Devices finish our sentences. Apps remind us to breathe. Algorithms predict what we want before we do. While AI promises efficiency, many of us feel more scattered, anxious, and disconnected than ever.
Still Human, by Chris Cage, offers an honest, often humorous exploration of what it means to stay mentally healthy, focused, and fully yourself in the age of artificial intelligence. Drawing on research, personal stories, and lessons from healthcare tech, endurance sports, and everyday life, he examines how AI is quietly reshaping our emotions, productivity, and sense of identity.
Inside, youâll learn:
Why âalways-onâ technology fuels restlessnessâand how to push back
The underrated role of rest, recovery, and imperfection in real productivity
How to use AI tools as co-pilots, not crutches
Practical ways to reclaim your attention, protect your energy, and set boundaries
Whether youâre a parent, professional, or simply feeling overwhelmed by pings, prompts, and predictions, Still Human gives you both perspective and tools to navigate this moment.
By the end, youâll walk away with clarity, confidence, and a plan to live wellâeven in a world that wants you optimized 24/7.
Devices finish our sentences. Apps remind us to breathe. Algorithms predict what we want before we do. While AI promises efficiency, many of us feel more scattered, anxious, and disconnected than ever.
Still Human, by Chris Cage, offers an honest, often humorous exploration of what it means to stay mentally healthy, focused, and fully yourself in the age of artificial intelligence. Drawing on research, personal stories, and lessons from healthcare tech, endurance sports, and everyday life, he examines how AI is quietly reshaping our emotions, productivity, and sense of identity.
Inside, youâll learn:
Why âalways-onâ technology fuels restlessnessâand how to push back
The underrated role of rest, recovery, and imperfection in real productivity
How to use AI tools as co-pilots, not crutches
Practical ways to reclaim your attention, protect your energy, and set boundaries
Whether youâre a parent, professional, or simply feeling overwhelmed by pings, prompts, and predictions, Still Human gives you both perspective and tools to navigate this moment.
By the end, youâll walk away with clarity, confidence, and a plan to live wellâeven in a world that wants you optimized 24/7.
Notifications, inboxes, endless browser tabs⌠Welcome to the modern panic room.
Letâs start with a quick thought experiment: imagine you are a hunter-gatherer, 200,000 years ago. You wake up. You forage. You might hunt a squirrel, avoid a saber-toothed tiger, make eye contact with two humans all day, and then go to sleep when the sun goes down. Simple life. High stakes, sure. But simple.
Now compare that to this morning: You wake up to five notifications before your feet hit the floor. Your smartwatch buzzes. Your workâs enterprise instant messaging solution is already pinging. You skim 37 new emails, forget to reply to the one that actually matters, toggle between calendar apps, check the weather, then open four browser tabs to catch up on the latest trends, none of which you actually read. You glance at a productivity app, update your to-do list, remember that you are out of coffee, and debate whether you have time to microwave your brain with one more podcast before your next meeting. It is 8:17 a.m. and your cortisol, your bodyâs built-in stress hormone, is already clocked in.
Welcome to modern life, where your brain, a beautifully evolved machine designed for scanning threats, navigating social dynamics, and solving real-world problems, is now trying to survive group chats, Google Docs, auto-scheduling AI, digital assistants, and TikTok recipes all at once.
Your Ancient Brain, Upgraded Poorly
This is not just a âbusy scheduleâ problem; it is an evolutionary mismatch.
Your brainâs core survival systems have not had a proper software update in about 50,000 years. It is still wired to detect threats such as lions, tigers, or bears and to notice rewards like ripe fruit or social approval. Now, instead of predators and campfire gossip, we have notifications, algorithmic timelines, and pop-ups. And your brain treats every notification as a potential signal worth reacting to.
It is running on what psychologists call the âStone Age Operating Systemâ [1], a metaphor for evolutionary mismatch, where ancient survival wiring meets endless modern stimuli. Psychologists describe this mismatch as the consequence of having neural systems evolved under ancestral conditions now struggling to adapt to 21st-century life. The rational part of your brain, prefrontal cortex, is constantly battling your limbic system, the emotional and reactive part, while both are getting ambushed daily by dopamine hits from likes, comments, calendar reminders, and whatever AI-generated nonsense your inbox coughed up overnight.
That evolutionary mismatch: between how our brains evolved and the world we live in now, is one of the biggest drivers of chronic mental fatigue.
We were designed to focus intensely on one thing at a time, with generous pauses for rest. But now we expect ourselves to answer emails mid-conversation, solve work problems in the middle of dinner, and use AI to brainstorm, outline, edit, and schedule content before our coffee even kicks in.
