My intuition is that all of the benefit you get being outside and walking is probably lost by strapping a laptop to yourself and being on calls the whole time. Call me old fashioned but I'm outside to look at the sea, hear the birds and be very definitely away from my tech.
For the last year or so I have scheduled my two status meetings back to back in the mornings. That means I have 90 minutes of walking in the forrest in the morning (30min before the meetings and then 30min each for the two meetings).
I have two teams reporting to me, and each have a 30minute morning meeting where we decide what needs the team attention during the day. There is also room for small talk to keep it a bit social.
Those meetings do not need screensharing very often. When they do, we can manage to look briefly at a phone screen.
It has been wonderful and it is something I would miss if I ever had another job. I encourage the others in the team to do the same thing.
Walking in the forrest have two benefits; less risk of getting hit by a car, and, it’s more quiet of a background for when I unmute.
Regardless of opinions, the sheer volume of his output is a tad overwhelming. I do wish he had taken Mathematica down a different path (just imagine if it was truly broadly available at non-insane pricing as a local native app, almost as a stupefyingly flexible Jupyter), and I find the Wolfram Language too unwieldy for some things, but if you can see past the self-branding and unusual viewpoints, Mathematica is prety awesome.
I once had a bit of fun with it on a 20-core Raspberry Pi cluster, and sometimes I think it would have been amazing to run some ML workloads on this kind of environment: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/08/10/0830
I'd say it is more flexible than jupyter. I really think many folks are hidden from a lot of magical computation you can do with computers, by not having exposure to some of tools like mathematica.
That was a great read. It got me smiling!. It's not often that you find fellow control freaks in the wild.
Stephen Wolfram's personal infrastructure sounds overall great, but it crumbles in the sound department.
If you're going to be on calls for hours every day, for everything that is holy please get a hands-free set up. The most ergonomic object is no object at all.
I use a Scarlett 212 mic and sound card paired with a decent pair of speakers and my working room works like a charm. Everything is set up so if I start a call any device I can walk though the office and have a conversation with someone like they're in the room. 10/10 would recommend.
I love this essay so much. It was the inspiration for my Dogsheep project - https://dogsheep.github.io/ - because I wanted to build a much less impressive version of a subset of what Wolfram had built, and a Dogsheep is clearly a less intimidating version of a Wolfram!
(Also it meant I could call my search engine Dogsheep Beta, as opposed to Wolfram Alpha - and I enjoyed that pun so much I spent quite a significant of time writing the software to support it: https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous... )
Everything he does I see his keyboard or monitor in the background. I don’t know why he is so much into ‘productivity’ that even for walks he has to be in front of his machine and working? Why can’t he just enjoy walking to relax a bit outdoors. I think walking is as much for mental well being as for improving physical health and decoupling from work and digital life is how I’d like to relax.
When you've been gifted with a brain like his, I imagine the most interesting and intoxicating thing in life is to engage with your mind as much as you can.
I want to be as productive as possible while working. What I don't want is to be as productive as possible while living. So tools that integrate work into non-work aspects of my life end up turning my whole life into endless work; for some people that might be fine -- and it used to be fine for me 2 decades ago, but it's not fine anymore.
I run my own personal infrastructure. Most of what it takes is to research secure setups from the beginning. You don't have other users so upgrades aren't painful. Frankly what I find most difficult is dealing with aging hardware, but this dude probably had the money to buy everything new.
Not really. I keep even more than that. And at a finer grained resolution. And have done so for almost two decades. It's all put on to a write-only-by-the-capturing-device/read-only-by-other-device secured storage system.
I give up filesystem taxonomies to end up in org-mode/org-roam managed time-organized notes, with files attached and retrievable in a classic search&narrow UI (org-roam-node-find) with eventual quick search (via counsel-rg on org-roam-directory, where in that case notes are like files metadata) or queries (org-ql on drawes properties and tags who are ensured a bit consistent via templates (org-capture, yasnippet etc).
This extra layer was a game-changer for me, I hesitate for long, but finally switched few years ago and so far prove to be flawlessly. I still miss fancy UI/ML tools, but anything is at my fingertips locally, I can make quick slides if needed directly in org-mode, I can click code-executing links (elisp:), running code blocks (org-babel) and anything is integrated to a level NO ONE modern software can reach due to modern systems archaic, limited and limiting designs.
