As a CTO at IDEATECH, I can code 8+ hours a day with AI. A year ago it was 5–6 hours and I'd finish exhausted. Today I end with more energy. Claude Code saved me hours of searching documentation, writing repetitive code, and debugging errors I've seen a hundred times. And it gave me back my flow.
Key takeaways:
- AI speeds up writing code, everyone sees that. The bigger impact is removing friction that breaks flow: docs, repetitive code, debugging. You don't just work faster, you can sustain it much longer
- Cognitive load shifts: AI handles the routine, you focus on architecture and decisions that require context
- More hours in code ≠ burnout, if the type of work changes (less frustration, more creation)
- AI is evolving so fast that every day brings new ways to automate another piece of your work
- AI doesn't replace architectural thinking, business judgment, or the ability to say "no"
Why I code more than a year ago
You'd expect a CTO to code less. More meetings, more strategy. For me it's the opposite.
IDEATECH is a small team and my role is hands-on. A year ago I wrote code 5–6 hours a day. The rest was coordination, code review, searching documentation, debugging, writing repetitive code. Today I can write code 8+ hours. AI took over all of that and freed up 2–3 hours a day.
It's not just that AI writes code faster. That's the visible but smaller effect. The bigger one is removing friction: the micro-interruptions that pull you out of flow and cost dozens of minutes to recover from. Each is trivial on its own, but there are dozens of them per day.
Flow state: what breaks it and what protects it
Flow is fragile. Hard problems don't break it, they require it. What breaks it is the trivial stuff: you can't remember a function's parameters, you switch to a browser, open docs, search for the right page... and by the time you're back in your editor, you've forgotten what you were working on. Getting back can easily take twenty minutes.
AI absorbs these interruptions. You stay in your editor, describe what you need, get an answer in seconds.
Cognitive load: what I no longer need to keep in my head
Imagine driving without GPS. You need to remember the route, watch for signs, estimate turns. Part of your attention is always occupied with navigation instead of driving. With GPS you don't drive faster, but you drive with less load. Instead of navigating, you focus on the road.
AI in programming works the same way. I don't need to remember the exact function signature, I describe what I want. I don't need to look up how error handling works in a given library, I just ask. I don't need to mentally switch between five different documentation sites.
My working memory freed up for architectural decisions. Instead of dedicating half my capacity to remembering details, I dedicate it to system design, thinking through edge cases, and questioning whether I'm even solving the right problem.
Eight hours in code and it's not burnout?
Eight hours of daily programming sounds like a recipe for burnout. It depends on what exactly you're doing for those eight hours.
It's not eight hours of the same work as before. Less frustration from debugging and repetitive typing, more design and solving new problems.
| Situation | Before AI | With AI |
|---|---|---|
| Searching documentation | 10–15 min, context switch, lost flow | Describe what you need, answer in 5s |
| Repetitive code | Copy from previous project | AI generates from description, you review |
| Debugging unknown errors | Stack Overflow, 3 tabs, 20 minutes | For common errors, paste the message and AI explains cause and fix |
| Refactoring | Afraid to break it, keep postponing | AI handles mechanical changes (renames, extractions), you guide architectural ones |
| Writing tests | Keep promising to add them later | AI generates the scaffolding, you define the edge cases |
| Code review | Reading diffs line by line | AI pre-reviews for patterns and bugs, you focus on architecture and business logic |
| End of day | Tired from context-switching | Tired from decision-making (better kind of tired) |
At the end of the day I'm tired, but differently than before. I spent the day on architecture and new problems instead of searching documentation.
Waking up with new ideas
AI has been evolving so fast over the past year that every day brings new ways to automate another piece of your workflow. Things I was doing manually a month ago now run on their own.
Yesterday I set up an automatic daily briefing through Claude Cowork that scans my email, calendar and monitoring every morning. Earlier this month, I rewrote an entire website in an afternoon. Six months ago, neither would have been possible.
Every week brings a new model, a new tool, a new way to automate something that used to take hours. Keeping up with this pace is demanding, but it's also why programming is more fun for me than it's been in years.
What AI won't change
- Architectural thinking. AI doesn't know which technology to choose for a new project. It doesn't know your business constraints. It doesn't know you're switching payment providers in two months
- Business judgment. AI doesn't understand why you're doing what you're doing, or what's a real priority
- User empathy. AI will design a technically perfect solution that no one can use
- And the ability to say "no". AI will help you build anything, but knowing what not to build is often more important
I'm not going back
Sometimes I wonder if I'd want to go back to programming without AI. No. Not because I couldn't, but because it would be like switching from automatic back to manual in city traffic.
This isn't a temporary hack. A year ago I coded less and finished exhausted. Today I code more and finish differently tired. Hard to go back from that.
Let's talk about how AI workflow could work for you
