Doing is thinking

I've been more hands-on in my work recently.

It’s reminded me that a lot of the thinking happens in the doing. The micro-decisions, the adjustments, iterations, guided by experience, instinct and intuition. The versions. The happy accidents. All in the moment, not planned and prompted in advance.

For me, this doing → thinking feedback loop is the satisfying part of the work. It’s what flow feels like. And it feels good.

As I integrate AI tools into my workflow I'm noticing that in some instances they are not particularly conducive to that kind of flow.

In fact, in some ways the interaction model is almost perfectly designed to interrupt it.

You stop. You switch. You reach for words to describe an instinct that maybe you can’t articulate concisely. Then you wait and hope you got the words right.

That's several context switches and interruptions to flow in a row.

Earlier this week I caught myself feeling frustrated that I'd ‘wasted’ twenty seconds on a result that was way off the mark. Not a happy accident, just another sh*t result.

Frustration over a wasted twenty seconds is a pretty absurd thing to feel, but it wasn't really about the time.

When you spend time doing, you feel in control. You’re building an understanding of the work as you do it. You feel a sense of pride in the outcome.

When you spend time waiting, you’re not in full control. You’re hoping, not learning. You don’t feel as much ownership of the outcome.

The joy in making something lives in the doing and thinking. In the flow, in the feedback loop between what you imagined and how the work evolves, what you learn along the way.

When the result arrives without any of that, you get the thing but not the feeling. Which can be a strange kind of outcome, given that the feeling is where most of the satisfaction comes from.