Have you ever gotten to the end of a long work day and realized you’re no closer to your goals? I have. The problem, counterintuitively, was lack of interruption. Sure, I was doing a lot of stuff. But I never paused to ask whether I was doing the right stuff. Or whether my approach was working. Or if I was spending the right amount of time on it. So I needed a reliable way to interrupt my “unproductive productivity,” and refocus on what’s important. The obvious first-thought solution was a timer. Unfortunately, if you use timers a lot, you learn to dismiss them reflexively. And it’s really easy to forget to set the next timer. A week later I’d think “Hey, that timer idea really worked, I should get back to that.” And then I didn’t. So I built a new kind of timer. It does 2 unique things: My timer asks me a question. It gradually blurs my screen if I don’t set a new timer. Every few minutes it asks me the same question: “What will you focus on?” I answer in a word or two, hit enter, and keep working. Having to name my intention keeps me fully aware of my trajectory. If I’m in danger of drifting, it’s obvious. If I’m flying on something simple and don’t need to reorient frequently, I can set the timer for a longer duration, maybe 30 minutes. But if I’m working on something more open-ended, I might tighten the leash all the way down to 3 minutes. Then I can’t get off track. Unlike a regular timer, I can’t fail to set the next one. If I don’t restart it promptly, the screen gradually becomes less readable until I do. If I wanted to avoid answering, I’d have to make a conscious decision to close the app just so I could see the screen clearly. I’d have to decide to be less productive. I never do. This small intervention has worked beautifully. Not only am I catching unproductive divergences earlier, I’m noticing fewer of them over time. It seems to be training me to do more and better thinking. It’s not a replacement for a more extensive journaling practice. I love to journal, but that only happens once per day. What about the rest of the day? There’s a lot of benefit in reflecting more often than once every 24 hours. If you’re running macOS, I recommend giving Intention a try. I use it every day, and I think it’s the superior way of working.

Have you ever gotten to the end of a long work day and realized you’re no closer to your goals? I have. The problem, counterintuitively, was lack of interruption. I never paused to ask whether I was doing the right thing. Or whether my approach was working. Or if I was spending the right amount of time on it. The obvious first-thought way to interrupt myself was a timer. But I discovered those are too easy to dismiss, and too easy to forget about. A week later I’d think, “That timer idea really worked, I should get back to that.” And then I didn’t. So I built a new kind of timer that asks me a question: “What will you focus on?” Every few minutes I answer in a word or two, restart the timer, and keep working. This keeps me fully aware of my trajectory. If I’ve drifted, it’s obvious. If I’m flying on something simple and don’t need the reminders, I can set the timer for a longer duration, maybe 30 minutes. But if I’m working on something open-ended, or my attention is wandering, I might tighten the leash all the way down to 3 minutes. Unlike a regular timer, I can’t ignore it. If I don’t answer the question, the screen gradually blurs until I do. Drifting requires making a conscious decision to close the app. I have to decide to be less productive. This tiny intervention has worked beautifully. At first, I caught myself drifting constantly. Over time, I naturally became more focused. It’s training me to stop wasting time. Setting a recurring timer every few minutes sounds like it could be too much. Instead, it’s a relief. There’s nothing worse than spending all day accomplishing nothing useful. All I have to do to prevent that is type a word or two and hit enter. Importantly, it’s not a blocker. It doesn’t try to stop me from using distracting apps or sites. I’d just disable that, anyway. Instead of trying to take control away from me, it gives me more control, because I’m more aware. Plus, this makes blockers unnecessary. I can tell you from experience: by the third time you set a 3-minute timer you’ve titled “Aimless scrolling,” you’ll feel ridiculous enough to stop. It’s also not a journal, or a log. Those are harder to keep up with, and they don’t help minute-to-minute. Journaling once per day is great, but then I’m still potentially spending a full 24 hours off course. This is every few minutes, and it only takes a couple of seconds. All I have to do is name what I want to focus on. If you’re running macOS, I recommend giving Intention a try. I use it every day, and I think it’s the superior way of working.

I’m the person my friends and family come to for computer-related help. (Maybe you, gentle reader, can relate.) This experience has taught me which computing tasks are frustrating for normal people. Normal people often struggle with converting video. They will need to watch, upload, or otherwise do stuff with a video, but the format will be weird. (Weird, broadly defined, is anything that won’t play in QuickTime or upload to Facebook.) I would love to recommend Handbrake to them, but the user interface is by and for power users. Opening it makes normal people feel unpleasant feelings. This problem is rampant in free software. The FOSS world is full of powerful tools that only have a “power user” UI. As a result, people give up. Or worse: they ask people like you and I to do it for them. I want to make the case to you that you can (and should) solve this kind of problem in a single evening. Take the example of Magicbrake, a simple front end I built. It hides the power and flexibility of Handbrake. It does only the one thing most people need Handbrake for: taking a weird video file and making it normal. (Normal, for our purposes, means a small MP4 that works just about anywhere.) There is exactly one button. This is a fast and uncomplicated thing to do. Unfortunately, the people who have the ability to solve problems like this are often disinclined to do it. “Why would you make Handbrake less powerful on purpose?” “What if someone wants a different format?” “What about [feature/edge case]?” The answer to all these questions is the same: a person who needs or wants that stuff can use Handbrake. If they don’t need everything Handbrake can do and find it bewildering, they can use this. Everyone wins. It’s a bit like obscuring the less-used functions on a TV remote with tape. The functions still exist if you need them, but you’re not required to contend with them just to turn the TV on. People benefit from stuff like this, and I challenge you to make more of it. Opportunities are everywhere. The world is full of media servers normal people can’t set up. Free audio editing software that requires hours of learning to be useful for simple tasks. Network monitoring tools that seem designed to ward off the uninitiated. Great stuff normal people don’t use. All because there’s only one UI, and it’s designed to do everything. 80% of the people only need 20% of the features. Hide the rest from them and you’ll make them more productive and happy. That’s really all it takes.

