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Task Paralysis and AI

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Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#51

Post by Forgeties79 »

MrGilbert wrote: post #11
Weryj wrote: post #3

I could have written this article myself. The addiction part, the ADHD part and the pending test part. The fear of becoming addicted to AI is real and I don't think I'll be capable to stop it, considering we're asking people who struggle with avoiding quick dopamine to use it professionally in their daily work life. My Pro went to Max(5) to Max(20) pretty quickly and I was burning through that weekly limit still, wit…

> [...] considering we're asking people who struggle with avoiding quick dopamine to use it professionally in their daily work life. It's so wild that it never dawned on me, why some people around me were so quick with "Let AI do that!". I'm not saying that each and everyone has ADHD, but I think I underestimated a) the flow of dopamine a successful prompt can set free and b) the craving for it by folks that I deemed…

As someone with ADHD, it’s really a problem. I have so many random documents of random outputs from prompts I didn’t track. It’s honestly accelerated some of my worst habits because it feels like I actually completed a task. The reality is I just have folders of half finished projects, which anyone with ADHD can relate to.

I’ll finish modding that Dreamcast one day…

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#52

Post by xantronix »

stavros wrote: post #38
Thanemate wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>AI development doesn't involve luck to any appreciable degree Reading this while I'm prompting for the third time to fix a 100+ line function is amusing, to say the least. I don't care about the definition of "appreciable", but I definitely have to repeat myself to get stuff done, sometimes even to undo things I never told it to touch.

That sounds like a process problem. LLMs, like any tool, work better if you don't use them in the naive "do this" way. This works well for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083267

What's your monthly token spend?

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#53

Post by KallDrexx »

dgellow wrote: post #20

I do have an actual diagnostic and I had the same experience over the past year with early coding harness at the beginning of the year, then Claude code since its release date. But after 1+year going that direction I really don’t want to continue. The novelty is gone, dealing with AI now feels frustrating and boring, I miss engaging deeply with the actual lower level technical challenges. I do not want to manage flee…

I have done a lot of introspection on this and realized that I'm very much driven by intrinsic rewards moreso than extrinsic.

I got into coding over a decade before it was my career because of the exploration, learning, and puzzle/challenge aspect.

Every time I have tried to be extrinsically driven (career or OSS wise) it's never worked out anyway. I could have done more to make it successful but I never cared about getting validation or getting users for my stuff (and the stress that brings).

I've been lucky that up until this point, the intrinsic rewards I have gotten from my job have aligned with company goals.

LLMs take all the intrinsic wins and leaves only the extrinsic ones. That makes me sad, but it is what it is I guess.

I have been thinking about a tool for months but didn't have the time. I finally gave in and built it at work in a week with LLM tokens. It worked fantastically. But I felt no accomplishment. It felt just the same as if I downloaded the tool from someone else's repo (and who had an overly eager maintainer that would implement my GitHub issue requests).

The hard part for me is ignoring LLMs in my free time to try and keep some of the intrinsic rewards to myself, without being annoyed that I could do it faster if I just "gave in".

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#54

Post by stavros »

xantronix wrote: post #52
stavros wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a process problem. LLMs, like any tool, work better if you don't use them in the naive "do this" way. This works well for me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48083267

What's your monthly token spend?

I have a $100 Claude sub and a $20 OpenAI sub.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#56

Post by renticulous »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #29

Nitpick: Stop the throat clearing and get to the point. The final paragraph is the whole point of the article. It's a real turnoff when I have to scroll past a moral lecture on artistry and piracy when I just want to hear your thoughts on task paralysis. --- To the author's point though, AI is incredible at building some initial momentum on a task. The initialization energy is basically zero.

When I don't have time, I just ask AI to summarize the main points and expand on the point I like. I do this with even HN discussions. I just copy the whole HN page and paste into Claude and ask it to summarize and deduplicate talking points.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#57

Post by ncr100 »

_ink_ wrote: post #43

For me it's different. I am not diagnosed, but I think my executive function doesn't work right. It's really hard for me to start a new task, but when it is interesting enough I can hyper focus until it's done. In the past that often happened when I needed to implement something not too trivial. But now that AI does the implementation in minutes I need to switch tasks constantly and it is honestly super exhausting fo…

Sounds to me like what people are identifying as dopamine, generating it and enjoying it. I am not educated though about brain function.

Noticing novelty is beneficial in nature as it surfaces opportunities to conscious level. "Squirrel!" famously, from the movie "Up". It feels good to experience. Then, creating ones own dopamine supply can drive behavior, and increasing the number of behavior can exhaust energy supply on different human dimensions.

So now, managing this process and limiting the dopamine cycle becomes also worthwhile -- avoiding fatigue potentially perhaps -- while still not negating the attractiveness of dopamine derivable from the endless opportunities of the world. <3

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#58

Post by jplusequalt »

adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #29

Nitpick: Stop the throat clearing and get to the point. The final paragraph is the whole point of the article. It's a real turnoff when I have to scroll past a moral lecture on artistry and piracy when I just want to hear your thoughts on task paralysis. --- To the author's point though, AI is incredible at building some initial momentum on a task. The initialization energy is basically zero.

You didn't have to read the article.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#59

Post by ip26 »

Weryj wrote: post #3

I could have written this article myself. The addiction part, the ADHD part and the pending test part. The fear of becoming addicted to AI is real and I don't think I'll be capable to stop it, considering we're asking people who struggle with avoiding quick dopamine to use it professionally in their daily work life. My Pro went to Max(5) to Max(20) pretty quickly and I was burning through that weekly limit still, wit…

The counterweight has been, after using it for a bunch of projects, I have internalized that it will very, very quickly get me to maybe 60% and then I'll have to take it the rest of the way mostly by myself (or handholding it tightly for the remaining 40% at a much slower pace).

In other words, the initial implementation is practically already there, already done. So there's no rush left in generating it - it's only worth bothering if I'm prepared to see it through to 100%.

When it is worth pushing through to 100%, it's pretty great for getting the inertia going though.

Re: Task Paralysis and AI

#60

Post by ncr100 »

I've a thought that AI could drive humanity to appreciate humans, as a side effect of its rise.

Nowadays we're bumping up against alternative nonhuman intelligences, nowadays as we go about our lives. New neighbors, kind of.

And AI has its idea of 'living' in this world .. as a servant to us mainly.

So human life is changing: we now have the opportunity to relate to life (existential) while we're being influenced by the valuable accompaniment of these new docile servants. We're able to "see our plantation and peacocks" if you will.

We experience our life-challenges differently ... now being alive to see our daily labors accomplished by others, and we're able to reap the benefits: more dopamine, resources, whatever.

Our role is changing somewhat, being 'wealthy' or 'elevated'.

I think this poses new questions implicitly, like: Q: Do we like our new wealthy-in-productive-results selves? Is this a life worth living?

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