It is not that we are lazy or distracted. It is that we are overloaded and constantly being pulled in competing directions by tools that were designed to make us more efficient, but which ultimately end up demanding more from us instead. The mismatch between how our brains evolved and the world we live in now is one of the biggest drivers of chronic mental fatigue.
Caveman Brain versus Modern Brain
Your Brainâs Sticky Note Is Already Full
Here is a lesser-known fact: your working memory, the mental scratch pad where you juggle thoughts, is tiny [2]. And not in a small-brain kind of way; everyoneâs working memory comes fun-sized.
Basically, it is the brain equivalent of a Post-it note, not a 10-terabyte cloud server. When you overload it with incoming information, something falls off before you have had a chance to process it.
In a simpler world, you would use that sticky note to track one or two important things, like where the food is or which direction the predator went.
Today, it is holding your grocery list, your next link for a video call, that random password you just created, and the fact that you owe your boss an email that just fell off the note because another work chat notification came in.
When Technology Took Over the House
I understand this feeling intimately.
I have always been passionate about technology, not in a âbuild my own computerâ way, but in the sense that if a new tool promises to make life easier, I am eager to try it. Whether it is for managing my daily work, running The Mental Lens, helping my family, or simply streamlining household tasks, Iâve tested many. Often, it has been worth it. Mesh network for a remote work household? Game changer.
However, sometimes the obsession with improvement creates its own kind of chaos.
Take Alexa. As I mentioned earlier, I was an early adopter of the Echo devices. Initially, they felt magical. They play music, check the weather, and settle arguments about trivia. So I got another. And another. Bedroom, kitchen, home office, and even the bathroom.
But before long, the helpful devices created a wall of noise. My kids would shout commands, often hesitantly, and Alexawould respond in ways that were either confusing or just plain wrong. I would ask the kitchen Echo to start a cookie timer, but it would be the upstairs bedroom device that responded. Meanwhile, my phone buzzed with work notifications, my iPad dinged with reminders, and my laptops, plural, squealed for attention like caffeine-driven toddlers.
I found myself living in what I can only describe as a Digital Panic Room, surrounded by smart tools and automated systems meant to simplify life but actually scrambling my brain.
There were days I sincerely wanted to rip every Echo out of the wall, toss them in a box, and ship them back to 2015. Not because I dislike technology, but because I needed a break. I needed a chance to think without being prompted, buzzed, or scheduled.
Why Your Brain Short-Circuits
So, what is actually happening behind the scenes?
Every time you get a notification, your brain experiences a small spike in dopamine, a hit of novelty and anticipation. That is why it feels urgent to check it, even when you know it is just another shipping confirmation or reminder from your pharmacist.
And it is not just the dopamine; it is the fact that your brainâs âswitching costâ is high. Each new alert pulls your focus away from what is called âdeep workâ and back into reactive mode. Your brain has to unload one mental task and load another, like force-quitting apps in your mind. That is why you feel so scattered even after a âproductiveâ day. Research from the University of California, Irvine, found it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to regain focus after an interruption. Basically, you just paid 23 minutes to read three words and a cat meme. That is the âswitching costâ: the time and energy it takes to unload one mental task and load another.
Also, letâs not ignore the sensory noise. Sounds, lights, haptics, and screen flickers keep your nervous system on high alert. You are not imagining the exhaustion. Your fight-or-flight system never fully powers down.
Multiply that by 100 interactions a day, which is conservative, and your attention span suffers. Your brain gets stuck in task-switching mode, where instead of focusing intensely, it bounces from one shallow activity to the next, trying to put out fires and stay afloat.
Research has shown that task switching reduces productivity by up to 40% and increases stress and error rates [3]. That mental âloadingâ time, the effort required to shift gears, adds up fast.
And while tools like AI can automate tasks and reduce some friction, they do not eliminate the cost of constant decision-making. In fact, they sometimes increase it. Ever spent more time choosing an AI tool or tweaking its output than you would have spent just doing the task yourself?
Yeah. Same.
The Stress of Hyper-Productivity
The rise of AI, automation, and digital task management has transformed the landscape.
This pressure is not coming from nowhere; it is reinforced by how our tools are designed. Many apps and platforms rely on attention economics: the more time you spend engaged, the more valuable you are. You are not just using the technology; itâs using you.
Now, instead of focusing on meaning or quality, we often default to speed and output. And that pace? It is not built for a nervous system evolved to take naps under trees.
Yes, AI is incredibly beneficial. It saves time, accelerates research, and automates the tedious tasks. But here is the catch: it also sets higher expectations for what we expect of ourselves.
Suddenly, âgood enoughâ no longer feels sufficient.
If a machine can summarize a report in 30 seconds, why did it take you 30 minutes?
If you are not using AI to streamline your day, are you falling behind?
If others are rapidly producing polished blogs, workflows, content calendars, and pitch decks in record time⌠what is wrong with you?
