Hey everyone,
I spent years learning to write software. Now I spend a substantial portion of my day telling AI what software to write, reviewing what it produces, and deciding what needs to change. I'm considerably more productive than I used to be, and I have no desire to return to writing every line of code myself. But the experience has made me wonder what happens to some of the things we used to enjoy about our work when machines become capable of doing them for us.
I'm not talking about the economic implications of automation, although those are obviously significant. I'm concerned about something more personal: the possibility that in our enthusiasm to eliminate effort, we might inadvertently eliminate experiences that are genuinely good for us.
One of those experiences is what psychologists call a *flow state*.
Most people have experienced flow, even if they've never had a name for it. It's that feeling of becoming so completely absorbed in an activity that you lose track of time. Musicians experience it while playing or writing. Programmers experience it while working through difficult problems. Athletes, artists, craftspeople, and people engaged in all sorts of other pursuits experience it, too. There's a particular satisfaction that comes from being immersed in something that demands your attention and challenges your abilities.
I've experienced this throughout my life, from writing software and making music to physical training. Some of my favorite afternoons have involved working through a difficult problem, becoming so absorbed in what I was doing that everything else seemed to disappear. The satisfaction wasn't always tied to the outcome, either. Sometimes the thing I was working on didn't turn out particularly well. Sometimes I didn't even finish it. But the hours spent completely engaged in the work were rewarding in their own right.
And I wonder what happens when we no longer need to do as much of that work ourselves.
AI is becoming extraordinarily good at eliminating the effort involved in accomplishing things. In many cases, that's fantastic. There are enormous amounts of repetitive, tedious, and administratively burdensome work that I'd happily never do again. If AI can give people more time to spend with their families, pursue their interests, or focus on work they find rewarding, I'm all for it.
Still, I'm not convinced that eliminating effort always improves the experience.
Consider software development, which has occupied a significant portion of my professional life. For years, there was a familiar archetype of the programmer who would put on headphones, disappear into a difficult problem, and emerge hours later having built something. Sometimes those stretches of work lasted days or weeks. It wasn't always healthy, and I'm certainly not suggesting that spending every waking hour staring at a computer is something we should romanticize. But there was something deeply satisfying about becoming completely absorbed in the process of solving a difficult technical problem.
That experience is changing rapidly. Increasingly, software development involves describing what you want, evaluating what a model produces, and directing subsequent iterations. There's still plenty of thinking involved, and in some respects the work has become more intellectually demanding. But it's a different kind of engagement. The familiar rhythm of writing code, testing an idea, debugging something that doesn't work, and gradually arriving at a solution is becoming less central to the job.
Of course, it's entirely possible that we're not losing the opportunity for flow so much as changing where we experience it.
I still find myself getting absorbed in technical work, but more of that work now happens at a higher level of abstraction. Instead of spending hours writing and debugging individual functions, I might spend that time working through the architecture of a system, evaluating different approaches, or considering the implications of a design decision. There's satisfaction in that work, too, and sometimes the intellectual challenge is considerably greater than the implementation it replaces.
But I'm not sure those experiences are interchangeable.
There's something different about the sustained concentration involved in writing code, playing an instrument, or building something with your hands. These activities require a particular kind of attention, often involving a continuous exchange between action and feedback. You try something, observe the result, make an adjustment, and try again. Eventually, when things are going well, the process becomes almost automatic. You're no longer consciously managing every individual decision. You're simply engaged in what you're doing.
Flow isn't just the result of doing something difficult. Psychologists generally describe it as a state that emerges when the challenge of an activity is well matched to our abilities, often accompanied by clear goals, immediate feedback, and sustained concentration. If something is too easy, we become bored. If it's too difficult, we become frustrated or overwhelmed. Somewhere between those extremes, there's an opportunity to become completely absorbed in the activity.
AI could influence those conditions in either direction.
It might remove so much of the challenge from an activity that we no longer find it engaging. But it could also allow us to take on challenges that would previously have been beyond our abilities. Someone who has never written software might become immersed in designing and building an application. A musician might use AI to investigate unfamiliar harmonic ideas and spend hours experimenting with material they wouldn't otherwise have encountered. In those cases, the technology isn't eliminating the opportunity for flow. It's creating new ways to experience it.
There's also the possibility that AI will free people from work they never enjoyed in the first place, allowing them to spend more time pursuing activities that provide exactly this kind of satisfaction. That's an outcome I'd certainly welcome.
But I think we need to be more deliberate about how we get there.
For decades, we've designed technology around the idea that friction is something to eliminate. Generally speaking, that's been a successful approach. Nobody particularly enjoys navigating unnecessarily complicated interfaces, repeating tedious administrative tasks, or spending hours trying to accomplish something that should take a few minutes.
The complication is that some of the activities we find most rewarding involve considerable effort. Learning to play an instrument is difficult. Writing a good song is difficult. Building something with your hands, mastering a physical skill, or working through a challenging intellectual problem can be incredibly frustrating. But those difficulties are often essential to the satisfaction we get from the experience.
And what constitutes rewarding effort varies considerably from person to person.
I know programmers who genuinely enjoy writing code, and others who would happily delegate every line of implementation if it meant they could spend more time designing systems. Some musicians love the technical aspects of production, while others find those same tasks tedious and would rather focus entirely on writing and performing. Neither approach is inherently better. The value of an activity isn't determined solely by how efficiently it produces an outcome.
This distinction has become an important consideration in how we're building StudioOps.
We've deliberately avoided trying to automate the entire creative process. Our goal is to expand an artist's creative surface area and vocabulary, helping them encounter musical, conceptual, and emotional directions they might otherwise have missed. We want to make it easier for artists to reconnect with forgotten ideas, investigate unfamiliar influences, and work through the obstacles that prevent them from making progress.
But I still want the artist to spend hours working on a song. I want them to experiment with an unfamiliar chord progression, struggle with a lyric that isn't quite right, or become completely absorbed in trying to capture a particular sound. Those experiences are a substantial part of why people make music in the first place.
I don't want to build software that eliminates the experience of writing a song. I'd much rather build something that makes a musician excited to sit down and work on one.
The same considerations extend well beyond music. As AI continues to change the nature of work, we may need to become more intentional about finding activities that challenge us in ways we enjoy. That might involve learning a craft, playing sports, writing, woodworking, painting, or pursuing interests that have absolutely nothing to do with how we earn a living. There's value in becoming good at something simply because we enjoy doing it, even when the activity produces nothing of particular economic value.
I also wonder whether this deserves more attention from the people designing AI systems. We tend to evaluate technology based on how much time it saves, how much work it eliminates, or how much more productive it makes us. Those are useful measures, but they don't tell us much about the quality of the experience. Perhaps we should also consider whether a tool makes an activity more engaging, helps someone develop new capabilities, or creates opportunities for sustained concentration.
That doesn't mean deliberately making software more difficult to use. It means recognizing that the fastest route to an outcome isn't necessarily the most rewarding one, and that different people may want different levels of involvement in the process.
I don't know whether AI will ultimately give us more opportunities to experience flow or fewer. I suspect the answer will depend a great deal on how we choose to use it, and perhaps more importantly, how we design the systems people will use.
What concerns me is that we may not recognize some of what we've lost until those experiences have become considerably less common. We'll still be accomplishing things, probably at a pace that would have seemed absurd just a few years ago. We may even find ourselves with more free time.
I just hope we're thoughtful about what we choose to do with it.
Talk soon,
Todd