AI, it may have felt like cheating, in a good way. The email took a few seconds. We wrote the draft ourselves. The boring tasks disappeared behind a blinking cursor. For a moment, my work felt light.
Then something strange happened.
The time I saved didn’t turn into free time. It became even more work. Shorter deadlines. Higher expectations. And the quiet assumption that if AI can do it, you should be able to do even more.
That’s the latest discussion harvard business review report. He says AI will not reduce jobs. It strengthens it and reshapes productivity, expectations, and power within organizations in ways that most companies never anticipated.
Most of us signed up for an AI tool with one simple goal: to make our jobs easier. And at first I did. Small victories came quickly. Getting your whole team working with just a few subscriptions no longer feels like an exaggeration.
Work boundaries have become blurred. Project managers can also code. If you’re a writer, you might be able to design it. With each prompt, my role expanded and my expectations rose.
Once this became the norm, it became less personal. The managers noticed. What started out as a “nice to have” quickly became the baseline. AI didn’t just make work faster. What was it redefining? usually The output now looks like this:
To see if this shift is real or just anecdotal, the researchers behind the HBR study observed hundreds of knowledge workers as they integrated AI tools into their daily workflows. Instead of lab experiments and simulations, they focused on real work, real tasks, and real deadlines.
The assumption was simple. If AI speeds up human work, it should reduce the workload. Deadlines should be relaxed. The working day should be shorter.
But that didn’t happen.
AI has improved efficiency across roles and industries. But the time saved rarely translates into less work. In fact, my expectations have increased. More tasks were assigned. And the project expanded.
AI won’t eliminate jobs. This has redefined how much work is considered reasonable.
Think of it like ordering a pizza.
According to the app, it will arrive within 30 minutes. Seems fair. Plan around it. Then, miraculously, the delivery was completed at 3 p.m. you are impressed. You may even be able to leave a better review.
But the next time you order, it won’t take another 30 minutes. You would expect 15. And when it shows up at 30, it suddenly feels slow, even if everything was fine.
Now imagine a restaurant is quietly updating its internal goals. Delivery partners are given tighter schedules. More orders pile up for each rider. What was once the exception becomes the norm.
That’s what the AI did to function.
It’s not just a metaphor. The data backs it up.
In the Harvard Business Review study, researchers followed nearly 200 employees over a nine-month period for whom AI tools were part of their daily work, even though their employers did not mandate the use of AI. We tracked what happened after the AI stopped feeling new and started feeling normal.
The pattern was consistent. Employees were able to complete tasks faster and produce more results. However, the time saved did not translate into a reduction in workload. Instead, they quickly reinvested in more duties, which in some cases even led to longer working days. It was simply because I felt it was possible and rewarding to do more. Employees may even let their work slip into the time they had pre-designated as a break because they felt the AI could work in the background while they were away with just a few prompts at the end. But as it trickled down to employees within the organization, this simply meant increased workloads and unrealistic expectations.
In other words, the AI worked exactly like early pizza delivery. The first time felt like a bonus. Then I quietly reset my expectations.
So where does this leave us?
First of all, AI is not the problem. There are unspoken expectations.
If companies treat AI efficiency as an upgrade to personal performance, workloads will continue to grow. Faster tools simply mean more work. But when organizations treat AI as something that improves systems rather than oppresses employees, the results change.
This means you’ll be explicitly resetting the benchmark instead of raising it silently. Rather than defaulting to “more output,” predetermine a direction for efficiency gains, such as improved quality, deeper thinking, or, in some cases, less work.
If you leave it on autopilot, the AI won’t give you your time back. You wonder why 30 minutes is no longer acceptable when you can just get the same pizza delivered faster.
infographic
We’ve seen a lot of logos and advertising embedded around F1 cars. But have you ever wondered how much it costs to get there?
Reader Recommendation: Don’t Lose Your Mind, Lose Weight by Rujuta Diwekar Recommended by Nidhi Dhanani
This is a diet book written by Rujuta Diwekar, a famous nutritionist who has coached the likes of Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan. It’s about how to lose weight in 3 easy steps without drastically changing your diet.
Thank you Nidhi for the recommendation!
That’s it for this week. See you next Sunday!
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