Stephen Wolfram explains his "personal infrastructure"

Rudy Rucker shared a link to this wonderful and idea-rich piece from Stephen Wolfram's blog. In the article, entitled "Seeking the Productive Life: Some Details of My Personal Infrastructure," mathenaut and "undisputed king of the computerites" (Rucker) shares some really useful tips and ideas on personal workspace hacks and his ideas on productivity and workflow.

…I found out that by putting a gel strip at the correct pivot point under my wrists (and putting the mouse on a platform) I can comfortably type while I'm walking. I typically use a 5% incline and go at 2 mph—and I'm at least fit enough that I don't think anyone can tell I'm walking while I'm talking in a meeting. (And, yes, I try to get potentially frustrating meetings scheduled during my walking time, so if I do in fact get frustrated I can just "walk it off" by making the treadmill go a little faster.)

I'd actually been thinking about walking and working for a long time. Twenty years ago I imagined doing it with an augmented reality display and a one-handed (chorded) keyboard. But the technology didn't arrive, and I wasn't even sure the ergonomics would work out (would it make me motion sick, for example?).

…Last spring, I was at a fancy tech event, and I happened to be just out of the frame of a photo op that involved Jeff Bezos walking with a robotic dog. I wasn't personally so excited about the robotic dog. But what really interested me was the person walking out of the frame on the other side, intently controlling the dog—using a laptop that he had strapped on in front of him as if he were selling popcorn.

Could one actually work like this, typing and everything? After my "heart-rate discovery" I decided I had to try it. I thought I'd have to build something myself, but actually one can just buy "walking desks", and so I did. And after minor modifications, I discovered that I could walk and type perfectly well with it, even for a couple of hours. I was embarrassed I hadn't figured out such a simple solution 20 years ago. But starting last fall—whenever the weather's been good—I've tried to spend a couple of hours of each day walking outside like this:

These days I don't deal with paper much. But whenever something does come across my desk, I like to file it. So behind my desk I have an array of drawers—with the little hack that there's a slot at the top of each drawer that allows me to immediately slide things into the drawer, without opening it: