I learned about Johnny.Decimal from Pika blogger Michael Borland. The last post on his blog clued me in. Sadly he has since passed away. RIP Michael. ❤

I’ve dipped in and out of Getting Things Done (GTD) many times over the years. The most organized I’ve felt in life is when I was truly adhering to the process, including physical tickler folders in a filing cabinet. A filing cabinet!

Today Johnny.Decimal came across my view, and I think I might give it a go. The current state I’m in is this:

• My work has been all-consuming, in a good way.

  • My work is not organized, but rather little note papers on the desk, a million Basecamp to-dos, and a general trust that the most important things will remain in my brain or come to the fore as necessary.

  • With the productivity power of LLMs, I’m putting more and more balls in the air every day.

  • While I know I can’t copy-paste a personal system onto our work to-dos, I hope Johnny.Decimal can help bridge that gap.

• My home projects are abandoned.

  • There are papers piling up on my office floor, awaiting organization.

  • My office is a mess.

  • I’m daily making small decisions about what is important to get done (pay the bills) and what isn’t (scan the documents).

  • I have notes and reminders spread across Things, Apple Reminders, Apple Notes, and Obsidian.

  • I’ve uncharacteristically missed some important tasks over the past year. Late estimated tax payments being one glaring example.

  • There are little projects to do, but my system has become disorganized and overwhelming. So any spare moments with energy I generally pour down the drain of internet distraction.

  • I have lots of woodworking ideas that I can’t work on now, but I suspect I’ll pick back up in the next decade.

At this point in life I’m not seeking to be an efficiency master. I’m well aware that I’ll never get everything done. I’m happy to sit and read a book or watch a movie. Yet I would like to feel that my ideas and projects are organized in a way that I can find (or be reminded of them) again later. I’ve had that feeling before and it was the first year after starting GTD.

I’m watching some introduction videos now, and I might actually pony up for the course to get my bearings. If only I could justify the time…

Ava is traveling and shared this from the Victoria and Albert Museum: 

A lengthy, imperfect article on how much Minnesota mattered this winter. (archive)

The challenge of this work week has been trying to figure out a way to streamline the moderating Pika blog posts. With only two of us on the team, it’s impractical for us to read every blog post and look for rules violations. Especially when you consider that there are many blogs on the platform with hundreds and thousands of posts. Choosing posts or blogs that we’d rather not include in the soon-to-return Pika Pulse is an even more subtle and nuanced task.

It seems obvious that LLMs could be engaged to help us with this, and in testing in my local development environment it is absolutely true that it would be a big help. We are still strong believers in not training AIs on Pika blogs. The terms published by APIs for these services are clear that when sending anything to them the default position is to not train on that content. You must opt-in.

Do we trust them? Not exactly. So we’re going to keep looking for alternatives that stay away from LLM cloud services. 🤔 I have a Mac Mini lying around here that could maybe run an LLM that has no access to these motherships…

This time of year I do a lot of working from my couch with basketball games on TV. It’s not nearly as compelling these days with NIL and players constantly transferring between schools, but old habits die hard.

If you are even a mild St. Vincent fan, I recommend her fantastic new live album:

Delta Air Lines…responded to the continuing shutdown by suspending special services for members of Congress, including airport escorts and red coat services.

I applaud Delta for doing this, but why the heck do members of congress get special services in the first place? Sure, for certain situations I could see it, but generally they should be in the airport mixed in with the rest of us citizens. Pat them down!

Related, we’re flying out of Des Moines today, heading down to Phoenix. With some time to kill we took some inspiration from the Thingelstads:

The Des Moines airport was a bit of a breath of fresh air. We were literally the only people at security when we walked up. Everyone was mostly chipper. I suppose! (Though the shuttle to the airport had a happy-to-tell-you-what-he-thought driver. 🤷‍♂)

Trying to wrap up my work tasks before our vacation was an absolute flurry. I’ve not felt much more busy (in a good way) in my career than I have with 2026 and We Are Good Enough. Maybe it’s the ownership aspect? Maybe it’s that I really love the products that we’re working on? Maybe it’s the catalyst of LLMs helping me accomplish more work than I should be capable of?

In any case, I’m going to do my best to make this vacation a week-off-the-grid style time off. Family, food, reading, and a pool. Repeat.

The sing along lyrics in “The Subway” are so fantastic.

I’ve seen several Chappell Roan concert videos that have the song lyrics onscreen, which I think is genius (assuming the artist wants that type of concert). So many times I go to a concert and know the words 50/50. Properly done this can enhance the experience, and it also builds in accessibility in a cool way. 👏