The line here that resonsted was that AI removes the friction of starting and the friction of stopping. That’s huge.
We’ve optimised activation energy and deleted termination energy. The constraint is no longer skill, it’s judgement. The risk isn’t laziness, but directionlessness at speed.
Where I see that most is in decision quality. When everything is draftable in 30 seconds, the scarce skill becomes deciding what deserves to exist at all. That’s strategic muscle, not just prompting skill.
Perhaps the deeper issue isn’t performative productivity, but outsourced thinking? If AI enters before we’ve clarified our own position, it amplifies noise and "slop" rather than signal or insight.
Perhaps the principle needs to be "Think first, prompt second".
Then likewise, "AI as amplifier, not as substitute".
The friction AI removed wasn't just the friction of starting work. It removed the friction that forced you to feel whether the work mattered. Before AI, starting something hard gave your gut time to ask 'is this worth doing?' Now that pause is gone. The solution isn't a matrix or a prompt. It's learning to hear the signal AI made it easy to ignore.
Before the age of AI, work felt finite. Once it was done, it was done. With AI, there are always more ideas, more directions, more things you could try. Nothing ever feels brutally finished anymore, and that constant sense of “not quite done” quietly drains my energy.
It is powerful and exciting, yet also strangely exhausting…
Spooky. I read this as I am grinding (1:28 am for me). Grind day after day after day. 80 hr weeks are routine. For the moment, doesn't feel like a grind. Loving it, but it's my own business. Can't be the same for the crew that is working for me. But doesn't full deployment of agentic-AI mean I can take a months long vacay and come back and the business hasn't missed a beat?
Yeah I think when you’re doing it for your own business it makes a huge difference. Exact same thing for me, and exact same long term question - my business isn’t that complex, so how long before I can just fully offload the day to day management to AI? I suspect the answer is pretty soon.
When cognitive load goes down without being replaced by something else, turning the wheel does not feel like work. Using AI tools creates the space and time for us to crack higher order, more difficult problems: take it. That feels like work.
Recently passed my Diploma in cyber security and networking levels 1,2 and 3. I was made redundant recently and I am looking to study AI and also cloud, I am no spring chicken anymore (hate to admit) (59) and I want to study and also earn, I am in Manchester if anyone is around to offer me a job it would be appreciated , I was a senior Tech support manager in a telecoms company for 19 year. Any help and advice would be great thank you
I’ve seen a few of these studies, and I think there’s always a challenge of selection bias. If you study AI users now you’re very likely to get ambitious, highly motivated people who are very excited about the technology.
I’m definitely doing more work with it than I would be without, but that’s for two reasons. First, it enables me to take on a lot of new tasks. I own ecommerce businesses and built an application to generate listing images for my products instead of paying my designer to make them. It’s much easier to iterate on designs this way and I’m happier with the outputs, but I simply could not have attempted this before AI.
But the second is that it’s not only fun but inherently productive. The most important skill you can be developing right now is AI use. Every new use case I attempt teaches me something about capabilities and how to best use the models. So even if I’m working on stuff that’s not directly productive, I’m absolutely getting value out of the time spent.
The friction was the feature. We just didn't know it.
Every annoying thing about old tools - the loading, the setup, the manual work - was secretly protecting us. It forced breaks. It created natural stopping points. It made us ask "is this worth the effort?"
AI removed the gates. Now there's nothing between you and infinite work except your own willpower. And willpower is a terrible gate.
The line here that resonsted was that AI removes the friction of starting and the friction of stopping. That’s huge.
We’ve optimised activation energy and deleted termination energy. The constraint is no longer skill, it’s judgement. The risk isn’t laziness, but directionlessness at speed.
Where I see that most is in decision quality. When everything is draftable in 30 seconds, the scarce skill becomes deciding what deserves to exist at all. That’s strategic muscle, not just prompting skill.
Perhaps the deeper issue isn’t performative productivity, but outsourced thinking? If AI enters before we’ve clarified our own position, it amplifies noise and "slop" rather than signal or insight.
Perhaps the principle needs to be "Think first, prompt second".
Then likewise, "AI as amplifier, not as substitute".
The friction AI removed wasn't just the friction of starting work. It removed the friction that forced you to feel whether the work mattered. Before AI, starting something hard gave your gut time to ask 'is this worth doing?' Now that pause is gone. The solution isn't a matrix or a prompt. It's learning to hear the signal AI made it easy to ignore.
💯
Before the age of AI, work felt finite. Once it was done, it was done. With AI, there are always more ideas, more directions, more things you could try. Nothing ever feels brutally finished anymore, and that constant sense of “not quite done” quietly drains my energy.
It is powerful and exciting, yet also strangely exhausting…
Spooky. I read this as I am grinding (1:28 am for me). Grind day after day after day. 80 hr weeks are routine. For the moment, doesn't feel like a grind. Loving it, but it's my own business. Can't be the same for the crew that is working for me. But doesn't full deployment of agentic-AI mean I can take a months long vacay and come back and the business hasn't missed a beat?
Yeah I think when you’re doing it for your own business it makes a huge difference. Exact same thing for me, and exact same long term question - my business isn’t that complex, so how long before I can just fully offload the day to day management to AI? I suspect the answer is pretty soon.
When cognitive load goes down without being replaced by something else, turning the wheel does not feel like work. Using AI tools creates the space and time for us to crack higher order, more difficult problems: take it. That feels like work.
Recently passed my Diploma in cyber security and networking levels 1,2 and 3. I was made redundant recently and I am looking to study AI and also cloud, I am no spring chicken anymore (hate to admit) (59) and I want to study and also earn, I am in Manchester if anyone is around to offer me a job it would be appreciated , I was a senior Tech support manager in a telecoms company for 19 year. Any help and advice would be great thank you
Slam dunk. So many critical messages here🙌
I was just talking to someone about this the other day. AI answers every prompt with an encouragement to go on. “Now, would like to do X?”
Makes it very hard to stop.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. The productivity aperture widens, compounds. More plates spinning… you start to wonder who’s prompting whom.
Posted at 11pm on Saturday night 😭 😂
Thanks for the breakdown
Hi Im new welcome to
Outcomes over outputs is key.
I’ve seen a few of these studies, and I think there’s always a challenge of selection bias. If you study AI users now you’re very likely to get ambitious, highly motivated people who are very excited about the technology.
I’m definitely doing more work with it than I would be without, but that’s for two reasons. First, it enables me to take on a lot of new tasks. I own ecommerce businesses and built an application to generate listing images for my products instead of paying my designer to make them. It’s much easier to iterate on designs this way and I’m happier with the outputs, but I simply could not have attempted this before AI.
But the second is that it’s not only fun but inherently productive. The most important skill you can be developing right now is AI use. Every new use case I attempt teaches me something about capabilities and how to best use the models. So even if I’m working on stuff that’s not directly productive, I’m absolutely getting value out of the time spent.
Thanks Ruben. I used prompt 1 in Claude and I’m all set for the next 90 days. My goal is so much clearer now. 🙏🏻🙏🏻
The friction was the feature. We just didn't know it.
Every annoying thing about old tools - the loading, the setup, the manual work - was secretly protecting us. It forced breaks. It created natural stopping points. It made us ask "is this worth the effort?"
AI removed the gates. Now there's nothing between you and infinite work except your own willpower. And willpower is a terrible gate.