DEV Community: koshirok096

Lists Are Easy to Add to, but Hard to Remove From (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 21:14:14 +0000

Introduction

Sometimes, I find that things I add to my task list stay there for a surprisingly long time.

I add something because I think, “I should do this,” but then I miss the opportunity to get it done, and it simply stays on the list. When I look at it again after some time has passed, I sometimes find myself wondering, “Do I still need to do this?”

Of course, I'm not talking about things like work meetings or tasks with clear deadlines, where the necessity or urgency is obvious.

What caught my attention were the more ambiguous tasks, such as “I should do this when I have time” or “It might be worth looking into this.” I may add these to my list when they come to mind, but sometimes the opportunity to work on them never comes. Even so, when I try to remove them from the list, I find myself thinking, “Well, I might need this someday.”

So why is it so easy to add something, yet so difficult to remove it?

There may be many reasons why these tasks remain on the list, but one possible factor could be the status quo bias.

Status Quo Bias

Status quo bias is, simply put, the psychological tendency to prefer keeping things as they are.

For example, if changing something could potentially lead to a bad outcome, we may choose to leave things as they are, even if the current situation is somewhat inconvenient.

Something similar may be happening with task lists as well.

Once something has been added to a list, it remains there as something that we might do in the future. To remove it, however, we have to make another judgment: “I don't need to do this anymore.”

As a result, something that required almost no hesitation to add can somehow become difficult to remove.

Of course, not every task remains on a list because of the status quo bias.

Still, this tendency to find it easier to leave an existing state unchanged may be one of the reasons why some tasks remain on our lists for such a long time.

Adding Is Easy, Removing Is Hard

When I think about it this way, adding and removing items from a list may not be as symmetrical as they appear.

If I think, “I should do this too,” I can simply add it to the list. But when I remove something, I have to decide, “I don't need to do this anymore.”

At first, I thought of “adding” and “removing” as simply putting things in and taking them out. I assumed that the two actions would have roughly the same cost.

In fact, if anything, adding might seem more costly. You have an idea, think about what you want to do, and then decide that it is worth doing before adding it to the list.

But in practice, removing something often feels more costly.

When adding something, I can simply choose to leave the possibility open. When removing it, on the other hand, I have to decide that “I don't need this anymore” or “I'm not going to do this.”

In other words, adding can be done simply by keeping a possibility open, while removing something requires a decision to let that possibility go.

What looks like a simple matter of putting something in and taking it out may actually involve two very different kinds of decisions.

Conclusion

I've been using task lists as an example here, but the idea that “adding is easy and removing is hard” may not be limited to lists.

For example, the same thing can happen when saving files on a computer or smartphone. It is easy to think, “I'll keep this just in case,” and let the number of files grow. But when we eventually try to clean things up, we may hesitate because we think, “I might still need this someday.”

When something is easy to add, we tend to add it casually, and sometimes we add a lot of it. But if we also think about what it will take to remove it later, we may make slightly different decisions about what to add in the first place.

This turned into a somewhat rambling piece, but I wanted to take some time to put into words something I've been thinking about recently.

Thank you for reading!

Why Tense Up to Relax? (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 21:12:55 +0000

Introduction

In the 1920s, an American physician named Edmund Jacobson noticed something: when people feel stress or anxiety, tension shows up in their muscles without them realizing it. That led him to a question — if you could learn to fully release your muscles, could you bring down the tension in your mind as well? This is where progressive muscle relaxation, or PMR, came from.

Personally, when I try to do something about stress or tension, I tend to look at my thoughts or my feelings first. So the fact that Jacobson looked at the body instead struck me as pretty unique.

That said, it does make sense once you hear it. When I'm tense or stressed, my body does feel stiff. What Jacobson worked out was a way to get at it from that end. If a tense mind makes the body stiff, then loosening the body might help ease the tension in the mind too.

And the interesting part is the procedure. It's a method for relaxing, and yet the first thing you do is deliberately tense your muscles.

Why tense up on purpose?

The method itself is simple. With your hands, for example, you clench them lightly, hold for about five seconds, and then let go all at once. For the next 10 to 20 seconds, you pay attention to the feeling of the tension draining away. Then you work through the body in order — hands, arms, shoulders, face, and so on.

Why tense up first? Because when someone tells you to relax your shoulders, you often have no idea how much force you're holding there in the first place. Or rather, I think most of the tension we carry is the kind we never notice. Shoulders creeping up while working at the PC, teeth clenched, a tight forehead. Now that it's pointed out, all of it sounds familiar.

So you tense on purpose, to create a contrast with the moment you release. The procedure feels less like a stretch to loosen your muscles and more like practice — teaching your body what a released state actually feels like.

