TTF Tech / Productivity Stack

How I Work When I Work Well

Ever since reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done about eighteen years ago, early in my entrepreneurial career, I have experimented with various methods for optimizing productivity. As a late Gen Xer, I’ve been online for almost 30 years, ever since taking a computer literacy course at my local university for high school credit in 1995 entitled me to dial-up access for the Unix terminal. I have lived in both the best and worst of times, with incredible tools available for maximizing the productivity of the human mind, simultaneous with the rise of the most distracting algorithms in history that liquefy our brains for profit, exploiting our most basic animal appetites for sex, novelty, food, status, and social approval, auctioned in real-time for a few pennies per thousand impressions.

As other commenters have noted, it’s the most divergent environment ever for high-agency vs. low-agency people. Technology used well amplifies one’s impact more than at any time in human history, but the default path is slowly turning most into the pod people from WALL-E.

The Tech Stack

If you want to get things done, you need the most productive tool: the desktop computer form factor. The desktop computer most equalizes our relationship with the online world, in that the tools for consuming information are most balanced by the most efficient input tools of the full-size monitor, keyboard, and mouse. My tech tools in reverse order of weekly hourly usage are: desktop computer, phone, laptop, and iPad.

I advocate a barbell strategy: a desktop computer for most work, and a phone for mobile convenience. Work, as much as possible, is reserved for desktop time during business hours. Anytime I spend working on a mobile device is a loss of productivity, so batching and delaying work when possible during normal business hours is the best use of my time. The laptop is useful when I must work away from my desk; I can be 80% as productive instead of 30% as productive on a phone or even worse, a tablet.

My work setup is a Mac Mini M2, Apple’s Studio Display¹, Apple’s Mighty Mouse, a wired USB headset (no fiddling with charging and Bluetooth), and a basic Lenovo keyboard. Except for the Lenovo keyboard — I find Apple’s chiclet design slows my typing — I am happily integrated into Apple’s entire ecosystem. The killer app of Mac desktops is a fully integrated phone and texting experience. This means an entire workday can be spent on the desktop, taking calls and responding to texts as necessary, without having to be a chump on a phone slowing down my work. Using a full-size keyboard to text people on phones is like having a superpower. Similarly, when I must work away from my desk, I use an M-series MacBook Air to provide the same integrated experience.

The most essential part of this setup is the 5K Studio Display. Unlike mass-produced widescreen displays optimized for gaming or movies, the 5K aspect ratio provides just enough additional vertical space to more comfortably allow the use of two websites or 8.5x11 documents, or any other combination of programs, to be viewed simultaneously. I’ve tried adding an extra monitor to this setup, and I have friends who like to have 3-4 monitors, but I find it distracting to have more display space; the 5K monitor fills most of my useful peripheral vision anyway, which means moving my neck to use any extra screens. Moving stuff between screens is a pain, and I only ever need to display two, at most three, things at once to be productive. Since human attention is best spent monotasking, I don’t think it’s useful to have extra screens for monitoring an email inbox, or a stock market display, all distractions when trying to get through the to-do list.

Further tools in my setup:

• Felix Gray blue-light reading glasses with +0.25 magnification - this gives a small boost for seeing smaller objects on the screen, and significantly reduces eyestrain and general fatigue from staring at a screen much of the day. In addition, my desktop is set to “Night Shift” settings 24 hours a day to minimize blue light.

• The Magnet Mac app replicates the window-snapping features of Windows on a Mac. This enables quick split-screen views between two different programs or tabs.

• Combined with desktop texting, the Mac shortcut Command-Shift-4 allows for quick screenshots by simply drawing a box. The feature has been dumbed down with a preview feature for consumers in more recent OS releases, but the original functionality can be restored with a menu option. Taking a screenshot and emailing, texting, or IM’ing it to someone is a huge productivity boost to show rather than tell.

• Fujitsu Scansnap scanner - super-quick direct scanning to the desktop for paper documents that remain a part of business life.

• A heavy standing desk converter topper called the Desktop Elevator, which is unfortunately no longer made (though this might be an acceptable substitute). I leave it at a permanently elevated height and almost never sit at work, and essentially stand or lean on my Muvman stool on top of an ergonomic mat.

