If you are already on the cusp of burnout and you simply use AI to do the same things faster, your problem will only get worse. I have noticed more and more people offering consulting services on how to use AI to create better work-life balance. While I don’t know the full extent of their offerings, the solutions appear to focus on using AI to process and respond to email more quickly. Let’s look at why this alone won’t help alleviate burnout for most people. The primary drivers of burnout for knowledge workers are:
- Constant digital communications with real-time responses
- Too much work
Let’s start with the “too much work” challenge. When you get through work more quickly, you will run into the “infinite buffer” problem. There is an unlimited amount of additional work that can fill up any free capacity that you gain. The universe of potential work available to you is inexhaustible. There is also the issue of our limited human cognitive capacity. There are only so many things that we can sustain focus on at a given time. Even if AI gives us unlimited work capacity, we can still burn ourselves out attempting to focus on too many things at the same time.
Now for real-time digital communications. The double-edged sword of e-mail, chat, text, etc. is that it is frictionless. It is so easy for us to communicate digitally, so we don’t put as much thought into it as we would for a conversation in the physical world. Therefore, there is a high volume of content in our digital lives. Staying on top of the digital noise creates stress. While it is true that AI can help us manage separating signals from the noise, it will also further increase the frictionless nature of digital communication which in turn will drive more and more volume. AI assistance does not by itself alleviate the constant context switching driven by the need to respond in real time.
The best antidotes to burnout are still:
- A capture system
- Dedicated focus time
- Prioritization and Planning
AI can enhance all of these methods, but it is not enough to cure the burnout epidemic by itself. We all want 6-minute abs which is why that offering still sells. Be wary of anyone selling you AI a quick fix burnout solution. Their offer is as likely to be as effective as getting shredded by adding 6 minutes of crunches while changing nothing else in your life.
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