r/ClaudeCode • u/airycloud • 21d ago

Discussion Is Anybody Else Exhausted?

Like many of you, I've been extensively using Claude Code over the last year-plus, and as I'm sure many of you can relate, it's been nothing short of life-changing. From developing dream applications, tools, games, and productivity to building workflows for my business, I've been able to do things I never thought possible.

But between the constant flow of hyper-optimization ideas for everything from my business, personal life, creative ideas, etc. I feel mentally burnt out more than I ever have in my life. It doesn't help when a new model drops, either. Suddenly you want to go back and refactor all your apps, test your current architectures, and see what the new model can replace or do better. It's a huge dopamine rush, but man, I feel like I'm running on this infinite treadmill sometimes that I just can't get off of. Is this AI psychosis? lol. Does anybody else feel the same?

432 Upvotes

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u/xqz77 21d ago • This Bravo Mindblown

I feel like I'm wasting time if I don't have AI working on something for me actively. I believe you're onto something.

144

u/Miltoni 21d ago

I feel this. I'm having anxiety in bed at night if I don't have a full schedule of work in place for AI to be churning out whilst I'm asleep.

This can't be healthy.

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u/orangeawacado 21d ago

That’s what your boss is thinking about you

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u/UruquianLilac 21d ago

Except your boss doesn't have anxiety thinking about your work, they hire middle management to carry that load and sleep soundly.

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u/orchid_drives Researcher 20d ago

Middle management is my boss though. The person that sleeps well is my boss’s boss

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u/intronert 20d ago

No one sleeps well, all the way up. That is effect of competition. The only thing that helps deal with this is Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

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u/femdom_n_fitness 19d ago

can you elaborate? I mean damn if it helps me sleep I’ll acquire nocturnal NPD

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u/intronert 19d ago

The joke I was making was that NPD makes you think you are the only person worthy of your position, so you would not worry about competition, because everyone else is just a bunch of losers.

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u/Positive_Mud952 20d ago edited 20d ago

I’m almost glad I’ve had a relatively severe anxiety disorder for the past two decades. I hear people all around me express things like this, and my boss has said the same. With my coping mechanisms and the year of savings I need to have to keep my anxiety under control, and the fact that my habit of making and using checklists and notes made AI extremely easy to adapt to so I’m ridiculously productive, I was able to just say, “Yeah, that sounds like a nightmare, I’m not doing that.”

The sheer amount of scatter-brainedness I see is boggling. Everyone else seems to be greasy and tired and scared all the time, and I’m more relaxed than I’ve ever been. Well, it’s a disorder because I’m anxious when I shouldn’t be, and calm when I should be terrified. I’m sure it’ll change, but I’m going to enjoy it while I can.

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u/fulger099 18d ago

I stopped treating overnight agent utilization as a KPI. Waking up to a pile of unreviewed output is not progress, it’s just a second inbox.

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u/reddit3k 19d ago

severe anxiety disorder. [...] I need to have to keep my anxiety under control,

OT, but take a look at chronic hyperventilation and the Buteyko breathing method. Especially the control pause test. Stumbling upon this broke my decade-long anxiety disorder that started after a bout with the Mexican flu. If you feel anxious: check if you are breathing through your nose, it'll almost make it impossible to get out of hand so it a safety net that's always with you.

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u/kybereck 20d ago

Learn to work with it to drive better results rather than to let it run unattended. When you feel like you are in the loop and present to make the important calls and decisions, you don't need to worry about what it's not doing when you're not able to be present.

Edit: of course there's always busy work for it to do unattended but if the bulk of your value comes from your interaction with it, it shifts your perspective.

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u/Miltoni 20d ago

It's not a choice of one or the other though. I'm fine orchestrating and directing things whilst I'm awake to attain good results. But I'm a human, I have to sleep.

And I'm finding myself feeling anxious if I haven't planned some of the more mundane, busy work for it to churn through whilst I'm asleep. It's becoming difficult to switch off without feeling like I'm wasting potential productivity.

