Existential Anxiety

There’s a specific kind of anxiety that hits differently right now — existential anxiety. It’s the dread of investing your focus into something that might not matter by the time you finish it.

You want to build a product. You have the idea, the energy, maybe even the first prototype. But somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice asks: will this still be relevant when it’s done?

This isn’t hypothetical. Sam Altman admitted to feeling obsolete watching his own AI tools surpass what he could do manually. If the person steering the ship feels this way, the rest of us aren’t imagining things.

The Shelf Life Problem

The pace of change creates a paradox for builders. Products have a shelf life that keeps shrinking, but the thinking behind them doesn’t. A product might get leapfrogged in six months. The reasoning — why you built it, what you noticed, how your understanding shifted — that compounds.

There’s a term psychologists use for what many are experiencing right now: present-moment nostalgia. The feeling of living through the end of an era while you’re still in it. Like watching a sunset and already missing the light.

A 2026 survey found 63% of workers believe AI will make their workplace feel less human this year. The fear isn’t just about losing jobs — it’s about the erosion of skills you spent years building. A specific dread that the ground keeps shifting.

The Missing Soul

A friend recently made an observation that stuck with me. We were talking about AI-generated art, and how people often say it “lacks soul.” I asked her what she thought that meant. Her answer was simple: what’s missing isn’t the output — it’s the process of creating it.

That reframing changes everything. When someone paints, the final image is only part of what happened. The hesitation before the first brushstroke, the decision to scrap a color and try another, the accident that became the best part — that’s where the meaning lives. AI skips straight to the output. The soul people are looking for was never in the painting. It was in the painting of it.

And if that’s true for art, it’s true for building anything. Maybe the process itself is the meaning. Not the product. Not the deliverable. The act of wrestling with a problem, changing your mind, finding your way through — that’s the part that can’t be automated, and that’s the part that counters the anxiety. You don’t need the final product to survive in order for the work to have mattered.

Writing as the Antidote

So here’s the bet I’m making with this blog: the documentation of thinking is more durable than what the thinking produces.

If I build a product and it becomes outdated, the product is gone. But if I document why I thought it was worth building, what I observed along the way, and how my understanding evolved — that stays useful. To me and to anyone reading.

Documentation is a metacognitive exercise — thinking about your thinking. And unlike a shipped product, the process of arriving at an idea is not something AI can make obsolete. The reasoning path is uniquely yours.

What This Blog Is

This is that documentation. Not polished essays. Not product announcements. Just the running log of what I’m noticing, what I’m building, and — most importantly — how my thinking changes.

Some posts will be a single observation. Others might trace how an idea evolved over weeks. The format doesn’t matter. What matters is capturing the thinking while it’s happening, before it gets smoothed over by hindsight.

Because in a world where products expire fast, the evolution of thought might be the only thing worth keeping.

中文翻译

存在主义焦虑

有一种焦虑，在当下这个时代格外刺痛——存在主义焦虑。它是一种恐惧：你倾注全部注意力去做的事情，可能在完成之前就已经失去意义。

你想做一个产品。有想法，有干劲，甚至可能已经有了第一个原型。但脑海深处有个声音一直在问：等做完的时候，这东西还有人需要吗？

这不是杞人忧天。Sam Altman 自己都承认，看着自己的 AI 工具超越了他手动能做的一切，他感到了一种被淘汰的失落。如果掌舵的人都有这种感受，我们其他人的焦虑就不是空穴来风。

保质期问题

变化的速度给创造者制造了一个悖论：产品的保质期越来越短，但产品背后的思考不会过期。一个产品可能半年就被超越，但做这个产品时的思考——为什么要做、观察到了什么、认知如何转变——这些会持续积累。

心理学家用一个词来形容很多人正在经历的状态：当下怀旧。身处一个时代的尾声，却还没走出来。像是看着日落，光还没消失，你就已经开始想念了。

2026 年的一项调查发现，63% 的职场人认为 AI 会让他们的工作环境变得更缺乏人情味。人们害怕的不仅是丢掉工作——更是花了多年积累的技能正在被侵蚀。一种脚下的地面不断移动的恐惧。

缺失的灵魂

一个朋友最近说了一番话，让我印象很深。我们聊到 AI 生成的艺术，很多人说它"缺少灵魂"。我问她怎么理解这件事。她的回答很简单：缺的不是最终的作品——缺的是那个创造的过程。

这个重新定义改变了一切。一个人画画，最终的画面只是发生的事情的一部分。第一笔之前的犹豫，决定放弃一个颜色换另一个的瞬间，那个意外变成了整幅画最好的部分——意义就在这些地方。AI 直接跳到了结果。人们在找的灵魂从来不在画里，而在画画这件事里。

如果这对艺术成立，那对做任何东西都成立。**也许过程本身就是意义。**不是产品，不是交付物。与一个问题搏斗、改变想法、找到出路的那个过程——这是无法被自动化的部分，也是能对抗焦虑的部分。你不需要最终产品存活下来，这段经历本身就已经有意义了。

写作作为解药

所以我在这个博客上押了一个注：对思考的记录，比思考所产出的东西更持久。

如果我做了一个产品，它过时了，产品就没了。但如果我记录下为什么觉得它值得做、一路上观察到了什么、认知如何演变——这些记录会持续有用。对我自己，对任何读到的人。

记录是一种元认知练习——对自己的思考进行思考。和一个已发布的产品不同，得出一个想法的过程，不是 AI 能替代的。推理的路径是独属于你的。

这个博客是什么

这就是那份记录。不是精心打磨的文章，不是产品发布公告。只是一份持续更新的日志——我在注意什么，我在做什么，以及最重要的，我的想法在怎样变化。

有些文章可能只是一个观察。有些可能追踪一个想法在几周内如何演变。形式不重要。重要的是在思考正在发生的时候把它捕捉下来，趁它还没被事后的合理化抹平。

因为在一个产品快速过期的世界里，思想的演变或许才是唯一值得留下的东西。