Back to blog
The restless mind of thinkers, how obsession, curiosity, and chaos can be a gift
11 min read

The restless mind of thinkers, how obsession, curiosity, and chaos can be a gift

Want a quick summary of this post? Tune in 🎧
Table of Contents

1. Introduction

You know the feeling when your brain just can’t shut up? Or time is never enough for what you want to learn or do? Well, that’s my story as well. While this article might look weird or out of place, it’s a story of how obsession, curiosity, and chaos can be a gift sometimes, but also a curse.

Did it happen that you close your laptop but you’re still coding in your mind endlessly? Recently I finished watching Queen’s Gambit and I could relate myself to it, but unfortunately I can’t visualize VSCode or PHPStorm on the roof of my room. Instead, I can plan, architect, design, and build something in my mind. Maybe prepare what I’m doing the next day? Solve problems in my mind or just think about what I will learn next?

Is this a problem? Or is it just the art of being a thinker & the love for learning? Well, I don’t know, but do whatever drives you forward. If it makes you happy, it’s a gift. 🧠

2. The Storm

Sometimes it starts with something small, a random idea that hits you while you’re doing something completely unrelated. Maybe in the shower, maybe drinking coffee, or even taking a shit, and suddenly you need to open your laptop or grab your phone to search for something. It’s like a spark that won’t leave you alone.

Did you ever want to stop a movie because your brain was somewhere else and all you wanted to do was pause and get that database schema aligned, fearing you might not have the same clean thinking tomorrow? Or have you started to refactor a little bit of your code and ended up in a pile of code, GitHub issues, pull requests, and an amazing deep dive into the codebase? Well, that’s fun!

I know it sounds chaotic, but that chaos is also where the best ideas are born. It’s the moment where logic meets obsession and suddenly, you’re not forcing creativity, but instead you’re riding it. You don’t even feel like you’re working anymore.

Yeah, it drains us sometimes. But honestly? I live for those moments. That feeling when everything clicks, when you’re in that unstoppable flow, that’s what keeps me coming back. Maybe that’s what the creative storm really is: proof that you care deeply about what you’re doing. It’s messy, it’s loud, it’s exhausting, but it’s real, and for me that’s where the real magic happens.

3. Learning - The Real Oxygen

I don’t really “decide” to learn, it just happens. I’ll be scrolling on X, or watching a video, and something grabs me. Next thing I know, I’ve got ten tabs open, half a Notion page filled with notes, and a new course I probably won’t finish (but at least I started it).

For me it’s not about needing to know everything, it’s about not being able to ignore curiosity. I feel restless if I go too long without learning something new. Some people relax by watching a show or going out. I relax by discovering, by figuring out how something works, by knowing the internals of something.

I know it sounds intense, but for me, learning feels like breathing. It resets me. Even when I’m tired, if I find something that sparks my curiosity, it gives me energy again. It’s like my mind goes, “Oh well! Finally, something to chew on.” Sometimes I wonder if I’m chasing too much: new tools, new frameworks, new ideas. But then I remember that curiosity is what keeps me moving. It’s what keeps me alive.

Is learning just a skill? Or is it a pulse?

4. AI - Infinite Learning

Something that completely changed how I learn was realizing how much AI can help me stay curious forever. A lot of people see AI as a shortcut or a threat, but I see it as a partner. It’s not here to replace thinking, it’s here to remove friction.

When I get stuck, I no longer waste hours searching or waiting for the right moment. I can just ask, explore, and keep moving. Whether it’s debugging code, understanding a concept, or brainstorming an idea, AI helps me stay in motion. It keeps curiosity alive. 🤖

The best part is that it never judges. You can ask the same question ten times in ten different ways until it clicks. You can go deep into topics that used to feel out of reach and actually understand them at your own pace.

AI doesn’t make you less human, it makes you more capable of focusing on what truly matters: creating, learning, and thinking. It keeps the fire of curiosity burning and turns every question into a path forward.

We finally live in a time where learning never really ends, and that might be the greatest gift of all.

There are no excuses anymore!

5. Stopping = Weakness?

One thing I’ve learned the hard way: stopping doesn’t mean you’ve lost momentum or you are weak per se. I used to think that if I wasn’t working, learning, or creating, I was falling behind. That if I stopped, someone else out there was already doing the thing I just paused. It’s easy to fall for the trap, especially if you are on X or Bluesky where you see the community moving forward with a zillion ideas getting implemented. That mindset pushed me forward for a while, until it started to eat me alive.

There are nights when I’m deep in a problem, exhausted, but still pushing because I feel like I should finish it. And every time I do that, I end up making twice as many mistakes and rewriting everything the next day. Funny thing, when I finally step away, take a walk, smoke a cigarette, or even just sleep on it, the answer shows up like it was waiting for me to shut up for five minutes. Step back to go forward!

