Token Paralysis
- Rich Washburn
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
A month ago, everybody was token maxing — burning through their AI allowance, slamming into limits, and bitching because they had to wait for the reset. Now we’ve somehow invented the opposite problem. Token paralysis.
My buddy called me this morning because his Codex usage had reset. He was sitting at 100 percent. A pristine, untouched weekly allowance. And he didn’t want to waste it.
He wanted me to tell him what sufficiently important thing he should use it on. You can’t make this shit up.
We’ve gone from rationing access to artificial intelligence because we can’t get enough of it, to staring at a full tank and refusing to drive because we’re waiting for a trip worthy of the gasoline. Dude. Pull the fucking lever...Hit the button. Throw something stupid at it. Ask it to inspect your computer. Build a ridiculous app. Organize the disaster you call a Downloads folder. Analyze your business. Make a game. Automate some annoying little task. Create a dashboard for something nobody needs a dashboard for. It doesn’t matter. You don’t need a grand idea. You don’t need a startup. You don’t need to invent the next Facebook before Sunday night. The point right now isn’t necessarily to make something valuable. The point is to become dangerous with the tool.
A week and a half ago, I installed Codex on this guy’s Windows computer. He had the usual collection of Windows problems: slow performance, buggy bullshit, mysterious nonsense that accumulates inside every Windows machine like plaque in an artery.
I told him, “Have Codex fix it.”
He had no idea what I meant. So I remoted in, installed it, and showed him that he’d effectively placed his own technical support person directly inside the computer. Not someone on the phone reading from a script. Something that could inspect the machine, work through problems, explain what it was doing, write scripts, build programs, manipulate files and actually operate within the environment. Then I showed him it could build applications...and presentations..and utilities...and all kinds of weird, useful little things he’d never considered making because, until recently, making them required skills he didn’t possess. Naturally, he was blown away. Now, less than two weeks later, he’s hoarding the usage.
That’s how quickly the psychology changes. First, you don’t know the thing exists. Then you’re amazed by it. Then you’re afraid of wasting it. Then eventually, assuming you actually use it, you can’t imagine operating without it. But you only reach that last stage by playing with it.
This Is Training
You’ve just been handed a ridiculously powerful, PhD-strapped creative magic wand. Stop worrying about whether every swing of it produces an asset. Swing the damn thing.
Experiment until you understand how it thinks. Learn what it’s good at. Learn where it screws up. Learn how much context it needs. Learn when to let it run, when to interrupt it and when to tell it that its first idea was stupid.
Build things you’ll delete. Solve problems that barely matter. Ask questions you could probably answer yourself. That isn’t waste. That’s how you develop fluency. You’re not just training the AI. You’re training yourself to recognize opportunities for the AI. And the more you use it, the more those opportunities become visible.
Eventually, you’ll stop wondering what to ask it to do because the list’ll become endless. You’ll burn through a weekly allowance in two days, then one day, then a few hours.
Good. That’s the point. Because by then, the question won’t be whether the upgraded plan costs $100 a month. The question will be how the hell you ever operated without it.
And if you can’t find a way to make more than $100 a month from having a capable software engineer, researcher, analyst, technical-support person, creative partner and automation engine attached directly to your computer, the usage limit isn’t your actual problem.
We’re living through the strangest learning curve in technological history. Yesterday, people were afraid AI would take their jobs. Today, they’re afraid to use up their tokens.
Tomorrow, they’ll be furious because the machine can’t keep up with the number of things they suddenly realize they can do. So stop waiting for the big thing.
This is the big thing. Sit down. Open the terminal. Prompt that bitch.
Rich Washburn is a technologist and strategist working at the intersection of AI, infrastructure, and capital. He is Managing Partner and Chief AI Officer at Eliakim Capital.