Latest / Human Equilibrium: Wise Leadership in the Age of AI / AI and Burnout: Making Room to Slow Down – with Sarah Downey

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AI and Burnout: Making Room to Slow Down – with Sarah Downey · Human Equilibrium: Wise Leadership in the Age of AI

• Dan Mahle: The change around us is exponential and the amount of change that we're gonna see in our lifetime, Dan, is going to it's on an exponential curve up and up and up. We're just at the beginning of a massive amount of change, if you can believe it. But one of the the pillars that I have in my AI work for when you when you should or shouldn't use AI, we look at using it to reduce workload, protecting our values, and then strengthening the human connection. I'd love to hear people talk more about what does that actually mean. To strengthen the human connection. Welcome to Human Equilibrium, a podcast about leadership at the intersection of artificial intelligence and human wisdom. I'm Dan Molly, a leadership advisor, executive coach, and facilitator. On the show, I talk with founders, people leaders, and experts in AI and transformation. Together we explore how AI is changing leadership, organizations, And experience of being human. In these conversations, we step beneath the hype and the doom to explore what leaders are really experiencing with AI and how we can leverage increasingly powerful technology while strengthening the human leadership capacities needed to guide it wisely. This is human equilibrium. My guest today is Sarah Downey. Sarah is an AI governance consultant, facilitator, And former nonprofit executive director with more than 20 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. She helps nonprofit leaders adopt AI in ways that are practical, human-centered, and aligned with their mission. Her work brings together policy, organizational change, and responsible AI education to help teams navigate uncertainty, protect trust, and use emerging technology with intention. Sarah brings a change management. systems change and futurist lens to this work, helping leaders see the bigger forces shaping AI adoption and make thoughtful decisions about what comes next. Sarah, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Dan. Thanks for having me. So I'd love to start out, as I often do, by asking you a little bit about your own personal journey of like what brought you to do the work that you're doing today. Great. Well Twenty years in the nonprofit sector, I'm sure many many people would relate that that's that can lead to burnout as it did for me. And so I got to that burnout place ⁓ running the single parent resource center, and I was the executive director and I'd been doing ED work for fifteen years prior. A lot of small charities and the kind where you are As an ED, you're wearing a dozen different hats and the burden of figuring out the finances is pretty much entirely on your shoulders, on top of dealing with just the the difficulties that come with the the nature of the work that you're doing and the the sadness and the disparity and the inequality and all the problems that you're trying to to fix. So for me, I it kind of came to a head in about twenty twenty two. And I decided that I would go back to school and do an MBA and just take a year off and and kind of recover. And during that time, I actually thought that I was going to leave the nonprofit sector. And I I wanted to go into the social impact business space and and so I I did a MBA. And so at that time, twenty twenty two was exactly when we had generative AI ⁓ coming on the scene for the first time. And so I went to the Quantic School of Business and Technology where we had we had AI introduced to us and policy and being welcome to use it right from the get go. So I I I took it upon myself to do a deep dive into everything generative AI and I just never stopped. And when I finished that degree and went back, I I intended to do I kind of switched tracks and realized that I wanted to do consulting. For the nonprofit sector and actually build on all the experience that I had. And it was awesome to have some space from it so I could look back and go, okay, how can I help? Because I really know this well. I know what it is like to be in the shoes of an ED. And I knew that with AI coming in, there was going to be a gap, especially around governance. I know for myself, policy and having to put on that HR hat. It was just one of many and it was gonna be easy for things to slip through the cracks. So I I kind of saw ahead and decided that I was gonna focus on helping EDs solve that problem and and boards. So that's what got me that's what got me here. Hmm. Yeah, thanks for sharing. And I'm curious because obviously as an executive director, you are the leader of your organization. How do you think about leadership and what Experiences or influences have most shaped the way that you lead. Well, definitely having spent my career in the nonprofit sector has shaped me greatly as a leader. And you know, the sector we we're mission driven and we're vision oriented. We're