To one with a troubled mind, even the sweetest apple will taste rotten.
~ Not sure
I've always struggled with multitasking, especially at work. It's so alluring to try to do multiple things at once, more so when whatever I'm doing is slow-going or, in general, I have to wait more than 30 seconds for things to compile. I'm also often prone to that close cousin of multitasking called procrastination, which is basically the same but with the added benefit that I feel guilty about it! Whenever I spend long spans of time doing more than one thing at a time, I end up feeling exhausted, my mind a quagmire of half-formed ideas.
Lately at work this feeling has increased dramatically, and I think it's mostly because I've been using coding agents a lot more. In part it's because my employer has been pushing for everyone to adopt this new technology as much as possible; in part it's because I'm a tinkerer at heart and am curious to see what I can do with it; but mostly (especially lately), it's because I'm lazy. These tools are so easy to exploit, so easy to overuse, but we tend to forget that no matter how much they do for us, eventually we get to the point where we have to pay the bill. My laziness makes me use them more than I should, trying to hand off as much as possible to them, but then I still need to spend a huge chunk of time reviewing what they did. And let me tell you, reviewing AI-generated code is no fun.
It's also a twisted sort of laziness because it's not like using these tools decreases my workload in any way. On the contrary, the fact that I have multiple agents churning along just ends up with me taking on yet more work (or procrastinating more), which in the end increases the overall amount of stuff I need to think about. By the end of the day, I end up feeling burned out and like I didn't manage to get anything done.
...
A couple of days ago I was listening to this awesome (really, check it out if you can) talk by Ajahn Brahm titled Four Ways of Letting Go, and in it he recounts a story (here) about bringing gifts on his visits back to his mother. He tells how he at first brought her a plushie of a stuffed kangaroo and how she put it on her mantel shelf. Then on a subsequent visit he brought her a stuffed koala, which also ended up on the mantel shelf. Then a kookaburra, and then a platypus. Then he brought her a wombat, but the mantel shelf was already so full of stuff that everything fell off. No matter how carefully she placed things, they just wouldn't all stay on the mantel shelf. Ajahn asks, "Mother, why don't you just throw those other things away"?, and she answers, "Nooo, these are nice, they remind me of you".
[She] had so much rubbish on that shelf and I said, "Mother, this is like a person, they get one more thing in their head, they have a nervous breakdown, your mantel shelf's having a nervous breakdown".
That's what happens, we collect so many thoughts and so much stuff. So if that was my mantel shelf, every time, if I got a kangaroo, I'd just put that on, everything else would be clear. The next time someone gave me something else, I'd throw that one away and get something new.
So one thing at a time in your head. And then your mantel shelf inside your brain never, ever has a nervous breakdown.
When I heard this part of the talk, it immediately hit me, "Man, I'm just putting more and more stuff on my mantel shelf! No wonder I've been so mentally exhausted lately".
When I use coding agents, my mind is constantly switching from one thing to another. What is this one doing, ok that's good, now switch to another one, hey that doesn't make sense do this instead. Then wait... wait for them to give me something I can check... get bored and start doing something else, now I have three agent sessions running. And the cycle keeps on and on; I never settle anywhere, and I just keep adding more and more stuff onto the pile. I'm basically multitasking to the extreme.
...
I've also heard the claim that, actually, users of AI agents aren't really any more effective than they used to be before. I'm not so sure about that, as I feel that now I can get a crazy amount of stuff done, much more than before. But perhaps I was always as productive, just that I didn't realize? It's really hard to subjectively measure speed, though 😅 I do feel I'm at least much more effective at researching and learning stuff. But maybe this is only specifically true for me, as my job often requires me to work with technologies I'm not familiar with.
...
I've been coming to the conclusion that my life would be easier if I were to take a step back, reevaluate, and proceed more slowly and intently. Indeed, I started writing this post some days ago, and since then I've tried to use agents as a partner more than as an intern. I'm doing a lot more things by hand and certainly feel more involved with the project and what we're doing, as well as feeling more motivated and energetic.
I think there's a sweet spot that's hard to find, and perhaps it is different for each of us, or different from project to project. I think we need a cultural change in some ways, where we don't overvalue raw productivity so much, where we realize that engagement is as important (if not more so) for "good results" than simply mindless machines churning out "results". If we burn ourselves out in the process, then we will only manage to fail at getting anything done. Lack of involvement means our brains will not think deeply about the subject matter; it means our subconscious, that most excellent source of ideas, is only ever engaged in a superficial manner.
Here I'm using coding agents as the example, but really it applies to overreliance on technology (and especially AI) in any area of our lives. Every time we over-rely on something to do things for us, we lose the ability to do it ourselves. With AI (while powerful and full of promise), we're offloading our thinking and our enjoyment for what we do, and where does that leave us?
Thoughts:
- I've been busy lately working on Harvest! Mostly making a couple of moderation tools for myself to make my life easier. Now players can also report if a word is too hard and should be removed or, conversely, if a word is missing and should be added. I find that I'm spending more time tweaking stuff than actually improving the game itself (not to mention actually playing it) 😅
- Hey, I just realized that today is post #70!! Whoop, we've really come a long way since that first post 🥳 It's hard to say whether my writing quality has improved, but at least I do feel more confident in what I'm doing.
- I recently opened up my Google Keep by accident and discovered a treasure trove of quotes stored there! Though it seems past me wasn't really good at properly attributing where they came from. The quote at the top of this post comes from there (it might actually even be original).