An objective, external world is a non-falsifiable assumption. The prevailing theory is that our subjective experiences correspond to an external reality. However, they may simply be subjective through and through. That which we claim to be evidence of external reality is actually subjective experience, which may or may not have an external and objective cause. Any test devised to prove objectivity is evaluated within subjectivity and therefore does not require objectivity to explain the result. Some object to this, claiming that the consistency of experience is best explained by an external world. However, consistent experience does not require any external mechanism, let alone the specific one we have assumed. Claiming that belief in an external world is simpler is like claiming that belief in God is simpler; in truth we are inventing something vast and complex without evidence and agreeing not to question it. This is not science, it is a substitute for epistemic humility. Much as dreams appear consistent while dreaming, that which we consider waking experience may not actually be as consistent as we believe. However, questioning this is unproductive reasoning because it undermines the value of reason itself. We must assume our experiences are rational and consistent, or else give up thinking altogether. Experience is the only reality which is detectable. Whatever experience is, it is real and directly perceptible, unlike objectivity. Claims that experience is an illusion presuppose an objective world to which experience does not correspond. Pragmatic truth is supportable, correspondence is not. If an objective world can’t be proven, neither can we prove that knowledge does or does not correspond with it. That which produces a consistent effect in experience is useful in influencing experience in the desired way, therefore science is useful. Materialism is religious faith. Just as we once invented a spirit world to help explain our experiences, we invented an objective world for which there is similar quality evidence. Both are assumed to explain experience, yet neither is directly known. The assertion that matter gives rise to experience is no more compelling than the assertion that experience gives rise to matter. The assumption of an external world has zero explanatory power, as consistent experience does not require it. Materialism is superior to classical religions in that it responds to pragmatic truth, but it still accepts unsupportable metaphysical claims and regards them as unquestionable. By contrast, noting that we have experiences does not require extrapolation or invention. Modern civilization is optimizing materials, not experiences. Focus on economic metrics has allowed us to make tremendous progress in reducing starvation and otherwise improve the experience of the least fortunate. Nonetheless, the subtle error of conflating material improvement with improvement in well-being has consequences. In advanced societies, increases in abstract indicators of material wealth like GDP have been accompanied by negative changes in consciousness: stress, social disconnection, and increased suicide. The materialist assumption that improving external conditions will always trickle down to better experiences is demonstrably unreliable. Often, this assumption results in methods which improve economic indicators by reducing experiential well-being, and in these cases it is worse than nothing. In addition to misallocating its priorities, modern civilization also conditions people to feel powerless over their own well-being. As materialist structures (corporations, governments, economic systems) become more dominant, individuals are increasingly absorbed into mechanisms designed to optimize external conditions rather than subjective experience. People come to believe that their quality of life is dictated by forces beyond their control. The best way to improve experience is to optimize it directly. The only rational goal is maximizing satisfaction. Long-term positive changes in consciousness are what is best in life. If a person achieves material or hedonistic aims but is unsatisfied in the long term, they are having a negative experience and are working against themselves. Secure, nourish, nurture, and build yourself and your community. Seek what is satisfying and aesthetic—that which feels good and true and beautiful. Unlike materialist assumptions, this requires no external faith, only a direct commitment to improving the reality we actually experience.

Code forces humans to be precise. That’s good—computers need precision. But it also forces humans to think like machines. For decades we tried to fix this by making programming more human-friendly. Higher-level languages. Visual interfaces. Each step helped, but we were still translating human thoughts into computer instructions. AI was supposed to change everything. Finally, plain English could be a programming language—one everyone already knows. No syntax. No rules. Just say what you want. The first wave of AI coding tools squandered this opportunity. They make flashy demos but produce garbage software. People call them “great for prototyping,” which means “don’t use this for anything real.” Many blame the AI models, saying we just need them to get smarter. This is wrong. Yes, better AI will make better guesses about what you mean. But when you’re building serious software, you don’t want guesses—even smart ones. You want to know exactly what you’re building. Current AI tools pretend writing software is like having a conversation. It’s not. It’s like writing laws. You’re using English, but you’re defining terms, establishing rules, and managing complex interactions between everything you’ve said. Try writing a tax code in chat messages. You can’t. Even simple tax codes are too complex to keep in your head. That’s why we use documents—they let us organize complexity, reference specific points, and track changes systematically. Chat reduces you to memory and hope. This is the core problem. You can’t build real software without being precise about what you want. Every successful programming tool in history reflects this truth. AI briefly fooled us into thinking we could just chat our way to working software. We can’t. You don’t program by chatting. You program by writing documents. When your intent is in a document instead of scattered across a chat log, English becomes a real programming language: You can see your whole system at once You can clarify and improve your intent You can track changes properly Teams can work on the system together Requirements become their own quality checks Changes start from clear specifications The first company to get this will own the next phase of AI development tools. They’ll build tools for real software instead of toys. They’ll make everything available today look like primitive experiments.