• The tablet and smartwatch form factors are largely missing from my tech stack. iPads are generally only useful for watching videos — but less useful than my laptop due to the iPad’s smaller screen — or reading long documents and are worse than phones in turning their users into passive consumers due to awkward typing on its on-screen keyboard; since I avoid long-form leisure reading on screens as much as possible to minimize total screen exposure, which is already high due to my work, using an iPad as a reader has limited use to me. I wore an Apple Watch for about 18 months, thinking it would help me avoid other screens for convenient, quick responses to incoming alerts. On balance, however, I found that it was less useful for this than expected, and more often that not just spiked my stress levels with notifications that were inconvenient to respond to in the moment an alert was received. I ditched it for a regular watch, which I highly recommend since it helps avoid checking a phone or other screen for the time and date.

I think the faux convenience of smaller devices has caused an underappreciation of the efficiency of desktop computing. Even wasting time is faster on a desktop, and feels more active. The true tabbed browser, not the goofy facsimile on a tablet or phone, remains the most powerful information consumption tool ever invented. Twenty news links can be launched into the background quickly, and disposed of just as quickly with keyboard shortcuts (Command-W on a Mac) to close and move on to the next tab.

Technology with the highest possible information bandwidth is critical if one is attempting to be super productive and add a lot of value to the world while still working reasonable hours.

Productivity Practices

The first rule of productivity is to create space for it. This means, as much as possible, eliminating time-wasting, pointless meetings from the calendar. Those meetings that are necessary must be list-and-task-driven, where items are discussed based on next actions after discussion. The productive life is essentially the maintenance and disposition of lists of to-do items in the most efficient manner possible.

David Allen in Getting Things Done gave the definitive system for dealing with the complex insanity of modern knowledge work. Our memories are not only highly imperfect but knowing we must remember stuff brings stress and foreboding. Allen teaches that we must empty our brains of our to-do lists into robust, easy-to-use systems that we trust will remind us at the appropriate time. Allen recommended the paper-based “tickler file” of folders representing each day of the month, and each month of the year, where tasks could quickly be jotted down on note cards and deposited for future reference. This discipline, once developed, enables the endless to-do list to be tamed and for one to relax knowing one has a trusted, universal system that one can rely upon to remember things.

While some of my companies use proprietary software to achieve this effect, and other more moderate, intermittent responsibilities such as nonprofit work are handled via shared Apple Notes, my attention, being fractured among various interests, is primarily organized via email. This, however, requires achieving Inbox Zero, where every message not related to a specific task I’m planning to work on today is archived, out of sight, for searchable reference, but no longer allowed to take up mental space when their context is not relevant at the moment. I have religiously followed the Inbox Zero methodology for over 15 years.

I also find email to be the best repository for implementing Allen’s systems with digital tools. Gmail’s snooze tool, along with its ability to separate personal messages from promotions and mailing list updates, enables this most easily. By archiving, deleting, or snoozing each email that comes in, I have the ultimate digital tickler file. Most of my task organization comes from sending myself emails, and on the go, asking Siri to “send me an email” is very helpful when things I need to remember to do bubble up, and later, when I’m back at my desk, I can snooze those appropriately to the time in the future I want to address them. My closest associates know the way to get on my list is to send me an email. At the end of each day, the only emails in my box are things I am working on; everything else is archived or snoozed for later action.

The beauty of email as an organizational system is that it’s universal (other people don’t need accounts for some SAAS to send me stuff) and I’m already checking it anyway. Adding additional systems to check, like some to-do list manager, is very expensive overhead, especially when so many tasks come in via email anyway, and actions related to those tasks require email. To constantly be transferring information between the two systems would be burdensome and wasteful.

Software complexity beyond the simple list and snooze functionality is IMO mostly useless. I’ve seen so many people get twisted up in sexy technology where running and designing the system becomes a hobby instead of simply getting things done. Many business processes can and should be standardized through specialized systems — our rule of thumb is anything repeated more than 30 times per year. But when I have disparate outside interests and delegate anything repetitive to specialist systems run by others, a general system in email, which again I’m going to be forced to check anyway, has been my most durable solution.

