1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
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  3. Abo, Akinori 9
  4. aesthetics 19
  5. agile 30
  6. Albers, Josef 17
  7. Alexander, Christopher 135
  8. Alexander, Scott 5
  9. Allsopp, John 4
  10. Ammer, Ralph 6
  11. Anderson, Gretchen 7
  12. anxiety 9
  13. Appleton, Maggie 5
  14. Aptekar-Cassels, Wesley 5
  15. Arango, Jorge 4
  16. architecture 110
  17. art 86
  18. Asimov, Isaac 5
  19. attention 17
  20. Auping, Michael 6
  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
  22. Bachelard, Gaston 12
  23. Baker, Nicholson 10
  24. beauty 58
  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bjarnason, Baldur 8
  27. Blake, William 5
  28. blogging 22
  29. body 11
  30. Boeing, Geoff 7
  31. boredom 9
  32. Botton, Alain de 38
  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
  41. business 15
  42. Byron, Lord 14
  43. Cagan, Marty 8
  44. Calvino, Italo 21
  45. Camus, Albert 13
  46. care 6
  47. Carruth, Shane 15
  48. CegƂowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 16
  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
  60. code 20
  61. collaboration 18
  62. collections 31
  63. color 23
  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
  70. construction 9
  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
  82. culture 13
  83. curiosity 11
  84. cycles 7
  85. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  86. darkness 28
  87. Darwin, Will 10
  88. data 8
  89. death 38
  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
  92. design 131
  93. details 31
  94. Dickinson, Emily 9
  95. Dieste, Eladio 4
  96. discovery 9
  97. doors 7
  98. Dorn, Brandon 11
  99. drawing 23
  100. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  101. Duany, Andres 18
  102. Eatock, Daniel 4
  103. economics 13
  104. efficiency 7
  105. Eisenman, Peter 8
  106. Eliot, T.S. 14
  107. emotion 8
  108. ending 14
  109. engineering 11
  110. Eno, Brian 4
  111. ethics 14
  112. euphony 38
  113. Evans, Benedict 4
  114. evolution 9
  115. experience 14
  116. farming 8
  117. fashion 11
  118. features 25
  119. feedback 6
  120. flaws 10
  121. Flexner, Abraham 8
  122. food 16
  123. form 19
  124. Fowler, Martin 4
  125. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  126. friendship 6
  127. fun 7
  128. function 31
  129. games 13
  130. gardens 26
  131. Garfield, Emily 4
  132. Garfunkel, Art 6
  133. geography 8
  134. geometry 18
  135. goals 9
  136. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  137. goodness 12
  138. Graham, Paul 37
  139. graphics 13
  140. Greene, Erick 6
  141. Hamming, Richard 45
  142. happiness 17
  143. Harford, Tim 4
  144. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  145. Hayes, Brian 28
  146. heat 7
  147. Heinrich, Bernd 7
  148. Herbert, Frank 4
  149. Heschong, Lisa 27
  150. Hesse, Herman 6
  151. history 13
  152. Hoffman, Yoel 10
  153. Hofstadter, Douglas 6
  154. home 15
  155. Hoy, Amy 4
  156. Hoyt, Ben 5
  157. html 11
  158. Hudlow, Gandalf 4
  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
  169. infrastructure 17
  170. innovation 15
  171. interaction 10
  172. interest 10
  173. interfaces 37
  174. intuition 8
  175. invention 10
  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
  180. Ive, Jonathan 6
  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
  183. Jacobs, Alan 5
  184. Jobs, Steve 20
  185. Jones, Nick 5
  186. Kahn, Louis 4
  187. Kakuzƍ, Okakura 23
  188. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  189. Keith, Jeremy 6
  190. Keller, Jenny 10
  191. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  192. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
  193. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  194. Kitching, Roger 7
  195. Klein, Laura 4
  196. Kleon, Austin 13
  197. Klinkenborg, Verlyn 24
  198. Klyn, Dan 20
  199. knowledge 29
  200. Kohlstedt, Kurt 12
  201. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  202. Krishna, Golden 10
  203. Kuma, Kengo 18
  204. language 20
  205. learning 30