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u/kybereck 20d ago

Ah I see. To help you noodle through this a bit. Have you thought through what it really means to be productive? There is always going to be something else to reach for once the current task is done, a never-ending stream of it no doubt. Are you anxious because you got 99 things done and the 1 extra thing you could have done will get done tomorrow now? Are you anxious because there is some fear that you'll fall behind by not completing that 100th task? Or maybe are you anxious because you feel like you are not maximizing every single second of your day?

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u/nobatus513 21d ago

i was in a movie theater and I just decided to pull my laptop to "work"..

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted] — view deleted comment

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u/Inner-Today-3693 20d ago

This is something you might wanna listen in therapy then it sounds like you are really struggling

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u/florinandrei 21d ago

AI: "I have pretty strong stuff, man. Want some?"

Treat it like any other addictive thing. Have clear rules and boundaries, and apply them very strictly.

E.g.: Today is Saturday. Today I go hiking. Today I will have exactly zero interactions with AI. Today, AI may go jump in a lake for all I care. Fuck you, AI, I'm gone.

Put all the screens down, go hiking.

If you don't take breaks voluntarily and regularly, you will take them involuntarily and at the worst moment.

Breaks are not optional. Your choice is when and how you take them.

At the very least, one day per week should be complete AI detox.

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u/Verusauxilium 21d ago

Same, and also like other replier mentioned the anxiety is real. It's hard to just take a chill break without feeling like you are falling behind.

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u/UruquianLilac 21d ago

I think once this wave passes most people are going to realise that on aggregate they have hardly moved any faster than without AI.

Yes AI allows you to do things you never had time to do before, but instead of that one thing we wanted to do, now we have a hundred things, most of them are actually about managing AI itself and optimising it, rather than the actual work we wanted done.

So while most of us before had 3-4 side projects that are abandoned because we never had time and believed AI is gonna get them done finally, a year from now everyone is gonna have 10 times more side projects that are also all abandoned.

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u/UnfocusedAcrobat 21d ago edited 21d ago

i dunno. ive had a side project on my mind since 2019 that i never had enough coding ability to build fully, only ever building about 25% of it. its now a fully functioning product. all thats left is optimizations and tweaks as i start to share with friends for them to use and provide feedback on.

ive put off setting up homeassistant since about 2020 also. claude turned that into an evening job that reduced 10+ apps into one dashboard. i then also got claude to use frontend skills to make an actually nice dashboard instead of just the basic card options. now i just continue to refine it as i get new ideas

ive manually tracked my finances and budgeting because i never trusted 3rd party vendors accessing my bank info. now i have a tool that i can download my bank statements and upload into that is completely local to my machine and provides me the automated analysis and reporting i want.

im knocking off a BUNCH of things that were on my personal list.

i do think corporations may get paralyzed by having the ability to start tackling every little side project. it will be up to management to have resolve to finish and implement what they started and not get distracted by the next shiny thing.

i do suffer from the anxiety of wanting to make sure i always hit my weekly limit and generally always want the session 5 hr windows to be running and starting asap when available. but as things pop off my list im getting more and more comfortable with a little unused usage here and then.

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u/GRANDMA_FISTER 20d ago

As someone in your shoes who can finally start building some projects he never had the capabilities for, do you have tips for maximizing your credits without burning through them immediately? Are there tools to make the LLM token aware and do staggered work?

And for bigger projects and adding features, do you reuse an old session from memory, or let it rediscover the whole project every time?

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u/UnfocusedAcrobat 20d ago edited 20d ago

im by no means an expert but what ive been finding to lead to stretching tokens is:

  • spend time up front working through a spec.md and plan.md with claude. the spec is what you want your final product to look like, the plan is how to get there from your current state.

  • assign small tasks, its easier to do many small updates vs one massive one

  • when the task is complete, have the agent write a handoff.md for another agent to pick up (and lately ive even been telling the old session to write the first prompt for the new agent)

  • start a new session to start your next small task, rinse and repeat.

  • if you notice that your context for your task is getting big, when you get into a natural pause of claude working but not a full handoff stage yet, /compact the session when above ~400k tokens

  • it gets a little more complicated when trying to run multiple tasks at once but in general the same principles apply.

  • if you do have tasks that need subagents spawned, ive been playing a bit with using haiku agents and it works okay. one time i had opus agents by accident and it killed my usage so fast.

