Archive of posts from July 2022

Ever had a project you’re really stressed about…

…then something real (like an emergency trip to the hospital) wipe out that stress entirely?

It stops mattering in an instance. The stress vanishes.

I hear often about how ‘difficult’ it is to shift your perspective on something stressful, such as something you’re working on.… and yet people do it so easily once their world is shaken.

The project didn’t change.

Perspective changed.

Calm was restored not from external forces, but internal ones.

What if we didn’t need to experience such trials in order to be prompted into peace?

What if we simply chose peace (and change our perspective) by ourselves?

Optimising our work can lead us astray.

We must remember to ask ourselves, who are we optimising for?

The Ruby programming language is optimised for happiness. In Python, you need to type ‘exit()’ to exit an interactive shell because Python prescribes a single correct way to do things. In Ruby, typing ‘quit’ in an interactive shell, exits the shell. Or “exit”, for that matter. It doesn’t mind. It was optimised to understand humans, doing what they mean rather than what they say, instead of pedantically instructing them. Python was optimised for machines, Ruby was optimised for happiness.

Fathom, a website analytics tool, is optimised for happiness. Google Analytics overwhelms site owners with reports that give half the picture, requiring people to plan for the data they want to see. It’s why so many people install it but don’t look at their data. Conversely, Fathom shows just the important stuff that most people want to see, all on one page, and that’s it. Google Analytics was optimised for data, Fathom was optimised for happiness.

OpenSea is optimised for humans. While LooksRare gives NFT traders more rewards and features for buying and selling NFTs, OpenSea knows their humans want charts. So they give you charts. LooksRare does lots of things right, but there are no charts, so people don’t use it as much. As much as NFT traders give OpenSea a hard time for some of its business decisions, LooksRare was optimised for what people said they want, and OpenSea was optimised for what they actually want.

Stickies.app, a Mac app that has barely changed since 2001, is optimised for happiness. While Evernote and other sophisticated note-taking tools give you a plethora of organisational tools and taxonomies, Stickies recreates Post-It notes on your screen, and nothing more. There are courses on how to use Evernote properly. There are no courses for how to use Post-It notes properly. People already know (and love) those big yellow squares.

Are you optimising your work for happiness?

I’ve had a sticky note in my studio this week.

On it, it simply asks, “Is this essential?”

It’s an innocuous question that can have a profound influence on your work, if you let it.

When we ask the question, inessential things get left behind. Features you don’t need don’t get built. Projects you don’t need don’t get started. Essential things get your focus.

When we don’t ask the question, essential things get left behind. Your journaling habit gets left to the end of the day, when you’re too tired and say, “Maybe tomorrow.” Your would that could have been great, was instead good, because you had no time for great.

Find time for great.

Hint: It’s trapped among the inessential.

When we give our time, we can never get it back.

We think we know this, but then we do these things:

We take a 30 minute call that we don’t need, because we felt obliged to say yes. Time becomes free and freely given, not for care about a cause or a person, but because of a bad relationship with the word, ‘No’.

When we take on projects we don’t want because we’d feel awkward to decline or terminate. Time, irreplaceably reduced to nothing again, thanks t not being’t honest enough inwardly and outwardly about what will and won’t be tolerated.

When we sink parts of our day into habits we don’t even approve of ourselves. Time, irreplaceably given away to newsfeeds and algorithms, substances and distractions, because ‘tomorrow’ feels like a better time to do something about it.

Price your time however you like. You can’t get it back. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

And the true value of time only reveals itself when you realise you’re short of it.

It’s worth spending some time thinking about, isn’t it?

If you think compound interest is only for money, you’re missing out:

Compound interest on creativity: A curiosity nurtured becomes a skill. A skill nurtured becomes a mastery. Done multiple times creates an intersection that makes you irreplaceable and uniquely equipped to be the best at your chosen ‘thing’.

Compound interest on relationships: A marriage you invested in has more trust and stronger bonds than a more casual relationship ever could. Same goes for being a parent or a child.

