for makers

Novelist Toni Morrison on invention:

"If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. The same is true of any endeavor: if the solution you seek doesn't exist, create it."

1. Everything is iterative. A single Instagram or Twitter account becomes a newsletter becomes a small publication with a few contributors becomes a corporation. (See The Free Press.) Thus it makes sense to build your concept in public and test its engagement at every stage. Every powerful brand starts with a single post. As with restaurants, new publ

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Poet and novelist Charles Bukowski on forging your own reality:

"I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen but as the years wasted on nothing ever did unless I caused it."

Rick Rubin talks about hidden rules that hold us back:

"It’s a healthy practice to approach our work with as few accepted rules, starting points, and limitations as possible. Often the standards in our chosen medium are so ubiquitous, we take them for granted. They are invisible and unquestioned. This makes it nearly impossible to think outside the... See more

Start small and learn fast. Your first move doesn't need to be perfect; it just needs to teach you something. Focus more on the next small step that moves you closer to the goal.

Motion creates momentum, and momentum reveals opportunities that standing still never could.

First

Remember: doing experience design well — making beautiful, wondrous, kind, breathtaking things, requires...you.

You, specifically.

Your weird, full, curious brain and tender little inside self. It wants for emergence and energy and is hungry to be inspired.

And those things need the fallow seasons. The spaces of nothingness and slugtime and dark... See more

Don’t focus on giving people they thing you know they’ll accept, give them the thing that you know will move the needle.