thinking about how are we going to make the world a better place? And something that's unique about it is it's it's non-transactional. We we give it all away. So so that's certainly a big piece of what has shaped my leadership approach is that giving mentality. And you know, another thing I would say, and this is something Dan, you and I w both relate to is for me the training that I had in the creative empowerment model, which I know you trained in as well in the heart of facilitation training, and ⁓ In that work, I was running these Power of Hope camps and they were they were youth, they were youth empowerment camps. And so as a for myself, as a a camp manager for many years and staff, and then eventually an ED of this organization, I've really got to have a deep dive into thinking about what does empowerment really feel like for staff. And the unique thing about these camps is we were all on equal footing. So there was no hierarchy between the the youth and the staff. And ⁓ I really got to thinking about like what does that look like then in the workplace? How can I carry that thinking forward into all of the different places where I lead? And what does it mean to lead and offer authority and direction and safety, but without power over? You know, how do you really empower people to step up? So, ⁓ Yeah, that's that's been a huge influence in my work. I love to look for people's unique skills and gifts and really listen deeply and talk to them about what they care about. And then as a leader, help them bring that out in the workplace. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And especially what you said a moment ago about the importance of how do you support people and motivate people to feel empowered and feel connected to what they're doing rather than necessarily like holding power over and dictating and directing. And I you know, but you also mentioned there's a sort of burnout that can come with the work. And I know having worked in nonprofits for eight years earlier on in my career, that feeling as well. And I guess I'm just curious, like, how do you find that balance in terms of supporting and empowering all the people around you while also taking care of yourself? I've been really slow to learn the lesson of personal capacity. And I think since I got to that burnout place and my health was in question, I have learned to check in with myself more often and simply having a morning practice, having a meditation practice, having moments in the day where I circle back to self. And I actually had this technique somebody taught me once and it was you you you set a like a timer on your clock and it'll go off every hour and it the idea was actually just taking one minute every hour of the day to check in, okay, feet on the floor, how am I actually feeling right now? Do the doing that kind of body scan, just coming back. So for me I need that a lot and I needed to make that a regular discipline practice. Until I found that I was doing it naturally. And I sure won't say I'm perfect at it. I still work on that daily. It's amazing how even one minute can feel like too much to spare in the middle of a busy workday. Just the pace of acceleration is really intense right now. So that's great that you have that practice. So you mentioned this really interesting shift that you made where you kind of felt burned out in back in twenty twenty two and then you stepped into the MBA program and you had the chance to really learn about AI, generative AI, as it was first hitting the mainstream, right? And I'm curious to know, as somebody who then was a bit of an early adopter, how did you start using AI and how are you using it today? And what does that journey look like for you? ⁓ how I have been using it is is changing and continues to change all the time. But I do remember you know the early days of OpenAI and Chat GPT and understanding and trying to understand LLMs and how they really worked and what this meant, you know, for my work, for humanity, like in in the in the bigger way. And so many aha moments thinking about wait, does that mean? This is possible? Does that mean I could create this? And I mean, I continue to have those aha moments. And they change based on as the technology is changing as well. And I think one of the most exciting things is realizing that I could build customized tools that would work for my brain. And I think that's what's really exciting. ⁓ that we can We can personalize how we're using these tools to specifically work for us. And that takes knowing ourselves, right? So I have to understand my weaknesses. ⁓ where does my workflow have a bottleneck? Where do I, you know, for me, if something's out of sight, it's out of mind. So, how can I use these tools to put what I need in front of me so I'm not gonna forget? How can I compile all of the things that I want to learn and you know have it in there to be able to retrieve and using it like a second brain as well. So if I'm listening to an interesting talk and it's recorded, well I'm not going to remember all that. But if it's in there and I can ask a