Inevitably, during the course of my daily work as a software engineer, I'll need to log into various systems most of which require two-factor authentication. I've chosen to use an authenticator app on my phone but the simple act of unlocking my phone can trigger endless distractions from notifications, Slack, or email. I’ve lost entire 15-minute blocks of focus because I glanced at a message I didn’t need to check yet. As a software engineer I'm starting to put more thought into the tools I use and how the affect me.

Jump cut to drawing analogs between carpentry and knowledge work. Woodworking provides an interesting contrast. Woodworkers often move between tools like switching from a lathe to an orbital sander without losing momentum. (Sorry if that is never something that is done in woodworking, I have only rudimentary knowledge but high respect for the art of transforming wood) The woodworker can delight in a set of tools which have delightfully bounded context. The lathe cannot inform you of steps 3 or 4 down the line. It cares only for turning wood! The specific kinds of tools used are not the only difference between woodcrafting and knowledge work
but if I allow myself to be a bit poetic, we knowledge workers can take inspiration from things in wood working.

If I'm set on not being distracted by emails, then why not use a machine that I can develop software on, but also doesn't have easy access to the internet. Wherever should I expect to find such a device? Luckily I had a laptop from 2008 in the house. It is a Macbook (not pro) with an Intel dual core processor and two whole gigabytes of ram! Taking some inspiration from 100 Rabbits and their support of the concept of permacomputing my weekend project was to get this laptop working in a state where I can continue my experiments in functional programming and Haskell. I don't need super high end components nor extensive use of the internet to do this.

Since the version of Mac OS that it was running
is not longer supported and since it definitely can't run a new one, I loaded Manjaro Linux with Xfce desktop environment (which is suppose to be lightweight and capable of running smoothly on old machines). After I installed the OS, I looked at the installed software. It turns out that Manjaro installs Firefox by default so I naturally started to browse the internet. To little surprise the experience was pretty awful. Slow load times and after opening only 6 tabs, the application became unresponsive. A nice consequence of this is that this machine actively resists mindless browsing! A boon to my weekend projects of building CLIs and GUIs with Haskell.

This year I'm looking to refine what kinds of tools I use and how I use them. I do not expect to use my macbook from 2008 in a professional context, but I will have fun to using one of my first computing devices and noticing how it makes me feel. In particular, it was refreshing to see that a slow UI makes the internet not very fun!