Compound interest on market: A new market entrant has no trust, and must prove themselves. Someone who has been around for a while, playing long-term, positive-sum games with long-term people has the trust, speed, opportunity and safety that market-hoppers could only dream of.

Are you investing in these areas?

As deadly as Bond… but with even more casualties.

More projects could mean more opportunity, but definitely means more problems…unless we have the Creative License To Kill. We need not pursue problems needlessly: this license grants us the opportunity to kill inessential projects and free ourselves of unwanted problems.

Larger networks could mean more opportunity, but definitely mean more problems…unless we have the Creative License To Kill. Seneca wrote, “Many men will meet me who are drunkards, lustful, ungrateful, greedy, and excited by the frenzy of ambition.” This license grants us the opportunity to simply disassociate with unwanted relationships.

More is not implicitly better… ‘more’ is merely ‘more’.

Seek ‘better’ to get better, not ‘more’.

Your Creative License To Kill can help with that.

Do you open this kind of attachment?

It comes attached to emails…

It comes attached to chat messages…

It comes attached on news sites…

It even comes attached to phone calls.

I call it, the .emosh file.

.emosh is the file extension for “emotion”. Inboxes allow anyone in the world to send you their needs, demands, feelings and gripes. Same with chat; third-party emotions designed to be adopted as your own for their benefit. News sites are paid to do this.

You don’t have to open this kind of attachment, if you don’t want to.

Your system will be so much healthier when you don’t give system-level access to the world.

What’s your relationship with bad news?

What about good news?

When good news goes to your head, it may become your new normal and anything less is a disappointment. It may become the seed of downfall where you’re too afraid to try new things, fear that the good news may end.

When bad news goes to your head, it too may become your new normal and put you in a ‘funk’. It may become the seed of doubt that turns into quitting your body of work altogether.

News can control us and our work. But it doesn’t have to.

Marcus Aurelius put it this way: “Stand on your own two feet without needing to be propped up by others. Stay at your post, do your work as best as you can, and be ready to go when Fate calls you.”

News need not receive a free pass to modify your mood nor your behaviour.

News can simply be news.

Leaving you alone to simply do your best work.

Switch it off.

Most of us know that our computers need switching off from time to time.

And we’ve all had that moment when we turned our phone off, then noticed how much faster it feels after you switch it back on.

But for those among us passionate about our work, there’s one device we forget to switch off to reap the rewards.

Our brains.

It’s harder than turning off the computer. It’s harder than turning off the phone (though many among us find that difficult, too!) It’s hard because it requires another place to go inside… an organised mind that can reconcile its affairs before “leaving it alone” for a while, without coming back to a mess on your return.

Marcus Aurelius challenges us in his journals to know our own thoughts, such that we could at any point give an immediate and confident answer to the question, “What are you thinking?”

With an organised mind, not only do we know our own thoughts. But we can keep an organised mind.

And an organised mind is the ultimate hack for switching off.

“How are you doing?”Are you likeable?

I find that most folks in the market fall into one of four categories:

#1: They like you, even when it costs them. These folks have your back. They’ll stick with you through tough times. They’re the ones most likely to be taken advantage of, but they consider that an acceptable edge-case in exchange for an abundance of strong relationships.

#2: They don’t like you, no matter the cost. These folks are a bit miserable. They don’t want to be your friend, and they don’t want to help you more than the job description requires. Their soft skills could be a limiting factor in their work’s progress and enjoyment.

#3: They don’t like you, until it costs you. Many people have a bit of this in them. They’re the people who sound like they want to rip off your head on a cold call until they realise you have something they need, at which point they’re sweet as key lime pie.

#4: They like you, until it costs them. These people are your friend until they need to save their own skin, at which point you burn.

Marcus Aurelius says in his third book of Meditation, “Don’t imaging that something is good for you if, in pursuing it, you must break a promise, harm anyone else, lose self-respect, act hypocritically, or hide in shame. Follow the light within—it will not lead you astray.”

In your journey as a creator and a human, consider which of the above four you are being.

“How are you doing?”

