It’s Not Fear. It’s Fatigue.

What AI is exposing about how we work and what still holds us back.

Most conversations I’ve had since coming back to Switzerland didn’t start with AI, but they somehow ended there. 

After nearly two years in Vietnam helping build H+P from day one as Executive Creative Director, I expected to feel the cultural shift when I returned to the motherland, especially in the place where I grew up. What I didn’t expect was how strong the contrast would feel. Not just in pace, but in mindset.

Like anyone who’s been away for a while, I came home with questions and ended up in a string of honest conversations. Teachers, creatives, freelancers, agency people, and those who’ve stepped away.

Different paths, but the same undercurrent:

“No one really knows where this is heading.”

There’s a growing sense that the ground beneath the workforce is shifting.
And yes, AI is part of it.

People talk about it. With curiosity, with resistance, but mostly with uncertainty.
Not because they don’t see its relevance, but because they don’t yet see how it fits into their work.
Or their life.

What I’m hearing isn’t fear.
It’s fatigue. Disorientation.

Not just about AI, but about work itself. The roles, the expectations, the pace—everything’s shifting.
And most professionals are just trying to keep up, without a clear sense of where it’s all going.

And underneath that disorientation, there’s this new pressure in the air:

“We should be using AI.”

You can attend workshops, collect a few prompts, feel fired up for a minute. But like any craft, without consistent practice, a real system, and a clear strategy, it goes nowhere.

The tools aren’t the problem. The way we’re set up to use them is.
And AI doesn’t fix that. It just reveals how unprepared we are to use it well.

Think of traditional systems: agency models, corporate workflows, approval layers, content calendars.
They were built for a slower, linear world.

AI brings speed. Flexibility. But instead of rethinking how we work, we’re stacking it on top of old habits. Creative teams are caught in the middle, expected to adapt fast, with no time, no structure, and no room to figure out what actually works.

In short: The speed, the expectations, and the tools have all evolved but the way we work hasn’t.

Maybe the better questions are much simpler than “How do we use AI?”
They sound more like:

• What real problem are we trying to solve with AI, and why now?
• Do we even know what “better” looks like, for our team, our clients, our output?
• What’s actually slowing us down?
• Where’s the value here… and for who?

That might be the real shift we’re facing.

Not how fast we can adopt AI.
But whether we have the structure, judgment, and focus to use it well.

To fix the foundation first, before layering on tools that just add more complexity and confusion.

Because intelligence, human or artificial, means little if we’re too distracted to think, and too disorganized to do anything with it.