You probably know about the “second shift.” It’s that block of time after the kids are finally asleep where you open the laptop to tackle the work that the day’s chaos pushed aside or didn’t let you finish. Until I was a parent, I never fully appreciated the concept of post-kids’-bedtime shift, even though I heard about it from my colleagues and friends. As a parent, it became a staple of my day.

First it was putting my son in the bath, then reading time with him, then his bedtime, and after all that the workday restarted for me.

Sometimes, after putting my son to bed, he would ask me to stay. He didn’t want to go to sleep in the room by himself. And if I left before he dozed off, he would get upset.

Outwardly, I was there with him (lying on the floor). Inwardly, I was already at my laptop. I was physically present but mentally miles away, thinking about what my to-do’s were that night and planning out how I would get them done. The goal, as always, was to get to my own bed before the clock struck midnight.

Then, about a month ago, something shifted.

The Missing Second Shift

I didn’t notice it immediately. We don’t usually notice the absence of a burden until we’ve walked a mile without it. But sometime over the last month, I realized that I wasn’t putting in the “second shift.”

I was grabbing my crossword puzzle book. Or I was playing a board game with my wife. Or perhaps reading a book. Or a late night glass of wine.

I had clawed back nearly two hours of my day.

And just like I was slow to notice that it had happened, I was slow to realize why.

I initially attributed it to a temporary lull in the work. I then even amusingly thought that maybe I had cracked the code on boundaries.

Over some time, I realized that I wasn’t doing less work and neither was I putting it off. I really was getting a lot done during the daylight hours.

I asked ChatGPT to summarize all the questions and work items I engaged it on over the last two months. I had fifty-three distinct questions and work items. Over one per week day.

As I had gotten more and more comfortable with AI, I was diverting so much work towards it. And the result was fantastic – getting those two hours back.

And those two hours make a big difference. Lying on the floor next to my son’s bed at night, I’m not thinking about work. We’ve started talking about the highlights and lowlights of the day. Turns out, kids can be really introspective and fun to speak with late at night.

I’ve also noticed I’m not rushing out of the gym to get to my work. I have the confidence that whatever is on my plate will get done, because I have super-powered help.

Yes, I do realize this is a bit silly, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s real.

AI Can Make You More Human

I was listening in on a Train In Your Lane training the other week. Nick Pope, one of our fantastic trainers, talked about how AI was making him more human. And that was because it was giving him time back to do things he found exciting. That resonated with me immediately because of the experience I just went through.

There’s also the concept of Jevon’s Paradox – more efficiency can mean more work, and I anticipate many of us will use that time to get even more done, whether in our core line of work or on fun side projects. But that is the human element; we are taking time from something we had to do and can redeploy it to something we want to do.

And for some of us, that could be something as simple as more relaxed time with their family or with a crossword puzzle.

Practical Steps to Reclaim Your Time

Three use cases drive the time recapture:

  • AI Intuition: The first shift was building the intuition that I can and should be using AI for so much of my work. I send as many questions and work items to AI. No fancy tech setup required, just immediate time savings from the answers I get.
  • Custom AI: I use CustomGPT’s in OpenAI and Gem’s in Gemini to give me consistent outputs for repetitive tasks.
  • The Agent Advantage: Move from “Copilots” (AI that helps you) to “Agents” (AI that does the work). I’ve built some agents that move across multiple different systems and take actions on my behalf. Saves me immense time.

The Takeaway

AI efficiency for franchise executives is often sold as a way to do more. I want to argue that it is actually a way to be more.

When we give the “boring” work to the machines, we aren’t becoming more robotic. We are freeing ourselves to be the leaders, parents, and partners we were before the “second shift” took over. The most valuable thing AI can give you is taking back your time and having greater control over how it’s spent.

That is what I’m passionate about here at Train In Your Lane. We’re not pitching a specific solution for a workflow that will save immense time in that one workflow. We want people to develop the AI intuition and literacy to use AI for half their work and have those extra hours every day.