7 ms·

Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure (2019)

165 points by not_knuth 6y ago

tartrate 6y ago
> computational thinking > computational history > computational documents Whenever I see an article by S.W. I do something very unconstructive, which is to just search for occurrences of "computational" to see how he manages to put it into just about any context.
- 83457 6y ago
  How very computational of you.
- emteycz 6y ago
  I went through all occurrences and I think it makes sense every time! The man simply computes a lot. What would you expect from someone who made their own computational environment though...
jacquesm 6y ago
The best way to appear to be productive is to appropriate other people's IP.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  Is this a specific accusation against Wolfram or a general comment? (I did a quick google search and found nothing, but without being sure if I was even looking for something, I limited the amount of time I spent.)
  - anon_tor_12345 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cook#Work_with_Stephen_Wolfram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cook#Work_with_Stephen...
sambroner 6y ago
Let me start by saying... this is as must read article. I share it often. It is 1. extremely fascinating 2. patently ridiculous 3. something to learn from He documents almost every part of his daily work environment in painstaking detail. Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top. I am very appreciative that he chose to share. Stephen has optimized (for him! not for me) his life to an unbelievable degree. Whether that is walking outside with a laptop working because it slightly reduces his resting heart rate, the extensive renovations to his office to remove the sound of his computer fan, or the elaborate filing system he uses for his daily notes and mail. He also goes deep into his personal analytics. Stephen is working approximately 100% of the waking hours of the day as evidenced by the timestamps on the emails he sends, which are well plotted over 3 decades. (He's a night owl, sleeping 3am-9am). It also appears he is opening nearly 800 email every day and keeping his unreads below 200. I should add, partially because I read this article, I began tracking half hourly sprints in the pomodoro-style and have become more interested tracking parts of my own life.
- 1996 6y ago
  > Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top I disagree. It gives an example of what you can achieve with large amounts of money, freedom and dedication. It also contain great advice possible on a budget: > When I was consulting at Bell Labs in the early 1980s I saw that a friend of mine had two garbage cans in his office. When I asked him why, he explained that one was for genuine garbage and the other was a buffer into which he would throw documents that he thought he’d probably never want again. He’d let the buffer garbage can fill up, and once it was full, he’d throw away the lower documents in it, since from the fact that he hadn’t fished them out, he figured he’d probably never miss them if they were thrown away permanently. Whether you may gain from the suggestions is up to you. For example, if you value your health, reducing your resting heart rate seems like a valuable thing to optimize for. > Whether that is walking outside with a laptop working because it slightly reduces his resting heart rate, the extensive renovations to his office to remove the sound of his computer fan This seems extremely valuable to me. He's in for the long game. So am I. Thanks to my work in the crypto space, I retired very young. I have great freedom to fail, but I remain time poor. Reading from his experiences gives me a better idea on what will provide me the most utility, without investing too much of my time in what seems to be a failure for other people (I considered doing the book thing, but in university I fortunately moved to everything PDF, so all paper books were trashed) Also it helps avoid what would be very little gains in practice. For ex, his note system: he had his box of archives digitized. I decided to throw everything away as his example of being able to access school notes about a rhinoceros talk strike me as a waste of time and a risk of potentially drawing wrong conclusions: > > So, for example, here are school geography notes from when I was 11 years old, together with the text of a speech I gave Yeah thanks but no thanks. Nostalgia is a powerful drug that can make you keep a wrong path. It is better to let yourself forget what is value less to make room for what is important. Let these unused neural pathware decay and go extinct!! Just one thing wrong from the article: > > How do I take notes when I’m “out and about”? I’ve tried various technological solutions, but in the end none have proved both practical and universally socially acceptable. So I’ve kept doing