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Key Takeaways AI can supercharge your productivity — but it can also quietly drain your focus, creativity and humanity.
To find the balance between analog and automation, you should create input-free mornings, go on brainstorming walks and implement empathy audits.
You should also schedule a technology delegation hour, leverage technology for reflection and prioritize champagne moment check-ins.
It’s 6:00 a.m. Your day starts with a scene that feels all too familiar. You roll over and find your AI assistant hard at work. It’s already drafted three urgent emails, summarized a newly released whitepaper on trends in your market and rearranged your calendar based on a meeting that was cancelled while you slept.
In a split second, a sense of productivity is drowned out by a wave of technology overload, leaving you feeling overwhelmed and stressed. In this moment, you’re faced with a choice. You can either let the algorithm dictate the frantic tempo of your day or put the phone face down and decide to take back control of your time and dopamine.
Unfortunately, we’ve spent countless hours training AI models in hopes of finding maximum efficiency, speed and output, but we rarely stop to think about how these same models are training us to be chronically reactive, anxious and constantly distracted. The solution isn’t to abandon technology, but to find ways to remain grounded, clear-headed and competitive in a tech-driven world through habit stacking.
Popularized by author James Clear, habit stacking is the practice of adding a new habit to an existing one. AI-centric leaders can build on this approach by stacking analog, human rituals onto every high-speed AI interaction to find the perfect balance.
1. Create input-free mornings
The way you start your day is typically an indication of how your remaining waking hours will go. From the moment they open their eyes, most people immediately start consuming synthetic content curated by AI and delivered via social media algorithms or news summaries.
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