I once succumbed to absolute AI tool overwhelm… and added a heap to my stack in a matter of a few weeks. My workflow got worse. I share here what fixed it.
Somewhere between downloading my fifth and sixth AI tool that week and completely forgetting what I was supposed to be doing, I realised I had a problem. AI tool overwhelm, and I had a particularly chronic case of it.
I’d been seduced by the promise. Every day, new tools were landing in my feed, faster, smarter, amazing-er.
So I did what any self-respecting person obsessed with efficiency (and shiny new things) would do: I signed up for them all.
A new AI writing assistant. Another content repurposer. An idea generator. A social media scheduler with built-in AI captions. A transcription tool. And some I honestly can’t remember the name of anymore, which tells you everything.
Before long, I was spending more time playing with tools than creating content. I had six different platforms open on any given Tuesday, and I was copying and pasting between apps like I was playing some kind of video game. And the output? Bland. Disconnected. Could’ve been written by anyone, or, more accurately, by everyone, because it sort of was.
This is what I now call Tool Accumulation Syndrome. It’s not laziness. It’s probably not even a terrible strategy, exactly. It’s what happens when you keep adding inputs without a system to hold them together. You end up with a very expensive, very crowded taskbar and no space to actually think.
The turning point was embarrassing, as most good wake up calls are.
I was putting together a piece of content for a client – also a good friend – someone with a genuinely brilliant voice, dry humour, strong opinions. I ran it through my usual processes, but this time with some of my new ‘toys’. I sent it off. Ooooof, she replied in about four minutes flat: “This isn’t what I wanted, and nothing like me.”
Ouch. The first time she’d been less than thrilled with my work, and a friend enough to tell it to me straight.
She was right. I’d used five different tools across the process. Each one had smoothed off a little more of her edge, rounded down her specificity, replaced her phrases with serviceable substitutes. By the end, it was sound content. It just wasn’t hers. It was Bot-Wash, and I’d served it up on a silver platter.
That afternoon I deleted about six of those new tools. Kept three. And I started building the only thing that actually matters: a system.
Here’s what the system looks like now. It starts with voice: not a style guide, not a list of adjectives, but actual captured voice. The phrases someone uses when they’re not trying. The rhythm of how they explain something. The specific words they reach for. It comes from extraction, and isn’t created, because the voice already exists. The job is to find it, document it, and protect it from every AI that tries to sand it smooth.
From there, every piece of content passes through the same checkpoint: does this still sound like me? Not “is it grammatically correct” or “does it hit the keywords.” Does. It. Sound. Like. Me. That’s the whole filter. One question. Surprisingly hard to cheat.
The tools I kept are the ones that speed up the parts that don’t require a human: scheduling, formatting, initial drafts that I then pull apart and reassemble. The parts that do require a human? I do those. There’s no shortcut for judgment. There’s no plugin for personality.
Six tools promised the world but made me less productive and more generic. Three tools and a system made me faster and actually useful.
If your AI workflow is currently giving you more to manage than it’s taking off your plate, you don’t need a new tool. You need a clear process and a strong voice at the centre of it.
Say you’re ready to build that system – a voice-first, lean-stack kind – and I’ve got a way to help.
The Humanoid Crew is my membership for small business owners who want to use AI well, not just use a lot of it. Join before May 1 and you get a 30-day bonus sequence designed to help you try, evaluate, and decide on the tools that actually belong in your workflow. One tool a day. Keep it or toss it. No accumulation, or dusty tool collection, just curation.
Here’s where you can read all about it: The Humanoid Crew
