Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderMy intuition is that all of the benefit you get being outside and walking is probably lost by strapping a laptop to yourself and being on calls the whole time. Call me old fashioned but I'm outside to look at the sea, hear the birds and be very definitely away from my tech.
Let me start by saying... this is as must read article. I share it often. It is 1. extremely fascinating 2. patently ridiculous 3. something to learn from He documents almost every part of his daily work environment in painstaking detail. Much of it is ridiculous. All of it, including the article itself, is over the top. I am very appreciative that he chose to share. Stephen has optimized (for him! not for me) his life to an unbelievable degree…
As mentioned, Wolfram livestreams some of his working sessions on Twitch, he calls it "Live CEOing". I put it on sometimes in the background while remote working; it does a great job emulating the in-office effect of having an interesting conversation nearby to tune out, which I find helps me focus. https://twitch.tv/videos/2151617315
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 494
- Total comments
- 184
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020-11-03 | Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure (2019) | sxp | 1 | 0 |
| 2021-02-06 | Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure (2019)First breakout | not_knuth | 165 | 63 |
| 2022-08-12 | Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure (2019) | nsoonhui | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-11-02 | Seeking the productive life: Some details of my personal infrastructure (2019)Best thread | goranmoomin | 199 | 106 |
| 2024-04-23 | Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure | jxmorris12 | 1 | 0 |
| 2024-05-22 | Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure | Bluestein | 99 | 13 |
| 2025-10-08 | Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure | dmazin | 2 | 0 |
| 2025-11-12 | Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure (2019)Latest 20+ point return | OuterVale | 26 | 2 |