I’ve been meeting with some of the top industry leaders in the UK recently as part of my podcast—the creatively titled Estate Agency Leaders. The conversations have been brilliant, but they’ve also left me thinking a lot about work, capacity, and the ever-difficult idea of work/life balance.

And I have to be honest: my views on this feel slightly old-fashioned.

The Truth: I Work… A Lot

It would be fair to say that I’m working a lot at the moment. Long days during the week. When I’m away, I tend to work flat out—12 to 15 hours a day—squeezing every ounce of productivity I can out of the time. My commitments across the businesses I’m involved in mean my calendar is permanently full. Even my long-suffering assistant, Hannah, is creaking under the weight of the increased volume of work that’s being generated.

But here’s the interesting part: a lot of this is because of AI.

AI has expanded the scope of what’s possible at an incredible pace. The blockers that used to slow us down—waiting for edits, delegating tasks that take longer to brief than to do, batching content, admin—have almost evaporated.

Record an interview on Riverside? It’s pre-edited, chaptered, and clipped within minutes. Want a social post? I can download the transcript and hand it to a pre-trained GPT, which gives me five options ready to polish. Admin, research, prep, writing, strategy—everything is compressing.

AI hasn’t made me less busy. It’s given me the capacity to take on even more of the things I actually want to do.

And guess what? I’m doing exactly that.

Should I Slow Down?

Here’s what’s struck me while speaking with industry leaders: they all work incredibly hard. There’s a sharp energy that sits underneath the people who tend to build things. Even Peter Rollings—who is “retired”—has an engine that most 30-year-olds don’t have.

In fact, I don’t think I know anyone who works for themselves who doesn’t work hard. I’ve met plenty of people who work for other people who don’t. But not entrepreneurs.

And interestingly, two business owners I’ve spoken to recently admitted they took their foot off the gas and let others run things… and they’re now stepping back in because things drifted. That’s the reality of leadership. If you don’t fuel the machine, momentum starts to leak away.

Creating a thriving business in the UK is hard. Working hard doesn’t guarantee success—not even close—but it is the cost of playing the game.

The advice I often give business owners is: only do the things that only you can do. The problem is, when you free up space—especially with AI—your brain immediately fills the vacuum with another idea, another project, another “wouldn’t it be great if…”

It’s not capacity we’re short of anymore. It’s restraint.

Family Life: The Other Side of the Equation

Then there’s the question I’ve been wrestling with more and more: how does all of this square with family life?

I have five children at home, my wife, a grown-up son in Newcastle, my parents, four siblings and their kids, and friendships that matter to me. I’m financially responsible for seven people. That alone means working hard isn’t just ambition—it’s part of my role in the family.

But I also know that if I’m not careful, work can occupy every corner of the day. So I make a very deliberate effort to leave work at the door. No calls, no emails, no laptops once I’m inside the house. When I walk through the door, I want to be Dad or husband—not “Ian Preston: Calendar Item”.

Most nights, that means spending 20 minutes on the drive finishing a call so I can walk in fully present. It’s not perfect, but it works.

So Where Does This Leave Me?

AI has changed the game. It’s giving us more bandwidth, more speed, more leverage. But it also means we have to ask a tougher question: just because we can do more… should we?

Right now, I don’t have a good answer. What I know is that I enjoy the work, I enjoy building things, and I enjoy being around people who have that same momentum in their lives. But I’m also conscious that balance doesn’t happen by accident—it requires intention.

Maybe this is the real consequence of the AI revolution: we’re removing friction faster than we’re learning to handle the freedom it creates.

And maybe—if we want to stay sane—we need to get better at intentionally doing less, even when we could do more