Yeah, I can just do that.
I like writing code. I like figuring things out. It’s fun and it’s the point.
The Math of Why You Can’t Focus at Work
Deep work is statistically near-impossible. We’ve normalized an environment where focus has been engineered out of the workday.
Sounds about right. Nice visualizations, and there’s a nifty little tool at the end of the article.
This is cool. Had no idea there are more than 1000 domains.
I definitely notice this when I use ChatGPT or Claude to proofread long-form work messages or drafts of my blog posts. It does give me useful feedback here and there, but in general it strips away my personality and quirks. I think moving forward when I use an LLM for writing: stick to grammar corrections and syntax suggestions, but keep my voice and authenticity. Even if my writing sometimes sounds a bit convoluted to machines or robots, I believe that’s just how humans communicate and express ourselves.
For example, having a frictionless to-do app means I end up with too many fucking tasks. Some things need to be unsaved, neglected, forgotten, ignored, left undone so better things can be done. Or so I can spend more delightful moments at ease, not doing but being.
Yep, I am guilty of this. Sometimes I optimize too much and everything just works so efficiently that I end up working more instead of using that time for something actually meaningful. Trying to create more meaningful friction in my life now.
Many years on the job and I still don’t get it.
Many of these are also aspects of becoming a better designer. A good reminder to not measure my productivity solely based on the amount of designing I’ve done in a day.
I Started Talking to My Computer Instead of Typing. It Changed How I Think.
I’ve been doing this at work for brainstorming and notice how fast I can get things off my chest before organizing them with writing and editing. Can definitely recommend utilizing talking as a mode more often.
Reading this brings me joy and even gives me courage to keep creating and tinkering.
Doomprompting Is the New Doomscrolling.
I’m an AI proponent, but I can’t deny how insidious its use can become.
how to slow down time (the neuroscience of time perception)
Some good nuggets on how we can change our perception of time and make time feels longer.
If you’re in a group of twenty-three people, there’s a 50% chance that two of them share a birthday. If you’re in a group of seventy people, that probability jumps to over 99%.
My team has 18 people, and we have two pairs of people who share birthdays (on two separate dates)!
When I have a piece of writing in mind, what I have, in fact, is a mental bucket: an attractor for and generator of thought. It’s like a thematic gravity well, a magnet for what would otherwise be a mess of iron filings. I’ll read books differently and listen differently in conversations. In particular I’ll remember everything better; everything will mean more to me. That’s because everything I perceive will unconsciously engage on its way in with the substance of my preoccupation. A preoccupation, in that sense, is a hell of a useful thing for a mind.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Make something that doesn’t matter
Having a pointless hobby that you genuinely enjoy (my endless tinkering with this site, for example) is seriously fulfilling. I don’t know where this will take me, I’m just happy to figure things out along the way.
21 observations from people watching
I can see how much someone accepts themselves by looking for intense distortions in the way they are interacting with the world. Find the range in how they treat people; if there is a split difference in their stance towards people they admire, and people they look down on.
And other interesting insights about humans. Also, today I learned wedding painting is a thing.
The whole point of making creative work is to share one’s own experience - if there’s no experience to share, why bother? If it’s not worth writing, it’s not worth reading.
I’ve been using AI a lot for work and to improve how I write and articulate, but I never let it write for me. You may not have the perfect words for what you want to say, but it’s your voice, your thoughts, and that’s what makes you you. So I’ll never understand why some people would rather share writings that have been made out to be theirs when it’s clearly written by AI.
As you read these words, you are uniquely yourself, different from who you were a moment ago and who you’ll become in the next. By embracing this present version of yourself, you release yourself from the bonds of history while simultaneously doing the greatest possible favor to your future self.
And we can always rewrite our story. Instead of dwelling on what happened, we can reframe why it happened and what it can mean for us going forward.
A collection of articles and an ode to the personal web.
The difference between those who succeed and those who stagnate isn’t access to options — it’s the willingness to exercise agency over them.
But if you’ve done great work, if you’ve produced superb software or fixed a fault with an aeroplane or investigated a problem... without telling anyone, your work is wasted. You have to write, you have to tell people, and you have to do so in a way that they will take notice.