“Good, super-busy with work, how about you?”

We hear this dialog as though it’s a good, normal, acceptable thing.

And if you care about your work, perhaps it’s you making the latter statement.

I know I can be (I’ve not taken a vacation in over fifteen years!)

What struck me today, was when Marcus Aurelius wrote in his third book of meditations, “Be a person of few words and a few projects, not busy and scattered.”

‘Busy’, and ‘scattered’, used in the same sentence, almost interchangeably.

It makes sense:

Someone who “waffles on” has too many words to say, whereas someone who “states” something has just the right amount of words.

Someone who is “busied” usually has to deal with many things. Were they to only have a small number of things to do, we might refer to them as “focused”.

Next time you consider describing yourself as “busy”, consider swapping the word out for “scattered”, and see what it does for your work.

You don’t have to be worthy of big ideas.

Big ideas need to be worthy of you.

You don’t have to be worthy of your clients or contracts.

Clients and contracts need to be worthy of you.

You don’t have to be worthy of the lifestyle or work that you want.

Lifestyles and work needs to be worthy of you.

We ‘spend’ time (‘spend’ like we ‘spend’ money) on things because we choose to.

Make sure what you’re ‘spending’ your time on is worth the expense.

We know what soft skills are.

But the list we think of is decades old.

Here are some new ones to add to the list of essential soft skills:

Asynchronous communication skills: It’s not enough to be able to attend calls. If you and I must wait for the stars (and our schedules) to align each time things must progress, things don’t progress. Learning to work asynchronously (independently of the other’s availability) is a must-have skill for where we’re all going.

Not being a knee-jerk: This is a term coined by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, suggesting that knee-jerk reactions make you a knee-jerk. They’re right. Why set people up to be knee-jerks with internal presentations and unveils when you could gift them the opportunity to first digest ideas before being asked to share their guidance.

Mic-check punctuality: It’s not enough to connect to the audio conferencing room on the hour, so everyone else must then listen to you wrestle with headphones or microphone settings. Being ahead of time with tech checked and ready to go is the new “on time”.

They might not seem like much, and they may not be critical to your work today.

But they’re critical in my companies today.

And they’ll probably be critical in yours tomorrow.

Are you developing your “new soft skills”?

We don’t have TV, nor the popular channels and shows that come with it.

We don’t engage the “explore” tab of social tools to discover what’s popular.

We don’t have news apps, nor push notifications about ‘breaking’ matters they come with.

Why?

Because it’s not just songs that get stuck in our heads…

…So too do the ideas and opinions of those we allow into our worlds and minds.

The quality of our work, our focus and our lives depends on the quality of our thoughts.

Be careful what you read and whom you follow.

Sustained concePeople like easy things…

That’s why people like to buy things that make their lives easier.

But there’s an opportunity hidden in the sentence. If people are attracted to easy things… they’re repelled by hard things, things they won’t engage, problems they won’t (or can’t) solve.

Creating art that requires tools that aren’t ready for primetime or mass adoption.

Innovating in spaces that have “always done things this way”.

Pioneering a new way of thinking that challenges the status quo.

These are hard things. Even those among us who do go the extra mile tend only to go just one, because that’s just hard enough.

There’s not much competition at all on Mile Two.

Sustained concentration of human brains is one of the most sough-after resources in the world.

It solves hard problems with less effort.

It produces great work in less time.

And it’s sought-after because it’s scarce.

Most don’t manage sustained concentration for very long, very often, on almost anything.

That means if you want to solve hard problems and produce great work with less effort in less time than everyone else… then that’s totally available to you, and sets you apart from everyone else.

Not because you need to be genius.

But simply because you were prepared to sustain concentration for longer, more often, on things that matter.

Do you carry your phone everywhere you go?

What if you carried a notebook instead? Would that help you explore ideas rather than consume, in those small moments when you reach for your pocket?

What if it were a book? Would that help you ingest more ideas, making each small moment of consumption more thoughtful and valuable to you?

