The catching-up treadmill
In this era of rapid AI development, something new and “revolutionary” seems to drop every single day. So you try to learn the latest tool, catch up with the trend — and by the next day it’s already outdated. You keep running but never actually arrive anywhere. The result: FOMO, confusion, and eventually doing nothing at all.
One tempting escape is going to the opposite extreme — just lying flat (躺平), opting out entirely. Why bother, if every effort you make will eventually be washed away by the next wave of tools anyway?
The talkers
Then there’s another type: people who never sit down and actually explore any of these tools, but are incredibly good at talking about them. They throw around fancy words, hype up revolutionary ideas, and spread anxiety to the public — profiting off the information gap. I have a friend exactly like this. He talked endlessly about OpenClaw and all kinds of bold business ideas. Turned out he’d never even installed the thing.
The meta-learning trap
There’s also a popular saying that the most important skill in this age is meta-learning — learning how to learn. But honestly? It still sounds abstract and hollow (空洞). You sharpen your tools endlessly, perfect your learning system, build the ideal framework — but never actually sit down and learn anything real, let alone use it to solve a real problem.