I crashed out

As AI Accelerates, So Does Burnout. Here’s What I Learned.

I crashed out this week. But really I think it’s been a slow crash over the past few months.

W-2 work. Commuting. Two kids. End of school year. Getting sick four times. Hosting workshops. Building a product. Substack. Instagram. It’s a lot. But my learning was not just that it was too much, it’s that AI is fundamentally changing how we are working and, I believe, setting us up for quicker, more frequent burnout if we aren’t intentional with how we are managing our energy and attention.

AI didn’t give me more free time. It gave me more capacity. And I filled every bit of it with more tasks.

As a woman with ADHD on the brink of perimenopause, this is even more critical. Time blindness can cause me to go into holes so deep I can’t see out of them for days. My brain feels like it has too many tabs open, with thoughts on top of thoughts interrupting each other. Bundled with a high sense of urgency to do things quickly, putting me at an even higher risk for burnout.

So I closed the laptop and spent the week at the pool with my family. Splashing in the cold water finally pulled me into my body and out of my head. Giving myself the right dopamine - of trees, the rippling water, the bright blue sky, and my kids laughter.

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Why does this feel hard when AI makes it easier?

When we work with AI, something shifts in how our brain operates. The context window shrinks. We’re not sitting with one project for three hours anymore and the opportunities for that flow state are becoming less and less. We’re moving between projects faster, context-switching constantly, fitting more into the same time block.

We’re not just working faster with AI. We are retraining how we have worked, and for some of us those are patterns and habits that we have built for decades. We’re learning new tools, new prompts, new ways to think about problems. We’re forcing our brain to operate differently which takes heaps of power, it’s like turning a massive ship around in a wild ocean. Learning to rewrite that muscle memory is HARD.

So there’s the accelerated work rhythm and the fundamental retraining of how we work. Ding ding ding: a recipe for burnout, especially if your body is a ship that’s under construction (perimenopause) with a poor maintenance alert system (ADHD).

My promise to myself

While AI has made me more efficient, I need to reinvest some of that time back into myself and not only back into the work. Here are a few ways I’m going to do that.

• More time for long form, slow content

  • The learning: high frequency context switching, short form content are ruining my attention span. Dedicate more time to content that will rewire my brain back to longer stretches

  • The action: Add back in books before bed. Send me your recommendations. I’m starting with two:

    • Fiction: Yesteryear by caro claire burke

    • Non-Fiction - Founder Unfriendly by Charlie O'Donnell

• Mid-day dopamine breaks

  • The learning: While AI gives lots of dopamine hits, they don’t get me out of my brain and into my body. Focusing more time with activities that get my heart pounding and clear my head. Bonus points if they include quality time with the kids. Give my sensory seeking body the feedback and input it needs.

  • The action:

    • Ride my bike in the middle of the day - bonus if the kids are on the back

    • Swing, jump and climb on the playground with the kids. I’m working on my dead hang, I’m at 30s right now with a weak grip and I’m hoping to get that up to 60s by the end of summer

    • Deep pressure massage or acupuncture

    • Movement with Barre3 workouts (love my local Dobbs Ferry studio)

    • Gardening, digging, weeding

    • Schedule walking meetings instead of being tethered to my desk

    • Swimming (see above)

• Strategic admin days

  • The learning: I used to do these and they have fallen off my calendar. I’d schedule a day off work on a Friday or a Monday to get life done. Run some errands, schedule doctors appointments, tidy and organize the house, and if I’m lucky get lunch with my husband. These days are like a pressure valve for burnout.

  • The action: Put a monthly personal admin day back on the calendar and set it to recurring so that I don’t have to think about it.

• Outsource what I’m not good at

  • The learning: I have many ambitions and not enough hours in the day, instead of grinding it out solo, I should focus on what I am good at

  • The action: Starting with editing videos on Instagram. I’ve only done a few videos but they take an insane amount of time to edit and are slowing me down. I’m looking for an editor if you know someone.

