I may not work less, but certainly different and better.
Just this morning I went for a long walk on the beach, barefoot in the water. Using nothing but voice interaction, I handled a couple of outstanding CRM tasks, sorted out some accounting issues and upgraded my search infrastructure (SearXNG) and most of all enjoyed my walk outside. I would not be able to do all this without AI and would be stuck behind my desk, daydreaming about going for that walk instead.
With the power of AI, soon all of us can be doing outstanding CRM tasks instead of wasting time enjoying nature. Imagine the time savings we could recover by removing all quiet contemplative moments!
I’m a bit puzzled by this kind of comment, which pops up every time someone mentions getting some work done while out in nature.
What it seems to miss is that we get to walk around while doing some work, not the other way around. The alternative would be being stuck at a desk or in a meeting room, not quietly enjoying nature on a day off.
What is the reason you couldnt use your laptop on the beach to do work in 2019? Probably mainly that you are either working or enjoying nature, not both, and if you're working, then an office with reliable Internet, no wind or sun in your face, etc, is more suitable/efficient.
Put another way: if my twin and I are both working at competing firms doing the same job, but I do it via satellite phone while hiking the PCT and he does it from in front of a keyboard, there is no way he's not getting more done, even with AI. The bandwidth of voice/text to speech is a tiny fraction of visual.
Thanks for asking! I have had pain in my back and and shoulders and hands from being deskbound since I was 18 and it is a constant balancing act to get in enough exercise to offset the work in front of the computer. I have also used standing desks, 500$ ergonomic keyboards, and forced remote work during covid was a godsend because I could take regular breaks to pace my living room while I was worried to be perceived as unfocused if I did this in the open space. Speaking of living room, working on my TV from a distance of 2m alleviated eye strain too, compared to using the laptop screen or even a secondary monitor at my desk.
Believe it or not, it was not practical to take my gear into nature haha. But with the advent of agentic coding (and stt solutions like handy), I can be productive with much less typing and equipment.
I have considered leaving the tech sector because of the aforementioned friction, and just like in my message above, I don't think we are considering the same dilemmas. OP said work vs contemplation, I said indoor work vs outdoor work. You mention productivity trade-offs, but for me working in tech used to feel physically unsustainable.
The counterfactual is impossible to prove here, but I think it’s at least plausible that this poster, who I guess lives near the beach, could have enjoyed their morning coffee on the beach
Yea, it seems that the OP neither did better work, or actually enjoyed the walk (I mean, how do you enjoy walk if you don't allow your thoughts to wander?)..
It may be more pleasant to work outside -or it may not (it's almost winter here in Alaska -that would be a hard pass for me!). but no -it's definitely not the same, as you pointed out.
For sure, and a good part can already be automated. But certain things still require human intervention and always will.
Keep in mind these work related walks do not replace other outdoor activities.
I get the idea and I used to try and optimize my computer time this way - working in the park, working while walking, etc.
In the end it was just a hassle and a distraction. I’d rather have 5 solid hours of work and 5 hours of non-work, rather than 10 hours of an awkward hybrid.
The type of work indeed matters a lot, if you need any visual confirmation or have to look things up yourself it's probably not worth it.
As a solo entrepreneur I manage my entire business workflow. Everything is accessible from an API, from accounting to my CRM to S3 storage or my PostgreSQL cluster. Tasks can be handed off between different agents to keep things separated.
Not sure when you last tried, but I feel I would not be able to do what I do today with last years models.
For many of us, this would not be a better experience. The physical and mental components of doing it yourself is half the pleasure
Of someone’s carried my ass around all day I’d be a physically atrophied and mentally addled maniac, on obese to boot if I’m stuffing my face the whole ride
Part of the dilemma with modern culture is that most people seem to be striving for and hoping technology will provide pleasure funk laziness and glut. But these things in and of themselves produce bad outcomes. I get why people really stressed out might daydream about that, but this is probably more indicative of being overworked than of the virtues of laziness and glut
For those of us stuck in an office building, at a desk, AI models have enabled handling multiple tasks as a same time as fast as we can think. I'm absolutely doing multiple times the work I was doing before and the time between tasks is basically zero. Same pay, though, and drastically increased productivity and sense of effort.
