When People Have Trouble with Something

I have a lot of things I want to write down and share, but I rarely end up doing so. My first instinct is to attribute this to laziness. But recently I've been reading a book, The Design of Everyday Things, and in it the author argues: "When people have trouble doing something, it isn't their fault—it's a problem with the design."

Looking at my blogging process, I have to go through a series of steps:

1. Sit down at my desk (on weekends I'm often reluctant, because I've already spent the entire workweek in front of a computer).
2. Connect the monitor's USB-C cable to the Mac mini behind the monitor. This step itself involves multiple micro-actions:
   • Locate the USB-C cable with my right hand—it's usually lying in the middle of the desk, or plugged into my work laptop on the right-side stand. If it's connected to the laptop, unplug it first.
   • Holding the cable in my left hand, I lift myself halfway out of the chair, bend forward into an awkward crouch, and reach behind the left side of the monitor, my head tilted slightly to the right as I try to find the port.
3. Turn on the Mac mini and open VS Code. Then I can start typing.
4. Chat with AI to fix grammar issues and improve unclear wording.
5. In the terminal, I type publish, and a script automatically pushes the content to GitHub and deploys it to the website hosted on Cloudflare.

The truth is, many things remain undone simply because the first step is too hard—or rather, there are too many prerequisite steps. If human beings have so much untapped potential, I think a big part of it comes down to this: we have the ability to do things, yet often fail to act on them. For me, there are many things I want to share, but for a long time they only existed in my mind. Before I could even make it to my desk, the ideas had already slipped away. So now, while the momentum is still there, I'm jumping up from the sofa to record these thoughts.

So, back to what's blocking my writing, I don't want to blame myself and drain my energy on guilt. But I am the one responsible for this process, so I suppose I'll have to add a few more tasks to my plate to clear the obstacles. Or maybe my husband will get tired of watching me struggle and help me fix it. That's part of life, too.

My Workspace

Notes:

Why VS Code? Because I use it every day at work, so I'm already used to it. In a way, using VS Code for blogging is also part of what holds me back—it feels slightly "off" psychologically. A more visual UI might actually feel better.

Why not use a laptop? I want to separate work and life. My personal laptop is also quite old, and I don't even know where it is anymore. Setting it up again would take effort. So I just stick with the Mac mini setup.