What if it were an empty pocket? Would that help you engage in the ability to be temporarily bored, letting your mind wander and learn more about itself?

So. What should you have in your pocket? That which aids your mind.

Maybe you don’t need this reminder.

But in case you do:

The goals that scare you, are self-imposed.

The timelines that stress you, are self-imposed.

The vision that fills you, is self-imposed.

The plans that govern you, are self-imposed.

The problems that haunt you, are self-imposed.

Remember that you’re in control, and the goal posts are standing where you last put them.

You’re not a victim of your own environment.

You’re the designer of it.

If the design suits you, carry on.

If the design no longer suits you, design.

Providing divergent streams of thought.

Processing what doesn’t need your attention.

Appropriating feelings to signals.

Guiding your perception.

These are all subconscious activities.

We can learn by studying (conscious), but we can learn so much more if we give our minds ideas to chew on while we do something else (subconscious). Next time we go to study, it comes easier to us because we’ve done the work.

We can write by writing (conscious), but we can write so much more by feeding the specifics of the next chapter to our minds to explore while we do something else (subconscious). Next time we sit down to write, the words are there.

You can work on interesting projects (consciously), but you can achieve so much more by giving your mind a specific, clear, felt problem to work on by itself, too.

If you’re doing work that matters, remember that 90% of your mind is subconscious.

Learn how to wield it, and just watch how much you can achieve.

Last week, every single tweet we posted got over 1,000 likes.

Not every week is like last week.

And it doesn’t need to be.

Remarkable things are what we deem worthy of making remarks about… but we don’t discover ‘remarkable’ by only showing when we feel sure our work is remarkable.

That’s not how ‘remarkable’ works.

Rather, it comes from showing up often enough to develop good taste, and adapting for the benefit of those we wish to serve.

To be remarkable, you need to be prepared to be unremarkable some of the time.

Try being unremarkable more often… you’ll increase your chances of blowing our minds.

When we hear ‘mundane’, we think it’s a bad thing.

An adjective meaning ordinary… unimaginative.

But why is that necessarily a bad thing?

When we love a way of working or a way of life, it becomes ordinary…to us. We continue to do things that way, appreciating all of its nuances.

We imagined that way of doing things…once. And then we made it happen. Imagination is past-tense here. We’ve achieved the way of things that we wanted.

Mundane can be an achievement.

Something to be proud of.

Something to build on top of.

The foundation of something wonderful.

The first question most people ask when they learn I’ve blogged every day since late 2017 is this:

“How do you still have something to say?”

There’s something fascinating about this question.

Why do we not ask people this when we first pick up the phone?

Or in response to emails we receive?

There’s so much to say, so much to do. The problem isn’t lacking in things to say or do, but lacking in time spend with yourself to know what to say and do.

If you’re unsure of what to say, it could be time to spend time time with you, and discover what you have to say.

As Epictetus said, “First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

What you discover may just leave you speechless.

Many of us don’t press publish because we’re not sure if it’s perfect yet.

We don’t post the tweet we believe in because we might not like the replies.

We don’t launch the project because we don’t know if anyone will care.

The post isn’t perfect, the tweet won’t please everyone, and nor will your project.

We press publish because we’re writers, not because we’re perfect.

We tweet because we’re in community, not because we’re always right.

We create because we’re creators, not because we’re mind-readers.

Create anyway.

I write every day because it forces clarity of thought.

I draw every day because it forces my drawing skills to grow.

I read every day because it forces me to expand my mind, and remember how to learn.

I journal every day because it forces me to review life as it happens, rather than merely retroactively.

I spend time with my family every day because it forces my relationships to stay strong.

Doing things daily forces things to occur.

What do you want to ensure happens in your work and life?

Are you doing it every day?

In creative projects, you need to be prepared to burn things.

The question, what gets burned?

Perhaps it’s the scope. The vision for the project you have… chopped down in size, so that you can deliver when you said you were going to deliver. Sound too difficult? Then…

Perhaps it’s the date. The date you told everyone you would have the work ready… missed, with everyone involved to manage accordingly. Sound too difficult? Then…

Perhaps it’s a lucky dip. Because you didn’t chose which gets burned if push comes to shove, who knows which will get burned. It could even be both.

