In 2026, I’m no longer interested in ‘working on myself’
We think of ourselves as full-time projects, but what if doing so much inner work does more harm than good?
On Making
TLDR: I gain a lot of fulfillment by making things. I don't consider things built by others at my request to be made by me, and are therefore much less fulfilling. And then I feel sad. This article starts strong and then heads off into the weeds.
I'm addicted to being useful
When I get together with my friends in the industry, I feel a little guilty about how much I love my job. This is a tough time to be a software engineer. The job was less stressful in the late 2010s than it is now, and I sympathize with anyone who is upset about the change. There are a lot of objective reasons to feel bad about work. But despite all that, I’m still having a blast. I enjoy pulling together projects, figuring out difficult bugs, and writing code in general. I like spending time with computers. But what I really love is being useful.
Harnessing Frustration: Using LLMs to Overcome Activation Energy
One of my biggest weaknesses as a software engineer is procrastination when facing a new project. When the scope is unclear, I have a tendency to wait until I feel I’ve “felt out” the problem to start doing anything. I know I’ll feel better and work much faster when I get “stuck in” but I still struggle with that first step, overcoming the “activation energy” required to engage with the details. LLMs have been a game-changer for me in this respect: I can just throw a couple of sentences at them with the shape of the problem. This leads to one of two outcomes: The LLM comes up with a good solution, usually in a slightly different way than what I was thinking. I realize “oh wow the solution is much simpler than I thought”. Straight away I start thinking about the consequences of implementing and improving what the LLM suggested. The LLM comes up with a solution that I intuitively recognize as “wrong”. My immediate reaction is frustration (“How could it get it so wrong”) which leads me to go back and forth with the model, explaining to it why its solution could not possibly work. But in the process of arguing with the model, my brain is churning away and generating variations or different approaches that could work. After a while, even if the AI is still on the wrong track, the debate will trigger a moment of inspiration where suddenly the solution will come to me. I’ll excitedly start up a new conversation and start working through it with the model. The key is the emotional reaction I have immediately to the LLM’s response, either excitement or frustration. By harnessing this immediate feedback loop, I get my brain out of its passive, procrastination mode. It’s almost like a jolt: either I’m thrilled because it’s simpler than I thought, or I’m spurred to action by the urge to correct a perceived ‘wrong’ answer. This forces me to engage with the problem in a meaningful way.
The Friction I Don't Want to Lose
I love learning. And while the friction of solving new problems is increasingly traded for speed, the experience gained by overcoming that friction is as important as ever.
My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file
The biggest transition for me when I started college was learning to get organized. There was a point when I couldn't just remember everything in my head. And having to constantly keep track of things was distracting me from whatever task I was doing at the moment.
Please stop multitasking. I’m begging you. Please.
The greatest trick we ever pulled on ourselves as knowledge workers was convincing ourselves we could juggle multiple projects with no consequences.
A quote from Andrew Quinn
One could say in the first quarter-century of my life, that while I was always fascinated by programming, I could never overcome the guilt of not really knowing whether the …
Frew’s Foolish Woodworking | Substack
My woodworking journey. Click to read Frew’s Foolish Woodworking, by Frew Schmidt, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
Don't Get Distracted
I’m going to tell you about how I took a job building software to kill people. But don’t get distracted by that; I didn’t know at the time.
Stuck? Diagrams help. - Abby Covert, Information Architect
Stuck? Diagrams help. When was the last time you felt stuck? Maybe it was because of a decision you were struggling to make, a complex topic you were
I got into tech six years ago because I figured I could have an outsized impact on making a less harmful, more empowering world for workers and marginalised people. Only this year, I started connecting IRL with people who think this way. Here I tried to write about the ways that's transformed me.
DWeb, Culture and Resistance
meri.gardenI made a new thing 🐀
RatProto for AtProto 🐀
lab.mackuba.eu
