Guys, I'm exhausted.
It's the kind of exhaustion I can only describe as feeling like an out-of-date computer chip running on its last gigabyte of memory. Seriously, if I could reach into my brain and hit the off button just to stop the constant overdrive that kicks in around 2 p.m. every day, I would.
And in the spirit of nostalgia for simpler times, my brain's chosen coping mechanism has been retreating into my early-2000s playlist. The youth are out here running full Y2K revival campaigns, and honestly? Same.
A line from The Killers keeps looping in my head: "It's all in your mind."
If you've been feeling mentally drained, scattered, overwhelmed, or like your brain is struggling to keep up with the pace of everything lately, you're not imagining it. And you're definitely not alone.
In fact, there may be a reason so many of us seem to be experiencing the same strange brand of cognitive fatigue at the same time. (Spoiler: AI may have something to do with it.)
Not because ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whatever new tool launched this week is inherently bad. But because we're all being asked to adapt to a technological shift happening at a speed most of us have never experienced before.
That's what AI overload can feel like. Like maybe you're the problem. Like you should be learning faster, prompting better, producing more. Like everyone else has figured it out, and you're somehow falling behind.
CBS News recently gave this feeling a name: "AI brain fry."
Aka the mental exhaustion, decision fatigue, and cognitive overload many people are experiencing as they try to keep pace with rapidly evolving AI tools and expectations.
And I'll admit, it was validating because for a while, I genuinely wondered whether the problem was me.
So yes, this is another article about AI. But I promise this isn't a deep dive into prompts, automation, or the future of work. It's something much simpler: a conversation about what this moment might be doing to our brains and why feeling overwhelmed by it doesn't mean you're failing.
AI has a very real toll on our brains at work. Researchers who surveyed about 1,500 workers found that people constantly bouncing between multiple AI tools reported more decision fatigue and more errors, and about one in seven workers said they had experienced mental fatigue from juggling AI tools at work.
Burnout hits millennials hardest, along with workers with 10 to 19 years of experience and those at small companies under 250 employees who are already worried about layoffs. And according to a 2024 Quantum Workplace survey, employees who frequently use AI tools experience 45% higher burnout rates than those who don't.
"The AI can run out far ahead of us, but we're still here with the same brain we had yesterday," said Julie Bedard, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group and author of the AI study published in HBR.
Bedard told CBS News that the study findings are an "early warning sign" that expectations around AI productivity may need recalibrating. "Specifically, there are ways in which intensive oversight of AI causes a lot of cognitive exhaustion."
Yeah, all the above. Absolute and total exhaustion.
I work in a creative field. My job starts with ideas and thoughts formed, questioned, and refined in my own very human brain. From there, I research, dig deeper, connect dots, and uncover the information needed to build effective content and branding strategies. And if I'm being honest, like most writers, there's a little bit of ego wrapped up in that process. We take pride in creating something original from a blank page.
And what I've watched happen over the past few years (slowly, then all at once) is the systematic dismantling of creative trust.
It doesn't come in swinging. It comes in as a meeting invite to discuss a new mandatory workflow. A directive to run every piece of copy through three different AI tools before a human eye touches it. It comes in as a CEO or creative director or other figure of authority who has discovered prompting and now wants to teach the people they hired to write… to write? Make it make sense.
And while it comes dressed as innovation, it often lands feeling like surveillance.
It's not the tools that are the problem. It's the implication underneath that what you've spent years developing (the instincts, the voice, the craft) is now just a starting point for a chatbot to improve upon. It can feel like your judgment is being managed, that your processes are being standardized, and that creativity, of all things, can be optimized from the top down.
It can't. And deep down, everyone in that hour-long meeting you just got out of to discuss “Claude prompting” knows it.
Frankly, the creative space is a hot mess right now. Everybody's doing what they can to push their brands to the top, to hit their bottom lines, because that needle has been moving fast since 2020, and not gradually, but in lurches. And in that scramble, what gets flattened first is creative autonomy. The result is word vomit everywhere. On LinkedIn, on social media, in your inbox — content that was not so much written but clearly assembled, and it’s making the good stuff harder to find.
But here’s what I keep trying to stress: If you put good in, you get good out (and obviously the reverse of that, as well). That “putting good in” part still requires a human, and it requires giving that human enough room to actually do their job.
The problem is that many organizations are so focused on what AI can produce that they're paying far less attention to what constant AI adoption is doing to the people expected to use it.
I came across Olivia Gambelin, an AI ethicist who has advised Fortune 500 companies across the U.S. and Europe, and what she's been observing lately hit close to home.
"There's less and less progress forward and more and more paralysis," she said in Psychology Today. "I'm hearing 'I don't know where to go. There's too much.'"
That resonated because I don't think most people are actually struggling with the technology itself, but more so with the pace and uncertainty surrounding it. Every week seems to bring a new platform, a new workflow, a new expert insisting this changes everything, and a new executive directive about getting ahead before someone else does. You're expected to have a clear opinion on tools that didn't exist six months ago while simultaneously keeping your actual job moving forward.
That's where the exhaustion comes from. Not from learning one new thing, but from being asked to continuously reorient yourself while the destination keeps changing.
Behind all the confident language of "AI transformation" is a quieter emotional reality: a lot of people are trying to do good work while the playbook gets rewritten for the fourth time this quarter. And after a while, constant adaptation starts to feel less like innovation and more like survival.
I'm no expert in managing the overwhelm of life and stress, but here's what's been helping — actual, unglamorous, sometimes-it-works stuff. If some of this makes you laugh, even better.
Go outside or deal with your self-loathing somewhere other than your office. Even during the workday, find 10 minutes to go sit outside in the sun, snuggle your cat, or walk your dog. Breathe deeply. Let your brain just exist without a feed or a notification for a moment. It sounds small, but it stacks up.
Go to hot, dark yoga and pretend you're still in the womb pre-smartphone. Stay for savasana. Enjoy those 60 minutes without your phone. (And props to those instructors who actually call out the people who can't put their phones down, thank you!)
In the same vein, leave your phone behind when you exercise. Or, in general, just leave your phone behind whenever safely possible. One to two hours of undisturbed time where you are not a content consumer or a content creator. Just a person with a body, doing something. It's more radical than it sounds. Groundbreaking!
Use a Brick device, or other form of “phone jail”. I dug mine out recently. It's a physical phone-blocking gadget that locks you out of social media unless you go find the device and scan back in. That tiny inconvenience is everything. It means that at 10 PM, when I'm trying to wind down, I don't accidentally end up doom-scrolling LinkedIn for 45 minutes. Yes, LinkedIn of all things. Why am I this way? And why, collectively, have we decided a professional networking platform deserves this much of our attention?
Have actual, in-person conversations with people. Revolutionary, I know.
But that person next to you on the treadmill? Say hi. Tell them good job. Ask what distance they're training for. If you pass the same man reading on a park bench every evening, say hello. Most people are a lot more open to connection than we've convinced ourselves they are.
I recently moved to a new neighborhood, and one of the biggest surprises has been how many of my neighbors genuinely want to stop and talk. They'll tell me about what the block was like 30 years ago, which houses have changed hands, and how the neighborhood has evolved over time. What started as a quick wave has turned into conversations I actually look forward to.
Somewhere along the way, we've gotten so used to keeping our heads down, earbuds in, and eyes on a screen that we've become almost allergic to spontaneous human interaction. And yet, every time I push past that instinct, I'm reminded how much I needed it.
So don’t be afraid to say hi, ask a question, or make small talk; your brain might appreciate the break from talking to machines all day.
Read for 30 minutes before bed. Or watch a full hour-long episode of something. There's something almost rebellious about sitting with one story long enough to let it breathe. Short-form content has trained a lot of us to expect constant stimulation and immediate payoff. (I'm looking at you, iPad kids. And the parents raising them. For the love of all that is holy, please set a time limit.)
Anyway, I digress.
The point is that resisting the urge to constantly consume the next thing, even in small ways, helps rebuild the attention span we've been slowly surrendering. And that focus tends to show up everywhere else, including your work.
Again, these are my go-tos to rewire my energy and find inspiration beyond the computer screen to bring back and make my work stronger. Whatever works for you that you can stick to, do it!
Because what nobody talks about enough is that the more you step away from screens, the better your work on screens becomes. When you put your phone down, go outside, have a real conversation, feel something new. You're being a human. You're collecting actual experiences, actual thoughts, actual reactions. And when you come back to the tools, you have something real to bring to them. That's what makes the output worth reading. AI can help you work smarter and faster, but it can only amplify what's already there. If you're not out living, talking to people, sitting with your own thoughts long enough to form one, there's nothing for it to amplify.
