Hacker. Human.
This movie is unbelievable. It fundamentally shifted my thoughts around craftsmanship. You must watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi.
I’m still wrestling with a lot of it and I literally couldn’t finish it because I felt so ill watching it – the shift was too great to bear in one sitting. I finished it the following night.
Unbelievable.
I had dinner with two of the guys from Arrested Development and spent most of the evening discussing music, life, entrepreneurship and everything in between.
I love spending time with creative individuals and learning more about how they think, how they operate, and how they get their stuff done.
The reason why IKEA fails is because their products do not inspire.
These products are some of the cheapest made solutions ever conceived. It starts with near 100% particle board on every “wood” product – and the rest of the components are of no high quality either.
Worse yet, building the product is one of the least inspiring activities on planet earth – it’s just as pleasurable as removing a splinter from underneath your fingernail. The process and experience does not inspire the builder to enjoy the experience of building or even want to appreciate or increase their appreciation for the art and craft of building something, let alone the art of carpentry and assorted other disciplines.
There is a tragic reason why they have these instructions in the very beginning of every single manual – they know that it’s a complete pain in the ass to build their own products and are quite open and willing for you to pay their own employees (who probably hate it just as much) to build the product for you.
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I can’t believe I got this email from mom this morning. I think I nearly died laughing:
I was asked to create a Curriculum Vitae recently for an opportunity that I’ve been considering and the last time I updated anything like that was back in 2008.
I know this because I looked at timestamps for them in a legacy folder that I keep in Dropbox.
Although I’m no longer a fan of resumes nor do I have any explicit use for them I understand why this group was looking for one and I didn’t mind putting something together for them. In fact, as I’ll explain, it was a very revealing and introspective activity.
And no, I’m not leaving my current role(s) for a full time salaried job anywhere either for this opportunity. No way.
I will be speaking at Hypepotamus on March 28th to the Atlanta Web Design Group and I’d love to hang with you.
Here’s the description of the talk:
Your best friend is like a physical reminder of what is good, worthy, and true. They are a moral compass when you cannot seem to find yours and an encouraging conscience when the dark clouds of doubt suddenly appear.
They see the things that you are apparently blind to and are unafraid to let you know about them. They are hard when hardness is required and quiet when words would destroy.
They allow you to fall and persuade you to get up. You never asked them to be all these things and they don’t feel as if it’s a burden to bear – with gladness they partner with you.
There are moments in our lives where we find ourselves undone – that is, we find that the worldviews and perspectives that we once held so dear are collapsing all around us.
We have to do a very difficult reset – a literal unplugging from the wall while all systems and running and abort all processes with the high chance of data loss.
Recovery isn’t guaranteed, especially in the previous state. This is both a blessing and a curse. An opportunity and a challenge. A renewing of the mind and a divorce of what was.
I am incredibly protective of my mornings – this is an uncompromising part of my day where I find I am the most productive. I once plotted this out as you can see here. This has slightly changed now that I’m spending more of my time in my work office instead of my home office, but it is essentially the same.
In a not-so-strange way I demand absolute authority in this space and time to do as I please – whether that’s writing content, listening to a podcast or viewing a must see video, or relaxing. I may even schedule an early morning meeting too. Heck, I might do all of these things at the exact same time.
Whatever it is this is also the worst time to interrupt me – I’m the most volatile and most sensitive at this point in the day as I hold this morning period sacred. A few people have experienced my wrath and it’s not a pretty picture. I can’t say that this is “right” but it is what it is.