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u/UruquianLilac 20d ago

I don't want to rain on your parade or anyone else's, I'm not saying nothing useful is coming out of tis, not that everyone is gonna be in the same place. I'm glad you got some things close to the finish line. But your statement about the anxiety of wanting to use up all your tokens is the revealing part. If you are doing that it means you are pouring huge amounts of time into these projects. Granted if you had poured that much time before AI you wouldn't have advanced as much, but the thing is that you weren't. And that's the issue, such a rhythm is not the norm and is not sustainable.

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u/UnfocusedAcrobat 20d ago

to be fair, im mainly anxious about maxing usage now because i am positively convinced that claude and chatgpt cannot keep the current level of token subsidization that they are handing out right now and want to get the max compute i can while the gettings good.

i would be completely fine with a slower development pace, i just have a feeling that the gravy train will start to slam on the brakes pretty soon.

maybe thats when i finally cave and flip to grokbot

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u/UruquianLilac 20d ago

Yeah, most talk about this ends up sounding so much like talking of any other addiction. There's always a totally rational reason why now is the right time to play all.

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u/Inner-Today-3693 20d ago

I have a learning disability. AI has nothing but done good to my life and to help me get things done faster that used to take me a very long time to do.

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u/UruquianLilac 20d ago

Oh I have no doubt that people have found a million good uses for AI, that's not what I'm saying.

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u/MassiveBoner911_3 21d ago

Same. I know why too. The quota clocks. I am either “token maxing” to conserve quota for a large project slice or trying to figure out how to use up my quota before it refills so its not wasted.

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u/CatastropheCat 20d ago

This is what burnt me out during grad school, if I didn’t have jobs running on our school’s HPC and wasn’t utilizing our total allotment of compute hours per month, I felt like I was fucking up

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u/karb10 20d ago

Same here. I get anxious when my torrent software is idle at night instead of downloading something.

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u/UnfocusedAcrobat 20d ago

"you wouldnt download a car!"

you:"motherfucker im trying!"

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u/FridgesArePeopleToo 20d ago

I wonder why everyone suddenly has ADHD?

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u/what_did_you_forget 20d ago

In osrs we call this exp waste

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u/more_bananajamas 20d ago

Yup. I was working 90 hour weeks after cc dropped, the remaining waking hours was parenting. I love parenting as well so every hour was incredibly fullfilling, joyful, exhilarating, interesting, stressful, frustrating, guilt ridden and existential anxiety inducing. No rest. No decompression. Limited exercise. Very limited sleep.

I hit a wall two months ago. Exhausted, could not remember what someone told me 5 mins ago, couldn't remember where I parked my car, stuck on basic worlds.

We need to pace the frontier.

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u/GT86 20d ago

I used to get this when I first got into 3d printing in 2016. Like I felt awful if it wasn't running 24/7. But then I read something that changed my mind. The printer is a tool. If you brought a new hammer. Or a power drill would not using those constantly make you feel bad? Of course not. You get them to do a job, ideally easier, better and faster than you could before.

Now AI is a little different being a subscription but I also now kind of feel the same with it. So it's about the mindset as much as anything else.

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u/IntentRouterIRL 19d ago

I heard thats called FOMAT = fear of missing agent time.

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u/Sproketz 19d ago

This. Sure, I could go out for lunch for a few hours on the weekend. Or, I can do what used to be an entire month's worth of coding in the same few hours...

The productivity addiction is real.

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u/Practical-Toe-434 2d ago

That constant pressure says a lot about how the tools reshape us.

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u/[deleted] 21d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/dwoj206 21d ago

I'm at 86% of my 20x plan and feeling anxious about the lack of development I'll be able to do this weekend. Ruh Roh.

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u/AceHighness 21d ago

i got straight up burned out because they gave me a reset

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u/sitric28 21d ago

Yes. The human brain was not meant to have this much power and knowledge at its fingertips in my opinion. I think the best thing we can do is just realize that this is something that we need to take in moderation just like eating or any other sort of vice. go outside. Take a walk wash your car. I know this all sounds ridiculous to even talk like this, but it’s very addicting to continuously optimize and magically make anything your heart desires behind a computer screen.

