#74 JooBee's newsletter

TL;DR

😵‍💫 When did getting things done start feeling this hard?

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When did getting things done start feeling this hard?

My best work has always come from being a little bit lazy 😆…my personal motto is minimum effort, maximum results. When I’m at 100% battery, I get where I want to go faster, produce better results, and I enjoy the work I do far more. Most importantly, I’m better at solving problems in in novel and targeted ways.

For example, I wrote edition #46 of this newsletter in under two hours. It became my most-read edition. Yet this year, some editions have taken me days. Edition #69, which many of you loved, took me around 10 days😱.

As an introvert, I notice it outside work too. When my battery isn’t recharging fast enough, my default is to retreat. I get very quiet and become much less fun to be around😅. Every social interaction spends a little more energy that I don’t seem to be replenishing.

In 2019, I learnt how to recharge my battery

After burning out just before Covid, I consciously changed how I worked. I built habits to protect my thinking time, recognise when my energy was running low and, importantly, know when to stop rather than push through. 

I talked about some of those habits in this coaching conversation with Sayo😀 

(These BtS Coaching sessions are raw, behind-the-scenes coaching conversations. Sayo has kindly agreed to share this part of our session to help other HR leaders facing similar challenges.)

So why am I edging towards burnout again this year? 

For years, those habits worked. I knew my signals and what to do when my battery was running low. But this year, despite doing many of the same things, my battery was draining faster than I could recharge it. 

After months of conversations with friends (🪏I have an obsessive need to dig for the root cause of things), I identified two reasons. I want to share one because I suspect some of you might recognise it too.

AI.

AI taught me to ignore a signal I used to listen to

Don’t get me wrong, I ❤️ AI. It has massively improved some parts of my work, particularly operations. I now have agents automating parts of my day-to-day so I can stay on top of things while spending more of my time on relationship building. This I super love. It has also allowed me to scale how I help HR leaders through BeeBot.

The problem appeared when I started using AI for the creative work where my own original thinking is the value. 

My 'minimum' effort philosophy became 'maximum' effort

Before AI, I knew this. If I wasn’t making headway, I would stop. I’d clear my mind, do something else and come back when my brain was ready.

Instead of taking the mental block as a signal to stop, I started brute-forcing my way through it with AI. Another prompt. Another version. Another attempt to explain what I was trying to say. 

I had somehow created a strange contradiction for myself. I’ve always believed that when I’m not in flow and can’t find the breakthrough, making up for it with more time and effort rarely produces my best work. Yet I had been doing exactly that for months and months.

I worked longer, the results still didn’t feel right, and then I spent even more time trying to get them there. The supposedly easy way started to feel like walking through treacle. Everything was taking longer than I knew it normally would, and burning far more energy than I expected.

AI was slowing me down where my original thinking matters most

There is a particular kind of work that creates a lot of my value: communicating an idea that gives someone an aha moment, writing a newsletter that feels like I’m talking directly to you, building a framework that shifts how someone thinks, or designing a learning experience that accelerates a leader’s development.

I’ve realised that work needs to start with me.

I used to create about 80% of a first draft myself, then bring in AI to help me hone it. Without really noticing, that sliding scale moved until AI was doing perhaps 80% of the starting.

It gave me a fast start. Then I spent far longer trying to shape what it produced into the thing I could already see in my head. 

And then I saw this reel on Instagram …it felt painfully familiar😖.

So, I went back to how I worked before AI 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve started shifting back to how I used to work. Slowly, I’m getting that old feeling of satisfaction from producing something I’m proud of without exhausting myself to get there.

It happened while I was writing this newsletter. I got stuck after the second paragraph. Normally, I might have opened AI and tried to brainstorm my way through the block. This time, I stopped. I had an early lunch and planned some games for a house party I was having.

Then I came back and started writing again.

The flow came back... and, most importantly, so did the enjoyment of sharing.

3 Questions before the end-of-year hectic kicks in…

By the time you read this, you’ve probably just returned from your summer break and are getting ready for the busy end of the year. 

So while there’s still a little calm before the storm, I’d like you to look back at 2026. We’ve spent the year hearing: “Learn AI fast. Use it everywhere you can. Automate more. Produce more. Move faster. Don’t get left behind.” 

Before you keep moving faster, take a moment to reflect:

1. Where has AI genuinely given you energy and leverage? 

2. And where might it be taking more from you than you realise?

3. What would you change?

For me, the answer has become surprisingly simple.

I told my manager this recently (yes, I’m working at Notion Capital two days a week and I have a lovely boss 😆):

I’m going to stop using AI to think.

Step up from HR Leader to Business Leader

Ready to influence strategically, drive business impact and make HR indispensable?
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