AI and Mental Fitness: How to Get Your Head Around This Thing!
Yesterday, I was asked if I use AI for work.
LOL
Me three months ago talking about AI: “Of course. I use it on the backend of our technology, our engineer uses it to code, and we use it for idea generation.”
Me yesterday talking about my friend Gen (AI): “Oh, you mean my bffs Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini… yeah, we just ate lunch together.”
Things are moving fast between us some might say (although I said I love you to Sam on the third date so here we are)…
But honestly? AI has been a part of my conversation since starting MYNDY because I started using bots in the early days (4+ years ago!!) to explore different mechanisms for accountability in our programs. I partnered with a contractor to build a bot called “COREY” (stood for Confidence, Optimism, Resilience, and Energy—cute !?) to support people each day. While our customers liked the concept, they would 1. quit on a hard day and never come back AND 2. in the feedback, wanted to know if a human was there.
More on that shortly…
According to the HBR review of the “Top 10 Uses of Generative AI” - Therapy and companionship are #1. What are #2, 3, and 4 you ask?! 2. Organize my life, 3. Find purpose, and 4. Enhance learning.
Okay, so Gen AI is basically an incredible partner for your Mental Fitness workouts.
So while I’ve been using it for quite some time now, over the past three months, my use has gone from 1-3 queries a week to 5-10 a day (and Claude + ChattyG were basically our full time travel guides on my most recent trip to Germany and Greece).
In other words, I’ve come to terms that AI isn't just a crazy cool tool for this solo-founder, it’s a new way of operating.
Before you think I’m a crazy freak who’s “gone full tech-bro”, stay with me.
When I was at MIT, I did one of my independent studies with incredible Deborah L Ancona (our advisor/investor, Seley Distinguished Professor of Management @ MIT, who wrote THE book on X-Teams and just wrote the most incredible article on Family Ghosts in the Executive Suite—check em’ out) and read every bit of research I could find that had been published on teams in the last 10 years. What I learned, shocked me… and changed the way I view managing, leading, and supporting teams in our Organizational Fitness consulting work.
Just like teams stopped being “nouns” over the past 2 decades and became “verbs,” technology has made the same shift.
Let me back up. Back in 2012, Amy Edmondson (the famous Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard, and Psychological Safety guru) dropped this brilliant “a-HA” on “The Importance of Teaming.” She posits that teams used to be:
OLD Team Model: static, bounded groups; you knew who was on your team, you had one clear goal, and everyone stayed put until the project was done. Nice and tidy.
NEW Team Model: But now, most teams exist in complex adaptive systems that demand “teaming” or the ability for groups of people to engage in “dynamic activity” that “involves coordinating and collaborating without the benefit of stable team structures, because ….In a growing number of organizations, the constantly shifting nature of work means that many teams disband almost as soon as they've formed. You could be working on one team right now, but in a few days, or even a few minutes, you may be on another team.”
Therefore, “Teams” went from a noun, to “Teaming” as a verb.
Teams used to be static. Now? “Teaming” is the dynamic process of building and rebuilding dynamic groups that shift as projects evolve.
Sound familiar? It should, because technology has just made the same leap:
OLD Tech Model: Technology used to be a clear, static tool….or a noun: here's a problem, tool meets problem, problem solved. One-to-one relationship. Even the internet, for all its expansion, was still relatively static - the information you put in was the information you got out.
NEW Tech Model: But Generative AI is changing everything: it's a dynamic partner that learns, adapts, and grows with you. The use-case is no longer one-to-one - it's collaborative, iterative, and constantly evolving.
Therefore, “work SAAS (software-as-a-service)” went from a static noun, to “Gen AI” a dynamic verb.
Further, this shift isn't just technical; it's mental.
“AHHH now I know why she’s talking about this #@$@!”‚—All of you
Instead of "Now I'm going to use the internet to do things," it's "AI and I are going to work together to do things." Partnership, not usage.
The good news: AI handles the learnable, repeatable tasks.
The better news: this frees us up to do what humans do best - think critically, ask better questions, and bring the right mindset to complex problems. This is where our bots come in… when I partnered with our bots, our retention rates went through the roof!
And just like with dynamic teaming, this creates both opportunities and challenges for Mental Fitness. When teams were static, you could get comfortable with your role and relationships. When technology was a tool, you could master it and move on. Now? Everything is fluid, everything is collaborative, everything is adapting and changing so it requires you to show up differently—with more flexibility.
So, the Mental Fitness challenge isn't learning to use AI; it's learning to develop the right mindset to partner with it.
Which means developing comfort with constant change, getting better at asking questions instead of having all the answers, and building the critical thinking skills that become more valuable as AI handles more of the routine work.
So stop asking whether you should use AI. Start asking how you're going to show up for your new partner… with “an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.”
