The 26-Lane Workday (3 Min Read) | Vol. 215

August 7, 2026

“It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” — William Stanley Jevons

The 26-Lane Workday

Texas has the widest freeway in the world. The Katy Freeway runs west out of Houston. By 2004, it was one of the worst bottlenecks in the country. So Texas spent $2.8 billion widening it to 26 lanes. Twenty-six. A lane for every letter of the alphabet. 

It worked. For a minute.

Then gridlock crept back into the picture. Within three years, the morning commute was 25 minutes longer. The afternoon commute was 23 minutes longer. They built more road and got more traffic. Shorter commutes became longer commutes. 

Planners call this induced demand. Add capacity and, inevitably, something rushes in to fill it.

The idea predates the Katy Freeway. In 1865, an English economist named William Stanley Jevons noticed that as steam engines got better at burning coal, Britain burned more coal. Not less. Efficiency didn’t save the resource. It made the resource cheap enough to, well, burn through.

We’ve all lived this. You spend a Saturday clearing the garage. Six months later you can’t park in it. You kill a standing meeting. Three weeks later, a new meeting occupies that slot. And you couldn’t tell me what it is. Now hand everyone an AI.

I talked about this with Oliver Burkeman on this week’s podcast. He’s the author of Four Thousand Weeks and Meditations for Mortals. And he’s watching people build 26-lane workdays in real time. He told me he’s met people who feel guilty at the dinner table – not because they’re behind, but because their AI could be running a hundred more things while they’re eating with their kids.

That’s the trap. Every tool that makes you more productive invites in more work. It’s like buying a pickup truck. Congratulations. You now help everyone move.

The efficiency isn’t the problem. The default is.

Our default is additive. We save an hour and immediately spend it. So the honest question isn’t how much more can I do now? It’s what did I free that hour up for?

We can use productivity to make our days shorter, not just fuller.

Oliver said something else that stuck with me. When you finally close the laptop with things left undone, what you’re building isn’t discipline. It’s tolerance. Tolerance for letting potential work go unfinished.

That’s the muscle we need to train. Not doing more. Pausing, resting, being while the list waits.

Twenty-six lanes didn’t fix Houston. It just gave the more traffic somewhere to go.

One question to ponder in your thinking time: If a tool saved me five hours this week, where did those five hours actually go? 

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan
Author I CEO I Coach

P.S. – Something unusual happened with this episode. Our data shows a surprising amount of interest from older high schoolers and new-to-college listeners. That almost never happens. If you have a child, a niece, or a nephew in that stretch of life, this one might land differently for them than anything you could say directly. Forward it.