When in Doubt, Be Useful
A field report from the front lines of deep work and digital craftsmanship.
“When in doubt, be useful.”
Action is the antidote to fear. Once you’re there, doing the thing you’re avoiding, you’ll realize that the dragon you were afraid of is way smaller than you could have ever imagined. We spend more time worrying than it actually takes to bring great projects to life.
I bought a small Linux server and a new keyboard. It’s command-line only. That means it has no user interface. There’s something about the command line that forces you to be organized and to deeply understand your system. Here are key insights from my experiences:
Computers are magic rocks that store and manipulate bits. Bits are teeny tiny pieces of information. An article is made up of static bits and a video is made up of dynamic bits that are shifted by algorithms in real-time.
Computers only work if you command them with the right bits. If your instructions only slightly differ from grammatical rules of the machine, the computer will NOT listen to you. Beware.
Computers are automation workhorses. Imagine this. You tell your computer to do research and edit a text file with new scintillating pieces of knowledge every day for 30 days.
Computers can store virtual worlds. I’m working on building them.
Get up and do it again. Get up and do it again. Get up and do it again. Until it’s done. Persistence is the key to success. We all start… but most don’t finish. Comforts kill great ideas. Focus on the mission. Discipline is not innate. It’s not a trait. Doing the thing hurts. It’s painful. Get up and do it anyways. The only way out is through.
The Keychron V1 Max. Best keyboard ever. I’ve been writing on Mac keyboards my entire life. This one takes the feeling of typing to a new level. The mechanical feel of it is extraordinary. Crazy aesthetics. Someone really sat down and dedicated their life to answering the question: “how do I make typing feel like sex?”. This keyboard is a testament to the power of a team of people focusing on one goal. Focus creates extraordinary results. Doing too many projects simultaneously will burn you out. Focus.
Will more information make you smarter? There is a limit to the amount of information we can effectively process and utilize in our working memory. In a world of endless stimulation, more is not always better. It is easy to overload your mind with too much data and handicap yourself creatively. Limit your information diet. In addition to that, get better at sitting in silence with yourself. Every moment of silence is an opportunity for a new insight to surface.
Use AI for research, not writing. If you outsource your writing to AI, it will steal your voice. But, if you leverage it to find the knowledge that goes into your pieces, it is extraordinarily useful.
I’ve been foraging for mushrooms. It’s a cool connection to the forest. The idea that most people can’t survive in the wild by themselves… is well… wild. That’s why I’ve been going out to the forest and learning to find berries and edible mushrooms. Good skill to have. Make sure you have someone who can rigorously identify what you find. There are many poisonous mushrooms out there. Plus, according to studies done in Japan, walking in the forest for hours boosts your immune system.
Pick an area of your life and get 1% better at it. At first I thought infinite discipline and growth would just magically appear on the day that I suddenly became that legendary version of myself. But, I’ve been struggling with real growth more than I’d like to admit. Well, turns out, getting 1% better in many dimensions of your life is easy. From diet, to sleep, to work output. Constantly identify where you are running up against resistance, measure the resistance, and GET 1% BETTER.
Quick hack: listen to motivational YouTube videos from the account Invictus. These videos compile advice on working hard from successful individuals. Yeah, they might be a bit cliché, but for whatever reason, they are working for me. I’m working harder, getting more done, and I’m the most focused I’ve ever been.
Here’s an AI prompt you can use to guide you on your programming journey:
"I want you to help me understand a programming concept by guiding me through four levels of understanding:
Concrete Analogy: First, give me a metaphor or analogy from everyday life that makes the concept intuitive.Mental Model: Then, describe the underlying structure or system—the 'why' behind it.Code Application: Next, show me a practical code snippet (in Python or my preferred language) that demonstrates how this concept works in action.Design Insight: Finally, teach me how to use this concept to make better decisions in designing software systems or solving real-world problems.Start with [insert concept here, e.g. recursion, pointers, dependency injection, or asynchronous programming].
Have juicy wagyu steaks in 10 years by investing your spare change with Acorns.
Finally, I promise to write a post every single week from now till the end of the year. I swear that I will do it. I’ve been slacking for too long. It’s not that I’m lazy. I’m just knee deep in the muddy waters of the shifting world of AI, designing and building. Next week, I’ll be writing about how LLMs are very similar to Operating Systems.