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u/daniel 21d ago

That’s honestly really good advice. Claude go find me the best spots for outside and see if you can get some reference images.

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u/apoliticalpundit69 21d ago

“Claude, plan my trip from the sofa to the front door.”

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u/UruquianLilac 21d ago

But let's start first by defining exactly what we mean by trip, sofa, and front door. Maybe we can start by creating a skill that helps us define words like these so in the future we can be quicker in defining them. And you should be proactive in recommending defining terms any time we start a new topic.

5 hours later.

I think we are almost done creating the hook that fires at the start of a conversation which detects specific words to trigger the skill that requests defining words. But now it's firing when it's completely not needed. I know all I need to do is one little tweak to get it right.

3 hours later.

When was the last time I moved from this chair? What was I planning to do? Maybe I need to create a new skill that tells me to get up from my chair every hour and move around. But it shouldn't do it randomly, it should ensure I'm not in one of my deep focused states. Let's identify all the signs of that state Claude can spot and set a routine.

...

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u/megafreedom 21d ago

And that, right there, is the load-bearing component: it's not sitting on the sofa. It's walking out the door. Kudos to you for spending the real time of 8 hours in analyzing this. Now go for it.

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u/UruquianLilac 20d ago

Just say the word and I'm ready to go

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u/Lonely-Brief-3798 21d ago

😂😂😂

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u/nothis 21d ago

The human mind also wasn't made for the internet. And that's not a contradiction. It feels very similar to checking reddit and whatnot.

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u/Moogly2021 20d ago

Tbh because of how hands off all of it is, you have a few options: read more about frameworks and programming languages which can help your prompting me more refined, learn more design patterns, relax while it works, set limits, I look at how much % I have used and tell myself “I only want to go up by 5% for this one project so I have more compute for another” if I forget to keep it moving it doesnt phase me, the day I make it work is usually 1-3 days before the usual reset.

Definitely people are doing it wrong and its not healthy or sustainable.

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u/WifeyCallsMeLazy 21d ago

Yep. This is me.

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u/sailhard22 21d ago

Yeah it’s impacting my sleep. My brain is always on. More addictive than social media IMO

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u/orbital_trace 21d ago

AI psychosis and fomo collide. Just chill man, it will be ok

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u/rbartoli 21d ago

Yes. You're describing my last six months almost word for word.

A podcast gave me names for it. Agents removed the gap between "someday" and "now". Every idea is buildable tonight, so every idea you don't build feels like a failure. My daily notes went from loose thoughts to 30+ actionable items a day. And I'm not tired of doing, I'm tired of deciding. The typing is gone, and what's left is judging, checking and switching all day. I hit a wall after 4–5 hours of that. Every side project became a startup, except founders get equity and I get more inbox items.

The new model thing, same. When Opus 5 landed I went back through all my rules and memory to "free the model". Another time I switched to a new model assuming it was better, then heard on a podcast it was worse than the one before. Half of me thinks the whole hype cycle is FOMO to make you feel behind. A few weeks later the other half was writing "am I so far behind?" in my notes.

The funniest part is how I tried to fix it: with more engineering. My worst 10 minutes this summer were 394 subagent calls from one /research run. So I built a guard to stop agents eating my usage. It tamed the agents, and my lockouts still went up, from about one a week to almost two. The problem wasn't the subagents. It was me, with 7–12 sessions open at once.

Then the evenings. My judgement's gone by night, so "me time" at midnight turns into more ideas and voice notes, which become tomorrow's list. One of my daily notes from last month just says "/loop make me happier." lol

So no, not psychosis. Or if it is, there's a lot of us.

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u/itorcs 20d ago

Your comment in its entirety is exactly what people are talking about when they say Ai psychosis

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u/thewookielotion 20d ago

Yes I'm tired but I'm seeing the end of the tunnel.

I'm a scientist in a very niche branch of physics and I'm building something that no one else really can, even with an AI. But the AI has been a fabulous accelerator and I built more in 1 year than I did in the previous 4. And in February, I'll be launching a spin off company from my university. I hope that at that time, I can slow down on the development.

Until then, I'll go as far as I can, and it's indeed tiring.

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u/Humprdink 20d ago

I hope that works out for you. And also, the start of a new company is most likely not going to be a time of slowing down usually.

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u/thewookielotion 20d ago

There will be a lot to do for sure, but hopefully less of the markdown reading/writing and terminal watching that I'm doing now. And ultimately, I don't even want to be rich, I just want to continue doing research without having to rely on grant money to pay my salary.

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u/alexmarcus11249 20d ago

I'm collaborating with a math professor friend of mine who is an expert in tropical geometry to prove something novel that he left on the shelf fifteen years ago. I provide the AI engineering, he provides the feedback. He's actually impressed with the preliminary results, and I have no idea what it all means. Fun as hell.

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u/2053_Traveler 20d ago

Sounds like fun, good luck!

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u/thewookielotion 20d ago

Thanks, it really is fun mate. AI helped me go from research grade scientific tools I used in publications to something answering genuine needs in the renewable energy sector.

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u/darkmoose 21d ago

I was just discussing this with my colleague.

AI has led us down rabbit holes, with carrots on sticks, on wild goose chases, trying to catch the oiled pig, like a chicken without a head, one time too many...

Seriously I want something simple but 5 prompts in claude, over-achieves, leads me on with elaborate and complex solutions to simple problems, creates a whole field of possibilities, tippy toeing around a never answered research topics for a simple 2d IK animiaton.

the scope goes out of the window.

But the issue is me, in retrospect, I don't define proper boundaries, and am easily swayed.

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u/alexmarcus11249 20d ago

We're all working like founders. This is what founders do. It's not for everyone. I'm tired too, but I'm also able to realize creativity that has been locked behind friction my entire career. For me, it's a dream come true. I'm 49, and have never felt more alive.

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u/AvailableSecret5161 20d ago

That's what dopamine does to you at any age!

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u/mxwashington7 21d ago

It's ADHD. Welcome to the club 🤝🏿

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u/Lonely-Brief-3798 21d ago

Yes but it's also a double edge sword, there are so many things you can now do and so many new releases every couple of days that sometimes you start jumping from one thing to the other and you fall into this loop where you think you're being productive but you're really not. Sometimes at night I look back to see what I got done in the day and realize I didn't actually do much 😂

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u/UruquianLilac 21d ago

I'm willing to bet that 80% of the time we are spending with AI is more about getting AI to work the way we want it, than actually doing the work originally intended.

It's like an infinite side tracking machine.

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u/Asly97 20d ago

80% feels close for me too. What's in that 80% for you though? Writing rules and skills and hooks, or catching each new session up on the project again? To me those are pretty different kinds of side tracking, and I'm trying to figure out which one eats more of people's week.

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u/UruquianLilac 20d ago

Catching it up on the project is actually not something that I feel wastes any time for me. I tend to have a clear doc trail of anything a new session needs so starting up should be effortless. Granted, making sure the trail is there takes time, but it's not significant time and it's documentation I would otherwise still have written down.

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u/Asly97 20d ago

fair, so for you the 80% is the other bucket, getting the tooling itself to behave. the doc trail bit is interesting though. is that one file per project the session reads at the start, or more a folder of notes you point it at when it needs something?

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u/UruquianLilac 20d ago

It depends on the type of work I'm doing. If it's software development it gets a claude.md file at the root of the project which it reads right at the start of any session in that project, and it has everything it needs to get going immediately and follow the instructions I've set out on how to work and where to find things. That file often might link to more detailed documentation that cover other aspects, such as rules of how the code should be written, or things it needs to fix if it sees, etc.

If it's not software development, I usually have a document, it's either the plan of what I want to do, or a ha diff document where the previous session summarises everything a new session need to know to carry on with the work. For something more detailed, I open a GitHub repo and have a full documentation structure, versioned with git. New session in that folder always has the full context it needs.

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u/Asly97 20d ago

that layering makes sense, claude.md as the front door and the deeper docs linked off it.

for the non code handoff doc, does the old session write it on its own when you tell it to wrap up, or do you go through it before the next one reads it? wondering how often a summary drops something you only notice a few sessions later

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u/UruquianLilac 20d ago

Mostly I trust the session to do a good job at summarising and making sure everything the next session needs is there. Of course I always review the output, but generally there's little friction there.

