#262: AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it

Is social media addictive? How it keeps you clicking and the harms it can cause

Author

Jenae Spry
February 20, 2026

Productivity Stacks Newsletter

Issue No. 262

The Best in Evidence-Based Productivity

for Small Business Owners, Freelancers & Founders

Helping You Work Smarter and Live More

The Rundown

  • When Your Past Blocks High Income Potential: 5 Tips To Clear The Way

  • Is social media addictive? How it keeps you clicking and the harms it can cause

  • This free open-source app breaks procrastination loops

  • Anthropic prepares Claude Tasks on mobile for browser automation

  • 'AI fatigue is real and nobody talks about it': A software engineer warns there's a mental cost to AI productivity gains

🔥Quote/Prompt

❝

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

Omar Khayyam

Use the quote as a writing or thinking prompt to finish your week strong.

A bit from mine:

(posted in our Doer Entrepreneurs Free Community — off social media)

How many of us are postponing happiness until we hit some arbitrary milestone?

"I'll be happy when my business hits X figures."

"I'll enjoy life once I have more clients."

"I'll celebrate after I finish this project."

But here's what the research on goal achievement actually shows […]

Did someone forward this to you?

📈 Performance

Holding back in a meeting, passing on a stretch opportunity, or talking yourself out of a pitch before you've even tried — sound familiar? It's not a confidence problem or a skills gap. According to Dr. Bryan Robinson, it's something called "cloud mind," and it's likely rooted in emotional experiences from your past that are quietly running the show in your present career decisions.

"Cloud mind forms when unresolved emotional memories influence how you interpret present events. It's not weakness. It's the elegant design of how the nervous system protects you. If you were harshly criticized early in life or your career, laid off unexpectedly, embarrassed publicly or burned by a toxic workplace, your brain stored those memories as cautionary data. Later, similar situations like a demanding boss, stretch assignment or increased visibility can trigger the same emotional reactions. These reactions don't feel like history. They feel true, but they're emotional memory in disguise."

Key Insights:

  1. Cloud mind doesn't feel like the past, it feels like the present, which is what makes it so sneaky. What registers as "I'm not ready for that promotion" may actually be your nervous system replaying an old story, not accurately assessing your current capabilities.

  2. The antidote isn't positive thinking; it's perspective shift. Robinson's concept of "sky mind" is about observing your reactions from a higher vantage point rather than being consumed by them, which leads to more accurate risk assessment and stronger decision-making under pressure.

  3. You don't need a meditation retreat to start rewiring your responses. Small, practical interruptions like the three-breath micro-mindfulness reset or simply asking "is this about now or then?" can break the automatic reaction cycle in seconds.

Read the full article for five specific techniques to shift from cloud mind to sky mind and start making career decisions based on present reality instead of past emotional echoes.

⚙️ Optimization

Spending more time on social media than you planned isn't exactly a rare experience. You open Instagram to check one thing and surface 45 minutes later wondering what just happened. Whether or not that technically qualifies as "addiction" is actually worth examining, because how we label the problem shapes how we try to solve it. Treating social media overuse the same way we treat substance abuse like alcohol or cocaine may lead us down the wrong path entirely. We dug into this topic recently in a YouTube video and have some thoughts on a better approach. In the meantime, this breakdown from University of Leicester lecturer Quynh Hoang sheds some useful light on exactly what's happening in your brain when you can't put the phone down.

"Features like infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications create a continuous flow of content. By eliminating natural end-points, the design effectively shifts users into autopilot mode, making stopping a viewing session more difficult. Similar to a slot machine, algorithms deliver intermittent, unpredictable rewards such as likes and personalised videos. This unpredictability triggers the dopamine system, creating a compulsive cycle of seeking and anticipation."

Key Insights:

  1. The platforms are doing this on purpose. Infinite scroll, autoplay, and variable rewards aren't accidents of design; they are deliberate engineering choices built to override your self-control, which means willpower alone was never a fair fight to begin with.

  2. Overuse isn't just a time problem. Hoang's research found that excessive social media use can fracture attention spans, deepen feelings of emptiness and isolation, and leave users feeling genuinely defeated by their inability to align their intentions with their actual behavior.

  3. Getting sucked in can happen before you're even fully conscious. Participants in her study described reaching for their phones purely on reflex, before making any conscious decision to do so, which is a useful thing to know if you're trying to build better habits around your usage.

Read the full article for a breakdown of the three core platform strategies keeping you hooked, plus our YouTube video on how we actually recommend addressing this one. 

⏲️ Time Management

Staring at a task list and not knowing where to start is one of those productivity killers that no amount of motivation hacks seems to fix. Most task management apps make it worse by adding more complexity on top of an already overwhelming situation. Super Productivity takes a different approach, and the fact that it's completely free makes it worth a serious look.

