# Why Constant AI Use Is Making You More Anxious, Not More Productive [00:00:00] **Tiana Ned:** Last week I told you about this small thing I started doing on most days, if not all days by now. And it's something that completely changed how present I am in my work, in my day-to-day, and how specifically useful it is for my future goals and setting myself up for success in achieving them [00:00:26] And at first I didn't think I would make an episode about this because I thought, "Well, h- does it necessarily tie to AI for creative professionals? Are these just some of my own personal observations, and maybe they don't fit in here?" But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that this is not just a me thing, that this is also a you thing, you the one who are listening to this, because I know that we are all kind of stuck in the same limbo of overthinking, being overstimulated, overworking, oversight hustling and all those things. [00:01:13] So even though this feels simple, almost simple enough so that it doesn't need a full episode, well, here it is anyway, 'cause it turns out that simple things are sometimes exactly the thing worth 20 minutes on your random Friday or whatever. So it was about 10:00 PM at night, sometime in, I think it was mid-July, and I'm sitting on my patio. [00:01:45] I had iced decaf on the table, or sometimes it's zero sugar soda instead. Depends on what's in the fridge that night. [00:01:54] And I had notebook and a pen out there on the table, and I just sat down. I didn't really have a plan for anything in particular. I was just being like, "Okay, Let me just sit here for 30 minutes, drink my drink, and write down anything that comes to mind [00:02:16] And even just a month prior to that, if you would've asked me, are you comfortable sitting alone with your thoughts with no input, just doing nothing? Not listening to a podcast, not watching YouTube videos, not scrolling on Instagram Reels. I probably would've said that I haven't done it in a long time and that it's just a waste of time, right? [00:02:46] I always need to be doing something. If I'm going on a walk, it's gotta be music or podcasts, right? If I'm at home, I always gotta be consuming something or working, right? There's no space in between. Well, now when I think about it, I actually go back in cycles with that, alone time or doing nothing time. It really all depends on how busy I think I am in my mind. If I'm super stimulated with work, with, my side projects, I would tell you that there's no time for doing nothing, right? There's always something to do because there's always something waiting for me, So if I fit those 30 minutes or an hour of doing nothing, well, I'm just gonna be more anxious because there are tasks on my to-do list for the day [00:03:37] And it really turns out that liking the idea of doing nothing and being able to actually sit in it for half an hour without reaching for something are two extremely different skills. [00:03:54] [00:04:11] **Tiana Ned:** Hi there. Welcome back to AI for Creative Professionals. I'm Tiana, and if this is your first time here, this is the show for designers, writers, marketers, illustrators, videographers, podcasters producers and editors, like me. Basically, anyone creative trying to figure out how AI can fit into their workflow and where it is just noise. [00:04:37] Today is the flip side of the previous week's concert episode. If you haven't listened to that one, please go back to it after you finish this one. They're not, related like part one, part two, soyou can listen to this one first [00:04:52] And in the previous one, I talked about something that was very loud and very shared with other people for two hours. And this episode is a bit opposite of that. S-It's 30 minutes alone on purpose in the dark doing nothing. Let's get into it [00:05:15] Okay, so here's what this looks like for me since what I mentioned, in the intro just gave you a shape of it. It was 10-ish at night. I'm on my patio with a drink, notebook, and a pen next to me that I basically don't even use most of those times. So I'm not journaling necessarily. I'm not doing the three things I'm grateful for today kind of situation. The notebook just sits there in case something insists on getting written down. And [00:05:46] [00:05:47] **Tiana Ned:** to be quite honest with you, most nights it doesn't, so the pen doesn't move [00:05:52] And it's interesting that at night outside specifically, n- there's nothing to look at, right? [00:05:58] Because during the day on my patio, it can get pretty loud. You know, I can hear the outside traffic or other people, just talking being on their patios and whatever's going on next door. You know, just visual and auditory noise generally. But at 10, 11 o'clock, it's dark, and there's nothing competing for my attention besides my two cats