Ep#222 AI Brain Fry - Why You Can’t Think Straight Anymore
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[00:00:00] Hi everyone. My name's Dex Randall, and this is the Burnout to Leadership Podcast where I teach professional men to recover from burnout and get back to passion and reward at work.

[00:00:22] Lately, do you get stuck into AI agents first thing, only to find yourself exhausted before lunch?

[00:00:30] Because here's what's happening. You are not using AI. AI is starting to use you. Not in a kind of sci-fi way, but in a much calmer, more sinister way.

[00:00:42] You are outsourcing the very thing that makes you valuable, your thinking.

[00:00:47] The more you do that, the harder it becomes to think without it.

[00:00:51] It's like taking sleeping pills, that only make insomnia worse.

[00:00:56] And that's what we're getting into today.

[00:00:58] AI Brain Fry: what it is, then how to keep a head on your shoulders and a beat in your heart.

[00:01:04] AI is a tool. Marvelous, indispensable, but your relationship with it determines whether you get sharper or softer, and most professionals are unwittingly training themselves into cognitive dependence.

[00:01:20] For the record, I use AI all the time for building, analyzing, automating my business. I'm usually exhausted after two to three hours.

[00:01:31] I could use it to write podcasts, but I'm too stubborn! If I'm not giving you my own thoughts, where's the value?

[00:01:39] My view is a contrarian in everything from burnout causes, to how to permanently resolve burnout, how to become impermeable to criticism, how to create strong, open confidence, why developing empathy and humility is good, not bad, and so on.

[00:01:59] My clients recover from burnout because I don't use standard corporate reactivity, stigma and performance plans to address burnout. You might have noticed yourself how poorly that works?

[00:02:11] It's still a blame culture out there, where even top ranking professionals fail, swamped by work pressures and aggravations. Never taught how to stay afloat, simply penalized for drowning.

[00:02:25] Now with added AI! Feel the AI burn! I hear you.

[00:02:31] One of my senior cardiologists clients lost his job after decades at the top because of bureaucracy and burnout.

[00:02:38] Luckily, because I'm an outlier, you can learn to transcend burnout from me. Under your own steam, without relying on your boss or organization for help.

[00:02:51] But okay, I do use AI a fair bit. I am a nerd from way back. I find preparation lengthy and complex, but the yield is an amazing, super-set of my abilities. It's not replacing what I can do, it's augmenting it.

[00:03:07] I do know where to draw the line and I can draw it without losing my job, because I'm self-employed. I trade on people skills, which AI -silky smooth as it can be- cannot replicate.

[00:03:21] I naively asked an AI agent what its persona was. It was a clone of me, of course, with extra helpings of schmooze. But if AI is trained to please me, what about my audience? What about the truth?

[00:03:37] I did use AI to refresh my LinkedIn account recently, and it crashed because AI wasn't willing to tell me the truth about my plan.

[00:03:47] So please, I'm very interested, let me know in the comments here what YOU think about AI. What is your relationship with it?

[00:03:55] But if you have AI Brain Fry, defined as mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one's cognitive capacity, according to HBR, 14% of workers report AI Brain Fry.

[00:04:14] Here are some of the factors of AI that can wear you out.

[00:04:17] Number one: The Illusion of Efficiency.

[00:04:21] It makes things faster initially, but you skip the struggle and learning phase of your work. You bypass synthesis of your experience. You lose depth.

[00:04:35] AI can increase workload. Each AI task is simple, but managing it is complex. Rabbit holes of exploration pop up everywhere. You're multitasking more than ever and struggling to complete anything. It is a short-term gain that you pay for with long-term dulling of your brain. This is how AI's fast answers are training slow thinking.

[00:05:04] It's also why AI prose feel so empty, like Candy Flos. That emptiness is lack of emotional resonance, lack of human connection, and like it or not, we need that.

[00:05:16] Number two: Micro Dependence.

[00:05:20] It's not big reliance. It's, oh, just rewrite this. Just summarize that. Just give me ideas about this. Each one teaches your brain "I do not need to do this myself". And your brain listens. Your brain uses 20% of your daily energy intake, so it's designed not to waste any, and thinking is very energy intensive. Your brain won't think if it doesn't have to.

[00:05:48] Number three: Cognitive Atrophy. Use it or lose it. You're weakening focus, stamina, original thought, decision making, confidence.

[00:05:58] This is the first time we've been able to outsource thinking at scale and get this effect.

[00:06:05] This is why people using AI say, I feel a bit off, but I can't explain why.

[00:06:11] Number four: Why AI Brain Fry feels like Burnout (although it isn't necessarily).

[00:06:18] You might get foggy thinking, reduced motivation, second guessing, irritability, distraction, loss of ownership, and even procrastination.

[00:06:30] But it is not depletion. The tiredness comes from assimilating huge amounts of AI output, checking it's saying or doing what you want it to do.

[00:06:41] It's disconnection from your own capability and purpose, and that hits your identity hard.

[00:06:48] Studies show that AI use contributes to burnout. And if you feel it's like that for you, if it's pushing your burnout over the edge, come and talk to me.

[00:06:59] Let's make your personal plan to recover, to feel and perform at your best. Book a free consult with me at dexrandall.com. 

