How to Escape AI Brain Fry and Prioritize Peace Over Productivity

If you’re finding yourself exhausted at the end of each day — mentally depleted, unable to do much more than scroll or stare at Netflix — you’re not alone. 

Heavy AI users are increasingly suffering from a phenomenon researchers are calling “brain fry” — as one CEO put it, it’s not from work itself, but from managing all the work his AI tools are doing on his behalf. “It’s not burnout in the traditional sense. It’s something weirder — a kind of cognitive overload masked as productivity,” he explains. 

I admit I’ve felt this myself. I’ve always made an effort to delegate my busywork, taking care to focus only on the tasks I find intrinsically valuable. But lately, I’ve also seen how easy it can be to fall into a productivity trap — greater efficiency allows us to take on more projects, dividing our attention like never before. 

All this multitasking is taking its toll. But the solution isn’t necessarily to scale back on AI tools, but think strategically about how it can genuinely lighten your load versus pile on your overworked brain. Here’s how. 

The limits of efficiency 

One of the things I love about AI is how it has democratized startups. As a bootstrapped solopreneur, I’ve never believed a great idea needs VC money to turn into a viable business. This has never been truer than it is today. Even non-programmers can get a startup off the ground on their own, no coding background required. 

Not only can generative AI serve as an early support team, but it also streamlines cumbersome tasks that take huge amounts of time. Drafting a contract used to mean either paying a lawyer or spending a weekend wrestling with templates. Now it takes minutes. The same goes for writing marketing copy, summarizing a stack of customer feedback or putting together a pitch deck. The barrier to entry has been dramatically lowered, and that’s a good thing. 

The problem is how we spend our newly unlocked time. I’m all for productivity — I hate busywork so much that I wrote an entire book about how to automate it. AI agents in particular have dramatically changed the landscape, working autonomously to complete the routine tasks that once took up hours of our days. The results have been incredible — I now have systems built to simplify all of my most tedious tasks, leaving me the freedom to focus on other things. 

But researchers from BCG and the University of California have identified a new problem. AI agents are not perfect, and they need oversight to verify they’re staying on track. They’re calling the cognitive cost to overseeing so many agents “brain fry,” which they define as “mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond one’s cognitive capacity.” 

I get it. Plenty of companies are pressuring their employees to become tireless AI taskmasters, even tying performance metrics to how many lines of code are AI-generated. But the problem isn’t AI itself — it’s how it’s being deployed. And it’s up to leaders to ensure that teams are using it to their advantage, giving them more mental space, not less.

How leaders can help

At my company, Jotform, we’ve proudly embraced the AI revolution. Online forms are well-suited to benefit from AI’s abilities, and we’ve released a number of products (such as AI App Builder) designed to make our customers’ lives easier. And our teams use them too — which, in my opinion, is the best way to know that they work. 

Even so, we established a set of best practices for AI use early on, which I think has helped keep brain fry at bay. Here’s how we’re approaching it.  

Don’t outsource your deep work

One thing we’ve been deliberate about is not letting AI do our thinking for us. While it’s important for teams to experiment with new tools, human creativity should always remain at the forefront. Generative AI can absolutely serve as a collaborator and sounding board, but at the end of the day, there needs to be a person steering the ship. 

To me, AI’s most important role is eliminating busywork. For us, that means using AI for tasks like taming an unruly inbox, summarizing meeting notes and acting as a thought partner when brainstorming new ideas. It doesn’t mean outsourcing our thinking or creativity.

The researchers found that when limited to this purpose, the problem of brain fry is kept at bay. 

Establish ground rules and guardrails

When it comes to their AI use, your employees should not feel like they’re in the Wild West. Leaders should codify best practices and make sure every employee understands when to use AI tools and how. 

Clear directives on AI not only keep your company and its data safe, it keeps employees from feeling overwhelmed and confused. At Jotform, we make sure AI use is transparent, and that everyone understands which tasks are off-limits to it entirely. 

Don’t expect productivity to infinitely scale

I am, and always will be, a big believer in the power of rest. Many of my best ideas and breakthroughs have come to me not while I’m poring over my laptop, but amid the olive groves on my family’s farm in Turkey. 

Brain fry is a symptom of the mental drain of overseeing too many agents, and that’s a problem: AI is making it possible to do more with less, but those gains are not infinite. People need rest, and the best leaders know this. Protect your teams’ downtime, and make sure they understand your expectations of their output. 

Burnout thrives in ambiguity. By all means, encourage your teams to use AI. But make your expectations clear, your processes transparent and your boundaries firm. 

If you’re finding yourself exhausted at the end of each day — mentally depleted, unable to do much more than scroll or stare at Netflix — you’re not alone. 

Heavy AI users are increasingly suffering from a phenomenon researchers are calling “brain fry” — as one CEO put it, it’s not from work itself, but from managing all the work his AI tools are doing on his behalf. “It’s not burnout in the traditional sense. It’s something weirder — a kind of cognitive overload masked as productivity,” he explains. 

I admit I’ve felt this myself. I’ve always made an effort to delegate my busywork, taking care to focus only on the tasks I find intrinsically valuable. But lately, I’ve also seen how easy it can be to fall into a productivity trap — greater efficiency allows us to take on more projects, dividing our attention like never before.