This is where I write for the web.
Kevin Smith - Great Filmmaking Advice
My favorite from him was:
You have to have this kind of a reasonable amount of “unreasonability” to even become a filmmaker.
Good advice, not just for filmmakers but for everything we do, to have the guts, to push the envelope within a certain constraint.
Designers share wisdom with first-year students in poster series. I love all of them. Great idea, great execution, also a viable business too.
Unpacking the secrets of happiness and creativity one poster at a time.
Every time I read about or experience one of these situations, I am reminded of a story I read in The Checklist Manifesto about the emergency checklist for engine failure in a single engine Cessna airplane. The checklist has just six vitally important steps, including things like making sure the fuel valves are open and ensuring the backup fuel pump is turned on. But the first step is fascinating. It is simply FLY THE AIRPLANE. In the confusion of losing an engine, pilots often panic and forget the most obvious things they should be doing. It seems completely unnecessary, but this step ensures the best chance for survival.
The human body’s physical “fight or flight” response evolved to help it evade a dangerous situation, which historically involved extreme physical exertion. The rush of steroids into the bloodstream essentially turns off unnecessary systems, including some higher thinking processes, to aid in escape. Unfortunately, as we’ve evolved into more intelligent beings, that response hasn’t evolved along with us. The stress response is still optimized to prepare for a short period of extreme physical exertion, not for increased mental clarity. The result is painfully obvious with Air France 447: the co-pilot made an absurd error that no pilot in his right mind would make.
So, the next time you’re in a crushing situation, remember how irrational humans can be under stress, and remember to FLY THE AIRPLANE.
When this happens I just comment out the whole portion of the code or grab a blank sheet of paper and work back up from nothing. Start thinking: what does the user want to see? What’s the most important thing they need on this page? The answers then shape your new solution. The previous design is only awkward because it doesn’t answer those questions but is instead focusing on something else. By starting with a clean slate you can throw away the old assumptions and constraints and work within a new framework.
Sound advice.
“If you want to reach peak performance, you have to find the limit. Finding the limit means stepping over the limit. Going too far, going too fast. It means taking a good idea to the extreme to learn just how far it’ll bend before it snaps.
In racing, the driver who can most consistently drive just beyond the limit — running the optimal seven degrees of slip — is most likely to win. The same applies in business.
When you continously seek out the limit, you’ll realize that it’s often much higher than you expected. Yes, you can make that screen even simpler than the bare-boned version you’re looking at. Yes, you can trust your employees much more than you imagined. Yes, you can launch without a billing system.
Once you train yourself to seek out the limit in all endeavors, you’ll get better and faster at correcting the inevitable oversteps, and hit that peak performance.
But if you never dare venture close to the limit, you’ll find that it’s shrinking all the time. There will be even more people you could possibly offend, even more bells that need whistling, ever more realities of the real world you cannot change.
Records are set by the people who said fuck your limits and found their own.
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