As a person that is always thinking on the public interest, and what that means for open code, I cannot help it thinking "how long until open source overcomes his work"? A decade? 50y?
Those monitors trigger me. Uneven heights, one is tilted, there's a gap big enough to fit a hand through, and they're miscalibrated (different color temperature).
>But one inevitably needs some flat surface, if only just to sign things (it’s not all digital yet), or to eat a snack. So my solution is to have pullouts. If one needs them, pull them out. But one can’t leave them pulled out, so nothing can accumulate on them.
This is a great tip. Get a desk with pull-outs. I have them on the left and right. They're 1/2 an inch think and strong enough to leave a heavy book, laptop, or whatever until you're done. When both sides get pulled out, some paper-heavy task is occurring, such as taxes.
Wow. Reading through Wolfram's post, I stopped and decided to listen to one of his livestreamed software design sessions. Who knows what the right model is, but it's very very clear from at least this video (https://youtu.be/y_M7qtfjjjs) that he's deeply technical and incredibly actively involved in development. I really want to know how effective he is as an organization's manager and not their product manager...
What a guy! Yes, I believe the point is to find what keeps you motivated and works for you. One of my favourite hacks/ritual is making a lot of Mate tea in the morning, drinking a cup, and taking a 1 liter thermo to work. Mate is the best kind of energy drink available and you can pretty much drink as much as you want with no sideeffects (except an extra trip to the toilet). This way I avoid bad coffe at the office. On weekends i drop the Mate tea and prepare myself some descent coffee as a treat
If you showed this to an advanced alien civilization I think they might consider his life one of enforced torture, if they themselves aren’t already living it.
The Clockwork Orange eyes held open forced to watch screens device comes to mind.
I've read this before, but took the opportunity to read it again.
One of the things that impresses me the most is exemplified by these two examples:
> [...] including for example the issue of my elementary school magazine from Easter 1971.
> [...] school geography notes from when I was 11 years old, together with the text of a speech I gave
When he was 11 he had the foresight to realize that he might want to refer back to this stuff and decided to keep it and store it somewhere that it could be found again. When I was 11 I'd have likely thrown it out during the end-of-year desk/locker clean out and not given it a second thought.
While I don't necessarily aspire to his level of productivity, I'm very envious of how meticulous his record keeping is. Whenever I try to get organized like this I quickly get overwhelmed and give up.
I share the dream of being able to walk through the woods while working online, but there's no way that Dr. Wolfram's approach would work for me. I just can't walk smoothly enough to read comfortably from a screen, particularly not while avoiding roots and rocks. A gimble stabilizer could help with the text but not the refocusing.
So I'm hoping that AR glasses will do the trick before long. If they can project non-jiggly text into the world so that I can rapidly context shift between them with little refocusing, and let me input by wiggling my fingers, I'd pay a lot for it. But I guess lines of code per hour will decline with speed.
What a fascinating person! Personally, I prefer to run 10 miles on a trail in the morning then go to work and grind. Vs trying to combine exersize and work.
Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a project can be done on my computer and then intentionally avoid doing those on the phone.
If I have access to a nice screen, full keyboard and a mouse, the only reason I need to use my damn phone is developers who prioritize their phone apps over computer based applications (see Apple Music, etc).
Right after a pandemic that disrupted to a degree multiple aspects of our life, I say this is not the right time to seek productivity. It is time to reconnect with yourself, your motivations, and your ability to build self enforcing social relations. If you have all these, congratulations, go for optimizing productivity!
Yes. Completely prevents my kids carsickness— they threw up most car rides over 1 hr unless instructed not to read or look down(had to look straight ahead)
I've always found Stephen Wolfram's thoughts to be overly self indulgent, and this is no exception. But it is illuminating since it reveals what I most loathe: the productive life.
Being productive is not a good. It leads to wanting to attach a computer to oneself while going on a walk outdoors!
This is a common sentiment on the Internet. But when I look around at the people I know, none of the people who are anti-productivity are people I admire. In fact, the pro-productivity people do much more of everything with better outcomes.
