This is what AI is actually doing to your brain, with Gabriella Rosen Kellerman

some are actually making it worse. In this conversation, Gabriella and I get into who is getting hit hardest, why using more than three AI tools at once is where productivity falls off a cliff, and what managers are doing, often unknowingly that is adding fifteen percent more mental fatigue to their teams. This episode really changed how I think about my own AI use, and I hope it does the same for you. Also, just a quick heads up, there's a little bit of background noise at the very

start of this episode. Record it early so it clears up quickly to stick with us.

you more free time, and it decreases burnout. And then other studies suggest that when people are using more AI tools at work for a variety of unclear reasons and mechanisms, that may be increasing burnout, and it even happens to be the case that there's a whole literature studying radiologists and whether radiologists in part particular have increased or decreased

burnout because of the use of AI tools. So we were very interested to study it, and in particular, as you may be aware, there is more and more usage of multi agents at work, meaning you're not just using one AI tool at once, you're using multiple agents at once. Sometimes the agents are working with each other. And what we found was that indeed there's this way of using

AI very intensively. We're really trying to keep up with these tools and use a lot of them at once, and it's very cognitively intense, and it produces this experience that we call AI brain fry that does not have a relationship with burnout, doesn't increase burnout, doesn't decrease burnout. And then we did see that totally different type of AI use, which is using a I to replace repetitive

tasks at work, decreases burnout. But we hopefully also started to advance the conversation about the extent to which burnout as a construct is no longer sufficient to help us understand the domains of strain that will be raised in the new era of AI work.

than other roles. And indeed, in marketing there is a lot of operational lenses that are brought to the use of AI, things like monitoring content, looking at optimizing content particularly, and like search engine optimization, you know, question and answer optimization. Marketing is one of the domains where a lot of the roles have been most disrupted by AI in terms of the specific skills and responsibilities. So in a way,

it wasn't surprising to us to see that. I just want to be cautious in how we extrapolate from that to the level of certainty that we can get to.

responsibility now extends to that agent. In a way, you could say that you are managing that agent as a manager. It's different type of management, but it is true that your sphere of accountability has increased. The activities include decision making, error correction, feedback, prompts, monitoring all kinds of interactions that are required in order to oversee that agent.

But yes, all of those things could be under the umbrella of oversight and monitoring.

much has AI increased your productivity at work? It happened to be the case there was a really interesting relationship between those two particular items, such that this self reported productivity increased through AI increased with multiple use of tools from one to two, from two to three, but then beyond three that self reported increased decreased, the point being there is diminishing returns beyond about two to three tools. It may vary by person. By the way, our brains

are not all the same. I think it's important also to not like this is timestamped to January of twenty twenty six and to the generation of tools that we

have right now. Oftentimes, what is a mean to work with these tools all at once is the tools have processing times, and so maybe it's the case that in the windows, where one tool is processing, you can go to another tool and turn your attention and then it's sort of like a triangle of rotation between the tools, and if there's faster processing times, maybe you can't do that.

Another thing that didn't make the cut of the study of what we were able to fit into the publication that I'd love to share is that we saw a similar pattern of the peak at three for the sophistication

of the users of those tools. So we have at BCG a categorization of AI sophistication that's really just about how long you've been working with AI tools, how well you know how to work with orchestrateor agents and autonomous layers, and it helps us see how do we learn to get better with the tools over time and therefore say things about like what's the limitation of someone's experienced curve or learning curve versus the tools, let's say, or some

interaction between human and AI that's more fundamental. And what we see is that it seems to be that the most sophisticated users tend to prefer to be around three. So there are the folks who are hanging out, you know, maybe at the twenty five that I mentioned are probably not the most sophisticated users are probably folks who are still a little bit earlier in their learning curve. Obviously, they're not the earliest, but there's some wisdom that's coming

into play around. It's not about like maxing out the number of tools you can use at once. It's really finding that sweet spot of productivity where it feels good to your brain. You have that feeling of mastery and yet you're getting that boost from the tools with the productivity.

you know, processing times do vary. Like if I'm asking the AI tool to do some deep research on a topic and meanwhile I might have another tab or task open that is, perhaps I'm working with it to edit some content. Then I know for me, and I mean, I know how bad multitasking and context switching is for my brain as a psychologist, but I find myself doing

it quite a bit. When I'm using the AI tools to help augment or save time on whatever it is that I'm doing, I'm curious is that something you can relate to in your gabriella And I'm wondering what behaviors have you changed around how you're interacting with AI since doing this study.

