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AI was supposed to save us time. Instead, the sessions run longer and stopping feels worse.

The pressure to keep going comes from a self-imposed demand the machine perfectly serves.

When human colleagues got tired, their fatigue told us stopping was OK. AI never sends that signal.

The other evening, I was working through a checklist with AI. The rhythm was simple enough: load up one step, and while the machine ran it, line up the next. Between steps, there was a pile of content work to clear. Eventually, around 7:30 p.m., I started getting very tired.

So far, so normal. I’d been working since 6 a.m., and a 13-hour-plus day is enough to get anyone tired. But I felt guilty about the idea of stopping. My collaborator that evening could go on forever. Indeed, the machine was still going, waiting for me. So why wasn’t I? Why was I taking a break? Why wasn’t I feeding the machine?

I typed in a prompt and then paused, struck by the strangeness of what I had just done. There was no deadline. There was no boss shouting at me to get something done. I was tired and had done more than enough work for the day. But I felt guilty about stopping, guilty enough to keep working.

Part of it is a me thing, of course. But it’s not just a me thing.

There’s a pattern to working with AI that seems widespread: The tool does more of the work than any tool in history, and yet the sessions run longer, not shorter. Just one more........

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