  206. life 59
  207. light 31
  208. loneliness 12
  209. love 26
  210. Lovell, Sophie 16
  211. Lupton, Ellen 11
  212. Luu, Dan 8
  213. Lynch, Kevin 12
  214. MacIver, David R. 8
  215. MacWright, Tom 5
  216. Magnus, Margaret 12
  217. making 77
  218. management 14
  219. Manaugh, Geoff 27
  220. Markson, David 16
  221. Mars, Roman 13
  222. material 39
  223. math 16
  224. McCarter, Robert 21
  225. meaning 33
  226. media 16
  227. melancholy 52
  228. memory 29
  229. metaphor 10
  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. MĂŒller, Boris 7
  243. Naka, Toshiharu 8
  244. names 11
  245. Naskrecki, Piotr 5
  246. nature 51
  247. networks 15
  248. Neustadter, Scott 3
  249. Noessel, Christopher 7
  250. notetaking 35
  251. novelty 11
  252. objects 16
  253. order 10
  254. ornament 9
  255. Orwell, George 7
  256. Ott, Matthias 4
  257. ownership 6
  258. Pallasmaa, Juhani 41
  259. Palmer, John 8
  260. patterns 11
  261. Patton, James L. 9
  262. Pawson, John 21
  263. perception 22
  264. perfection 7
  265. performance 17
  266. Perrine, John D. 9
  267. Petroski, Henry 24
  268. philosophy 6
  269. photography 20
  270. physics 6
  271. Pinker, Steven 8
  272. place 14
  273. planning 15
  274. Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth 18
  275. poetry 13
  276. politics 9
  277. Pollan, Michael 6
  278. practice 10
  279. problems 31
  280. process 22
  281. production 7
  282. productivity 12
  283. products 21
  284. programming 9
  285. progress 16
  286. Pye, David 42
  287. quality 26
  288. questions 8
  289. Radić, Smiljan 20
  290. Rams, Dieter 16
  291. Rao, Venkatesh 14
  292. reading 16
  293. reality 13
  294. Reichenstein, Oliver 5
  295. religion 11
  296. Rendle, Robin 12
  297. repair 28
  298. research 17
  299. Reveal, James L. 4
  300. Richards, Melanie 3
  301. Richie, Donald 10
  302. Rougeux, Nicholas 4
  303. Rowe, Peter G. 10
  304. Rupert, Dave 4
  305. Ruskin, John 5
  306. Satyal, Parimal 9
  307. Saval, Nikil 13
  308. Sayers, Dorothy 32
  309. Schaller, George B. 7
  310. Schwulst, Laurel 5
  311. science 17
  312. seeing 36
  313. Sennett, Richard 45
  314. senses 11
  315. Seuss, Dr. 14
  316. Shakespeare, William 4
  317. Shorin, Toby 8
  318. silence 9
  319. Silverstein, Murray 33
  320. Simms, Matthew 19
  321. Simon, Paul 6
  322. simplicity 14
  323. Singer, Ryan 12
  324. skill 17
  325. Sloan, Robin 5
  326. Smith, Cyril Stanley 29
  327. Smith, Justin E. H. 6
  328. Smith, Rach 4
  329. socializing 7
  330. society 23
  331. software 68
  332. solitude 12
  333. Somers, James 8
  334. Sorkin, Michael 56
  335. sound 14
  336. space 20
  337. Speck, Jeff 18
  338. spirit 10
  339. streets 10
  340. structure 13
  341. Strunk, William 15
  342. Ström, Matthew 13
  343. style 30
  344. Sun, Chuånqí 15
  345. symbols 12
  346. systems 18
  347. Sƍetsu, Yanagi 34
  348. Sƍseki, Natsume 8
  349. Tanaka, Tomoyuki 9
  350. Tanizaki, Jun'ichirƍ 15
  351. taste 10
  352. Taylor, Dorian 16
  353. teaching 21
  354. teamwork 17
  355. technology 41
  356. texture 7
  357. thinking 31
  358. Thoreau, Henry David 8
  359. time 54
  360. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
  361. tools 32
  362. touch 8
  363. transportation 16
  364. Trombley, Nick 44
  365. truth 15
  366. Tufte, Edward 31
  367. Turrell, James 6
  368. typography 25
  369. understanding 32
  370. urbanism 68
  371. ux 100
  372. Victor, Bret 9
  373. Viollet-le-Duc, EugÚne 4
  374. vision 7
  375. visualization 34
  376. Voltaire 4
  377. wabi-sabi 8
  378. walking 23
  379. Wallace, David Foster 33
  380. Wang, Shawn 6
  381. war 7
  382. waste 12
  383. Watterson, Bill 4
  384. Webb, Matt 14
  385. Webb, Marc 3
  386. Weber, Michael H. 3
  387. Wechler, Lawrence 37
  388. whimsy 11
  389. White, E.B. 15
  390. Wirth, Niklaus 6
  391. wisdom 20
  392. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 7
  393. Woolf, Virginia 11
  394. words 35
  395. work 81
  396. writing 55
  397. Wurman, Richard Saul 18
  398. www 88
  399. Yamada, Kƍun 5
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Work & Labor