Or you would be unemployed and nervous about how you were going to pay your bills, replaced by someone willing to do the same work for lower cost while chained to said desk.
What seems better to you, seems a bit nightmarish to me. If I'm going for a walk, the last thing I want to have on my mind is dealing with CRM software in any way.
But it's a purpose built, tailored to my needs CRM, mostly automated. Like I ask, "which outstanding issues need my attention". I tell it what to do next, when to notify again and I'm done. All tedious form entry work is taken care of in the background.
The choice is do you want to walk or sit behind a desk when doing a task that needs human attention.
It doesn't have to replace a nice "offline" outdoor activity.
But isn't the next step where your employer tasks you to codify all these tasks and capture your "process" and "reasoning" and then you can still walk on the beach all you want but you won't have work to do. Isn't the next step for a junior engineer or a single verifier to just add a minor human verification step at a higher level to remove you from the loop? I feel like there is not enough discussion about this mindset shift. Early adoption is taking away the employee moat that some people have but we don't seem to be considering that it is going to be recursive and repeating.
It reminds me of the 7-minute abs scene in Something About Mary.
> But isn't the next step where your employer tasks you to codify all these tasks and capture your "process" and "reasoning" and then you can still walk on the beach all you want but you won't have work to do
No, the next step is the employer to ask "why are you walking on a beach when you could be working?" and won't accept the answer that they are just orchestrating agents.
The only part the employer will focus on is "walking on a beach" and think "I don't pay you to walk on a beach."
(Caveat: OP might be running their own business. That's different. Also makes me rethink my life choices a bit).
Vertically integrated solo business on a Patroni controlled PostgreSQL cluster spread out over multiple dedicated servers with multiple providers.
Shocks Opencomm 2 headset or my Sony xm6 earbuds connected to a custom Android app. Android local Supertonic model for text to voice, private whisper on the server for voice to text. Local Nvidia Glider LLM for PII filtering of CRM related data. The Android app controls codex app server instances (mostly working with latest GPT model on high), switches between projects and threads based on voice commands, a ton of little tweaks to optimize my workflow. Every service except the public facing website runs behind a Wireguard VPN.
Yes of course your employer is fine with you going walking barefoot on a beach instead of being in the office working, and it's happy to pay you the same money. Come on...
Also, you are telling me that you can get only with voice interaction an AI to write well engineered and maintainable code, something I've yet to see an AI be able to do, to me the result that they tend is at best the same of a junior developer, except that the junior developer learns, the AI continues to make the same mistakes (because it's context is limited, when it's full it's full).
I think we should move to pull requests that describe succinctly what feature or bug needs to be pulled. Not the actual code.
A PR for a bug needs an issue link with a test demonstrating the bug in an easy to verify way, eg an online playground/runner.
Ideally the project has a well written, living product and system implementation document that can be used to verify bug reports and feature requests against. Before even looking at the actual code implementation.
Glad I got a toll badge covering Italy, Spain and Portugal so the amount gets auto deducted every month, instead having to pay each individual toll segment.
Anyway, the A25 heading from Salamanca Spain into Portugal is now toll free, same as some of the roads around Barcelona/Catalonia. So it's not all bad.
I was afraid of this but switched from Samsung to an Oppo Find X9 Ultra anyway as the new Samsung S26 Ultra feels stuck in the past. I was pleasantly surprised with ColorOS. The only thing Samsung has going for it is OneUI. OneUI is better, but not by a lot.
Android Wireless debugging is already a major pita to work with.
Requires a wifi connection to even work, so I need to carry a mobile wifi router with me, instead of having it bound to my secure WireGuard connection.
Next it assigns a random port number every time the wifi connection is interrupted, or when it considers now is a good time to reset the port number. It should be possible to set a stable port and and have it available, perhaps behind a few awkward UI/adb toggles.
I do a ton of coding (codex) with a tts/stt wrapper. During walks, cycling, in the car. Not every task is suited to this style of interaction, but many are. Long form codex replies are condensed, code blocks are suppressed all in the name of making it work for tts feedback. So it works best on well defined projects with guardrails, where you know the agent can perform well.
Talking on the phone is extremely dangerous? What are your thoughts on talking with a passenger? Is that something that people ought to stop doing? Drive in silence. 100% focus?