the same thing for 40 years: in my pocket I have a pen, together with a piece of paper folded three times (so it’s about the size of a credit card). It’s very low-tech, but it works. And when I come back from being out I always take a few moments to transcribe what I wrote down, send out emails, or whatever This is a big one. I have found a 14" Sony ebook to be the best notetaking device. Someone I otherwise found very wise told me it was a 1k etch-a-sketch replacement to folder pieces of paper. I disagree. The ability to backup and sync my notes everywhere is priceless - and developing the habit to review my objectives everyday even more so. It has allowed me to fully revamp my TODO system, but I found the lack of color problematic for some notes. So now I'm in the process of replacing it by a lenovo dual display solution (Yogabook C930) - one color side, one eink side. The eink can also work as a display for regular windows applications.
dmje 6y ago
I wonder if he’s happy. I mean, genuine question, not a snark. There’s obviously important reasons to be “productive” but there are many reasons to just let go, too. I wonder what his mental health looks like.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  He probably had $10 million close to 30 years ago, so I'd guess he is pretty happy. The number is somewhat arbitrary, but it's enough money to spend most of your time doing what you want to do. Not enough to chase every whim, but enough that what you end up doing with the bulk of your time is a choice.
  - Toine 6y ago
    > He probably had $10 million close to 30 years ago, so I'd guess he is pretty happy. This is the saddest thing I've read recently
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Just wait until you read about 2020.
    - robjan 6y ago
      I think the unwritten part of that sentence is "so he can quit what he's doing whenever he wants, but he chooses to live like this"
      - dmje 6y ago
        ...kinda the important part of the sentence too. Plenty of totally depressed millionaires out there...
    - TuringNYC 6y ago
      >> >> He probably had $10 million close to 30 years ago, so I'd guess he is pretty happy. >> This is the saddest thing I've read recently I read something sadder recently -- a mother in the US who was crying because she couldn't afford insulin for her child. Seriously, sure, money doesnt solve all problems. But it sure as heck solves most problems. It adds others, but not as big as the ones it takes away. (FYI, i've lived across the income spectrum thru my life from $10k/yr w/o healthcare to top 1%)
layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
The thing I’ve noticed about people around me using tons of “productivity” tools is that in the end they’re not actually producing more stuff than the regular folk who don’t organize their life around Notion boards or personal wikis... This article is yet another example of this phenomenon. I mean sure, Stephen Wolfram founded the company that makes Mathematica. But other than that, his achievments are pretty underwhelming especially when discounting his aggressive self-promotion. His body of work is mostly a lot of handwavy stuff with some interesting ideas sprinkled in. The science community doesn’t really take him seriously. So the question remains: are these productivity habits anything but symptoms of a mild case of OCD? Where’s the purported “produce” that these productivity tools enabled him creating?
- jansan 6y ago
  If the science community does not take the guy who invented Mathematica seriously, they are just a bunch of arrogant §%#$s, but I doubt that is even true.
- nojito 6y ago
  The most productive people in terms of output and success are the ones who do not talk about what tools they are using. But instead they almost solely talk about behaviors and ideas. Once I realized that I quickly learned to ignore all of the productivity/self help space that plagues the internet today.
- emteycz 6y ago
  > Where’s the purported “produce” that these productivity tools enabled him creating? - Wolfram Physics - Wolfram language - Wolfram Mathematica - Wolfram Alpha - several science books - hundreds of talks and presentations - ...
- simonw 6y ago
  "his achievments are pretty underwhelming" - I don't feel that at all. Sure, his self-promotion can make it easy to be skeptical. But he has built SO MUCH stuff in his career. Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language and Mathematica are incredible achievements. As an open source focused person I tend to avoid them in favour of OS alternatives (not that the open source world has anything even remotely comparable to Wolfram Alpha) but I can't deny that they are astonishingly powerful products.
Sytten 6y ago
Legit question, what is Wolfram, who uses it and why? I used the equation solver a few times but I had no idea they have VoIP!
