Something cracked.
Maybe it was a holiday photo. Maybe it was pants that didn’t fit. Maybe an ex got engaged, or a colleague got promoted, or you just turned 39.
It wasn’t “I want to be healthier.” It was darker than that. A moment that made you feel:
I am not the person I thought I was.
So you joined a gym.
Not because you did the research on fitness programs. Not because January was the optimal time to start. You joined because signing up felt like doing something. The membership card in your wallet was a proof of: I’m handling this.
You bought the shoes or a pair of yoga pants. Downloaded a tracking app. Maybe shared your “new chapter” somewhere with someone. Each action delivered a quick reassurance. Progress. Forward motion. Control.
Here’s the thing that few talk about: you weren’t optimizing for fitness.
You were optimizing for the feeling of fitness. The sensation of moving forward—without actually confronting why you felt so stuck.
The gym was never about your body. It could be about the job that’s draining you, the hard conversation you’re avoiding, the fact that you can’t stop comparing yourself to the LinkedIn of someone you just met, the version of your life you thought you’d have by now that isn’t coming.
“How do I get fit?” has clear answers. Reps. Sets. Protein.
“Why am I unhappy?” is terrifying and murky.
So you picked the solvable problem. And for a few weeks, it worked… Then, at some point, you stopped going. Not because you’re lazy. Because the surface solution never touched the real problem.
You wanted control—but the gym became another obligation.
You wanted to feel worthy—but slow progress felt like evidence of failure.
You wanted to escape comparison—but gyms are full of people to compare yourself to.
The question you never asked: What would actually make me feel okay about myself?
If you sat with that honestly, the answer might be: leave the job draining you, have the hard conversation, stop measuring yourself against someone else’s highlight reel. Grieve the life you thought you’d have by now.
None of that is solved by a gym membership.
The video version will be released on Wednesday!
Now Replace “Gym” with “AI.”
Here’s a screenshot from the Ipsos AI Monitor 2025 report.
They asked 20k+ online participants, how much do you agree or disagree with the following?
Products and services using artificial intelligence make me nervous
Products and services using artificial intelligence make me excited
If you’re reading this from the Anglosphere, like the US, UK, or Canada, you’re sitting in the global epicenter of AI anxiety. You are likely feeling much more nervous than excited about AI. Meanwhile, Indonesia and Thailand sit in the opposite corner: near 80% excited, about 50% nervous.
This isn’t because people in Southeast Asia don’t understand AI’s risks.
It shows what AI means in different economic contexts and how people associate AI with their future. In countries where the ladder already feels broken—where the wage gap widens each year, the job security has eroded, and the social security net is full of holes—AI reads as one more threat to already-precarious positions.
So no, you’re not more anxious because you’re smarter or have more knowledge about AI. You’re more anxious because you’re standing on a ladder that’s been quietly breaking for years.
Then something started to crack as every big company began forcing AI on everyone.
You’ve likely seen yet another post about someone who got promoted to a position with an AI prefix just a week into 2026, or opening your inbox to three newsletters screaming contradictory messages: "AI will save humanity," → "AI will destroy jobs," → "AI is mostly hype."
Or a message from your manager: “Everyone needs to complete the AI training by Friday,” or maybe you realized you’ve been tracking how long tasks take you, mentally calculating whether AI could do it faster, and the answer is confusing at best.
You felt something you probably couldn’t get hold of. Uncertainty. Guilt. And fear.
So you signed up for an AI course. Bookmarked a prompt library. Downloaded three new tools. Had one AI to “double-check” the result of another. Each action delivered a small hit of relief that: I am doing something, I am still in control.
The gym story and the AI story are the same story.
The story of how you’re optimizing for the feeling of competence—without confronting why you feel so replaceable.
And underneath it all, there’s a question you’re not asking:
Who am I if not my job/skills/productivity?
Five Ways the AI Anxiety Shows Up.
You’re probably living at least two of them right now—and one is costing you more than you realize.
Each one is a variation of gym memberships.
Now, rewind a bit.
There’s a reason that all apps are easy to sign up for and hard to cancel.
The people who design apps—the ones who are very good at getting you to buy things—know that what’s on the shelf is almost never the real intent of your purchase. There’s always a surface reason, and the real reason.
The surface reason is what you think you are buying. The real one is what you’d never admit to as the reason you are making the purchase. Exactly what I’ve just shown you in the gym story.
For a decade, companies paid me to figure out and to exploit your true intent behind your every online decision.
