---

How to Stay Sane and Human in the Age of AI

Have you ever tried to remember a phone number lately? Or struggled to find a meeting spot without GPS?
Probably not. And if you’ve never scrubbed laundry on a washboard, well — your grandmother might still have. Washing machines, smartphones, Google Maps… these aren’t just inventions; they’re small miracles.

But what happens when artificial intelligence (AI) pushes convenience to a level where we barely have to do anything at all?

In The Road Less Travelled, Scott Peck once argued that doing nothing is evil. Harsh, maybe, but he was on to something: as Aristotle wrote, humans are teleological beings — creatures who need goals to stay sane. Our brains are built around the dopamine hit of moving toward something difficult.

We are wired to struggle.
And in a world where friction quietly disappears, so does something essential about being human. Let’s look at some of the reasons and possible remedies.

Table of Contents

• The Danger of a Frictionless Life
• AI and the Erosion of Meaning
• The Happiness Paradox
• Reclaiming Effort: The Antidote
  1. The 2% Rule
  2. Embrace Boredom and Silence
  3. Practice Contentment and Wu-Wei
  4. Choose Human Interaction Over Automation
  5. Do Something Badly on Purpose
  6. Build Something Physical, Slowly
  7. Introduce Tiny Frictions Into Your Digital Life
  8. Reclaim Real-World Navigation
  9. Practice “Manual Mode” Once a Day
  10. Slow Conversations: The Antidote to Digital Speed
  11. Meaningful Micro-Challenges
  12. Reconnect with Nature (Without Tracking It)
• Can AI Save Us from AI?
• Conclusion: Find the Struggle That Keeps You Human

---

The Danger of a Frictionless Life

AI, automation, instant everything — these things are wonderful. But they also create a strange psychological trap.

Comfort Creep

As life gets easier, our expectations expand quietly and endlessly.
A slow-loading website feels like a personal insult.
A coffee machine taking 25 seconds? Intolerable.
A grieving friend needing time? “Ugh, hurry up.”

When everything is optimized for convenience, even small inconveniences feel enormous.

Problem Creep

Psychology shows that when the number of real problems in life drops, our brains simply downgrade neutral experiences into “problems” to fill the quota.

This is why “first world problems” feel emotionally real, even though they’re objectively ridiculous.
Our nervous system evolved for scarcity, fear, effort, and uncertainty — not abundant comfort and infinite entertainment.

---

AI and the Erosion of Meaning

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
The easier life becomes, the less meaningful it tends to feel.

It’s not that AI will destroy our humanity.
It’s that it might make us comfortable, and comfort — in excess — quietly dissolves purpose.

Of course everybody understands that when AI takes our jobs, our purpose is gone. Well, it does not have to be, as the job might not have been fulfilling and we might find purpose in things like gardening or caring for our old parents (if we can afford it), but that’s a different discussion.

For the purpose of this post let’s have a look at drawing. I’ve always felt inferior next to animator colleagues. My sketches were never great. But working through the awful early attempts, the bad lines, the lumpy shapes, the boring and the tedious taught me something precious: effort builds appreciation.

So when I see actual masterpieces I bow not only to the beauty, but also to the struggle of building the skills.

When AI generates a stunning image in four seconds, I sometimes ask myself:

• Did I make this?
• Yes, I did come up with the prompt, but does it even feel like it’s “my work”?
• What happens if nobody needs to struggle to draw again?
• Will the next generation be movie directors without ever filming a terrible short with a shaky camera and bad audio?

It’s the same with any (creative) endeavor – Anne Lamott famously coined the “Shitty First Drafts” concept encouraging us to embrace the messiness.
If we outsource the messy, awkward, formative parts of creativity to AI… what remains of the meaning? And can we still (motivate ourselves and our kids to) learn and improve?

---

The Happiness Paradox: Why Easier Often Feels Worse

Modern dissatisfaction — that faint tug of “not enough” on a perfectly fine Saturday afternoon — is often just biology reacting to excessive convenience.

