Sterling Proffer
@sterling
Sterling Proffer
“There Has to Be a Line”: Substack’s Founders Dive Headfirst Into the Culture Wars
Joe Pompeovanityfair.com
Some of the most prolific figures in literature, math, and science spent only four-to-five ours doing their most creative and profound work. The rest of the time, they focused their attention on spending time with family and friends and taking advantage of rest as much as possible. In short, creative productivity is not based on the number of hours... See more
William Ballard • Only 4 Hours of Creative Power
You need to force the team to be the adjacent user by experiencing the product in the conditions and settings that the adjacent user is experiencing. This is commonly referred to as dog-fooding. This starts by making sure the team is constantly experiencing new user flows, empty states, and product states that require a certain amount of usage... See more
Bangaly Kaba • The Adjacent User Theory
Great art, even good art, relies on the existence of individuals who are able to devote the lion’s share of their energy to producing it—in other words, professionals.
William Deresiewicz • The Death of the Artist: How Creators Are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech
Product teams by nature are power users of their own product. The parts of the product that the product team uses, tend to automatically get improved as the pain is right in front of them. But this leads to building for yourself (or your friends). While that can feed the ego, if you are only building for yourself or power users, you won’t grow. You... See more