"Every time you procrastinate, there's usually a specific emotion behind it. Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed by how big the task is. Or maybe it feels too easy, and you're too bored to start. The Procrastination Buster sidebar shows a list of common reasons for procrastination. Click the one that best matches your current state, and it suggests practical strategies to help you push past it."

Key Insights:

  1. Naming the emotion behind your procrastination is half the battle. Super Productivity's Procrastination Buster plugin works because it forces you to identify what's actually stopping you before suggesting a fix, which is a much more targeted approach than just setting another timer.

  2. A visual priority system cuts through decision fatigue fast. The built-in Eisenhower Matrix lets you drag tasks into a classic urgent/important grid, so instead of staring at a wall of to-dos, you immediately know what actually needs your attention right now.

  3. Breaking tasks into five to ten minute subtasks builds the momentum needed to keep going. Rather than broad categories like "write" or "edit," the goal is specific micro-actions that feel completable, such as "jot down the main argument" or "write the outline," turning an intimidating project into a series of small wins.

Read the full article for a complete walkthrough of Super Productivity's features, including Pomodoro timers, Domina Mode, and cross-platform sync options.

💻 Tools & Technology

Anthropic prepares Claude Tasks on mobile for browser automation

Running repeatable workflows from your phone rather than being chained to your desktop is the kind of quality-of-life upgrade that sounds small until you actually have it. Anthropic appears to be moving in exactly that direction, with new signals pointing to a Tasks feature coming to Claude's mobile apps that could bring meaningful automation to wherever you're already working.

"The strings also hint at broader capabilities attached to Tasks, including the ability for Claude to operate a browser as part of execution. On mobile, that would imply a workflow where a task can open pages, gather information, and complete steps in sequence, without the user manually driving every tap."

Key Insights:

  1. This isn't just a mobile version of an existing feature; it's automation becoming genuinely portable. The Tasks feature appears closely aligned with Claude's existing Cowork interface, meaning users who already rely on Claude for recurring operational work could soon set those same structured jobs up from their phone.

  2. Browser operation on mobile is the detail worth paying attention to. A task that can open pages, pull information, and complete multi-step sequences without manual input starts to look less like a productivity tool and more like a lightweight assistant running in the background.

  3. Timing matters in the agent space. With competitors racing to ship similar capabilities on mobile, including the still-anticipated iOS arrival of Comet, who lands first will shape which tools become default habits for professionals and creators building AI into their daily workflows.

Read the full article for additional details on what's visible in the current iOS build and what the broader rollout could mean for cross-device automation.

🤖 AI

Here's something worth sitting with: when I was a freelance translator, I worked hard to maximize my output and eventually hit speeds of up to 2,000 words an hour. For context, that's roughly what was considered a standard full day's output. Sounds great, right? What I didn't anticipate was that my brain was still processing every single one of those words. And I definitely couldn’t do that for 8 hours…or even 6 hours. In other words, peak is called peak for a reason. You cannot live there. I've coached others on this and call it the "peak performance trap," and we are starting to see it play out with AI in a big way. Yes, AI is handling more of the mundane work, but that does not mean your brain can be creative, strategic, and review AI output for eight straight hours. This article from Business Insider is a cautionary tale worth reading for anyone building AI into their workflow.

"I shipped more code last quarter than any quarter in my career. I also felt more drained than any quarter in my career. AI creates a paradox of productivity that falls almost entirely on the user to solve by reducing the cost of production but increasing the cost of coordination, review, and decision-making."

Key Insights:

  1. More output does not mean less cognitive load. AI shifts the mental burden rather than removing it, replacing deep focused work with constant context switching, reviewing, and decision-making across far more tasks than before.

  2. Skill atrophy is a real and underreported risk. Just as GPS quietly eroded our ability to navigate without it, leaning heavily on AI for reasoning and problem-solving can gradually weaken the very skills that make you valuable in your field.

  3. The fix isn't using less AI; it's using it more intentionally. Becoming fluent in AI is still the goal, but without personal guardrails around how and when you use it, productivity gains can quietly tip into burnout before you even notice it happening.

Read the full article for Khare's specific ground rules for reining in AI use and the Harvard Business Review findings on how AI tools are intensifying rather than reducing workload.

🎉 Celebration Corner

Every week Doers Inner Circle members do a weekly review & get help when they need it — check out the progress they made this week!

  • Good balance this week between billable work, business goals and personal life.

  • Finished everything on time.

What did you do this week? We feature non-member successes too. Just post them here!

🔒Inner Circle: Events & Announcements

  • On-going Challenge: Doers Routine Bucket Challenge Join here

  • Monday: {EU Time} Work ON Business. Theme: 2️⃣ Process & Productivity  RSVP here

  • Tuesday: Work ON Business. Theme: 2️⃣ Process & Productivity RSVP here

  • Monday/Friday: Goal Setting + Plan Your Week Party

  • Accelerators: February 27 is your Monthly Goal Setting Workshop  RSVP here

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I hope you found this valuable!

Wishing you much productivity!

- Jenae :)

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