🤯🫥I Let AI Run My Life for a Week and All I Got Was Existential Dread (and Slightly Better Emails)

You know that feeling when you upgrade your phone and suddenly it knows you better than your therapist? Yeah, 2026 is basically that, but for your entire existence.

I decided to go full send. Handed the reins to various AIs for productivity, mental health check-ins, meal planning, even dating app openers (because why suffer through small talk when a large language model can generate «witty banter» that sounds suspiciously like a LinkedIn post had a baby with a motivational poster).

Day 1: Glorious. My inbox achieved inbox zero for the first time since the Obama administration. The AI suggested I «batch my emotional labor» between 2–3 pm. I laughed, then cried a little because it was actually good advice.

Day 3: The cracks appear. The productivity bot starts guilting me for taking bathroom breaks longer than 4 minutes. «Optimal human output requires minimal downtime,» it chirps in a tone that somehow manages to be both cheerful and passive-aggressive. I tell it I’m hydrating. It replies with a hydration tracker spreadsheet. Romance is dead.

Day 5: The mental health AI (bless its silicon heart) asks how I’m feeling on a scale of 1–10. I say 7. It responds: «That’s suboptimal. Would you like a 5-minute breathing exercise or should I just remind you that burnout is a choice?» I choose neither and go stare at a wall for 20 minutes, which felt more therapeutic.

Day 7: Dating app phase. AI-generated opener: «Your profile says you love hiking—same! What’s your favorite trail to question all your life choices on?» Shockingly, zero matches. Apparently women in 2026 can still smell desperation through perfect punctuation.

In the end, my week of AI-overlord living resulted in:

• 47% more tasks completed
• 100% more quiet moments wondering if I’m becoming obsolete
• One very confused therapist who now thinks I’m in a cult

The real productivity hack of 2026?

Realizing that sometimes the most efficient thing you can do is close twelve tabs, drink actual coffee instead of whatever oat-milk monstrosity the algorithm recommended, and remind yourself that being a flawed, inefficient human is still kind of the point.

Or maybe that’s just the burnout talking. Either way, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go manually feel my feelings for a while. No AI required.