Owners are concerned with the value of what they own. Stewards are concerned with how well it can serve the group. And this makes all the difference in producing better outcomes.
I couldn’t agree more. This applies to designs and products, as well as lots of other things in life.
A thoughtful perspective on how to approach one’s career and play the long game.
your dreams demand your best hours
There are hours in a day, and then there are your best hours. Your dreams demand your best hours.
It’s so easy to fall into the habit of going through the motions. As much as I enjoy my work and see it as paid education, this is a good reminder to prioritize making times for things that truly nourish my soul.
Beautiful, boring, and without soul
By tending to the soil of our own hearts and minds with care and intention, we can cultivate products that not only serve a function but also make us come alive. In doing so, we open the door to a future where technology becomes a canvas for expression, a catalyst for connection, and a testament to the enduring power of the human heart.
I find that if I love something deeply, I end up loving it all the more if I locate its weak points. Often, this helps you find the necessary points of tradeoff that actually made the thing great. If conducted covertly, this particular mental habit allows you to love people more deeply and realistically, by noticing how the annoying thing about them and the great thing are fundamentally intertwined.
I think avoiding summary is even more important when writing, possibly it’s the first step to good writing. You are a primary source. Lots of people couch their opinions with citations, or “studies show”, or they create writing that is an attempt to shorten some portion of thought or history. But this mostly makes for less interesting writing. I think one should write as much as they can with their own empiricism, their own senses, giving the reader their own characterization of life or events.
the quiet rebellion of a little life
choosing a little life is an act of defiance. it’s a way of saying, i will not measure my worth by how much i achieve or acquire. i will measure it by how deeply i live. it’s about valuing presence over productivity, connection over competition, depth over display.
Advice for a friend who wants to start a blog
Great, practical pointers that I’ll revisit. Just try to amuse yourself
is how I started my blog.
A lovely book for learning and understanding Vietnamese type design.
We are all pushed toward growth — personal growth, professional growth, growth in our network and our societal status — and the terms of this growth are often set by platforms and media outlets that are, in turn, pursuing growth. And as I’ve discussed, the way the terms of our growth is framed is almost entirely through a digital ecosystem of warring intents and different ways of pursuing growth — some ethical, many not.
This made me realize there are things that I’ve just accepted and ignored. I also can’t help but feel I’ve played a part in creating the state of the digital world we’re in today.
The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990-2024)
Honestly one of the best videos I’ve ever watched. Absolute genius of an edit, too.
Maybe instead of accumulating more responsibility, you need less. Maybe instead of adding new habits, you need fewer. Maybe instead of more structure, you need more wide spaces of time.
A wonderful series. I’m glad I came across the newsletter as I’m reviewing my goals and focus for the new year.
10 things I wish I knew about careers when I started
At the end of your 20s, you want to have clear lists — what you love, what you hate, what you’re good at, what you’re bad at. If you know yourself well, you will know what direction to point yourself in and what ladder to climb. You will know what makes you happy, fulfilled, and powerful at work. You also want to have a community — interesting people that you’re desperate to work with again, and wonderful people who want to help you grow and attain whatever goals you end up having.
Where do you want to go today?
The world is full of possibilities. So why shouldn’t you get a shot at what you want? I can tell you a lot crazier things have happened than your idea turning out to be good.
Bookmarks I should have shared a long time ago
An amazing list with a ton of goodies.
The Pleasures of Talking Nonsense with Someone We Love
Intimacy is about daring to be increasingly and bravely weird with someone else, and finding out that that’s okay with them.
Crabs, Creativity, and the Endless Cycle of Imitation
Real, timeless inspiration comes not from what’s already been done, but from what is waiting to be seen.
Bridging the hard and the soft
A framework of segmenting machine logic and human logic at different scales or gradually transitioning across different dimensions.
When you want to learn how to do something yourself, most people won’t understand. They’ll assume the only reason we do anything is to get it done, and doing it yourself is not the most efficient way. But that’s forgetting about the joy of learning and doing.
