Steve Schoeffel

Introducing the most powerful whiteboarding capabilities available in @ChatGPTapp: read, create and edit diagrams and wireframes, all without leaving the conversation

✏️ Whiteboard with your coding agent. • Visualize code flows and system behavior • Give feedback with annotations • Rapidly explore UI ideas with lo-fi wireframes

@jrdi We're building this at @whimsical. You can create posts inside teams and also inside of projects. Happy to chat more if you want! More info here: whimsical.com/posts and also check out this video where we show posts in a project context: x.com/steveschoeffel… (0:40).

The best long-form technical write-ups and discussions at Tinybird happened in Basecamp. Years ago, we started using Slack, and it became a noisy mix of single-sentence reply threads. Is anyone building an alternative?

When it comes to visualizing tasks in a project, everyone has used the standard task views (kanban, list, timeline, etc.). But what about a canvas view? We’re now creating these board-based “tech trees” in every project we run inside of @whimsical. It’s a more visual way of viewing the tasks in a project and how they relate to each other. You have the flexibility of the canvas so you can do things like group related tasks, show dependencies and progressions, and mark milestones. You can also open the task directly from the canvas to read or update it. The card color is synced to the task status so you can easily understand how things are progressing. The tasks are still available in a more traditional, structured task view (e.g. kanban / list) if things like filtering or sorting are needed.

@nosyeaj @whimsical :)

@accomazzo @elixirlang Hi @accomazzo that's a cool loking diagram tool! may I know what's that?

Here's a video explaining why @elixirlang's GenStage is designed the way it is –– and how that translates to better/faster pipeline performance:

Big shipping month for us at @whimsical! ✅ Split view ✅ Windows desktop app ✅ File uploads (in boards, docs, tasks, posts, comments) ✅ Due dates in tasks ✅ Compare page ✅ PLUS dozens of polish items and bug fixes Next month we’re planning to start on some exciting new projects, including a public API + MCP 🚀

This is so good! 😂

Super interesting. A few takeaways/reflections: Two things make people feel better about their job across ALL metrics: 1) being at a smaller company 2) having a great manager Related to #1—there is truly something special about small companies. I think there’s generally: - more speed, less red tape/slowness - fewer meetings, less communication overhead - hardly any politics, if at all - more focus - you can actually make an observable difference Though it’s hard too! There are less places to hide so everyone needs to pull their weight. From what everyone tends to say, regardless of your company size, there’s always a lot of work and seemingly not enough people to do it. So that doesn’t seem to be a differentiator. For #2 (having a great manager): it’s a good reminder to continue to invest in growing as a manager myself and encouraging our team do the same. Always room to grow there and it makes such a difference. Some other things that stood out: “Startup founders are the happiest people in tech” This has been my experience as well. I’ve never felt such enjoyment in a job. Some of the things for me: the feeling of agency and ownership (both in the product and the company), the continual need to learn and grow and stay on my toes, the long-term commitment to working at something that changes peoples’ lives for the better. Once again though—it’s not easy. The weight of responsibility coupled with the ups/down and twists/turns are challenging psychologically. I will say—I’m grateful that we have a culture of working at a sustainable pace (taking real vacations, no nights/weekends, etc.). I think it’d be much harder to keep at it for 7+ years otherwise. Last thing that stood out: Remote work has the highest sense of belonging (and also leads in all other categories except one). This feels like a narrative violation in the sense that I think the default assumption is that being in-person generates a stronger sense of belonging but that’s not the case here. I’m not taking this one survey as the objective truth for all time but it definitely signals the merits of remote work and validates our own experiences as a remote-first company. I love remote work and am grateful I/@whimsical gets to work this way.

5) Due dates or not? Some teams and projects really need due dates (e.g. marketing teams). For others, they aren’t relevant at all (e.g. product teams working in cycles/sprints). Our goal was that due dates would feel like first-class citizens for the people who need them and they would disappear for people who don’t. The way we accomplished this is by allowing teams in Whimsical to set a default project configuration where due dates can be on or off. This can be configured at the individual project level as well.