if they wanna jump, in my lap and cuddle. [00:06:27] So on the third or fourth night, in with this ritual, I checked my phone probably three to four times before I finally just took it inside and left it on the counter or left it on the charger [00:06:43] And those 30 minutes almost felt like 90 minutes [00:06:48] and some part of my brain kept going, " Okay, let's walk in or let me just grab my phone and watch YouTube." And, I'd have to argue [00:06:58] with myself to get inside and grab my phone [00:07:02] So I was not in that zen state, just breathing deeply And sitting still. No, it's closer to sitting through a slightly uncomfortable meeting with myself. And not sure if this is relatable, but there's some restlessness you can feel that basically shows up the second you take away everything you normally use to avoid being alone with your own head. [00:07:28] It's either your phone, it's a podcast, or even s- just some background noise [00:07:36] So why would I even start this? It's not like I woke up one day feeling spiritually undernourished or anything and decided, "Okay, I need to add this on to my wellness routine." What it was is just the stacking and overstimulation. [00:07:55] During the day, I've got work, so I do podcast editing, client stuff, agency work. Then I have my side projects on top of that. There's always two to three going at the same time, one of them being this podcast, AI for Creative Professionals. And then I don't know anymore. On top of that, it's YouTube content consumption, it's newsletters I feel obligated to read, like they're homework that I assigned to myself, and there's a bunch of them that I'm subscribed to. [00:08:28] And I definitely gotta go and clean out my newsletter subscriptions. But then there's Netflix series at the end of the day with my partner on top of everything else. [00:08:40] And when you look at all those things individually, well, none of it is a problem, right? I mean, I like my client work . It's not like I'm overstretched or anything at this point in time. I mentioned in the content overload episode that I am a fan of YouTube and Netflix. [00:08:59] I mean, who isn't? But stacked like that every single day with no gaps anywhere in between except for going for a walk or cooking my lunch [00:09:11] Or doing those random errands. I really started feeling anxious, and not about anything in specific, if I'm being honest with you. It was just, I don't know, this low hum, and the cause was all of it together with no room to breathe at all. And it's worth saying a lot of what fills those gaps now is stuff that's specifically built to fill them, right? [00:09:40] Because your next video is already queued up before the current one ends. [00:09:43] Netflix asks you if you are still watching after, I don't know when it turns on, I guess after a couple of hours of not seeing any activity from you. And it's just that the friction that used to exist between one thing and the next thing has mostly gotten engineered away And here's the part I think, matters. [00:10:07] There's this voice, still is honestly, that goes something like, "Okay, I'll just finish editing this client's podcast, and then I'll chill." You know? That's the deal I keep making with myself. I'll finish one thing, and then I'll rest. Except there's always another thing. [00:10:26] There's always another scheduled task. There's another email. There's one more newsletter I told myself I would read. And it doesn't end on its own, you know? It ends when I say and when I decide it ends So sitting outside for 30 minutes doing nothing felt at first like I'm stealing time from something more important. [00:10:51] Like, hey, I'm supposed to be working, and here I am with a drink getting warm. I had to argue with that voice most nights before I could even sit down. At some point, I couldn't tell you exactly when, I decided this counts. Okay? And I didn't treat it as a reward for finishing everything else during the day. No, I basically wanted to treat it like a necessity, something that has to happen. The same way sleep has to happen, even though sleep doesn't produce anything either, right? [00:11:29] And as usual, my nerdy brain, Googled something about this topic, kind of like I did with the concert thing, because I wanted to know why my brain fights this so hard [00:11:43] Why is there a problem with sitting still? And there's a real thing there. there's a network in your brain called the default mode network. You've probably heard of it. it's the part that lights up specifically when you're not locked onto a task, when you're just letting your mind drift. [00:12:03] And there was a study published, in Scientific Reports Where they had people do a creative writing task. they gave some of them a mind-wandering break in the middle of it, and the group that got the break came back with