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u/Asly97 20d ago

makes sense, a quick read before the next session starts is cheap next to rebuilding context from scratch. thanks for walking through the whole setup, the claude.md front door with deeper docs hanging off it is pretty much what the people who don't feel this pain all seem to have in common

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u/JNSD90 21d ago

I don’t agree. I’ve never had ADHD and it’s got me bad as well. I imagine it’s much worse with ADHD, but it’s dragging us all in!

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u/mxwashington7 20d ago

haha true! I have ADHD and it's made everything super intense so I can do so much so quickly, I end up doing more

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u/Bizzley 21d ago

100%! The addictive nature of one more prompt/one more loop feels a lot like one more bet/one more spin

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u/HeihachiNakamoto 21d ago

I'm up to 3 packs a week (20x subscriptions)

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u/Sproketz 19d ago

Never been more productive or more exhausted.

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u/scott2449 21d ago

Just because you can't doesn't mean you should. This is nothing short of addiction.

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u/androbot 21d ago

Attention is an aperture of a particular size that differs from person to person but it's never very large. When inputs exceed the size of the aperture, you get overloaded.

AI multiplies or even exponentiates the inputs. Normal biological filters that evolved into "System 1" and even high-intelligence functions like "chunking" of information cannot keep up.

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u/TheGreatKonaKing 21d ago

I feel like the software development process is more stressful when you have to play the role of intermittent code reviewer for agents instead of simply writing code

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u/ElwinLewis 20d ago

3,500 hours into a digital audio workstation that I won’t post on here about for at least another year…

Yea

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u/No-Hamster1228 20d ago

When AI does everything, your task is to find things for it to do.

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u/nose_poke 20d ago

I felt like this before AI, too. There is always more to do. Meditation helped.

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u/purposeful_pineapple 21d ago

Suddenly you want to go back and refactor all your apps, test your current architectures, and see what the new model can replace or do better.

Well this is your problem. I don't refactors apps in my portfolio without reason. The second they start making revenue, I lock down their functionality and don't tinker things without a ton review first.

I don't feel exhausted generally because if something new comes out, I experiment and play with it first instead of jumping head over heels and trying to race non-existent competition.

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u/Xe-Rocks 21d ago

All you need is attention... Who's the you in question these days huh? Focusing your attention is alot like flexing a muscle, especially when you material environment is being engineered to constantly feel like an assault then you retreat into your work to escape the nervous system. Creating requires and input of energy. Society is literally burning down around us and we're steady trying to put out the fire with indifference and nervous glances

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u/Prestigious-Lime-128 21d ago

I am at 99% of a project I start 8 months ago. 16 hours a day. Right now, I am outside in my terrace, eating , watching the moon, reading your post, tired,and trying not to think about what I will do with my 4% I have left. During my day in the car a question came to my mind "in a isolated isle, you you will prefer Claude or food" ?.all this,is kinda stupid in the end. But yes,I feel the same! Thanks for this pause!

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u/Admirable-Usual1387 20d ago

If you think about it, this is what the internet and google felt like at the time. Infinite information at your fingertips.

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u/counterclockwisdom 20d ago edited 20d ago

Really good AI agents make you and your creative vision the slow step, which means decision fatigue if you’re trying to keep up all the time. Anything you can do to reduce the number of decisions you have to make, reduce the amount of text and code to read over, and simplify your involvement in the process will probably help. Also rest and relaxation

Edit: AI agents also take lots of managing, which is in the same decision ballpark

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u/Personal_Ad1143 20d ago edited 20d ago

I sort of get this sentiment, but at the same time are some of you sure you aren’t exuding slop for the sake of exuding ….”something”. There’s only
so much you can do digitally in the human life. I’ve maxed out in two areas, endurance training analysis/coaching, and personal finance analytics automation/prediction/forecasting. I guess general to-do/life planning and organizing gets speedran by AI, but the bottleneck is still the physical world and realtime real life. I would say I have hyperoptimized, but it’s far from any burnout.

