The emotional component is one of the toughest parts of the job. Whether it’s communicating with someone you recently had a conflict with, following up on a tedious but important task, or just generally pushing through moments of resistance or procrastination - our emotions don’t always make things easy.
What if we could leverage the natural “alexithymia” of AI systems to our advantage in overcoming emotional friction? As AI’s don’t appear to have subjective experiences (yet), they are impervious to emotions like frustration, resentment, burnout or reluctance that humans often face (for now).
Imagine there’s someone you need to follow up with, but just the thought of directly interacting with them starts to raise your blood pressure. Use AI to draft the message. This would allow you to communicate pragmatically without letting any lingering interpersonal tensions interfere. The AI’s objective, emotion-free communication style would sidestep your own anxious reactions.
So rather than dwelling on past issues or stressing over an awkward encounter, you focus solely on conveying the necessary information. The AI acts as a buffer, providing a bit of distance from an emotionally fraught situation. This helps you still get your point across and move things forward, while saving your emotional energy for interactions that truly matter.
Similarly, if there’s a task I’ve been resisting or procrastinating due to fatigue or lack of motivation, enlisting an AI assistant can help separate the emotional component from the logical “next steps”. This allows me to leverage a methodical, emotion-free collaborator to help move projects forward despite any personal reservations. Showing up is 90% of the work, and LLMs “show up” in milliseconds, with minimal pay. By reducing the emotional friction of the work - they can help me show up even when I don’t really feel like it.
Some prompts to experiment with:
- Have an AI assistant draft a difficult email, message, or presentation you’ve been avoiding. Remove your emotional reaction from the content.
- Enlist an AI to break a complex task down into bite-sized, manageable steps so it feels less overwhelming.
- Give an AI routine administrative tasks you’ve come to dislike through repetition so you can focus on more engaging work.
- Utilize AI databases, research tools, or information retrieval to find answers independently rather than expose yourself to the emotional slot-machine of the internet
- Develop an AI chatbot to field basic user questions and issues as the first point of contact, reserving your expertise for more nuanced inquiries.
- Use an AI to guide you (and your team) through a perspective-switching exercise (for example, I’ve been using my “6 Hats Helper” bot almost every day).
With great power comes with great responsibility. These tools could be used to help you become even more emotionally avoidant, or they could be used to reserve your human energy and attention for the truly important and highly emotional work.