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  28. blogging 22
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  31. boredom 9
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  33. Brand, Stewart 4
  34. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  35. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  36. Broskoski, Charles 6
  37. brutalism 7
  38. building 16
  39. bureaucracy 12
  40. Burnham, Bo 9
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  42. Byron, Lord 14
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  44. Calvino, Italo 21
  45. Camus, Albert 13
  46. care 6
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  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
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  50. chance 11
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  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Clark, Robin 3
  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
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  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
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  71. content 9
  72. Corbusier, Le 13
  73. Coyier, Chris 4
  74. craft 66
  75. creativity 59
  76. crime 9
  77. Critchlow, Tom 5
  78. critique 10
  79. Cross, Nigel 12
  80. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  81. css 11
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  84. cycles 7
  85. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  86. darkness 28
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  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
  92. design 131
  93. details 31
  94. Dickinson, Emily 9
  95. Dieste, Eladio 4
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  100. Drucker, Peter F. 15
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  102. Eatock, Daniel 4
  103. economics 13
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  105. Eisenman, Peter 8
  106. Eliot, T.S. 14
  107. emotion 8
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  110. Eno, Brian 4
  111. ethics 14
  112. euphony 38
  113. Evans, Benedict 4
  114. evolution 9
  115. experience 14
  116. farming 8
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  119. feedback 6
  120. flaws 10
  121. Flexner, Abraham 8
  122. food 16
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  124. Fowler, Martin 4
  125. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  126. friendship 6
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  135. goals 9
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  138. Graham, Paul 37
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  146. heat 7
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  156. Hoyt, Ben 5
  157. html 11
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  159. humanity 16
  160. humor 6
  161. Huxley, Aldous 7
  162. hypermedia 22
  163. i 18
  164. ideas 21
  165. identity 33
  166. images 10
  167. industry 9
  168. information 42
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  170. innovation 15
  171. interaction 10
  172. interest 10
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  174. intuition 8
  175. invention 10
  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
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  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
  183. Jacobs, Alan 5
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  190. Keller, Jenny 10
  191. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  192. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
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  195. Klein, Laura 4
  196. Kleon, Austin 13
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  198. Klyn, Dan 20
  199. knowledge 29
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  227. melancholy 52
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  230. metrics 19
  231. microsites 49
  232. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  233. Mills, C. Wright 9
  234. minimalism 10
  235. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  236. Mod, Craig 15
  237. modularity 6
  238. Mollison, Bill 31
  239. morality 8
  240. Murakami, Haruki 21
  241. music 16
  242. Müller, Boris 7
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skill

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  • The reflective craftsman

    Specialized tools like bench shears have proliferated throughout history in part because craftsmen necessarily do the same task with the same tool over and over. After a while, the task becomes routine, and the craftsman is able to perform it with predictable skill. The most creative of artisans is frequently one who, in the midst of routine, pays attention to the details of the work and the tools that effect that work, and so it is that the reflective craftsman develops ideas for new and improved tools in the course of working with those that he perceives to limit his achievement or efficiency.

    Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things
    1. ​​Eating your own dog food​​
    • tools
    • routine
    • skill
  • Reaching 95

    Reaching 95%-ile isn't very impressive because it's not that hard to do. I think this is one of my most ridiculable ideas. It doesn't help that, when stated nakedly, that sounds elitist. But I think it's just the opposite: most people can become (relatively) good at most things.

    Note that when I say 95%-ile, I mean 95%-ile among people who participate, not all people (for many activities, just doing it at all makes you 99%-ile or above across all people). I'm also not referring to 95%-ile among people who practice regularly. The "one weird trick" is that, for a lot of activities, being something like 10%-ile among people who practice can make you something like 90%-ile or 99%-ile among people who participate.

    Dan Luu, 95%-ile isn't that good
    danluu.com
    • skill
    • practice

    There still seem to be a number of things where 95%-ile is still impressive – things like academia, especially primary education, where participation and regular practice are mandatory for everyone. 95%-ile on the SAT isn't quite as impressive as it seems as first, but it's also still good.

  • Good design can copy

    Good design can copy. Attitudes to copying often make a round trip. A novice imitates without knowing it; next he tries consciously to be original; finally, he decides it's more important to be right than original.

    I think the greatest masters go on to achieve a kind of selflessness. They just want to get the right answer, and if part of the right answer has already been discovered by someone else, that's no reason not to use it. They're confident enough to take from anyone without feeling that their own vision will be lost in the process.

    Paul Graham, Taste for Makers
    1. ​​Four stages of competence​​
    • skill
  • Skill vs. knowledge

    We should say that anybody has skill enough to build a good dry-stone wall but that few know how to design one, for the placing of the stones is a matter of knowledge and judgment, not of dexterity.

    David Pye, The Nature and Aesthetics of Design
    • making
    • knowledge
    • skill
  • A perfect circle

    Once, being asked to submit a sample of his work, what Giotto submitted was a circle.
    Well, the point being that it was a perfect circle.
    And that Giotto had painted it freehand.

    David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress
    • art
    • skill
  • Mistakes at the top

    Personally, in every activity I've participated in where it's possible to get a rough percentile ranking, people who are 95%-ile constantly make mistakes that seem like they should be easy to observe and correct. "Real world" activities typically can't be reduced to a percentile rating, but achieving what appears to be a similar level of proficiency seems similarly easy.

    Dan Luu, 95%-ile isn't that good
    danluu.com
    • skill
    • mistakes

    Dan makes the case here that simply being aware of your mistakes and deliberately fixing them can take someone from 50th to 95th percentile in most activities.

