Goodbye state of flow

I keep working on two or three things at once, because I’m waiting for AI to finish.

I send a prompt. Let it get on with the work. I open something else. Sometimes it’s another project in another chat. Sometimes it’s another AI tool. Sometimes it’s something else entirely. Then I go back to see what the first one has done.

There’s something to assess, something to change, another instruction to give. I move between them, trying to keep everything going. Sometimes it feels like managing people.

The awkward part of working with AI is deciding what to do while it works.

I’ve tried using that time to do some design myself. I can get on with something I enjoy while another part of the work happens in the background. But then I go back to check the result, and whatever I was getting into gets interrupted.

I can also doomscroll. That holds my attention fine. I end up scrolling long after the work I was waiting for is done.

I miss getting properly absorbed in designing or building something. There’s a lot of enjoyment in staying with a piece of work long enough to follow an idea through, notice something, change it, and see where that takes you. That process was part of why I got into design in the first place.

With AI, I keep breaking that process into instructions and reviews. I can get more things moving, but I find it harder to stay inside any one of them.

And I keep giving myself more things to move.

I was going to say I’ve started four projects, but it’s more than four.

It’s easy for quantity to become the thing I’m paying attention to. There’s another project I could move forward while this one is running. Another idea I could try. I rarely stay with any of them long enough to get lost in it.

I’ve never been more productive, and I still feel behind.