What five hours of automation taught me about stewardship

"So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom." (Psalm 90:12, ESV)

I built an AI-assisted workflow that cut a repetitive purchase order task from about ten minutes down to roughly thirty seconds. That part was easy to measure. What was hard to measure, and what actually mattered, was what I did with the five or six hours it handed back to me every week.

Where the five hours actually came from

Part of my day job is invoicing and purchasing across multiple locations. Vendor invoices come in constantly, and each one used to mean the same small ritual: open the file, pull the right details, name it correctly, build the purchase order, file it where it belonged. Ten minutes here, ten minutes there. Not glamorous. Not a single instance of it was ever bad enough to justify a big project. It just quietly followed me through the week.

I built an AI-assisted workflow to handle the naming and the purchase order creation. What used to take ten minutes now takes about thirty seconds.

Technically, that was satisfying. Find the bottleneck, understand the process, build something better, remove the unnecessary work. Done.

Except there was another problem.

What happened to the five hours?

I honestly couldn't tell you at first.

The first temptation was more work

The obvious answer was to fill the space. There's always more. I've built and sold two companies. I currently run something close to nine ventures at once, including an AI consulting company with my business partner Brendan, a web and software shop, an accessibility SaaS product, a personal app suite, and a build-in-public platform. I know exactly how easy it is to turn a recovered hour into another obligation before the hour has even arrived.

That's the productivity trap. We automate a task in the name of freedom, then immediately spend the recovered capacity proving we deserved the freedom in the first place. The tool gets faster. The life doesn't get lighter.

For a long time I probably would have called that productivity. Now I'm not so sure. If I automate five hours of administrative work and immediately replace it with five hours of a different project, what did I actually gain? More output, maybe. But did I become a better husband? A more present dad to William, Wes, and Wyatt? Did I spend more time in Scripture? Did I rest? Or did I just raise my own productivity quota?

Efficiency and stewardship are different questions

The efficiency question is: how do I do this faster? I love that question. It's basically my whole skill set.

The stewardship question is: what is the saved time for? That question is a lot harder, and the answer isn't always "do less work." Some seasons genuinely call for more. A deadline matters. A client needs help. My family needs provision. But the difference is whether the decision gets made on purpose. Unused margin doesn't stay margin for long. Something fills it, whether I chose it or not.

Grounding Scripture: "Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil." (Ephesians 5:15–16, ESV)

Making the best use of the time isn't the same instruction as making the most use of it. Wise, in that verse, isn't a synonym for busy.

My family is part of the calculation

I protect a daily family block because I don't want Elizabeth and our three boys to receive only whatever attention is left over after every system in my life has taken its share. Wes and Wyatt are usually down by seven. William sometimes stays up until eight or eight-thirty. That's a real, specific window, and it's smaller than it sounds once a workday actually ends.

I don't do family perfectly. But I'm trying to treat their time as a design constraint, not a hopeful intention. If an automation makes me faster but also makes me permanently more available to work, it isn't serving the priorities I actually claim to have. If it removes repetitive effort and gives me more room to be present with them, the value isn't measured in minutes saved. It's measured in attention returned.

The prepare, decide, deliver test

My invoice and purchase order workflow was valuable because it handled the preparation. It didn't remove my responsibility to understand the process, check the result, or notice if the automation started behaving badly. That distinction matters more than the time saved.

Five hours is not the final result

The final result of that automation was never five hours. It was a question: what would become possible if the repetition were handled and the judgment stayed mine?

That question is a lot more useful than a generic promise that AI will "save time," because it forces the purpose into the open. If you're building an AI workflow of your own, don't stop at the efficiency calculation. Name the person, the responsibility, the relationship, or the rest that the recovered capacity is meant to serve. Otherwise the system may save your time while quietly taking your life.

Frequently asked questions

How can Christians use AI for productivity?

Christians can use AI to reduce unnecessary repetition and support meaningful work, which creates room for the responsibilities and relationships that actually matter. The recovered time should be directed deliberately rather than automatically filled with more work.

Is saving time with AI always good?

Saving time can be good, but efficiency isn't the only measure of wisdom. The effect on truth, responsibility, relationships, rest, and human judgment matters just as much as the minutes recovered.

What should I do with time saved by automation?

Decide before you automate. Recovered time can rightly go toward better work, family presence, service, rest, or learning. The faithful choice depends on the responsibilities and season God has actually placed in front of you.

Start here: the free F.A.I.T.H. AI Stewardship Audit is twenty questions about your week, not about technology. About five minutes, no cost, and your answers stay on your device.

I'm Dave. I manage IT, facilities, and purchasing across multiple locations for my full-time employer, and I build AI-assisted tools and businesses in the hours before my family wakes up.