The figure usually given is 10 to 20 minutes a day over several weeks, and apparently it's less something you pull out in the middle of a tense moment than something you practice while you're calm.

What's the point of releasing it?

So what do you get out of being able to release it?

The idea goes like this. Mental stress can lead to muscle tension, and that tension can become part of the overall experience of stress. If your body stays tense even after whatever was bothering you has passed, that physical tension may contribute to the feeling of remaining stressed.

That's why releasing the body is worth something. Even so, releasing it doesn't make the cause of the tension go away. The work deadline, the worry at home, the friction with people — all of that stays right where it was. And even when the source of stress is still there, relaxing your muscles may help you feel a little less tense.

Still, telling your mind to calm down is hard, while dropping your shoulders is something you can actually do. When you can't reach a thing head-on, there may be a way to get at it from another side. It's about having one place you can move.

Conclusion

This post is a write-up of what I recently learned about progressive muscle relaxation, partly as a note to myself.

PMR got my attention, though I can't say I've been especially aware of feeling tense lately. But writing this out, it seems likely there have been plenty of times my body was holding tension without me noticing. And in those moments, knowing how to release it might make some difference.

I've tried it a little, and honestly it hasn't clicked yet. But the reasoning makes sense to me, so I'll keep at it for a while.

Thanks for reading.

Postponing Something Is Also Work (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 20:37:42 +0000

Introduction

I moved recently. I knew my hands would be full with packing, moving, and unpacking for a while, so I put off a few things I had in progress (my usual work, mostly). Of course, the important and urgent things have to get done whether or not you're moving. But anything I could reschedule, I pushed to after the move.

Things have finally settled down, so I spent yesterday and today working through all of it, and most of what I'd postponed is now done.

But something struck me while doing it. My thinking had been that doing something now or later doesn't change the work itself, so if that's true, then doing it after the move — when I'd be settled both physically and mentally — should be the most sensible option. And each individual task really was the kind of thing that would have just moved along normally if the move hadn't happened. But when I actually got to them, things didn't go smoothly. Almost everything took more effort than it would have if I'd just kept going.

Starting from "Now, where was I?"

What I learned is that when you come back to something, you can't just pick up where you left off. I had left notes on some of them, but reading those notes doesn't bring back what I was actually thinking at the time.

When you stop, you still have it all in your head — what you were about to check, where you were stuck, what you meant to do next. But after being away for a while, that fades. So restarting means first going back through old logs and rebuilding what past-me had been thinking.

This quietly eats up time. And you never remember all of it. You end up reconsidering things you wouldn't have had to think about back then, or redoing a check you'd already finished once. It's not just a matter of time — I think it shows in the quality of what comes out, too.

The more I had things sorted out before stopping, the bigger this effect seemed to be. The sorted-out state itself doesn't exist in any tangible form, so it disappears the moment you let go. What's left is just the work in progress.

Carrying It Around Wears on You Too

That was all about restarting, but there's something else that happens while you're still carrying it.

Once you've set a date and moved something into the future, in theory you shouldn't have to think about it anymore. In practice, that's not how it goes. There was always a low-level "I have to do this once the move is over" sitting in the back of my mind. When I'd look over my upcoming schedule before bed, there it would be, and I'd find myself going through them one by one — right, that one's there, better not forget it.

The date is already set, so checking doesn't change anything. No work has moved forward either. But I'm still holding it in mind, and that quietly wears on you.

Conclusion

This turned into a somewhat rambling post, but I wanted to write down what I noticed around my move, partly as a note to myself.

I'd started out assuming that shifting the timing was all it was — the work stays the same, so nothing really changes. But once I actually went through it, a fair number of downsides showed up. Of course, events like a move are unavoidable, and situations where you have to postpone things come up all through life. Still, knowing the cost of postponing — the kind I felt this time — makes it easier to see the problems coming, and it changes how you decide whether to postpone in the first place. Among the things I'd waved off as "same either way," there were probably some I'd have been better off pushing through and finishing, even at some cost.

That said, what you can and can't do depends on the situation, so I'll just try to carry this lesson forward!

Thanks for reading!

The moment you decide to do it every day, days you didn't do it come into existence (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 21:30:51 +0000

Introduction

You decide to do something every day, but it falls apart after a few days, and you feel let down. Has that ever happened to you?

Getting up early, taking one online language lesson a day, going for a run — that kind of thing.

In my case, my daily routine had been getting out of shape lately, so a little while ago I came up with a habit: get up early and eat breakfast, then go for a walk during the day (ideally, before the sunset). I tried to do it every day as much as I could. But as things got busier, I gradually stopped managing it. A while after that, I started feeling a bit let down with myself — and at the same time, something struck me. Before I decided on this habit, I wasn't doing those things either. And back then, it didn't bother me at all. What I do is the same. Only that feeling is different.

