The Void Isn't Coming—It's Already Here
I spent three hours yesterday staring at AI-generated code that should have taken thirty minutes to review.
The code was fine. The AI did its job. But I kept muddling through, tweaking, second-guessing, rewriting what already worked. When my business partner asked what I'd accomplished, I had nothing to show for those hours.
This is the void.
You won't find it in dystopian predictions about AI taking jobs or robots replacing humans. You'll find it in the Tuesday afternoon when your AI coding assistant generates a perfect solution and you feel... nothing. No satisfaction. No sense of accomplishment. Just a vague unease that something important just slipped away.
The Abundance Paradox Nobody Talks About
Here's what I've learned building a software platform with AI tools: abundance kills motivation faster than scarcity ever could.
When I started coding with AI six months ago, I thought I'd found the holy grail. Tasks that used to take days now took hours. My productivity metrics looked incredible. I told everyone how AI was changing everything.
Then I noticed something strange.
Some days the code flows and I build features in minutes that used to take weeks. Other days I sit in what I call "the grind"—hours pass, nothing ships, and I can't explain why. The AI works the same both days. The difference is me.
A METR study recently confirmed what I was experiencing. They tracked experienced developers using AI tools and found something remarkable: completing tasks took 19 percent longer with AI, even though developers reported feeling 20 percent faster.
Read that again.
We feel productive while becoming less productive. The AI gives us the sensation of speed while quietly eroding the very thing that made us valuable—the struggle that builds skill.
This isn't a bug. This is the feature nobody warned you about.
Why Your Brain Craves the Grind
I know the right move when I hit the grind. Stop coding. Go outside. Come back fresh. Every productivity book says the same thing.
But I muddle through anyway.
Why? Because I carry a high level of responsibility. Because the AI should make this easy. Because abundance trained me to expect instant results, and when they don't come, I assume I'm doing something wrong.
The research on AI adoption in manufacturing firms shows this pattern at scale. Companies implementing AI saw productivity drops of 1.33 percentage points initially. When researchers corrected for selection bias, the short-run negative impact jumped to 60 percentage points.
We're in what economists call the "Productivity J-Curve"—the dip before the rise. The problem is that dip happens inside your psychology before it shows up in the data.
You're not failing. You're adapting to a world where the old rules don't apply.
AI as Mirror
Here's what 20 years of Vipassana meditation taught me that applies directly to AI: tools don't solve problems, they reveal them.
When you sit in silence for 10 days, you discover your mind isn't the peaceful sanctuary you imagined. It's a chaos of reactions, cravings, and aversions you've been running from your entire life.
AI does the same thing, just faster.
Every time the AI generates perfect code and you still feel empty, it's showing you something. Every time you muddle through when you should stop, it's revealing a pattern. Every time you mistake motion for progress, it's holding up a mirror.
Most people will look away.
They'll blame the tool. They'll say AI isn't ready. They'll wait for the next version, the better model, the perfect prompt. Anything to avoid what the mirror shows.
But the mirror isn't the problem. The mirror is showing you that your motivation system was built for scarcity, and scarcity just ended.
The Three Traps
I've watched this play out in my own work and in conversations with other builders. There are three traps that keep intelligent people from confronting the void:
Trap 1: Distraction
When the AI makes everything easy, you lose the natural filter that used to protect your attention. You start 10 projects because starting is free. You explore 50 ideas because exploration costs nothing.
But finishing? Finishing still requires you.
The distraction trap isn't about lack of focus. It's about abundance removing the constraints that used to force prioritization. You're drowning in possibility.
Trap 2: Dependency
The more the AI does for you, the less you trust yourself. You second-guess decisions you used to make instantly. You check and recheck work that's already correct.
I see this in my own code reviews. I spend more time validating AI-generated solutions than I used to spend writing them from scratch. The AI didn't make me faster. It made me dependent on external validation.
Trap 3: Cynicism
When abundance arrives and you still feel empty, cynicism becomes the easy answer. "Nothing matters anyway." "AI will replace us all." "Why bother?"
