Boring tools, good work

Tools should absorb complexity, not become a recurring source of it. A small, legible stack gives you somewhere firm to stand while everything else changes.

The best tool is often the one you can stop thinking about and simply use.

For this site, posts are files. Pages are generated ahead of time. Styling is typed, local, and visible in the source. There is no database to keep alive and no editor format to escape later.

That approach is not universally correct. It is simply proportionate to the job.

Choose tools for the attention they preserve, not the possibilities they advertise.

A boring tool is predictable in the ways that matter. It can still be new, ambitious, or technically sophisticated; it simply earns trust by making its behavior legible and its failures recoverable.

The useful test is not age. It is whether the tool helps you return your attention to the work.

Prefer constraints you can explain

A useful constraint makes decisions cheaper. It should be possible to say what it protects and what it costs.

• Static pages protect speed and operational simplicity.
• Markdown protects portability.
• A small component surface protects readability.

The point is not minimalism as an aesthetic. The point is preserving attention for the parts of the work that only you can do.

Read Revisiting “The 4-Hour Workweek” in The New Yorker