The days I didn't do it came into existence after I decided

The habit — get up early and eat breakfast, go for a walk during the day — wasn't a strict one. I started it at the level of "it'd be nice if I could." Still, somewhere in the back of my mind, I had a vague wish to do it every day.

A while after I started keeping this in mind, things got busier and my work began running late into the night. My wake-up time drifted into the afternoon, and I stopped going for walks. It's not that I couldn't go. There was still time to get out, but I just didn't feel like it.

Before I set this habit, it wasn't like this. There must have been plenty of days in the past when I got up at noon and didn't go for a walk. But I have no memory of thinking back on those days and feeling let down. I wasn't counting them.

Not going for a walk, the behavior itself hasn't changed at all. What changed is that the day became a day I didn't go.

What I did do hasn't disappeared, and yet

There's another odd thing.

A walk should do me good for each time I go. Even if I only managed twice in a week, those two are definitely better than not going at all. And yet, when I've decided on every day, those two barely stay with me. What stays is the other result: the five days I didn't manage.

Breakfast has something similar going on. On a day when I've slept until noon and missed breakfast — and this is just how it goes for me, so it may be different for others — I get the feeling that since I've already failed the breakfast goal, I might as well skip the walk too. It turns into "today's a write-off," and the walk goes down with it.

But the walk itself would still do me good, even on a day I got up at noon. If I'd gone, my mood would have shifted. The reason I don't go is that I've already made the day a failed one, and I feel that nothing I add to a failed day can change it.

Once you decide to do it every day, only two things remain: you did it, or you didn't. What should have been adding up gets erased into a pass or a fail. I decided on it in order to do something good for myself, and because I decided on it, I stopped doing the thing that was good for me.

Conclusion

Writing it out like this, I notice the order is backwards. I decided on it because I wanted to go for walks, and now the goal I set takes emotional priority, and I don't go.

But I'm the one who put it there. And if I'm the one who put it there, I can be the one to change it. Otherwise I'm just setting up a situation where I lose out to myself.

Has anything like this happened to you? If so, let me know in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

Motivating Yourself Takes Motivation (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 20:47:55 +0000

Introduction

When you don't feel motivated, but you have to get motivated anyway, how do you push yourself into gear?

Maybe, there's a deadline and someone's waiting on you, or you told yourself you'd finish it today. In those cases, you literally have to do it. If it didn't matter, you could just go back to sleep, but some days that isn't an option.

So people do something first. Clean the desk, sort through the task list, meditate, go for a run — the idea of doing something like these to get yourself going is common enough advice.

However, I recently noticed these all have something in common. Or rather, they all rest on a fatal assumption.

It's this: anything you do to get motivated takes motivation. There's a contradiction built into it.

Using Motivation to Make Motivation?

When you think about it, it's obvious.

Cleaning your desk means using your body. Sorting your tasks means deciding what to keep and what to drop. Meditating means sitting still and holding yourself together, and running speaks for itself. All of them are easy — if you're already motivated.

So the things offered as fixes for having no motivation require motivation as a prerequisite. You've got nothing in the tank, you decide to do something about it, you start to get moving. Then you realize even that something feels like too much, and now you feel worse. That's the spin.

The interesting one is resting. Resting doesn't take any motivation. It's the one option that costs you nothing.

Conclusion

I'll admit it, the reason I wrote this is that I'm in exactly that state right now. I was going to write about something else today, but I couldn't get going, and then I started thinking about motivation and ended up here instead 😅.

Back to the question I opened with. I don't think there's one reliable answer that works for everyone. But one possibility worth considering: maybe the more you want to get motivated, the more it pays to not rush into anything, and just rest without a plan.

Of course, sometimes cleaning or exercise or meditation really does flip the switch. If you're in a state where you can move, that's the fastest way there is. It's just that some days you don't even have that much in you, and on those days, reaching for the same tricks can leave you spinning.

That said, some people can't sit still doing nothing. If that's you, getting one thing done that doesn't take any motivation might be about right. Something with no decisions in it, with the steps already laid out, with a clear finish. It won't bring your motivation back, but at least it won't drain you further.

Now, at work there are situations where you don't have the luxury of taking it slow. But on the days when you do, forcing yourself to get fired up just wears you down that much more. When you catch that feeling coming on, maybe taking the long view is what gets you back to normal sooner after all.

Thanks for reading.

