Tools: Stop Pretending You're Not Exhausted by AI — We All Are

The Dirty Secret Nobody in Tech Wants to Admit ## Why Your Brain Is Rebelling Against AI ## The 3 Types of AI Fatigue (And You Probably Have At Least Two) ## 1. Tool Fatigue — Too Many Options ## 2. Prompt Fatigue — The Mental Tax of Talking to Machines ## 3. Output Fatigue — Everything Sounds the Same ## The "Two Tool Rule" That Actually Fixed My Workflow ## 5 Practical Strategies to Beat AI Fatigue Today ## 1. Do the "Would I Ask a Colleague?" Test ## 2. Schedule Your AI Time ## 3. Stop Optimizing Prompts ## 4. Unsubscribe From AI Newsletters ## 5. Rediscover Manual Work ## The Real Question Nobody's Asking I used to be the person who tried every single AI tool the moment it launched. New writing assistant? Downloaded. AI-powered calendar? Signed up. Yet another "revolutionary" code completion tool? Already on it. Then one Tuesday morning, I stared at my screen for twenty minutes trying to remember which of my seven AI tools I was supposed to use for a simple email. That's when it hit me — I wasn't more productive. I was drowning. Here's a number that should scare you: the average knowledge worker now interacts with 4.2 different AI tools daily. Not weekly. Daily. We've gone from "AI will save us two hours a day" to "I spend an hour a day just managing my AI tools." The irony is so thick you could cut it with a prompt. And yet, scroll through LinkedIn or Dev.to, and everyone's still performing the same ritual — sharing their "incredible AI workflow" that involves chaining seventeen tools together like some kind of digital Rube Goldberg machine. Nobody stops to ask: is this actually making my life better? I call it AI fatigue, and it's everywhere. You probably have it too. You just haven't named it yet. AI fatigue isn't laziness. It's a perfectly rational response to an irrational situation. Every AI tool you add to your workflow creates what cognitive scientists call "switching cost." Your brain needs time to context-switch between different interfaces, different prompting styles, and different mental models for how each tool works. Each one is basically a different language. And your brain? It's running out of RAM trying to be multilingual across twelve platforms simultaneously. There's also decision fatigue. Before AI, writing an email was one decision: what do I want to say? Now it's five decisions: Should I use AI? Which AI? What prompt? Should I edit the output? Was it faster than just writing it myself? Spoiler: for emails under 100 words, the answer to that last question is almost always no. You've got subscriptions to four AI services but somehow still feel like you're missing the "right" one. Every week there's a Product Hunt launch that promises to be the one tool to rule them all. You try it. It's fine. You add it to the pile. The symptom: You spend more time evaluating AI tools than actually using them for work. Writing good prompts is genuinely exhausting. It's like being a manager who has to explain every task to a brilliant but extremely literal intern — every single time, from scratch. You can't just say "make this better." You need to specify the tone, the audience, the format, the length, what to include, what to exclude, and probably throw in "act as a senior developer" for good measure. The symptom: You've started just doing things manually because crafting the perfect prompt feels like more work than the task itself. You know that AI voice. That slightly-too-polished, aggressively-helpful, suspiciously-balanced tone that makes every piece of content sound like it was written by the same eager intern. "In today's rapidly evolving landscape..." — if you just felt a small cringe, congratulations, you have output fatigue. The symptom: You've become so good at spotting AI-generated content that you're starting to distrust your own writing when it comes out too clean. After months of tool-hopping, I forced myself into a brutal constraint: maximum two AI tools for everything. That's it. Two. Not two per category. Two total. Here's what I picked and why: Tool 1: One general-purpose AI (I went with Claude, but ChatGPT works too). This handles writing, brainstorming, analysis, coding questions — basically anything that requires thinking. Tool 2: One domain-specific AI integrated into my actual work environment. For me as a developer, that's Cursor. For a designer, it might be Figma's AI features. For a marketer, maybe Jasper. Everything else? Cancelled. Deleted. Gone. The first week was genuinely uncomfortable. I kept reaching for tools that weren't there anymore. But by week two, something wild happened — I got faster. Not because the two remaining tools were better, but because I stopped wasting mental energy deciding which tool to use. Before reaching for an AI tool, ask yourself: would I walk over to a coworker's desk for this task? If the answer is no — if it's a two-minute task you'd just do yourself — then just do it yourself. AI isn't free. Your attention is the cost. This sounds ridiculous, but it works. Instead of context-switching to AI tools all day, batch your AI interactions. I do two "AI sessions" — one in the morning for content creation, one in the afternoon for code review. The rest of the time, I work the old-fashioned way. Good enough is good enough. If your prompt gets you 80% of the way there, just edit the remaining 20% manually. The time you spend crafting the "perfect prompt" to get a 95% result almost always exceeds the time it takes to fix a rougher output. I know, I know. But hear me out. Every AI newsletter you read creates FOMO about tools you're not using. That FOMO drives you to try new tools. Those new tools create more fatigue. It's a cycle, and the easiest place to break it is at the input. Keep one. Maybe two. Unsubscribe from the rest. This is the counterintuitive one. Some tasks are better done without AI. Writing in a physical notebook. Sketching wireframes on paper. Thinking through a problem during a walk instead of asking ChatGPT. Not because AI can't help. But because the act of doing it yourself engages your brain differently. And sometimes that deeper engagement is exactly what produces your best work. The tech industry has spent three years asking "How can AI make us more productive?" Maybe it's time for a different question: "What should we protect from AI?" Not everything needs to be optimized. Not every task needs AI assistance. Not every workflow needs automation. The developers, writers, and creators who'll thrive in the next few years won't be the ones using the most AI tools. They'll be the ones who figured out exactly where AI helps and — critically — where it doesn't. AI fatigue is your brain's way of telling you that boundary doesn't exist yet. Maybe it's time to draw one. What's your experience with AI fatigue? Have you found yourself drowning in tools, or have you figured out a system that actually works? I'd love to hear your approach in the comments. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse - ChatGPT wants conversational prompts - Cursor wants code-specific instructions - Midjourney wants comma-separated descriptors - Your AI email tool wants bullet points