All the studies show it's not an over-reaction, you're 400% more likely to have an accident. It is extremely dangerous and it's not an over-reaction, the more people do this, the more people die. It's simple maths. If you're doing extended programming sessions, you're not paying attention to the road like you should be.
And no, talking to a passenger is not as dangerous as it's a different cognitive load.
It'll take you 20 seconds to google this, please do and stop putting everyone else in jeopardy.
In what way is talking on the phone a different cognitive load that talking to a passenger?
After googling the 8th or 10th result had a link to the study I assume you are referencing.
I just don't agree with you. I believe that there is risk when driving inherently although relatively low and a 400% increase from 0.0001 to 0.0004 does not really concern me.
I have been in one accident in 15 years and I was not at fault and it was unavoidable.
Many people engage in all sorts of distracted driving, texting, eating, driving while tired etc. which I would wager are more detrimental than speaking on the phone.
Having your one bone to pick being speaking on the phone just seems absurd and an odd message to preach when nearly everyone does it.
The difference between talking to a passenger versus using a hands-free phone is an interesting one. While they intuitively feel similar, it has been shown that speaking on the phone results in significantly worse performance. This is because a passenger shares awareness of the driving situation and surroundings. Their conversation naturally adapts to traffic conditions, often pausing or shifting topics to focus on the road, which can help with awareness.
Texting and eating are far more dangerous as they divert eyes from the road and introduce motor interference. Fatigue also severely degrades both attention and cognitive function.
Coding while driving does seem unnecessarily risky though. Unlike other non-motor distractions, it demands more cognitive engagement without necessarily moving your hands or eyes. It is far more demanding than a standard phone conversation, which has already been shown to impair driving.
You will make errors that you won’t remember because your brain is occupied with the code rather than monitoring the environment.
Your ability to recognize objects and react slows down. If a child runs into the road, that split-second delay could mean the difference between stopping or killing them. The same applies to sudden obstacles like kangaroos in my case. The delay in reaction could turn a near-miss into a fatal crash.
Most of the risk lies in the complex and unexpected situations. It's really not worth it, just listen to some music or an audiobook and enjoy your ride. Do coding later.
If you have any other psychology or cognitive-related questions to it I can try and answer. I'm not an expert in this specific area but we did some work on it at university.
That's fantastic. I have long, winding trails near me also and one of these days I also want to start prompting a coding agent on my bike with a headset. Do you recommend any particular type of headset?
Edit: never mind, I see you already suggested the Shokz OpenComm2 in another comment. Thanks!
I have my phone in my pocket, no screen interaction is required. I use a headset (Shokz OpenComm2) with wind muff (when cycling).
I made an Android app that listens for codex turn-complete or intermediate updates and plays them back to me. My answer is transcribed and pasted back to the relevant codex (tmux) session on the server (which I can select by voice) a tiny layer helps with things like /new, /plan, answer selection, etc.
I'm still wondering if this is something the big AI companies will come out with tomorrow, if it has business potential (it's extremely niche I think) or if I should put it on GitHub and build a community around it. This is what the Android app looks like:
https://imgur.com/a/qy8B2gthttps://imgur.com/a/C0eTPyn
I can't honestly think of a case where this would be remotely useful. This goes somehow beyond vibe coding to vibe interaction, where the only feedback comes via the AI. I'd love to see a concrete example of this working practice.
I've been building out the Android app that works as the wrapper between codex and me this way.
ADB debugging access over WireGuard. I ask to add a local wake phrase detection for the phrase "Hey codex" to start dictation. Codex tells me it thinks Vosk or OpenWakeWord might be a good fit, I voice select Vosk.
Codex starts working. Codex deploys (updates) the app on my phone and restarts it and I hear the task complete response.
I say "Hey Codex" to test and ask for some tuning/improvements, or move onto the next task. All while keeping my phone in my pocket.
But there are countless projects I work on this way. Eg, I got an email from person X, it says it encountered a bug when doing x and y. Codex reads the email (using nvidia/gliner-PII to hide PII data) and investigates the reason for the bug and proposes a solution. I ask it to implement the fix on my dev server and increase test coverage. I enjoy my walk and after say 7 minutes get a an overview of the fix and can decide to deploy to production.
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