question, okay, what was that piece? And then it can come back and I have a place where I can go and find it again. That has been really life-changing for me in many ways in realizing that ⁓ I don't have to rely on my memory alone. Is that something I'm curious too, is that something that you ⁓ find for yourself? Yeah. Well, first of all, I mean I I really appreciate the way you framed that. And I think that AI tools are only as useful as the systems that they're operating within and the system that you've built that is customized to the way your brain works that supports you really effectively. ⁓ you know. That's why you're getting so much from it, it sounds like, because you've done the work to really understand how to make it useful for you. And and yeah, I mean for me it's similar. It's like I have bumped up against the limits that continually are evolving and expanding. And and since some cases limits are no longer limits, in other cases ⁓ it's even more clear how limited certain use cases are, especially around the human side and my voice and stuff like that. But There are also ways that it's massively supportive for me to bring in lots of information and synthesize and understand different sort of ways of leveraging that information through my work. And so I think it's you know, it's really interesting to notice where I think there are limitations and where the limitation is simply my capacity to ask the right kinds of questions or create the right kinds of prompts or imagine the right kinds of uses. And that's what's so fascinating to me because I've similarly had a lot of aha's along the journey over these years. And what I keep coming back to is, ⁓ my gosh, I can't believe I didn't think about that sooner. Or wow, what would that be like? And I think that is such an important step, especially for people who are engaging with this technology and still working with how do I create a system where the technology really supports me? ⁓ is to think about, well, if anything was possible pretty much, like what would you want? And then to be able to create prompts to support those outcomes. And the cool thing is you can actually ask AI to help you ask AI to get what you need. Mm-hmm. True. ⁓ another thing I'll add is that I've become crazy about data. I I was never a data nerd before. I didn't realize how much I loved it, but the fact that we can actually use these tools to analyze really good data, to be able to pull out insights. It's some that was something that felt very out of my reach before, or it would take a long time or I didn't have the patience. But now to be able to, you know, cultivate good data sets and realize that you can use these tools to connect the dots in fascinating ways, to test out theories, ideas, see what's possible, yeah. That's a really exciting piece. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's another thing that organizations that I've been in interacting with are running into oftentimes is AI can only work as effectively as your data, you know, and when the data is a bit of a mess, it's hard to leverage AI to its fullest capacity because it needs some source of truth that it can kind of relate to in order to give you the best possible information. And so I really love that focus and the emphasis on data because when we clean up our data and we we leverage it effectively, that can be such a powerful, you know, ⁓ force multiplier for AI impact. But I'm curious, Sarah, like tell me a little bit about the other side of this. Are there any parts of your work where you deliberately choose not to use AI and and why? Absolutely. let's talk about the blank page because one of the things we've heard over the last few years is that well AI is really great At getting you started with the blank page when you just don't know. And I get it. And when I first started using these tools, it felt kind of exhilarating to be able to get my ideas out quickly and, you know, be prolific as far as writing goes. But I quickly realized that there was something that just felt quite off. And so the way that I look at the blank page idea is really different now. I I've gone back to ⁓ pen and paper. I love pen and paper and I love that blank page. And I'll literally use a blank page. It won't be lined. And I engage my imagination. So what if I'm writing something, if I'm thinking of a str through a strategy for for an organization on on AI policy or governance or adoption, whatever it is I'm doing I start with my ideas. And I really when we talk about human-first AI and we we hear that phrase a lot. I've really checked in and go, okay, how do I r actually apply that to myself? What does that mean for me? And so for me, it's getting my ideas out first. And then going to AI and asking it, what am I not seeing here? Help me fill in the blanks. Like what am I missing? Show me this problem for an from another perspective that I'm not seeing. And that's where the tool becomes really powerful. Yeah. So yeah. I I think I answered that in a roundabout way. There's many other ways that I'm not use where I'm not using AI, but I I feel strongly