Episode 18 of the ReeThink Podcast takes a hard look at something most conversations around AI miss: AI pressure on attention and what that does to our ability to think.

Instead of talking about “AI vs humans” in the abstract, Rudi Adigbli asks a sharper question:

Which levels of thinking stay valuable when AI can already remember, summarize and analyze better than we can?

Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as a scaffold, he maps where today’s models dominate, where they still fail, and how we can train executive function and brain plasticity to stay ahead.

Bloom’s Taxonomy breaks cognition into six levels:

• Remember

• Understand

• Apply

• Analyze

• Evaluate

• Create

Most of our education system still lives in the bottom half. We teach students to store information, repeat it back and follow known procedures. That made sense in a world where information was scarce.

In an AI‑saturated environment, that bottom half is exactly what models are best at. Large language models and similar systems:

• Remember – surface and recombine knowledge on demand.

• Understand (syntactically) – model relationships in language and data.

• Apply – follow instructions, generate drafts, refactor content, produce basic code and visuals.

Where they start to fail is at the top of the pyramid:

• Analyze – deciding which information matters in this context.

• Evaluate – judging trade‑offs, risk, ethics and long‑term impact.

• Create – producing truly original work grounded in lived experience, not just remixing.

Episode 18 uses the Remote Labor Index study as an example: AI systems could assist on many freelance tasks, but full end‑to‑end automation remained extremely low. The work broke down when projects demanded multi‑step planning, ownership and creative decision‑making.

For founders, operators and investors, this has a clear implication:

• Treat remember / understand / routine apply as areas to partner with AI.

• Invest most of your training time into analyze / evaluate / create, where AI and executive function still give humans a unique edge.

If the upper half of Bloom’s pyramid is where our edge lives, the next question is how to train it. Episode 18 connects this directly to flow state neuroscience and movement and neuroplasticity.

Drawing on work from Steven Kotler and Dr. Michael Mannino, Rudi explores three high‑impact brain states:

• Flow

• Trauma / PTSD

• Psychedelic experiences

All three radically alter perception and drive strong, rapid brain plasticity, but only one reliably builds capacity. In the episode, Rudi highlights a key distinction:

• Trauma often encodes learned helplessness – high stress with no sense of control.

• Flow encodes “learned powerfulness” – high challenge matched with high perceived control.

In practical terms, flow state training becomes a way to:

• Strengthen executive function under pressure.

• Improve decision‑making and pattern recognition.

• Turn stress into adaptation instead of overload.

Rudi emphasizes the role of embodied cognition and coordinated movement here. Practices like martial arts, rope flow and other complex coordination drills are not just workouts; they are brain training exercises for:

• Sustained attention in dynamic environments.

• Fast feedback loops between intention and action.

• Building the nervous system’s tolerance for challenge, essential for nervous system regulation performance.

In a world where AI can handle more of the cognitive “grunt work,” these mental gym habits are what keep human creativity and strategic thinking online.

The third theme in Episode 18 looks at the darker side of AI pressure on attention: what happens when recommendation systems, feeds and notifications shape brains from childhood.

Building on Jonathan Haidt’s work in The Anxious Generation and newer causal studies, Rudi discusses how:

• Smartphones and social media pull adolescents into a phone‑based childhood instead of a play‑based one.

• Heavy social media use correlates with higher anxiety, depression and self‑harm, and cutting back can reduce loneliness and improve wellbeing.

From a neuroscience perspective, these environments are plasticity regimes:

• Constant scrolling trains short attention spans and reactive thought loops.

• Algorithmic comparison and outrage shape the emotional filters we bring to the world.

• Developing brains wire around these inputs, making distraction and dysregulation the default.

This is where attention sovereignty and digital detox neuroscience become more than buzzwords. Just as flow training and movement can drive adaptive plasticity, unregulated digital environments can drive maladaptive plasticity.

Episode 18 frames it as a binary path:

• Let feeds and tools control your micro‑behaviours, and you practice helplessness and fragmentation.

• Or deliberately design a mental gym that includes:

  • Protected deep‑work blocks away from notifications.

  • Regular movement for executive function and flow.

  • Clear boundaries around social media and smartphone use.

This isn’t anti‑tech. It’s pro‑nervous‑system. The goal is not to escape AI pressure on attention, but to turn it into a stimulus you’re trained to handle, much like progressive overload in the physical gym.

Underneath all of this sits one capability: executive function.

It is the system that:

• Directs attention.

• Inhibits impulses.

• Plans and sequences behaviour.

• Holds information in working memory long enough to act on it.

AI will keep getting better at simulating knowledge and even parts of analysis. What it cannot easily replace is a well‑trained, embodied human making context‑rich, value‑aligned decisions under pressure. That is where brain optimization for business, neurotech for entrepreneurs and your lifestyle design intersect.

ReeThink AI. ReeWire Your Mind.