Anthropic made a trade-off with your productivity last month and they didn't ask you first. 😬
I've been noticing two things happening in parallel as I use Claude now.
Number 1 — session limits are way tighter. I'm hitting caps way faster than I used to, especially during peak hours. On weekends I basically get stopped by lunchtime. We know this is true because they publicly announced it.
Number 2 — something about the reasoning feels off to me now? I always use Opus 4.6 with extended thinking on and high effort — but the output seems shallower lately. I find myself correcting more and more mistakes even though I know my internal Claude files have drastically improved over the months. And with the new auto dream mode on, I can only imagine my memories have also drastically improved. So there's no reason why my performance should be degrading out of nowhere... 🤔
We know that publicly, Anthropic quietly dropped the default thinking effort from high to medium back in early March. But what we haven't confirmed is if anything has actually changed with the model. Or at least I haven't personally confirmed — I'm sure somewhere on Reddit or on the interwebs, someone has already figured this out.
Here's where it gets super weird though...
The session limits are actually kind of saving me.
I wrote an entire newsletter a couple weeks ago about Claude Code burning me out. Because I haven't really felt able to stop working — the tool never stopped being available so I'm always available. But now Anthropic built the off-switch that I literally can't turn back on. Unless I upgrade my plan or pay for extra usage (which I don't think I'm gonna do...)
So I'm sitting in this uncomfortable spot where the same company simultaneously made my health better and my work worse? Although I do have them to thank for making my work drastically better to begin with. Didn't sign up for this trade...but I'm also not sure I'd trade it back either?
If you're paying for a Claude subscription and feeling these two new things too — are you feeling relieved or frustrated? Because somehow I'm feelin' both? 🤷
