Working Faster, Engaging Less: How AI Reconfigures Temporal Engagement and Creative Work

Existing research commonly assumes that people prefer to spend less time and to avoid interruptions. Using a temporal engagement lens, we question this prevailing view and argue that AI constitutes a mixed influence on work by altering when and how individuals engage with tasks, with hidden costs for creativity. Across three studies, we demonstrate that AI use is associated with lower temporal engagement intensity and reduced variability in engagement patterns, yielding a suppression pattern in which AI’s positive direct effect on creativity is counterbalanced by negative indirect effects transmitted through temporal engagement. Study 1 (N = 355), conducted over 14 consecutive days, shows that AI use decreases both the amount and the variability of time devoted to assigned tasks, and that these changes jointly mediate a negative indirect effect on creativity. Study 2 (N = 262) reproduces the attenuation of engagement intensity and instability in a real task context. Study 3 (N = 97), based on open-ended responses, sheds light on the underlying processes: AI lowers the cost of initiating tasks while reallocating task agency, thereby compressing temporal engagement. Taken together, these findings point to overlooked risks of AI for creative work and highlight the importance of actively managing temporal engagement.