Summary
Cole Medin examines a side effect of the AI coding boom: people are producing far more while ending each day mentally exhausted. Running many coding agents in parallel means constantly jumping between conversations, which fragments attention and makes long stretches of deep focus rare. He points to a widely shared post describing a “fried brain effect” and cites Cal Newport’s argument that focus is becoming the scarcest commodity of the century.
Medin describes his own experience using coding agents, their harnesses, and a personal “second brain” system. He admits to feeling guilty whenever he waits on an agent instead of starting another task, and to craving focused activities like chess or reading as a counterweight. He is clear that he would not go back to working without AI.
The second half focuses on practical ways to invest time so the problem eases, including improving agent systems so they need less supervision rather than simply adding more parallel sessions. A sponsored segment also shows a Revolut Business virtual card with a $50 weekly limit, restricted to software purchases in the US, as a way to give an AI agent spending ability with hard guardrails. The video is relevant to developers and founders managing their workload alongside AI agents.
📺 Source: Cole Medin · Published October 22, 2026
🏷️ Format: Opinion Editorial
