- 14 Dec, 2025 *
I fired up an old laptop today and did a clean install of Linux Mint. I used Mint back in college days when I didn’t want to spend the money for Windows, and certainly couldn’t afford a MacBook, so I know it a little. But I’ve been deep in the Apple ecosystem for quite some time.
The idea spark came after reading this post and then a few others on the same blog. Also tumbling around in the back of my head was this speech about reverse-centaurs by Cory Doctorow.
I’ve been thinking, journaling, and experimenting a lot lately trying to navigate a course in this wild world of the "AI Revolution". I …
- 14 Dec, 2025 *
I fired up an old laptop today and did a clean install of Linux Mint. I used Mint back in college days when I didn’t want to spend the money for Windows, and certainly couldn’t afford a MacBook, so I know it a little. But I’ve been deep in the Apple ecosystem for quite some time.
The idea spark came after reading this post and then a few others on the same blog. Also tumbling around in the back of my head was this speech about reverse-centaurs by Cory Doctorow.
I’ve been thinking, journaling, and experimenting a lot lately trying to navigate a course in this wild world of the "AI Revolution". I don’t claim to have figured it out by any means.
One thing that seems clearer at the moment, though, is the degree to which I’ve let what is possible with tech drive what I do with tech. This is quite different from figuring out what I would like to do, then applying tech to help only to the extent that it makes sense to achieve those carefully-considered ends.
Another thing that seems clearer now than before is how much of a hamster wheel many of these tech tools seem to create. I’m perpetually in this loop of feeling busy, using tools to get more "productive", then filling any newfound bandwidth with more tasks, returning me to the busy feeling and starting the cycle again. Maybe each individual hour is more "productive" in ticking off tasks, but I never get to the imaginary utopia where tech-powered "productivity" has freed me to focus on the truly important stuff.
Obviously this is my own choice and at some point I need to simply choose to do the important stuff first, and let the rest slide. Oliver Burkeman and Greg McKeown have sold a lot of books talking about this and they’re not wrong.
But bathing all day in the pixel-perfect attention magnet of a modern big tech ecosystem makes those good choices a lot harder. It’s difficult to step off the task monkey hamster wheel that’s already rolling downhill.
The bottom line is, at a macro level, the tools are not helping. I’m still just as subjectively busy, if not more so. If anything I have less mental clarity, focus, and energy. I’m constantly in the weeds. So what are they all for?
I have heard Derek Sivers talk about starting from zero and building up as needs arise, rather than starting with all the "normal" stuff and trying to cut what’s unnecessary. In contrast, it’s been years since I’ve seriously thought about which of these myriad tech tools, platforms, and habits I’ve accumulated truly serve me and which are simply boilerplate routine and rote muscle memory.
So I have this kind of foggy idea of "starting from zero" with a clean install of Linux on an old laptop as a means to force a more intentional approach to tech and its place in my life. I’m not throwing my MacBook in the closet or anything, but I’m thinking maybe I’ll see what it’s like to use this Linux machine as my full time personal laptop for a bit, reserving my Mac for work... and pay attention to what comes about.
The idea is not even half-baked, let alone fully thought through. But it has caught my attention and, if nothing else, seems kind of fun. So I’ll see how it goes.