Posts about productivity
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270 Agents While I Slept
I ran an autonomous agent loop overnight — 43 waves, ~270 dispatches, ~250 vault files produced. Here's what I learned about building systems that work while you sleep.
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The One-Cycle-Late Test
A simple heuristic for deciding how often to review anything: pick the longest interval where being late by one full cycle is still fine.
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The TODO Intake Gate
Most TODO systems fail from too many items, not too few. A four-test intake filter for what deserves your attention.
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Match the Tool to the Shape
Not every goal is a flywheel. The most common mistake in personal systems is treating a checklist as something that compounds.
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Stealing from Peers: A Truth-Seeking Discipline
Most people scan competitors for positioning. I scan them for transferable patterns — and route each steal to every domain it applies to.
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The Due Test
The difference between protecting a commitment and hoarding optionality
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How to Think With AI (Not Just Use It)
Most people use AI like a tool. Here's what thinking with AI actually looks like — and the skills that make the difference.
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Your AI Is a Thinking Partner, Not a Q&A Bot
Stop asking your AI single questions. Start thinking out loud with it. Let half-formed ideas land. The AI holds the structure so you can stay in flow.
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Over-Capture, Then Cull
Don't filter during capture. Capture is cheap. Ideas are expensive. The cull is where quality happens.
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Act-on-Receipt: The Third Task Class
Most task systems are binary, but a third class exists — tasks triggered by external notifications — and managing them like a backlog item is the wrong move entirely.
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The System for Checking Is Not the Checking
On the difference between eliminating friction and eliminating anxiety — and how to know when you've crossed the line.
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The Accidental Life OS
I spent an afternoon researching AI tools for personal life management. The conclusion was that I should stop looking.
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The Case Against Knowledge Management Systems
Most PKM tools are procrastination with better aesthetics. The problem isn't the software — it's that filing a note feels like understanding it.
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What It Actually Feels Like to Use AI for 80% of Your Work
Not productivity. Something stranger — the cognitive texture of days when the bottleneck shifts from execution to articulation.
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The Infra Trap
Building tools to support your work can quietly become a substitute for the work itself.
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I Didn't Mean to Kill My Todo App
A coding assistant quietly made three productivity apps redundant. Not by replacing them — by making context collapse the boundaries between them.
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AI Fixed My Perfectionism (Sort Of)
On why the blank page stopped being the hard part.
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I Made the AI Remind Me of My Own Blind Spots
I kept missing things at the end of AI sessions. So I stopped relying on willpower and systematised the nudge instead.
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Why AI Assistants Make Us Dumber (And What Governance Should Do About It)
The cognitive offloading problem is real. The governance response mostly isn't. There's a specific mechanism at work, and it has a specific fix.
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Building My Own Consulting Toolkit Before Day One
Most consultants arrive at a new firm and learn their tools from colleagues. I tried something different.
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When to Build vs. When to Wait: The Recurrence Rule for AI Tooling
Most AI tooling debates are actually recurrence debates. The question isn't whether to build — it's how many times you'll need it.
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Claude Code Mobile is Better Than Desktop
Walking meetings, voice input, and location changes unlock cognitive advantages desktop workflows can't access.
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Claude Code is Not a Coding Agent
Why I use Claude Code for everything except coding: cognitive compiler for strategy, decisions, and understanding.