Our ancestors walked long distances, faced cold and heat, hunted, gathered, dealt with uncertainty, interacted constantly. They were alive in a sensory and cognitive way that most of us rarely are.

Our environment has changed dramatically.
Our brains have not.

This mismatch is why:

• scrolling leaves us hollow,
• too much ease feels depressing,
• VR goggles promising “infinite joy” seem more dystopian than fun (‘Matrix movie‘ style personalized alternative reality pleasures, while our bodies rot in in a soup of non-movement),
• and why the Wall-E future (humans turned into funny, yet useless blobs) suddenly feels a little too plausible.

---

Reclaiming Effort: The Antidote to a Meaning-Drained Life

The goal isn’t to throw away AI. I still believe it can be very beneficial to human kind, e.g. helping with medical treatments or new chemistry/physics.

However, we have to prevent it from making us degenerate.

Here are 12 ideas to stay human, sane, and mentally strong in an automated world – looking forward to reading your ideas in the comments of this post:

---

1. Follow the 2% Rule: Choose Slight Discomfort

You don’t need to climb mountains. You just need to make slightly harder choices daily — the ones 98% of people avoid.

• Take the stairs.
• Park farther away.
• Carry groceries instead of grabbing a cart.
• Try rucking (walking with light weight).

These are tiny physical frictions that restore something primal.
Effort becomes a signal to the nervous system:

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

---

2. Embrace Boredom and Silence

In a world that keeps getting louder, boredom has become a superpower.

When you resist grabbing your phone the moment you feel a bit uncomfortable, the mind starts doing what it evolved for:
reflecting, integrating, imagining, understanding.

Silence is the reset button we’ve forgotten exists.

Good ideas rarely come when you’re overstimulated.
They come while walking back to the car, in the shower, in the quiet moments where the mind is allowed to roam.

Reflection is a form of investing your dopamine rather than leaking it through endless scrolling or binging on chocolate muffins.

In this video Anna Lembke explains the dopamine (pleasure/pain) seesaw and why we need more friction.

---

3. Practice Contentment and Wu Wei (Effortless Action)

The endless cycle of desire → acquire → desire more is a trap.
Contentment is the emotion of enoughness.

Taoist Wu Wei isn’t about laziness; it’s about aligned, harmonious action. It helps dissolve ego-driven striving that only leads to burnout.

True meaning often comes not from grand passions but from service — doing what needs to be done where you are, even if it’s humble.
Taking out the garbage with care can do more for your long-term well-being than another productivity hack or another purchase.

…it is a tough one though. The urge to own more stuff seems especially strong in children. Meditation, gratitude practices or getting into flow are some ways to cultivate contentment.

---

4. Choose Human Interaction Over Automation

Self-checkout. App-based ordering. Chatbots. The “ghost world” of convenience is everywhere — but every skipped human interaction removes a tiny piece of social friction that keeps us mentally healthy.

Try:

• ordering your coffee from a real barista,
• talking to the cashier instead of tapping through a screen,
• asking a human for help instead of searching endlessly,
• making eye contact.

Micro-interactions like these rebuild a sense of community and reinforce social confidence, something AI cannot replace. Humans need humans — even, well especially awkward, imperfect ones.

Human connection is the base for a meaningful, happy life:

---

5. Do Something Badly on Purpose

We’ve become intolerant of being beginners.
We expect perfection instantly — especially now that AI can do almost anything flawlessly on the first try.

But doing things badly is liberating.

Try:

• drawing badly,
• dancing in your kitchen,
• writing a poem you’ll never publish,
• singing even if your cat leaves the room.

When you allow yourself to be unskilled, you rebuild the emotional muscle of trying, which is more helpful than trying to be perfect.

---

6. Build Something Physical, Slowly

In a digital world, physical effort grounds us.

Pick something tactile and low-tech:

• cooking a meal from scratch,
• building a birdhouse,
• repairing something instead of replacing it,
• knitting,
• growing herbs.

Physical projects slow the mind, reintroduce patience, and reestablish the lost connection between effort and outcome. You feel the work in your hands — and the reward in your body.