So for me taking breaks having like true no digital slots and I do at least twenty for hours breaks from the digital once a week. I think having breaks at work where I do phone calls instead of zoom calls and I'm away from my computer and just talking and doing the audio is really really helpful and restorative. I think right now where there is like a feeling of excitement and such deep engagement with the AI tools and a feeling of like, look at this magic that's

very hard to pull away from. So the more we can be aware of the fact that just being engaged in this hyper busy way with our computers, with any kind of digital tool, there are brain networks we can't access when we operate that way, and knowing to take those breaks and take those digital detox moments, you will feel different, right, It feels different in your brain and your body when you step away from these devices phones too, like that the audio is fine, but the internet, the email,

that's all part of the same thing is a very important part of my routine as well.

of their team, which is a huge number. And the way I tell myself the story of that is that this is a manager who's leaning into the inner personal time, the human relationships, the care and the support for the team. You know, in the best case scenario, these tools are giving us more time for that. They're giving us more time to feel connected, to feel that sense of belonging in community, and we're experiencing them together as a team.

When the manager is showing up that way, that is having a sense of you know, slve, it's really showing this decreased effect on the mental fatigue of the team. And then the inverse of that came through as well, in the sense that there was a five percent increase in mental fatigue of the team. When the manager is setting an expectation that the employees should just be learning

how to use the tools on their own. So when this is framed as like a solo mission, go out there, do this on your own, it's not about us doing this together, there is an increase in the mental fatigue that the team members will experience.

who they are as a professional. Having that come through as a strong positive pays off dividends in terms of the pros and the engagement and the productivity that we're

seeing in the data. In terms of the AI story, what we did see in the study, which is important to know and important to take forward, employees who felt the sense that their workload was going to increase dramatically because of AI were more vulnerable to this mental fatigue, and there could be lots of reasons for that, but the goal shouldn't be to tell the story that your

work's going to get heavier because of AI. And I don't think organizations are intentionally telling a story like that, right. It's more about how do we emphasize the positives that will come for AI. How do we emphasize the sense of there is a lot of creativity that can open up. There's a lot of new domains of building that you can do as an individual. There's a lot of lift that you can get through this that you things you

have not been able to do before. Lean into those domains of it, and really watch out for unintentional undertones of this is going to lead to that increased work which people, when they hear, will be more disposed to that mental fatigue.

having very high levels of burnout. And I remember talking to her about her strategy and she said, well, AI will solve that because we'll implement it, we'll train people, and then they'll be able to do essentially I'm paraphrasing a normal forty hour work week, and I really see that kind of a story playing out. In fact, I can't even think of a client that we're working with or an organization that I've read about that has implemented AI.

They've trained people, and now there's like there's hard data to show that employees are working less hours, Like, have you seen any examples of anyone that's doing this well as opposed to just saying the right things, because I feel like there's a bit of a gap there.

experiences at work, more connection. That's what we suffer, this particular population in our study who had that decrease burnout. I hear it when people talk about, for example, even folks who do a lot of interviews, whether it's customer interviews or media interviews, and they talk about not having to transcribe anymore and the extent to which they can really just focus on the conversation and lean into that and enjoy it and it doesn't have to suck hours

of their time. Those sorts of tasks and the way people talk about what means to have that time back

and have that depth of interaction. Those are the stories that I think about and I think are where I'm seeing the really big lift and so much low hanging fruit by the way across organizations to find those moments and those stories and that left and I think sometimes you know, our job in helping organizations is really identify those moments where the lift is going to come from finding that work that can be easily automated and where the time given back will energize, right versus like be

filled with something that you know will deplete.

check in on whether their team is suffering from it. Plus, we also get into the ten twenty seventy rule that most organizations are completely ignoring when it comes to AI adoption. If you're looking for more tips to improve the way you work can live. I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've discovered that have helped me personally.

