The Warmth of a Working Kitchen

There’s a thing that happens in a home kitchen around seven thirty pm that I think about constantly. You’ve got rice going on one burner, something caramelizing in a pan on another, and you’re chopping herbs for a third thing that doesn’t exist yet but will in twenty minutes. The whole kitchen is warm. You’re not rushing, you’re not stressed, you’re just… in it, totally immersed into that exact moment, moving between all of the stations - tasting, adjusting, mixing… everything is alive at once.

That feeling, that specific warmth of having multiple things in motion, all at different stages of becoming, is what I’ve been chasing in my work for the past year. I started calling it ABC - Always Be Cooking ©️.

It’s not a productivity system. I need to say that upfront, because the internet has poisoned the word “system” for me. It’s closer to a disposition, a way of relating to your own creative energy.

The Cold Kitchen Problem

Here’s what I noticed about myself before ABC: I would work intensely on one thing for weeks, ship it, and then go completely dark. Not intentionally, but I’d just cool down. “The kitchen” would go empty.
And every time I tried to start something new after one of those cold stretches, it felt like lighting a wet match. Sure, starter boilerplates are great, but yet some of my best ideas died in that gap, not because they were bad, but because I let the stove go cold and couldn’t face turning it back on. Sort of a momentum, as you may call it, died there.

I think a lot of builders know this feeling but don’t name it. We talk about burnout, procrastination, imposter syndrome. But sometimes the real problem is simpler and more physical than any of those: your creative engine is just cold, you haven’t made anything in weeks, your hands forgot what it feels like to be mid-creation. And the longer you stay cold, the harder it is to warm back up.

Keep Something Cooking

ABC is my answer to that. Keep something cooking, always. Not ten things, not a frantic hustle kitchen with flames shooting everywhere. Just don’t let every burner go dark at the same time. Have a project that’s almost done, have one that’s a messy prototype, have an idea you’re lazily researching in the background with no pressure. The specific number doesn’t matter. What matters is that when you sit down tomorrow morning, something, however small or mighty it might be, is already warm.

Agents Are the Flame

Now, the part that makes this possible in a way it wasn’t a few years ago: AI agents changed what “keeping the kitchen warm” actually means.

Before agents, running things in parallel meant you personally had to context-switch between them, which is exhausting and produces mediocre work. The overhead of keeping multiple pots going was real and brutal. Most people correctly chose to focus on one thing at a time, because the alternative was spreading yourself too thin.

Agents dissolve that tradeoff. They’re not assistants you delegate to. They’re more like a low flame you can leave running under a pot overnight. While I’m deep in one project, agents are doing the unglamorous middle work on others: research, drafts, tests, iteration. Not autonomously shipping things. Nothing goes out without my hands on it. But they keep things from going cold.

The best analogy I have: agents are the warmth in the kitchen, not the chef. I’m still the one who decides what’s on the menu, who tastes everything, who says “this isn’t ready” or “kill this dish entirely.” They do the stirring that keeps the sauce from breaking, the basting that keeps the roast from drying out, the quiet maintenance work that keeps a dish alive between the moments I’m actually standing over it. You see, a chef without warmth is still a chef. Warmth without a chef is just a fire hazard. So actually I haven’t started from zero in months - there’s always something warm to pick up.

I think the reason this matters, beyond just getting more done, is psychological. When you’re always mid-creation, your relationship to ideas changes. New ideas don’t feel threatening, because there’s always an open burner. Shipping doesn’t feel precious, because another dish is right behind it. Even failure feels different. A dish that doesn’t work out just becomes compost for the next one. You stop white-knuckling every project, because your identity isn’t riding on any single thing.

There’s a specific kind of confidence that comes from this. Not the loud, performative kind. More like the quiet steadiness of someone who knows their kitchen is warm and there’s always something to work with. I’ve started making better decisions since adopting this mindset, not because I’m smarter, but because I’m less desperate, and have way more breadth than before. Nothing is do-or-die when you have six other things simmering.

The Warm Prison

I want to be careful not to oversell this. ABC won’t save you if you’re building the wrong things, it won’t replace taste or judgment or the willingness to kill your darlings. And there’s a real risk of using “always be cooking” as a cope for never finishing anything. If everything is perpetually simmering and nothing ever plates, you’ve just built yourself a warm prison (albeit a really cozy one!).

The discipline of ABC is knowing when to plate, knowing which dish is ready even if it’s imperfect, shipping the thing that’s 85% there while keeping the others warm. Not hiding behind busyness as a substitute for the vulnerability of putting something real into the world.

But with that caveat: the single biggest unlock of my last year has been to keep my kitchen warm, not letting the fire die, always to have something cooking. It sounds almost stupidly simple when I write it out.

Maybe that’s all good creative advice ever is. Someone giving you permission to do the obvious thing you already knew but hadn’t named yet.

And so, at last - the stove is right there. Turn it on.