It took me a long time to realize that rest isn’t weakness, it’s strategy. The brain keeps working in the background even when we stop forcing it. Sometimes stepping away is the most productive thing you can do.

Now, when I feel that inner voice telling me to push harder, I try to ask myself: am I pushing forward, or just running on fumes? If it’s the latter, I shut it down and let things breathe. Because real growth doesn’t come from nonstop motion, it comes from rhythm.

Stopping isn’t giving up. It’s making space for your next move.

6. Burnout or Laziness?

This one is confusing because they often look the same. You feel unmotivated, you slow down, and you start wondering what’s wrong with you. But burnout and laziness come from two very different places.

When I’m burned out, I still want to work. I still care. I just can’t get my mind to click on something. My focus is gone, my brain feels heavy, and even simple things start to feel impossible. That’s not lack of effort, that’s just your system shutting down after running too long. It’s your body saying “enough.”

Laziness is different. Laziness happens when I could do something, but I choose not to. When I tell myself I’m “resting” or “waiting for inspiration,” but really I’m just avoiding the hard parts of the process. Learning is uncomfortable. Growth feels awkward. And sometimes people disguise that fear as burnout because it sounds better than admitting they don’t want to struggle.

It took me a while to admit that to myself. There were times I said I was tired, but deep down I was just scared to start. Scared to be bad at something new, scared to open that documentation, or scared because Jared from Bun knows Zig and I would never get there! lol

Now I try to ask myself two simple questions:

Am I tired because I’ve given my all?

Or am I avoiding something because it’s hard?

If I’m tired, I rest. If I’m avoiding, I start. Even small progress is better than waiting for the “right moment.”

Because real burnout needs healing, but laziness needs honesty. One asks for recovery, the other asks for courage.

7. Curiosity > Talent

I’ve never seen myself as naturally talented. Most of the things I know today came from falling into rabbit holes, breaking stuff, and figuring out how to fix it again. Curiosity did what talent couldn’t.

I’m a self-taught developer, and all I did was to start toying around with small OGame Scripts back in the 2000s, and here we are today, still learning, still exploring, still building. Sometimes it’s easier to just sit down and watch a football match or a movie than to actually build something.

Talent helps, sure, but curiosity never runs out. It doesn’t care if you’re the smartest person in the room. It just wants to understand. That’s what keeps you moving forward when others stop. The people who grow the fastest aren’t always the most gifted, they’re the ones who keep asking “why” long after everyone else has moved on.

I’ve met people way more talented than me who gave up because learning got hard or slow. But curiosity doesn’t care about perfect conditions. It doesn’t wait for motivation. It just pulls you in until you find your own way through.

That’s the thing for me: talent might give you a head start, but curiosity keeps you in the race. It’s what makes you explore one more idea, read one more page, or test one more version of something that still doesn’t work.

Curiosity isn’t about being the best. It’s about staying interested. And if you stay interested long enough, you eventually become the best at what you love, not because of talent, but because you never stopped learning.

8. There are people around you

When you are obsessed with learning and building, it is easy to disappear into your own world. You start chasing progress so hard that you forget life is happening around you. I have been there and I’m still there sometimes, skipping calls, ignoring texts, telling people “I’m busy” for weeks that turn into months. It is not intentional, it is just that the mind gets stuck in its own loop of goals and ideas. ❤️

But every time I take a break and meet a friend, talk to family, or just share a meal, I realize how much I have been missing. Those small moments recharge something that no tutorial, project, or bit of progress ever could.

It is not about choosing between your passion and the people around you, it is about remembering that both can exist together. The same curiosity that drives you to learn can also help you connect. Ask people about their stories, listen, pay attention. Sometimes the best ideas and the deepest motivation come from those simple conversations.

At the end of the day, success means nothing if you have no one to share it with. The people who care about you are part of your journey too. They remind you to laugh, to slow down, and to stay human.

Keep learning, keep building, but remember to look up once in a while. Send that message. Call that friend. The world outside your thoughts matters just as much as the one you are creating inside them.

IMPORTANT: Re-read this twice please.

9. Conclusion

At the end of the day, the restless mind isn’t something to fix. It is something to understand and live with. Curiosity, obsession, chaos, they are not flaws, they are signals that you care deeply about what you do.

If you feel tired, rest. If you feel stuck, learn. If you feel alone, reach out. The balance is never perfect, and it never will be. But maybe that’s the point. The storm, the silence, the breakthroughs, the people, it’s all part of the same rhythm. ✨

So keep thinking, keep learning, and keep creating. Not to be the best, but to stay alive in the process of becoming.

PS: This article was brought to you in a late night, by a restless mind.

Like this post? Sharing it means a lot to me! ❤️