Cynicism is just fear wearing a leather jacket.
Viktor Frankl identified this pattern decades ago in what he called the "mass neurotic triad"—depression, aggression, and addiction. He warned that "ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for."
A 2023 study found that nearly 60% of young adults reported experiencing little or no meaning in their lives. That's double what Frankl observed.
The void isn't coming. It's already here.
The King's Cycle
I'm not interested in problems without solutions. Here's what I've learned works, tested through my own practice building software and decades of meditation:
Step 1: Daily Reflection
Every morning, before touching AI tools, I ask three questions:
What matters today?
What am I avoiding?
What would I do if the AI disappeared?
The last question is critical. It reveals what you actually value versus what you're outsourcing because you can.
Step 2: Choose Your Domain
Pick one area where you will remain irreplaceable. Not because AI can't do it, but because you've decided this is where you build mastery.
For me, it's system architecture. I let AI write boilerplate code. I keep the decisions about how systems connect.
This isn't about protecting your job. This is about protecting your identity.
Step 3: Leverage AI as Ally
Use AI for everything except your chosen domain. Be ruthless about this. If the AI can do it 80% as well as you, let it.
This frees your attention for the work that actually matters. The work that builds you while you build it.
Step 4: Ship Consistently
Abundance makes starting easy and finishing hard. Reverse this.
I ship something every week, even if it's imperfect. The act of completion builds the muscle that abundance atrophies. You learn more from shipping one flawed thing than exploring 100 perfect ideas.
Step 5: Embody the Challenge
This is where most frameworks fail. They stay intellectual.
I run 10 kilometers three times a week. I sit 30-day Vipassana courses. I choose physical and mental challenges that have nothing to do with productivity.
Why? Because deliberate discomfort trains you to choose hardship when ease is available. This is the skill that separates sovereign humans from algorithm-dependent consumers.
Research on deliberate discomfort shows that intentionally placing yourself in challenging situations improves mental health. But there's a key distinction: chosen hardship strengthens you. Grinding exploitation breaks you.
Know the difference.
The Great Sorting
Tony Seba's work on S-curves and disruptive technologies shows that adoption patterns are getting steeper. Technologies that used to take decades to reach mainstream now do it in years.
AI abundance will follow the same pattern.
Within five years, you'll see a clear division: people who expanded their consciousness through abundance, and people who dissolved into consumption.
This isn't moral judgment. This is pattern recognition.
The people who learn to forge meaning internally will build things that matter. The people who wait for external meaning will scroll, consume, and wonder why nothing satisfies.
Elon Musk talks about a "future of abundance" where robots do the work and humans enjoy the output. But this raises a question nobody wants to answer: if machines do all the jobs, who has the money to buy what they produce?
The economic paradox mirrors the psychological one. Abundance without purpose creates a void that consumption can't fill.
From Scarcity to Synthesis
I believe we're ending a 6,000-year era of scarcity thinking. Mass production, resource competition, zero-sum games—these shaped human psychology for millennia.
AI-driven abundance breaks that pattern.
But here's what most people miss: the transition from scarcity to abundance doesn't automatically create meaning. It creates a vacuum where meaning used to be.
You have to fill that vacuum deliberately.
This is what I mean by synthesis. Moving beyond polarization—us versus them, human versus machine, work versus leisure—into a new framework where meaning is internally generated.
Not imposed by necessity. Not derived from scarcity. Chosen because you decided it matters.
What Happens Next
The void is already here. You've probably felt it.
That moment when the AI solves your problem and you feel nothing. That afternoon when everything should be easy but you're grinding anyway. That question you keep avoiding: "What am I actually building toward?"
You have two paths.
Path one: Ignore the void. Fill it with consumption, distraction, and the next dopamine hit. Millions will take this path. It's easier.
Path two: Face the void. Use it as fuel. Build the King's Cycle into your daily practice. Choose deliberate hardship. Forge meaning through action.
I'm not here to convince you which path to take. I'm here to tell you the choice is happening whether you acknowledge it or not.
The void isn't coming.
It's already here.
What you do with it defines everything that comes next.