1-3-5 rule: 1 big · 3 medium · 5 small. If the 1 is done by 5pm, the day won. Everything else is bonus.

Building in Ethiopia = low-bandwidth UX + cost discipline + bilingual reach + real problems. Constraints make better products.

"Lazy day" = thinking day in disguise. Pacing, staring, deleting — that's compute. Don't punish quiet days.

Generic AI answers = generic prompts. Add: who you are · what you tried · constraints · what "good" looks like. Context is the new prompt.

14 productivity apps → 4 kept: Linear (tasks), Notion (writing), Cron (time), Apple Notes (capture). Tools that need maintenance aren't tools. They're hobbies.

Filename hack: `YYYY-MM_project_purpose_v#.ext`. Searchable. Sortable. No more `final_FINAL_actually-use-this.docx`.

Stuck for 30 min? 1) Explain out loud 2) Fresh AI chat 3) Walk away. Stuck for an hour? You're not working. You're suffering.

"I use ChatGPT" → 2023. "I built a workflow that uses ChatGPT" → 2026. Find one boring task. Chain the steps. Wake up to it done. That's when AI pays rent.

Building in Ethiopia is not a limitation. It is a sharper test: mobile-first, cost-aware, bilingual, real-world constraints.

Move fast = 6 dead branches + 3 features no one sees + 1 prod bug + 1 small win that ships. Speed isn't speed. It's deciding when "good enough" is good enough.