There’s a difference, of course, between feeling seen and being seen.
This. So much of this post captures precisely why I stopped posting on Instagram and using social media in general.
Enjoyment comes from seeing progress, looking at how far you have come.
The UX of LEGO Interface Panels
The ultimate guide I never knew I needed.
20 Lessons From 20 Years of Managing Money
So many investors assume complicated implies sophisticated when simplicity is the true form of sophistication when it comes to investment success.
digital consumption keeps me from getting better at my job
I resonate with the author’s struggle and am guilty of this from time to time. This is also a big reason I stopped being on social media.
Travel Is No Cure for the Mind
When you view life as a continuous cycle in this box, it can be easy to take its components for granted and view everything as a mundane blur of familiar events. However, when you take the time to actually inspect the box with mindful awareness of its contents, you will discover the true amazement that lives within them.
Even if your homework is tedious – and I certainly concede that there is a lot of dull and pointless homework meted out – nobody is giving it out because they want the answer. It’s to develop your skills, to help you piece together a better mental model of maths, and – guess what – to improve yourself as a human being.
Essentially, you ask what the material is telling you. You ask yourself if and how it might apply to you. You make notes. You may write about it in your journal. You try to explain to others. Contemplative reading may also be repetitive, where you stay on each topic for hours or even days. This is a slow internalizing form of consuming information to assimilate the essence and blend it with the ideas you already have in your head.
In the camera roll, the virtue of the image is completely reframed. A picture is no longer held to the rules of being good or bad, powerful or insignificant, evocative or dull. Rather, the photos maintain their own separate life within us, casting a gaze and a pressure of their own. Instead of possessions we have images; instead of memories, we have castoff snapshots.
A minimal browser on iOS that lets you customize it however you like.
But do you know what will impact your life in 20 years? How you spend your time, how your treat your body, and who you spend your time with.
Long-term investing is about being able to absorb manageable damage; if you can’t do that, you’re pushed into the much harder trick of attempting to avoid short-term volatility. You’re only durable when you care more about surviving volatility than you do looking dumb for getting hit by it in the first place.
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.
A social media site for song recommendations.
My Failed Personal Site Redesign
I love reading about other people’s process and the behind-the-scene details, and I feel like I’m going through a similar thing Jim Nielsen did here.
As you build your craft, whether it’s writing or radio or glass blowing or leading a team, you develop ever more ideas about what’s possible in your work. As your skill grows, so too do your ambitions, such that your taste always and forever outstrips your abilities. For every increment of improvement, you extend your desires out that much further.
The Japanese have a concept called ‘yutori’ – an idea that connotes a sense of spaciousness, elbowroom, leeway, reserve, margin, allowance, latitude… time.
Finding My Place in the Unfamiliar
Innovation rarely comes from the centre of things. It comes from the edges, from the people who question assumptions because they’ve never quite fit into them. From the ones who bring different perspectives because they’ve had to navigate different worlds.
It’s like anything in life. There are standards. The standards have to be enforced. If the standards aren’t enforced, then the standards slip. This is the role of the CEO in any company. Some care and some don’t. Great CEOs care a lot. Steve cared a lot.
The Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation
A beautiful site for discovering poetry.
An online curated space where good design and coffee meet. Two of my favorite things!
Design is about consistency, and consistency builds trust. Increasing trustworthy craft means you know the teammate next to you will sweat the details as you should.
If a subject is naturally complex, work to make it no more complex than it needs to be—but no less. People are not averse to complexity, but they need to know it’s worth their time and energy. Educating them on how to do something is not enough, there should be education on why it’s important. People enjoy learning if the subject is engaging.
A lot I can resonate with and have experienced firsthand.
40 questions to ask yourself every year
This is my second year returning to this list. Almost that time of the year again.
Find people who challenge you, but never feed your self-doubt. Find people who, rather than give you what they think are the right answers, instead hold up a mirror and push you to discover the answer for your own damn self. They’ll be cheering you on, waiting for you at the finish line.
I enjoy this visual essay by Robin Rendle. This topic in particular is something I’ve been pondering recently.