- The pro-productivity people are more involved parents and family members
- The pro-productivity people are more involved in hobbies
- The pro-productivity people create many more things
- The pro-productivity people lift more, go outdoors more, travel more
It appears, empirically from my sample set, that being pro-productivity correlates with spending one's life meaningfully. Having chosen to model myself on those I know like this, my life has gotten better.
This class of advice (anti-productivity) therefore appears to me to be in the same class of advice as other Internet advice: "kick your kids out at 18 to teach them personal responsibility", "don't take on debt", etc.
To make it worse, you only have to scroll approx 1 page down before you have a picture of Stephen Wolfram outdoors.
The separation of work and play that so many online commenters form is perhaps key to this whole thing. Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and fulfilled when I do it. It is fun!
This. I felt an almost cringe-like reaction from reading the article. It reminds me of Goodhart's Law: when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. At some point being productive becomes the end goal and no longer a means to an end, and you've lost touch with the beauty of just going on a walk in nature.
Being productive is good but only as a means to an end. If you're using your productivity to get more done then that can be dangerous. But if you're using it to get your work done faster then it's actually quite useful.
Perhaps you mean that being maximally productive -- that is, seeking productivity over all other goals in life -- is not a good? Because productivity is definitely a good. Without it, all crumbles away to the natural state, which is chaotic and for human purposes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
I find that you’re projecting your thoughts and lifestyle onto his lifestyle choice. Just stop as it does nobody any good.
What’s wrong with attaching a computer to oneself while walking outdoors? Does he have the same intrinsic motivators as you? Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not.
What about people that go outside and just read? Is that not a good life?
Most people don't have his potential. Yeah, I'm aware he pushes a lot of crackpot science, but he is still exceedingly brilliant. For the average folk, this is a horrible way to live.
dmje|3 years ago
surfsvammel|3 years ago
I have two teams reporting to me, and each have a 30minute morning meeting where we decide what needs the team attention during the day. There is also room for small talk to keep it a bit social.
Those meetings do not need screensharing very often. When they do, we can manage to look briefly at a phone screen.
It has been wonderful and it is something I would miss if I ever had another job. I encourage the others in the team to do the same thing.
Walking in the forrest have two benefits; less risk of getting hit by a car, and, it’s more quiet of a background for when I unmute.
Highly recommended!
iancmceachern|3 years ago
rcarmo|3 years ago
I once had a bit of fun with it on a 20-core Raspberry Pi cluster, and sometimes I think it would have been amazing to run some ML workloads on this kind of environment: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2016/08/10/0830
taeric|3 years ago
zorrolovsky|3 years ago
I use a Scarlett 212 mic and sound card paired with a decent pair of speakers and my working room works like a charm. Everything is set up so if I start a call any device I can walk though the office and have a conversation with someone like they're in the room. 10/10 would recommend.
germinalphrase|3 years ago
I imagine you can hear your partners quite well, but I want to be heard well also.
froh|3 years ago
simonw|3 years ago
(Also it meant I could call my search engine Dogsheep Beta, as opposed to Wolfram Alpha - and I enjoyed that pun so much I spent quite a significant of time writing the software to support it: https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous... )
gordon_freeman|3 years ago
elzbardico|3 years ago
I can't relate, it is not my cup of tea, but I can understand it and refrain for judging.
deniszgonjanin|3 years ago
insane_dreamer|3 years ago
iancmceachern|3 years ago
caust1c|3 years ago
Yikes? He's smart, so I'm sure he's protected it adequately, but auditing the surface area of this much software seems insane.
kodah|3 years ago
justinlloyd|3 years ago
kkfx|3 years ago
This extra layer was a game-changer for me, I hesitate for long, but finally switched few years ago and so far prove to be flawlessly. I still miss fancy UI/ML tools, but anything is at my fingertips locally, I can make quick slides if needed directly in org-mode, I can click code-executing links (elisp:), running code blocks (org-babel) and anything is integrated to a level NO ONE modern software can reach due to modern systems archaic, limited and limiting designs.
ninotheopsguy|3 years ago
rongopo|3 years ago
gigel82|3 years ago
ge96|3 years ago
1970-01-01|3 years ago
This is a great tip. Get a desk with pull-outs. I have them on the left and right. They're 1/2 an inch think and strong enough to leave a heavy book, laptop, or whatever until you're done. When both sides get pulled out, some paper-heavy task is occurring, such as taxes.
aliljet|3 years ago
quijoteuniv|3 years ago
mxwsn|3 years ago
JohnJamesRambo|3 years ago
The Clockwork Orange eyes held open forced to watch screens device comes to mind.