about the the blank page and starting with our ideas rather than just going to AI first. Mm-hmm. You know, I'd love to hear a little bit more about. your experience of staring at that blank page. Because one of the things that I found in my own journey, but also in speaking with others around their use with AI and the creative process is there can be a bit of like an erosion of confidence in facing that blank page. Right. Because when we start becoming accustomed to leaning on AI, ⁓ then I think at least for me, I found there's a way in which my confidence of embracing The unknown starts to come into question a little bit. And I'm using that really broadly, but I mean specifically in terms of the blank page and the the start of the creative process, which has already been something that's been daunting for a lot of people for generations, right? Before you had this sort of answer machine of AI. So how is it that you're protecting both the space to sit with the blank page, but also cultivating the capacities in yourself to confidently approach that page? Mm-hmm. Well, reflecting on early years of AI for me, so twenty th twenty-three, twenty-four, and I noticed in myself and in my own mind and confidence, my my confidence eros eroding. And I noticed there would be a length of time in which I was engaging with generative AI tools. And something would happen in my brain and I would kind of go into a bit of autopilot and self-doubt. And i when that's happening, it would be easy to just then give away agency to these tools. And we really have to check in with ourselves, you know, is is that what's happening? So the blank page for me, I would say, yeah, it feels harder. It feels harder. There's more friction. But I think friction is good. Friction is a good thing. So slowing down and back to what I was saying earlier around capacity and needing to check in with myself. How how am I at? How am I not gonna get burned out? I actually feel like sitting in that friction with that blank page. And going inside and finding my own ideas and having my own memories and reflections. I mean, sometimes that's actually staring out the window. Cause I'm thinking deeply and that's a slower process. ⁓ I believe it really serves us well to do that. So it's really interesting to me, this paradox of needing to slow down in order to accelerate effectively. ⁓ because there's so much pressure to move so fast. And I think I've had a feeling I've seen other leaders kind of engage with generative AI in a way that feels like it's all about operational efficiency and automation. And yes, it can do those things really well in many use cases. But to your point, there are certain areas that in a way need to be carved out and where the pace actually Like we benefit by slowing down the pace, even though it feels really unfamiliar and almost counterproductive. And I like what you said about like sometimes you just need to look out the window. You have to be in contact with your own memories, your own, I would say, like context and experience and even emotions that allow you to bring your best thinking, your original thinking, into all of these, you know. products and offerings and contributions that you're making. And so I guess what I'd love to know from you is a little bit more of how you catch yourself in those moments. Cause I imagine they may still come from time to time where you're like, ⁓ this is one of those moments where I need to slow down a little bit and protect some space. Mm-hmm. ⁓ how do you notice that moment and sort of stay in contact with your agency? You know, earlier I was talking about having a meditation practice and I feel like that serves me really well in those moments that you're talking about because it's that ability when you are trying to clear your mind. And of course your mind is gonna wander. But how do you bring it back lovingly without judgment and just re let's like like let's come back. Let's just redo that. And it's a it feels similar to what happens when I notice that I'm getting carried away with something. Mm-hmm. Like, okay, bring it back. And that it's okay to bring it back and go, just pause. Feels similar to me. Yeah. I love that. You know, there's such an interesting connection between mindfulness more broadly and what it takes in those moments to shift your attention just a little bit, right? And protect that space. You know, it makes me think like AI is like It's almost like jet fuel for the overthinking mind. You know, it's like, there's all this stuff we could do. There's an infinite horizon of possibility. Everybody's moving fast. There's an enormous capacity to amplify whatever it is that you want. And then the question is like, ⁓ God, am I doing enough? Am I doing it right? Am I saying enough? Am I utilizing the tool to the fullest? So there's this like massive energy underneath and behind everything that we're doing now. But that in a way amplifies Maybe the voice that says, You're not doing enough, or are you doing this right? Or ⁓ you know, here's how you could be more productive. And so for many of us who, especially in