Nothing.
What is wrong is the unspoken pressure we are all absorbing; that in a world of intelligent systems, humans need to keep proving their worth.
So we start pushing harder and doing more. Checking more boxes. Chasing that elusive feeling of control. But here is the psychological reality: the more you optimize everything, the less your brain has to rest. And the less your brain rests, the more it short-circuits.
The hard truth: you are not meant to be a machine.
And trying to live like one will break you.
The Human Cost: Beyond Tired
The result of this constant pressure is what psychologists call cognitive overload: too much information, too many decisions, and not enough recovery.
It shows up as:
Forgetting why you opened your browser. You know the feeling: mid-sentence, mid-thought, and then, poof, it is gone, like a soap bubble popping before you can grab it.
Feeling anxious with every alert, ping, vibration, and notification.
Struggling to focus, even on things you enjoy.
Going numb from endless lists. Even âfunâ ones.
Snapping at people you care about.
Long-term, it does not just make you tired.
It can shrink your attention span, raise baseline stress, and dull your capacity for joy. Chronic stress can even alter brain structure. Studies using MRI scans have shown that high cortisol levels can reduce the volume of the hippocampus, the region involved in learning and memory.
When your nervous system spends all day reacting, it forgets how to rest. And when rest disappears, creativity is usually the first casualty.
So What Do We Do?
The good news is that the solution is not to abandon all technology and live in the woods. Although letâs be honest, that sounds appealing on some days.
You do not need to overhaul your life. You do not need to delete every app, go off-grid, or become a digital minimalist, unless you want to. But you do need to experiment with boundaries. Small ones. Quiet ones. Like turning off just one notification category. Or building a five-minute gap before opening your email. Or using technology to enforce limits instead of erasing them.
It is about awareness.
About understanding that your brain is not meant to handle this volume of input and permitting yourself to create space.
It is also about redefining productivity as something that serves your mental health, not competes with it.
In this book, we are going to explore how to build a more human-centered approach to productivity. One that respects your biology, leverages technology wisely, and creates space for clarity and calm.
We will explore ways to use AI without feeling like a robot. How to design systems that support your brain and how to reclaim the parts of yourself that do not fit in an app.
But it starts with the fact that if you feel like you are falling behind, it is not because you are broken. It is because the world is demanding more than your brain was ever designed to give.
If you feel like your brain is running on low battery by 10 a.m., it is not a personal failure. It is biology trying to survive in a modern world.
Clarity Check-In
Take a moment to scan your current digital life:
Which tools or devices genuinely support your well-being and productivity?
Which ones leave you feeling more scattered, stressed, or drained, even if they are marketed to âhelpâ?
When you think about your typical day, which alerts or notifications feel urgent but rarely matter?
If your brain could write you a one-sentence message today, what would it say?
How does your body feel during heavy screen use? Tense shoulders, racing heart, tired eyes? What might that be telling you?
If you could protect one part of your day from the digital world, what would it be? Mornings, meals, evenings, or rest?
Experiment: Pick one âmaybe helpfulâ app, device, or alert and turn it off for 24 hours. Pay attention not just to what is missing, but to what shows up in its place: a calmer morning, fewer distractions, a surprising burst of focus.
Write it down. Donât overthink it. Just listen.
The threats that AI poses are real, and Chris Cageâs Still Human comes as a pamphlet of survival tips from a knowledge worker and a concerned parent. Cage does not treat AI as a saviour or threat; it could be both, and hence we need to be aware of its strength and its deadly traps.
The book is divided into three parts: beginning with diagnosing the cognitive toll of being âever presentâ and tools and frameworks to redesign work models that better align with our brains, and finally confronting what makes us human and remains human in this AI-saturated world.
.
Cage makes deliberate attempts to differentiate between output and peace, dismantling the assumption that efficiency leads to well-being. The concept of âproductivity theaterââwork that looks impressive to watch but contributes nothing meaningful forward - is a theme that will resonate strongly with readers embedded in knowledge work and remote-first cultures.
The book does not offer massive transformation hacks that are common to these self-help genres. There are practical frameworks of time-blocking, in-app notification boundaries, deliberate rest, no-AI zones, etc., which are familiar to most readers and modest by design. The intentions behind the book were not to win at productivity but to help readers feel less frustrated about the wars with their own attention.
Anecdotal narratives, metaphors, and gentle humor heavily drive the book. The readers should be warned that the book is not one that can offer a sharper critique, systemic analysis, or political awareness.
Ultimately, Still Human succeeds because it raises a louder question than most books about AI dare to raise: not what machines will become, but what kind of humans we want to remain in this dystopia. Cageâs answer is neither nostalgic nor utopian. It is grounded, imperfect, and refreshingly humane, and it comes in listicles.