"I started having a recurring dream. I was in a meeting, someone asked me a technical question, and I couldn't answer. Not because I didn't know. Because I couldn't remember. The knowledge was there somewhere, but I couldn't reach it."
I get emails from engineers every week. Most of them start the same way:
"I'm not sure if this is a real problem or if I'm just being dramatic."
It is a real problem. You're not being dramatic.
Call him Marcus. Senior engineer. Twelve years in the industry. Led a team of eight. The person people came to when things were hard.
When his company rolled out AI coding tools last year, he told himself it was good news. Faster shipping. Less grunt work. He'd focus on architecture and direction.
Six months in, he noticed something:
He didn't write code anymore. He reviewed AI output.
And when he tried to do something — anything — without AI, he felt slow. Confused. Like he'd lost something he used to have.
"I started having a recurring dream. I was in a meeting, someone asked me a technical question, and I couldn't answer. Not because I didn't know. Because I couldn't remember. The knowledge was there somewhere, but I couldn't reach it."
He told his manager he was "just in a rut."
He didn't tell his manager that he was scared.
He started with a 20-minute no-AI block, once a week. Just like the practice I gave you yesterday.
The first few weeks, he said it felt like "trying to speak a language I'd been forgetting." His brain kept reaching for AI. He had to actively stop himself.
But around week four, something shifted.
He debugged a gnarly production issue. No AI. Took him 45 minutes. When he fixed it, he felt something he hadn't felt in months:
Pride.
Not "we shipped something." Not "the feature is done." Pride. In himself. In his work.
"I remembered that I was actually good at this. I'd been so busy managing AI output that I'd forgotten I knew how to do the thing."
Marcus isn't special. He's not uniquely disciplined or talented or intelligent.
He's just someone who decided to do one small thing — 20 minutes a week — that protected a part of his identity that mattered to him.
And it worked.
Real engineers. Real stories. Anonymous, honest, specific.
Read the Engineer Stories →If you're in Marcus's situation — scared, confused, "in a rut" — the path forward is small steps.
Not "quit AI entirely." Not "rebuild your entire workflow." Not "talk to your manager about a full reset."
Just: one 20-minute no-AI block this week. And tomorrow, one moment where you notice yourself reaching for AI reflexively.
That's it. That's the beginning.