TF Tim Ferriss Tim Ferriss Author, early-stage technology investor and podcaster whose books include The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Me...

“I don't know anyone who's like, I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I'm now using for kiteboarding and knitting. Well, they're like, I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects.”

The Tim Ferriss Show · Ideas & Essays · October 2026

“I don't know anyone who's like, I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I'm now using for kiteboarding and knitting. Well, they're like, I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects.” — Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show

Kevin Rose had hoped AI assistants would give people more leisure and more time with each other. Ferriss says he hopes so too, but that plenty of technologies have made that promise, going back to the Industrial Revolution, and he hasn't seen it delivered yet. Rose then admits he spends the time he saves on more AI coding.

Transcript

The Tim Ferriss Show Around 1:45:26 into the episode
Tim Ferriss

that. Here's something I didn't think of. Could the decline in alcohol consumption actually be reflective of people sitting at home and not socializing outside? That

Kevin Rose

and I love that. Do you know what I mean, though? I have no idea. But

Tim Ferriss

you know what I'm talking about, right? Like it could actually correlate to people spending more time at home on their computers and their phones. Yeah. What I would say is with the AI Super, I hope it results in people having more in-person interactions. I do think that people are going to feel the poison, right? Like the dose makes the poison. I think they'll feel that it's not good for them in a very visceral, deep way that has not perhaps been as obvious in the last five years minus AI. But, and I'm not the first person to observe this, it's like, if interacting with a digital companion is easier than interacting with your actual partner, if they're always supportive and saying the right things and they're not getting dysregulated and freaking out like all humans do, right? If kids find their customized LLM, a better parent, easier to deal with because it eliminates some of the messiness of unpredictable human interactions, you know, what are the consequences of that? The leisure time, I hope that's true. There have been so many technologies with that promise. The Industrial Revolution, we can go through a long list. And I have not yet seen it. I don't know anyone who's like, I used AI to free up a bunch of free time that I'm now using for kiteboarding and knitting. Well, they're like, I was doing two projects, but now I can do 10 projects.

Kevin Rose

Something always fills the gap, right? Something's always going to fill the gap. And you have to be very selective about what's going to fill that gap. But I will say, for me, the daily grind of email and a lot of those other things. Now that I have these and it's going to be like, hey, Kevin, you need to pay attention to this. I don't have to check all the other spam and all the other crap that's coming in there. It has freed up time. Now, am I using it to AI code then? Yes, I am. I'm going right back in. But in theory, I could be doing woodworking or some other thing.

Tim Ferriss

The woodworking. The woodworking comes up every nine months.

Kevin Rose

You know, Japanese trainery is amazing. I know

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