Productivity & Tech Hygiene

A huge change in recent years has been improving my proportion of “good days” where I feel well-rested, motivated to get things done, and in a generally positive mood. This foundation of productivity for me is good sleep, sufficient exercise, and managing stress.

For sleep, I burn the kilowatt-hours to sleep in a cold room. As a person of almost entirely English descent living in the Sunbelt, I am far away from the ancestral climate to which I am optimally adapted, where average daytime highs are 56 and average nighttime lows are 43 degrees; admittedly, I’m not chilling the room that cold, but I can simulate it with a water-circulating chilling pad. I’ve previously recommended the Eight Sleep Pod Cover and continue to be a happy customer.

However, temperature is only part of the equation. Increasingly, technology hygiene practices are necessary to allow stress, stimulation, and attendant cortisol levels to normalize for optimal sleep. Ideally, all of my tech is put away by 9:30 PM or so and I’m reading print books, journals, or magazines only in bed. When I break this rule, I pay for it with a longer time to fall asleep, worse quality sleep, and a less productive following day.

Also supporting sleep is an exercise routine: weight lifting twice per week, interval training twice per week², and low-intensity cardio twice per week. Anything less than this I find makes me grumpy and anything more risks overtraining. For those nights when stress finds me anyway and prevents quick sleep, I find the supplement PS100 useful for lowering cortisol. Every now and then, when it’s really necessary, I’ll add 800 mg or so of Phenibut to stay asleep. The latter, a grey-market Soviet-era GABA analog that crosses the blood-brain barrier, has been harder to find³ since the war in Ukraine broke out, as most manufacturers are Russian. Reducing my alcohol use to 1-3 drinks a week has also been useful; as much as I enjoy a good bourbon, it always inhibits good sleep that night if consumed in the evening.

I’ve also been thinking about how technology affects my family time. Again, I can be hypocritical on this — we’re all addicts these days — but I do try to get my phone off my person as soon as I get home. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with a practice I call “offline Dad” where I limit my use of my phone to a fixed location in the house, in the kitchen, where I normally place my keys and wallet upon arrival. That is, I can check my phone, but only from this location, and once I’m done it goes right back to the counter, not in my pocket where notifications can interrupt my evening activities.

Technology & Family

I promised recently to offer more “half-baked parenting advice” and given the unprecedented harmful effects of technology on children, we late Gen Xers and Millenials are the parents who have to figure this out without any previous generation’s experience to guide us.

A summary of my practices, thoughts, and things I might do differently:

• We allow an iPad at age 12 (i.e. a super inconvenient WiFi-only “phone” with higher friction to use), an iPhone at age 15 (Christmas of the freshman year of high school), and no social media or Safari browser until 16⁴. Absolutely no Snapchat or TikTok. For boys, I highly recommend a Gabb phone, which has only text-based functionality⁵.

• Content filtering at the home router using OpenDNS Family Shield. Content filtering at the device level using Canopy (thanks to Aaron Renn for highlighting the company a few years ago), and device usage limits, and a third layer of content filtering with Screen Time. Typically, we don’t allow phones to function beyond basic calling before 3:30 PM on school days and 11:30 AM on weekends, and limit to an overall total of 2 hours’ screen time a day. I could choke Apple for allowing “one more minute,” however, on kids’ phones to override these downtime limits, which is just enough time to get their FOMO cortisol spun up from checking messages.

• Perhaps my greatest caution is opening the door to streaming services, both music and video. While the latter is only allowed on the family television, I believe the all-you-can-eat nature of these services is extremely problematic, leading to debates about content appropriateness. I’d rather pay more for individual pieces of content than allow the dopamine drip of unlimited streaming, and even beyond that of inviting Netflix or Disney’s latest bioleninist propaganda into the home. Lately, I’ve canceled most of these services and we buy content a la carte. If I had younger kids, I’d build a media library with used DVDs and Blu-rays and keep streaming services out of the home as long as possible. With music, I wish the pay-as-you-go iTunes or CD-based options were still viable, but it’s almost impossible to use with the phones, and simple iPods are no longer made⁶. My best recommendation here is to have a house network of Sonos speakers and have parents control the music playing, preferably cultivating a taste for classical music, which calms rather than animalizing young minds and seems to have a particularly effective deterrent effect on anti-social behaviors.