For me, that means being as present as possible off the clock. Taking the walk without the podcast. Having the conversation instead of sending the text. It sounds counterintuitive, but the less you're plugged in during your off hours, the more impact you have when you are.
Leaders, I know you’re trying to do your best. It’s a scary, uncertain time for many of us, and you’re just trying to stay ahead of the wave and not get swallowed by it. I respect the ambition and the hustle to keep up.
But here's the thing: when leadership is stressed, underprepared, or unclear about AI implementation, that strain doesn't stay in the C-suite. It cascades. Confusion, anxiety, and burnout spread fastest in environments where leaders can't offer clarity because they don't have it themselves. AI adoption isn't just a technology rollout — it's a full-scale change-management initiative.
And according to workplace researcher Melissa Doman, leaders need structured communication plans, proper training, and support for their own well-being before they can guide their teams through the transition.
So my humble suggestion is that you let your creatives (the ones you so diligently hired) continue to do their jobs well in the capacity they choose that delivers the best result. That does not mean moving the goalposts on AI usage every single day or micromanaging prompt inputs. It means being intentional and asking your people how they feel or how they've already been using these tools and whether it's actually helping.
After all, the goal isn't simply to get employees using AI. The goal is to help them continue doing good work without burning out in the process.
As Bedard noted in that CBS piece, the early promise of AI was that fewer people could do more work, faster. But if the technology is already contributing to cognitive overload, maybe those assumptions deserve a second look. A 2023 report from the American Psychological Association found that concerns about AI in the workplace are strongly associated with anxiety, stress, and feelings of powerlessness. That's not a productivity problem. It's a people problem, and it requires a people solution.
Gambelin captures it best in her book Responsible AI: "Technology is a reflection of our humanity. And right now, that reflection shows fatigue."
That line stopped me. When so many people are feeling overwhelmed, distracted, anxious, or burned out by the pace of change, the answer probably isn't to push harder but instead to create a little more room to breathe.
The takeaway is this: Don't make AI the villain, but don't make it the savior of your workplace woes, either. These tools are just… tools. They can accelerate good work, support good ideas, and eliminate some tedious tasks, but they're only as effective as the people using them, the environments they're used in, and the leaders at the helm of the ship.
When leaders communicate honestly, set realistic expectations, and provide a clear roadmap for how AI fits into the organization, employees feel safer, more supported, and more confident navigating change. And when people feel supported, they're far more likely to embrace new technology in ways that actually improve the work.
That's the environment where good work happens.
Sometimes, just knowing someone else in your field feels the same frustration is enough. A little "okay, I'm not the only one who feels like their value is slipping" moment.
The best tool available right now is still human interaction and the exchange of real ideas, real voices, and real experience. When we rely too heavily on quick-hit content and AI-generated output, we risk losing the very things that make our work meaningful in the first place.
So talk to people. Have the conversation. Vent when you need to, but remember to come to the table with ideas and solutions to your grievances, too. The way through this isn't isolation; it's collaboration. It's sharing perspectives, challenging assumptions, and learning from one another as we figure it out together.
While you're at it, protect your craft. Think about what made you good at what you do long before AI entered the chat. Let those qualities lead the way, and let AI do what it does best: assist, not steer.
If your brain is so "AI fried" that the only way to get your original thoughts out is by rambling into a voice memo and hoping Future You can make sense of it later, that's okay too. It's all a means to an end. You're doing your best. (And same, absolutely same.)
At Artisan, this is the part we think about most. Not just whether a team has the right tools, but whether it still has the room to do the kind of thinking those tools are supposed to support. The best creative work has always come from people given enough space to actually think. That hasn't changed. It just got easier to forget.
Helen has been writing for Artisan Talent since 2025, covering everything from the future of the creative industry to the decisions hiring managers face when building and protecting their teams. Her work spans the practical and the human: a look at why skipping lunch wrecks creative output, a hiring manager's guide to the red flags hiding in a creative portfolio, and a case for why the Design Engineer has become an essential hire. Across all of it, she writes for the people doing the work and the people responsible for them.