But today, I’m going to use that same lens. Instead of exploiting it and luring you to buy more stuff, but to help you discover the real reason behind each and every one of the AI anxieties you felt, and the true meaning behind some of those actions you’ve already taken.
Five anxieties, hundreds of surface reasons from people in the Anglosphere, but five true intents hidden underneath. Once you see the gap, you can stop renewing your AI anxiety in 2026, which was never going to solve the problem.
Anxiety 1: Narrative Whiplash
You are not alone if you’ve ever thought: “Some say AI changes everything, some say it’s overhyped.” “Who do I trust?” “I’m overwhelmed by contradictory takes.”
I’m not just saying this to comfort you, but truly. Dozens of comments on Reddit show that most people are equally confused and feel exhausted. Just to pick a few:
The overwhelming and conflicting signals are constant. If you’re not using it daily, you’re falling behind. It’s mostly slop. It’s revolutionary. It’s a bubble.
Now, take a deep breath.
Academics call this “epistemic flooding”—when there’s so much contradictory information that people become incapable of critically assessing anything. You’re not frozen because you’re uninformed. You’re frozen because you’re over-informed with no way to filter signal from noise.
And when you’re drowning in contradictions, the instinct isn’t to think harder. It’s to outsource the thinking entirely. To find someone—anyone—who sounds confident enough to follow. Just tell me what to do so I can stop holding all this uncertainty myself.
So if we dig another layer deeper, it’s more than just feeling confused about AI, you’re terrified of betting wrong—of committing to a position (or even time and money) and looking like a fool when the consensus shifts again next week.
The narrative whiplash is a self-protection mechanism at its core.
As long as you stay in “gathering mode,” you never have to stake a claim. You never have to be wrong.
The real question isn’t “who should I trust?” It’s:
What would I actually bet on, and what's on the line, if I have to start deciding?
Anxiety 2: False Safety Signals
There’s a specific kind of tired that comes from running without knowing where the finish line is. Or if there even is one.
This anxiety shows up in two ways. Some people are frantically adopting every AI tool they can find. Others are exhausted and resentful, wondering if they really have to learn another thing.
The frantic adopters tell themselves: If I stay in motion, I won’t disappear.
The exhausted resisters tell themselves: I can’t keep up, and I’m furious about it.
Different coping strategies. Same terror underneath.
on r/ArtificialInteligence - AI Tsunami: How do you guys keep up with your AI?
on r/AI_Tools_Land - I'm annoyed at juggling too many AI tools
Neither the motion nor the stillness is about AI.
The frantic adopter isn’t learning AI to get better at their job. If you ever feel the same, you’re learning AI to perform relevance. So stake a claim on your own existence before someone else decides you’re redundant. Every new tool mastered is a temporary stay of execution.
The exhaustion isn’t from the learning curve, but from constant audition with no finish line.
Underneath the constant chase for the latest hyped new tools lies an old story.
The phenomenon even has a name: workism—the cultural pattern where you make your work the primary source of meaning and identity in your life. Long before AI, we were already taught to measure our worth by our output. AI just made the measuring tape visible.
For years, you’ve played the game.
You've got the hang of your job. You built expertise. And now you’re being told: That doesn’t count anymore. Start over. The resentment isn’t about AI, but being asked to justify your existence—again.
So this “Am I falling behind on AI skills?” is the wrong question.
It’s:
If my worth is what I make, and my company believes a machine can replace what I make, what’s left of me?
And your company isn’t going to answer this for you. Especially if they’ve just handed you another tool, 8 hours of training, and a deadline.
So you need to ask this identity question: in other words,
What’s my worth beyond the output that I’m famailar with?
Anxiety 3: Misdirected Investment
You take the course. You get the certification. For about a week, you feel like you’ve done something real.
Then you open LinkedIn. Someone else has three certifications. Another person has the Stanford certificate and completed Google’s AI course. The certainty you just bought deflates.
This is the certification treadmill.
Each badge buys temporary relief, never actual security. At least with fitness, you can see if you’re getting stronger. With AI certifications, you’re never quite sure if you’re qualified enough.
Notice what’s happening here: You’re consuming education. You’re collecting credentials like Pokémon. And you’re getting more uncertain, not less.
Because you’re trying to buy a certainty and a permission.
A certainty for your job future. A permission to call yourself an “AI person.” So it’s more convincing that you deserve to be paid, even though you’re terrified of the “what if… “
The certification is a facade.