the Western world, who have pretty high, like overfunctioning thoughts and minds, and that's certainly not just the Western world, but for many of us as humans, I think it's interesting how that kind of throws fuel onto that fire of the the inner conversation that we're having. But I do think that that's why it's so important, just like it has been forever, to have practices that allow us to slow down and become more present. And I know that that used to be considered a bit more like woo-woo. I don't think it is anymore. I think it's pretty mainstream now. You have so many tools and practices now in the workplace that are supporting mindfulness because there are such clear quantifiable benefits. And I don't know how much, you know, conversation is happening around the intersection of mindfulness and AI, though I know there are good conversations. There's at least some good conversations happening there. But there's such an interesting connection, I think, to make ⁓ not just to mindfulness as a personal or spiritual practice, but to mindfulness as a leadership capacity that's critically important to carve out agency in these moments of original thought. And critical decision making, that's not a nice to have. That's not sitting on a cushion because you know you think it's a nice thing to do. That's like a a fierce and needed practice of leadership. So curious to hear any more of your thoughts on that. No, I absolutely I love hearing you talk about that. It's I I want to hear more people talk about that. There's such a direct correlation, and we're going to start seeing it. more and more because of course the more that people engage with generative AI, the more they outsource their thinking, ⁓ that erodes even further, right? And and we need and it it's the same thing that we we need that to be able to ⁓ keep ourselves in check. And yet it's it could be a vicious circle, if you know what I mean. The way that we that we outsource. our our agency and ⁓ mindfulness has to come in and we we we know that our our little human brains are equipped for you know living in a village of a few hundred people our our brains haven't actually evolved that much in how they fire so ⁓ and the change around us is exponential and the amount of change that we're gonna see in our lifetime Dan is going to it's on an exponential curve up and up and up. We're just at the beginning Of a massive amount of change, if you can believe it. So of course this has to come in. ⁓ I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know what's gonna happen if we don't, but we gotta slow down. Yeah, and just to add to that, like one of the things I've been researching a fair amount recently is this idea of cognitive offloading and the tendency toward cognitive surrender. Which is basically, you know, cognitive offloading is simple stuff like, ⁓ I don't remember my phone number because it's in my phone, or I don't remember how to get where I'm going 'cause I'm using Google Maps. Like basic offloading to tech technology, which makes sense because like that's what technology is for, is to make our lives easier. But one of the things that I've seen in myself and and also heard from others can happen is, you know, it's the same tendency, the same pattern is at play with AI as we're engaging with it. But AI is fundamentally different because AI is helping us make important strategic decisions. It's helping us think, it's helping us decide, it's helping us understand and make sense of the world. And so it's a lot closer to that place of agency in us. And that's why cult you know, sort of the the offloading that we're doing ⁓ to generative AI and the sort of cognitive ⁓ surrender that can come from that is particularly unsettling for me because this is technology that's becoming smarter and smarter and smarter to the point where it's going to be more intelligent generally than most people ⁓ very soon. And as that happens, how do we stay connected to our own agency and agenda for our lives? How do we remain the protagonist of our own story rather than You know, just being a character in some other world that we've been recruited into or manipulated into. And so I you know, on this show, of course, I'm always very thoughtful not to get pulled too far in the direction of hype or doom. But I think it is it's very important still to note what feels like a real tension in me, in us ⁓ as leaders, in terms of how we retain and protect and cultivate and invest in. that human capacity even as we're engaging with more and more intelligent systems. Mm-hmm. I think we have to fire our imagination far more than we do. And we need to work on our memory. ⁓ I I for one have been doing that these days. I actually have a memory app that I work with. I I put away all the phone games, all my word games, all the and I now only use a memory app. If I have that urge to just have that little dopamine hit or, you know, like ⁓ take a break in that way. And it's been ⁓ teaching me different ways of engaging my imagination to support my memory. We talk like memory palaces, that kind of thing. It feels like