[HN Gopher] Seeking the productive life: Some details of my pers...
___________________________________________________________________
Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal
infrastructure (2019)
Author : pcr910303
Score : 133 points
Date : 2022-11-02 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (writings.stephenwolfram.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (writings.stephenwolfram.com)
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Previously (still a good re-read!):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26045380
|
| 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 wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal
| Infrastructure (2019)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26045380 - Feb 2021 (63
| comments)
| reidjs wrote:
| Part of my solution to this is to identify what parts of a
| project can be done from my phone and then intentionally avoid
| doing those on the computer.
|
| - 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 wrote:
| Writing an essay via voice-to-text on my phone sounds like one
| of the most painful things I could voluntarily subject myself
| to.
|
| Siri can't even get simple text messages write (pun intended)
| madars wrote:
| The great thing about text editors, and to a large extent
| also paper, is that they give you random access - you can
| easily see the whole document and make edits at arbitrary
| points. It's incredibly ergonomic (there is a reason why
| books overtook scrolls!) and I doubt voice-driven editing can
| come close. At the same time, audio is easy for creating
| conversational-style pieces (e.g. podcasts) but a good final
| product must always come with timestamped transcripts (how
| else would one grep and/or skip?)
| Calamitous wrote:
| I'd be curious to hear what you're using on iPhone for voice-
| to-text. I've tried a few things and the results have been
| pretty awful for me.
| reidjs wrote:
| Oh just tap the little mic button next to the space bar with
| any app. It works great (admittedly a white, American male
| here).
| dmje wrote:
| 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.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| 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.
|
| Highly recommended!
| oangemangut wrote:
| What about for other users of the forest? Hopefully you're
| able to stay well away from them so as not to disturb the
| peace and quiet of the forest for work.
| holler wrote:
| > Walking in the forrest have two benefits; it's less chance
| to get hit by a car, and it's more quiet of a background for
| when I unmute.
|
| More than that, it's very cathartic and peaceful. I used to
| live next to a big park on the Puget Sound and I would do a
| similar routine, in addition to occasionally taking a stroll
| through the park (effectively a forest) at lunch.
|
| It had a very calming effect, def miss that!
| gigel82 wrote:
| 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).
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| 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
| mxwsn wrote:
| I love mate, but just one extra toilet trip is a substantial
| underestimate for many..
| [deleted]
| m463 wrote:
| title should probably say [2019]
| gordon_freeman wrote:
| 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.
| elzbardico wrote:
| For people like him, working is the supreme form of relaxation.
|
| I can't relate, it is not my cup of tea, but I can understand
| it and refrain for judging.
| testfoobar wrote:
| Hi this is Stephen Wolfram. Let's talk about my favorite topic:
| Stephen Wolfram.
| gjvc wrote:
| 100%
|
| Also, don't mention the Rulians.
| zabzonk wrote:
| no idea why this was downvoted, except possibly by people who
| don't know about wolfram
| dang wrote:
| For starters, it was snarky, a shallow dismissal, a personal
| attack, unsubstantive, and an internet trope.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| It's honestly just a boring comment. Yes we all know Wolfram
| is self-indulgent and overly long-winded, nothing new there,
| no need to belabor the obvious.
|
| The question is whether there's anything of value to be
| gleaned from his novella-length blog posts. If you think not,
| then just downvote or flag article submission.
|
| But if you actually read the whole thing and found specific
| things of value, and want to summarize them here, then by all
| means I hope you're upvoted a million times.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _The question is whether there 's anything of value to be
| gleaned from his novella-length blog posts. If you think
| not, then just downvote or flag article submission._
|
| Flagging, I've always felt, is sort of heavy-handed for "I
| disagree with". I use it for spam and the like.
|
| There is no "downvote" feature, for article submissions.
| Which is why it is disappointing when low quality reads
| like this makes it to the front page.
| [deleted]
| dang wrote:
| Please let's not do Wolfram Derangement Syndrome in HN threads
| --if not for Wolfram, at least for ourselves. This was already
| a cliche a decade 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
| testfoobar wrote:
| Understood.
|
| BTW - as always - thank you for keeping HN threads focused
| and useful.
| caust1c wrote:
| > I have systems that keep all sorts of data, including every
| keystroke I type, every step I take and what my computer screen
| looks like every minute
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| 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.
| timdavila wrote:
| Curious why you do this and what you feel like it adds to
| your life?
| prashp wrote:
| Is Gwern [1] actually Stephen Wolfram's alter ego? Two sides of
| the same coin
|
| [1] https://www.gwern.net/
| yayitswei wrote:
| Has anyone found those funny glasses to be effective at
| preventing carsickness?
