The promise was simple: AI would give you back your time. Instead, it gave you more to read. Three years after the Axios founders convinced corporate America to write shorter, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz are back—this time to explain how the very technology sold as an efficiency unlock made things worse.
Their new book, *Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less*, out this month, is both a diagnosis and a correction. The diagnosis: AI has flooded offices with more decks, longer emails and what the trio calls "work-like activity"—motion without progress. The correction: a framework they say they built by testing it on themselves first.
AI Didn't Free Your Calendar—It Filled Your Inbox
The argument will feel familiar to anyone who has opened their laptop on a Monday morning to find forty new messages, half of them generated by a tool that was supposed to reduce exactly that. According to the founders, AI has not lightened anyone's workload. It has simply changed its shape.
Where once a colleague might have sent a two-line update, they now send a polished, AI-assisted brief. Where once a meeting might have been a conversation, it is now a deck. The result, the founders argue, is an office culture that rewards the appearance of work over its substance.
Why 'Smart Brevity' Needed a Sequel
*Smart Brevity*, published three years ago, became something close to gospel inside corporate communications departments. Its premise was straightforward: respect your reader's time, cut the filler, lead with what matters. It was a direct rebuke to the bloated memo.
But the founders now say the problem has evolved. Brevity alone is no longer enough when the tools themselves are generating volume at a pace no human editor can match. *Simplify* is their attempt to address what *Smart Brevity* could not: a workplace where the bottleneck is no longer how you write, but how much is being written at all.
The '90s Really Were Different—Here's Why That Matters
In their conversation with Fortune, the founders drew a contrast with the 1990s workplace, a period they describe as fundamentally different in how work was structured and communicated. The implication is not nostalgia. It is a benchmark.
Before the always-on inbox, before the shared drive, before the AI-generated summary of a meeting you already attended, work moved at a pace set by human attention. The founders' argument is that something was lost in the transition—and that AI, rather than restoring it, has accelerated the loss.
Who Feels This Most: The Middle of the Org Chart
The people most affected by this shift are rarely the ones making the decisions. They are the mid-level managers, the communications teams, the junior staffers who must read, respond to and produce within a system that now generates more than it ever did.
For them, AI has not been a promotion. It has been a second job—one that involves filtering, correcting and responding to output that did not exist five years ago. The founders' framework is aimed squarely at this group.
What the Founders Actually Recommend
The specifics of *Simplify* are built around a single premise: do less, but do it with more intention. The founders describe the framework as one they tested on themselves before putting it on paper—a claim that carries weight given their own history of running a media company built on the idea of saying more with less.
According to their interview with Fortune, the goal is not to reject AI but to stop letting it set the terms of engagement. The tool should serve the work, not become the work.
Confirmed Facts vs. What Remains Unclear
Confirmed: The book *Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less* is out this month. The authors are Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz. They spoke with Fortune about the book's central argument. *Smart Brevity* was published three years ago and became widely adopted in corporate communications.
Unclear: How widely the *Simplify* framework will be adopted, whether it will replicate *Smart Brevity*'s influence, and what specific metrics the founders used to test their claims. The book's reception in corporate settings will be the real measure.
The Moat Behind the Message
What gives the Axios founders credibility on this subject is not just their platform but their track record. They built a media company around the idea that readers are time-poor and attention is scarce. *Smart Brevity* was not a theory—it was a product of their own newsroom's operating system.
That gives *Simplify* a different kind of authority than a typical business book. The founders are not outside observers of the communication problem. They helped create the standard that AI is now overwhelming.
Risks and the Balanced View
There is a fair critique to be made here. The founders are, after all, selling a book. Their argument that AI has made things worse aligns neatly with the need for a new framework—and a new framework needs a book.
It is also worth noting that AI's impact on productivity is not uniformly negative. For some workers, especially those in roles where drafting and editing were once a bottleneck, these tools have genuinely saved time. The founders' argument is strongest for knowledge workers in communication-heavy roles—and less applicable elsewhere.
The Wider 'AI Slop' Pattern
The founders are not alone in this diagnosis. The "AI slop" discourse of 2026 has become a defining conversation in tech and media circles, with critics arguing that the volume of AI-generated content has degraded the quality of everything from search results to internal memos.
What makes the Axios founders' contribution notable is that they are not technologists or critics. They are operators—people who built a company on the principle of cutting through noise. Their argument is less about AI's capabilities and more about how organizations have chosen to use them.
What Readers and Teams Should Do Now
For teams feeling the weight of AI-generated volume, the founders' advice is likely to be practical rather than philosophical. Start by auditing what is being produced. Ask whether each deck, memo or update would exist if a human had to write it from scratch.
For individuals, the takeaway is simpler: the tool is not the problem. The absence of a filter is. *Simplify* is, at its core, an argument for rebuilding that filter—deliberately, and with intention.
What Comes Next
The book's impact will depend on whether corporate communications departments—the same ones that adopted *Smart Brevity*—are willing to adopt a second framework so soon after the first. If they do, *Simplify* could become another shorthand inside offices. If they don't, it may remain a well-argued critique without a movement behind it.
Either way, the founders have named something real: the gap between what AI promised and what it delivered. Whether their fix closes that gap is now up to the people reading their book.
Our Take
The Axios founders are not anti-AI, and *Simplify* is not a rejection of the technology. It is a warning about what happens when tools are adopted without a corresponding discipline. The book's value lies less in its novelty than in its timing—arriving at the moment when the initial enthusiasm for AI in the workplace is meeting the reality of its output.
Whether or not *Simplify* becomes the next *Smart Brevity*, its central observation is hard to dismiss: more communication is not the same as better communication. And in an era where AI can generate both endlessly, the ability to choose what not to send may be the most valuable skill of all.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the new Axios founders' book about?
*Simplify: Do 50% More with 50% Less* argues that AI has worsened workplace productivity by flooding offices with more emails, decks and "work-like activity." It offers a framework for doing less with more intention.
Who are the authors of *Simplify*?
The book is written by Axios founders Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen and Roy Schwartz. They previously wrote *Smart Brevity*, which became widely adopted in corporate communications.
How is *Simplify* different from *Smart Brevity*?
*Smart Brevity* focused on writing more concisely. *Simplify* addresses a different problem: the sheer volume of AI-generated content that has overwhelmed the workplace since then.
What does "work-like activity" mean?
It is the founders' term for tasks that create the appearance of productivity—more decks, longer emails, more meetings—without producing meaningful progress.
Is *Simplify* available now?
Yes, the book was released this month. The founders discussed it in an interview with Fortune.
