• I'm a lawyer who decided to work in AI to try to get ahead of this technological curve.
• Over the last two years, I've struggled to keep up because AI is advancing faster than I expected.
• I feel overwhelmed and burned out by the constant conversations around AI.

For most of my career, I was a lawyer. There was something reassuring about how expertise worked in law. The longer I practiced, the more I knew.

But after years in a demanding profession, I burned out. It wasn't that I stopped enjoying law. I just needed a change.

Around two years ago, I started shifting my career toward AI because I thought it was the future. I didn't want to wake up 10 years later and realize technology had changed my profession without me.

It seemed like the smartest career move I could make. Now, I'm not so sure.

Joining the AI boom early seemed like the perfect career move

I made the transition while the AI boom was still gaining momentum. Ironically, I landed a job at a legal tech company thanks to a conversation with ChatGPT. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine my experience with my growing interest in tech.

My role involved testing the most advanced models, comparing their capabilities, and exploring how they could be used in legal work. I felt like I was ahead of a major change rather than trying to catch up with it.

I also became the go-to person for anything AI-related among my family and friends. People would ask me which tools to use, whether AI would replace their jobs, or what I thought about the latest developments. I enjoyed being the person who seemed to understand something that everyone was suddenly talking about.

But that feeling didn't last as long as I expected. Slowly, I began to realize that this wasn't just another new technology. It was something evolving at an almost frightening pace. And being close to it didn't necessarily mean being able to keep up with it.

What initially felt like an advantage was gradually becoming a source of pressure.

Things that took me weeks to learn or build became obsolete almost overnight

New frontier AI models and companies seemed to arrive every few weeks, each promising capabilities that the previous lacked. Just as I began understanding one model, another would appear, forcing me to reconsider everything I thought I knew about what AI could and couldn't do. There was barely enough time to breathe before "the next big thing" came.

What frustrated me most was how quickly my own work could lose its value. I spent weeks developing solutions to problems that a newer model could suddenly solve within a few minutes. Things I had carefully learned a couple of months earlier became unnecessary after a single product announcement. It was strange to put so much effort into something only to discover that the technology had already overtaken me.

And the constant learning didn't stop when I finished work. AI was everywhere. It was in the news, on social media, in conversations with friends, and in almost every discussion about the future of work. Sometimes, after spending an entire day testing models, the last thing I wanted to hear about was another breakthrough.

Yet I still felt an obligation to read about it, afraid that missing a single development could leave me even further behind. I was getting tired.

Accepting uncertainty became the only way forward

For years, I had measured my professional progress by how much I knew and how confident I felt about my abilities. AI challenged that completely. I began to question whether being good at my job meant knowing the latest developments or simply knowing how to adapt as everything changed. It was uncomfortable to accept that experience and hard work might not always provide the certainty I was used to.

I also started questioning how much of my personal time I was willing to sacrifice to stay relevant. I didn't want every conversation, evening, or weekend to become another opportunity to learn or talk about AI. I began making a conscious effort to disconnect after work, even if that meant missing an announcement or falling behind on the latest developments. For the first time, I was choosing not to know everything.

I don't regret moving into AI, but I no longer feel as certain about the decision as I once did. The technology isn't going to slow down. All I know for sure is that we are living through one of the most important inflection points in recent history, and perhaps that's what makes it all so overwhelming.

• I used to push myself at work, outearning myself year after year.
• When my dad died, and I heard how people talked about him, I reevaluated my approach.
• Now, I still make enough to cover what I need, but I'm living a fuller life.

I'm a reformed workaholic. I'd love to say I slowly came to realize that my value isn't monetary or based on how high I can climb a ladder, but that epiphany wasn't achieved in a growth-centric way. Instead, it was a surprising side effect of losing my dad suddenly in September 2024. He was there, and just like that, he was gone. And my willingness to burn myself out died that day, too.

In the flurry of administrative chaos and world-wrecking grief that follows sudden death, it took a while for me to notice the change. It was normal to work less while grieving. Except it's now almost two years later — and yes, I'm still very much grieving — but I am back in the flow of working. And it looks completely different.

I had been working hard for years

When I was balancing full-time teaching with a writing side hustle, I regularly pulled ridiculous hours, working from 7 am until late at night. Not only that, but I was also frequently working both weekend days and throughout school vacation. I even had an accident in May 2024 that put me out of work while my arm was in a sling to help the broken bones heal, but once I was back, I hit my highest earning month of all time. But then my dad died, and I just don't care the way I used to.

There wasn't an inheritance that suddenly made working optional. And it's not all-consuming depression either — the months that followed were immensely dark, but I'm doing really well from a mental health perspective now. Instead, there's been a reshuffling of priorities. My identity fundamentally shifted in 2024. I came entirely too close to dying in an accident while riding horses, where doctors couldn't fathom how I survived without paraplegia, and then, mere months later, my dad had a heart attack at 65.

The way people spoke about my dad made me want to live a fuller life

The eulogies poured in for my dad, who was a beloved doctor. Hundreds of people messaged us, telling stories of my dad's generosity, his kindness, adventurous spirit, talent, sense of humor, and utter chaos.

The sheer number of anecdotes was almost mythical, as it seemed impossible that someone could do so much with their time. My dad even started kitesurfing in his 50s because he thought it would be cool, and regularly drove hours out of town to reach the nearest dam to do it. His last kiting session was the week before he died. He was an astronomer, a chess player, an artist, a rugby fanatic, a dear friend, a dedicated husband, and the best dad anyone could wish for.

It made me look at my own life. I was out-earning myself, year after year. But I lived in a city that gave me little joy, and my hobbies were…well, just reading. And often, I was only reading self-help books to help me earn more or be more productive.

It's not that I took a step back from work. I just didn't step forward again. I have ongoing luxury travel copywriting clients. I still do a fair bit of journalism and a little bit of coaching essay writers. I ensure I earn enough to make ends meet — pay my mortgage, set aside money for my retirement, health insurance, and so on, but that's it. Once that goal is met each month, my foot comes off the accelerator, and I focus on life instead.

I moved to the coast and qualified as an advanced open water scuba diver. I knock off early on Fridays to hit the beach if it's a nice day, and I'm dabbling in surfing. I've started lifting weights. I have more friends than I've ever had before. I've started painting, and my guitar has been dusted off and tuned again.

I don't have it all worked out. I'm still trying to figure out what life without my dad can possibly look like. I just know how much life he crammed into the years he had, and the best way I can honor him is to try to do the same.