AI-Induced Stress: How To Spot it and What To Do About It

Today, a practical look at why AI can stress you out, what to do about it as an individual, and how leaders can think about stress in their organizations.

AI-Induced Stress

If you missed the last edition of this newsletter, it was about what we call an AI mindset—a way of thinking about AI that significantly increases the likelihood of getting good results with it.

Since that newsletter, I’ve been struck by the number of people who’ve told me in no uncertain terms that AI is NOT making their work lives better - in fact, it’s stressing them out. There was also an interesting BBC News article about it, called Will AI Make Burnout Worse? So, I figured it’s time to address this topic head-on, sharing what we’ve seen in our own research and what to do about it.

Let me start by answering the question posed by the BBC article upfront. For some, AI already is already contributing to fatigue and low-level burnout. We’ve seen it in the people we work with, and there are a number of factors contributing to it. Here are the top five factors we’ve seen that you might experience yourself:

• Expectations of increased productivity from your employer that you feel unable to keep up with.
• Confusion from the sheer proliferation of AI tools, meaning you don’t know which tool to use for which job.
• Exhaustion as you try to keep up with the ever-advancing feature set of AI.
• Frustration when AI does not produce the results you expect, requiring you to waste time tweaking prompts in an effort to make it “understand.”
• Fear in both the short and medium term. This could be fear that you will miss a mistake it makes, costing you your job, or fear that it will replace you as it improves.

Not everyone has these responses, and many people are enjoying their work more thanks to AI, but nonetheless, these are real considerations for many, many people. In an Upwork study referenced in the article, 77% of employees said that AI tools have actually decreased their productivity and added to their workload. And nearly half of the employees using AI said they have no idea how to achieve the productivity gains their employers expect. (Of course, they should be doing our Thrive With AI program;-)).

Minimizing and Dealing With AI-Induced Stress

AI isn’t going anywhere, so what should you do about all this?

Well, first, start to think about some of the concepts I raised in the previous newsletter. In our research, we found a distinct difference between people who try to approach AI as a time-saver (more stress) and people who approach it as a quality improver (less stress). As I mentioned in that article, this switch in mindset is helpful, even in situations where your manager or organization is pushing the time-saving angle - it helps you be more creative in using AI, and can even result in greater time savings overall.

But here are three other steps you can take to deal with AI-related stress, or indeed almost any technology-induced stress. We’ve seen them work repeatedly across thousands of people.

• Regularly create downtime from technology (sometimes called a digital detox). Disconnecting from technology forces you to slow down. You simply cannot go at the same rate when technology isn’t there to help you. Ideally, make it a complete break from ALL technology and use the time to connect with real people—with no phone in hand or buds in ears.
• When organizing your calendar, consciously include periods where you are going at a slower pace. AI can help you get many things done, but running constantly at 1000 miles an hour can be incredibly exhausting.
• Rediscover the joy of serial single-tasking. Almost every piece of technology we own makes it incredibly easy to switch between tasks, and many of us do this constantly. But repeated flipping like this just adds to stress. Shut down those unnecessary tabs, and consider simpler tools (like an e-writer) to reduce distractions as you work.

Reducing stress is helpful, but it’s also important to remember that stress is part of everyday life and always has been (it’s why our brains have stress receptors). So, it’s essential to understand how you usually respond to stress and figure out what to do about it. Many stress responses are extreme versions of behaviors we exhibit every day. They are influenced by our upbringing and are ingrained patterns we adopt when we don’t have time to think about better approaches. That can make them difficult to spot. I’ll be writing more about this in an upcoming edition of this newsletter.

How To Respond as a Leader

Our Thrive with AI program has a leadership track, which is conducted in cohorts, and as we’ve worked with leaders, we’ve realized many don’t really know what to do with this new technology. They don’t understand how to deploy the technology, how to deal with the proliferation of tools, and perhaps critically, what expectations to place on employees. We go into huge detail on these topics in our Thrive With AI masterclasses (and I’ll be doing a Live event on the topic shortly), but here are the five most important points.

• Don’t (fully) believe the hype: AI can improve productivity, but it’s not by orders of magnitude, and it may not be very much at all as your employees figure out how to fit it into their own workflows.
• Don’t chase every new tool: Yes, there might be a better tool out there than the one you currently use, but you will almost certainly get more out of a small number of tools that your employees know how to use well.
• Train employees on AI appropriately: That means not wasting money on prompt engineering courses and focusing development on the techniques employees can use to thrive alongside AI (that’s my last plug for our program in this newsletter, I promise).
• Increase your focus on human skills: Millions of routine jobs are about to be automated out of existence. This is set to massively increase the need for advanced soft skills in the jobs that remain (overall the percentage is projected to quadruple by 2030). So invest heavily here - you need a workforce of the most adaptable employees possible, flexible enough to take on whatever’s next.
• Show empathy: Whether you or your employees realise it yet, the AI revolution represents one of the most dramatic changes to the “how of work” in human history. Humans can adapt, but as we’ve been discussing, it’s stressful! You might be tempted to berate your employees for not giving you the ROI you expected on your AI investment, but blaming them for it is only likely to be counter-productive. Instead, lower the temperature and create the conditions to help your employees thrive.

Building Organizational Resilience

I’ve known Mindy Honcoop for some time, and she’s one of the more thoughtful people on I know on the topic of Organizational Resilience, which you can think of as the ability of an organization to deal with frequent waves of change. A while back I had the opportunity to chat with Mindy about this topic, and we’ve now released it in the Humanity Working podcast. At BillionMinds, we define resilience as the ability to cope intellectually and emotionally with change. One of the most interesting parts of the conversation for me was discussing how the concept of individual resilience translates into organizational resilience. Part of the picture is how we behave as individuals and how our managers behave, but it’s also crucial to have the right cultural framework, processes, and even technology to support resilience.

You can listen to the episode wherever you find your podcast, and you can view it on our website, or just by clicking below!

Thank You

Thank you for reading this - I’m enormously grateful to the people who wade their way all the way through this newsletter every two weeks!

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Oh, and in case we haven’t met, I'm Paul - the CEO and Co-Founder of BillionMinds. I formed my company and continue to write this newsletter and present our Humanity Working podcast for a straightforward reason: I believe that a positive future depends on everyone having the opportunity to do meaningful work. I want to do my part to make sure that happens, and I’d love you to join me in that mission - as a customer, partner, employee, or just a kindred spirit - whatever works for you.

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