Work Is No Longer Linear

Work used to have a clear shape. You started with nothing, added things incrementally, and eventually you were done. Progress was measurable. You could point at what you'd built and say "I'm about 60% through."

That's not how it works anymore, at least not for me.

Now I describe something, get a draft instantly, and then spend my time figuring out if it's right. The work moved from construction to verification. I'm not building brick by brick - I'm looking at a finished house and checking if the foundations are solid.

This is genuinely strange to watch. If you looked over my shoulder, you'd see me staring at code, scrolling, occasionally typing a question, then more staring. It doesn't look like work. There's no visible accumulation. I might reject three complete implementations before accepting a fourth, and from the outside that looks like I've accomplished nothing for an hour.

The hardest part is not knowing where I am. With linear work, progress is self-evident. With this, I might be 90% done or I might be about to discover a fundamental flaw that resets everything. The verification itself doesn't have stages. You're either confident or you're not, and the transition between those states can be instant.

I've also noticed that stopping is harder. There's no natural break point when you're refining rather than building. You can always verify more, check another edge case, ask another question. The work expands to fill whatever time you give it because there's no clear "done" - just degrees of confidence.

I don't have a conclusion here. I'm just noticing that the shape of work changed and I'm still figuring out what that means.