The demands of AI oversight, not AI use, are what's exhausting leaders and degrading decision quality.

Chronic stress physically weakens the prefrontal cortex, aka the brain that leads.

Unplugging isn't weakness—it's the discipline that restores the thinking AI can't do.

Over a decade ago, I wrote Rewired about our always-on, overwired world. I thought that I understood the costs, but AI changed the game again.

Like many clients, I felt AI moving closer to my business. The demands, pressure, and urgency mounted. AI’s ability to help you do more, faster, and better is seductively tempting. For a while, I ran harder and consumed more, all the while trying to adapt and recalibrate. The tools promised efficiency. What I experienced was a new exhaustion: the kind that a good night’s sleep can’t touch.

I unplugged from it all: the technology, my team, the constant stream of input, and even my family. I gave myself time in nature. Here’s what became clear to me: I was struggling to lead at all. I was managing a condition I’d created.

The research not only backs this up, but it also foreshadows something even more grim.

For years, leaders have lived in a state of constant context-switching. AI added a new layer. Now you’re not just doing your job; you’re monitoring AI doing your job. You’re correcting its output. You’re deciding what it should and shouldn’t do. You’re continually pivoting between three modes of work, often simultaneously.

Rather than productivity, this is cognitive exhaustion masquerading as efficiency.

In March 2026, researchers at BCG published findings confirming what many of us feel: The mental fatigue isn’t from using AI. It’s from supervising it. Workers with high AI oversight loads reported 14 percent more mental effort, 12 percent more mental fatigue, and 19 percent more information overload than workers who actually delegated to AI.

There are neurological costs to all this switching. Every context shift forces your brain to shut down one framework and rebuild another. It consumes mental resources and elevates cortisol. Add constant AI monitoring to the mix, and you’re asking your brain to do something it wasn’t designed to sustain.

Productivity peaks at one to three AI tools. Add a fourth, and it drops.

What Chronic Stress Does to Leadership Capacity

Neuroscientist Amy Arnsten is an expert on the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for planning, judgment,........

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