Most of you probably use AI to some extent – some more, some less.
Here’s a question: has it actually made your days lighter?
We were promised efficiency by AI. Many leaders I know got more overwhelmed instead.
A friend told me about a CEO he knows who replaced his entire team with over 60 AI agents to run his technology business.
No people. Just systems, automations, and him orchestrating everything.
The idea was freedom. What actually happened: he is now on the brink of burnout.
He didn’t remove the cognitive load. He concentrated it. Every decision, every failure, every exception the AI couldn’t handle, all lands on one person now. He became the single point of failure in a system he designed for freedom.
I’ve burned out twice.
Managing two businesses simultaneously. Long hours and too many of them.
But the hours weren’t the real problem.
It was that I never switched off.
Too many decisions running in parallel.
Challenges that followed me into the evening.
A mind that couldn’t find rest. No real recovery. Just a constant feeling of pressure.
Why it matters
AI doesn’t fix this for most leaders. For many, it actually adds to it.
More tools to manage.
More output to review.
More decisions about what the AI produced.
More anxiety about what it might have missed.
Here’s what concerns me most: it’s not only that we’re getting more overwhelmed.
We’re quietly outsourcing the thinking that used to keep us sharp: the judgment, the reflection, the uninterrupted moments where real clarity actually comes from.
When the load gets heavy enough, the temptation is to let AI carry not just the tasks, but the decisions that used to require you to work something through.
It feels like relief. It’s actually a different kind of cost, because the thinking you outsource is exactly the thinking that keeps you sharp as a leader.
The real shift isn’t whether you’re using AI. It’s learning where to stop it and actually think — otherwise you’re just managing output all day, and start just reviewing.
I’ve seen this play out in a specific way: a team that used to make a decision in one meeting starts needing three, because now there’s also the AI’s output to review and discuss. Load didn’t shrink and reviewing replaced deciding.
There are things only you can do as a leader. Setting direction. Developing people. Making strategic decisions nobody else can make. Navigating uncertainty that requires judgment.
Those things run on one resource: focused mental energy.
And it runs out faster than most leaders admit — whether you burn it by concentrating every decision onto yourself, like that CEO did, or by letting it atrophy from not using it.
Your action this week
1. Can you name three significant decisions last week where you did the actual thinking?
Not reviewed what AI suggested. Actually thought it through yourself. If you can’t name three, that’s the signal worth paying attention to.
2. When you added AI to your workflow, did your mental energy go down or up?
Check your mental energy today: morning, after lunch, end of day. Rate it low, medium, high. Then observe: did the low points follow moments of real thinking, or moments of reviewing and correcting what AI produced? Most people assume mental fatigue comes from hard thinking. Often it’s the opposite, because the constant mental load of monitoring output is what actually drains you.
3. Pick one real decision on your calendar this week
Before opening any AI tool, spend 20 minutes forming your own view first and write it down. Only then look at what AI suggests. Notice whether it sharpened your thinking, or replaced it.
If those questions felt uncomfortable to answer, then explore why and take action before it becomes something harder to ignore.
Cheers, Andrey Sergeyev
For short ideas on leading, living and scaling business with focus on what matters – follow me on Linkedin
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