Sorting Out My Question Before I Ask AI (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:54:03 +0000

Introduction

It's been a few years now since generative AI worked its way into everyday life.
AI has made life more convenient for a lot of people, but at the same time, I've been seeing more and more talk about its downsides.
The one I come across most often lately is the idea that using AI has a negative effect on how well you retain and understand things.

For example, something like this: you split people into a group that solves a problem using AI and a group that solves it without, and when you check on them again after some time has passed, the group that used AI remembers less about it.

This is something I can relate to. Or rather — I can't say for sure, but compared to how I was before AI, I've been handing whole tasks over to it more often, and I feel like I retain less and learn less by thinking things through. I build things up piece by piece less than I used to. Instead, more and more, it's AI laying the groundwork for my ideas and my work.

I Was Handing Over the Wrong Things

So is AI entirely to blame? I don't think so — I think it's a matter of how you use it and how you approach it. Looking back at my own usage, the problem was less about AI itself and more about what I was handing over to it.

Take coming up with ideas. Throw it at AI and you'll get plenty of plausible-sounding ones. But I've come to feel that some subjects suit this and some don't, especially anything involving my own opinion or taste. For those, thinking it through myself from the start usually gets me to the finish line faster, and leaves me more satisfied with the result. When I hand the initial idea over to AI instead, what comes back often feels detached, like it belongs to someone else, and a little thin.

On the other hand, there's work where the rough shape is already there but it isn't finished yet. Smoothing off the rough edges of that kind of thing is where I think AI is good. Pointing out gaps and typos, offering a different way to phrase something, cross-checking against what I've already written — that sort of thing. This is worth handing over, and I use it a lot myself. (Even for these dev.to posts, I never skip having AI check the text before I publish.)

The problem is that the line between the two gets blurry over time. Once you get used to AI, you start throwing both kinds at it, just to see. Especially when I'm tired or don't feel like thinking, I've found myself handing over things I should have done myself, simply because doing them felt like a hassle.

Trying to Take the Easy Way Doesn't Make It Easier

I'm often dissatisfied with what AI gives me. Not what I wanted, too shallow, off the mark. I used to assume the problem was on AI's end, and I'd get irritated about it fairly often. Lately, though, my first instinct is to suspect that I asked badly. Usually that's exactly it: I said something vague, so something vague came back. Sometimes the information is all there, but what I'm actually asking for is off, so I never reach the answer I wanted. When I put myself in AI's position at moments like that, I sometimes realize there was no way to answer the question as I'd asked it.

Thinking back, whenever I've worked with AI and felt like we made something good, I was also thinking hard the whole time. What do I want to make, where am I stuck. Just putting that into words means I've already done about half the thinking myself. AI feels like it's helping me with the rest.

The opposite case is when I've been brainstorming forever and getting nowhere. In those moments, my thinking has usually shut down. I throw things out without being clear about what I even want, vaguely hoping "something good" comes back. And when that doesn't happen, I get dissatisfied with the result. So I throw out something sloppy again, and I'm in a bad loop. (While I was thinking about this, it struck me that the same thing happens between people. Funny, isn't it.)

If you use AI expecting it to save you effort, it turns out it doesn't, really. If anything, you end up redoing the work yourself later and losing more time. If you want it to be easy, it's faster to think first — that's how it feels to me lately.

Conclusion

Today I've tried to put together my own thoughts on what I've noticed while using AI.
AI is convenient, but the more I use it, the easier it is to lean on it without noticing — dumping anything troublesome on it without giving it much thought, treating it carelessly. That's what I've been doing. Writing this post has made me rethink how I want to work with AI (which sounds grander than it is).

AI looks like it can do anything, but it can't.

Before I ask AI, I sort out what I want to ask it. AI keeps getting better, but I'm the one who has something I want to make, and if that part stays vague, nothing takes shape.

How about you — where do you draw the line between what you do yourself and what you hand to AI? I'd love to hear it in the comments.

Thanks for reading.

How Often Did I Actually Revisit the Articles I Saved? (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 20:42:19 +0000

Introduction

Recently, I cancelled the paid plan on the Evernote account I'd been using for years. I didn't delete anything I plan to keep using it within the free tier. The reason I cancelled: for the past two or three years I'd barely been adding anything, and the only thing keeping me on the paid plan was a small set of notes I still added on a regular basis. I've since reorganized those and moved them to a different tool, so there was no longer a reason to pay.

The old data is still there and still accessible. Even though I won't be adding to it, everything I saved in the past is something I can go back and look at any time.

Note Count

While I was going through the cancellation, the total number of notes I'd saved caught my eye.

Tens of thousands of them — far more than I'd expected. I'd spent years writing daily logs and review notes, clipping web pages whenever something caught my interest, so in hindsight it makes sense. Still, seeing it laid out as a single number, I was a little surprised at how much I'd used it.