The Disappearance of an Internet Domain
Physical history is never as separate from our digital future as we like to think.
A ‘Life Review’ Can Be Powerful, at Any Age
Life transitions tend to put everything upside down. The things that were important before are perhaps not that important anymore. Life review helps people accept changes and also to search for new commitments.
How to stop getting interrupted (aka, turn the worst offenders into the best defenders)
I’ve found that enlisting people as protectors of a cause helps them embrace that need for themselves.
On limitations that hide in your blindspot
Looking for limitations is about extending care to your future self.
There’s nothing glamorous about being a designer at a startup. It’s a role that frequently values speed and pragmatism over going deep in the craft. It’s not all big launches, viral tweets, building for happy paths, and clear-cut product requirements.
Aligning yourself in this way is difficult, but such is the case for the most meaningful endeavors in life. Difficulty requires ingenuity, and ingenuity is what makes you feel like you’re working toward your potential. The thing about potential, however, is that it’s invisible and can’t be photographed on a magazine cover. But having integrity is about trusting that it’s there, even if you’re the only one that can see it.
Relaxation is calm alertness guided by love; and as such it often induces great effort, growth, learning, and transformation.
Desperation is the single greatest advantage you have as a startup. It takes you down to the lowest level of detail. Desperation inspires creativity and intense focus. It is an essential ingredient to building great products and services.
My own magic is a small one: to write in order to uncover what I think; to prefigure a future of work that serves the living; to listen intently as people speak aloud a story of themselves that is, in the speaking, being rewritten.
The Three Foundational Questions
Without hope, there can be no ambition, and I believe that ambition is critical to the development of a healthy mind. The only reason you work on something is because there’s something you’re working toward, and it’s this ability to envision a future state that makes challenge possible in the first place.
There’s a difference between a process and a toolbox. There’s no "right order" for applying these tools. They don’t make up a process. Each tool is a small thing used in a response to a specific challenge in a specific moment.
Mastering our mind for better ideas
Six habits for mental clarity, creative insight; and ironically, sustained productivity.
The Best Camera Apps for iPhone
Guillaume shared this with me on Posts. I’ve downloaded just about every app on the list.
This journey isn’t just about completing code; it’s about growing as a developer and creator. Each finished project, no matter how small, is a step towards becoming someone who not only starts with enthusiasm but finishes with satisfaction.
It’s a small thing, but lots of small splinters lead to an agonizing experience.
Every webpage deserves to be a place
Have a cursor party on your website.
Everyone deserves the opportunity to do this: to find the thing they love as much as my companion-in-conversation at a boring event loved butterflies, and to contribute their spark to it, which might even be the inspiration for the next person.
Seriousness is love and curiosity expressed earnestly.
You don’t have to be a “content creator” to have a website.
Give yourself permission to exist and be seen regardless of whether you have a blog, side projects or “content” - whatever it means.
Making a Portable Macintosh Mini
A nice iteration after the Macintosh Studio.
Redesigning Piccalilli: the first part of the design process
Everything in the design process is also completely disposable. It gives us the freedom to experiment and work at an incredibly fast pace as a unit.
Don’t use dumb quotes for quotations or apostrophes—the nerds will revolt.
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process
I paid attention to things I liked to do, and found ways to do more of that. I made it easy for interesting people to find me, and then I hung out with them. We did projects together. I kept iterating—paying attention to the context, removing things that frustrated me, and expanding things that made me feel alive. Eventually, I looked up and noticed that my life was nothing like I imagined it would be. But it fit me.
Copying is the way design works
Whether you believe that it’s worthwhile or worthless to copy, whether you think that copies are a valuable part of the design community or a scourge, you are using software, hardware, websites and apps that all owe their existence to copying.
Great write-up, and very nice interactions.
Great design starts with writing
The best method for doing great design work is writing. In prose. Not in bullet points, not wireframes, not diagrams, and never spreadsheets.
The things we make are never done. There’s always the next feature or pivot or bug or optimization. In this way, digital design is inherently ephemeral. Our work was never meant to exist forever, and honestly, it would be a shame if it did.