Digital tools are meant to boost productivity. But what happens when there are too many of them and they create chaos? A new tech problem known as “digital tool fatigue” is undermining team collaboration, employee well-being and productivity. Why? There are too many tools and too little time to deal with the distractions, leading to both mental health and productivity concerns. Experts argue that this problem, while not new, has worsened with the advent of AI in the workplace.
What Is ‘Digital Tool Fatigue’?
In 2023, I wrote a story for Forbes.com about employee work overload in which 96% of workers in one study said digital tools weren’t helping them keep up, creating burnout. Employees, complaining about invisible tasks that involve keeping up with conversations, tracking down data and juggling logistical minutiae, were advocating for tools that would help them work smarter, not harder.
“App Switching” was sucking productivity, not creating it. Workers complained that one of their biggest challenges was switching from platform to platform across multiple platforms, half of them adding that they would prefer one solution that could handle all of their different tasks.
They felt stunted by a lack of access to the data they needed to effectively do their work and make decisions as one of the biggest things holding back their progress. Their tools at the time limited their ability to adequately gain insight and make decisions.
Employees were stressed working on everything, when they wanted to be working on the most important things. They said they needed tools that don’t just focus on to-dos and deadlines but also define and prioritize the tasks that will drive the most impact for their companies.
The main correction most employees wanted was for AI to handle at least one of their communication tasks such as writing emails, answering questions from customers and clients and writing documents.
Now nearly three years later with AI entrenched in most organizations, the technology seems to have worsened an already chaotic situation, leading to what experts are calling “digital tool fatigue.” Workplace teams rely on digital tools to get work completed, but when the tech stack grows too large, “digital tool fatigue” sets in and productivity starts to slip. The context switching, notifications and redundant platforms obstruct productivity, costing teams in time, focus and mental health.
New research from Lokalise, which surveyed 1,000 U.S. professionals across 11 industries, uncovered how digital tool overload is quietly eroding collaboration, well-being and productivity in the modern workplace. Their findings reveal similar stressful obstructions to the ones reported in my 2023 story.
The results cite workers, logging into multiple platforms every day, endless alerts and duplicate tools causing distractions that are chipping away at focus, productivity and mental health creating “digital tool fatigue.”
The constant switching comes at a steep cost, according to other key findings in the study:
How AI And Mistrust Contribute To ‘Digital Tool Fatigue’
Experts insist that two factors are at the root of “digital tool fatigue”: AI and employee-employer mistrust. AI has promised to help produce faster, clearer and more valuable work when applied correctly, but recent reports allege that AI is not only not helping but in many respects it’s contributing to “work slop.”
A recent story in the Harvard Business Review defines “work slop” as “AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.” The story cites an MIT Media Lab report stating that, despite all the activity and enthusiasm, 95% of organizations find no measurable return on their investment in AI technologies because of “work slop.”
Imagine a team member sends you a document that looks polished and professional at first glance. But upon closer inspection, you notice it was hastily thrown together, lacks substance and makes no sense. And it takes you hours of extra time to rework the document which overloads you with additional work and costs the organization. The real issue isn’t the tool itself but how employees use it. AI can deliver precise results when applied correctly, but organizations must train workers on the correct procedures.
Asana’s new 2025 Global State of AI at Work report shows that, although 70% of workers use AI weekly, most companies are “automating chaos,” instead of fixing broken work. Digital exhaustion has jumped to 84%, workloads are unmanageable for 77% of employees and just 29% of organizations have successfully scaled AI. The rest are stuck in “pilot purgatory.”
Experts insist that most workers have not come close to exhausting what foundational models can do, yet organizations keep piling on platforms. AI strategy expert, Zach Giglio, told me that companies are bombarded every day by vendors pushing new tools and proprietary models. “The pressure to adopt AI leads to rushed, fragmented roll-outs,” he says. “The result is overwhelming for employees. We see that when people are overwhelmed, they fall back on established habits, and those habits rarely include AI.”
Another issue at the root of “digital tool fatigue” is mistrust. Employers believe employees aren’t working that hard, and workers believe that organizational leaders aren’t providing the proper AI training on how to use the technology.
In the midst of massive layoffs and the 9-9-6 work schedule, employee mistrust has led to widespread “quiet covering,” in which workers hide or minimize aspects of their personal lives from their managers such as race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, disability in order to gain acceptance, avoid layoffs and get promoted. They fear employers will use personal information against them, overloading them with more work or use personal information as grounds for termination.
The authors of the Harvard Business Review article argue that employees should be invested with autonomy around AI but that the organization should be working through its own careful policies and recommendations around best practices, top tools and norms. Mitigating “digital tool fatigue” is everyone’s job–both employees and employers. And the authors conclude that AI is everyone’s job, too, “foremost—the job of organizational leaders to develop guidance for employees to help them use this new technology in ways that best align to the organization’s strategy, values and vision.”
By Bryan Robinson, Ph.D.
Source: forbes.com
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