What these bright-eyed park acrobats teach me about design, focus, and building in public.

I’ll say it plainly: squirrels are my favorite animal. They’re everywhere and nearly invisible until you decide to see them. Once you do, you notice patterns—how they cache, how they rehearse routes, how they debug a leap before they attempt it. I started treating them like tiny mentors in a gray hoodie, and I swear my craft got better.

Why squirrels are my favorite animal (and what that reveals)

It’s not nostalgia; it’s mechanics. Squirrels model a loop I want in my work:

• Scout: scan branches, pick a viable route.
• Stash: cache today’s surplus for tomorrow’s unknowns.
• Sprint: commit to a move without melodrama.
• Scope: stop, reassess, update the map.
• Share: chatter when danger’s near—lightweight team comms.

I use that loop to write chapters, tweak LifeOS, and survive “cracking lost” days. The loop is calm. It’s iterative. It’s enough.

How squirrels are my favorite animal shaped my design brain

Watch a squirrel on a fence line. They favor waypoints—posts, knots, corners—and they keep them close enough that a single miss won’t be fatal. That’s a product roadmap:

• Ship to the next post, not across the entire yard.
• Allow a safe fallback (branching, feature flags).
• Cache as you go: notes, snippets, test data.

In LifeOS, that means thin slices with visible waypoints: a List↔Grid toggle that persists; a metadata row that reads well at narrow widths; a token flow you can reason about on paper.

Where squirrels are my favorite animal leads in writing

Drafts are caches. Scenes are branches. I quit trying to “fly” a whole chapter in one go. I build landing spots: a true line, a beat that clicks, a reveal that earns its jump. If I miss, I can grip the last good sentence and try again. Squirrels don’t apologize for taking two hops.

The squirrel’s rule of play (and why it’s strategic)

They chase each other, pause, spiral a trunk, vanish, return. That’s not wasted motion; it’s skill rehearsal under joy. Builders forget this. If everything is grim, we hold our breath and ship worse. A little play (a fun commit message, a tiny animation, a clean φ-grid poster) keeps the muscle elastic.

Cache small, ship small, rest real

Squirrels stash hundreds of seeds knowing many won’t be found. That’s fine. In creative work, not every note must “pay off.” We overvalue perfect recall and undervalue generous caching. Put the idea where future-you can stumble on it. Let the forest help.

A tiny field guide for builders

• Branch-test: Before a big leap, test the next branch with a toe (spike branch, throwaway prototype).
• Waypoints: Map three posts in sight. Name them. Build to the nearest.
• Caches: Tag your stashes (seed type = idea class). Future-you says thanks.
• Chatter: Fast, honest status over silence—“hawk north” beats “everything’s fine.”
• Play: Run the trunk once for speed and fun. It pays back later.

Today’s squirrel-scale plan (ϕ-scaled)

• 5 min — Scout: pick the next waypoint for LifeOS.
• 8 min — Stash: jot three lines for the chapter.
• 13 min — Sprint: ship a micro-fix/UI polish.
• 3 min — Scope: log what changed, what’s next.
• 2 min — Rest: go outside; find a tail.

Circles are promises you can keep with your feet. Squirrels keep them daily. I’m learning.

— Rev. Brian Scott O’keefe (randomblink)

“Notice a small life doing a great job; copy the loop.”