[00:07:08] Number five: The Confidence Crash

[00:07:11] When you don't trust your thinking anymore. You hesitate, you check more, you defer more, you worry more. And suddenly that high performer has become an approval seeker.

[00:07:23] Not because they're weak, but because they've stopped backing themselves.

[00:07:27] The fix. Okay, what can we do? Don't say "Use less AI", 'cause that's not realistic. Say "Reclaim authorship".

[00:07:36] Practical steps to do that:

[00:07:39] Think first, then use AI.

[00:07:42] Write the messy version before you optimize.

[00:07:44] Draft the plan before you build out.

[00:07:47] Use AI as a challenger, not a crutch.

[00:07:51] And build non-AI time into your day.

[00:07:55] Simple rule. If you can do it, you should do it. 

[00:07:58] AI is for expansion, refinement, backfilling data points, integration, speed after depth. Not replacement.

[00:08:10] Number seven: The Corporate Panic nobody's saying out loud.

[00:08:15] There's another layer to this, isn't there? At a corporate, a market level, this isn't calm strategic adoption. It's panic. Companies feel like they can't slow down. They can't question it. They can't opt out because if they do, they'll fall behind.

[00:08:32] So what happens? Everybody piles in! More tools, more automation, more complexity, more AI-first decisions. Not always because it's better, but because it's happening. It's the classic, we can't get off the bus.

[00:08:48] And here's the tension: at the organizational level, it appears to provide speed, scale, efficiency, and cost savings. None of which entirely backed up by the data at the moment, by the way. But at the human level, it brings on confusion, dependency, erosion of thinking, de-motivation, anxiety. And nobody is really reconciling those two sides.

[00:09:15] So you've got high performers inside these systems trying to keep up while quietly feeling less sharp, less certain, less useful, less themselves. And that's not personal failure.

[00:09:28] Evolution dictates our human adaptation rate, and now we're in an environment that's accelerating faster than people can integrate.

[00:09:38] Number eight: The Economic Undercurrent.

[00:09:42] So let's zoom out a bit further, because this isn't really just about tools or productivity, it's a global scale issue and it's starting to shake the foundations of work itself.

[00:09:54] Futurists at the moment are predicting when we'll no longer need workers anymore.

[00:09:58] So you've got, even now, sudden wholesale job losses in some sectors; roles being redefined, if you like, on the fly in real time; companies investing heavily in AI without a clear return on investment.

[00:10:16] And that last one matters, because nobody really knows when the return's coming, where it will actually land, who will benefit most and who will lose out.

[00:10:26] So then what are organizations doing? They're keeping going, because pulling back feels like losing the game.

[00:10:33] And what are stock market's doing? Brewing an AI bubble as we speak.

[00:10:40] So now you've got this strange dynamic: massive investment, massive expectation, very unclear outcomes and timeframes and incomplete support system. We haven't adapted to using AI completely yet. And floundering teams scrambling to keep up.

[00:11:01] That doesn't create confidence. It creates tension.

[00:11:05] So number nine: The Psychological Cost.

[00:11:07] Nobody's measuring. Inside of all of that, people are asking themselves questions they've never had to ask before.

[00:11:14] Am I using AI properly? Am I falling behind? Should I be faster than this? Will I lose my job or career?

[00:11:24] The uncertainty sits in the background all day, humming along. It's subtle, but it's constant, and it adds a whole new layer of pressure. Not just about doing your job well, but doing it the right way in a moving and undefined system. That's exhausting!

[00:11:42] So finally, this is why it feels so unsettling. It's not just the tech, it's the combination of Cognitive offloading (your brain stepping back); Potential increase in workload and uncertainty of that; Economic instability (what's happening to work itself?); Identity uncertainty (where do I fit into all of this?); AI Brain Fry (am I burning out?); and Loss of human returns (critical disconnection from people, purpose and meaning).

[00:12:18] It's a potent mix, and most people haven't really grappled with it yet.

[00:12:22] They just feel on edge, a little bit behind. Unsure why things that used to feel easy don't anymore.

[00:12:32] And AI isn't directly the problem. This isn't just about using AI better.

[00:12:37] This is about staying anchored while everything around you is shifting faster than it ever has, because the people who do well in this next phase won't be the ones who blindly adopt everything, and they won't be the ones who resist it either.

[00:12:52] They'll be the ones who can use the tools, understand the game, believe in themselves and their role in this, trust their own thinking and purpose, and focus on team wellbeing around AI use.

[00:13:06] Because your value, your confidence, your leadership will come from your ability to sit with something and figure it out (that you've always had) and your EQ and people skills that keep you and your team humming, and your nervous system regulation, which for those in burnout is the biggest challenge. So don't give any of those away.

[00:13:30] Maximizing your emotional intelligence is maximizing your value.

[00:13:35] So that's a brief run through, and I hope you've enjoyed this food for thought today. Thank you very much for listening.

[00:13:40] I would really love to hear your comments and how it's working for you, or where it's not working for you. Please do share this episode with others you think might need to hear it.

[00:13:50] For help with AI Brain Fry, burnout recovery, and leadership performance without burning out, see the links in the show notes.

[00:13:58] And I will catch you next week.