Jimmy Breslin on the Hangover of Ideas
“Don’t trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.”
Ben Chestnut on Business and Passion
“Do what you love is not the same as love what you do.”
You always hear people say, ‘do what you love, do what you love.’ That’s partly true, but if it’s business, if you start a business doing what you love, it will kill you, it will kill your passion.
If you like to bake and you start a bakery, you will hate baking very soon.
I like ‘love what you do’ better because, it’s kinda like, wherever you are just be good at it, embrace it, love it, and eventually success will find you.
I actually kind of believe that.
But you never forget your passion.”
The Zen of Changing Lanes
Everything I need to know about Zen I learned from changing lanes.
Or, more accurately, not changing lanes.
My onramp to the freeway is a long, two lane stretch with a traffic light at the end.
Everyday I’m a-fluster when I decide which lane to move into. There’s the truck up front on the right side—that’s worth two cars for sure. But the left has two vans. Quick, left!
This happens everyday in the echo chamber in my head. It’s a weird thing to worry about. We all do it.
It’s silly–honestly–to think of how scared we are of picking a lane. Choosing wrong. The finality of it. It’s 37 seconds—I timed it. It’s 37 seconds in the slower lane. 28 in the faster one.
And for what? To get my turn to merge into the bulging freeway so I can wait and worry there about what lane’s best? (more…)
Design, Objectivity & The Punk Spirit
What does human nature, biology, and ancient Greek architecture have to say about how wide my sidebar should be?
I’ve recently been geeking out about how my calculator can help me design more gooder.
I’ve been influenced by people who say there may be objective-ish right answers to design problems… or at least righter answers.
Making it feel right
Up to now everything I’ve designed has been a product of feel: shaping the stuff to look right/good to me. Obviously often within constraints which shape the design as much as my “feel” (the CEO hates blue, the site must be accessible to weird people, the target audience is Australian Latinos, etc).
This is the only way I could have known how to make things. I’m self taught, no lessons, and the fun thing about design has always been caring about the experience and making it right.
But this feel-based approach has been called into question by a few smarty pants people. (more…)
Jon Yongfook on Design vs Value in Startups
“Focus on value creation. Design enhances value, it does not create it. Stop creating shitty startups that look amazing. […] Stop this cycle of creating beautiful novelties, getting your 15 minutes, then disappearing. Create value.”
Coding Horror on wonder
When I am holding Henry and I tickle him, I can feel him laughing all the way to his toes. And I realize, my God, I had forgotten, I had completely forgotten how unbelievably, inexplicably wonderful it is that any of us exist at all.”
Frank Chimero on design as gift
As a designer […] my role is more frequently to generate desire in other people; to make them want. And the reason I’m so prone to want to look at the work I do from now on as a gift is because a gift promises to satiate that desire in some way.
[…] So maybe instead of using it to make people want things I can use the same skills to give them things that satiate those same desires.”
Excellent article on worldly wisdom and business
The way to win is to work, work, work, work and hope to have a few insights.”
Louis C.K. on compelling, inspiring and fun
AVC: Has performing stand-up gotten easier for you over the years?
LCK: Well, no, because I haven’t let it become easier, I try to keep it challenging. It’s easier if you cull from all your greatest hits and just do them. That’s easy, but it’s also probably suicide. [Laughs.] It’s harder now than it was earlier, but it’s way more compelling and inspiring and fun. It’s worth the traveling and everything now. I got really burnt out on travel, but not anymore. Because I don’t really care—unless I’m on some stupid train to Buffalo or somewhere, I’m not thinking of comfort. I’m poring over notes, listening to some old tapes, and being sure I make use of that show, because I start every year with a target date for that special, and it’s always a little too soon, so I’m always in the theater. So it’s harder, and I’m always trying to cull together material that I don’t really know well. If it works out, at the end of the year, I’ve got a completely honed, perfect sweet set. I know right where the sweet chunks are. I know right where the heavy artillery is, and I’ve got a reliably great hour. And I do it in front of a polished, perfect crowd and get it on tape. And that’s easy and fun and great, but it takes a year to get there. And when the special is done, I’m back to nothing, literally no material, not even a single joke I can tell onstage. So that keeps the cycle.
Ogilvy’s 10 rules for building and running a business
80 year old David Ogilvy’s advice for building and running a business:
- Remember that Abraham Lincoln spoke of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He left out the pursuit of profit.
- Remember the old Scottish motto: “Be happy while you’re living, for you are a long time dead.”
- If you have to reduce your company’s payroll, don’t fire your people until you have cut your compensation and the compensation of your big-shots.
- Define your corporate culture and your principles of management in writing. Don’t delegate this to a committee. Search all the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees.
- Stop cutting the quality of your products in search of bigger margins. The consumer always notices — and punishes you.
- Never spend money on advertising which does not sell.
- Bear in mind that the consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Do not insult her intelligence.