Something strange has been happening to me.
I am getting more done than I used to — not imagined productivity, but real work. Writing, design, technical analysis, planning, problem-solving. Tasks that once took half a day now take an hour. Research that used to stall a project now resolves quickly.
And yet I increasingly feel rushed.
Days disappear.
Weeks blur.
I finish work… but I don’t feel finished.
At first, I assumed this was stress, or age, or distraction. But none of those explanations fit. My focus is actually sharper than it has been in years. My efficiency has increased. I am objectively accomplishing more.
So why does it feel like I’m falling behind?
The answer, I think, is that we misunderstand how the mind measures progress.
We assume we measure progress by output — how much we completed.
The brain doesn’t.
It measures progress by friction.
For most of human history, meaningful effort contained resistance. Writing required rewriting. Building required waiting.
Learning required mistakes. Problem-solving required pauses.
That resistance created internal markers: I struggled, I worked, I moved forward.
The mind could feel the distance traveled. Artificial intelligence quietly changed this.
AI removes friction. It compresses steps. It eliminates waiting. Instead of moving slowly through a problem, we move rapidly from one solved problem to the next.
Paradoxically, when friction disappears, the internal markers of progress disappear too.
So even though we accomplish more, the mind doesn’t register the movement. We experience acceleration as stagnation.
There is another effect.
We don’t experience time by the clock. We experience time by the number of meaningful mental events we encounter. Struggle, reconsideration, and reflection create memory anchors. When many anchors exist, a day feels full. When few exist, the day feels as if it has vanished.
AI removes many intermediate steps. Fewer anchors form. The brain records less passage even while more work is being done.
So we arrive at a strange modern feeling: productive but unsettled.
We interpret the sensation as being behind. But it may actually be something else.
It may be that we have not lost progress.
We have lost the signals that tell us we are progressing.
And without those signals, the mind calls the experience what it feels like: CHAOS.
Series: AI and the Lost Rhythm of Thinking [1] [2] [3]