Rabbit holes have been a part of my personality sinc time immemorial. I still remember - and I don’t think it’s exaggerated - eight hour binges of interesting facebook profiles. Going back and scrolling through many many years of rich, lived experiences posted freely and publicly by a friend of friend who’ll never hear of my existence.
Then, of course, there’s reddit and tumblr and anything else that allows bottomless scrolling. Even better if it’s organised by topics or somesuch. Algorithmic feeds, funnily, are easier to eschew (I mean ignore).
Right now, the latest rabbit holes are LLMs. Willing to engage any fancy. Eager to help out with a follow-up question to further direct and deepen my ‘research’.
To someone who likes to ‘plan’ - i.e. fantasise without consequences or the risk of going wrong - this is a succubus’ hug. Or something like that.
It’s much easier to be conscious of procrastination when I’m doing something patently different from what my goal was. It’s much more insiduous and difficult to spot when procrastination comes in wearing the garb of productivity. Almost aligned with the goal, but living on a completely different plane altogether.
The way LLMs enable this, and the way I’ve been falling for this trap, is ridiculous. What good is blocking Reddit and LinkedIn and Techcrunch and all the other distractions if I’m going to talk to chatgpt for 40 minutes about buying a notebook.