For weeks I had a split-screen setup. Multiple Claude Code sessions running across terminal tabs and windows. Each one its own project, or its own feature, or sometimes just its own part of the same feature. Felt like the right way to work.
Seth Godin wrote something this morning about multitasking being an illusion. Reading it, I thought: what I had was the visual impression of doing many things, not the reality.
A few days ago, I moved to Zed's new Threads Sidebar. Everything in one sidebar, organized by project. When a thread finishes and is waiting for me, a blue dot appears next to it. It just sits there until I'm ready. When I'm done, I can archive it. The Thread History holds all of them, letting me jump back into any if needed.
In the terminal, notifications would flash when a session was done. Miss one and I'd be checking each tab, trying to remember what was where. The blue dot doesn't go anywhere.
It's calmer. And I started running fewer threads, as I was closer to the code. Reviewing what the agent built. Testing in the browser, the iOS and Android simulator. Guiding the next step. I couldn't do that and also manage five threads at the same time.
With the terminal setup, I was maintaining the feeling of parallel productivity. Lots of things happening. Agents running in parallel, but I wasn't alongside any of it. I was traffic control. With Zed I'm just closer to what's actually being built.
Seth Godin says one thing at a time. I'm not there. One to three threads currently feels right.
I started to be in it, rather than above it.