When I first started coding with Claude, it felt like I'd discovered infinite time. Six months later, the business world expects warp-speed delivery and I'm back to not having enough hours in the day. Turns out, I was coding next to a black hole the whole time—I just didn't know which one.

Month One: Time Expanded Like the Big Bang

Remember that scene in Interstellar where Cooper realizes that one hour on Miller's planet equals seven years back on Earth? That's what the first month of coding with Claude felt like—except in reverse.

I'd spend an afternoon with Claude and emerge with:

A fully refactored API that would've taken me two weeks solo
Comprehensive test coverage I'd been putting off for months
Documentation that actually made sense (gasp)
Three new features I didn't even plan to build that day

It was intoxicating. Every project felt like I'd hacked the space-time continuum. Four hours of work produced two weeks of output. The velocity was mind-bending.

The Initial High: Subjective Time Expansion

"Holy sh*t, I just built in four hours what used to take me three weeks. TIME ISN'T REAL. I AM A GOD."

— Me, approximately 6 months ago, before reality set in

I thought I'd found a cheat code. I thought I was operating on a different temporal plane than the rest of the software development world.

Turns out, I was just approaching the event horizon.

Month Three: The Business World Recalibrates

Here's the thing about moving faster: people notice.

Once you deliver that two-week project in an afternoon, your stakeholders don't think, "Wow, let's give them a break for the next two weeks!"

No. They think: "Oh cool, so now we can do 10x more things in the same timeframe. Here's the new roadmap."

The velocity I'd gained wasn't expanding my free time. It was expanding their expectations.

The Expectation Shift

Before Claude:

"Can you build user authentication? We need it in two weeks."

After Claude (Month 3):

"Can you build user authentication, add OAuth, implement role-based permissions, create an admin dashboard, set up email verification, add password reset flows, integrate with our CRM, and oh—can you also refactor the entire frontend architecture? We need it by Friday."

Suddenly, my "superpower" wasn't giving me more time. It was creating a black hole of infinitely expanding scope.

Month Six: Welcome to Time Dilation

Here's where the physics gets wild—and uncomfortably accurate.

In Einstein's theory of general relativity, when you're near a massive gravitational source (like a black hole), time moves slower for you relative to someone farther away. The closer you get to the event horizon, the more extreme the dilation becomes.

Six months into coding with Claude, I realized I was experiencing productivity time dilation.

From the outside—from the business's perspective—I was moving at light speed. Features were shipping. Bugs were vanishing. The roadmap was accelerating.

But from my perspective? Time had slowed to a crawl.

There weren't enough hours in the day anymore. The backlog was infinite. Every completed task spawned three new ones. I was working faster than ever before—and somehow falling further behind.

The Time Dilation Equation

Your Velocity × Business Expectations = Constant Urgency

No matter how fast you move, the gravitational pull of "more features, faster timelines" keeps you locked in the same subjective experience of never having enough time.

So Who's the Black Hole?

At first, I wondered: is Claude the black hole? Is AI the gravitational force warping my perception of time and capability?

No.

Claude is the spaceship. It's the technology that lets me move faster, cover more ground, do more in less time. It's powerful, it's transformative, but it's not the source of the gravitational pull.

The black hole is the business world itself.

Specifically, it's the feedback loop of escalating expectations. The gravitational field that says:

"You shipped that feature fast? Great, here are 10 more."
"You solved that bug in an hour? Perfect, here's a critical incident on a Friday at 4:45 PM."
"You refactored the codebase in a week? Awesome, now migrate everything to a new framework by next sprint."

The faster you orbit around this black hole of expectations, the more extreme the time dilation becomes.

⚠️ Warning: Event Horizon Approaching

The event horizon is the point of no return. Cross it, and you're trapped. In productivity terms, it's when you're moving so fast that the business literally cannot function without your AI-augmented velocity—and you can't slow down without everything collapsing.

You become the critical dependency. Your burnout becomes a single point of failure.

The Physics of Sustainable Velocity

So what do you do when you're caught in the gravitational field of infinite expectations?

You could try to escape. Quit the project. Reject the demands. Throw your laptop into the sun.