4) Handling different years What if you pick a date that is in a different year? How can we make it clear that it’s not May 29 (next week) but May 29, 2026 (one year away)? What we chose to do here is display month + year and drop the day. So, if you set a due date for May 29, 2026, we display it as “May 2026”. Same for dates from a former year (May 2024). Once again, you can hover to see the exact/full date.

When we build something at @whimsical, we aim for insanely great quality. For example, we’ve been building due dates for tasks. Seems like a pretty standard thing, right? But when you get into the details, there are quite a few things to take into consideration: 1) Input The initial version we built required you to select an exact date from the calendar picker. That’s fine. But sometimes natural language is easier and faster. So we expanded the input to accept a wide range of natural language inputs as well. For example, you can type “tomorrow” or “next month” or “june 5” or even just “6” (this one will give you the 6th of each of the next couple of months). It's really smooth.

Something fun that we do at @whimsical: monthly fitness challenges. Here’s how it works: 1) each month, we have a new fitness challenge (e.g. max pull-ups in 5 min, fastest 1km run, longest dead hang, longest row in 30 min, etc.) 2) it’s open to everyone and you post your results throughout the month 3) the top 4 for each monthly challenge get points (1st place gets 10 points, 2nd gets 5, 3rd gets 3, 4th gets 1) 4) we add up all the points at the end of the year to find our champion We use a board in @whimsical to track the results. Last year’s champ was @osvaldsn 🏆 So far this year, Jack is in the lead. This month’s challenge: fastest 1 mile run 😅

I felt really inspired the other day after watching these two back-to-back: - youtube.com/watch?v=qtP88H… - youtube.com/watch?v=lKqva5… The common theme for both is they found something that captivated them and are relentlessly pursuing it over a long period of time with an almost obsessive focus. They committed fully. They aren’t doing it because it’s easy (it isn’t). They genuinely love it and that fuels them. Reminds me of the classic @pmarca quote: “The world is a very malleable place. If you know what you want, and you go for it with maximum energy and drive and passion, the world will often reconfigure itself around you much more quickly and easily than you would think.”

As a knowledge worker, would you rather: A) have 30 hrs of meetings per week B) have 3 hrs of meetings per week A) have the expectation that you are always available over chat/email (even nights and weekends) B) have the expectation that you are not immediately available over chat/email A) be required to work from an office full-time B) have flexibility to work from anywhere (home office, co-working, while traveling) I think most people would choose B for more freedom and more maker time. The assumption is that Option B is less productive and collaborative. In my experience, Option B is not only a more pleasant way to work, it’s far more productive too! The assumption that the “old school” approach of constant meetings and availability always leads to better results is simply outdated and wrong. Peak productivity often comes from longer stretches of deep work where you can focus without distraction. Option B (remote+async) is the way to do this. Yes, it requires leadership buy-in, a healthy level of trust within the team, the right tools and processes, etc. But it’s possible. It’s the way we work at @whimsical and it feels incredible. I hope more companies adopt this style of work.

Fair question. I still find a lot of value in quite a few smartphone apps: maps, podcast apps, calendar, apple pay, having a good camera, etc. So I think it'd be hard to go old school. The Light Phone gets pretty close. I don't love the feel of it in my hand and contact-less payments is a notable gap. Might be worth trying at some point.

@steveschoeffel Nice. Do you still see a need for a “smart” phone? Perhaps an old school feature phone with WhatsApp is sufficient? Also makes for better form factor than the heavy and large smart phones of today

I’ve been trying to make my phone usage more intentional and less distracting. Here are the changes I’ve made so far: Removed - email - Slack - all social media (and signed out in the browser) - YouTube - ESPN Notifications - “Personal” mode most of the time (by default, only texts/calls from my wife come through) - no notifications for any apps except for texts (banners) - no notification bubbles, including texts and calls Also moved my browser app out of sight. Overall, it’s helped. I’ll still find myself searching for a distraction sometimes. But I’ve found that I’m on my phone less and feel less distracted by it.