AI turns strategists into managers, not thinkers — and I am not sure that’s a good thing.

The AI wave is pushing many mindworkers in a liminal state between old and new ways of working right now. Old behaviours and modes of thinking are still there. New ones are taking shape but not fully embraced yet. (Maybe it is different for younger people with less pre-AI mental wiring, but that’s another story.)

We are moving from doing most of the heavy lifting ourselves to orchestrating an army of assistants, tasks and conversation threads. Which sounds great in theory and promises more speed and efficiency. And personally, it has already changed a lot for me — the amount of things I can do in less time is insane.

But I am not convinced this is a desirable end state. At least not for people working in strategy. For four reasons.

Reason 1: The mental drain.

Permanent switching between tasks, threads and assistants takes a high cognitive toll. It’s multitasking on steroids, and we all know by now that is not the healthiest way to work — it drains mental resources and precious capabilities. And yes, agents, Cowork workflows or a proper “AI OS” can make this easier. But you are still directing shitloads of things in parallel, because you can and the efficiency trap demands it.

Reason 2: The unnatural flow.

Forking your linear stream of thought into parallel work threads kills deep, continuous thinking. The seconds between starting tasks and waiting for output become dead time. You can’t really keep thinking about the problem, because the next result might pull you somewhere unexpected — interesting and fresh, but away from where you wanted to go. The AI slot machine nudges you to wait for the next dopamine hit. Hours later you are lost, numb, and unsure whether what you got is what you actually wanted in the first place.

Reason 3: The lack of accomplishment.

“Outsourcing” parts of your thinking process to machines gets results, but leaves you empty. At least if you take pride in creating things and enjoy the feeling of resonance in the making. Sure, you can pump out lots of decent stuff with AI now, faster than ever. But the Heureka moment — that click when something finally lands — is gone. You just check a box and feel… nothing. For some, that’s how work always felt, and yes, it pays the bills. For others, it’s an unnatural state of being.

Reason 4: The role shift.

I have lived this mode before during my years as Account and Client Service Director. Leading big teams with 100 items in parallel, but doing less and less actual content work — mostly juggling too many balls at once and trying not to drop anything. At some point I made a deliberate choice to step out. Closer to the strategy craft. Fewer balls in the air. Real thinking, not coordination.

Now AI is quietly handing it back. In a different shape, but with the same feeling. Technically I work solo, but my brain manages a team that doesn’t exist. Briefing agents. Reviewing outputs. Catching what slipped. The coordination layer never fully quiets down.

The AI promise is that this makes you more capable. And maybe it does — if you measure capability in volume.

But it turns strategists into middle managers. Which is an important job, no shade. But we used to be paid to think. Now we are paid to orchestrate machines that think for us. And there is a real difference between expanding your output and keeping agency over your own thinking. AI is good at the first. I am not sure it protects the second.

So here is the question I keep landing on: How much of your own thinking are you willing to outsource for the extra throughput?

Are you ready to trade depth for speed? Craft for volume? The feeling of having thought something through for the feeling of having shipped it?

Because the price doesn’t show up in next quarter’s numbers. It shows up later — in the kind of thinker, leader and person you have slowly become without noticing.

But this is not out of our hands. Humans have always shaped their tools, and let their tools shape us back. The plough, the press, the calculator, the search bar — each one rewired how we think. AI is no different. Just faster, and louder about its promises.

Our brains are not fixed either. The same neuroplasticity that lets AI quietly reroute our thinking also lets us route it back. We can learn. We can unlearn. We can drop a habit and pick up a better one.

Which means we have agency. Especially in work where quality matters — strategy, craft, anything that lives or dies on depth — we get to choose. Do less in parallel. Think more in series. Use AI where speed actually helps, and protect the parts that need slowness.

The question isn’t whether AI is useful. It clearly is. The question is what kind of mind — and what kind of work — you want on the other side of it. What kind of mind clients and projects really need and benefit from.

Soon, everyone will be running a hundred agents. The edge won’t be in output. It will be in the mind that decides what is worth doing in the first place.

So let’s build that mind on purpose, not by accident. In whatever shape we imagine it.

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First published on Medium, 28.05.2026.