{"id":613492,"date":"2026-04-17T18:56:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T18:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/613492\/"},"modified":"2026-04-17T18:56:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T18:56:11","slug":"ai-brain-fry-is-already-slowing-down-your-marketing-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/613492\/","title":{"rendered":"‘AI brain fry’ is already slowing down your marketing team"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a previous opinion piece for Mumbrella<\/a>, I spoke of the crisis in training for newcomers to our industry. Now, at the risk of casting myself as a doom monger, there is an even more acute crisis facing our industry and it isn\u2019t getting the attention it needs.<\/p>\n

A major study published in Harvard Business Review<\/a> last month, conducted by Boston Consulting Group, confirmed what many of us are seeing on the ground. They named it \u201cAI brain fry\u201d: mental fatigue from excessive use or oversight of AI tools beyond cognitive capacity.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t burnout. Not at first anyway. AI brain fry is something sharper and faster. It\u2019s the acute cognitive overload that can hit after a single heavy session of prompting, reviewing outputs and chasing AI-generated options that keep multiplying faster than any human can meaningfully evaluate.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s the finding from the BCG study that stopped me: 26% of marketing professionals reported experiencing it. More than any other function surveyed. This is real, and it\u2019s on the rise.<\/p>\n

ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

The AI tap has become a fire hose. Is it any wonder we\u2019re struggling to drink from it?<\/p>\n

The tell-tale signs<\/p>\n

Hands up if you recognise any of this. Spinning plates with AI and ending the day with more options than you started with and no clearer sense of which one to back. The plates keep spinning. Nothing lands.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the urge to keep iterating. One more prompt. One more version of the deck that\u2019s already good enough. AI makes the next iteration feel almost free, but the cost is the creeping anxiety that the latest version is never quite right.<\/p>\n

You find yourself second-guessing decisions you\u2019ve already made because AI has helpfully shown you fourteen alternative paths you didn\u2019t take. That\u2019s not strategic thinking. That\u2019s doubt wearing a productivity badge.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s happening around the clock, on phones at the dinner table, or at the dog park. AI is always on, always ready, and the line between thinking and prompting for some has completely dissolved.<\/p>\n

The real costs of infinite options and AI brain fry? Doubt. Then fatigue. Then, comes the burnout.<\/p>\n

We built the wrong mental model for the AI era<\/p>\n

Until now, the anxiety in marketing and media leadership came from scarcity. Not enough good ideas. Not enough data. Not enough time. AI, we\u2019re told, will fix all of that. And in many ways, it does.<\/p>\n

But in solving the scarcity problem, we\u2019ve created something worse: abundance without a filter.<\/p>\n

AI may have obliterated old constraints, making ideas cheap and infinite. But the cognitive machinery required to evaluate, prioritise and commit is still running on the same hardware we had before.<\/p>\n

Psychologist Barry Schwartz called this out decades ago. His work on the paradox of choice<\/a> showed that more options don\u2019t produce better outcomes. They produce paralysis. People presented with too many choices freeze, second-guess, and often feel worse about whatever they eventually decide. He\u2019s now updating his thinking for the AI era, warning the problem is getting worse.<\/p>\n

But when faced with the paradox of choice, subtraction becomes a skill.<\/p>\n

Also last month, ActivTrak\u2019s annual workplace report<\/a> found the average organisation is now running seven AI tools, up from just two in 2023. But whether overloading with multiple tools, or just gorging on one or two, many leaders are white anting their own success.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re not struggling to generate ideas. They\u2019re struggling to believe in any of them long enough to actually follow through. Every strategy feels like it could be iterated into something better with one more prompt. The result isn\u2019t momentum. It\u2019s drift.<\/p>\n

And drift is deadly.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Thinking like a robot can fry your circuits<\/p>\n

Anyone who\u2019s built and run their own agency, as I have, can tell you that the cost of not deciding is higher than the cost of deciding imperfectly. More tools didn\u2019t give me a competitive edge, it was the ability to weigh up the choices, subtract the options, and back myself that did.<\/p>\n

Good leaders are paid for their ability to cut through the options available and make the tough, creative, incisive calls. The best develop a ruthless clarity about what they are and are not pursuing. Their success is often defined more by what they decline than what they accept.<\/p>\n

In this AI arms race era, I firmly believe it\u2019s the skill of subtraction that will allow the best leaders to pull ahead. When everyone has access to the same raft of tools, the ability to choose what to ignore has become one of the most valuable leadership capabilities.<\/p>\n

And the good news is it\u2019s teachable. In my time leading pitches for M&C Saatchi I saw first-hand the power of simplicity. Brutal Simplicity of Thought is a belief system that was drummed into me, respected by clients, and carried into an incredible streak of pitch wins. Today I still deploy it as a principle with the leaders I work with.<\/p>\n

Three things that help<\/p>\n

Before you arrive at these the hard way, here are some practical steps you can take to minimise the risks of AI brain fry. Some prompts, if you like!<\/p>\n

Set the ceiling:<\/p>\n

The next time you open an AI-assisted thinking session, decide how many rounds of iteration you\u2019ll allow yourself. Three is the ceiling I use with clients. Generate, refine, refine once more \u2014 then stop. Work on something else. Come back with fresh eyes if you need to, but don\u2019t let the promise of a better version become the reason you never commit to this one.<\/p>\n

The urge to run one more prompt is almost always a signal that you\u2019re searching for certainty rather than quality. At some point the work is good enough, and moving becomes the priority. The leaders winning right now aren\u2019t the ones who found the perfect answer. They\u2019re the ones who made a good call, backed it, and got moving while everyone else was still prompting.<\/p>\n

Do this and you\u2019ll move faster, feel better, and win more.<\/p>\n

Protect the quiet:<\/p>\n

Block time without AI tools to simply think without having to decide. Not to generate options. Not to review outputs. Just to sit with a question and let your own judgment catch up with the volume you\u2019ve been processing.<\/p>\n

This sounds almost offensively simple. It isn\u2019t. The brain recovers from decision-making the way muscles recover from exercise.<\/p>\n

Most high achievers have scheduled every hour of their week except the one their cognition actually needs. In an AI-saturated environment, white space isn\u2019t inefficiency, it\u2019s a performance strategy. I\u2019ve seen it change the quality of decisions faster than almost anything else.<\/p>\n

Find your editor:<\/p>\n

Every leader I work with who is navigating this well has one thing in common: someone outside the noise helping them decide what not to pursue. Not a sounding board inside the organisation, but someone with no stake in the answer and enough commercial experience to push back without hedging.<\/p>\n

Longtime Google CEO Eric Schmidt called hiring an external thinking partner, who he worked with weekly for fifteen years, the best professional decision he ever made. He understood that being outside the noise is a fundamentally different cognitive position from being inside it. That was true before AI made optionality infinite. The argument has only got stronger since.<\/p>\n

A genuinely independent thinking partner with real commercial experience gives you something AI cannot: a structured space to think out loud, stress-test your thinking, and make faster decisions with less self-doubt.<\/p>\n

These three steps won\u2019t eliminate AI brain fry. But in my experience, they\u2019re where the damage stops.<\/p>\n

Because out-thinking your competition got you here. Overthinking your options is what will slow you down.<\/p>\n

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