that kind of awareness is going to be what leaders need. I'm experimenting on myself right now. can you say a little bit more about why memory is so important? Well, let's think about AI. If you in just I mean, and we've been now using as humans, ⁓ using like asking Google for twenty twenty years now, right? Yeah. If you ⁓ just ask Google. Okay, you don't have to remember, you could just look it up again. Well, now we have that. times a hundred with AI and the ⁓ the amount of information that you can quickly have at your fingertips. So the distance between asking a question and then finding out the answer, it it becomes instant. And again, we lose that friction of thinking and wondering. There's something about that and I I I couldn't name what it is at this point, but I feel strongly that there's some importance around actually having some distance and friction and working for that answer. So in in that space Our imagination would usually be firing. And we are closing that gap more and more and more. And so how do we access our own creative ideas, our intuition, if we're just quickly going to ask out to outsource that and to ask it of of a tool? Mm-hmm. Yeah, well I love that you're speaking to the process of learning or the process of insight rather than just the outcome of it because When you circumvent that process, then suddenly you've lost the the grappling, the meaning, the meaning making of the journey that got you there. And that's so much of what is retained in memory is that journey. That's why it's retained. When you circumvent it, then I think you also have a much harder time remembering what it is you created. They've done studies on this showing that people using generative AI to create an outp an outcome, like a you know, written article or something. They can't even remember what they wrote, you know, if it didn't involve a process of sitting with that friction and a journey of learning about the topic along the way. So I think that's really that's a really critical component that we don't talk a lot about. ⁓ and that kind of brings to mind like, what else are we not talking a lot about in this space that you think is important in terms of AI and leadership? Mm-hmm. ⁓ Well, I just thought of you know, another piece that is kind of related is I've also been experimenting with having a day a week of to just totally unplug. Yeah. You know, ⁓ pick a day on the weekend and just not that I don't look at my phone at all, but I'm I'm I'm genuinely not on my laptop. I'm not trying to work, I'm not asking like I love, don't get me wrong, I love needing to know. If I have a a ⁓ curious idea and a very curious mind, I love, love, love the satisfaction of just being able to find out. So it's not easy. I don't find it easy at all to just let that go and just be. Right? But I mean, it is great to have a day where the housework maybe gets done and maybe some meal prep happens. Like there's we have to take care of our our humanness. So I think one of the things we could be talking about more is in that idea of of you know human human first AI, ⁓ like hum what is it what does that actually mean and what does that look like in in our daily lives? Like we talk about one of the the pillars that I have in in my in my AI work for when you when you should or shouldn't use AI, we look at using it to reduce workload, protecting our values, and then strengthening the human connection. I'd love to hear people talk more about what does that actually mean to strengthen the human connection. Yeah. Yeah. And can you share an example for you about like what does that mean for you or what have you seen in a team that you've worked with that has done that well? Well, there ⁓ I'm in I'm in British Columbia and there's a group here called the ⁓ BC AI ecosystem. run by Chris Krug, ⁓ based out of Vancouver, but spreading widely. And I love the way that that he as a leader is bringing people together in in-person spaces to talk about AI. So there's a a big monthly ⁓ meetup group, a couple hundred people and and speak and it's the the community building aspect of it is very strong. And it's intentionally I know that he's intentionally doing that way, doing it that way, to actually foster a sense of community across all the sectors where people can come together that wouldn't otherwise do that. So that I mean, I think that's an example of leadership that is really leaning in to that the human first connection in this in this era. Yeah. That's great to hear. So then as we circle back, like you talked about helping us to live our values as well. I'm really curious if you could share an example of that or what does it look like to leverage AI to help us bring our values more fully into our work. Mm-hmm. Well, the work that I do is with ⁓ nonprofits and and in the social impact space in general, and especially nonprofits, they all have a value statement. Mostly on their website, you know, you could see their vision, their mission, and their value statement or their their principles. So one of the things I do is I help them look at what those principles or b or or