How Much Did I Actually Revisit?

After seeing that number, a thought occurred to me: how many of these did I actually go back and look at?

Thinking it over, I doubt most of those notes were ever opened a second time.

Not zero, of course. There are pages I've opened again and again, and I clearly remember moments where I was glad I'd saved something — summaries I'd written for myself after reading a book, bookmarks I ended up referring to. But those were a small fraction of the whole. The vast majority were saved once and never opened again.

I would have found it interesting to see an actual figure — how many notes had been opened more than once — but I doubt that statistic is available anywhere. Still, even going on feel alone, "almost none" is clear enough in my own mind that I'm comfortable saying it.

Why Was I Saving So Much?

Daily logs, book summaries, review notes — those are a separate matter. What I'm thinking about here is the bookmarks and web clips. Looking back, I don't think the reason I saved those was "to read later."

It was the feeling you get when something catches your eye — the feeling of not wanting to let it slip away. The sense that if I don't grab it now, I'll never run into it again. Once it's saved, I can relax. What I was really buying was that reassurance.

And saving something gives you the feeling of having dealt with it. Even though I hadn't read it, and hadn't used it. Collecting had become the point in itself.

What strikes me now is that the things I genuinely end up needing are usually findable if I go looking. I can't recall a single case where not saving something left me stuck.

The Courage Not to Save

Saving takes effort. Clipping it, organizing it later, checking back on it now and then. Each one is small, but multiplied across that many notes, it adds up.

Line that effort up against how often I actually went back to any of it, and honestly, it didn't balance out.

If there's something you've been accumulating, it might be worth taking a look at just the number sometime. It's more interesting than you'd expect.

And of course, I'll keep saving the things that matter, in whatever tool fits!

In my own case, though — when it comes to the things I save just for a vague sense of reassurance, maybe the courage not to save them matters too. That's what I've been thinking about lately.

Thanks for reading!

Don't Optimize for Your Best Day. Eliminate Your Worst One (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 20:55:45 +0000

Introduction

Schopenhauer's Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life starts from a premise: happiness isn't something you can add to.

Most of us tend to picture it the other way around, as something that accumulates. Work hard, get promoted, etc. Save a little every month. Stack up results, and you end up happier than you were before.

But for Schopenhauer, what we call satisfaction or happiness is nothing more than a state in which want and pain have been removed. Getting something feels good because the state of lacking it has ended — not because a plus has been added. This is why he calls happiness negative.

Drawing on Aristotle, he returns again and again to a single principle: what the wise person seeks is not pleasure, but the absence of pain.

Not pleasure, but freedom from pain. That is what the wise person aims at. The reasoning is the same as above: pleasure is only pain having disappeared, and the thing with any real substance is the pain. He adds one more condition here — freedom from boredom — and says that when both are in place, you have the conditions for the only happiness actually within reach.

If that holds, then his conclusion follows: what you should be aiming at is not increasing the good states, but reducing the bad ones.

So what should we do?

Schopenhauer gives 2 answers. Remove the pain you can actually feel, as far as you can. And reduce the wanting itself, since wanting is what produces the lack. If pleasure is only pain having disappeared, then this is the only place reachable happiness can be.

Put as a question:

❌ What can I add to make this better?
✅ What can I remove to make this hurt less?

The adding side has no end. There's no ceiling on "better," so the moment you reach one, the next one appears.

The removing side is finite. And you already know what hurts, because pain is the thing that gets felt.

But there's no payoff once it's gone. Pain that is no longer there isn't something you notice. So nothing registers as improvement, and it keeps getting pushed further down the list.

Designing your best day works less well than removing your worst one. In Schopenhauer's terms, that is the kind of happiness that is actually within reach.

Conclusion

I read Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life a long time ago and had completely forgotten what was in that book. I recently came across an article summarizing it, so I wrote this post as a way of going back over the material.

Of his 2 answers, the "reduce the wanting" one is not something I can honestly see myself carrying out. In the society we live in now, the things to want are supplied to you from the outside, and there are plenty of situations where the structure around you requires you to keep pace with them.

The "remove the pain you can feel" one seems more workable. You know what hurts, because you're the one feeling it. That part stayed with me for a while after reading.

Sorry if a lot of this came out abstract! This is my own reading of the book, so if it interests you, please go and read the original.

Thank you for reading!

When Multitasking Doesn't Work: Task Combinations I'd Rather Avoid (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 20:39:07 +0000

Introduction

In my previous article, I argued that multitasking isn't always something to avoid. Instead of treating it as inherently inefficient, I suggested that the combination of tasks is what really matters.

For example, pairing compatible tasks, attaching a new habit to an existing routine, or even taking advantage of the right environment can sometimes create a positive synergy rather than hurting productivity.

That said, compatibility really is the key. When two tasks compete with each other, multitasking often leads to reduced focus, lower-quality work, and greater mental fatigue.

So this time, I'd like to take the opposite perspective and share a few combinations that I personally try to avoid, along with why I think they don't work very well.

As always, these are simply observations based on my own experience. I hope you'll read this as one person's perspective and perhaps compare it with your own habits.

1. When Language Competes with Language

Examples

Writing a blog post while listening to a podcast
Writing emails while listening to music with lyrics
Reading a book while studying from audio lessons

This is probably one of the easiest examples to imagine. When both activities require language processing, they tend to compete for your attention.

Personally, I find it difficult to write while listening to lyrical music or talk radio. Instrumental music, on the other hand—such as jazz—often feels much less distracting and can even help me stay focused.

Another interesting thing I've noticed is that music sung in a language I don't understand often feels much less intrusive. Since I'm not automatically processing the lyrics, it becomes more like background sound. In that sense, it almost plays a role similar to white noise—at least that's how it feels to me. (I'm curious whether other people experience the same thing.)

2. Decision-Making Tasks + Tasks That Require Comprehension

Examples

Planning a project while listening to a podcast
Creating presentation slides while following the news
Brainstorming ideas while listening to talk radio

This overlaps slightly with the previous category, but I think it's worth separating.

Tasks like brainstorming, planning, or creating documents require active thinking and decision-making. Combining them with something that also requires you to understand spoken information—such as podcasts or news—doesn't seem to work very well.

Even if both tasks can technically be done at the same time, I find that my attention constantly shifts back and forth, making both activities less effective.

Personally, if I want some background audio while working on this type of task, instrumental music works much better. Even when I have the news playing, I usually don't actively follow what is being said. It's more like ambient background sound than something I'm actually listening to, and that seems to interfere much less with my thinking.

3. Deep Focus + Constant Notifications

Examples

Studying while receiving LINE notifications
Writing while checking Slack
Designing while constantly checking email

This isn't exactly multitasking—it's more like frequent interruptions.

Every notification pulls your attention away, forcing your brain to switch contexts. It can be surprisingly exhausting.

When I'm working on something that requires concentration, I've found it much more effective to mute notifications and deal with emails or messages in batches afterward.

4. Safety-Critical Tasks + Anything Else

Examples

Driving while using your phone
Cycling while watching videos
Using a kitchen knife while trying to do something else

This isn't really about productivity at all.

When safety is involved, even "just for a second" can lead to accidents. These are combinations that are simply not worth the risk.

5. Rest Time + Information Consumption

Examples

Scrolling through social media during lunch breaks
Reading the news in bed before sleeping
Checking work emails during breaks

Breaks and sleep are meant to be opportunities to recover.

However, if we habitually fill those moments with social media, news, or emails, we may not be giving our minds the rest they actually need. Even if those activities don't feel like work, our brains are still processing new information.

Personally, I often catch myself picking up my phone whenever I have a few spare minutes—scrolling through social media or looking up things that aren't actually urgent.

I've found that intentionally leaving some of those moments empty instead of automatically reaching for my phone helps me feel more refreshed and makes it easier to focus afterward.

Conclusion

Everything I've shared here comes from my own experience and the task combinations that I personally find incompatible.

Writing this article reminded me that multitasking itself isn't necessarily the problem. What really matters is which tasks we combine. Some combinations compete for the same mental resources, while others can complement each other surprisingly well—as I discussed in my previous article.

If this topic interests you, it might be worth taking a closer look at your own multitasking habits. You may discover combinations that help you stay focused, as well as others that leave you more mentally drained than you realized.

Understanding those patterns could be a simple but effective way to improve both your productivity and your daily routine.

Thanks for reading!

Rethinking Multitasking: It's the Combination That Matters (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 21:26:01 +0000

Introduction

Multitasking is sometimes called inefficient, on the grounds that it divides your attention.

And there's something to that. Research in cognitive psychology has shown that when you try to do several attention-demanding tasks at the same time — writing an email while sitting in a meeting, say — your performance tends to suffer. But even setting the research aside, plenty of us have probably felt it directly: when you work this way, the quality of your work drops and you tire more quickly. At least I have.

That doesn't mean all multitasking is bad, though.

What matters is what you combine with what. Depending on the pairing, you can get more than just time savings — sometimes the two activities actually reinforce each other, producing a kind of synergy.

1. Combining one task with another

Take pairs like writing an article while watching a video, or studying while checking social media. Both sides demand your focus, so efficiency tends to fall.