What I’m carrying forward

These learnings I’m taking into building a community around learning AI and driving productivity and efficiency, while balancing being human…

• How might I build in pacing into a workshop cohort?

• How might we weave in mindfulness into our meetups?

• How might I consult a small business into introducing AI to their team with a long-term strategy?

Because if I’m going to work alongside you, I need to model it. I need to structure things in a way that doesn’t accelerate YOU into burnout.

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Some other past due updates…

AI is for Moms | Phase 1: Research and Testing

In hindsight, this break has created a nice opportunity to do a retrospective on what I’m going to call my Phase 1 for AI is for Moms. I’ve been able to test content here on Substack and Instagram, host workshops and meetups in person and virtually, and consult with a local small business on some use cases for AI. Here are some of those learnings…

Workshops and Meetups

The meetups and workshops had incredible energy and real connection. I was so lucky to get to know several of you and test some of my assumptions of what kind of information you’re looking for.

Three distinct groups have emerged:

Home Operating System. Moms who want to use AI to get a handle on the household mental load. You’ve seen the prompts I’ve shared here. I’m passionate about helping moms make home life easier by making AI accessible and easy to use.

Vibe Coding. Entrepreneurial moms and startup founders who are building products using new vibe coding tools. We’re sharing which tools we’re using and how we are getting the results we want. I believe we’re going to see a lot of first-time startup founders in the mom space now that vibe coding has unlocked our ability to build solutions to our own problems. I want to help build the community so that we can make this a reality.

Small Business. Moms who are running businesses (the therapist, the nutritionist, the local coffeeshop) and want to put AI to work inside them. I’ve been doing some in-person sessions with a friend who runs a barre studio locally. Until recently, small businesses have been overlooked as enterprise has been quick to adopt. I’m excited about supporting members of my community in making the change to adopt AI.

The tracks are distinct, but they’re not rigid. If you see yourself in any of these, I have a waitlist open for future free meetups and workshops.

Another interesting finding revealed itself:

I’ve been hosting these with no recordings and I’ve come to love that constraint. So much stuff on the internet lives forever. But these conversations? If you weren’t there, you missed it. The value is the candid talk, the bonds we build, the fact that we can talk about our families and our mom lives without worrying about who’s saving it and sharing it out. That feels precious. I want to keep it that way.

Tinker Hour Recap

The vibe coding meetup was something else. Two moms in the community Tiffany Soroko and Rebecca Spitzer demoed their apps live.

What I loved most was this symbiotic moment it created: The builders got a community they can test with and learn from and the learners got front-row seats to watch someone build in real time.

If you want to demo at a future vibe coding meetup, share your interest.

Moms’ Night Out Update

What is it? Moms’ Night Out lives in your group chat to help you coordinate your nights out easier. Text it, and it finds when everyone’s free, then suggests where to go.

While I’ve been on teams building apps for companies like Peloton, Hims & Hers and PayPal, this is my first time building one for myself, by myself. I’m thrilled with vibe coding tools available today that I’m able to do this on my own without spending tens of thousands of dollars or spending months before testing with users.

Yet, building a SMS/iMessage-based product has introduced some small hurdles that is taking longer than a traditional app-based product. It’s still in-progress and I’m about half-way through the build now (see my progress below). It’s been exciting to see this much progress, and I loved demoing the build so far for our Tinker Hour meetup group. I’m excited to get more moms testing it out soon.

Maybe you? The first 50 founding members will get one year for free and access to our Founders Slack. Be an early user.

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If this spoke to you, a couple favors:

1. Share this with someone you know who’s burning out trying to keep up with AI. I hope it helps them feel more seen.

2. Comment how AI is shifting your way of work, thought, play, downtime… I’m curious how we are all being impacted by this massive shift.

3. Subscribe - Most weeks I share helpful prompts for using AI or introduce you to a mom building.

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Jen writes about AI for real people. Also find her at jen-makes-work-work.com, on LinkedIn, on Instagram, and on Luma.