It can feel like a tricky question, and one you don’t want to answer.

Answer it, for stronger work, and stronger promises.

The joke in ‘reworking’ is hidden in plain sight.

It implies that you do work…and then you do it again. You’re re-working.

Doesn’t sound particularly useful:

Reworking a functional SSG website in another SSG. When infrastructure works well, technologists like to change it anyway. It’s in the blood to want to solve the problem again using a different set of opinions. But what if we solved new problems, to make things better, rather than just different?

**Reworking an NFT so that it moves. **Artistic expression aside, a token is more than the sum of its parts. We don’t judge a ball game on the admission ticket alone, nor a web3 project on its NFT alone. What if we advanced what’s possible, rather than merely pursuing derivative works?

You are reworking. We all have areas where we do it. The trick is to learn to spot these moments, so we can challenge ourselves to be intentional with our craft, our focus, and the work we bring into the world.

We want to see what you’re capable of when you stop reworking.

Vulnerability isn’t about weakness.

It’s about connection.

When I announced that our business was making some changes following a situation of loss, people who had also experienced that same type of loss connected, and felt belonging.

When I mentioned that Kezi is working through health challenges, people who had also experienced those same health challenges connected, and felt belonging.

So many are so afraid to risk feeling weak, that they lose the opportunity to connect to something bigger, to find solace among friends, to achieve what one can’t achieve alone.

Viva la vulnerability.

There’s a KPI people forgot.

It’s called “Making people feel special”:

Feeling special is when someone busier than you takes the time to respond to you. When I respond to someone’s DM on Twitter, the reactions are telling.

Feeling special is when someone acknowledges you when you shared your opinion, your art, or your energy. People are used to being ignored, and it shows.

Feeling special is when someone recognises the problem in your tribe and decides to fix it… rather than merely imposing their solution-in-search-of-a-problem upon you.

Special is scarce.

That’s why it’s valuable.

Yet it costs you nothing.

What wonderful arbitrage that is.

Today, I had a hard drive failure.

Bit tedious.

I backup fairly frequently, but there’s always a bit of something that isn’t.

In this particular case, that ‘something’ happened to be 2 days of artwork.

Bit tedious.

Two options:

Option 1: Take the opportunity to recreate what was lost, making it even better than it was the first time around thanks to the lessons learned. The opportunity is a gift, as you would never have given yourself permission to take that opportunity were it not for these circumstances.

Option 2: Get really annoyed about it.

Most of us will pick Option 2.

But only a few of us will choose Option 1 afterwards.

Sometimes we overpay for things. We don’t like how that feels when we realise.

Other times, we buy things we love, things we want, things we have an emotional connection to, things that make us feel like we’ve made the right choice. These things aren’t usually the cheapest option on the market. So why isn’t this “overpaying”, too?

Because “overpaying” has nothing to do with money.

“Overpaying” is the feeling of getting less than we wanted.

Tesla fans don’t “overpay” for their cars when the feeling of being early more than worth the price.

Comic book collectors don’t “overpay” for out-of-print issues when they’re buying a solution to their favourite, incomplete collection.

Over to you.

Do those who buy what you sell (whether it’s your ideas, your work, or your time) love what they bought, at the price you chose, for the value you gave?

Or did they merely feel like they overpaid?

What’s the best process for creating remarkable work?

A boring process:

Exciting process, boring work. It’s fun playing with new tools all the time, discovering various innovations, designs and ideas as they are released in full or in beta. But that puts our creative energy into the tool, and how we might achieve the same results we might have achieved before using them, rather than into pushing our work forward.

Boring process, remarkable work. When the tools are boring — understood, practiced, familiar — all of our focus is given to the work. The excitement becomes less about how we produce, but what we’ll produce. The more boring the tools, the more creative energy gets focused into what we’re capable of creating next.

Keep it boring, folks.

Your work will thank you for it.