# Check whether AI is lowering or adding to my mental load

Reviews how you use AI tools at work to show where they reduce cognitive load and where they add checking, prompting, or extra coordination.

- Topic: Working with AI
- Framework: Few-Shot
- Level: Advanced
- Tags: AI & Prompting, Write, Summarize, Fill-in Template
- Source: https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/prompts/check-whether-ai-is-lowering-or-adding-to-my-mental-load

## Prompt

```text
Help me check whether the AI tools I use are making my work lighter or heavier.

**My role:** [JOB TITLE]
**How I use AI today:** [LIST - tool, task, how often, e.g. "Copilot to draft emails daily", "ChatGPT to summarize reports weekly"]
**Tasks that still feel mentally heavy:** [LIST]
**Any new work AI has created:** [e.g. "reviewing AI drafts from my team", "more meeting summaries to read", "tracking prompts"]

Analyze each use and task:
1. **Load reduced:** where AI takes real mental effort off me (first drafts, summarizing long material, reformatting, recall).
2. **Load added:** where AI adds effort, such as checking for errors, rewriting generic output, writing and refining prompts, switching between tools, reading more AI-generated messages, summaries, and updates from others, or extra coordination about who used AI for what.
3. **Net effect:** for each use, is it a clear win, break-even, or a net cost once checking time is counted?
4. **Untapped relief:** 3-5 heavy tasks from my list where AI could genuinely reduce load, and what good use would look like.

Return:
- A table: | Task / use | Load reduced | Load added | Net effect | Change to make |
- Uses to stop, uses to keep, uses to try.
- 3 team norms that would cut AI-generated noise (e.g. "summaries under 150 words", "say when a draft is AI-assisted").

Don't assume AI always saves time. Count the time to verify output, and flag tasks where errors would be costly enough that I must check every line.
```

## What to fill in

- JOB TITLE
- LIST

Free to copy and use. From ThinkWithPrompt (https://www.thinkwithprompt.com/), a library of 2,663 curated AI prompts.