I've Never Gotten More Done, and It's Making Me Uneasy

I recently introduced Chief, my AI chief of staff. Since then I've been running a lot of my work by voice, talking to Chief while it works across my Claude projects in parallel. (A project is a separate AI workspace that keeps its own files and memory.) Since I first got into this, my productivity had already doubled, and in the last week or so it doubled again.

Thursday was an incredibly productive day. I did almost all of it by voice and barely touched the computer. And I never felt a sense of accomplishment. None of the normal relief and comfort that comes from checking things off the list. I was so productive it felt unnatural, like jet lag. The work got done, but there wasn't enough time for any of it to sink in.

Like any big new technology, AI changes how we behave, how we spend time with people, and our mental and physical health. It's a much bigger change than getting a new phone. It changes the human experience, and I've started to run into something that makes me a little nervous: you can be too productive. The more I get done in a day, the more uneasy I feel.

What Thursday Looked Like

Here's what got done across my projects on Thursday, almost all of it by voice, and a lot of it in parallel with the rest of my life. I'm including the list as evidence for a problem I haven't solved yet, and in no way to brag.

Career - Project used for my job search, planning my consulting business, and speaking and outreach

• Fixed the broken nightly job search scraper
• Applied for a job
• Changed the job search to look only for AI Transformation roles (dropped Marketing)
• Worked out a consulting services list and a first draft of a new website
• Started brainstorming consulting company names and checking which domains are free
• Archived the video from my HAIC conference talk

COS (Chief of Staff) - Project used for my calendar, email, daily logistics, and keeping my other projects on track

• Cleaned out the inbox and wrote down sorting rules so future rounds go faster
• Moved a family appointment and set daily times to visit a relative
• Drafted 4 emails for me to review and send
• Checked whether a large telecom company offers public tools for AI agents (it doesn't)
• Added a few new to-dos
• Ran a health check on 11 projects and got the broken ones fixed

School support - Project used for my son's school support plan and schoolwork

• Reviewed new paperwork from the school
• Checked in on how his makeup work is going
• Drafted and sent the school an email on the open items

Home Finance - Project used for household bills, the budget, and tracking money

• Paid and logged the bills that came in the mail
• Decided to pull transactions straight from the bank and card sites instead of a budgeting app

Family care - Project used for helping my aunt with her care and affairs

• Updated her status
• Drafted an email to her care team about next steps

LinkedIn - Project used for my articles, reading list, and LinkedIn presence

• Built a tool so other projects can safely add to my reading list
• Added 4 newsletters from my email to the list

Other projects

• BooBridge (the add-on that gives my Claude projects memory between sessions): Made its memory system stronger and did some project cleanup.
• Division 2 (Claude goes through my gear in the PS5 game to find the best items): Built a keyboard controller that records a walk through the game and replays it, so Claude can get to the stash on its own.
• Descenders (teaching Claude to ride a bike in the PS5 game on its own): Moved 8 GB of old test files into storage.
• Deep Tune (music analysis that splits songs into instruments and guesses the genre): Merged its two separate memory systems into one and closed 6 to-dos.

Off the computer, the same day

• A 2-hour training call with a friend
• A call with an old colleague about a potential consulting engagement
• Happy hour with Verizon colleagues
• Used AI to order some vitamins my wife asked me to get
• Chores, laundry, taking care of the dogs, and a shower

Why I Think a Day Like That Doesn't Feel Great

1. Checking on Every Project, Again and Again

With all those projects going, I find myself going back again and again to check on the status of each one. It feels like I've got a million plates spinning. Every check is a switch from one project to another, and the switching cost is pretty high. On a day like Thursday, it adds up.

2. No Time for the Work to Sink In

The work also goes very fast. Reviewing a draft and reading it isn't the same as wrapping your head around it, and I'm losing some of the wrapping my head around it, because I'm not doing the doing.

The review goes faster too, because I'm not reviewing the work with another person. That saves a lot of time and a lot of explaining. It also means I'm not getting enough absorption time.

3. AI Took Away My Triage, So Every Read Is Heavy

I used to prioritize and triage hard. A lot of things got discarded, because there was no way I was going to get to them and they weren't a high enough priority. Newsletters were usually the first to go.

Now, in theory, I have the time to read them. And AI is very good at finding things that are hyper-relevant and interesting to me, so I'm not finding light content anymore. A rich, serious piece is a heavy meal, and it uses up a lot of brain power. It's like everything I'm drinking is a shot of intellectual liquor.

This article is an example. As I was starting to sketch out the idea, Chief found a newsletter sitting in my inbox with other people saying much the same thing. BRXND Dispatch, a newsletter about AI and marketing, put out 25 quick takes from its team. Joh writes, "We're approaching a point where we can accomplish more in a day than we can cognitively absorb." Mike expects burnout to multiply: "As AI automates more of the redundant tasks that used to serve as a brainless mental reset, we're spending more and more cognitive energy every day."

That newsletter is the kind of thing that used to go first. This time I read it, commented on it, and it ended up in this article.

4. No Natural Limits on When or Where I Work

When I had a day job, like many people, I got into back-to-back meetings. You fill the space to the limits of your productivity, but those meetings gave the day natural boundaries.

Now I control my schedule. Everything is interesting, and I can follow up with people so much more. My ability to connect with people and be part of a community used to be highly constrained. One of the things I've been excited about is being able to connect with a lot of people in a genuine, no-agenda way.

But there's no natural limit to the people and topics. They're an endless fountain, or more like a fire hose. Unless I deliberately ease off, my calendar would fill every hour of every day. I'm opening it back up after a couple of weeks' break from work, and my fear is that it fills instantly and leaves no time to process any of it. That makes me feel frantic in a new way. Then I feel guilty, because even with all that, people still have to wait too long to connect with me.

The same goes for where I work. I can do voice work whenever and wherever now, which is its own kind of multitasking burden. I can work deeply and intensely while I'm grocery shopping, driving or in the shower, and I sometimes do. The space available for work is now anywhere. There are no physical limits.

A Strange Burnout, Even in Work I Love

I have a lot of experience switching between things and managing people and work, and I greatly enjoy this work. It's like a stressful job that you love and that's very rewarding. And I'm still feeling a strange form of burnout.

Plenty of people don't have that experience, or don't love their work the way I do, and they may feel more of the pressure. So when someone feels nervous about AI, or pushes back on it, I don't think we should dismiss them as someone who doesn't get it. There's enough resistance out there that there are things we haven't figured out yet about how AI fits into our lives in a healthy way.

I've written before that not everything that could be automated should be. Too much productivity is another place where we need to be thoughtful about how and why we're using AI, and what it does to the people using it.

New Boundaries I'm Going to Try

You shouldn't bring a phone to the dinner table. I think working with AI is going to need new boundaries like that: self-imposed best practices for mental health, social health and physical energy, so we don't go past our human limits in an unhealthy way. Some of mine probably need to be physical limits on where I work, since right now I've got none.

I haven't figured mine out. I've only just started to wrap my head around this problem. What I'm going to do is experiment. I'll put breaks and processing time into my day, pay closer attention to how the pace feels, talk about it with other people, and try out ways to chill out. Mostly, I need to be deliberate and mindful about my time, and not so all-or-nothing about it.