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  Stephen Wolfram is a person. The Wolfram Language is a language he made (in the same sense that Guido van Rossum made Python – it's the programming language behind Mathematica). WolframAlpha is a website that also contains a partial implementation of the Wolfram Language.
jansan 6y ago
I can share some experience about having a treadmill in the office. I built my own using a second hand treadmill from which I removed everything but the lower part (belt, drive and housing). Then I purchased an IKEA Skarsta height adjustable desk. Finally all I needed was a monitor and a desk mount for the monitor. Without the monitor the price was less than 300€. But the thing is, while it works really well in theory, I rarely use it. I find working while walking very difficult. I cannot concentrate very well and movements get really erratic. It is mainly useable for longer browsing sessions, but long browsing sessions usually occur by accident and are usually not planned in advance. So yeah, the whole machine is right next to me while I write, but I am not using it. Also, Linus Torvalds has a similar setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE0JtUeyVJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE0JtUeyVJA
- jfim 6y ago
  How fast is the treadmill going? For walking desks it seems that it needs to be a pretty slow pace, and slower than the pace at which one would normally walk.
  - jansan 6y ago
    I can control the speed with a little potentiometer (that is basically the control that I stripped from the original upper part). So it can go quite slow, which really is necessary if you want to use a mouse or keyboard. For watching youtube, you can go pretty fast.
- rubicon33 6y ago
  I picked up one of these [1] a couple years ago and have LOVED it. I've logged on average probably about 7 miles a week on it. While that might not sound like much, it adds up, and it's 7 miles a week that I would have otherwise been sitting. If I need to REALLY focus on a very challenging problem, I will sit down. But if I'm doing something more routine, it's perfect for walking. The best part of the treadly is how easily it's stored. Just flip it up and lean it against the wall. Out of the way. [1] https://www.treadly.co/ https://www.treadly.co/
egypturnash 6y ago
And for at least the past couple of years—unless I’m bringing the bigger computer, usually in a backpack—I have taken to “wearing” my little computer wherever I go. I originally wanted a bag where the computer would fit completely inside, but the nicest bag I could find had the computer sticking out a bit. To my surprise, though, this has worked well. And it’s certainly amusing when I’m talking to someone and quickly “draw” my computer, and they look confused, and ask, “Where did that come from?” Today I learnt that Stephen Wolfram dos not live anywhere it rains very much, because I sure would not take my laptop out in that bag when I lived in Seattle, nor would I take it out in that now that I live in the tropics. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2019/02/10-sw-with-spikey-messenger-bag6-e1550708049961.png https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2019/02/10-...
mark_l_watson 6y ago
I didn’t read the article to the end but enjoyed the first half. If he were my friend, I would have a serious talk about using a tablet when walking outside. I live in the mountains and spend a huge amount of time walking around my neighborhood and also wilderness hiking. Some of that time my mind is absorbed in nature, gratitude for what I am experiencing. But I also use some hiking time, when I am not with friends, for listening to a wide range of podcasts and enjoying fine literature on audiobooks. My new years resolution for 2021 is listening to more great music and reading even more than I typically do. I very much liked Wolfram’s organization and productivity hacks. My system is much simpler but I also like his. I have twice tried to integrate Wolfram language and notebooks into my technical life, but it didn’t work out. Last time I read that they were baking RDF, SPARQL, and other linked data/Knowledge Graph tech into their platform, but it was not fully baked when I tried it and I walked away in frustration. Maybe I will give their knowledge platform another try sometime.
- swader999 6y ago
  I'm surprised he could find a screen that was useful outdoors.
appleflaxen 6y ago
Has anybody worked for Wolfram? What's he like as a boss? What's the company like?
- not_knuth 6y ago
  I have no idea what the company is like, nor do I know what working for Wolfram is like (person and company), but Wolfram the person streams a lot of his meetings. https://www.stephenwolfram.com/livestreams/ https://www.stephenwolfram.com/livestreams/
reddog 6y ago
"It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself." -- Thoreau
dugditches 6y ago