It does make a difference in your mental framework when you actually accomplish some repair – especially if you had considered yourself useless in that regard.

---

7. Introduce Tiny Frictions Into Your Digital Life

You don’t need to delete all apps — just make them slightly harder to access.

Ideas:

• no phone in the bathroom,
• remove addictive apps from your home screen,
• use a grayscale display,
• keep your phone in another room while working.

These micro-frictions help regulate dopamine and restore a degree of intentionality that AI-driven “infinite scroll” tries to extinguish.

Digital detox.

---

8. Reclaim Real-World Navigation

Let yourself get a little lost.
Let your brain build a map.

Try:

• navigating without GPS for short, familiar routes,
• paying attention to landmarks,
• choosing a new path home.

Rebuilding spatial awareness enhances memory, creativity, and independence — all traits slowly eroding in the hyper-automated era.

---

9. Practice “Manual Mode” Once a Day

Pick one thing per day to do manually, even if AI could do it better.

Examples:

• write a paragraph without autocomplete,
• solve a problem without asking ChatGPT,
• brainstorm ideas on paper instead of with a model,
• do mental math,
• plan a weekly schedule by hand.

It’s not about efficiency — it’s about not letting convenience atrophy the cognitive muscles that give us agency.

---

10. Slow Conversations: The Antidote to Digital Speed

In the age of short-form, ultra-optimized messaging, slow conversation feels revolutionary.

Try:

• calling instead of texting,
• asking open-ended questions,
• listening without multitasking,
• having one “long talk” per week with someone who matters.

Deep conversation forces attention, empathy, emotional nuance — all things algorithms flatten.

---

11. Meaningful Micro-Challenges

Every few days, pick a challenge that’s slightly annoying, slightly uncomfortable, but entirely doable.

Examples:

• cold shower finish,
• walking 10 minutes before checking messages in the morning,
• a “no complaint” day,
• carrying all groceries in one go (hero mode),
• learning a new word and using it twice that day.

These tiny self-assigned challenges reinforce agency and self-discipline in a world that increasingly removes both.

Or take it a step further and grow from doing hard things.

---

12. Reconnect with Nature (Without Tracking It)

Go for a walk without mapping your route, counting your steps, tracking your calories, or photographing anything.

Just walk.
Feel the cold.
Feel the warmth.
Listen to the chirps.
Let your senses recalibrate.

Your nervous system evolved outdoors. Nature is the original “operating system update.”

---

Can AI Save Us from AI?

Despite AI comfort and AI slop threatening our sanity, AI itself isn’t the villain.

It could even become our tutor (think AI assistants that push us to do the things that matter – e.g. data driven health Brian Johnson style) — nudging us toward healthier behaviour instead of trapping us in dopamine loops:

• reminding us to move,
• to talk to real people,
• to reflect,
• to pursue meaningful goals instead of easy ones.

The choice is ours. Kind of… as we have to overcome the parts of our mammalian brains, optimized to look for threats and to conserve energy.

---

Conclusion: Find the Struggle That Keeps You Human

The constant pursuit of comfort is like trying to build a sandcastle at the water’s edge — every wave of convenience washes away a bit more of the foundation.

Intentional struggle — the kind that aches a little and grows us — is like carrying the sand further up the beach.
The structure becomes stronger, more durable, more human.

AI isn’t here to steal our meaning. But AI will not provide meaning either.

For now, and for most of us, meaning still comes from the same ancient places:

Effort.
Connection.
Presence.
Service.
Struggle — the right kind.

The kind that reminds you that you’re alive.

---

Disclaimer: For this article I wrote down thoughts I had for quite a while, being amazed as well as intimidated by AI.
Then I made a ‘shitty first draft’ and ended up using AI to help sturcture and polish my German English sentences. Also AI was utilized to create most of the images (except for the first one). So I still feel very ambiguous about AI. Let’s all help build a humane future without brainrot, where we make sensible use of AI so we can look back in a couple of years and say “this AI thingy helped us become a better version of ourselves so we were able to make good decisions for our human societies as well as for other creatures and the planet, too.”