Or—and hear me out—you could establish a stable orbit.

1. Set Explicit Boundaries on Velocity

Just because you can ship features in a day doesn't mean you should promise to ship features in a day.

I started padding my estimates. Not lying—just accounting for the time dilation effect. "This will take three days" became "I can have this done by end of week." Same output, healthier expectations.

2. Protect the Downtime Between Sprints

The space between projects isn't wasted time—it's deceleration burn. You need it to avoid getting pulled past the event horizon.

I blocked calendar time labeled "Technical Exploration" and "System Maintenance." Translation: "Don't give me another feature request for 48 hours or I will implement the chaos monkey in production."

3. Educate Stakeholders About the Black Hole

Most non-technical stakeholders don't understand time dilation. They see output and think, "More! Faster!"

I started explicitly explaining the trade-offs:

"We can ship this feature in two days instead of two weeks. But here's what that means:"

We're deferring tech debt that will cost us later
We're narrowing our testing window
We're increasing the risk of production issues
We're using up our "fast sprint" capacity—next sprint will be slower

"Is that trade-off worth it for this feature?"

Surprisingly, when you frame it this way, stakeholders often say, "Actually, let's take the two weeks."

4. Remember: You Control the Spaceship

Claude (or any AI tool) isn't making you work faster. You are choosing to work faster.

You can slow down. You can say no. You can establish a pace that's sustainable even with AI augmentation.

The black hole doesn't have infinite gravity. It only feels that way when you keep accelerating toward it.

The Interstellar Ending (Sort Of)

At the end of Interstellar, Cooper falls into the black hole. But instead of being crushed, he finds the tesseract—a space where he can see across time, communicate with the past, and influence the outcome.

There's a version of the AI productivity black hole that works like this.

When you stop fighting the gravitational pull and instead learn to navigate it, something shifts. You're not trying to escape the expectations. You're not trying to outrun the time dilation.

You're using the gravity to your advantage.

You ship high-value features quickly—but you're strategic about which ones
You use your AI-augmented speed to carve out time for deep work, not just more tasks
You educate your team on sustainable velocity so they become allies, not black holes
You build systems and documentation that reduce future drag

The black hole doesn't disappear. But you learn to orbit it without getting consumed.

The Truth About Time Dilation

When I started coding with Claude, I thought I'd discovered infinite time. Six months later, I realized I'd just changed reference frames.

Time didn't expand. My capability expanded. And with it, so did the expectations, the scope, the urgent requests, the "just one more thing" conversations.

The black hole isn't Claude. It's the system that treats increased productivity as permission to demand infinite output.

And the only way to survive near a black hole is to understand the physics—and respect the event horizon.

The Punchline

Six months ago, I thought AI would give me more time.

It didn't.

It gave me more capability. Which the business immediately converted back into the same amount of time.

But here's the thing: I'm not mad about it.

Because now I'm building things I never could have built before. I'm solving problems I would have avoided as "too complex." I'm shipping features that genuinely make users' lives better.

The time dilation is real. The black hole is real. But so is the impact.

I'm just making damn sure I don't cross the event horizon.

Final Thought: A Message to My Fellow Time Travelers

If you're coding with AI and feeling the same time dilation effects, know this:

You're not imagining it. The velocity is real. The expectations are real. The sense that time is both infinite and nonexistent—that's real too.

You're orbiting a black hole. The business is the black hole. Claude (or ChatGPT, or whatever tool you use) is your spacecraft.

Don't let the gravity consume you. Learn to navigate it.

And for the love of physics, protect your weekends. They're your Lagrange point—the stable orbit where the gravitational forces balance out and you can finally just... float.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have 47 feature requests that just landed in my inbox.

Time dilation waits for no one.

But at least now I know which direction the black hole is.

Ready to Navigate Your Own Black Hole?

Learn how UpNorthDigital.ai can help you harness AI productivity without getting pulled past the event horizon.

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Written by Nolan in collaboration with Claude AI. Yes, I used the spaceship to write about the black hole. The irony is not lost on me. Learn more about AI-augmented development at upnorthdigital.ai.