Another one from Jeffery Zeldman, this time on writing or really just doing any sort of work:
In writing four books and an unknown quantity of articles and blog posts, I’ve discovered the simple secret to maintaining quality. I share it with you here in mnemonic nursery rhyme fashion:
Write when inspired; rest when tired.
John Gruber’s review of the 15-inch PowerBook, and perhaps my favorite DF article of all time.
Stories about flying the SR-71 Blackbird, one of the fastest spy planes in the world between the 1960s to the 1990s.
Michael Lopp:
A nerd needs a project because a nerd builds stuff. All the time. Those lulls in the conversation over dinner? That’s the nerd working on his project in his head.
“Does your job happen to you?”
Hilarious, hilarious story by comedian Dave Barry about getting a colonoscopy.
I yield to nobody in the field of being a pathetic weenie medical coward. I become faint and nauseous during even very minor medical procedures, such as making an appointment by phone.
Though the point of today’s link-share is to promote and dig up great, older articles, this post from Jeffery Zeldman, which I think about often, has a different take on “blasts from the past”.
If your old work doesn’t shame you, you’re not growing.
It’s nice to look back and feel that you’ve made progress. When you look at old work, it should suck glaringly and you should cringe painfully. But there should also be some germ within it that you’re not ashamed of—some spark of talent or inspiration that connects to what you do now.
Maybe we’ll do this every January. Maybe not. That’s not the point.
Today, I had a fantastic time combing through my “faves”, “tips”, and “inspiration” tags within Yojimbo to dig up a few of good articles I have bookmarked over years. I also perused through my starred items in Instapaper for some golden oldies.
Alas, one of the ways of the Web is that if it isn’t fresh it isn’t worth talking about. But you and I both know that’s not true.
So tomorrow, January 20, 2011, is a day to dig up and share some of the older articles we’ve read over the years that have inspired us, encouraged us, and delighted us.
There are two rules to participating:
Here is how to participate:
You can follow along with what I’m posting here by checking the homepage at the top of every hour starting at 7:00 am CST tomorrow morning — I’ve got 8 links queued up (so far). I’ll also be tweeting the links.
Mike Vardy was kind enough to have me as a guest on the WorkAwesome Podcast. We talk about how I balance work and home life, using digital GTD tools like OmniFocus, and, of course, coffee.
What we didn’t talk about, because I didn’t tell Mike, was that fact that this is the first podcast show I’ve ever appeared on. Fun!
I always hire for unity first.
Because there is something much more vital than productivity to the success of a work environment: unity. Will this person fit in, get along, and bring the unity of the team up a notch? It’s not until that question is answered that I then look for teachability and, lastly, talent. (But that’s a different blog post.)
Our culture is borderline obsessed with the focus on productivity and getting things done. And while I am certainly an advocate for those, at my office, and on my team, unity is far more valuable than productivity. Where there’s unity there’s people who love their job. And a lover will always out-work a worker.
Unity encourages discovery, too. Unity means I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine. When you feel safe around your team then you’ll go ahead and try out that crazy, out-of-the-box idea of yours. If you were afraid of your peers criticizing you, then you’d probably stick to what is safe and boring. Unity and trust amongst your team means you’re safe to fail. Which means there’s a far greater chance of something truly amazing happening.
The first iPad app from Lunar/Theory that’s just hitting the App store today.
What really intrigues me about this iPad app is its philosophy. It’s basically a well-built front end for delivering content from almost 100 pre-selected sources. Or, put another way, it’s a fun RSS reader with the feeds pre-subscribed for you.
The whole point of the app is to get design inspiration. And so they’ve gone out and found what they think are the best visual and literary places of inspiration on the web today and are piping their content into their app.
From their website, the features list is:
- Real-time visual inspiration from 50+ sites
- Text feeds from 30+ sites
- In-app web browser
- Share links via email, Facebook and Twitter
I think this is a fantastic idea, it’s curated content for a specific purpose and has been custom built for use on the iPad.
I have a few short lists of people whom I turn to when I need feedback, advice, and encouragement for different areas of my personal and professional life. The areas I most often seek feedback for are:
For each area I have a handful of people whom I trust and whom I know I can ask for their help. I know they have an educated and valuable position on the subject, and they meet two very important requirements:
They want me to succeed. Usually, by the time I’m ready for feedback from someone, I’ve gone about as far I you can go on my own. And that’s when I need someone to cheer me on to cross the finish line.
Some people are on a few of these lists, and one person is on all of them (my wife).
It’s not always easy to seek out input from others (especially when they found a giant hole in your otherwise perfect idea). But if you’re trying to push the boundaries of what you can come up with, build, and ship, then feedback and encouragement will be an invaluable tool along that path.
Mark Pilgrim shares about how his latest book, Dive into HTML5, has sold. (a) Congratulations to Mark on a successful launch; and (b) this is fascinating info for anyone else working on a non-fiction book targeted to the designer/developer community.
And speaking of Amazon, I enjoyed reading Roger Ebert’s response to reporter Christopher Heine’s awkward questions about his Amazon affiliate tweets:
Have I made a fortune from Amazon? No. Have I made some? Yes. Am I happy to have it? You bet. Have I been amused? Yes. It’s kind of like fishing.
Ebert’s just a guy trying to make a buck like the rest of us.