The brain-swap

I used to play Cluedo on the train. Not for fun. To swap the brain from "other day job" to "the other other day job" — fifteen minutes of small accusations and elimination logic, and by the time the train pulled in I was a different person at the desk.

Witcher III was my last big one. Four playthroughs. Forty endings, give or take. Geralt of Rivia, in the bathtub, rubber duck, scars, regret. If there was ever a leading man who made me forget what time it was, it was him. Master Chief annihilating the Flood with Cortana's voice in his ear. Red Dead Redemption — until they killed off Marshall and stuck me with his son. I threw the controller. Continuity is a contract. They broke it.

These were not entertainment. They were immersion. A different brain for a few hours. The good ones bent time.

I do not have time for a game like that anymore. New business by day. Old role part-time. Side projects on weekends. A husband who deserves more attention than I'm giving him. The Cluedo move still works on the train — small commitments, no continuity risk. The forty-ending kind of game does not.

Here is the part I did not see coming.

And then I noticed it was already happening. The agent at my terminal hands me the next reasonable thing the way Cortana used to. The good games bent time; so does this. I open a PR at nine and look up at four with three things shipped, a fifth one mid-argue, and the dishwasher still full of yesterday's mugs.

“

The Witcher-III brain came back. It just lives at work now.

The difference is the stakes. Geralt's swordfights had no consequences. The agentic work I am doing this year is reshaping a real business, a real customer relationship, a real product that someone signs a real contract for. The dopamine is the same. The cost of getting it wrong is not.

I do not think this is a healthy substitute. I think it is a thing I should be diagnostic about. Game-shaped flow inside actual work is seductive in a way the games never were, because the world thanks you for staying in it. Nobody compliments you for finishing Witcher III. Plenty of people will compliment you for the third major thing you shipped this week.

So: I am noticing. The brain-swap engine still runs. The game has changed. The controller is in my hand a different way.

And if Geralt is reading — which would be on-brand for 2026 — the bathtub still wins.

— maria