The Book is Getting a Revision (Yes, Already)

I gave out Life as User Experience as an ebook in October. Recently, I printed a physical copy for myself. You know, to see how it actually feels as a Real Book.

And now I'm in the middle of a revision.

The good news: there's not many copies sold yet. A small consolation prize for having published prematurely being there's not many who knows.

What's Wrong With It?

Nothing much, really, and at the same time, too many things:

• Too many sub-chapters. The book has more section breaks than a train schedule. Some are useful. Many are not.
• A few to many Norwegian words. I love sprinkling in digg and passe and vedlikehold. But there's a line between "charming cultural flavor" and "requires a glossary."
• Overuse of certain words. Turns out I have favorite words. They show up. A lot. More than they should.
• Sentences that need rewriting. Some are clunky. Some try too hard. Some should probably just be deleted.
• Paragraphs that should be shorter. Or gone entirely.

The revisions I'm making feel right. Good, even. Like the book is becoming more itself.

Which makes it slightly embarrassing that I published it with all the "errors" still in there.

But hey—at least it's appropriately unfinished, right?

The Paradox of Winter Maintenance

Here's the thing: I was supposed to be in what we in the book call "winter mode". Both literally and metaphorically. Mørketid. Dark season. The time of year when you're supposed to slow down, scale back, give yourself permission to do less.

Instead, I've spent the last few weeks:

• Updating almost all the iOS apps (six in two weeks, pluss 2 more in the days after)
• Revising the book that literally talks about the importance of seasonal adjustment
• Doing all this as a side hustle to an already full life with a demanding job, family, and everything else that comes with being human

So much for gentle degradation and graceful failsafes.

"Both you and the systems around you need maintenance. Adjustments. Upgrades. Shifts. Nothing stays the same—not the tools you use, not the rhythms you keep, not the person you are."

That's from Chapter 20 of the book I'm now revising. The chapter about vedlikehold—the craft of upkeep. The unglamorous, essential work of tending what exists.

Turns out the book needed its own maintenance. Not a big surprise maybe for those who know book publishing-that having been both author, editor and publisher myself, it would be prone to need fix-ups.

Going Against Principles (Again)

The book talks a lot about buffers. About not running at full capacity all the time. About building systems that can handle degradation without collapsing.

And here I am, in the darkest part of the year, when I'm supposed to be gearing down—paradoxically doing more.

But here's the odd thing: it doesn't feel draining.

DigTek—the apps, the book, the blog, the podcast—still feels like one of the things that gives energy rather than takes it. It gets an hour in the morning before "the other life" starts. Maybe an hour or two in the evening when it fits.

This isn't an ode to hustle culture. It's not a "look at me, doing so much!" flex. It's just an honest acknowledgment: sometimes you go against your own principles. Sometimes winter doesn't mean rest—it means tending. Sometimes the work that needs doing is the quiet craft of making things a little better than they were. Even during winter.

The Thing About Appropriately Unfinished

One of the core ideas in the book is this: you're allowed to be appropriately unfinished. Not broken. Not abandoned. Just... in progress. Still figuring it out. Good enough for now, with room to grow.

Publishing a book that itself needs revisions this soon feels like living that principle a little too literally.

But maybe that's the point.

The first edition is out there. It's done in the sense that it exists, that it says what it needs to say. But it's also not done—because I'm learning, adjusting, refining.

The apps work the same way. Version 1.0 ships. Then 1.1. Then 1.2, and so on. The work is never finished because the work is a relationship, not a product.

Same with the book.

Your Chance to Own the Unfinished Version

So here's the slightly cheeky pitch:

If you want to see something truly appropriately unfinished—with all the extra sub-chapters, the overused Norwegian words, the sentences that should've been deleted—you should probably grab the 1st edition while it's still the version out there.

Think of it as a collector's item. Or evidence that even people who write books about life design are still figuring it out as they go.

The 2nd edition will be better. Tighter. Clearer. More digg. (I hope.)

But the 1st edition? That one's honest in a different way.

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Life as User Experience is available now on Apple Books. The revision is happening in real-time, one sub-chapter deletion at a time. For more on the maintenance mindset, check out the recent blog post on The Winter Maintenance Rush or listen to Episode 8: The Maintenance Mindset on The Constraint Protocol podcast.