I'm kind of loving it. So I want to just recognize that, like these tools can be really engaging and exciting and often we get to the point of brain fry because we're enjoying ourselves, right, So it can be really engaging to see like how much you can build and how fast, And so the point is not to deprive ourselves of the excitement and the engagement. And to my friend, if you're listening, like you go enjoy yourself

and you know, don't deprive yourself of that. The goal though, is really like this is giving us opportunity to develop acute self awareness of our own intelligence as we come to meet this new alien intelligence.

We don't want to make mistakes at work, right, And that was one of the things in our study that's at stake clearly with this is we need to be able to work sustainably. We need to have our attention and our working memory intact for the whole day, for all the tasks that we have, for the task outside of work, for our families, right, we want to be in good shape for all of those things. How do we pace ourselves? How do we start to feel that

sense of brain fry coming on? Take a break, do something else, have a digital detox, Start to figure out how many tools can you reasonably work with at once. It's probably not more than three. Two, maybe just fine. One could be just fine too. Find that for yourself and really, like use an opportunity to learn more about yourself and your brain and your cognitive capacity. I think it's a beautiful opportunity for the self discovery of like, really the most important organ in the body, right, the

organ that determines how we experience Alibliefe itself. And if this is the technology that's going to get people excited to learn about it, then amazing all the better.

But I think it's like what you're saying is such a good reminder to just go. Like at the end of the day, we are responsible for our own behaviors, and you know, hopefully you do work in a workplace where when your brain is feeling a little bit fried, you can just stop. I would love to know, like, for leaders, how can they do a formal or an informal audit of their team to go is my team suffering from brain fry right now?

asked as well. At the team level, really important that it not feel competitive, that it not feel like it's all about who on the team is using the most versus other people on the team, that it'd be more about the team pushing one another to help drive the skills together. As you can do that as a leader, you can embed tools within your team processes, so it could be tools that you're using to help digest what's happened that week, to help drive research that the team

is doing. Doing team trainings together is a great way, or have team members teach others about how to use the tools. These are always to help bring the team together around the tools and to know that there are new ways that we're all adjusting that are different from the old forms of work, and keeping an eye out and open door to listen and to hear about it and to just learn about what it's feeling like and looking like as every new generation of tools arrives.

the rate of experimentation. Those are all great ways to try to capture how this is being metabolized effectively through the organization. Any kind of change in an organization has

a toll. So before we want to roll something out and have lots of people using it, we want to be really thoughtful and strategic about how and why, and so being really careful about how we design around all of this is the other piece of what we see happening right now in the phase that we're in now, and the more we can carefully design how work should be flowing, where it should be locating, how the tools should be used, how many tools right on, what spans

of control those types of questions, the more we can make sure that the changes we're going to roll out will be to the right people and the right ways at the right time and kind of minimize that change burden that over otherwise will create more inertia than forward momentum.

the technology, regardless of industry. These are avoidable challenges, if we make smart decisions around the design, if we learn quickly, if we help empower employees to take pauses, have leaders who are there to answer questions. I think it's actually more about creating cultures where those things are possible, making decisions that are driven from the right outcomes, driven from a desire for sustainable productivity value creation.

And there's nothing like you know, kids to help me keep things in perspective.

degree of agency. And that's what I would point to an answer to the question is that the more we can be optimistic about how we can use these tools to advance our goals, to advance our purpose, to advance the things that we want to accomplish, and the more we can lean into our sense of self efficacy and agency that we are in the driver's seat, the more that we can use them to our advantage and really get the most out of them as individuals, as leaders, and as organizations.

focus on people. So really focusing on the people side of getting people to find that high agency, high optimism mindset to engage with the tools to use it in ways that authentically advance their goals, their purpose, that give them that sense of lift that we talked about, to have more time for connection, for belonging, for purpose, for creativity. Those are the things where we really see this like unfair advantage opening up and huge opportunity.

less about the technology and more about self knowledge. Now, if you are someone who ends the day with a fried brain and no real sense of why, try treating it like Gabriella suggests, like learning your breath on a run, notice when it starts, and take the break before you actually need it. And if you enjoyed this chat with Gabriella, I reckon you'd enjoy the first time I had her on How I Work, where we talk all about thriving

in times of uncertainty. If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded