Things I Like
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A structureless life is a depressing life. Our days work better when they have a reliable shape. Grab a copy of Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals (if you can’t afford it, see #2 on this list) and read about the daily routines of famous artists, scientists, and creative people. Take inspiration from them. Cobble together your own daily routine and stick to it.
Yup, another bit of advice for graduates, but I think it also translates to all of us. I'm a huge fan of the daily routine. Even between jobs this spring, I kept to a routine. I also love the library and recommend people use it; it's easy, you can read digitally if you want, and the price is right.
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But that narrative isn’t quite right. Portland prices are skyrocketing, yes. And newcomers are generally the type of people who want to live in the center of the city, near transit and bike lanes, which drives up prices for those areas. But it’s not tech or newcomers that are solely to blame. Portland hasn’t been able to slow its rental crisis because in a city that prides itself on progressivism, many of the traditional tools used to create more affordability are off the table.
The best part of this article is the fact that it doesn't put all the blame on newcomers, but points out that how the city deals with the growth is important. We can't stop people from moving here, what we can do is get much more progressive about how we build and develop to keep housing affordable.
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Such concerns have not deterred a growing number of small businesses in Sweden from testing the concept. Many found that a shorter workday can reduce turnover, enhance employee creativity and lift productivity enough to offset the cost of hiring additional staff.
There are two things I find really intriguing about this concept. The first is the fact that we still think of paying for knowledge work like it is factory work. Something great, such as a great logo, can take 5 minutes, but behind that five minutes can be 25 years of experience (Paula Scher talks about this so wonderfully). But the other interesting piece is that both a surgery unit and an auto repair shop could make more money because they made more use of their buildings. I found, personally, that 6 hours is about right when I was freelancing. I may solve a code problem when I walk on errands after work or I may do it while cooking dinner. Knowledge work isn't contained by time.
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I'm trying to drink a lot less alcohol, but what I miss about it is the ritual of making a drink in the evening while I'm cooking dinner. So I made my first drinking vinegar a few weeks ago. I used frozen cherries and it's super delicious. Add in a twist of lime and soda water and you've got a pretty great mocktail.
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Consider this a very high-level primer of the tools and techniques we’re leveraging these days. This is by no means an in-depth account of each, if something piques your interest there are links below for you to explore further. Really, I just wanted to expose our secret blend of CSS front-end starter files naming conventions, basic gruntfile.js, syntax, coding methodology etc.
I love this, I love seeing how different places, especially consultancies that are starting things a lot, do it. And what I really like about this is that it's very loose, and you could easily modify it.
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Policing a design system never works in my experience. It never works because people don’t like rigid systems, being told what to do, and will straight up do the opposite. Being liberal in accepting things into the system, and being liberal about how you go about that, ensures you don’t police the system. You collaborate on it.
Mark is doing some of the best writing and speaking on large scale design systems I've read and heard in a long time. He isn't focusing on the nitty gritty details of implementation, but he's focusing on the big picture and that's been what interests me lately. Tooling and implementation come and go, but big picture ideas usually stick around.
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But also remember that the greatest challenges you will face starting tomorrow, have little to do with your talent. Sure, talent matters. It matters a lot. But I like to say that 10% of your career is your talent and ingenuity. And the other 90% rests on your energy and enthusiasm, your humility and perseverance, your professionalism and dedication to pushing through every bump in the road you will encounter.
I like this address. I went to art school, but have never made my living from art. This past six months has found me creating again, but there is a lot in this speech that can be applied across disciplines, and the above quote is definitely true no matter what your work is. Careers are long, they are full of change and bumps, there is so much that is unexpected, and what gets you through is not luck or talent, but, at times, sheer perseverance.
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Activism spawned from these online conspiracy groups wastes time and money, and it’s increasing. In a recent interview, Californian Republican Representative Devin Nunes said that 90% of the communication he receives from constituents is conspiracy-theorist nonsense, up from approximately 10% when he took office in 2003. It’s impacting the political process on everything from zoning laws (fears of UN Agenda 21) to public health policy (water fluoridation). In Hawaii last month, for example, lawmakers killed a simple procedural bill that would have allowed the state to more quickly adopt federal guidelines on administering vaccines in case of an outbreak—because outraged residents claimed that vaccines were responsible for Zika (and, of course, for autism).
This article is fascinating, talking about how the way we are kept in a bubble in our social networks (always seeing things we like or that are related to what we like) is resulting in shifts in policy. I saw this with the Portland fluoride vote. The amount of conspiracy theories and bad science being talked about during that time was unbelievable. And it feels like it is only getting worse with this current election cycle.
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There are very few things that require instantaneous reply or attention, such as a service being down or a major security flaw. Most of the questions, doubts or bugs can be resolved at later notice. We are an attention hungry generation, but it’s disrespectful to assume that anyone we ping will immediately drop whatever they’re involved in. With multilayered communication we can choose an appropriate medium for the severity and urgency of the message where about to convey. We need to value each others time and attention.
This is a great article. And it's interesting because I've been a remote team member now for several years. We talk about how tools can be asynchronous, but then we don't treat them as such. It used to be that way with people expecting instant replies to emails, but now it is instant replies to Slack. The point of the tool is the the information waits for us, so let's calm down a bit. But this whole article has some really wonderful points about how to work remotely.
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If you’re passionate about your work and you have a certain temperament, you may be inclined towards your own Work Singularities. But I know people who don’t ever work that way and still produce amazing outcomes. I don’t want to over-romanticize this kind of scheduling just because it happens to be a thing that I do. There are other ways to get a lot done.
This piece is a reaction piece, so you should probably read the links at the beginning to understand it fully. But what I truly appreciated about this was her way of framing what she calls a "work singularity", a time where you are pushing through to finish something because you just have to get it done. And it is a short burst, followed by downtime to recover. And, she also acknowledges, you never need work this way to do great things, which is comforting because I never work that way.
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Historians can trace the concept to 18th century England, when it was probably known as a dumbwaiter. It may have become popular at a time when household servants were in declining supply. In the absence of maids or footmen to refill wine goblets and deliver condiments, diners were forced to reach across the table or interrupt conversation with "pass the pimientos please." The Lazy Susan helped to solve that problem, and plenty of 18th century examples prove it.
Just a tidbit I found super fascinating!
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Accessibility is not a checklist item that only needs to be considered in some projects, or at the end of a process. Rather, these practices should be woven into every step of a project and role in a team. An accessible product stems from everyone on a team owning and shouldering the responsibility. It's part of our jobs as creators.
I know Winston, one of the Vox Product people who's been working so hard to bring accessibility into their process and it's so great to see what's happening with the work they are doing. This stuff is important and this post points out all the reasons why, it's so great.
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It would be ideal for me if an SDK could be created on the fly for different people based on project needs. So, for example, for freelancer ‘A’, I don’t want to send them HTML or CSS as I know they’re not building anything, so I just send them mood boards and inspiration, image assets and branding guidelines. For freelancer ‘b’, a front-end developer, I send boilerplate, CSS, template assets and icons. I mix and match and provide the design SDK, rather than send along a URL and expect them to know what they need and how to use them.
I'm thinking about style guides a lot again, for reasons. And this idea from Mark is really interesting. How do we make a thing that documents and helps the entire team? That is a hard to answer question, but also really necessary before any team approaches a style guide type of project.
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Taken together, Leckie’s world subverts traditional gender stereotypes, features genderless characters who are caretakers, heroes, leaders, and villains (often several of those characteristics at once), questions notions of gender in language and the male defaults which continue to infect us, all the while simultaneously proposing fascinating relationships between humans and AIs that probe complex areas of privacy, dependance, and love.
Mandy's writing here is amazing. She takes what is currently happening with AI and then takes a look at how AI is portrayed in fiction. It's amazing because the people currently building these bots are taking the most unimaginative route possible. I realize that I link to everything Mandy writes, but that's because it is all so worth reading. And if you haven't yet, while on her site, check out her book reviews, lots of good ideas for reading in there.
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By the way, at dusk or dawn (which can last for hours in an airliner) you may see a clearly delineated, barely curved shadow on the sky above the horizon. That's the shadow of the earth on the sky — one of the few opportunities, for the non-astronauts among us, to observe more or less directly the shape of our planet.
Beautiful photos in this one, and even though I've come to dread flying, I do find the ideas and facts in this piece fascinating.