Writing that's shaped how I think about designing with intention, scaling effective teams, and choosing what's worth building.
The longer [Hercules] shoveled, the more time the horses had to drop more manure. The longer he worked, the deeper the crap. There was no way to shovel fast enough. So he went upstream and re-routed the river to wash everything clean. As designers — let's move upstream. Let's make our own assignments.
If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.
See also: Keep Your Identity Small by ftlsid
You will never feel smart, competent, or good at things; instead, you will just start feeling more and more like everyone else mysteriously sucks at them.
You never know when you might want to go back to something you created years or decades ago. Don't lock your data into a format you can't retrieve.
If you want to find gold, you've got to spend the vast majority of your time digging, not arguing about how to dig.
No snacking: only work on the big stuff. The hard part of focus is saying no to the things you want to do. [...] Counterintuitively, to get to the big stuff, you need to be in the details.
When everyone has access to similar information sources, the differentiator becomes your ability to synthesize, contextualize, and execute. This shift demands thinking tools that augment rather than replace our uniquely human capacities for insight, creativity, and judgment.
Genuine excellence emerges from a dance between speed and depth, agility and quality. Like a skilled musician who can improvise yet still maintain impeccable technique, you must learn to adapt fluidly without compromising the integrity of the final piece.