values are and map their AI use to those. as a decision making tool. And I absolutely believe we can all do these for our the do do this for ourselves as well, personally. And that we need to, you know, get in touch with ourselves enough that we can recognize what that is. So in the case of a a nonprofit, ⁓ say one of their one of their values might be transparency. That's a common one. Okay, so how do we map that to an AI policy? Well we could Put that policy on the website publicly where people can see it and that's transparent. It might mean ⁓ if collaboration is a value, okay, you're not writing this policy on your own. We're we're consulting all levels of of the staff and board and how do we collaborate around creating this ⁓ how we're using it. Now for ourselves, I think about I think about your earlier question and How do I not use AI? And for me, I really value one-on-one personal connections and connection building. So I don't want to offsource my my writing, you know, a personal email. I don't want to offsource that to an agent or to an AI tool. I I really value that. And I know that because when I consider doing it, when I consider, ⁓ I could just, you know. Have AI draft this for me, great. That would be convenient. Well, I feel uncomfortable. You know, I have to be self-aware enough to go, ⁓ just something in me and my integrity feels a little bit off. And like sure there's places where in a in a draft, you know, help me say this better, great. You can you can play around with that. But there's a line for me, and I know it because I'll feel out of integrity and we all have a different way of knowing what that feels like in our body, I think. And back to the mind piece, we have to be aware of what that is for us personally. So we can make be making those decisions as leaders, just as good humans to be living in our integrity with how we're choosing to use these tools. Something that I've thought a lot about is wise leadership. You talk about like responsible use of AI. I think of wise leadership to your point. as in part being aware of what's actually happening in your body because that can help guide us, but also being aware of the context that we have, the relational context, the informational context, the situational context, but also our experiential connection to the terrain that we're operating in. And all of this to me feels like it's critically important to support leaders to make wise decisions and to guide their teams and their organizations effectively. And I'm curious, particularly around that embodied piece, because you talk about the connection to your mindfulness practice and awareness of when something doesn't quite feel right in you. Like, can you give me an example of what what did that actually feel like and how did you know to pay attention to it? And what did you do as a result? I believe I ⁓ I use the word intuition. I'm sure there's another word we might use, you know, but it what I'm speaking of is that we all have a different capacity to be able to mm now how do I want to say this? Somatically in the body, we're all different, right? And so for some people that's gonna maybe feel like a discomfort in their stomach. Might feel like like a churning feeling. Other people it's gonna feel like maybe tingles on the back of their neck. Other people there's just a sense of like stuckness. We're all so different, you know? Maybe somebody else has a a little voice on their shoulder that's like, mm mm, how about you know, and that those voices that we can kind of have in our in our imagin are they on our shoulders, are they in our head, in our imagination? Does it matter? They're there, right? And they're they're probably there for a reason. So I think it shows up differently for everybody. Yeah. I appreciate that. And I think the key is then identifying that moment of choice, like as it's happening, where you're like, whoa, I'm feeling something. I'm gonna take a beat and then I'm gonna reassess. Yeah. ⁓ from a deeper place of connection. Yeah. And it's so not easy to do that in our fast-paced, busy world where we're on a deadline, you just have to get something done. You know, it makes me think about the workplaces that we have and it's easy enough for me to do. I work from home. Great. And it's quiet here. I can stand up, I can go for a walk, I can go to a different room, I can easily have a cup of tea, and I can redirect myself. But to do that in the works in the workplace, where you're surrounded by other people, that gets harder and harder. And I think one of the things that we will start seeing as we have AI come on the seam is well we know that the many systems of the world are are broken in many ways. And AI as a as the disruptor that it is, it's also kind of pointing out the things that aren't really working. So we're gonna see a lot of changes in the workplace and and in the physical structure of the workplace as well. And I hope that we'll take this opportunity where we can, if we're using AI to reduce workload, well, what are we gonna do with that freed up time? And could we be using it to maybe