To tired to think and it's AIs fault

I've Been Tired. And I Think AI Is Part of the Reason.

I've been tired lately. Not the good kind of tired after a solid workout or a long hike—the kind where your body feels earned and your mind is clear. This is brain tired. The foggy, flat kind where nothing really resonates, new ideas feel scarce, and the energy to push forward just... isn't there.

And yeah, I'm blaming AI.

Don't get me wrong—AI agents are incredible. I throw a ticket or a half-baked idea at one (or a few), and boom—progress. Code appears, structures take shape, tasks get knocked out at a pace that would've been unimaginable a couple years ago. It's genuinely amazing, and I'm not about to go back to the stone age. But there's a mental cost I'm starting to feel, and I suspect a lot of you are too.

The Old Way: Slow, Messy, and Surprisingly Energizing

Think back to the old days. I'd spend hours—sometimes days—deep in the weeds. I'd poke at some code, trace how it interacted with everything else, run experiments, hit dead ends, backtrack, and finally land on something that worked. That grind wasn't just about getting the task done. It created this rich feedback loop.

While digging, my brain was connecting dots in the background. I'd spot patterns I didn't expect. Ideas for the next feature would bubble up while I were wrestling with something else. Even the friction—the "why is this breaking?" moments—forces processing time. It built momentum and, dare I say, innovation and genuine excitement to keep going.

It felt like real craftsmanship. Slow, sure. But it fed the creative part of my brain.

The AI Way: Lightning Fast, But Something's Missing Now?

I prompt, I review the output, I iterate a bit, and move on. It's efficient as hell. But that deep feedback loop is gone. No more hours of investigation that double as thinking time. No mental wandering while the code compiles or while you're stepping through a debugger. Just quick results and the next ticket.

It's like the difference between cooking a meal from scratch—chopping, tasting, adjusting—and ordering takeout. One nourishes you in more ways; the other just fills you up. With AI, I'm getting the output without the process that used to spark new ideas and sustain my energy.

This resonates.  

In fact, a well-documented psychological phenomenon called "The Generation Effect" shows that people remember information much better if they actively generate it themselves rather than just passively reading it.  I see this in how I built my career:  I learn and expand my skills by doing not reading a book or an article. By letting AI generate the code, I bypass the very mechanism my brain uses to learn and feel engaged.

I'm not saying AI is bad. It's a powerful tool. But when it becomes the default, it can shortcut the very mental work that keeps developers (and creators in general) sharp and inspired.

Perhaps we need to take a step back and realize AI place in our work.  And I am not suggesting nor am I going back to grinding through bugs for the nostalgia of it. But I think we owe ourselves a real conversation about what we're trading away for speed. The friction wasn't a bug in the old process — it was where a lot of the thinking, and a lot of the joy, actually happened. If I let AI take all of that away, I'm not just getting faster. I'm losing the sharpness, the spark, and the drive that actual problem-solving builds.