I originally chose Vim as my text editor so that I could get rid of all superfluous UI elements in an IDE and focus on what mattered the most, the text itself. But recently, I have found myself opting for vscode to prevent the endless customization and plugin ecosystem that Vim demands.

I really like that when I cmd+click a URL (to open the link in a new tab), Orion nests the new tab under the original tab. I tend to spiral and open a bunch of tabs so this makes it convenient to track back up to the origin (like popping my stack of thoughts).

Meeting scheduling systems should have a “cognitive status” indicator. For instance, book a meeting with me in the morning if you want to collaborate on a task that requires deep work. Evenings, I am working on fumes, book meeting if you need quick, low effort, low risk decision making.

Not thinking about productivity makes me more productive.

Cardio gives me a better high than weight lifting.

The level of product thinking behind Birdie is top notch. Not only did they nail the design and UX, they also back such a seemingly simple technology (a CO2 monitor) to research on productivity, sleep and mental health. Amazing.

Github code search is awesome. I often find myself writing obscure and niche pieces of code that don’t fall under the bell curve of the internet. But with code search, I search for a specific or expected code pattern and voila.

So it’s indeed unique links associated with my Spotify account. That’s impressive strategic foresight right there.

I can’t figure out how Spotify kept track of songs I shared with people on other messaging apps. Is the URL unique and contain some kind of token? Fascinating.

Spotify has a chart now? Great. It should let me know if I have already shared a song before.

Using Claude to tailor my resume. Curious that Claude starts ending its response with “your resume is ready for submission” after 3-4 iterations. Wonder if this is baked into the global system prompt?

Throughout my PhD I despised books that attempted to describe and prepare you for what this experience would be like. Post PhD, unemployed and 2 papers still in the revise-review-resubmit limbo, and I can sympathize with the authors. You need to be in the trenches yourself.

Use the right tool for the job. I can be reasonably productive in the command line but there is a reason why GUIs dominate. It takes design, interactions and product thinking to make something worthwhile for the user.

Open source developers are philanthropists.

I saw drastic improvements in my table tennis technique in year 1. But it took another year to translate than into winning matches. I find that I need to shift my mind to a play state, focus on having fun rather than score. Sometimes the wins come naturally, most of the time I learn something new.

Found the perspective of considering AI wrt Economics refreshing. There are days when I cannot remember how I got anything done without AI. But on the other hand, I also distinctly remember swearing at the garbage Claude sometimes produces after hours of prompting.

Having the possibility to digitally capture thoughts and ideas actually backfired on me. It never gave me time to process what I was capturing. Intentionally keeping my TODO.txt only on my laptop lets ideas simmer in my subconscious. Often they turn out to be bogus, the good ones are hard to forget.

Learning a lot about gaming ATS today.

Modern LaTeX stack: tectonicand tex-fmt. No more 5GB texlive hanging about my on system.

Currently undergoing a digital detox. No more spiraling with note taking; back to the basics with a single markdown file to manage tasks & pen+paper for brainstorming. I was feeling anxious about all the note I was writing. Connections form in the brain, not on a screen.