Jeremy Keith

Toward the end of 2021, I wrote about working a four-day week. It really suited me. So much so that I’ve gone one further. For the past year or so I’ve been working a three-day week.

I work on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. From Friday to Monday, my days are my own.

This really changes the dynamic of the week. It no longer feels like an extended weekend. What I mean is that usually we think about the working week as the default and the weekend as the exception. That’s been flipped on its head for me. The three days I spend working feel like the exception.

Once again, this decision meant earning less money. But I’ve decided that I value time more than money. I know that’s a privileged position to be in. Many people have to expend all their time in order to make just enough money.

I’ve made some choices along the way that certainly help. I don’t have children. I don’t have a car. I live in a modest flat and I’ve paid off the mortgage. I live in a country where healthcare is free.

So I don’t have too many expenses. My biggest expenses are travel-related; getting to the States to see family, or travelling to Irish music festivals wherever they may be.

But still, working a three-day week means I can make enough to cover my expenses and still put some money aside for the future.

Now, this wouldn’t work for everyone. My work tends to be the kind that doesn’t require much direct collaboration (which is also why I mostly work from home). I imagine it could get frustrating being on a team of people working different numbers of days.

I’m also really lucky to have the choice to do this. I know that many workplaces wouldn’t allow this kind of lifestyle. Clearleft is different.

In my last conference talk, I touched on this:

I think you could you could divide management into two categories like you can do with programming languages. There is a very imperative school of management where it’s all about measurements, it’s all about those performance reports, it’s all about metrics, time tracking. Maybe they install software on your machine to track how long you’ve been working. It’s all about measuring those outputs.

That’s one approach to management. Then there’s a more declarative approach, where you just care about the work getting done and you don’t care how people do it. So if they want to work from home, let them work from home. If they want to work strange hours, let them work strange hours. What do you care as long as the work gets done? This is more about giving people autonomy and trust.

I’m very happy that Clearleft takes the declarative approach.

And I can reiterate what I said when I stopped working on Fridays:

I haven’t experienced any reduction in productivity. Quite the opposite. There may be a corollay to Parkinson’s Law: work contracts to fill the time available.

Now that I don’t work on Mondays, bank holiday weekends don’t mean much to me anymore. Or to put it another way, every weekend is like a bank holiday weekend. If I want to travel somewhere on a Friday and come back on a Monday, I don’t need to book any time off. That’s really nice.

I’ve got four days in a row to do with as I wish. I had to fight the urge to immediately launch into some new project or side-hustle to fill the time. I’m savouring it instead.

I’ve got time to take care of The Session. I’ve got time to read. I’ve got time to cook. I’ve got time to spend learning Irish. Mostly I’ve got time to just be.

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dead framework theory | AI Focus

This is depressing.

The Main Thread Is Not Yours — Den Odell

Every millisecond you spend executing JavaScript is a millisecond the browser can’t spend responding to a click, updating a scroll position, or acknowledging that the user did just try to type something. When your code runs long, you’re not causing “jank” in some abstract technical sense; you’re ignoring someone who’s trying to talk to you.

This is a great way to think about client-side JavaScript!

Also:

Before your application code runs a single line, your framework has already spent some of the user’s main thread budget on initialization, hydration, and virtual DOM reconciliation.

It’s hard to justify Tahoe icons @ tonsky.me

I’m avoiding Mac OS Tahoe because of the disgraceful liquid glass debacle, but it looks like the rot goes even deeper. Here’s a detailed look at the sad state of iconography in application menus.

I know that changes in an OS update can take time to get used to, but this isn’t a case of “one step forwards, two steps back”—it’s just a lot of steps back with no forwards.

Here’s the new year, same as the old year. Well, not the same, but pretty similar.

At the end of 2024, I wrote:

It was a year dominated by Ukraine and Gaza. Utterly horrific and unnecessary death courtesy of Putin and Netanyahu

See what I mean?

2025 added an extra dose of American carnage with Trump’s psychotic combination of cruelty and incompetence directed at the very foundations of the country. I’ve got to be honest, I’m tired of the USA living rent-free in my head so I’ve issued an eviction notice. It’s not that I don’t have sympathy and empathy for what’s happening there, but a majority of the country voted for this …again. Like a dog voting to have its nose rubbed in its own shit. Maybe this time the lesson will stick.

Anyway, leaving world events aside (yes, please!), I also said this at the end of last year:

For me personally, 2024 was just fine. I was relatively healthy all year. The people I love were relatively healthy too. I don’t take that for granted.

Again, same. No major health issues in 2025. My loved ones are well. My gratitude grows.

I’ve already written about how much music I played in 2025. I’m hoping to continue that trajectory in 2026 with lots of sessions. We’re four days into the year and I’ve already had two excellent sessions. There are another three lined up this week.

One of the highlights of 2025 was my trip with Jessica to Donegal. Learning Irish by day, playing in sessions by night, all while surrounded by gorgeous scenery. I’ve already got a return trip planned for 2026. I’m also planning to be back in Belfast for the annual tradfest.

Other 2025 highlights include:

• Curating an excellent edition of UX London.
• Releasing the new Salter Cane album and playing those songs live—I want to do more of that in 2026.

Most of my travel in 2025 was either for music or family.

I made three trips to the States to see the in-laws: California, Florida, and most recently, Arizona. I can’t say I feel very comfortable going to the States right now, especially to Florida, where people openly display their intolerance on their T-shirts, and Arizona where they openly display their guns.

I went back to my hometown of Cobh a few times during the year to visit my mother.

Aside from those family trips, I went to Belfast, Donegal, Galway, and Clare in Ireland, Cáceres in Spain, Namur in Belgium, and Amsterdam. Only that last one was work-related. I always make sure to get to CSS Day.

Meanwhile here on my website, I posted 695 times in 2025. That includes 345 notes, 262 links, and 86 blog posts. Here are some I’m quite fond of:

• The web on mobile
• Portugeating
• Style your underlines
• Hounds Of Love
• Research
• Bóthar
• Why use React?
• Tunes and typefaces

All in all, 2025 was a grand year for me. It wasn’t all that different from the year before. I’m at an age where the years aren’t all that differentiated from one another. I’m okay with that because I’m also at an age where I know what brings me joy and satisfaction, and I can focus on those things.

So here’s to 2026, which I hope I will spend doing more of what I did in 2025: playing music, speaking Irish, eating good food, hanging out with friends, reading good books, travelling to interesting places, and staying relatively healthy.

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