Vas Frolik

A Mac mini M5. It’s my second machine and my home server, and I use it to host AI models and LLMs. It also runs my app builds in the background, so the laptop stays free for design work.

A Leuchtturm1917 120g notebook and a Parker Jotter. There’s nothing more satisfying than writing on good paper with a good pen.

I used to live in Kenting, down by the beach in the south of Taiwan. Summer typhoons would lock us in the house for days at a time, so I needed a way to keep my steps going. Now I do 30 minutes at the start of the day and 30 at the end, which comes to about 5,000 steps. Do the full hour and you’ve hit 10,000. Those two slots fit because I’m either planning the day over coffee or cooling down after work. It’s really hard to focus and get into flow while walking, so I keep it out of the deep work hours.

Taking notes, either in my Leuchtturm or in Remlo, the app I built. Writing a hard problem down keeps my head clear and sharpens the thinking. Before I step away, I always write one line with exactly what I’ll do next. When I come back, I read it and I’m straight back in, with no warming up.

I read non-fiction in the morning and fiction in the evening. For non-fiction it’s Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things. Anyone building things should read it. It explains how we interact with the machines around us, and it’s more relevant today than ever.

For the evening, Barbarian Days by William Finnegan. It’s a Pulitzer-winning memoir that reads like a novel and puts you right on the surf trips, hunting for waves. Read it if you want to get lost in something, surf or anything else. If that one doesn’t land, Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. It’s short enough to finish in one sitting, and you’ll be sad it’s over, like a really good film.