What the hell do I do now?

The AI transformation wasn't something most of us chose; it arrived, and now we're grappling to keep up. The pace of change has accelerated by 5X. AI was supposed to free our time, but we´re working harder and longer, constantly feeling we´re falling behind. We´re not just anxious about our jobs, we´re worried we will be irrelevant. Fear of becoming obsolete has surged by 43% in a single year. Underneath the anxiety is something harder to name: an exhaustion that comes from having to keep reinventing yourself while the ground keeps shifting. 

This talk doesn't pretend any of this is easy; but none of it is inevitable. It offers a framework for navigating this moment. How to thrive through this transformation and beyond (because it´s never going to slow down). The framework has a terrible name: meta-adaptation. Not adapting to each change, but building the capacity to keep adapting as the changes keep coming.

How to continually do things differently

AI hasn't freed your time; it's filled it. Velocity has become the default operating mode: the efficiency trap converts every productivity gain into raised expectations. Add pluscrastination – the near-zero activation energy for starting new work - and most people are busier than ever. This section focuses first on creating the space to lift your head up. Then it applies the meta-behavioural layer of adaptation: treating your ways of working not as permanent fixtures but as prototypes. Zero-basing your workflows. Pre-committing the time AI saves before it evaporates. Running rapid habit sprints: testing new ways of working for 7 to 14 days, keeping what works, abandoning what doesn't. Systematically subtracting.  Building a working life designed for ever-evolving effectiveness.

How to keep up

AI is moving fast, and it´s hard to keep up. New tools and new initiatives hit us in endless waves. The instinct is to consume more, faster. It´s the wrong instinct. The section looks at meta-cognitive adaptation. What it takes to move from using AI to substitute thinking to using it as a springboard to deeper thinking, more creativity, sharper criticality. It also means establishing rhythms of learning and play as core components of remaining productive.  Most importantly, actively retiring the expertise and assumptions that used to serve you but now hold you back, updating mental models that have a shorter shelf life than ever before. Most people are trying to keep up by consuming more; reading more, learning more tools, taking more courses. That's the wrong instinct. The more valuable capability is unlearning: letting go of mindsets, knowledge and approaches that no longer serve in order to evolve at pace.

How to feel positive about the future

This is the layer most people miss; and the one that determines whether everything else holds. The anxiety, the fatigue, the quiet fear of becoming obsolete: these aren't signs of weakness. They're signs that your emotional operating system is running outdated software. When AI can approximate what makes you valuable, the instinct is to protect who you are rather than evolve who you're becoming. But protection is a loss spiral: the more you defend who you were, the less equipped you are to become who you need to be.

This section helps you create career clarity through the intense fog of the unknown. It addresses the energy layer directly: not resilience (bouncing back to an old shape) but evolution (bouncing forward into a new one). It helps you hold your identity lightly, staying curious about new possibilities. To reframe the question from "how do I stay relevant?" to "who could I become?"

Three things you'll take away

• A new mental model. Meta-adaptation: a terrible mouthful and an important idea. The shift from adapting to each change as it arrives, to building the capacity to keep adapting as the changes keep coming. Cognitive, behavioural and emotional, all three layers working together.

• Practical strategies. Each section contains concrete, research-grounded tools: the unlearning loop, the habit sprint, the pluscrastination antidote, and a future-back thinking exercise that helps people construct a viable and energising vision of who they are becoming.

• A different relationship with the future. You'll leave not just with strategies but with a different emotional orientation: less fearful of obsolescence, more curious about possibility, and more confident that the capacity to keep adapting is itself the most valuable thing you can build right now.