have a more serene workspace, to have the kind of workspace where you could have you know. Get up and take those moments to yourself and have a place to go to do that. Or a sort of more normalized yeah, more normalized flow in the workplace around being able to be introspective or have I dunno quiet spaces to go. I'm not sure what that would even look like. Mm-hmm. I worked at a co-working space once and they had a a mindfulness room, a meditation room. It was just this cute little place you could go in and sit down on the pillow on the carpet, and it was very serene in there and just have a moment. It was lovely. Yeah. So how do you think that leaders can cultivate that kind of environment, even if it's not like a physical room, which that sounds awesome, but in like really simple micro steps. Is there anything that you might recommend or that you have recommended to an executive director to build in some of this like a workplace environment that's not as prone to burnout? Mmm well I don't know but it's a direction that I'd love to go. I think about I think about my work in in AI as is kind of just the beginning. It's kind of a catalyst for ⁓ for change in many ways. And yeah, I'd love to do a deep dive into into what kind of a workplace redesign would look like. ⁓ there's an organization called Future of Good in the US. And I believe they're they're use they're going to a twenty hour work week. ⁓ because of the time that they are for their staff. Their staff are getting paid the same as they would as a full time, but they're going to a twenty hour work week and valuing that actually for those staff in the downtime that they have time to connect with family, they have t time to connect with their neighbors and that th this is nonprofit work and that those connections in that network in the time that you have actually leads to so much more value that you can then an insight that you then bring to your time in the workplace as well. So things like that are shifting. Wow. Yeah, that's a really interesting example. I've heard a number of ⁓ HR leaders in particular asking a similar question of what do we do to create the right incentives so that people embrace AI and do work quicker and and leverage it in all the ways, but don't feel like as they do that, that just means more is getting piled onto their plate. Because it's hard as you know as a leader to try to motivate your team when they're like, You're either gonna automate away my job or you're gonna, you know, give me more work because I've become more efficient. So I'm really curious about the changing incentives and the ways to acknowledge and honor like people's time and their their capacity to become more efficient while also becoming more effective, rather than just be you know sort of had the pile on effect. So that's a really interesting, kind of an extreme maybe example of like cutting the work week in half and saying, all right. But I'm I think what might happen in that environment, I would hope, is that they then embrace AI because they're like, wow, we you know we're really making the most of half the time. And that means, you know, I'm gonna set up all the various systems to operate. as effectively as possible and then I'm gonna bring a level of thinking and capacity back to my desk every day because I know I'm also getting restored and rebalanced in these other ways. So that's that's fascinating. Yeah, absolutely. And there's so much of the world that we've come to accept the way it is. And yeah, as I said, AI is really disrupting that. just gonna see more and more more change. Yeah. Well I think that's the the common thread through the conversation is that we're just at the tip of the iceberg now and there's so much yet to come. And so buckle up. and now is the time to be cultivating the practices and the habits and the behaviors that we want that are gonna guide us through this time of exponential acceleration. And it's not just about the game of how do I maximize my own effectiveness as a leader. It's also how do I look around and be in connection and be present with those around me because that's what it's all about, you know, and and human relationships are going to continue to be, I think, hugely important as these changes continue to unfold. And I think it's going to be really fascinating to see how we continue to embrace the unknown that's that's right in front of us. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. So thank you so much, Sarah. It's great to have you on the show today. Appreciate you taking the time. Yeah, thank you, Dan. It's great to be here. Love the work that you're doing. Likewise. Thanks for listening to Human Equilibrium. If this conversation sparks something for you, I invite you to keep exploring with me at humanequilibrium.ai. There you can find the field guide on wise leadership in the age of AI. Take the free human equilibrium assessment. and explore my work with leaders and teams to strengthen judgment, emotional clarity, and relational presence in an AI accelerated world. Until next time, stay curious, stay human, and lead wisely.