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Daily, snackable writings to spur changes in thinking.
Building a blueprint for a better brain by tinkering with the code.
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The SECOND illustrated book from Tinkered Thinking is now available!
SPIN CHESS
A Chess app from Tinkered Thinking featuring a variant of chess that bridges all skill levels!
REPAUSE
A meditation app is forthcoming. Stay Tuned.
CREATIVITY & OPTIMIZATION
August 6th, 2026
Having done a fair amount of woodworking, I've had the pleasure to visit and sometimes use some really nice woodshops and there's something pretty demoralizing that I realized. People who get good at woodworking start optimizing the process — which is good, don't get me wrong. They constantly acquire more and more equipment, and the number of specialized jigs pile up.I remember I was sailing up the Columbia river in Washington and I needed to have some serving mallets made in order to make some repairs to rigging. After asking around a small town, one guy said his father had an amazing woodshop and could help me out for a couple of bucks.
This old timer's woodshop was unbelievable. Easily half a million dollars worth of equipment in this space — a space mind you that was bigger than his actual house. He was full of stories and took a lot of joy in showing off all his toys. But when he finally showed me some stuff that he'd built, I was very underwhelmed. He'd used a lathe to cut some strange shapes and when you cut them in half you'd see like... a dolphin, or a frog or something. A cool demonstration of skill, but . . . a little disappointing considering the beast of a workshop he had.
Reminding myself of the often elaborate preparations that writers "need" in order to work, I wonder if it's an elaborate form of procrastination? Shifting focus to optimization instead of the harder work: being creative.
So where do we draw the line between optimization and those necessary constraints that benefit creativity?
One might argue that creativity shouldn't be optimized at all.
But whatever form and medium creativity takes, there's always some degree of . . . tedium(?) interwoven into the process. For some this tedium is ritualistic, or otherwise beneficially meditative. And for others it becomes the sole purpose as one shifts from novel creation to optimizing the tools of creation.
There is a balance to strike, and the human spirit can run off the road in a variety of ways. Taking time away from the actual creative process to build tools for it can create genuine improvements. For example, I'm now writing this on a custom composer that I built into Tinkered Thinking. Previously, since Tinkered Thinking was my first project, it was pretty janky. I would write something in a word document and then copy and paste that into a html converter and then enter the whole thing into a database row that I managed through SequelAce. An abysmal process. I did that for over a thousand entries if you can believe it.
And then the world of AI coding came along and I realized I could use those new powers to revitalize my old projects. And so I built this composer, and it's great, I'm actually starting to write more, and more often. The old habit is sloughing dust and gaining inertia. And I think that is the real north star of optimization. If the creation of a new tool or an optimization of an existing process adds speed and momentum to the original purpose, then it was worth the time. Of course it's always very difficult to gauge whether a detour will be worth the distraction or whether it'll just end up as time wasted.
I'm currently building some tools to make the blog->book process more efficient. I think it'll be worth the effort, because I've got at least 3 more books worth of writing that I can put out and on the store.
Regardless of personal vagaries, the lesson was clear a long time ago: you don't want to die with a pristine workshop capable of anything and nothing to show for all that effort.
Likewise you don't want to be so hampered by inefficiencies and friction that you never get around to producing anything. There's a balance. And it's better to be lopsided on the side of creation, but it's worth it to take a step back from time to time and wonder: how can I make this easier for myself?
