Top all-time · #1397
Tom Critchlow
Personal blog · tomcritchlow.com · on HN as topcat31careerproductivityculture
Tom Critchlow's personal blog at tomcritchlow.com covers career, productivity and culture. Since 2011, 50 different Hacker News readers have linked it 137 times, most often “A proposal for an open bookshelf format library.json”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-06-08, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (22) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Tom Critchlow's blog for posts on digital gardens, small-b blogging, personal websites, consulting, and RSS/JSON. Most commenters cite it as a source or point to it as a good read.
- Recommended for · 8 comments
- Called a good read and a nice post, the RSS post 'Good stuff!', a 'you might like' pick for small b blogging, a shout-out for library-json, and a book chapter o
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 22 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Tom Critchlow. Move. Think. Create.
Most-linked posts?
- A proposal for an open bookshelf format library.json4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-04-16
- Increasing the surface area of blogging4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2022-04-27
- How to build a personal wiki out of files and folders using Jekyll4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-02-18
- The Strategic Independent3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-04-04
- Small B Blogging (2018)3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-04-23
- Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2019-11-18
- Quote the Web with Quotebacks3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2020-06-09
- A fieldguide for independent consultants2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2016-12-14
- A Map for Indie Living2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-08
- I, Consultant?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2019-03-01
What Hacker News says?
As I said somewhere in that thread, I only ever encounter arguments against value-based billing from other contractors/consultants, and not companies. There's probably a psychological topic there to explore but I won't go there. I have nothing to gain by convincing other contractors/consultants, except the feeling that I helped someone escape the hell that is hourly billing. Yes, it helps to be offering some unique…
Comment linking /2019/04/04/the-strategic-independent/
on “I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page”Submitted Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work as a story · 358 points
HN discussionI appreciate when blogs include a "start here" section, like https://tomcritchlow.com/start-here/ , or equivalent. Sometimes a bunch of content can overwhelm a new visitor, so entry points are appreciated. See also: - random post button - most popular posts - author's favorite posts
Comment linking /start-here/
on “Microfeatures I love in blogs and personal websites”Submitted Show HN: Electric Tables – an experiment in personal databases as a story · 231 points
HN discussionThere has been a growing movement around the thought that one's website is their digital garden, for example: https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/02/17/building-digital-garden/
Comment linking /2019/02/17/building-digital-garden/
on “My product is my garden”Submitted "Let me know how I can help" – a proposal to HN as a story · 193 points
HN discussionYou might like the "small b blogging" ethos :) https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/02/23/small-b-blogging/
Comment linking /2018/02/23/small-b-blogging/
on “Building a personal website in 2021”Submitted Increasing the surface area of blogging as a story · 169 points
HN discussionI wrote about my first year of consulting to share what it was like and some tips I learned along the way: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting-l... Here is another good one, which applies to tech consulting just as well: https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/04/04/the-strategic-independen...
Comment linking /2019/04/04/the-strategic-independent/
on “Ask HN: What was your experience starting a tech consultancy?”Submitted Why can't I write code inside my browser? as a story · 145 points
HN discussionI'm kind of a JSON maximalist because I find it really simple and haven't put too much thought into it. I'd also like to shout out https://www.jsonfeed.org/ https://jsonresume.org/ https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/04/15/library-json/ https://geojson.org/ It'd be pretty cool to have an ecosystem where you could ``` $ packagemanger init my-site password $ hostOfChoice deploy ``` Go to the url, auth yourself, then have a…
Comment linking /2020/04/15/library-json/
on “Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)”Submitted Notes on my Remarkable tablet as a story · 117 points
HN discussionAuthor here - yeah I hear you. I love the hypothesis interactions when they happen on my site but the UI is a little aggressive (especially on mobile). All about tradeoffs unfortunately. FWIW I posted a little UX teardown of the different annotation platforms here if you're interested: https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/02/12/annotations/
Comment linking /2019/02/12/annotations/
on “Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work”Submitted Small B Blogging (2018) as a story · 90 points
HN discussionChapter 2 is also available: "Optimism as an Operating System" https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/11/19/optimism-operating-syste... I'm really looking forward to chapter 4, "Status Switching", as it's a skill I'm very keen to further develop. I wish I could get an email as soon as it's posted.
Comment linking /2019/11/19/optimism-operating-system/
on “Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work”Submitted Triple Entry Blogging as a story · 55 points
HN discussionI’ve tried similar myself but I love the visual simplicity of this. Much nicer than a list. If you’re interested I came across this year’s ago … some nice inspirations and ways of finding new stuff. https://tomcritchlow.com/wiki/books/bookshelves/ My favourite is this one with the little toggle for reviews or comments: https://daverupert.com/bookshelf/
Comment linking /wiki/books/bookshelves/
on “I made a virtual bookshelf”Submitted The office is a theatre for work (2019) as a story · 53 points
HN discussionThere's also a nice blog post at https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/06/09/quotebacks/ (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467586 . There were a few comments there but we moved them hither.)
Comment linking /2020/06/09/quotebacks/
on “Quotebacks – Quote the Web”Submitted Business Narrative Strategy as a story · 35 points
HN discussionBusiness opportunity here to replace this? Start with some HN or Reddit style forum discussion code. Some income could come from affiliate links to indie booksellers. (Is there even infra for such a thing right now? Need to build that too?) Edit, answering myself, this guy has some thoughts: https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/04/15/library-json/ Edit, as for the index corpus, the USLC does okay: https://catalog.loc.gov/v…
Comment linking /2020/04/15/library-json/
on “Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end”Submitted Small b blogging as a story · 35 points
HN discussionGreat points about noise, and you really hit it on the nose with your final point—I've heard of a mental model of Twitter being likened to tapping a tuning fork and seeing who resonates ( https://twitter.com/kevinakwok/status/1076967914580918277 ). The most fun (and probably best) self promotion is done with fun in mind—Tom Critchlow's post on small b blogging vs. content marketing comes to mind ( https://tomcritchl…
Comment linking /2019/03/12/strange-attraction/
on “Bill Watterson, Picasso, and self promotion”Submitted I, Consultant? as a story · 34 points
HN discussionHere's a post from another company that's been using it: http://tomcritchlow.com/private-google-plus-engagement . I understand that some people might be skeptical of G+ in the workplace. Some people were skeptical of Google Apps in the workplace, and that's fine. But G+ can be a really powerful tool for companies that want to use it. One more anecdote: I have a friend whose company just moved from Lotus Notes to Goo…
Comment linking /private-google-plus-engagement
on “Bringing Google+ to work”Submitted The Jigsaw of Independence as a story · 22 points
HN discussionOne of the problems with Solid is that it's definitely guilty of the sort of criticism that surfaced (brought up by a reader) in related to some of the things discussed in an earlier post about "Library JSON" < https://tomcritchlow.com/2020/04/15/library-json/ >: > That said, the thing that kills the indieweb is too much enthusiasm for specs, too few [...] implementations, and, ironically, too much focus on the ‘ind…
Comment linking /2020/04/15/library-json/
on “Triple Entry Blogging”Submitted Yes, And – How to be effective in the theatre of work as a story · 12 points
HN discussionThe comparison with double entry bookkeeping seems a little bit far fetched, in my opinion. But I like the enthusiastic tone of the article and I understand the comparison as a starting point for brainstorming new ideas! I am now reading his post about RSS ( https://tomcritchlow.com/2022/04/21/new-rss/ ). Good stuff!
Comment linking /2022/04/21/new-rss/
on “Triple Entry Blogging”Submitted Notes on an Open Scraping Database as a story · 10 points
HN discussion
