Conventional wisdom says burnout comes from overwork, so AI making us 2-100x faster should eliminate it. But that's a seductive lie. As a repeat founder and new dad, I had 100+ article drafts and 50 side projects waiting for "someday." Claude teased: maybe you can do it all now! I started YOLO-ing projects between meetings, queuing AI in 5-minute increments. It worked—10X'd my ambition to spin more plates. Soon I had 40 proof-of-concept projects and growing burnout. Each was a new open loop, a new responsibility. I used AI to reduce work, then invented endless make-work.

Greg McKeown's *Essentialism* argues for doing less, but better—critical in the AI age. Instead of expanding horizontally, go vertical on what matters: focus and follow-through. I stopped rushing a "Sesame Street Simple" article, realizing it deserved A+ effort, not B-.

Garry Tan notes the difference between 99% and 100% eclipse is visually 100x—a cloud dimming vs. eerie night. That last 1% may take 50-90% of total time, but AI removes the excuse to skip it. Ruthless focus on few projects, then follow through. Publish fewer articles, go deeper. No one should burn out in the AI era—the point was to offload labor so we can be more human.