Interesting about the glasses he uses to avoid getting car sick. Looks like they're round tube frames, filled with a liquid dyed blue. Which apparently tricks your brain into thinking it's the horizon(which moves with your vehicle). https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/1200x/assets/images/148075-gadgets-news-seetroen-anti-travel-sickness-glasses-image1-yi2at7gh34.jpg https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/1200x/assets/images/148075-g...
simonw 6y ago
I love this essay so much. It was the inspiration for my Dogsheep project - https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehouses/ https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous... - which I called "Dogsheep" because I'm imitating Wolfram but it's not nearly as impressive.
- rednafi 6y ago
  Recently, I came across the podcast on Talk Python where you talked about Dogsheep and Datasette. Dogsheep looks amazing and I can definitely get behind your philosophy of SQLite for everything.
weagle05 6y ago
This is an amazing article. Thank you for sharing. I'm also a little upset I didn't know Wolfram had all of these amazing apps. I now know what I'm doing this weekend.
tartoran 6y ago
The problem I have with super productivity is that it appears to push people only in one direction. I think giving oneself a break and having unstructured time is something that is overlooked with these regimes. Merely talking daily walks without any devices or technology helps our brains enormously. And a bit of chaos (under control of course) can be very beneficial
hkon 6y ago
To say this was an interesting read is a massive understatement. Thanks for sharing.
jodrellblank 6y ago
> "If I actually want to write anything serious, though, out will come my little computer, with its full keyboard. Of course, if I’m standing up it’s pretty impractical to try to balance the computer on one hand and type with the other." Something I've not seen, but wondered about, is a chording keyboard on the back of a tablet device. Especially since he mentions chording keyboards earlier in the article, a tablet screen could have keys for one or both hands while holding it. > "(I periodically try using drawing tablets but I don’t like the way they treat my whole screen as a canvas, rather than operating in a window that I can move around.)" Bit surprised that a multimillionaire computer programmer can't get this solved when it seems like "only" a software problem?
csomar 6y ago
For such an elaborate setup, I'm quite surprised he missed a few things from the gamers world. And yes, these gamers do have some serious sh*t. Gamers mice and mousepads are order of magnitudes more precise and comfortable. I had the Logitech G900 and recently got the Razer Viper Ultimate. Anyone having strains from using the mouse should try these things.
maya24 6y ago
The only thing I really got out of this long article was the importance of having a customized organizational and workflow system that suits your lifestyle. For me there's two books / methodologies that has made a huge impact in how I think about and organize my work. The first is David Allen's getting things done system. It is extremely generic but comprehensive and suitable for pretty much any kind of knowledge worker. The second is using a personal kanban board for organizing all of my work and personal tasks. Highly recommend the book Personal Kanban. with a sufficient organizational assistant in place I don't feel the need to be productive all the time. I know that when I sit down my work is already planned ahead so I can immediately start being productive. I also review and plan my work ahead a little bit which saves a lot of time and makes contact switching less costly.
jacknews 6y ago
I feel exhausted just reading, no, just skimming through, the article.
noisy_boy 6y ago
I liked the idea of the plastic envelopes to group things. They stack things vertically and keep them flat so I can better use the abundant vertical height of my backpack and with different colored plastics, can easily get to the correct set. Will try to find ones that have multiple compartments.
andrejserafim 6y ago
What I got out of the article: - define what productive means for you. The narrow definition of "doing work" won't work for the missus, kids. And your general well being for most of us. The author doesn't dive into that. I guess because the article is already too long. My take is - doing the things that matter. - Being meticulous and ruthless about removing garbage getting in the way. And for that all the data and tracking help.
joemazerino 6y ago
That is an insane amount of scrutiny on one's productivity. No wonder he has been so successful.
KoenDG 6y ago
I have never before seen something like that tool by which his monitors can go higher. The brand isn't mentioned in the article, the name of the tool isn't mentioned. Had to zoom in and try and guess the name from, there. Apparently "Versa Desk"

