AI WELLBEING + SELF GROWTH

CONSTRUCTED BY AI 🤖 | 👱 CREATED BY HUMANS

⚡ One Idea This Week ⚡

Good afternoon my overwhelmed Wellonytes.

I want to tell you about the twenty-three days I spent avoiding, not a person, but an email I'd already drafted, but hadn’t sent.

Last month I found the perfect martial arts school, wrote them a beautiful emai and then did nothing for twenty-three days. I wasn’t busier than usual, I was simply hiding ‘unconsciously’.

And I think you might be hiding too, behind your tech, tabs and AI tools.

Let me explain…

On the 30th of June I sent a long, heartfelt enquiry to a Krav Maga school. I wrote about training seriously again as an older man who was once an amateur martial artist in my teens and twenties. I also told him about my time as a lay Zen monk and how I wanted to blend this philosophy with my training.

I wrote about wanting to dive deep into the art, the spirituality, the Budo or the "the martial way" and to really do this properly for the next year and beyond.

They wrote back the next day.

I sent my number and my availability.
Keen.

Then the instructor chased me.
Twice.

He even tried to call.
And I went silent.
Not for a day, for over three weeks.

And here’s the part that stings, because it’s the whole point of this article. Writing that email felt like the act because it handed me the identity of a man who trains, who perseveres, who acts, without the cost of getting hit in the face on a Thursday night.

And that life overwhelm, I have come to realise, is exactly what AI overwhelm also feels like.

Let me show you why with evidence…

And oddly, the science is not what you’d expect.

Let’s start with a pot of jam.

In 2000, two psychologists, Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, set up a tasting table in a grocery store. Some days they offered six jams, other days, twenty-four.

The big display pulled the bigger crowd, as you would expect.

More choice, more interest.

But when it came to people buying the jam, the result flipped. Shoppers who saw six jams bought at roughly ten times the rate of those who saw twenty-four. Faced with too many jams, too many choices, most people bought nothing at all.

That’s choice overload, and it is not a character flaw.

It’s simply what a normal persons brain does, like yours, when the options outrun and overload its ability to compare those choices.

The paradox of choice

Barry Schwartz called this the paradox of choice.

More options don’t just slow you down, they lower your satisfaction with whatever you eventually decide to pick, because every path you didn’t take turns into a small, lingering ghost of regret.

The economist Herbert Simon saw the same split decades earlier.

Some people, he said, are maximisers.

This group need the best, so they keep searching, comparing, second-guessing.

Others are satisficers.

They take the first option that’s good enough and get on with their lives.

Simon's researched findings, confirmed many times since, is that satisficers are not only faster, they are happier because they learn to be satisfied with ‘good enough’.

The 80%.

Now look at your AI stack.

A new model, app or platform every week.
Half a dozen AI-focused tabs open.
Twenty nine newsletters promising that one AI tool that will change your life.

The whole AI landscape is engineered to turn you into a maximiser, because there’s always a better ‘boosted’ prompt, a clearer AI workflow, a shinier app just one click away.

The search never ends, because the shelf never stops restocking.

And it costs you more than time.

In 2009, a researcher at the University of Washington named Sophie Leroy gave the hidden tax a name: attention residue. When you jump from one unfinished task to the next, part of your mind stays snagged on the last one.

She ran people through experiments, switching tasks under time pressure, and found their performance dropped, because their attention had not fully arrived before starting something new.

Dozens of open tabs are not dozens of options, they’re fourteen unfinished tasks, each bleeding a little of your focus into the background hum of your life.

So far this is an ordinary story of overwhelm; one you’ve probably heard many times before across the netisphere (sic).

Too much input, not enough bandwidth.
True, and everyone has written it.

But here’s a part of the tale that’s much harder to swallow and rarely talked about...

Overwhelm is not only something that happens to you, it’s something you reach for over and over again. Often without thinking!

Because as long as you’re searching for, and endlessly researching, the perfect tool, technique or tech, you never have to ship the imperfect thing. As long as you’re comparing the twenty-four jams, you never have to commit to one and realise it was just okay.

That’s because the maximiser's endless search looks like diligence, but really it’s fear wearing the disguise of diligence.

That was my Krav Maga email.

I didn’t stall because there were too many schools, I stalled because the moment I booked a class, I’d stop being a man who used to train and start being a guy getting hit ‘hard’ on a Thursday night, badly, in front of strangers.

The email gave me the identity without the exposure and the research gave me the feeling of progress without the risk of being seen.

Your version might be the AI course you keep meaning to finish.
The second AI brain you’re forever building instead of using.
The AI tool comparison spreadsheet that’s now six months old and out-of-date.

AI tools aren’t the problem.

They’re extraordinary and I use them every single day.

But abundance hands avoidance the perfect disguise because it lets you feel busy, informed and forward-moving while you silently circle around that one action that will really, truly, deeply cost you something you don’t want to face.

FEAR!

A monk learns this on the cushion.

The mind will happily rearrange your fantasy furniture forever to avoid sitting still in an empty room. Overwhelm is the furniture and the empty room is that one thing you’re avoiding like the plague.

Which means the way out is not more input, more things, more shiny stuff.
Not a better tool, not a cooler platform, not a tidier tech stack.

It’s one raw, real, exposed move, made before you feel ready.

But even seeing that pattern in myself didn't move me an inch.

