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A Berkeley Haas study of 200 tech employees found that AI tools don't reduce workload but instead intensify it by enabling parallel work streams. While LLMs provide productivity boosts, they create cognitive overload through constant context switching, output checking, and managing multiple concurrent tasks. The mental exhaustion from this "always juggling" state can deplete energy within hours, despite feeling productive. Organizations need structured AI practices to distinguish genuine productivity gains from unsustainable intensity and prevent burnout.

AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It

We are definitely in a current bubble over ai tool overload, constant updates week on week, and there’s not enough time in life to learn what went out of date already, let alone produce your work.

This feels very real. AI makes more possible, which sometimes just means more to handle. Curious! What’s the healthiest way to use it without letting it dictate the pace?

I think we’re all in collective agreement about this. Learning how to integrate these tools has been fascinating to watch. We all want a way to relate to them in some way, so we call them CoPilots and “Junior Devs”, I think largely to paint the picture that our workload is being reduced. I was always suspicious that is really the case. Personally, I find the most balance when I think of them as <a href="https://cheewebdevelopment.com/dont-vibe-code-delegate-responsible-development-with-llms/" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">“Delegation Tools”</a>, where it sits alongside the stack and I choose to use them as much or as little as I need. Delegation is a new skill we all suddenly need to learn, one that many people aren’t really familiar with. Many of us have never really had someone to delegate to in the first place! Now we all have a tool we can offload our work and, unfortunately, our thinking to as well.
My workflow is definitely not “AI-First”, probably second or even third. Some days I don’t use it at all.

Welcome to the world ot team lead or multiple project owners role,
if you can’t handle brake to smaller parts, make a pipeline work in one workflow stream :) you will not feel exhaustion and will not overload you … Here comes good tools, wrong usage !! The problem is that many good programmers != good managers or cannot handle multitasking, instant switching between tasks.
ps. take it slow dont rush, create your zone of confort