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What To Do With Your Existential Dread As AI-Adoption Keeps Speeding Up
Every morning I clear my inboxes first thing.
It’s a warm-up for my real workday and a satisfying box to check in under an hour. It isn’t what productivity experts recommend, but it works for me.
Except when it doesn’t.
Today this normally benign task opened up a well of existential dread. Every email in my inbox seemed to be shouting, “All of the strategies that worked for you in 2024 will stop working in 2025. Act now or be left behind!”
I wanted to crawl under a blanket and sleep until 2026.
I wanted to abandon my business and get into AI agents, put my life savings into bitcoin, and add my name to the waitlist for the next available humanoid robot who’ll probably do my job better anyway.
“Tarzan! You spent $1174 on skiing this month when you should’ve been saving for the AI apocalypse!” I scolded myself. “THE SINGULARITY IS HERE!!!”
As though the mere fact of a single digit change would propel us faster into the future than we are already headed. But at that moment, I felt like a dinosaur. Like none of my skills mattered and that I was slipping faster every day into irrelevance. Everything around me was moving SO FAST, producing a sort of “spiritual nausea,” to borrow from Jenny Odell in Saving Time, “toggling between a Slack window and headlines about the soon-to-be-uninhabitable earth.”
Do you get scared like this too?
Today I wanted to share some strategies for managing your existential dread. Bet you already have an overwhelming amount of advice in your inbox right now, so let this be inspo for things you could try next time you feel like a dinosaur on the cusp of the next ice age.
Survival Strategies for Existential Dread
Get outside. I walk my kids to school even though they’re old enough to go together, even when it’s below 0° and snowing and they’re hounding me to drive them. The deeper you go into nature, the better this works. I camp and paddle in the summer, and you already know about my skiing.
Why it works: Being in nature calms your nervous system so you can relax. It also reminds us that our place in the larger ecosystem, no matter how small, is still meaningful.
Prioritize pleasure in your morning routine. Every morning I drink electrolyte water while making coffee, which I consume slowly, with a book. I never go to my desk without eating first. Every Wednesday my bestie and I have a hot tub date at 7am.
Why it works: Starting the day with a pleasure ritual sets the tone for the day, reduces cortisol and reminds me of the places where I do have control.
Put some distance between you and your phone. I use an alarm clock on days when I want to be at the gym early. When I have my kids, everyone knows the phone lives on the charging station, not wherever we’re sitting. This summer I left my phone in my car and camped for three days, which is the longest and farthest I’ve been from my phone in 10 years. 10/10 recommend.
Why it works: Even a little bit of distance from the constant noise of your phone is a necessary form of sensory rest. It lets you tune back into your body and your surroundings, and notice that you are safe in this moment.
“Log off and search for joy.” That’s advice from Maegan Megginson, who writes a newsletter about rest. I can’t produce quality work when I’m in fight or flight, and I bet you can’t either. Basic tasks take me 50% longer, and big ones, like writing this newsletter, are out of the question.
Why it works: Your brain works better when you rest and do joyful activities. You bring your creativity and problem-solving skills back online.
Rest like it’s your profession. For me, resting = skiing, reading novels, getting better at playing guitar, and occasionally telling my kids, “I have to take a nap now please don’t talk to me for half an hour.” All of these things are allowed during designated working hours when necessary.
Why it works: Treating rest as a necessary element of productivity tricks your brain into thinking you’re doing the thing every entrepreneur is wired to do: put in more labour hours. Even though I hate the idea of resting as a way to produce more labour hours, this can work as a good stepping stone.
Move your body. I used to hate exercise until I found supportive communities that could help me develop as an athlete, to see something in me I couldn’t. Now I can’t get enough. The feeling of having exercised is some of the best dope on earth. I almost never miss a day. It’s a near-guaranteed cure on the worst of dino-days.
Why it works: Endorphins! Community! Both dependable tools for regulating all those pesky feelings. Both offer near-immediate relief on hard days.
All of these practices shift focus from abstract worries like “nothing I do means anything anymore” back to the tangible and beautiful aspects of our lives that bring us meaning.
It’s not always as fast as I’d like.
I took a nap with my 6yo son Mo (co-regulating, another amazing strategy), who happened to be home sick and kept bugging me to sit on my lap and press his soft little cheek to mine while I toiled away, working in slow-motion.
We got through it together.
It took 3 hours before I came back to myself, remembering what a precious gift it is to be Tarzan, a human and not a robot.
The next day I was over it and able to get back to my work.
I’m telling you this because right now I’m only seeing two styles of people in my inbox: those who seem to know exactly what they’re doing with AI, or those who aren’t talking about it at all.
Hardly anyone is raising their hand to say, “This is moving really fast and I’m scared of what it means for my place in the world, the future of the planet and the people and places I love.” I think about this every day, as I’m sure you do. It feels better to name it than it does to try and shove it down.
I hope this helped you today.
If you have your own strategies to share, I’m all ears.
T-Boss