Let's not forget he's also discussing things on communities like HN, where I calculate 3 comments/day over the last month (based on a calc I just made, since I subscribe to his comments via https://hnrss.github.io/).
If I sit in front of a computer all the time I'm awake, I still wouldn't be able to be producing as much content as Simon Willison. My productivity would start to decline after 5~6 hours, and probably diminish after 8~9 hours. The consistency in his output is just magnificent and awe-inspiring.
The answer is almost always personal support / personal assistants.
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.)
Sometimes, sure this is the case. I know a few big time artists who have dedicated teams that are always behind the scenes. But plenty of times it's not, as Simon himself pointed out below.
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.
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
Yeah, honestly the answer is mainly not having a proper job (I don't have anyone who can tell me how to spend my time) combined with constructive procrastination: I've not been making nearly as much progress on my main projects over the past couple of months because there's been way too much stuff I want to write about.
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.)
One thing I'd love to know - how do you balance time spent "building" vs. time spent "researching"?
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.
Having relevant projects is key. My https://llm.datasette.io projects gives me the ideal playground for trying stuff out - any time a new API model comes out I can spin up a new plugin to for LLM, which is a great way to try the model with limited development time (most API plugins are a few dozen lines of code).
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.
Oh that's cool. We've been blogging about AI eng recently, but the project is often "try this idea/tool/library in order to write a blog post about it".
Having some kind of standard "I need to integrate this new thing with an existing codebase" makes a great standard project.
Don't bother with this one - the latest post (The Return of Magic) is promoting a load of unscientific woo (The Telepathy Tapes). The author seems to seriously mean the title of the post literally.
Basically his whole "return of magic" premise seems to be rooted in his listening to "The Telepathy Tapes" and it confirming/supporting some of his latent beliefs. But the Telepathy Tapes is utter nonsense and self delusion based on wishful thinking and the "Autism Parent" movement.
Finally, I'll recommended a blog/webcomic that often seems to be written for HN fans, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/
Not new, but Josh W. Comeau's blog posts (https://www.joshwcomeau.com) on frontend and React are always next-level, you can tell there's passion in the details.
Takes all kinds of lifestyle and tech topics and nerds out about them thoroughly. If you've ever wanted to see mundane things overanalyzed and backed with solid facts, I recommend.
I don't necessarily agree with all their views, but I've always enjoyed an article and it's rarely if ever confidently wrong.
It's not focused on tech, but occasionally touches on policy issues that are tech-adjacent. It's a refreshing, often insightful, and usually very funny take on current events. The author is a former writer for the HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver".
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadhttps://www.construction-physics.com/
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.
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.
https://unnecessaryinventions.com/about-ui/
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.
In that case it's not really a blog but I will go with WEB CURIOS by Matt Muir
https://webcurios.co.uk/
https://www.theamericansaga.com/p/the-telepathy-tapes-is-tak...
Another oldie-but-greaty is Metafilter: https://www.metafilter.com/
Finally, I'll recommended a blog/webcomic that often seems to be written for HN fans, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/
https://interconnected.blog/
Takes all kinds of lifestyle and tech topics and nerds out about them thoroughly. If you've ever wanted to see mundane things overanalyzed and backed with solid facts, I recommend.
I don't necessarily agree with all their views, but I've always enjoyed an article and it's rarely if ever confidently wrong.
And I always learn from the very deep signal processing fun on Absorptions: https://www.windytan.com
I find the concept(s) and tech interesting, but crypto news is so full of drama and horrible people / acts it's hard to enjoy for me.
Most coins/chains/platforms have some sort of newsletters. You can find most of this stuff by looking up the ticker on coingecko or similar.
There are dedicated “crypto news” platforms (e.g. coindesk)
If your news is full of drama and horrible people… thats on you tbh. The algorithms are primed for that sort of content, but curation is up to you.
I say that because reading about crypto doesn't depress me at all.
https://jeremymorrell.dev/blog/
0. https://www.simplermachines.com/why-doesnt-everyone-do-xp/
Julia Evans - https://jvns.ca/
Fabien Sanglard - https://fabiensanglard.net/
Rachel - http://rachelbythebay.com/w/
Bruce Eckel - https://bruceeckel.substack.com/ (old blog @ https://www.bruceeckel.com/)
Blobs in Games - https://simblob.blogspot.com/
Astrid dot tech - https://astrid.tech/
Brendan Gregg - https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/
Stargirl Flowers - https://blog.thea.codes/
* Noah Smith: fhttps://www.noahpinion.blog
* Since he's retired from his NYT column after 25 years, Krugman: https://paulkrugman.substack.com
For personal finance / business:
* https://awealthofcommonsense.com
* https://ofdollarsanddata.com
But here is my list:
Https://daringfireball.net
https://stratechery.com
https://tldr.tech
among a few
It's not focused on tech, but occasionally touches on policy issues that are tech-adjacent. It's a refreshing, often insightful, and usually very funny take on current events. The author is a former writer for the HBO show "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver".
Arnoud Engelfriet's blog about Dutch IT law (in Dutch).