On the other hand, combinations like:

A walk × a podcast
Chores × an audiobook
A train commute × language study

work better, because when one side is relatively simple, the load doesn't pile up on top of the other.

So the question isn't whether multitasking is good or bad — it's about choosing pairings that go well together. That, to me, is what matters.

2. Combining a task with a habit

The thing you pair with doesn't have to be another task.

For example, say you want to listen to a podcast to study a language. If you frame it as "I'll set aside 30 minutes to study," it easily gets pushed to later on busy days.

But if you attach that podcast to a walk or a commute you already do every day, you don't need to carve out any new time at all.

This connects to the idea of "Habit Stacking" — tying a new action to a habit you already have. It's a method introduced in James Clear's Atomic Habits: instead of starting a new habit from scratch, you link it to an existing one to make it easier to stick with.

3. Combining a task with an environment

The thing you pair with can even be your environment.

This strays a little from multitasking in the strict sense, but bear with me: suppose you want to work out at home. It's easy to keep putting it off, or to find you just can't concentrate.

Go to a gym, though, and the environment is already set up for exercising — and there are people working out all around you. Simply placing yourself in that setting can be enough: "Well, I came all this way, so I might as well," and you find yourself acting more naturally.

In behavioral science, it's well established that our actions are shaped not just by willpower but heavily by our surroundings. So "exercise" paired with "the gym" is another combination that nudges you into action.

Conclusion

On a personal note: lately I've been paying more attention to multitasking as a way to work through different kinds of tasks efficiently, and that's what led me to write this piece.

The word "multitasking" tends to carry an image of being inefficient.

But if you avoid stacking two focus-demanding tasks, and instead choose pairings that don't get in each other's way — or tie a task to a habit or an environment you already have — you can not only use your time well but also gain positive side effects like building habits and refreshing your mind.

Rather than lumping multitasking together as simply good or bad, try looking at it through the question, "what combination would create synergy?" You might just find a hint for building a new habit.

Thank you for reading!

A Few More Months with Claude — Some Scattered Thoughts (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 20:05:03 +0000

Introduction

Earlier this year I wrote a few posts about switching from ChatGPT to Claude, then getting into MCP, and various odds and ends I noticed after making the move.

Quick background, in case you're new here: I'd used ChatGPT as my main AI tool for a long time, but for various reasons I switched my main tool over to Claude around spring 2026. (I haven't quit ChatGPT, by the way — I still use it as a secondary tool.)

It's already been a few months since I moved over to Claude. (Time flies 😅)

I happened to be looking back over one of my older posts, and now that I've got a few more months of use under my belt, some new things have come into view — stuff I couldn't have noticed back when I wrote that earlier post. So this time I want to touch on that a bit. This isn't so much a tidy conclusion as just my scattered impressions right now.

Recent Impressions of Claude and ChatGPT

Claude

I previously wrote that the combination of the memory feature and MCP "cut down on explanation overhead quite a bit." That assessment still holds. But the more I use it, the more I've started to see another side. For example, sometimes it'll force a connection to information stored in memory even when the topic is completely unrelated.

"Uh, that's... not relevant right now."

Moments like that feel more frequent than before. These forced connections add noise, and it can get a little annoying. It's the flip side of the convenience, but since memory just keeps accumulating, tidying it up and deleting things might become part of the routine going forward. (I haven't tried that yet, so it's a to-do for later.)

One more thing — and I can't be sure about this — but lately I feel like I'm running into a bit more hallucination, excessive agreement, and, as a result, a harder time thinking critically. Even with Opus 4.8 or 5.0 — the top class model if you set aside Mythos and Fable — I occasionally hit the kind of wild, off-base answers I rarely used to see. (Oddly enough, when I experimentally switch back to something like Opus 4.6, I sometimes feel the answers are actually better, which is strange.)

It might have to do with how well a given model fits the kind of thing I'm asking about. Or maybe I'm wrong and it's just my personal impression, or maybe it's something off in the model's design itself — I can't really tell. Specs change often, so it could just be a problem with how I'm using it. I'd like to keep watching for a while.

ChatGPT

Right now I'm using ChatGPT on the free plan. Back when I was weighing the move from ChatGPT to Claude, I agonized quite a bit over whether to keep my ChatGPT Plus subscription. But paying a fixed cost for something I'm no longer using as my main tool felt wasteful, so I decided to try going free.

The number one thing on my list of "what ChatGPT has that Claude doesn't" is image generation. Claude can handle things you can express through SVG or Artifacts, but it doesn't have standalone JPG image generation the way ChatGPT does (as things currently stand). In my case, I need this image generation in all sorts of situations, so I was worried about whether going free — with tighter limits — would actually let me generate the volume my work requires. (Or, put another way, I figured if I hit a wall here, I'd need to keep Plus after all.)

But when I actually tried it, I could generate a fair amount without hitting a stop. The quality looks unchanged too. That said, if I ever need a much larger volume of images in a short window, things might change.

For now, though, the volume I use for work is no problem, so I feel like staying on the free plan is fine.

On the whole, I mostly use ChatGPT for image generation these days, but it seems like new models and memory features keep getting added one after another. There are probably quite a few features I don't even know about.

As for the recently talked-about GPT-5.6, I've also seen reports that on some benchmarks it's putting up numbers that surpass Claude's Mythos class — the model that itself made waves around the world.

So my impression that "Claude is ahead" has faded compared to before. But in the end, both are evolving at a pretty rapid pace, so I suspect my impression will have shifted yet again six months from now.

Closing thoughts

Today was all over the place, but I've loosely gathered up some honest impressions of how AI has felt to use lately.

One thing that struck me is that my own workflow is changing even faster than the AI itself. Properly adopting and using MCP, for instance, dramatically changed how I run my work, and going forward I plan to keep trying out new ideas — not just MCP — as they come up.

If I read this back again in a few months, I might think, "Huh, so this is the stuff I was fretting about back then." This post, too, isn't a conclusion — I'm leaving it as a note capturing where things stand right now.

Thanks for reading!

Getting Lost on Purpose (Bite-size Article)

koshirok096 — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 21:10:56 +0000

Introduction

This is another short, light one, but I hope you'll stick with me. A little while ago I wrote a post on the benefits of walking, and today I want to talk about walking again — from a slightly different angle.

—

In that post, I wrote about the "benefits" of walking: how ideas tend to come more easily when you mull things over on the move, how getting some sunlight is good for you, that sort of thing.

Separately from that, there's a way of walking I've come to enjoy lately: deliberately going out to get lost.

The Process, Not the Destination

I don't know the strict definition of a "walk," but the way I see it, it's less about getting to some particular place — that would be transit — and more about the walking itself being the point. So the interesting part isn't where you end up, but the process of getting there.

I feel that most strongly when I set out to get lost on purpose. The method is dead simple. Whether I'm traveling or just in the place I currently live, I start walking without deciding where I'm going. I don't open the map. Relying only on my own sense of direction and whatever signs happen to catch my eye, I turn down whichever way looks interesting. That's it.

When I do, the way the city looks changes noticeably. I naturally start picking up on the little details I'd normally walk straight past while staring at a screen — the bakery on that corner, a strangely steep hill, the flow of people. Not knowing where I'll end up turns out to be far more fun than I'd expected.

Why Do I Get Lost on Purpose?

Why do I do this? Honestly, there's no big reason.

For one, it's just a good way to kill time. For another, taking a different turn each time is somehow more exciting than walking the same route over and over. That goes double in an unfamiliar city — walking along with no idea what's around the next corner is a little bit of fun all on its own.

Thinking about it now, maybe it's a leftover habit from my backpacking days. When I was younger, I did a lot of backpacking abroad. Back then smartphones either didn't exist or were only just appearing, so I'd jot destinations onto a paper map in pen, walk by compass, and get lost all the time. But funny enough, what stands out most when I look back isn't the routes I nailed efficiently — it's the moments when I'd wandered somewhere by mistake. Though that's all reasoning after the fact; the truth is probably closer to "because it's just kind of fun."

Switching Between "Transit" and "Strolling"

That said, I'm not walking around ditching the map all the time. When I actually need to get somewhere — "transit," basically — I use the app fully, like anyone would. It's the fastest way, and I think that's exactly what you should do in that case.

What I'm doing, I guess, is consciously switching into a "stroll mode" now and then, separate from that transit mode. Not to reach a destination, but just to wander freely, I close the map for a little while. That alone makes even a familiar city look a bit different — and it's really not bad.

Wrapping Up

We've reached a point where you don't get lost anymore unless you make a conscious effort. Which is exactly why, every so often, I deliberately get lost and enjoy the situation when I do.

And on top of that, the "benefits" I mentioned last time — thinking more clearly, getting some sunlight, getting some exercise — you get all of those from this kind of aimless wandering too. You're still walking, after all. It's just that a little thrill of not knowing where you'll end up gets added on top.

It doesn't have to be somewhere you're traveling — even in your own familiar hometown, deliberately picking a street you don't know can turn up some surprising little discoveries. If you have the time, why not try getting "lost" — in a city you'll visit next, or in the one you already live in?

Thanks for reading.