Glossary
Drag Addiction
Continuing to do low-value, repetitive work by hand long after AI has made it unnecessary, sometimes from habit, sometimes to protect the last visible proof a job still needs a human.
Drag is the low-value, repetitive work that fills a job without moving it forward: data entry, reformatting, status updates, chasing down information that already exists somewhere else. Drag Addiction is what happens when people keep doing that work manually long after a tool exists to remove it.
Before AI, Drag Addiction was mostly a productivity problem. After AI, it’s worth reading as a signal instead of a bad habit. Some people cling to Drag because it’s familiar and safe. Others cling to it because it’s the last visible proof their role still requires a human being, and nobody’s shown them what the alternative, the 100 Interns mindset, actually looks like for their own job. Asking someone to give up Drag without showing them the higher-value work waiting on the other side is asking them to trade job security for a vague promise.