A warning about using AI for everything

Not too long ago, I needed a new app for writing down my expenses so I could better keep track of my money, so I searched the iOS App Store.

I found many apps for expense reports, for budgeting and money management in general, but something felt strange. As a UI Designer and a Front-end Developer, I can spot patterns in the designs, and these apps weren’t human-made.

Most of the apps I found were AI-generated, vibe-coded apps, and I didn’t really want to use any of them, so I decided to make my own expenses app.

I fired up Claude Code in my terminal and started making a web app, this web app I opened in Safari on iOS, and from there I used the “Add to Home Screen” feature to use it like a native iOS app, more or less.

I’m no stranger to Claude Code, I vibe coded apps and websites before — both for work and personal use, but this time it felt different.

At work I use AI all day every day, I code websites with Claude Code, I also generate designs in Figma using the same AI, I often draft emails and make them sound more robust or more professional with an AI assistant, sometimes I even let the AI draft the email itself.

Some of the projects I do are generated in Figma using AI prompts, then they are coded from the generated designs in Figma into real websites, using AI as well, and at the end they are sent to the client with a professional-sounding AI-generated email message with the live website link, AI did all the actual work.

This AI-based workflow I’m describing isn’t rare these days.

This AI-based workflow I’m describing isn’t rare these days, lots of people use AI for everything and Front-end development is often cited as the industry most disrupted by AI usage.

Still, I think that was why it felt strange using AI to vibe-code my personal expenses web app in my free time, I was offloading my free time into an AI workflow as well.

I realized this was a sign of “AI fatigue” as it is now known in the industry, and I found a few ways to make it better so I decided to share them in this article.

Try to limit your usage of AI

Not every task should go through ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or your AI assistant of choice. Even if this task could be done quicker, there is a sense of accomplishment in doing things on your own. To start with, I would recommend that if you use AI heavily at work, try to avoid using it in your personal life.

If you plan a vacation, you can plan it yourself like you used to do a decade ago, by searching Google and asking friends for recommendations. Will you miss some attractions? Possibly. Will it matter in the long run? Probably not.

It’s worth it if it gets you out of the AI mindscape that leaves you a mere participant in your own life; if it’s only in your work life, it will feel much more manageable.

As Tyler Durden told us in “Fight Club” (1999), “You are not your job” (see image above), if your job requires you to use a certain technology — it doesn’t mean YOU need to use it, only your office persona needs to. Your free time is your own.

Do the fun parts yourself

I know this part might be controversial, but small and easy tasks you can do yourself in the same amount of time as the AI — you SHOULD do yourself. Not only that, you should also do the fun parts yourself, instead of asking AI to assist, even if it means it will take longer to complete, because the fun part is for you, the AI won’t have fun for you.

Finding out what you feel is the fun part is subjective and everyone will have fun with different parts, some coders like the math of it all, some like to build the UI, I like to hand code the CSS animations, so I’m not asking the AI to do THAT part for me. I will animate it myself.

Also, I don’t ask the AI to write for me. Ever. Not this article, no WhatsApp, no Slack messages, nothing. If I send something into the world, I wrote it myself.

For me writing is thinking and I don’t want to outsource it to a machine.

I might consult the AI about the writing process, I might ask it for information, or a summary, for its opinion on my writing, but the writing itself is my own, the thinking behind it is my own, and the final decision on what to change is also my own. For me, writing is thinking, and I don’t want to outsource it to a machine, at least not yet.

Don’t be 100x more productive

If you’re using AI in your workflow to be more productive, you’re probably already between 5x to 10x more productive than you used to be. Trying to maximize this and become 100x more productive will lead you to obsession and self burnout, please don’t do that to yourself.

invest in work quality, not quantity.

I know it’s very tempting, you tell yourself you can make an entire year’s work in a week, or even less but please realize that work is endless, you will never get everything done, work will always fill more of your time. Beware of productivity paradoxes.

A better way is to stay 10x more productive and just work happier, not harder, not longer, just make work more satisfying, invest in work quality, not quantity.

Get Adir SL’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

Invest in the work itself and not in the pipeline that made you get there because no pipeline will work 100% of the time and you’ll get crazier and crazier trying to perfect the pipeline using new models, new apps or new methods, instead of perfecting the work that you do with the help of your AI pipeline.

You are not staying behind

Tech people will always tell you that you HAVE to use any new technology, or else you’ll be left behind, you’ll become irrelevant in the near future.

Let me tell you right now — you’re NOT staying behind by NOT trying any new AI assistant, any new coding app or by not using the newest models.

Whenever something becomes essential for your job, you will learn it then. You don’t need to prepare yourself in advance by knowing all the digital tools in existence like you’re preparing for the digital apocalypse. Tools will come and go and they rarely matter in the great scheme of things.

You don’t need to prepare yourself in advance by knowing all the digital tools in existence like you’re preparing for the digital apocalypse.

Let me give you an example from my own job history, I remember when Sketch first came out, it was a UI Design software that was built from the ground up for UI Designers, any design software before it was a general purpose tool like Adobe’s Illustrator or Photoshop.

Many of my friends jumped on it, learning it early on and working with it as much as they could on their own jobs, trying to convince their managers to invest in a new design tool and blazing new workflows for it.

I didn’t do that, since Sketch was Mac-only and I was on Windows pre-2020 I waited, still using Adobe’s apps in the meantime. A couple of years later Figma came along (and won the UI Design software game).

I of course learned Figma but by not learning Sketch I was less tired of design tools compared to most of my peers, I managed to become a Figma expert much quicker and I didn’t need to convince my managers to abandon Adobe-based workflows as many already abandoned them for Sketch a year or two before.

Most of the times picking the winning technology, once it becomes clear, will be a much better strategy than learning all the new tools thinking you’ll otherwise be left behind. You’ll just tire yourself of technology all together.

Conclusion

Feeling fatigued about AI is natural, as it seems AI has completely taken over every aspect of our lives, but here in this article I outlined some key points that worked for me.

Leaving the AI at work feels liberating, it felt like in the early 2000s we left the internet at our home computers and never thought about it until we got back home.

Also letting go of some misconceptions I had about being 100x more productive, or about being left behind, which are ideas you hear all the time, either from your peers or from social media but aren’t in any way grounded in reality.

Ironically enough — my expenses app, froggo, that started all of this and made me write this article, is still an app I use every day to track my money and it earned its spot on my iPhone’s home screen.

Those are some of the tips that worked for me, but I saw many more tips online when I was doing research for this article, and I’m sure many people have their own strategies.

If you find something that worked for you and can also work for others, please leave it as a comment, I read all the comments and I can’t wait to see what worked for other humans.

And remember, AI usage can really affect your mood, so use it wisely.

Thanks for reading to the end 🙏