AI can make an exhausted person look productive.
And I think we need to talk about that.
Because what if AI isn’t just helping us work faster, write better and get more done?
What if it is also helping us hide the fact that we are struggling?
Before AI, when we couldn’t think straight, couldn’t find the words, couldn’t make another decision or simply had nothing left to give, eventually something had to give.
Our work changed.
Our behaviour changed.
People around us noticed.
We noticed.
There were signs.
Today, we can open AI and keep going.
The email still gets written. The plan still gets created. The social post still goes out. The problem still gets answered.
From the outside, everything looks fine.
But is it?
I love AI. I use it every day and think it is one of the most incredible tools we have been given to help us become more productive, organise our thoughts and get things done.
But there is one word in that sentence that matters enormously.
Tool.
Because I am starting to wonder whether, for some of us, AI is no longer simply a tool.
It is becoming the thing we rely on to function.
And if AI is enabling us to keep producing when our brain and body are telling us to stop, are we actually solving the problem?
Or are we hiding the warning signs until there are no more warnings left?
What did we do before AI?
When we were tired, overwhelmed and mentally exhausted, what did we do?
When we couldn’t think straight, couldn’t find the words, couldn’t come up with another idea or couldn’t make another decision, what happened?
Maybe we stopped.
Maybe we went for a walk.
Maybe we slept.
Maybe we talked to someone.
Maybe we stared at a blank piece of paper until eventually our own thoughts started to appear.
Maybe somebody around us noticed.
“Are you OK?”
“You don’t seem yourself.”
“You need a break.”
Or perhaps our inability to function at our normal level forced us to recognise something ourselves.
Something needs to change.
Now?
We can open our phone or laptop and ask AI to keep us going.
Write this.
Answer that.
Give me an idea.
Tell me what to say.
Summarise this.
Respond to this person.
Create this plan.
And within seconds, there it is.
Which is brilliant.
Until it starts hiding something.
What is burnout?
I think we have become far too casual with the word burnout.
Having a stressful week isn’t burnout.
Being tired isn’t burnout.
Needing a holiday isn’t necessarily burnout.
When I talk about burnout, I am talking from my own experience of reaching the point where your body stops.
It won’t function in the way you are asking it to anymore.
You are left sitting in a chair.
Or lying in bed.
Because there is nothing left.
That was my experience in May 2025. I ended up spending a week in bed, on a concoction of medication, physically unable to do very much at all.
My GP was very clear. In essence: this is either burnout or an injury, and you haven’t been in an accident.
My body had stopped me.
I was going to spend a week of my life in bed, and I needed to make some serious decisions about what happened next.
But there had been signs before I got there.
And that’s what concerns me now.
Is AI hiding the warning signs?
Fast forward to today, and AI has become part of everyday life.
And I have started wondering whether AI could actually be helping us hide some of the signs that previously would have been visible to us and to the people around us.
Because AI can make an exhausted person look productive.
Think about that.
You can have no creative energy left and still produce the social post.
You can be struggling to concentrate and still produce the report.
You can feel incapable of dealing with another problem and still generate the plan.
You can have nothing left to give and still send the beautifully written email.
From the outside, you’re functioning.
You’re delivering.
You’re replying.
You’re producing.
Perhaps your colleagues don’t notice.
Perhaps your friends and family don’t notice.
Perhaps you don’t notice.
Because every time your brain says, I can’t do this, you open AI and do it anyway.
Before AI, some of those moments might have been warning signs.
Now we can potentially mask them.
I’ve written before about the midlife evaluation stage of a business, when entropy starts to creep in, and people can move from striving to simply doing what is expected of them and getting through the day. But what happens when AI helps us disguise that same shift in ourselves? When we can keep producing, responding, and performing, even when underneath it all we are running on empty?
And if we keep masking the signs, what happens next?
Perhaps there is no obvious warning.
Perhaps one day you’re simply the person sitting in the chair or lying in the bed because your body has finally said:
Enough.
AI doesn’t always challenge you either
There’s another part of this that I think we need to be careful about.
We talk about AI as though it is constantly challenging our thinking.
It isn’t necessarily.
Unless you’ve spent time helping it understand you, giving it context and specifically asking it to critique you, AI can be far too agreeable.
You have an idea.
AI tells you it’s a great idea.
You suggest an approach.
AI helps you build it.
You give it your thinking.
It tells you why it makes sense.
But your idea might suck.
Sometimes what we actually need is another human being to look at us and say:
No. That’s a terrible idea.
Or:
Laura, you’re overcomplicating this.
Or even:
Why are you doing this at all?
AI can be enormously useful for challenging your thinking when you deliberately use it that way.
But don’t mistake a beautifully articulated response for independent judgement.
And don’t surround yourself with a technology that constantly validates you while removing the humans who might tell you something you don’t particularly want to hear.
I never want to dull my sparkle
I’ve built my career through my ideas, my energy, my experience, my personality and my ability to see things differently.
That’s my sparkle.
And you have yours.
Your experience.
Your judgement.
Your instinct.
Your humour.
Your way of communicating.
Your ability to walk into your practice and understand something that no piece of technology could possibly understand in quite the same way.
AI can support that.
It can help me organise it.
It can help me articulate it.
It can help me get from an idea to something useful much faster.
And, used properly, it can challenge me.
But I don’t want it to become my brain.
Because the moment I believe I can’t think, write, decide or create without opening AI, I think I have a problem.
Even a ten-year-old can spot it
Something that fascinates me is my ten-year-old son.
He has limited time on YouTube, often when I’m around, and I regularly hear him say:
“Oh, that’s AI.”
“That’s AI.”
He spots it.
And he doesn’t particularly like it.
That really makes me think.
If a ten-year-old is already recognising when something doesn’t feel genuinely human, what does the adult population really think?
What do your patients think?
What does your team think?
What happens when every email, social post, patient communication and leadership message becomes perfectly structured, perfectly worded and completely devoid of you?
We talk constantly about authenticity and human connection.
Then we risk outsourcing the very things that make us human.
Perhaps you don’t need another prompt
If you genuinely feel you cannot think, write, plan, respond or make decisions without opening AI, I think it’s worth asking yourself why.
Not how you can write a better prompt.
Why do I need it this much?
Could you sit with a blank notebook and develop an idea on your own?
Could you write the email without asking AI to make it sound better?
Could you solve the problem?
Could you make the decision?
Could you spend a day without it?
If the answer is no, that’s worth paying attention to.
Take an AI detox.
Go for a walk without listening to anything.
Listen to nature.
Watch a film.
Read.
Talk to another human being.
Sit somewhere without feeling that every spare moment needs to become productive.
Pick up a notebook and write down what you think before asking AI what it thinks.
Give your brain the opportunity to work.
And give yourself permission not to produce something every minute of every day.
Don’t let AI hide what you need to see
Dentistry is full of highly intelligent, highly trained professionals.
Your knowledge, experience and judgement matter.
Technology should help you use those things more effectively.
It shouldn’t become the mechanism that lets you keep pushing when your brain and body are asking you to stop.
That’s the distinction I think we need to pay attention to.
Is AI supporting my performance?
Or:
Is AI helping me hide the fact that I’m struggling to perform at all?
I will continue using AI.
I will continue loving what it enables me to do.
I will continue using it to improve my productivity and support my work.
But I want it beside my brain.
Not instead of it.
And I certainly don’t want it masking the warning signs that the people around me or I need to see.
Because there is no AI tool, prompt or platform that I want to hand my sparkle over to.
Sometimes the smartest thing AI could tell us is:
Turn me off. Think for yourself. And if you can’t right now, perhaps that’s the thing you need to pay attention to.
