What are you *actually* using R1 for?

Honest question. I see the hype around R1, and I’ve even downloaded and played with a couple distills myself. It’s definitely an achievement, if not for the models, then for the paper and detailed publication of the training methodology. No argument there.

However, I’m having difficulty understanding the mad rush to download and use these models. They are reasoning models, and as such, all they want to do is output long chains of thought full of /think tokens to solve a problem, even if the problem is simple, e.g. 2+2. As such, my assumption is they aren’t meant to be used for quick daily interactions like GPT-4o and company, but rather only to solve complex problems.

So I ask, what are you actually doing with R1 (other than toy “how many R’s in strawberry” reasoning problems) that you were previously doing with other models? What value have they added to your daily workload? I’m honestly curious, as maybe I have a misconception about their utility.