  • Technical viruosity

    "You have to develop students' confidence and prove to them in their own performance that there isn't anything they won't be able to accomplish technically, eventually, given a lot of application, before you can begin to convince them that that kind of technical virtuosity doesn't deserve the focus they have been led to believe it does by a performance-oriented culture."

    Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
    • teaching
    • skill
  • Things you didn't know you can be bad at

    An Article by David R. MacIver
    notebook.drmaciver.com

    I wonder how many things we're all going around doing badly because the idea of not knowing how to do them well seems too ridiculous to admit to.

    ...You've probably never been taught to have a conversation. I've had exactly one class on it and it was in the last six months. I know damn well that many people have not self-taught this well... In general there's this entire class of implicit skills that we mostly don't think of as skills, that we're entirely self-taught on, and that we practice sufficiently non-demonstratively that we can't easily watch what other people do. The result is a very personal skill idiolect.

    1. ​​Idiolect​​
    • skill
    • learning
    • practice
  • Seventeen Years

    A Song by Ratatat & Young Churf
    en.wikipedia.org

    I've been rapping for about seventeen years, okay?
    I don't write my stuff anymore,
    I just kick it from my head,
    you know what I'm saying?
    I can do that.
    No disrespect—
    But that's how I am

    1. ​​Everything has been composed​​
    • experience
    • skill
  • What to learn

    An Essay by Dan Luu
    danluu.com

    While being an extremely broad generalist can work, it's gotten much harder to "know a bit of everything" and be effective because there's more of everything over time (in terms of both breadth and depth).

    ...If you watch an anime or a TV series "about" fighting, people often improve by increasing the number of techniques they know because that's an easy thing to depict but, in real life, getting better at techniques you already know is often more effective than having a portfolio of hundreds of "moves". I've personally found this to be true in a variety of disciplines.

    1. ​​Managing Oneself​​
    • learning
    • skill
  • I completely ignored the front end development scene for 6 months. It was fine

    An Article by Rach Smith
    rachsmith.com

    What I’ve learnt through experience is that the number of languages I’ve learned or the specific frameworks I’ve gained experience with matters very little. What actually matters is my ability to up-skill quickly and effectively.

    If you focus on:

    • learning how you best learn, and
    • practicing effectively communicating the things you've learned
      you can't go wrong.
    • learning
    • programming
    • skill
    • experience
    • practice
  • Mediocratopia

    An Article by Venkatesh Rao
    www.ribbonfarm.com

    I once read a good definition of aptitude. Aptitude is how long it takes you to learn something. The idea is that everybody can learn anything, but if it takes you 200 years, you essentially have no aptitude for it. Useful aptitudes are in the <10 years range.

    1. ​​Leveling up aptitude​​
    1. ​​You need to make the step forward​​
    • skill
  • Ignorant, but curious

    An Article by Austin Kleon
    austinkleon.com

    The method is perhaps best summarized by Mike Monteiro: “The secret to being good at anything is to approach it like a curious idiot, rather than a know-it-all genius.”

    The “curious idiot” approach can serve you well if you can quiet your ego long enough to perform it.

    A curious idiot is unafraid to ask stupid questions. Every stupid question you ask takes a teeny, tiny act of courage. Sometimes you have to muster the will to push the words out of your lips.

    • curiosity
    • skill
    • wisdom
  • On onion cutting

    An Article by Ana Rodrigues
    ohhelloana.blog

    In the television show Masterchef there was an episode where the judges did a test on what they call “basic skills”. One of the judges often says that in order to be a “true chef”, you must know how to quickly and finely cut onions.

    ...This was really bothering me and I am stubborn so I wanted to win this fake argument really badly so I looked up why the way one cuts onions is important: as it turns out, the shape and even the surface area affect the end flavour. I thought the whole “chop chop chop” was about performance in the kitchen. Cut quickly to serve quickly! I was wrong.

    • craft
    • food
    • www
    • skill
  • Early work

    An Essay by Paul Graham
    www.paulgraham.com

    Imagine if we could turn off the fear of making something lame. Imagine how much more we'd do.

    1. ​​The right way to deal with new ideas​​
    2. ​​Focus on the rate of change​​
    • creativity
    • skill
    • ideas
  • Four stages of competence

    An Idea
    en.wikipedia.org
    Image from en.wikipedia.org on 2020-10-10 at 10.56.10 AM.png

    In psychology, the four stages of competence, or the "conscious competence" learning model, relates to the psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to competence in a skill.

    1. Unconscious incompetence
    2. Conscious incompetence
    3. Conscious competence
    4. Unconscious competence
    1. ​​Good design can copy​​
    • learning
    • skill
    • progress
  • Eyes on the ground

    A Quote by Akira Kurosawa
    www.youtube.com

    When you go mountain climbing, the first thing you’re told is not to look at the peak but to keep your eyes on the ground as you climb. You just keep climbing patiently one step at a time. If you keep looking at the top, you’ll get frustrated. I think writing is similar. You need to get used to the task of writing. You must make an effort to learn to regard it not as something painful but as routine.

    • writing
    • experience
    • skill

See also:
  1. learning
  2. practice
  3. experience
  4. making
  5. knowledge
  6. art
  7. mistakes
  8. teaching
  9. writing
  10. progress
  11. creativity
  12. ideas
  13. craft
  14. food
  15. www
  16. curiosity
  17. wisdom
  18. programming
  19. tools
  20. routine
  1. Dan Luu
  2. Paul Graham
  3. David Pye
  4. David Markson
  5. Lawrence Wechler
  6. Robert Irwin
  7. Akira Kurosawa
  8. Ana Rodrigues
  9. Austin Kleon
  10. Venkatesh Rao
  11. Rach Smith
  12. Henry Petroski
  13. Ratatat
  14. Young Churf
  15. David R. MacIver