To Decide or Not To Decide, That's The Question.
September 4th, 2026
Lately, I’ve been feeling exhausted more often than not. I was wondering where this exhaustion came from, and I decided to “investigate” (by “investigate” I mean that I just stopped and started talking to myself to identify what was wrong).
One of my discoveries is that, by working with AI, my life—which was supposed to be easier now—is now harder because I have to do one thing that I don’t care much for: decide things. Uncle Ben said that “with great power comes great responsibility,” and this has never been truer. Just like The Police’s Sting, every prompt we use, every question we ask, AI is watching me. And, what’s even worse, it always comes back with one or more questions or one or more things I have to decide.
You would think AI would make your life easier since it does things for you. But what we all forgot to account for is that AI does things, but it needs you to decide every single little detail until you get from point A to point B. That said, until you get to the end of your task, you have to micro-decide 1,000 different things. How should we call this? Where should we place this? Will we use A or B?
This multitude of madness and questions drains me. I was trained to follow orders and execute tasks just like a well-oiled machine. I wasn’t raised to be a decisive leader; I was raised to be the employee of the month in the colony. That’s part of my nature. I am not cut out to make decision after decision and guide people through hardships and all. Can I do it? Probably. Do I want to? No.
The thing is… AI has changed everything. Even our nature is being affected. Not that it’s changing us (not yet, at least), but it’s forcing us to be and do things that are not natural to us. I can’t be the happy camper anymore. I have to make decisions every day, all day. It feels like pushing YES/NO buttons every day.
I always thought higher positions required that ability. My leaders have to be the ones with the capacity and ability to guide and decide. That’s how it works in organizations. This is probably controversial, but if everybody starts thinking for themselves, we’ll be driven and drowned into chaos. That’s not what we want. I’m not saying we have to be just pawns in a larger game and accept any and everything thrown at us, but we generally have a limit to what we have to decide. But this limit is being pushed further and further. So, the intersection of all those boundary infringements is what is dangerous.
I am not the only one feeling this way. Even people who are much better leaders than I am are feeling it. If those who are used to leading and deciding can’t hold their own, will I be able to? Well… I’ll have to, but I promise I will not enjoy any step of the way.