• Some degree of cultural “leakage” is inevitable. This leakage accelerates as the oldest child grows up and their experiences affect their siblings. Take advantage of the younger years when you can exercise more control and keep the degenerate culture out of your home and children’s environment for as long as possible. Connect your kids with both classical and folk styles from before everything fell apart culturally in the 1960s. Watch old TV shows like Andy Griffith, Lassie, and Little House on the Prairie so they can experience the aesthetics of Old America before their minds are numbed to the greater stimuli of modern television and film.

Cause for Optimism

The bifurcation of the world into high and low agency continues. Among Gen Z, it does appear they are becoming smarter about tech than the first smartphone generation. Putting one’s entire life on Facebook is now more of a Boomer and middle-aged Gen X phenomenon and is considered cringe-worthy by the younger generation; profiles are now more like carefully curated brochures, not a diary or journal.

I’ve been told that it’s a “red flag” for many Gen Z women if a Gen Z man has an overly active Instagram, i.e. it’s considered effeminate for a guy to be too into social media, which is now heavily coded female; they want their guys out in the world doing things, not simping on social. By contrast, a “green flag” is a guy whose last post was three years ago when he created the account.

When I research new Gen Z employment applicants for problematic social media posts⁷, I more often than not find almost nothing. This generation gets it and has developed better strategies for privacy than monetizing all aspects of one’s life for Mark Zuckerberg.

Productivity Management Is Life Management

We are all only given so many days to live, and the sum of our lives consists of our meaningful experiences. Careful thinking about productivity, and managing the algorithmic vampires that distract us, helps steward the only truly irreplaceable commodity: time, and by extension, the vapor that is our earthly lives.

1. For years I used a 27” 5K iMac. Interestingly, Apple’s M-series processors are such a compelling performance upgrade — this computer is the first that doesn’t frustrate me with loading times — I made this change, as Apple smartly continues to delay releasing an M-series iMac with a 5K form factor which would deplete 80% of the demand for their more expensive setups. If you want this early, you have to pay the tax.

2. Rhonda Patrick has recently convinced me to get religion again on HIIT training. For a few months, I was convinced by Peter Attia to focus on lazy “Zone 2” training, but Patrick brings overwhelming data refuting Attia on this; this also makes intuitive sense, as higher-intensity efforts *feel* better (after the workout) than moderate ones. This may be a false debate, however, in that HIIT should only be done a couple of times a week anyway, so the perfect balance may be two each of resistance training, Zone 2, and HIIT, and one day off per week. The most useful HIIT device seems to be the exercise bike; no other form factor allows the use of as many big muscles, which enables maximum cardiovascular training with minimal muscle cramping.

3. Our FDA is particularly keen on enforcement against effective, mostly harmless drugs like nicotine and phenibut while allowing stupefying cannabis use to flourish despite federal laws against it.

4. It annoys me to no end that the “Bible app” most churches endorse and recommend includes dumb social elements, like friends, followers, and shared notes for responsible parents trying to keep kids off the performative social media pole until their brains are more fully developed.

5. I’d love to be more restrictive than this, but other parents’ mental weakness and defection in accommodating their teens make it impractical to run too far from the herd. Interestingly, members of Gen Z have shared with me that they wish smartphones didn’t exist; many would happily give them up for dumb text-and-talk phones if all of their peers were forced to do the same. Parents of the world, unite! Ron DeSantis, as usual, is doing the Lord’s work in Florida casting sand into the gears of this machine.

6. This is a decent moral argument to “liberate” DRM off a subscription (various software tools exist to do this) and use a third-party offline player for kids if streaming services continue to refuse to offer granular control over what music kids can access.

7. As a capitalist, I studiously avoid hiring Marxists, whether of the classical or cultural variety.