The Freedom to Leave Things Unused

My room has a 34-inch curved monitor and a perfectly serviceable desk and chair.

Sometimes I want to work from a café or somewhere else, but I feel as though I'm letting all that equipment go to waste.

Lately, though, I haven't been able to sit at my desk for very long. Yesterday, I moved to the sofa with my computer and found myself surprisingly focused. It made me feel like I'd been held hostage by my own stuff.

Buying something doesn't mean I have to use it all the time to get my money's worth. I can use it when it suits me. It's not as though I've abandoned it entirely; I'm just not using it constantly.

What matters is having the choice. I can buy a standing desk and barely ever adjust it, knowing I can when I want to. I can buy a big monitor and still work somewhere else, then come back and plug it in when I need several windows open at once. If I never use something, I can let it go when the time is right. But if there are situations where it's really useful, even if they don't come up often, I don't need to worry so much about how little I use it.

Maybe the same goes for other things. Doing something doesn't automatically earn me a gold star. There's freedom in not doing things, too. Maybe choosing what not to do matters even more right now. Life is finite; I don't have to do everything.

AI agent subscriptions give me the same feeling. When I haven't used up my five-hour allowance or this week's quota, it always feels a little wasteful. But using up credits just for the sake of it is its own kind of constraint.

Running out when I need them is annoying, but that's how it goes. My workload isn't going to line up perfectly with my token allowance.

One way to manage it might be to write prompts for things that aren't urgent, save them, and send them to the AI when I have quota left over. But that could just leave me with an ever-growing backlog. Maybe I should get things done as they come to mind and not worry so much about credits.

Or running out could be a chance to test my skills and understanding without AI. If I have no idea how to carry on without it, that means I've become too dependent and let the AI take charge.

If MCP and computer use are like giving AI hands and feet so it can connect to services and operate a computer, I certainly don't want to become its “human use.”

I want to use AI to unlock more of my potential, but I also want the freedom not to use it.

(Whenever I catch myself writing “not … but …” these days, I spend a little time finding another way to say it. XD)