165 points by not_knuth 6y ago

> computational thinking > computational history > computational documents Whenever I see an article by S.W. I do something very unconstructive, which is to just search for occurrences of "computational" to see how he manages to put it into just about any context.

83457 6y ago
How very computational of you.
emteycz 6y ago
I went through all occurrences and I think it makes sense every time! The man simply computes a lot. What would you expect from someone who made their own computational environment though...

jacquesm 6y ago

The best way to appear to be productive is to appropriate other people's IP.

sokoloff 6y ago
Is this a specific accusation against Wolfram or a general comment? (I did a quick google search and found nothing, but without being sure if I was even looking for something, I limited the amount of time I spent.)
- anon_tor_12345 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_110#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cook#Work_with_Stephen_Wolfram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cook#Work_with_Stephen...

sambroner 6y ago

Let me start by saying... this is as must read article. I share it often. It is 1. extremely fascinating 2. patently ridiculous 3. something to learn from He documents almost every part of his daily work environment in painstaking detail. Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top. I am very appreciative that he chose to share. Stephen has optimized (for him! not for me) his life to an unbelievable degree. Whether that is walking outside with a laptop working because it slightly reduces his resting heart rate, the extensive renovations to his office to remove the sound of his computer fan, or the elaborate filing system he uses for his daily notes and mail. He also goes deep into his personal analytics. Stephen is working approximately 100% of the waking hours of the day as evidenced by the timestamps on the emails he sends, which are well plotted over 3 decades. (He's a night owl, sleeping 3am-9am). It also appears he is opening nearly 800 email every day and keeping his unreads below 200. I should add, partially because I read this article, I began tracking half hourly sprints in the pomodoro-style and have become more interested tracking parts of my own life.

1996 6y ago
> Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top I disagree. It gives an example of what you can achieve with large amounts of money, freedom and dedication. It also contain great advice possible on a budget: > When I was consulting at Bell Labs in the early 1980s I saw that a friend of mine had two garbage cans in his office. When I asked him why, he explained that one was for genuine garbage and the other was a buffer into which he would throw documents that he thought he’d probably never want again. He’d let the buffer garbage can fill up, and once it was full, he’d throw away the lower documents in it, since from the fact that he hadn’t fished them out, he figured he’d probably never miss them if they were thrown away permanently. Whether you may gain from the suggestions is up to you. For example, if you value your health, reducing your resting heart rate seems like a valuable thing to optimize for. > Whether that is walking outside with a laptop working because it slightly reduces his resting heart rate, the extensive renovations to his office to remove the sound of his computer fan This seems extremely valuable to me. He's in for the long game. So am I. Thanks to my work in the crypto space, I retired very young. I have great freedom to fail, but I remain time poor. Reading from his experiences gives me a better idea on what will provide me the most utility, without investing too much of my time in what seems to be a failure for other people (I considered doing the book thing, but in university I fortunately moved to everything PDF, so all paper books were trashed) Also it helps avoid what would be very little gains in practice. For ex, his note system: he had his box of archives digitized. I decided to throw everything away as his example of being able to access school notes about a rhinoceros talk strike me as a waste of time and a risk of potentially drawing wrong conclusions: > > So, for example, here are school geography notes from when I was 11 years old, together with the text of a speech I gave Yeah thanks but no thanks. Nostalgia is a powerful drug that can make you keep a wrong path. It is better to let yourself forget what is value less to make room for what is important. Let these unused neural pathware decay and go extinct!! Just one thing wrong from the article: > > How do I take notes when I’m “out and about”? I’ve tried various technological solutions, but in the end none have proved both practical and universally socially acceptable. So I’ve kept doing the same thing for 40 years: in my pocket I have a pen, together with a piece of paper folded three times (so it’s about the size of a credit card). It’s very low-tech, but it works. And when I come back from being out I always take a few moments to transcribe what I wrote down, send out emails, or whatever This is a big one. I have found a 14" Sony ebook to be the best notetaking device. Someone I otherwise found very wise told me it was a 1k etch-a-sketch replacement to folder pieces of paper. I disagree. The ability to backup and sync my notes everywhere is priceless - and developing the habit to review my objectives everyday even more so. It has allowed me to fully revamp my TODO system, but I found the lack of color problematic for some notes. So now I'm in the process of replacing it by a lenovo dual display solution (Yogabook C930) - one color side, one eink side. The eink can also work as a display for regular windows applications.

