CONCEPT
Compulsive Generativity
The paradoxical condition in which sustained creative output is produced through mechanisms structurally identical to addiction—excellence that costs more than metrics measure.
Compulsive generativity is the state in which a person's capacity to produce valuable work has escaped the governance of her capacity to assess whether the production serves her broader life. The builder working with AI tools at two in the morning is generating real output—working code, shipped features, professional advancement—through a pattern of engagement that meets clinical criteria for behavioral disorder: inability to disengage, irritation when interrupted, preoccupation, continued engagement despite relational consequences. The paradox is that the behavior the clinical framework would classify as pathological is the behavior the professional culture classifies as exemplary. Compulsive generativity is not a contradiction in terms but a description of the condition in which the generative and the compulsive have merged.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The concept emerged from the collision between Schüll's addiction-by-design framework and the empirical reality of AI-augmented knowledge work documented in the Berkeley study, the Gridley Substack post, and Segal's own confessions in You On AI. Existing frameworks could accommodate compulsive consumption (gambling, gaming, social media)