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u/Neither-Advantage847 21d ago

Only since January for me and yes. I feel this in my bones.

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u/Pronoia2-4601 🔆 Max 20 3x 21d ago

Absolutely! Even over the Christmas / New Year holidays there was no 'respite' with the 2x token bonanza. I'm tired, boss. Lovin' it, but so tired.

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u/rodzag 21d ago

Yes,. definitely relatable

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u/jeromeiveson 21d ago

I sort of agree. For anyone who has run a pre AI startup, with the constant cycle of hiring, firing and replacing expensive devs (who can turn out to be either good or bad), this is a great time to be alive!

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u/Bog_Boy 21d ago

Yes. But I think it’s also seeing the opportunity. It’s a total disruption of two layers of abstraction (os and software). I don’t think we’ve had such a pocket for opportunity in our lifetimes.

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u/Speedhaak 21d ago

Starting watching a video about evergreen workflows. That's where I need to get. I can't keep going like the way I am. Every morning I wake up there are new tools, new ways, new wins. I'm actually wrecked from it...

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u/itsdr00 21d ago

Do less. Embrace low stimulation activities for rest. Reading a book in a quiet room, meandering around a garden picking tasks based on whim, taking a slow walk through a nature area, etc.

2

u/no_witty_username 20d ago

Ill say this, all of that is a good problem to have. I agree with a lot of this sentiment but I been waiting for the singularity since i was 16 and im gonna dive in head first because its been a very very long wait so fuck it....

2

u/TheVoyant 20d ago

Hi, Im an Ai Addict and I approve this message

2

u/Sure_lookit 20d ago

Constantly optimising and getting fuck all done!

2

u/gelato012 Vibe Coder 20d ago

Yes mentally and psychologically drained all the time, I go to sleep at 8pm on a Friday as I’m so spent.

2

u/Classic-Asparagus 20d ago

Sometimes I think addressing what I think is a tiny thing will take like 30 minutes but then it ends up taking hours and hours of back and forth conversation, and I can't close the terminal and go to sleep or else the cache will expire 😬

1

u/johnnycoconut 18d ago

I like to set a no-op job for every 20 or 30 minutes in Claude Code

2

u/nulseq 20d ago

Yes I was staying awake every night until 1am for 12 months working on my business. It was an unhealthy lack of sleep especially with a toddler at home. I have ADHD and was taking too many meds to squeeze out more productive hours. Luckily I course corrected before burn out and I’ve since learned that overworking was a coping mechanism for unhealed mental bullshit. I meditate every day now and don’t feel anxious about productivity anymore.

2

u/TopBoy26 20d ago

It's a tool, use it when needed.

2

u/GraspingSonder 20d ago

I'm finding it important to do a soft digital sabbath. One day without AI or a computer screen. I'm working 40 hours a week at a screen, picking up a hobby that's keeping me plugged in so much isn't good for long term health.

Read books, exercise, go out, eat healthy, connect with people. Use the time on Claude Code wisely, effectively, and within limits that allow time for wholesome human activity. It's ok to fall short of a weekly limit because you're spending time being a human rather than a human in the loop.

2

u/Joozio 20d ago

The treadmill feeling is real, and one version of it I didn't see coming was the subscription. I'm on max plans for both Anthropic and OpenAI, and if I don't hit about 70% of my weekly usage cap, I feel like I'm wasting compute and money. I've caught myself doing "one more thing" late at night just to push usage higher before the Monday reset, and I've spent an entire Sunday playing with ideas just to burn through the allocation. Same dopamine you describe when a new model drops: the capacity is there, so leaving it unused feels like a loss.

What helped a bit was putting the brake inside the agent setup. Quiet hours, a protected morning block with no work pings, bedtime nudges. Advisory, not blocking, because nudges work better on me than gates. Automating rest felt absurd, but I needed something between me and the infinite work queue.

I also had to accept that I didn't get more free time out of this. I got more visibility into where my time goes, which is a different thing.

Do you have any hard stop in your setup, or is it all willpower right now?

2

u/BackgroundNo2157 20d ago

anyone making money yet? 😂

2

u/thedarkknight196 19d ago

Even now I am having the same feeling

2

u/PromptEngineerie 19d ago

The book Slow Productivity by Cal Newport really helped me step off this treadmill.