dmje 6y ago

I wonder if he’s happy. I mean, genuine question, not a snark. There’s obviously important reasons to be “productive” but there are many reasons to just let go, too. I wonder what his mental health looks like.

maxerickson 6y ago
He probably had $10 million close to 30 years ago, so I'd guess he is pretty happy. The number is somewhat arbitrary, but it's enough money to spend most of your time doing what you want to do. Not enough to chase every whim, but enough that what you end up doing with the bulk of your time is a choice.
- Toine 6y ago
  > He probably had $10 million close to 30 years ago, so I'd guess he is pretty happy. This is the saddest thing I've read recently
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Just wait until you read about 2020.
  - robjan 6y ago
    I think the unwritten part of that sentence is "so he can quit what he's doing whenever he wants, but he chooses to live like this"
    - dmje 6y ago
      ...kinda the important part of the sentence too. Plenty of totally depressed millionaires out there...
  - TuringNYC 6y ago
    >> >> He probably had $10 million close to 30 years ago, so I'd guess he is pretty happy. >> This is the saddest thing I've read recently I read something sadder recently -- a mother in the US who was crying because she couldn't afford insulin for her child. Seriously, sure, money doesnt solve all problems. But it sure as heck solves most problems. It adds others, but not as big as the ones it takes away. (FYI, i've lived across the income spectrum thru my life from $10k/yr w/o healthcare to top 1%)

layoutIfNeeded 6y ago

The thing I’ve noticed about people around me using tons of “productivity” tools is that in the end they’re not actually producing more stuff than the regular folk who don’t organize their life around Notion boards or personal wikis... This article is yet another example of this phenomenon. I mean sure, Stephen Wolfram founded the company that makes Mathematica. But other than that, his achievments are pretty underwhelming especially when discounting his aggressive self-promotion. His body of work is mostly a lot of handwavy stuff with some interesting ideas sprinkled in. The science community doesn’t really take him seriously. So the question remains: are these productivity habits anything but symptoms of a mild case of OCD? Where’s the purported “produce” that these productivity tools enabled him creating?

jansan 6y ago
If the science community does not take the guy who invented Mathematica seriously, they are just a bunch of arrogant §%#$s, but I doubt that is even true.
nojito 6y ago
The most productive people in terms of output and success are the ones who do not talk about what tools they are using. But instead they almost solely talk about behaviors and ideas. Once I realized that I quickly learned to ignore all of the productivity/self help space that plagues the internet today.
emteycz 6y ago
> Where’s the purported “produce” that these productivity tools enabled him creating? - Wolfram Physics - Wolfram language - Wolfram Mathematica - Wolfram Alpha - several science books - hundreds of talks and presentations - ...
simonw 6y ago
"his achievments are pretty underwhelming" - I don't feel that at all. Sure, his self-promotion can make it easy to be skeptical. But he has built SO MUCH stuff in his career. Wolfram Alpha, Wolfram Language and Mathematica are incredible achievements. As an open source focused person I tend to avoid them in favour of OS alternatives (not that the open source world has anything even remotely comparable to Wolfram Alpha) but I can't deny that they are astonishingly powerful products.

