AI Brain Fry Is Real, And It's Coming for Your Best Employees

Ever close your laptop and realize you're snapping at your kids over the smallest thing? You might be experiencing what researchers are now calling AI brain fry but even if you've never touched an AI agent, the underlying problem is one we all share: our brains were never built for the amount of multitasking we are handling today.

Moah and Alex dig into why multitasking exhausts us (even as we're getting more done), the unsettling stat that our average focused attention has dropped from 3 minutes in the early 2000s to 47 seconds today, and what actually helps.

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why our brains weren't built for the always-on workday
• The 7-second cost of a single notification glance
• The 2.5% of people who are actual "supertaskers"
• How to leave a "start here" note for your future self

Good news, though: you don't have to become a luddite and swear off AI to maintain your sanity. Moah and Alex share practical tactics like subtask boundaries, self-interrupted context switching, and the "routine complex cycle" for making the work more sustainable for your mental energy. If you've ever snapped at someone at the dinner table because your brain was still stuck at your desk, this one's for you.

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Links from the show!

Got to-dos? Get GQueues! gqueues.com

Boomerang for Gmail boomeranggmail.com

Boomerang for Outlook boomerangoutlook.com

Switching at breakpoints is better for your focus than being interrupted: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/oasis-a-framework-for-linking-notification-delivery-to-the-perceptual-structure-of-goal-directed-tasks/

Gloria Mark: Why our attention spans are shrinkinghttps://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans

Digital dementia and shrinking gray matter: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32062336/

*Correction: In the audio we said time between task switches used to be three to six minutes, but the median was actually two and a half minutes.