Working with AI is addictive.

AI work runs on the reward schedule of a slot machine, and the prize is real progress.

There's something that isn't discussed enough about working with artificial intelligence, and it's that it's addictive, literally, beyond any Twitter hyperbole. It hooks you because it runs on the same schedule that slot machines do, a reward that comes often but never on cue, which is the kind of reward dopamine neurons respond to most1. The difference is that here the reward is real progress, a problem unblocked or an idea that suddenly has shape. Your brain doesn't distinguish between I hit the jackpot and I just solved this in twenty seconds when it would've taken me two hours before. The mechanism is the same.

1Fiorillo, Tobler and Schultz, Discrete coding of reward probability and uncertainty by dopamine neurons, Science 299, 2003: the sustained response peaks when a reward comes half the time.

And that changes something fundamental about how working feels. Traditional work has friction everywhere, and that friction, though frustrating, serves a function we don't value until it disappears: it gives you excuses to stop. Waiting for it to compile. Waiting for review. Waiting for someone to get back to you. Those dead times are uncomfortable but they're also the moments where the brain rests without you realizing it and integrates what you've done. That's where the next thing surfaces. AI eliminates them. Every idea can be tested immediately. Every question has an answer in seconds. And then your brain, which was used to finding natural stopping points, suddenly can't find any, because the next step is always one prompt away.

That's why there are people working fourteen hours straight and describing it as fun. It's subtler than classic workaholism: when the reward frequency is high enough, the subjective experience of effort almost vanishes. You never notice you're getting tired; at some point your body pulls the plug and there's no going back. Sleep is overrated. Opus 4.5 spikes dopamine harder than finding a massive iron deposit right when you're setting up the factory in Factorio. Those who've felt it know exactly what I'm talking about. I don't know when was the last time I ate at a normal hour. I've been going through weeks where I sit down at ten PM with a mediocre idea and by three AM I have it deployed with tests, and I'm already thinking about the next thing. The infinite backlog I've been dragging around for years (those someday lists everyone has and nobody touches) is emptying out. It's emptying because now the cost of trying something is ridiculous, and when the cost of trying is ridiculous you try everything, and when you try everything some things work, and when they work you want more, and when you want more you don't stop. But when your bottleneck stops being execution and becomes imagination, the dynamic flips completely. Before, the chokepoint was doing. Now the chokepoint is thinking what to ask for. And thinking has no progress bar to tell you that you've been at it too long. So the loop accelerates inward. Every iteration feeds the feeling that you're on a streak. And then you realize (or you don't realize, which is the more common outcome) that you've been hours producing things that don't land anywhere. A lot of symbolic creation. Very little materialization. The feeling of progress has replaced progress, and it's such a clean substitution that it's nearly impossible to detect from the inside.

What I find most interesting about all of this is that it doesn't happen the same way for everyone, and I think that difference is going to matter more than it seems right now. There are people who thrive in that environment. Novelty stimulates them, and they keep their mental structure even through constant context-switching. For them AI is a clean amplifier, no noticeable side effects. But that's not the majority. For the rest, the same tools that feel stimulating to some turn out overwhelming, and the problem is that the initial enthusiasm masks it so well that when burnout shows up it seems to come out of nowhere.

The only thing that actually works for me, and I say this without pretending it's a solution, is going to the gym, and the reason has little to do with wellness or with anything I read about exercise and focus: it's the only moment in the day where the context changes so radically that the loop breaks on its own. You step outside, and that alone is something. The commute on public transit becomes almost a ritual, headphones on and Obsidian open on the notes that had been left half-finished. It's closer to letting ideas settle without forcing them than to productivity. And when you get to the gym and you're lifting weight, there's no prompt to fire off and no next step a click away. Nothing feels as good. The fact that this is now the sharpest contrast I have with working with AI says a lot about what AI does to the natural rhythm of a day.

I'm not going to give five tips for managing it better because I don't have them and I distrust anyone who does. What I do believe is that there's a question worth asking yourself honestly: is the fast-reward loop serving you, or is it using you? The tools are calibrated for your productivity, which is a different thing from your well-being, and in day-to-day life it's easy to confuse them because for a while, sometimes a long while, they look pretty similar.

I know. I know and I don't care, or I almost don't care, or I care just enough to leave this here before going back to what I was doing with a slightly clearer conscience.