Pritesh

Mysteries offer no such clarity of definition, and no objectively correct solution: they are imbued with vagueness and indeterminacy. We approach mysteries by asking ‘What is going on here?’, and recognise that even afterwards our understanding is likely to be only partial. They provide none of the comfort and pleasure of reaching the ‘right’... See more

Pay attention. What do you see that no one else sees? A word. A feeling. An aesthetic. Do you notice fonts all around you- on neon signs, and restaurant awnings? Do you notice colors? Do you feel taste? Do you pause to appreciate a shot in a movie that no one else cares about? Your edge is often at what you notice, and the world ignores.

As Mumford observed almost a century ago, the world loses its soul when we place too much weight on the ideal of total quantification. By doing so, we stop valuing what we know to be true, but can’t articulate. Rituals lose their significance, possessions lose their meaning, and things are valued only for their apparent utility.

You become what you scroll. Choose accordingly.

"The Grand Canyon wouldn't be so popular if it was just a uniform trench. The trick is controlling and managing chaos and turning it into something useful."

Going for a walk outside doesn’t do enough for touch as it does for sight, smell, sound, getting exercise and clearing your mind.

Mastery, Robert said, requires boredom and tedium. It requires doing the same mundane things over and over and over. It requires sitting with the frustration of putting in work that doesn’t immediately pay off.

All this is to say is that for design, as for other fields, the road to greatness is often paved with obsession—an immoderate, unjustifiable surplus of care. Doing things that no-one asked for with a love that no-one could reasonably expect.

Almost every social network of note had an early signature proof of work hurdle. For Facebook it was posting some witty text-based status update. For Instagram, it was posting an interesting square photo. For Vine, an entertaining 6-second video. For Twitter, it was writing an amusing bit of text of 140 characters or fewer. Pinterest? Pinning a... See more