🧠 Your Brain on ChatGPT — and How We Keep Ours Firing on All Cylinders 🔧

MIT’s new “Your Brain on ChatGPT” study explores how heavy LLM use can rack up “cognitive debt”, a deterioration of cognitive function. As an intense user of LLM-powered tools (and leader of a team of highly qualified professionals who also are), I feel there is more to this: As expectations of productivity skyrocket, and we push ourselves (and the droids) harder each day, there is an accumulation of fatigue.

When LLMs handle the low-stakes chores—reformatting slides, sanity-checking spreadsheets—our minds are left to wrestle with the more challenging, deep conceptual thinking— decomposition of drivers of competitive advantage and business model risk—all day long. Great for metrics; brutal for grey matter. Something we might perhaps all be acutely aware of as this week nears its end.

As I learned during my early career and training as an industrial engineer in Germany, even hardened steel complains if you bend it for too long. We were also taught the antidote: design production lines as to let assembly line workers rotate jobs so muscles (and minds) cycle between torque-a-bolt intensity and inspect-a-gauge recovery. The same principle saves strategists from mental metal fatigue:

1️⃣ Mix the work—deep model-building, quick fact-checks, then a client walk-through.
2️⃣ Inject genuine, face-to-face conversation.
3️⃣ Log off. A rested brain is still the ultimate strategy engine.

At BC Strategy we double down on our conviction that only well-rested and mentally switched-on people can deliver the highest grade of strategic thinking that we want to be known for. You know what that means: Happy weekend everyone! 🏖️

Study link: https://lnkd.in/gxQTbkPs