> Every day I’d have more and more state accumulation on my machine - open apps, unsaved changes, open tabs.

I resonate with your comment.

I grew up during a time when PC state was ephemeral (DOS days). Unsaved changes essentially meant lost data. Open apps were gone once the computer was shut down (and the computer was shut down daily - a 250W power supply had an expensive power draw; in contrast a Mac Mini only sips 1W when sleeping). This helped me develop a habit of keeping only necessary things open, bookmarking what I want to keep, and of habitually pressing Ctrl+S to save data. I never keep any tabs open (my browser loses all tabs upon close anyway), and my inbox is zero.

The cost I pay for this is context recovery -- every day, I have to essentially set everything up again. I do write notes or leave comments in code to remind myself where I left off, but I essentially started fresh. But there is an upside to this: I start each day from an uncluttered slate, which leads to clarity in my head. When context is ephemeral, I'm more likely to not be beholden to an existing state.

This actually helps me increase the quality of my writing and my code. It's akin to the heuristic of "throwing away your first draft and rewriting" to achieve higher quality. Write your code once, delete it, and write it again from scratch. The next version takes a quarter of the time to write but can be twice the quality because you've prototyped it in your head but you are not bound to your crufty first attempt. There was an HN discussion on this a while ago:

https://grantslatton.com/software-pathfinding

If you save state, you can resume more quickly, which is great if you're on a roll, but it's also an accumulation of more clutter that blocks certain more creative thoughts.