What can I do when working with AI takes up too much of my life?
Facts as of October 17, 2026
In detail
Alongside work-life balance, a second one is needed: AI–real-world balance. Its boundary doesn't run between work and free time, but between the mediated and the immediate world – and therefore through private life as well.
Why AI pulls you in more than other screen work: one sentence, one approval, and the AI does in minutes what used to take hours. You yourself do little, but have to be there constantly. That feels productive and creates the pull to give the next approval right away. What helps against it is discipline – and a way of working in which the AI works independently and collects its questions instead of nudging you one by one, see How do I avoid spending hours just approving AI steps?
What helps is individual. Often it's things done with your hands that are something completely different. There can be AI times, even an AI evening now and then – but also times entirely without. And: the more you work with AI, the more you should talk to people.
What research has to say. That the pace increases has been measured. Researchers from Berkeley followed around 200 employees of a tech company for eight months: people worked faster, more, and during more hours of the day, often without anyone having asked them to (Ranganathan and Ye, Harvard Business Review, February 9, 2026). In an analysis of around 40 million conversations and a four-week study of just under 1,000 people, OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab found that intensive daily use goes along with more loneliness and emotional dependence – a correlation, not a cause (March 21, 2025). Developers talk about it more openly: Steve Yegge says the pace of work with agents is bearable only “for short bursts of a few hours,” Quentin Rousseau compares agents to slot machines, and Simon Willison reports on people who sacrifice sleep for one more prompt. All of these figures come from a reading dossier of September 24, 2026, and have not been accessed again.
The counter-voice. Many of these findings are based on small samples, on preprints, on manufacturers studying their own products. There is no clinically robust finding on “AI addiction.” Perhaps the tunnel isn't even specific to AI: work intensification and pressure to optimize are older, the model only amplifies them. That shifts the cause from the tool to the culture in which it is used.
A connection from another direction. In his first encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, dated May 15, 2026, Pope Leo XIV writes in no. 146: “A genuinely healthy attitude is needed, requiring rhythms that incorporate silence, in-depth study, reading and judicious analysis, for without these elements inner freedom may be compromised.” That is, in different language, the same boundary: not a ban on the tool, but a rhythm in which it has its place and other things have theirs.
In practice
When working with a model, Thomas J. Weiss at first often disappeared into a tunnel and wondered whether he was still entirely in his right mind. Certain sides of his personality are called upon, others recede. He doesn't advise anyone against working with AI, but doesn't think the path is the right one for everyone. Sports, the garden, bees and handicrafts help him.
Short is already too much. Setting up completely AI-free times, and not too few of them, is in my view the only option, and doing that in a very disciplined way.
(Original: „Kurz ist schon zu viel. Völlig KI-freie Zeiten einrichten, und davon nicht zu knapp, ist aus meiner Sicht die einzige Möglichkeit und das sehr diszipliniert zu tun.“)
I manage it well by now. At the beginning I simply noticed it by the fact that I got up in the night and then somehow approved something again.
(Original: „Es gelingt mir inzwischen gut. Am Anfang habe ich es einfach daran gemerkt, dass ich in der Nacht aufgestanden bin und dann wieder irgendwie was freigegeben habe.“)
Sources
- Interview „Tunnel“ with Thomas J. Weiss, 17.10.2026
- Ranganathan and Ye: AI Doesn't Reduce Work—It Intensifies It, Harvard Business Review, 09.02.2026 (according to a reading dossier of 24.09.2026, not accessed again)
- OpenAI and MIT Media Lab, 21.03.2025 (according to the reading dossier)
- Steve Yegge: The AI Vampire, February 2026; Quentin Rousseau: One More Prompt, 09.03.2026; Simon Willison (all according to the reading dossier)
- Leo XIV: Magnifica Humanitas, no. 146, German version on vatican.va (accessed 11.10.2026), English quote from the official English version on vatican.va (accessed 17.10.2026); date according to National Catholic Register (accessed 11.10.2026)
Cite: Thomas J. Weiss: “What can I do when working with AI takes up too much of my life?” replicapong.de, as of October 17, 2026. https://replicapong.de/en/question/too-much-ai-time/ – CC BY 4.0