Simon Willison’s blog: https://simonwillison.net/.
How the heck does he have time to post all that amazing stuff, AND be coding open-source, AND have some kind of day job?
My god, I wish I were that productive.
How the heck does he have time to post all that amazing stuff, AND be coding open-source, AND have some kind of day job?
My god, I wish I were that productive.
I will add a +1 to your recommendation as well, his blog has been my favourite way to keep up with the AI landscape over the last 18 months. Just the right level of detail and technical depth for me
I can write fast because I've been writing online for so long. Most short posts take about ten minutes, longer form stuff usually takes one or two hours.
I also deliberately lower my standards for blogging - I often skip conclusions, and I'll publish a piece when I'm still not happy with it (provided I've satisfied myself with the fact checking side of things - I won't dash something out if I'm not certain it's true, at least to the best of my ability.)
I'm hoping to improve my overall balance a lot for 2025. Deliberately ending my at least one post a day blogging streak is part of that: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/ending-a-year-long-post...
The writing, I understand - you do it relatively quickly because of a lot of practice. But I feel like just reading up on the AI news every week takes up a significant amount of time - time that can't be spent researching/building things.
I'm wondering how you balance that.
I've managed to balance building vs writing a lot better in the past - I lost that balance in November and December, I'm trying to get it back for January.
Having some kind of standard "I need to integrate this new thing with an existing codebase" makes a great standard project.
There are for sure ways to increase your own personal productivity on its own, but the extra kick is usually from in-house cooks, cleaners, shoppers, schedulers, stylists, PAs, etc.
These people may or may not be spouses, family, friends and so on.
(This is a general response, I do not know Simon Willison or any of his work or life.)
We do have a couple of hours of cleaning help once a week but other than that my partner and I split the chores.
My brother is an "influencer" in the legit sense that he makes all his money from having a following (mostly through brand partnerships). He only gets help for very specific tasks on a project-by-project basis and even then he doesn't do that very often. He loves working alone and the freedom that comes from that.