| jeliotj wrote:
| 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!
| xmprt wrote:
| 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.
| hooverd wrote:
| Productivity people remind me of that one KRAZAM video [1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U
| prottog wrote:
| > Being productive is not a good
|
| 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".
| jeliotj wrote:
| No, I meant what I said exactly. The product might be a good;
| that can be debated. But the action itself is not
| intrinsically good.
|
| What makes an action good? It always or necessarily produces
| good things. Very few actions are good in themselves.
|
| As to the Hobbes quote: too much for now! I'm at work. :)
| renewiltord wrote:
| 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!
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > 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!
|
| That's not "online commenters". It's like 95+% of people who
| work for a paycheck.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > But when I look around at the people I know, none of the
| people who are anti-productivity are people I admire.
|
| It's interesting to me that you think the opposite of "pro-
| productivity"--which I define as people who are constantly
| engaging in life hacks to increase their perceived
| "productivity", and thus treat productivity as some kind of
| end unto itself--is "anti-productivity".
|
| Could we agree that the healthy thing lies somewhere in the
| middle?
| cableshaft wrote:
| > The pro-productivity people are more involved parents and
| family members
|
| I haven't seen this amongst several people I know as pro-
| productivity. The productivity tends to be hyper-focused on
| work and side hustles/creative, and family/parental duties
| seemed to be neglected as a result. But I couldn't find any
| data on this with a quick search, so it's just conflicting
| anecdata to your anecdata.
|
| Your other bullet points do align more with my experience,
| but not this one.
| ativzzz wrote:
| > Work is not a thing I do for money alone. I feel happy and
| fulfilled when I do it. It is fun!
|
| I really wish I could get into this mindset instead of
| dreading work. I find no fulfillment from work, in fact the
| most fulfilled i've felt was when I had no obligations to
| anyone or anything (taking a break from work)
| n4r9 wrote:
| Having read that blog post as well as others like [1], I'm
| not convinced Wolfram has the time to fulfill those bullet
| points in a fully engaged manner. He appears to be constantly
| working (or at least be available for calls and meetings)
| from waking up at 11am to going to bed at 3am, with a 2-hour
| dinner break.
|
| I dunno, he's clearly not your average Joe. I also enjoy my
| work but it's more stressful than going for a walk or playing
| the guitar. At work there are expectations and deadlines, and
| I have to plan and manage my time, and update the right
| people when there are delays or scope changes etc etc. Going
| for a walk you can just be whatever you are in the moment,
| you don't have to do or be anything that's asked of you for a
| few hours.
|
| [1] https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2012/03/the-personal-
| ana...
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| > It appears, empirically from my sample set, that being pro-
| productivity correlates with spending one's life
| meaningfully.
|
| I think many people have wildly different ideas about what
| makes a life meaningful and even more about what is a
| productive use of time.
| latenightcoding wrote:
| 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.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| 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?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| He's the one who posted it online. Fine if others post that
| they think it's bad, and why. Laudable, even, if you suppose
| he posted it to communicate some message and others find that
| message to be harmful or misleading or otherwise bad. They
| _ought to_ post what they think is wrong with it.
| _boffin_ wrote:
| Much more eloquent than what I said
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Do you think the world is worse for Stephen Wolfram having been
| productive?
| idoh wrote:
| I took it more along the lines of "this advice is not
| generally applicable" as opposed to dunking on Wolfram.
| agnos wrote:
| 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.
| 0000011111 wrote:
| 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.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Rucking (walking with weight on your back) is actually really
| really good for both cardio and strength.
|
| Once you get older and the knees start wearing out it's a great
| alternative
| simonw wrote:
| 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... )
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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
| taeric wrote:
| 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.
| hirundo wrote:
| 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.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| 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.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| But his clockwork orange pays so much better!
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >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.
| kkfx wrote:
| 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.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Another Wolfram article written about how much Wolfram Wolfram
| used to Wolfram new Wolfams. Now with more Wolfram
| Mister_Snuggles wrote:
| 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.
| aliljet wrote:
| 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...
| ninotheopsguy wrote:
| An important point not to forget is that he runs an 800 employee
| profitable company with no outside investments (not to mention
| his academic work)
| zorrolovsky wrote:
| 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.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Are you using a single mic placed on your desk? A wireless lav
| mic?
|
| I imagine you can hear your partners quite well, but _I_ want
| to be heard well also.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-11-02 23:00 UTC)