Most people don’t wake up thinking, I should try harder today.  They wake up already tired, already behind, already running through a mental list of emails, meetings, and decisions waiting for them. And somewhere in the middle of the day, often quietly, a question shows up: Why does this feel so hard when I’m doing everything I’m supposed to be doing? I hear versions of that story everywhere. People are trying harder, caring deeply, putting in more hours, yet feeling like wor

A few years ago, I was sitting across from a senior executive at a Fortune 100 company. Smart, respected, clearly successful. In the middle of the conversation, they leaned back, rubbed their temples, and said something that stopped me in my tracks: “I’ve never had better tools… and I’ve never been worse at thinking.” That sentence has stayed with me, because it captures what so many people are quietly feeling at work right now. We were told technology would make everything e