I wonder if these people just need to talk.

I wonder if these people are just avoiding thinking about the tough things in their lives.

I wonder if these people are just scared of being human, so reaching for any distraction they can get.

I've tried to stop taking my phone with me when I go to the bathroom. When I shower. When I go to bed. Because I think we all have these same addictions. There's things that suck in life. But maybe if we put our phones down we can work together to solve these things.

- Written on godelski's iPhone while pooping

I was a workaholic from 18-26. 12+ hour days for months/years on end. It absolutely was not healthy. Toxic is not an inaccurate label.

But I don't regret it. Those years are the foundation of the career I have in my 30's.

Back in those days, when I wasn't at a computer, I was listening to non-fiction audiobooks on business and software. I don't know how I had such motivation bvack then, but I'm glad I capitalized on it while I had it.

In other words, to people reading questioning if they're working too much: it's okay to work hard as long as you're doing it for the right reasons. (I'll purposely leave "right reasons" undefined, that's on you to evaluate)

I'm just generally not a fan of people putting other people down for wanting to be productive. It's okay to work hard, and it's okay if your identity is your work at least for a short time in your life.

I find driving to be one of the most useless ways of spending my time, and if it's for more than half an hour, I do try to figure out some way to increase the value of that time.

I have a weekly commitment that leaves me driving home (~40min) at 9pm, and I usually eat dinner (just a sandwich) while I drive. That also has the advantage of making it so that I'm not eating an hour before bed.

If I know that I need to call someone, I'll usually try to schedule that call while I'm driving. I used to take meetings while driving as well, though I stopped because it was perceived poorly by others.

What's sort of sad is that I can take public transit to all of my regular commitments, and that lets me keep doing something (reading, working, whatever). The schedules are poor, though, and they blow my commute times completely out of the water. For example, I've got a 5-7pm commitment that is a 15-minute drive one way, but if I wanted to go by bus, I'd have to leave at 3:30pm (latest it comes before I need to be there), and get back on it at 8pm (the earliest it comes after I'm done).

I think you should just focus on the road because most of us are just trying to get home safely to our families. Some of us are even biking beside the road on a lightly-protected bike lane.

Aw jeez. Just take it in the spirit it was intended and stop trying to score "more spiritual than thou" points. We are all deep one day and shallow the next. We are all workaholics and also smelling the roses. You know nothing about the author - you're hijacking a thread to grandstand.

Driving is a good time to decompress or hammock based engineer imo

In my experience the driving-behavior part of my brain can run virtually autonomously, like how you don't really have to spend 100% of your brain to walk down the street. This means that the words-thinking part of my brain is almost completely free, with the exception of short high-attention spikes for risky maneuvers like onramp merging. This is why listening to music or podcasts is a very popular driving activity. In many places even handsfree phone calls are allowed as long as both hands are available and your vision isn't obstructed.

I would contend that listening to a podcast or being on a handsfree phone call would be on par with the Claw Phone.

People like different things than you do, not sure why you have to get sad about it.

My main use case is that I'm driving and think of something I want to remember, and want to record it hands-free without taking my eyes off of the road

It’s a mix of virtue signaling and the inability to have own thoughts for few minutes without having existential crisis, no wonder mental illness is off the charts. There’s actually nothing more therapeutic than a night drive on a long road with your own thoughts to process certain events that happened throughout the day/week.

I started reading the first part of your comment before opening the article and thought you were mocking AI bros. I then read the rest of your comment and was sure you're misrepresenting TFA. I clicked on the article and started at it in disbelief.

Always relevant https://youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U&pp=iggUQAFKEDlhR21Pa...

Some folks might be trying to empty what's on their mind.

Very well could be a productivity habit bordering on obsession too.

Yeah but what if I do this so I have the time in my workday to drive to the beach.

I assumed they meant the 15 minutes waiting in between kind of slots. Not... Actually while driving I hope

So a lot of slop out there is just undiagnosed ADHD.