What if “bicycle for the mind” never meant that it’s a way to speed up, but a way to exercise? Since in 2026 nobody uses bikes to exercise anymore, the more understandable metaphor would be “a Peloton for the mind,” an ergometer to get your mind-muscles into motion at all before they atrophy. Then the goal is not to be quick, to get stuff done – at least not for you, personally, – but to learn and do something interesting. The old-skool Hacker ethos. The vibe you still have in niche communities of embedded system tinkerers, of fantasy console game makers, of 6502 assembly fans, etc. etc. There’s infinite ways to have fun and learn with a computer. And there’s ways to make a living using a computer in various ways. If these two goals don’t align, you need a tool to make the chores go over as quickly as possible, so you have more time for the interesting things.
I’ve been browsing the Swift Forums for something the other day that was related to sendability of NSItemProvider. I found this reply by Holly Borla – the question doesn’t matter much, I promise: Holly Borla (2024-10-14):
This weekend, I browsed around on Medium and found a post about “3 ways to pass data from model to controller”. Comments indicate that people like it because it talks about the important basics: how do you pass info around? It’s probably the most essential object-oriented programming question ever. How can you couple components?
The following isn’t a universal truth. It’s a report about my observations of a recurring theme in everything that’s great. First you imitate. Then you improvise. And then you may innovate. Imitation means repeating existing things to reach a deeper understanding of how it was done in the past. Improvisation means connecting the static patterns in creative ways to solve problems. Innovation means deviating from the known patterns in new and effective ways.
David Sparks and Jason Snell started a new podcast about going indie in general called Free Agents. The first episode, The Temptation of Yes, is so packed with good stuff that I recommend you listen to these guys for 35 minutes.
It’s important to manage working time. Managing to-do lists is just one part of the equation to getting things done when it comes to immersive creative work where we need to make progress for a long time to complete the project. To ensure we make steady progress, we need to stay on track and handle interruptions and breaks well. A short Knowledge Cycle will help to get a full slice of work done multiple times a day, from research to writing. This will help staying afloat and not drown in tasks.
As a knowledge worker, you have to learn a lot in your field. The internet is full of information, and there’s the books you just have to know in and out. How do you speed up the process and learn efficiently? Scott Young learned linear algebra in 10 days due to a very efficient method. It works for other fields of knowledge as well. The “Drilldown Method” consists of three stages: