Steyn Viljoen
@steyn
Designer at CustomerOS. Gardener. Dad. Write at Viljoen Space about product, gardening and parenthood.
Steyn Viljoen
viljoen.space
An unkink hose feels like…
The freedom to know your version of enough. Take a pause, any kind of pause at any kind of time and not beat yourself up for it.
Light speed clarity.
The freedom to not set huge radical business goals just cos everyone else is, cos it's just not your time to over-hustle.
Spaciousness.
The freedom to politely decline the reques
... See moreSteve Jobs’ motivation was to express a gratitude for the human species — and he did this by putting care and love into things he made.
— a synopsis of one of Jony Ive’s answers from the interview between Jony Ive and Anna Wintour in RE:WIRED 2021.
Define Your Way of Life
"But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life."
This is my favorite insight from the letter: Identify how you want to live, not what you want to achieve.
So often people focus all their energy on the summits—but complet
... See more"Learn to like what doesn't cost much.
Learn to like reading, conversation, music.
Learn to like plain food, plain service, plain cooking.
rowns i in h, trees, brooks, hiking,
Learn to like people, even though some of them may be different... different from Yearn to like to work and enjoy the satisfaction doing your job as well as it can be done.
Learn
... See moreHe who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch.
– Jean-Luc Godard
Quality software deserves your hard‑earned cash Quality software from independent makers is like quality food from the farmer’s market. A jar of handmade organic jam is not the same as mass-produced corn syrup-laden jam from the supermarket. Industrial fruit jam is filled with cheap ingredients and shelf stabilizers. Industrial software is filled... See moreWalking ‘is how the body measures itself against the Earth.' via https://www.densediscovery.com/issues/286
When we are deprived of green, of plants, of trees, most of us (though evidently not all of us) succumb to a demoralization of spirit which we usually blame on some psychological or neurochemical malady, until one day we find ourselves in a garden or park or countryside and feel the oppression vanish as if by magic.
— Robert Harrison: Gardens: An Es
... See more"All AI art can really do is add more voiceless noise to the world of relentlessly churning cheap content. If you're a part of that machine then yes AI will inevitably steamroll you, but if you're not it will accentuate your value as a singular voice a person who has something worth saying."
— Mango Street vid on YT h/t to Justin Mather in the Subst
... See more- "Which of these has more life? Which of these is more a mirror of my self? Does this object make me feel my humanity is expanding—or contracting?" — Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order
Questions to stay in sync with how people feel when they use your product