ActivTrak Finds Heavy AI Users Work 90 Minutes Longer, Contradicting Earlier 9-Minute Decline
Updated
Updated · Computerworld · Nov 3
ActivTrak Finds Heavy AI Users Work 90 Minutes Longer, Contradicting Earlier 9-Minute Decline
3 articles · Updated · Computerworld · Nov 3
Summary
9,140 knowledge workers across 467 enterprises showed heavy AI users worked 8.42 to 9.08 hours a day, versus 7.58 hours for non-users in ActivTrak’s latest five-month study.
Heavy users also had 22% shorter focus sessions—37.8 minutes versus 48.2 for light users—and switched apps 15% more often, pointing to more fragmented work rather than cleaner productivity gains.
Embedded AI users switched apps just 0.6 times an hour, while web-based AI users switched 1.7 to 4.2 times, creating what ActivTrak called a “swivel-chair tax.”
The findings clash with ActivTrak’s earlier, much larger study of 163,638 employees over 443 million work hours, which said AI cut average workdays by about 9 minutes while raising productive time by 19 minutes.
Analysts said both reports underline how hard AI productivity is to measure, because tracking can miss unmanaged devices, background automation and off-screen work even as managers may turn any time savings into more tasks.