Work With AI, Don’t Let It Work You
Ever heard that old Jim Gaffigan joke about having five kids?
“Imagine you're drowning...then someone hands you a baby.”
For some high-achieving professionals, generative AI is like that extra baby, because there's implicit and explicit pressure to make the most of this new thing...except we're already tired.
For others, it is more like a life preserver, because there's implicit and explicit pressure to make the most of the job you're lucky to have, and now you can do more in less time.
Either way, AI is disrupting work as we know it.
A recent study from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business conducted more than 8 months of ethnographic research within a tech company, and confirmed what many of us already feel: Generative AI is intensifying work…
It’s expanding what workers feel capable of and are willing to take on.
It’s enabling workers to move faster, take on more, and work longer...often without being asked to do so.
It’s introducing excitement and experimentation, but also creating internal and external expectations that are hard to sustain.
But the Haas researchers captured even deeper insights…
When those same workers stepped back from the daily prompting and iterating, they described their workdays as denser and more cognitively demanding because their natural stopping points disappeared.
They described themselves as busier, more stretched, and less able to fully disconnect…and as any organizational psychologist or executive coach will tell you, constant switching over time, with insufficient recovery, leads to impaired judgment, increased errors, and burnout.
So while generative AI seems to be delivering on its promise of increased efficiency, it may be progressively discouraging self-regulation and decreasing time and space for critical thinking and creative problem-solving - the very capabilities leaders need to possess, and the very qualities that keep us genuinely engaged and effective at work.
How to Regain Some Control
Way back in the 1970s, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied what makes people feel genuinely alive at work, and his answer was consistent:
The state of absorbed, generative problem-solving where challenge meets skill and something new emerges.
I've always loved his explanation because it reminds me of what we humans evolved to do: Make things that are novel, useful, and inspiring - things like fire, food, art, machines, products, services.
That kind of making doesn't happen when the majority of our time and energy is spent reviewing and editing AI-generated knowledge! It happens when humans are fully present and challenged in ways the brain finds deeply satisfying.
Csikszentmihalyi called this flow. Contemporary author and computer scientist Cal Newport calls this deep work. The label doesn't matter, but protecting the conditions that make it possible really does.
So if you want to prevent AI-saturation on your team or in your workplace, the Haas researchers recommend a practical path forward: an "AI practice" to become more conscious and more intentional about the rhythm and boundaries of AI-enabled work, rather than simply accelerating because the technology enables it.
For Leaders, this means:
Providing clear guidance around what work is best supported by AI vs. in-person collaboration.
Inviting employees to bring their AI-enabled findings to meetings where conclusions and next steps can be stress-tested against real experience.
Building in intentional pauses before high-stakes decisions rather than letting efficiency undermine your outcomes.
For Teams, this means:
Sequencing work into coherent phases and supporting healthy work boundaries.
Creating spaces for reflection and questioning, so work doesn't progress in echo chambers.
Actively looking for ways to help employees make something that's truly theirs.
These practices aren't about slowing down work. They are about working under the right conditions at the right times, and not allowing efficiency to extinguish what makes human work so extraordinary.
Your coach,
Katharine
