AI Agents Are Coming Faster Than I Thought – And It’s Messing With My Head
I was born in 1985, turned forty not long ago, and I have a problem: AI agent FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) has gotten to me. Really gotten to me. And I believe many others will soon feel the same way.
Always in the Right Place, Always at the Wrong Time
I’ve been a tech enthusiast for as long as I can remember. And looking back, I often had the right instinct. Just never the right timing or the business maturity to turn it into something big.
Web design and open source. As a teenager, I taught myself PHP because I wanted to build a forum and website for my Counter-Strike clan. I released the result as open source. Other clans could install it themselves, and I sold customization as a service: custom design, manual work, flat-rate pricing. Which was totally stupid because it doesn’t scale. But back then, I didn’t even know what scaling meant.
That you could have turned it into a subscription product? No idea. That idea came to someone like Tobi Lütke, the Shopify founder, who was in the right place at the right time and brought the business perspective.
Messaging on mobile. I recognized early on how amazing it would be to use ICQ and MSN everywhere. On your mobile phone, on other people’s computers. During a summer job at a campsite, I set up a multi-messenger service on a Hetzner server that I could access via console. Anywhere you had PuTTY, and later on the Palm Pre, I could access my ICQ+MSN, running around the clock.
Right approach. But not the business maturity to recognize that other people had exactly the same problem. The idea of building and offering something like WhatsApp never occurred to me.
IRC as team communication. During the gaming days, we communicated in teams via IRC – Internet Relay Chat – using clients like mIRC. What you’d immediately recognize today as Slack or Microsoft Teams. I knew the tool, but at that age I lacked the corporate perspective to see that it could also be interesting for businesses.
In 2012, I joined an IT corporation. The decade from 2010 to 2020 felt as though the best IT times were either already behind you (the dotcom era) or still ahead of you, with the cloud boom and the age of software architects and cloud engineers. By that point, however, I had long since shifted from technical roles into strategic ones.
These anecdotes illustrate how crucial the right timing is. It’s not enough to just be in the right place. When a wave of transformation approaches, the timing, the know-how, and the experience all need to align. On top of that, your age, life circumstances, and a well-positioned network play an essential role.
And Now It’s Happening Again
Until recently, I was enthusiastic about AI when it came to experimenting with the technology, but remained skeptical about the real transformation of businesses. I believed that existing scaling approaches wouldn’t be sufficient to develop true AI agents. By that I mean agents that genuinely act in the user’s interest, self-correct, and iterate toward an abstract goal until they achieve a concrete business outcome. I was convinced that simply connecting more hardware and GPUs to the LLMs wouldn’t be enough. In my view, a genuine technological breakthrough was needed.
That has, from my perspective, turned out to be wrong.
I looked at Opus 4.6, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, OpenClaw as an open agent framework. For software development, they’re already remarkably capable; for other use cases, still a bit fiddly. But it’s clear that it’s coming, and only predictable steps are still needed. By my estimate, this year 70% of code will not only be written by AI but also semi-reliably reviewed and tested. You can see it in tools like Claude Code, Claude Review, and Claude Security – what’s technically possible beyond the actual coding. For me, it’s settled: the threshold to agent-based software development has been crossed.
And when I look at Cowork or OpenClaw – tools that operate on my operating system, control browsers, integrate with email, connect to all sorts of things via the client interface, the MCP protocol, and natively built-in features – then it’s coming for other application areas too, just with a slight time delay behind coding.
And that’s exactly what triggers this FOMO in me. I realized: Oh shit, this isn’t coming in 2030. This is coming now. 2026, 2027. Now is the time to personally seize the new opportunities.
How FOMO Is Eroding My Presence
Honestly, I can feel how the flood of news and opportunities is fragmenting my focus.
For example, I’m back on X. For a long time, I considered the platform dead: a place where content creators try to make a quick buck. But by now I have to admit: X is the best place to get fresh AI signals. The best tools. Which models does OpenClaw work best with? What are the new open-source projects? What do the thought leaders think? How is the zeitgeist shifting? You have to be there. And every time I scroll the feed, I have ten new ideas.
At the same time, after nearly fifteen years in corporations, I feel like I finally understand the corporate world and B2B business. How do decision-makers think? What are the real problems? In theory, I’d be able to transfer what I learn from the tech enthusiasts to the B2B context.
So what I should actually be doing: building products twenty-four hours a day. Turning every little idea into a product and seeing what sticks. Whatever gains traction – double down there.
The second thing: experimenting a lot. You’ve seen the news whirlwind. Every day there are ten new things you should really be testing to truly understand the technology and the opportunities.
The problem: there’s more to build, more to understand, and more to experiment with than any normal person has time for. Especially when you still have your other life responsibilities and jobs to take care of.
Why I Believe Many Will Soon Feel the Same Way
With topics like these, I’m always fairly early. A classic early adopter. But more and more people will recognize what’s coming their way. And that they’re in a wonderful position to ride this wave. They’ll feel the same FOMO, “AI brain fry” and “AI fatigue / saturation of the soul.”
For those people, I want to share a few things, because I notice in myself how nerve-wracking it gets. The constant news, the impulses, the possibilities. I’m actually an information sponge who handles this kind of thing well. But it’s becoming too much.
Mindfulness suffers. In the evening, when I’m sitting with my son. In the morning, when I get up. During exercise. In meetings. Mentally, I’m already on to the next AI news, asking myself: What do I need to try next? What can I make out of it?
What Works for Me: Radical Timeboxing
My advice is not to bury your head in the sand and shield yourself from all news, ideas, and impulses. That’s not possible. You’d miss the wave. Instead: radical timeboxing.
This doesn’t just apply to the external impulses flooding in from the AI community and the news. Above all, it’s your own ideas and inspirations that pull you in a thousand different directions, dragging your mind into the future instead of the present, where you should actually be for the majority of the day.
Walks without input. I no longer listen to podcasts about AI, tech, and business non-stop. Only deliberately, when I know beforehand: this is a highlight I absolutely want to hear. The rest of the time – nothing. No audio, no music. Just walking. I’m actually a big multitasking fan. Walking and consuming content – that works. But it fires up the internal idea and inspiration engine, and then you have to process all these new impulses. That costs energy and clarity. That’s exactly the problem.
Leave the phone at the desk. Deleting apps didn’t work for me. If I delete Reddit, I go there via the browser. If I block it via DNS, I switch the DNS. There are always good reasons to check in after all, and that’s precisely what’s insidious. You don’t want to miss the wave. It’s not black or white.
What works for me – admittedly with teething problems like weaning off an addiction: leave everything at the desk. Phone, laptop, tablet. When I’m sitting at the desk, I’m allowed to engage with the topics, let myself be inspired, develop ideas, process impulses, work through stuff. But not in between. Not on the walk. Not at the dinner table with my son. Not when I’m doing housework. Not when I want to read.
Canary in the Coal Mine
I believe I’m something like the canary in the coal mine – someone who jumps on the opportunity early, but also feels the danger of losing mindfulness early. That’s why I wanted to write this down: for people who already have a similar feeling right now. Or who will feel it soon.
The wave is coming. Surf it. But don’t forget to keep your head above water in between.