Ask HN: Does your mind drift while waiting for AI prompts to finish?
I've been a software engineer for 9 years now, and I noticed a very new weirdness in my workflows. Once I finish the architecture of a project and i have my context engineering prompt ready, I hit SEND, and then is just void lol. I have realized that between that time of waiting till AI is done, my mind drifts, I go use other apps, search random stuff and if AI fucks things up I go back and forth supervising it. I feel like this whole experience has generated some kind of fatigue and comes with a lot of cognitive overload. Do you folks face that too? How is it affecting you ?
20 comments
"Flibbertigibbeting" and "Beboppin" are the new i'm waiting for it to compile, but while the binary outcome of compilation (either it compiles or it doesn't) keeps your head in the game, the open-endedness of a Claude response can be disorienting after you've come back from the YouTube/Reddit wormhole -- like how on Monday you ask yourself wtf you were doing on Friday. But it's just a matter of time before prompting is as fast as Googling... and then it's off to collecting UBI!
hah legend of a comment. and i agree regarding the open-endedness, it never settles it, and because it doesn't give you a concrete answer you are drawn into replying back and the infinite loop begins. Yeah, Elon said it is the great thing in the world, the UBI - LMAO. we will get paid enough to pay bills and fry our brains using LLMs. Now thats utopia.
That's relatable. Sometimes I feel like my short attention span is well-tuned for this kind of workflow, bouncing between the different projects I'm working on and swapping between one or the other while waiting for an AI to complete a task. I also worry that it's exacerbating a bad habit and only going to further impede my ability to actually concentrate.
exactly. that is the main side effect i see. Im a huge book reader, for the last 7 years. and lately it is not just that i read less, it is that i lost the appetite reading completely. apart from concentration, im like, if i read what is the benefit. wont be able to compete with AI no matter what i learn haha lol
Yeah, my assumed neurodivergence has never been more apparent to me than in these moments.
Sometimes it feels like genuinely more stuff is getting done in parallel, but I haven't figured out the key to this kind of performance. So, at times it is just the fatigue from context switching without the results that would justify it.
yeah. i fully agree. we do 'so many things' and obviously due to the volume, it is a logical assumption that the weight of significance of each is lower. and you dont really see, experience, or feel the results. so it creates some fatigue. a sense of meaninglessness in a way. do u do anything to deal with this ?
Yes, often working on several topics in parallel (usualy 3 to 4) and that's a big mental effort to switch from one to the other, also drifting from some priority topics to useless stuff...
I never really step back on that but I agree that this is a real problem that can lead to inefficiency
> time of waiting till AI is done
So you are saying that you are not running multiple shit in parallel?
lol sometimes yes. but what im saying is about the side effect of this idle-but-not-so-idle moment.
This is how people work now?
Well I guess so. AI is not really an option anymore. it is pushed inside most of the companies. Im currently in a big blockchain company leading an engineering team.
What will happen if you don’t use AI? Will they fire you?
Sounds just like https://xkcd.com/303/
Well... but at least swordfighting and swashbuckling your fellow co-developer is some genuine human connection in between bursts of work.