[Weryj]

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, without large agentic workflows that burn tokens. Just me and 4-5 terminals. Sometimes I was happy to hit the limit because I was forced back to normal life.

I've gone back to Pro to stop what was happening.

Now I'm self-aware enough to notice the trend and put up safe guards, but that's because I've always had to adapt my environment to control my behaviour because I know direct behaviour control is abnormally challenging. I fear for those who won't see it coming, until they're in deep.

[MrGilbert]

> [...] 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 more stable than myself.

[Forgeties79]

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…

[bluefirebrand]

I feel kind of lucky in a way that I hate working with AI so much. I'd rather hammer nails through my fingers than spend my time prompting

So my ADHD isn't being satisfied by those little dopamine hits from LLMs, Any time I'm forced to use them I'm mad about it, and can't wait to be done with it

I still have that folder of half finished things just like you, though. It's just not AI generated

[Weryj]

I thought about it a little deeper and I think software development has always had the addictive tendency. That hunt for the solution to the problem, has a rush when you complete it.

It’s just that the rush is more frequent, addiction intensity scales with dose and frequency.

[mettamage]

Don't know man. I'm also neurodivergent, subclinical in many ways at least on many things (I use science and self-development to keep myself remarkably stable for my neurotype). My issue with programming has always been that it feels so lonely and you get to care about things that no one else seems to really care about. So it removes one further from the general public.

I feel with AI agents, the pendulum shifted back a bit.

I do get what you're saying that software development has an addictive tendency as 20% of the time I am like that as well (and then I'm the "eat, sleep, code" kind). But at the same time, it's just not true for everyone.

I guess what it is: in order for software development to have an addictive tendency for one, certain conditions need to be met beforehand.

> has always had the addictive tendency

If you meant just your own experience by the way then I misread your comment. Since it reads to me as if you're trying to generalize it a bit.

[Weryj]

I was generalising a bit, but in a way where only a subset would agree. It's all anecdotal and very personal.

[hyperadvanced]

I think I might be going through withdrawal because I feel like I rarely get that fun feeling anymore with coding :(

It can be gratifying to get shit done but I love the feeling of coming up with a great reusable component and then making an entire app out of it

[thoughtpeddler]

I struggle to see the difference between "Let AI do that" and what a founder/executive is instinctively led to do also (i.e. delegate). Why does it have to be an ADHD thing? Yes, I see the risks of AI for someone with ADHD (described well in this article [0]), and for that reason I agree that ADHDers should be careful with these tools, as they present both a lot of promise and peril. But also... delegating functions to an 'agent' (whether human or AI) is just what people end up doing in life. Hard to tell these things apart...

[0] Rachel Thomas - Breaking the Spell of Vibe Coding: Sinister variations on the positive state of flow (https://www.fast.ai/posts/2026-01-28-dark-flow/)

[ip26]

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.

[mettamage]

I feel AI agents are an amazing replacement for many Figma screens. Just create a crude version of your app and have users test it immediately.

[willwade]

I find that the new "drug" is constantly hunting down new cheaper models.. z.ai/glm, mistral, deepseek.. if you need to get your fix - find the cheaper path..

[7777332215]

Average drug connesiuer activities

[rufasterisco]

Instead of jumping from project to project, I focus on one (maybe a few) and let myself free while agents spew out their output.

Something physical is excellent for me: minor wood carving, origami, drawing exercises, also light physical exercises.

My trick is to (try to) do something that requires high focus, on unrelated matters.

To give a practical example, the simple gesture to connect 2 points on a sheet of paper via a direct, non trembling line, requires high focus: if you try to do it sloppily it is too long, too short, etc. I need to shadow the moment, gain focus, draw the line.

It keeps my brain in focus, busy and engaged. Videos, podcasts, and in general enything digital seems to distract me away and/or overloads me.

Also, I am back at using pomodoro technique more frequently.

Just some pointers, in case you want to try out, or suggest some you find effective yourself.

[tim-projects]

For the addiction part I'm trying to squeeze as much quality code out of the free tokens possible. I'm having a blast!

[moron4hire]

Might call it the OnlyFans model of Software Development.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

You got me curious, mostly because I did not evolve past one terminal for whatever reason. Can anyone tell me how that happens? Can you realistically keep track of much? Or is it really a move to management as one of the other poster's noted?

[Weryj]

My monolith is large enough to work on multiple systems in parallel without overlapping. One prompt with Opus might take 30-40 minutes once past the planning phase.

So I plan the next work, while the current is still running and if that's a task that can't have parallel work, I have a bunch of time to keep planning the next steps for other systems.

And then there's time for reading through the changes and applying corrective changes to the code or the meta-skills.

I use CMUX and setup workspaces for each topic I'm working on, each workspace has number of tabs. That helps keeping track of everything I'm working on, but also means no topic gets left behind until I close the workspace. So they accumulate

[butlike]

Just follow the old drug using paradigm: "only get high on Friday." Only prompt on Friday