You hop off the zoom, mind buzzing with action items. Send recap. Schedule follow-up. Make the keynote for that upcoming AI ethics summit. Oh, and finalize the layoff decisions. You know, the usual.

Before you’ve even decided what to tackle first, Fireflies.ai has already gotten to work.

✅ Email recap delivered

✅ Follow-up call scheduled; calendar invites sent

🟡 Drafting your keynote now: “The Risks of Outsourcing Too Much to AI”

🟥 Decide which employees to lay off” — awaiting your approval

No tabs. No toggling. No thinking twice.

This is Fireflies.ai Taskmaster — an AI agent that doesn’t just summarize your meetings. It executes your action items. On autopilot.

It sounds like a dream. No more procrastination. No more cognitive overload. Just seamless productivity.

Until you realize: that friction that holds us back? It served a purpose.

The Behavioral Science Behind It

Friction isn’t just a bug — it’s a feature. Behavioral science shows that barriers (like having to think out and type an email, or put together a keynote ourselves) can create space for reflection, hesitation, and more deliberate choices.

A Nuanced Take

Automating actions saves time, but it can also erode our skills. From writing to reasoning, the more we offload, the less we practice — and eventually, the less we can. Delegation becomes default, and slowly, we forget how to do the work ourselves. If you never write the email or think through the tough call yourself, how long before you’re no longer able to?

Each time Fireflies.ai Taskmaster completes a task for you, that control becomes a little more symbolic. Like a toddler’s toy steering wheel in the backseat. It spins, but it doesn’t actually steer.

Over time, that illusion of control pairs with the ease of delegation, and convenience begins to chip away at our skills.

So while Fireflies.ai Taskmaster feels like the future (and in many ways, it is) it also forces us to reckon with a deeper behavioral shift: from doing to delegating.