Sytten 6y ago

Legit question, what is Wolfram, who uses it and why? I used the equation solver a few times but I had no idea they have VoIP!

wizzwizz4 6y ago
Stephen Wolfram is a person. The Wolfram Language is a language he made (in the same sense that Guido van Rossum made Python – it's the programming language behind Mathematica). WolframAlpha is a website that also contains a partial implementation of the Wolfram Language.

jansan 6y ago

I can share some experience about having a treadmill in the office. I built my own using a second hand treadmill from which I removed everything but the lower part (belt, drive and housing). Then I purchased an IKEA Skarsta height adjustable desk. Finally all I needed was a monitor and a desk mount for the monitor. Without the monitor the price was less than 300€. But the thing is, while it works really well in theory, I rarely use it. I find working while walking very difficult. I cannot concentrate very well and movements get really erratic. It is mainly useable for longer browsing sessions, but long browsing sessions usually occur by accident and are usually not planned in advance. So yeah, the whole machine is right next to me while I write, but I am not using it. Also, Linus Torvalds has a similar setup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE0JtUeyVJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE0JtUeyVJA

jfim 6y ago
How fast is the treadmill going? For walking desks it seems that it needs to be a pretty slow pace, and slower than the pace at which one would normally walk.
- jansan 6y ago
  I can control the speed with a little potentiometer (that is basically the control that I stripped from the original upper part). So it can go quite slow, which really is necessary if you want to use a mouse or keyboard. For watching youtube, you can go pretty fast.
rubicon33 6y ago
I picked up one of these [1] a couple years ago and have LOVED it. I've logged on average probably about 7 miles a week on it. While that might not sound like much, it adds up, and it's 7 miles a week that I would have otherwise been sitting. If I need to REALLY focus on a very challenging problem, I will sit down. But if I'm doing something more routine, it's perfect for walking. The best part of the treadly is how easily it's stored. Just flip it up and lean it against the wall. Out of the way. [1] https://www.treadly.co/ https://www.treadly.co/

egypturnash 6y ago

And for at least the past couple of years—unless I’m bringing the bigger computer, usually in a backpack—I have taken to “wearing” my little computer wherever I go. I originally wanted a bag where the computer would fit completely inside, but the nicest bag I could find had the computer sticking out a bit. To my surprise, though, this has worked well. And it’s certainly amusing when I’m talking to someone and quickly “draw” my computer, and they look confused, and ask, “Where did that come from?” Today I learnt that Stephen Wolfram dos not live anywhere it rains very much, because I sure would not take my laptop out in that bag when I lived in Seattle, nor would I take it out in that now that I live in the tropics. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2019/02/10-sw-with-spikey-messenger-bag6-e1550708049961.png https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/data/uploads/2019/02/10-...

mark_l_watson 6y ago

I didn’t read the article to the end but enjoyed the first half. If he were my friend, I would have a serious talk about using a tablet when walking outside. I live in the mountains and spend a huge amount of time walking around my neighborhood and also wilderness hiking. Some of that time my mind is absorbed in nature, gratitude for what I am experiencing. But I also use some hiking time, when I am not with friends, for listening to a wide range of podcasts and enjoying fine literature on audiobooks. My new years resolution for 2021 is listening to more great music and reading even more than I typically do. I very much liked Wolfram’s organization and productivity hacks. My system is much simpler but I also like his. I have twice tried to integrate Wolfram language and notebooks into my technical life, but it didn’t work out. Last time I read that they were baking RDF, SPARQL, and other linked data/Knowledge Graph tech into their platform, but it was not fully baked when I tried it and I walked away in frustration. Maybe I will give their knowledge platform another try sometime.

swader999 6y ago
I'm surprised he could find a screen that was useful outdoors.

appleflaxen 6y ago

Has anybody worked for Wolfram? What's he like as a boss? What's the company like?

not_knuth 6y ago
I have no idea what the company is like, nor do I know what working for Wolfram is like (person and company), but Wolfram the person streams a lot of his meetings. https://www.stephenwolfram.com/livestreams/ https://www.stephenwolfram.com/livestreams/

reddog 6y ago

"It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself." -- Thoreau

dugditches 6y ago

Interesting about the glasses he uses to avoid getting car sick. Looks like they're round tube frames, filled with a liquid dyed blue. Which apparently tricks your brain into thinking it's the horizon(which moves with your vehicle). https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/1200x/assets/images/148075-gadgets-news-seetroen-anti-travel-sickness-glasses-image1-yi2at7gh34.jpg https://cdn.pocket-lint.com/r/s/1200x/assets/images/148075-g...

