Weekly Commit #004

Last week I mentioned shipping a "Now" tab on my site. This week I want to talk about where that idea actually comes from.

The /now movement

In 2015, Derek Sivers, the guy behind CD Baby and the book Anything You Want, wrote a short post asking a simple question: if a friend hadn't seen you in a year, what would you tell them you're up to?

Quick aside on the book: Anything You Want is a 90-minute read about how Sivers built CD Baby into a $22M business almost by accident, and then sold it. It's less a business memoir and more a collection of short, punchy lessons, "no yes, either hell yeah or no," "make it anything you want," "care about your customers more than yourself." If you've never read it, fix that. It's the kind of book you finish in one sitting and then quote back to people for years.

Back to /now.

Not a bio. Not a resume. Not a highlight reel. Just: what are you actually doing right now?

He added a /now page to his site, suggested others do the same, and the idea quietly turned into a movement. Today there's a directory (nownownow.com) with thousands of people doing the same thing.

Three things I like about it

1. It replaces the "what do you do?" question with "what are you doing?" One is an identity. The other is a snapshot.
2. It's honest by design. A bio can stay frozen for years. A /now page that hasn't moved in six months is visibly stale, and that pressure is the point.
3. It's low-effort, high-signal. No essays, no analytics, no SEO. Just a list of what's currently true.

My version at andrecamara.dev/now has the time where I am, what I'm working on, what I'm reading, and the last track I played on Spotify. Small page, low ceremony, more current than any bio I could write.

Other things from this week

More in #005.