Executive coach and psychotherapist Peter Carnochan explores an issue overwhelming leaders in the AI space; how the newfound ability to build is making burnout harder to spot. Is our next challenge not work-life balance, but knowing when to balance intensity with rest?
Classified as an occupational phenomenon, rather than a medical condition, “burnout” is a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed and is characterised by exhaustion, growing mental distance, and reduced professional efficacy.
My experience working with clients building AI suggests a slightly counterintuitive possibility: the next phase of burnout may have less to do with people hating their jobs and more to do with the fact that they absolutely love them.
That might sound like a good problem to have. It is but it comes with a shadow. The first step is recognizing that founders and leaders building new systems at the cutting edge of AI may show none of the cynicism toward one’s job. Instead, the work can be energizing, deeply engaging and intensely rewarding.
The opposite, then, can be true: they show a kind of dangerous exhilaration.
The Iron Man trap
The context is important. The people beginning to show signs of this new form of potential burnout are not necessarily working for demanding bosses or enduring miserable jobs. Nor are they always “workaholics” in the conventional sense.
Instead, a kind of radical intensity can emerge from this newfound capability: an extraordinary increase in the ability to build. One founder I work with described becoming roughly 100 times more productive. An idea arising at 2am can now move from thought to execution almost immediately.
The experience can feel like being able to don an Iron Man suit: the builder is suddenly able to fly, break through walls and create at a speed that previously seemed impossible. Tony Stark could empathize.
The difficulty lies in wanting to stop such a powerful, seemingly magical assistant or take off such a powerful suit. That is where the problem starts.
The seductive power of the “pumping break”
Burnout is often discussed through the language of work-life balance: work is difficult, stressful and demanding; life happens afterwards, providing space to rest, see friends, exercise, spend time with family and recover.
But that model does not quite capture what is happening for some people working with AI. The problem may be less about work versus life and more about intensity versus rest.
When work is exhilarating, meaningful and unusually productive, the signals that normally prompt a pause can become remarkably easy to ignore. The thought is not, “I need to escape this terrible job.” Instead, the feeling is more like being caught on a wave: “This is the wave that I have been waiting for.”
The surfing analogy is deliberate. Surfers talk about a pumping break: a stretch of exceptional conditions delivering wave after wave of powerful, high-quality surf. Imagine finding the perfect wave after waiting a lifetime to ride it. Why come back to the dull old shore?
The answer, of course, is that eventually water, food and sleep are needed. The principle sounds obvious, but becomes considerably less so when the wave is a once-in-a-generation technological shift and everyone around is moving at extraordinary speed. Some people working at the bleeding edge are showing no signs of coming off the beach.
The race that never ends
There is another complication. Those building AI applications are operating under a peculiar combination of opportunity and existential threat. Capital is pouring into the sector, and the opportunities are enormous, but so is the possibility that something built today could become irrelevant tomorrow.
What happens when a company spends months developing a product only to discover that a major model provider has introduced a capability that renders it obsolete? That kind of brutal competitiveness changes the psychology of competition. The question is no longer simply, “Can this be built successfully?” but “Will this still matter six months from now?”
Under those conditions, “pace yourself” can sound almost ridiculous. There may be several competitors moving just as fast. In fact, if there aren’t, perhaps the market is not significant enough.
The resulting fear is simple: slow down, and someone else might overtake you. But refusing to pace yourself does not necessarily create greater speed. There is no Tony Stark Arc Reactor powering the human body; just flesh and blood. Eventually, exhaustion takes its toll, affecting health, judgment, relationships and, ultimately, the ability to lead others effectively.
The real danger is that decisions begin to emerge from a place of intensity and desperation rather than clarity. The emerging paradox is that the most effective way to move quickly in technology may be to stop trying to operate at maximum intensity all the time.
When biology stops being your warning sign
One of the biggest emerging dangers of AI-enabled work is that productivity itself can become a stimulant. Normally, exhaustion provides feedback: concentration deteriorates, patience wears thin and the body begins signalling that it is time to stop.
But when every hour produces something tangible—another prototype, another feature, another breakthrough—the reward can overwhelm those signals. A recurring pattern is the refusal to heed advice to slow down until the limits have already been pushed too far.
The warning signs may be physical, such as becoming mysteriously unwell for the second time in a month, or behavioral, such as becoming unusually reactive. Sometimes the clearest signals come from outside. A trusted colleague may suddenly leave because the environment has stopped being somewhere the wider team can thrive.
The adrenaline may be saying, “Keep going,” while your body, and the people around you, are saying something very different.
What I am saying versus what I am not saying
This should not be interpreted as either anti-AI or anti-ambition. The issue warrants attention before it begins to overwhelm young founders, CEOs and others building some of the most ambitious technologies.
The answer is not simply to tell people working on important and innovative projects to slow down, take a bath, go hiking for a weekend or work fewer hours. Such advice misses the reality of the moment. For some founders, this genuinely feels like a sprint: the technology is changing day by day, the competitive landscape is fiercely contested, and the potential rewards for the winners could be enormous.
The more constructive question is how to sustain exceptional levels of effort without allowing intensity to become the default mode of operation. That means taking human biology seriously: protecting exercise and sleep, creating time away from screens, building in genuine downtime and, where possible, maintaining a regular day off.
There is also a social dimension. Maintaining relationships unrelated to the company matters, as does remembering that co-founders and engineering teams cannot become an entire social world.
Most importantly, there needs to be awareness of when technology has begun to change the relationship with time. Just because a fantastic new personal “JARVIS” makes it possible to work at midnight does not mean midnight should become part of the working day.
Not everyone enters this environment with the same psychological foundations. Extreme pressure can amplify what is already present. A founder or CTO who is relatively well-grounded may experience the chaos as difficult but manageable, while someone carrying unresolved vulnerabilities may find those vulnerabilities becoming considerably more pronounced under relentless competition, uncertainty and pressure.
Don’t stop the wave, but ride it better?
The surfing analogy remains useful. The AI wave is not going to stop, so the challenge is learning to ride it without causing widespread burnout.
This dynamic extends far beyond founders and tech leaders to executives, developers, researchers, knowledge workers, students and creatives—anyone whose productivity is amplified by AI.
AI can deliver previously unimaginable capabilities, but not infinite energy, attention or emotional capacity. The better AI becomes at enabling work, the more important the discipline of stopping may become.
The future of work may therefore require a new balance: sustaining extraordinary intensity while recognizing human limits. Even when wearing the Iron Man suit.