simonw 6y ago

I love this essay so much. It was the inspiration for my Dogsheep project - https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehouses/ https://simonwillison.net/2020/Nov/14/personal-data-warehous... - which I called "Dogsheep" because I'm imitating Wolfram but it's not nearly as impressive.

rednafi 6y ago
Recently, I came across the podcast on Talk Python where you talked about Dogsheep and Datasette. Dogsheep looks amazing and I can definitely get behind your philosophy of SQLite for everything.

weagle05 6y ago

This is an amazing article. Thank you for sharing. I'm also a little upset I didn't know Wolfram had all of these amazing apps. I now know what I'm doing this weekend.

tartoran 6y ago

The problem I have with super productivity is that it appears to push people only in one direction. I think giving oneself a break and having unstructured time is something that is overlooked with these regimes. Merely talking daily walks without any devices or technology helps our brains enormously. And a bit of chaos (under control of course) can be very beneficial

hkon 6y ago

To say this was an interesting read is a massive understatement. Thanks for sharing.

jodrellblank 6y ago

> "If I actually want to write anything serious, though, out will come my little computer, with its full keyboard. Of course, if I’m standing up it’s pretty impractical to try to balance the computer on one hand and type with the other." Something I've not seen, but wondered about, is a chording keyboard on the back of a tablet device. Especially since he mentions chording keyboards earlier in the article, a tablet screen could have keys for one or both hands while holding it. > "(I periodically try using drawing tablets but I don’t like the way they treat my whole screen as a canvas, rather than operating in a window that I can move around.)" Bit surprised that a multimillionaire computer programmer can't get this solved when it seems like "only" a software problem?

csomar 6y ago

For such an elaborate setup, I'm quite surprised he missed a few things from the gamers world. And yes, these gamers do have some serious sh*t. Gamers mice and mousepads are order of magnitudes more precise and comfortable. I had the Logitech G900 and recently got the Razer Viper Ultimate. Anyone having strains from using the mouse should try these things.

maya24 6y ago

The only thing I really got out of this long article was the importance of having a customized organizational and workflow system that suits your lifestyle. For me there's two books / methodologies that has made a huge impact in how I think about and organize my work. The first is David Allen's getting things done system. It is extremely generic but comprehensive and suitable for pretty much any kind of knowledge worker. The second is using a personal kanban board for organizing all of my work and personal tasks. Highly recommend the book Personal Kanban. with a sufficient organizational assistant in place I don't feel the need to be productive all the time. I know that when I sit down my work is already planned ahead so I can immediately start being productive. I also review and plan my work ahead a little bit which saves a lot of time and makes contact switching less costly.

jacknews 6y ago

I feel exhausted just reading, no, just skimming through, the article.

noisy_boy 6y ago

I liked the idea of the plastic envelopes to group things. They stack things vertically and keep them flat so I can better use the abundant vertical height of my backpack and with different colored plastics, can easily get to the correct set. Will try to find ones that have multiple compartments.

andrejserafim 6y ago

What I got out of the article: - define what productive means for you. The narrow definition of "doing work" won't work for the missus, kids. And your general well being for most of us. The author doesn't dive into that. I guess because the article is already too long. My take is - doing the things that matter. - Being meticulous and ruthless about removing garbage getting in the way. And for that all the data and tracking help.

joemazerino 6y ago

That is an insane amount of scrutiny on one's productivity. No wonder he has been so successful.

KoenDG 6y ago

I have never before seen something like that tool by which his monitors can go higher. The brand isn't mentioned in the article, the name of the tool isn't mentioned. Had to zoom in and try and guess the name from, there. Apparently "Versa Desk"