AtlasBarfed|3 years ago
Mister_Snuggles|3 years ago
One of the things that impresses me the most is exemplified by these two examples:
> [...] including for example the issue of my elementary school magazine from Easter 1971.
> [...] school geography notes from when I was 11 years old, together with the text of a speech I gave
When he was 11 he had the foresight to realize that he might want to refer back to this stuff and decided to keep it and store it somewhere that it could be found again. When I was 11 I'd have likely thrown it out during the end-of-year desk/locker clean out and not given it a second thought.
While I don't necessarily aspire to his level of productivity, I'm very envious of how meticulous his record keeping is. Whenever I try to get organized like this I quickly get overwhelmed and give up.
hirundo|3 years ago
So I'm hoping that AR glasses will do the trick before long. If they can project non-jiggly text into the world so that I can rapidly context shift between them with little refocusing, and let me input by wiggling my fingers, I'd pay a lot for it. But I guess lines of code per hour will decline with speed.
AtlasBarfed|3 years ago
0000011111|3 years ago
diordiderot|3 years ago
Once you get older and the knees start wearing out it's a great alternative
reidjs|3 years ago
- Writing correspondence, essays, docs, todolists? The voice-to-text feature works great on iPhones.
- Reading blog posts or articles? Extract text then run it through the iPhone's screen reader.
- Moving trello tasks around? Do it through the phone app. etc.
sokoloff|3 years ago
Siri can't even get simple text messages write (pun intended)
wintermutestwin|3 years ago
If I have access to a nice screen, full keyboard and a mouse, the only reason I need to use my damn phone is developers who prioritize their phone apps over computer based applications (see Apple Music, etc).
Calamitous|3 years ago
rongopo|3 years ago
BrentLabasan|3 years ago
m463|3 years ago
adamredwoods|3 years ago
I have the problem of flat surfaces, I've been trying hard to figure out a better way for incoming papers (bills, to read, to investigate, to shred).
dang|3 years ago
Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26045380 - Feb 2021 (63 comments)
yayitswei|3 years ago
micahacobb|3 years ago
ge96|3 years ago
edit: ahh yeah... this is some dense/context specific stuff
the language design review ones are fun though... the tangents
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
lapestenoire|3 years ago
prashp|3 years ago
[1] https://www.gwern.net/
jeliotj|3 years ago
Being productive is not a good. It leads to wanting to attach a computer to oneself while going on a walk outdoors!
renewiltord|3 years ago
- The pro-productivity people are more involved parents and family members
- The pro-productivity people are more involved in hobbies
- The pro-productivity people create many more things
- The pro-productivity people lift more, go outdoors more, travel more
It appears, empirically from my sample set, that being pro-productivity correlates with spending one's life meaningfully. Having chosen to model myself on those I know like this, my life has gotten better.
This class of advice (anti-productivity) therefore appears to me to be in the same class of advice as other Internet advice: "kick your kids out at 18 to teach them personal responsibility", "don't take on debt", etc.
To make it worse, you only have to scroll approx 1 page down before you have a picture of Stephen Wolfram outdoors.
The separation of work and play that so many online commenters form is perhaps key to this whole thing. Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and fulfilled when I do it. It is fun!
agnos|3 years ago
xmprt|3 years ago
prottog|3 years ago
Perhaps you mean that being maximally productive -- that is, seeking productivity over all other goals in life -- is not a good? Because productivity is definitely a good. Without it, all crumbles away to the natural state, which is chaotic and for human purposes "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short".
_boffin_|3 years ago
What’s wrong with attaching a computer to oneself while walking outdoors? Does he have the same intrinsic motivators as you? Probably not. Does it matter? Probably not.
What about people that go outside and just read? Is that not a good life?
hooverd|3 years ago
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
latenightcoding|3 years ago
bpodgursky|3 years ago
testfoobar|3 years ago
[deleted]
dang|3 years ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
zabzonk|3 years ago
gjvc|3 years ago
Also, don't mention the Rulians.