I still clearly remember how I felt when we first met. Chat GPTend of November 2022. It wasn’t fear. It was a feeling of elation. Having spent 20 years in the information services field, I saw the opportunities ahead and felt the magnitude of what was to come. we were building machine learning Features of PatSnap from the beginning deep learning For over 10 years, starting around 2012, we have been training our models on global patent and R&D literature. So, Generation AI When the wave hit, it felt more like validation than disruption.
Matt Schumer’s viral essay “something big is happening” captures what many of us are building A.I. You already know. We are in the early stages of something much bigger than most people realize. The biggest advantage right now is simply that it’s fast. It’s quick to understand. Use it early. They are quick to adapt. I completely agree with that urgency.
But I want to add something to the conversation that continues to be missing from the productivity discussion. The human operating system is also important. What if we burn out the people driving adaptation?you lose the race anyway.
3 ways to prevent AI burnout
- Treat recovery as a performance indicator.
- Treat unstructured think time as a strategic asset.
- Lead by example in sustainable strength.
Exponential technology, linear biology
We live in exponential times. AI capabilities are getting better every week. Every founder and executive I know feels pressure to ship faster, learn faster, and decide faster. The pressure is legitimate, and the window for competitive advantage has never been shorter. As Schumer puts it, we’re “not there yet” in AI parlance, but there are ways to get there sooner than anyone expects. What tech workers are already experiencing as they see AI go from a useful tool to a true colleague; It’s an experience that every knowledge worker is trying to go through..
However, this is what is missing from the discourse on urgency. The number of SSRI prescriptions in the United States is increasing across the following age groups: youth, young people and adult. Anxiety is a global epidemic. But this is a deeper issue than anxiety and medication.
Always on, Our overstimulated way of working is causing hormonal and neurotransmitter imbalances that compound over time: Cortisol is chronically elevated, serotonin and dopamine pathways are disrupted, and testosterone and growth hormone are suppressed.
These are not just mental health issues. They reshape body composition, disrupt sleep quality, erode cognitive acuity, and change behavior in ways that people don’t even realize themselves. If you pick up your phone at 6am, you can feel your cortisol spike before you even have a glass of water. our brain, nervous system, biology. It doesn’t compound like AI. It deteriorates when subjected to unrelenting pressure. We need sunshine, calm, and restoration. Machines aren’t like that.
It’s worth distinguishing AI productivity tools from the last wave of technology that reshaped the way we work and live. Social media was designed for forced engagement. Infinite scrolling and variable rewards work to hold our attention for as long as possible.
However, when used intentionally and effectively, AI tools can have the opposite effect. Compress the time you spend on everyday cognitive tasks and give that time back to yourself. AI will not fascinate us the way smartphones do. The risk is that releasing that velocity creates its own pressure to fill all the recovered time with more production.
AI will reshape the way we work. The question now is: Will AI set the pace or will we set the pace? Getting it right is no reason to slow down. That’s why you’ll be smarter about how to keep pace.
Consider what is most difficult to replace
Schumer is right that those who are ahead of the curve are not using AI casually. They push it into real work. Enter contracts, messy spreadsheets, quarterly data, and automate tasks that used to take hours. With PatSnap, agent-like A system that can analyze entire patents in minutes. This speed is real and you absolutely have to embrace it.
But the questions that follow are just as important. Once AI takes care of everyday cognitive labor, what will be left? What will be the most difficult to replace?
I am dyslexic. For most of my life, I was made to feel like it was a responsibility, but now I consider it one of the greatest benefits of my profession. My brain doesn’t read something and save it neatly to a file. It remains on the thread even after time passes. A co-worker’s comment from six months ago, a podcast you half-listened to, an unrelated industry pattern. And suddenly they connect to things I had never thought of before. That kind of thinking is neither fast nor linear. But it is something that cannot be replicated by an AI system because it is precisely what comes from lived experience. That’s judgment, not optimization.
the study show That rest is crucial for cognitive performance. Even with short downtimes, the desynchronization of cortical circuits enhances their ability to encode and process information. What appears to be idle time is often a prerequisite for breakthroughs. The companies that dominate this decade need both. They need to get the job done with urgency, and they must intentionally protect the nation’s mental reserves through culture, rhythm, and leadership.
Adapt quickly and recover quickly
Schumer believes adaptability is the most important skill of our time. I would go further and argue that there is a persistent adaptive capacity. Anyone can sprint for one quarter. The question is, will you still be astute, creative, and able to make good decisions in the third year of the Exponential Age? It is as much a question of recovery as it is a question of strategy.
I’ve personally tried this approach. I wear a Whoop tracker and treat my biometric data as seriously as my revenue metrics. I can see how my body reacts to continuous calls without interruption, and how that data informs the quality of my decision-making. The data is clear. Recovery promotes performance. Not just once in a while, but consistently.
As a leader, this shapes the three principles I incorporate into how we operate.
1. Recovery as a performance indicator
First, treat recovery as a performance indicator rather than a perk. I wear a Whoop tracker and look at my biometric data the same way I look at my dashboard. What this consistently shows is that the days following a poor recovery are not only emotionally difficult. Your decision-making quality will suffer, your risk tolerance will be skewed, and you’ll end up being the worst version of the leader your team needs.
Organizations can operate this without everyone wearing trackers. Build recovery checkpoints into your team’s rhythm, normalize 1:1 capacity conversations, and treat “running on empty” as a signal worth taking action on. Athletes who skip recovery won’t win more races. They get hurt, but so do teams led by people who never stop.
2. Unstructured thinking time as a strategic asset
Next, we’ll protect unstructured think time as a strategic asset and explain exactly what that means. Instead of “going for a walk,” it’s an actual calendar space that requires no deliverables, accomplishments, or follow-up. Roadmap-changing insights rarely come from eight consecutive calls. It happens when patterns that have been quietly forming finally have room to surface. As a leader, ask yourself: Can your organization sustain the compounding cost of simply never spending time thinking?
3. Set an example of sustainable strength
Third, set an example of sustainable strength. Culture is transmitted through behavior, especially the behavior of those who hold the most power in the room. If you’re sending Slack messages in the middle of the night, your team won’t see that as dedication. They read it as a baseline and adjust accordingly. Sustainable strength means being visibly disciplined about your limits. Block and protect your concentration time. Treat breaks not as something earned after the sprint, but as part of the infrastructure that makes the sprint possible.
real race
Let me be clear. I’m not advocating slowing down. Something big is happening and hesitant founders and teams will be overtaken. By incorporating AI precisely into routine work, teams have the space to do the thinking they can’t do now. Automate relentlessly. Hurry up. Exponential times reward speed, adaptability, and constant curiosity.
But the race is not man versus machine. That never happened. This competition is between organizations that exhaust their employees by chasing the machine, and those that build teams that are resilient enough to continue to grow over the years. The former could sprint faster in Q1. The latter will still exist and prevail in 2030.
Let’s move quickly. Take advantage of all the tools at your disposal. But invest in the one system that APIs cannot replace: thinking humans. Companies that get this balance right will not only survive exponential times; They will define it.
