The Caspian The Caspian has its realms of sand, Its other realm of sea; Without the sterile perquisite No Caspian could be. Emily Dickinson, The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson beautybalance
Duality All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or a sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person – no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for the one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other. Herman Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund balance
Research, empathy, simplicity, speed An Article by Matthew Ström matthewstrom.com As Nosrat provides a simple list of essential ingredients for any great meal, can we describe a simple list of essential components for digital products? Here are four elements that I believe are the foundation of great digital products: Research, Empathy, Simplicity and Speed. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat designsoftwareproductsbalance
How to Think About Notes An Article by Will Darwin www.willdarwin.com Thinking in terms of outputs Maggie Appleton's Digital Garden notetakingwritinginformation
Thinking in terms of outputs In our use of digital and analogue filing tools, we classify information through folders. An article about railway construction gets filed under ‘infrastructure’ or ‘transport’. In Evernote we tag it with ‘rail’ or ‘construction’. This is thinking like a librarian and not like a writer. We are classifying the information as an input. The reason you take notes as a writer is to produce content. It makes sense, then, to take notes in line with this goal. Traditional filing like this tends to fail when you attempt to write your content. You are stuck trying to figure out which categories will be relevant for your proposal, paper or blog post. Interesting writing often comes from connecting separate fields through a common idea. By revealing the common denominator. By unifying two seemingly-contradictory ideas. How can you possibly achieve this if you’re looking in the same category for your information? The categories simply do not fulfil the function required by the writer. The notes you take and indeed, the way you process information, should be with a specific project or idea in mind. You must classify information in terms of its outputs. When you take notes on a book, think about how this could apply to a specific idea you had or how it argues against a paper you read last week. The premise is that you should be organising by context and always trying to connect the dots between the content you're consuming. How to be a genius notetakinginformationwriting