The real goal is the feeling: I’m allowed to be here because I’ve ticked the boxes.
But no certificate resolves real insecurity. A certification or the institution that issued it doesn’t help you rebuild the belief that you deserve to be valued at all.
So you get the certificate. You don’t get hired or promoted. So maybe that was the wrong course? Then you take another one? The emptiness repeats. LinkedIn fills with people bragging about their latest badge.
But the people who actually progress do one thing differently: They use their skills to solve a problem that matters to them.
Not for a grade. Not for display. Not for permission. For the satisfaction of knowing they solved it.
That’s competence. That’s real.
So the real question isn’t: “Should I get certified?”
Try this instead:
What problem am I uniquely positioned to solve, and it feels good solving it, certificate or not?
And if you can’t answer that, then no amount of certificates will fix this anxiety.
Anxiety 4: Wrong Competition Frame
You notice your colleague finishing work faster. Your manager also noticed it, combined with the top-down pressure, and now the expectation is to speed up on all fronts. The deadlines that used to be generous are now tight.
The mandate is to boost productivity.
You know the AI output can be messy. You know you’d normally spend time refining, questioning, and pushing back. But there’s a gap now between what you know is right and what’s expected of you. And that gap is where the anxiety lives.
So you start using the tools too. You try to find that balance—move faster, but not so fast that it breaks.
Unknowingly, you’re racing against your colleague.
You’re watching your peers, competing horizontally, while the entire layer is compressing. Didn’t realize that’s the wrong scoreboard. Winning the speed race doesn’t help if the track is sinking.
Your speed anxiety isn’t a personal failure, but a symptom of a bigger structural shift happening outside your control.
You and your peers are all being used as proof that the company can do more with fewer people.
If you keep racing to match your colleague’s pace, you’re still measuring yourself by the only metric that’s collapsing. The question isn’t whether you’re keeping up. You’re optimizing for obsolescence.
Your real leverage is elsewhere, what AI can’t amplify: judgment about when to slow down.
It’s your ability to say, “We need more time here.” Your willingness to think through a problem and deduce a logical decision. The expertise that comes from understanding trade-offs to lower the chances of shit hitting the fan never rests on executing faster.
It’s
whether you can clearly articulate to those who matter that what you’re offering can’t be outsourced to faster execution.
Anxiety 5: AI Imposter Syndrome
You’ve become dependent on something you don’t fully trust. Your imposter syndrome intensified the moment you started using AI. Yet you can’t imagine working without it.
You finish the work. AI generated most of it. Now, can you explain what it did? Can you defend every decision?
There's a boundary dissolving somewhere between what you did and what the AI did. And you're not sure where you actually end and where it begins.
You use AI to ship, and it is slightly faster.
You start accepting output without deep evaluation. Because it saves even more time.
But then, at some point, you found that you can’t defend the decisions of something you’ve released.
So you tell yourself, you’ll try to use it responsibly next time—really understanding the output before you accept it. Only when the next time comes, the deadline pressure kicks in. And you’re back to approving, not thinking.
This isn’t new. Google changed how we find and mentally store information.
AI is the next level of it.
While Google was a lookup. AI is much closer to a replacement. It doesn’t just answer the question; it often decides for you by synthesizing judgment and mixing knowledge.
The trap is using AI in a way that outsources thinking and understanding.
So, knowing that LLM isn’t going anywhere until the next generation of AI, reframe the questions from “Can I do this work without AI?” into two questions, each of which serves its own purpose:
Can you explain every decision in this work?
The big-picture decisions. The report outline, the art framing and style, or the code choice that made sense. Can you trace it all the way back to your initial idea? Or does it disappear into “the AI did it”?
But hang on, there’s something deeper than this one question.
Only being able to defend the work is not the whole story. But who you are, your identity to the world, and your pride:
Can you see yourself in what you share (deliver/release/publish) with the world?
In 2026
All five anxieties are gym memberships.
People frantically adopt tools, collect certifications, benchmark against peers, doubt their output, and drown in contradictory information—all to avoid sitting with the question underneath.
Which of the five anxieties have you experienced? Or maybe something I haven’t named?
The more frantically you pursue surface solutions, the further you get from the real problem. Which intensifies the anxiety. Which drives a more frantic pursuit.
You’ve been on this treadmill for too long. You feel too comfortable in this loop.
But you can break it; the ball is now in your court.
My last question to you:
Should you start reframing the questions or subscribe to another year of AI anxiety?
