Connecting into why it’s valuable. Sometimes you get so lost in a project that you forget why you started it in the first place, or why doing this kind of work is important to you at all. If you reconnect to that, you’ll raise the perceived value of doing the work in your brain—and it will make it easier to stick with. Try writing about why the... See more
‘Follow your passion’ is advice that doesn’t work most people. It’s far more nuanced than thought. In most cases, we’re better off trying to understand what we like, staying curious about those things, and see where we can do great work.
“If you want a new world, start making it right now, in whatever you are doing.”
-Brian Eno.
If you imagine the world you would like to be in and start making objects, systems and collaborations that belong to that world, that world comes into being.
Indeed the Oak tree King of Limbs, in Britain is over 1,000 years old. It has been growing quietly in place since before the Norman Conquest. The King doesn’t much care about one iPhone model to the next.
Millennia long scales of engagement with the world around us are almost unimaginable when contrasted with the 2 week long Agile sprints popular... See more
If the proximate purpose of technology is to reduce scarcity, the ultimate purpose of technology is to eliminate mortality.
If I look at things that have turned out well in my life (my marriage, some of my essays, my current career) the “design process” has been the same in each case. It has been what Christopher Alexander called an unfolding .1 Put simply:
Get good at asking the right questions. Elon said, the answer is usually the easy part. The hard part is asking the right questions. Questions are the only tool we have to inquire about this reality. It is our pickaxe to inspect the world we live in. It also happens to be the backbone of our cognition, we literally think in questions. Getting good... See more