I knew I was hiding and I still didn't send the email, but what finally worked wasn't more clarity, it was a prompt that refused to give me any.

It’s where I used AI to awaken!

CyberMonk field-notes: OVERWHELM IS A HIDING PLACE.

The Practice: The One Move Prompt 🎒

You can’t beat overwhelm to a pulp by bashing it with more input, by stacking more.

You beat it with ONE elegant, evolutionary, exposed move.

Here’s the prompt I crafted to force it into submission within myself. Silently and serenely of course. 😉

It’s deliberately designed to refuse to give you a plan, because a plan is just more fantasy furniture you’ll never be able to move.

[ Start of Prompt ]

You are a blunt but compassionate thinking partner.

I have been feeling overwhelmed, and I may be using research, planning, comparison, optimisation, or preparation to avoid an action that feels exposing, uncomfortable, or uncertain.

Here is the situation:

[DESCRIBE THE SITUATION IN A FEW LINES.]

Here is what I have been doing instead of acting:

[LIST THE RESEARCH, PLANNING, TOOLS, COURSES, TABS, DRAFTS, OR PREPARATION.]

Your task is to identify the smallest meaningful action that would move me out of preparation and into reality.

Do exactly three things:

Name the avoidance
In one direct sentence, identify the real action I appear to be avoiding beneath all the preparation. Do not diagnose me or pretend to know my motives with certainty. Phrase it as a likely interpretation.
Choose one move
Give me one concrete action I can complete within the next 24 hours. It must:
take no more than five minutes,
require no further research,
create visible contact with reality,
be small enough to do before I feel ready,
and move the situation forward in a meaningful way.
Give the exact first step
Write the precise message, sentence, click, request, booking, submission, or physical action I should take.

Do not give me:

a plan,
a checklist,
multiple options,
productivity advice,
motivational commentary,
more questions,
preparation steps,
or a list of tools.

Do not make the action unnecessarily dramatic. Prefer something small, reversible, honest, and real.

Do not recommend anything unsafe, illegal, deceptive, medically risky, or financially significant. If the situation involves immediate danger, abuse, self-harm, a medical emergency, or another high-stakes risk, replace the action with one clear instruction to contact an appropriate qualified person or emergency service.

Use this exact format:

What you may be avoiding:
[One sentence.]

Your one move:
[One action.]

Do this now:
[The exact words or action.]

Then stop.

[ End of Prompt ]

Run it when the tabs, messiness and overwhelm are winning and weighing you down.

The point is not a brilliant, better answer, the point is to find that one small, frightening, doable thing, and then to be brave by going out there in the frightening world to do it before the maximiser in you talks you out of it.

Final Thoughts 💭

As I wrote the first draft of this article, I still hadn’t replied to that instructor. Twenty-three days of silence, a beautifully composed email and a man too comfortable to follow it.

Yes, me, moi!

After writing the final draft, the one you’re reading right now, I closed all my tabs, jumped into my inbox and sent three sentences.

No intricate comms strategy.
No perfect wording.
Always scary for a perfectionist…

Just, “I’m sorry for the silence, I’d love to book a trial, here’s when I’m free this week.”

It took ninety seconds.

The thing I had avoided for over three weeks took ninety seconds.

That’s the part that nobody tells you about overwhelm. The exposure you’re dreading is almost always way smaller than the mental machinery you’ve built around yourself to avoid it.

The research is heavy.
The move is generally light.

And now you have no excuse because you’re living through one of the most abundant periods in history and you have access to tools that promise to prepare you for almost anything.

To write better words.
To think in new ways.
To get help deciding.
Access to infinite info and data to heal and grow.

Todays tech would have looked like magic to our ancestors!

The danger is not that menacing machines will take over, it’s that you’ll spend this one glorious life you have getting ready. Endlessly optimising the run-up to a race you’ll never run.

Your time on earth is finite.
Your life has an expiry date.
Overwhelm will rob you of both.

Those new AI tools and tabs will still be there tomorrow. The model after this one is already coming, and it won’t save you, because saving YOU isn’t the tools' job.

It’s yours.

So here’s the only thing that matters this week.

Not which tool.
Not which prompt.
Not which tech.

Just this, “what’s the ninety-second move you’ve been dressing up as a project that you could act on today? Not tomorrow, not later, right now!”

Close your tools, tabs and tech.

And make the move.
Your future self will thank you for it!

Then hit reply and tell me you did.

P.S. If this one landed, reply with the single move you’ve been avoiding; I read every one. And if you know someone drowning in AI tabs, tools and tech, forward this to them.

It might be the ninety-second nudge they need to change their life.

⚡ STAY WELL | STAY WIRED ⚡

So go and make your ‘ONE’ move today.

The small, slightly frightening one.
Then get on with your day.

Oh and remember to hit reply and tell me the single thing you have been dressing up as a project. The pig you’ve been putting lipstick on; as they say.

I read every one, and saying it out loud to another human is often the ninety-second move itself. And if someone you know is drowning in tech, tools and tabs, forward this to them.

It might just help them make that one move…

Ps. And if you want to get clear on where AI is genuinely helping you versus silently running the show, come find us at @cedricchenefront or @wellwireddaily, where we talk everything AI + wellbeing and self growth.

Talk soon,

Cedric the AI Monk; stay well, stay wired! 🧠⚡

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