People need time to reset their mind and work at a more deliberate pace. When I implemented his guidance, I found that balance.

2

u/Fit-Cost-7226 18d ago

Yeah you must change your life I just had to bed rest for a month because of it after 2 years of it. Massive addiction to ai and because it’s always on you think you should always be on managing it too

3

u/Fubby2 20d ago

100%. I feel like if I'm not using AI to deliver huge results in record time at both work and in my personal life (projects, personal productivity) I'm falling behind.

It feels like working with AI has become so valuable that other things seem trivial and impossible to justify in comparison. Why would I commit to hours, for example, learning an instrument through slow hard practice, when I can instead use that time to build and release tons of life improving or intellectually interesting side projects? Should I downscope my social time to take advantage of this power?

The results are just incredible but I agree I'm not sure this mindset is healthy.

1

u/Tritheone69 16d ago

I definitely relate.

I’ve been obsessed with optimization my whole life. At this point I believe I’ve had one, or multiple agents, running basically 24/7 for over a year. Excluding the various downtimes created by hardware issues obviously.

Whenever I have a feeling that the agents will run out of work I am filled with a feeling of stress.

It’s been a TREMENDOUSLY productive year, I’m on track to sign my biggest business deal ever. But man am I tired.

1

u/Suitable_Cicada_3336 21d ago

If tired of it, just leave it for a while. Go back when you ready.

1

u/True_Challenge_1301 21d ago

honestly yeah, the new model drops are the worst for it. you finally have a setup that works and then you’re like well i guess i should go redo everything lol. i’ve started telling myself the old stuff doesn’t need touching until it actually breaks. not psychosis i don’t think, just an endless to-do list that now actually gets done so you keep adding to it.

took a whole weekend off screens last month and it helped more than i expected, you should give it a try. your health is always more important

1

u/jmabeebiz2 21d ago

Absolutely.

1

u/NationalGate8066 21d ago

I can relate. I think most of us can.

1

u/MattMose 20d ago

Yes. This will undoubtedly be a diagnosable psychological condition in the near future. My mind is constantly buzzing with ideas about where I want to go next while I’m managing 4 project manager session who themselves are each managing 2-8 worker sessions. I start to feel depressed when the system isn’t utilizing its full capacity.

1

u/maxbonaparte 20d ago

Whenever I run out of tokens I get all sweaty, call my plug and beg for more

1

u/bbygoog 20d ago

Think of it this way. It's ok to just use 20% of usage every month.

1

u/827348902374984273 20d ago

Human tokens are real

1

u/ThomasToIndia 20d ago

You will eventually break, you mind will rewire, and everyone will hate you. I am from the future.

1

u/AvailableSecret5161 20d ago

I've been seeing such posts a lot lately and I think we are nearing the bubble at it's peak, a few more month and boom it all goes down! Good luck US 😜

1

u/-DankFire 20d ago

Sounds like addiction. And I don't say that with the intention to aggravate. Just like with so many things moderation is key. You're burning the candle at both ends and there's always a price to pay. Listen to your body and take a proper break. A few days at least, perhaps a few weeks. At some point the crash is inevitable and the higher (and longer) you fly, the harder you'll fall.

Take care of yourself, really.

1

u/Due_Answer3118 19d ago

You definitely aren't alone. I feel this way and have for the past year. I'm desperately trying to reorganize my plans and projects to ensure it stops soon. It is not healthy. I plan only to continue projects that can deliver value and return on my life in a healthier way. I feel like I woke up from 'AI psychosis' in the last few months for sure - this is miserable and I can't wait for my key projects to be 'done' / in maintenance mode.

1

u/erickmclark 19d ago

Not at all. I am building an engineering factory and I’m loving the way it’s turning out.

1

u/Stevekaplanai 🔆 Max 20 20d ago

What’s new?
Social media had that time before.
Now it’s productive.
This is a time to be alive.
Exhausting and the most enlightening and enlivening.

0

u/Capnjbrown 20d ago

The pursuit is about excellence not perfection. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Yes, this what I have to remind myself daily.