noticeably better ideas than the group that just powered through. [00:12:22] Which, okay, that's basically what I'm doing on my patio, just without the writing task part. and the letting it drift part is apparently not wasted time. It's doing something even when it feels like nothing's happening, which was weirdly validating because most nights out there [00:12:40] do feel like noth- nothing, nothing's happening. And it's kind of the mirror image of the previous concert episode, if you've listened to it, and if you really think about it. There, I was fully present with a couple of thousands of strangers, all locked onto the same external thing at the same time. But here, it's the opposite setup entirely, and I'm alone, and there's nothing external to lock onto at all. [00:13:11] But both of them only work because I wasn't doing five other things at the same time. Hmm. So that's maybe the thread connecting these two episodes now that I say it out loud [00:13:25] Okay, here's when I wanna get concrete How does this apply to your work or your side hustles [00:13:33] or whatever you've got going on now in your life, whether it's a full-time job, whether you have your own, solopreneur business, whether you have a job plus a side hustle or whatever the combo is. so much of the fear around AI in creative work specifically is will it take my job, right? That's a question that many creatives are asking and have been asking for the last two or more years [00:14:02] But the other thing I keep noticing in myself and in a lot of, the creatives that I talk to, it's a bit different. it's not so much the question of whether AI replaces you, It's more so about AI makes it so easy to always be doing something that you can go m- months without sitting with a question like, "Do I even want this side project anymore? Do I like where my career is heading? What am I really building towards here?" And all those questions, when you think about it, they need space with no tasks attached to them, and there's less and less of that space lying around by accident these days [00:14:51] I also mentioned this in a previous episode that I called AI for Freelancers: The Pricing Math Nobody Warns You About. [00:15:04] Where I discussed how you can actually decide whether the current freelance work you're doing or the work you're doing in a company is something that you wanna pursue long term, or you want to find a way to basically either productize your service, find other, not so labor intense ways of making a living. [00:15:25] I'm gonna link that episode in the show notes as well. But anyways, if your calendar is full of work blocks and zero blocks for just sitting with a question, that is something that's worth thinking about. You need one recurring chunk of time, even 15 minutes, okay? Where the only agenda is whatever your brain brings up when nothing's demanding an answer from it. [00:15:51] And if you notice, you keep saying yes to every side project that lands in your inbox, that's usually what happens when you haven't had a quiet enough moment to ask yourself whether this is something that you really want, or you're just saying yes 'cause, you know, saying yes, it, it just feels easier and faster than sitting with a question. [00:16:14] And maybe the smallest version of this is pick one thing in your day that AI could speed up, and don't let it. Don't let it. Don't ask it. Don't prompt ChatGPT your question [00:16:28] Because the friction is doing something for you that the fast version cannot So back to my nights on the patio. Most nights, by the time I get up, the ice in my drinks melt down to basically cold water. Some nights I catch something. Sometimes it's, an idea for this show. [00:16:50] . Sometimes it's finally making a decision on that thing I've been avoiding. [00:16:56] other nights it's just nothing. It's just, cuddling with my cats or fantasizing about a summer holiday destination But all those things count the same to me now, which I don't think I believed back in April or May. . I'd love to know if you have got any version of this, Whether it's some dead [00:17:18] time ritual you protect on purpose Even when it feels like it's stealing time, quote-unquote, from something more productive. I would love to hear what that looks like for you. [00:17:30] Next week is a pretty big shift in topic. We are getting into how AI is changing where your work actually gets found in the first place, how the search behavior itself is changing who's showing up in results and how people even discover a creative professional now and what you can do about it. [00:17:50] So if you've ever wondered why the old ways of getting found aren't working the way they used to, then this one is going to be useful for you. [00:17:59] thank you again for listening to AI for Creative Professionals. I am Tiana, and I will talk to you next week.