I know people like this, theres a form of procrastination where they are busy hyperoptimising their todo lists and workflows but getting only a tiny amount of actual work done. It's a form of the disconnected intellect - they can tell you the problem, they can even tell you the solution, but they can't turn that knowledge into action. Convincing themselves that utterly trivial inconveniences are so productivity and or psychologically harmful they can they can then rationalize all this "meta-work" while simultaneously claiming to be virtuous, when in reality it's usually insecurity in their abilities or cowardice to face the unknown, preventing them doing real work
sublinear|14 days ago
From my perspective, all this energy spent on AI prompting is actually just planning meetings and whiteboarding in disguise, but since all that has the bad reputation of luring devs into power struggles and yak shaving this is the new way.
It's likely where most of their improved productivity is coming from. The people doing the meta-work just need be mature about it to avoid procrastinating.