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  • If you have to do tedious work

    If you have to stand somewhere doing tedious work, at least make it interesting.

    Bill Mollison, Introduction to Permaculture
    1. ​​Useless work on useful things​​
    • beauty
    • work
    • boredom
  • Begin with your work

    A Quote by Edward Tufte

    In doing creative work, do not start your day with addictive time-vampires such as The New York Times, email, and Twitter. All scatter the eye, and mind, produce diverting vague anxiety, clutter short-term memory. Instead, begin with your work. Many creative workers have independently discovered this principle.

    • creativity
    • work
  • So much knowledge not being applied

    Most organisations have a lot of documents and data floating around that hardly ever gets revisited or used. They all have research, reading, and relevant information collecting dust.

    Stuff that should be informing the decisions and strategies of the company. Some of it sits unread in a knowledge base or a wiki. Some of it lies in the drives of individual employees who don’t have a way to share it productively.

    So much knowledge not being applied!

    Except that’s not how we work as human beings. If you haven’t read it, experienced it, and contextualised it, then it isn’t knowledge to you. Knowledge is a quality that people possess, not documents, and the only way to transfer it from one place to another is for people at both ends to apply themselves and make it their own.

    Baldur Bjarnason, On online collaboration and our obligations as makers of software
    • knowledge
    • documentation
    • work
  • Your life adds up

    Weber's German word for a vocation, Beruf, contains two resonances: the gradual accumulation of knowledge and skills and the ever-stronger conviction that one was meant to do this one particular thing in one's life.

    An English locution roughly conveys what he meant: your life 'adds up'.

    Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
    1. ​​All in & with the flow​​
    2. ​​The saddest designer​​
    3. ​​I've designed it that way​​
    • work
    • life
  • To form an integrated human milieu

    EVEN IF, during a transitional period, we temporarily accept a rigid division between work zones and residence zones, we must at least envisage a third sphere: that of life itself (the sphere of freedom and leisure — the essence of life). Unitary urbanism acknowledges no boundaries; it aims to form an integrated human milieu in which separations such as work/leisure or public/private will finally be dissolved. But before this is possible, the minimum action of unitary urbanism is to extend the terrain of play to all desirable constructions. This terrain will be at the level of complexity of an old city.

    Guy Debord, Situationist Theses on Traffic
    • work
    • life
  • Baumol’s cost disease

    Baumol's cost disease (or the Baumol effect) is the rise of salaries in jobs that have experienced no or low increase of labor productivity, in response to rising salaries in other jobs that have experienced higher labor productivity growth.

    The rise of wages in jobs without productivity gains derives from the requirement to compete for employees with jobs that have experienced gains and so can naturally pay higher salaries, just as classical economics predicts. For instance, if the retail sector pays its managers 19th-century-style salaries, the managers may decide to quit to get a job at an automobile factory, where salaries are higher because of high labor productivity. Thus, managers' salaries are increased not by labor productivity increases in the retail sector but by productivity and corresponding wage increases in other industries.

    Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
    • economics
    • productivity
    • work
  • The aspiration for quality

    To arouse the aspiration for quality and make good on it, the organization itself has to be well crafted in form. It needs, like Nokia, open information networks; it has to be willing to wait, as Apple is, to bring its products to market until they are really good.

    Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
    1. ​​On Taste​​
    2. ​​More profitable and a better buy​​
    • work
    • quality
  • Intrapreneurship

    The characteristic of 3M that enabled it to attain such diversity in its product line is a policy of what has generally come to be called "intrapreneurship". The basic idea is to allow employees of large corporations to behave within the company as they would as individual entrepreneurs in the outside world.

    ...It is 3M's policy (and that of other enlightened companies) to allow its engineers to spend a certain percentage of their work time on projects of their own choosing, a practice known as "bootlegging".

    Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things
    1. ​​Cannibalize yourself​​
    • innovation
    • work
  • On Criticism

    People are being counted on to do specific pieces of the puzzle. And the most important thing I think you can do for somebody who’s really good and who’s really being counted on is to point out to them when their work isn’t good enough, and to do it very clearly, and to articulate why, and to get them back on track. And you need to do that in a way that does not call into question your confidence in their abilities, but leaves not much room for interpretation.

    Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview
    • design
    • work
    • critique
  • From the desk of: Austin Kleon

    How do you work?

    When I get home, I have two desks in my office — one’s “analog” and one’s “digital.” The analog desk has nothing but markers, pens, pencils, paper, and newspaper. Nothing electronic is allowed on the desk — this is how I keep myself off Twitter, etc. This is where most of my work is born. The digital desk has my laptop, my monitor, my scanner, my Wacom tablet, and a MIDI keyboard controller for if I want to record any music. (Like a lot of writers, I’m a wannabe musician.) This is where I edit, publish, etc.

    Austin Kleon & Kate Donnelly, From the desk of
    fromyourdesks.com
    1. ​​Forget the computer — here’s why you should write and design by hand​​
    • drawing
    • work
  • Violence to the very structure of our being

    If we conclude that creative mind is in fact the very grain of the spiritual universe, we cannot arbitrarily stop our investigations with the man who happens to work in stone, or paint, or music, or letters. We shall have to ask ourselves whether the same pattern is not also exhibited in the spiritual structure of every man and woman. And, if it is, whether, by confining the average man and woman to uncreative activities and an uncreative outlook, we are not doing violence to the very structure of our being. If so, it is a serious matter, since we have seen already the unhappy results of handling any material in a way that runs counter to the natural law of its structure.

    Dorothy Sayers, The Mind of the Maker
    • creativity
    • work
    • life
    • material
  • Shortlist of interesting spaces

    Nick Trombley, barnsworthburning.net
    • craft
    • work
    • walking
    • www
    • notetaking
    • words
    • euphony
    • melancholy
    • zen
    • darkness
    • gardens
  • The right kind of building can do great things for a culture

    "Steve had this firm belief that the right kind of building can do great things for a culture," said Pixar's president Ed Catmull.

    Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. "There's a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by email and iChat," he said. "That's crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they're doing, you said 'Wow,' and soon you're cooking up all sorts of ideas."

    Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs
    • architecture
    • work
  • Values vs. strengths

    There is sometimes a conflict between a person's values and his or her strengths. What one does well – even very well and successfully – may not fit with one's value system. In that case, the work may not appear to be worth devoting one's lift to (or even a substantial portion thereof).

    Values are and should be the ultimate test.

    Peter F. Drucker, Managing Oneself
    • values
    • work
  • To improve the way you perform

    Do not try to change yourself—you are unlikely to succeed. But work hard to improve the way you perform. And try not to take on work you cannot perform or will only perform poorly.

    Peter F. Drucker, Managing Oneself
    • work
  • Parkinson's Law

    Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.

    Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
    1. ​​Hofstadter's Law​​
    • work
    • time
    • productivity
  • When you're interested in what you're working on

    It's never hard to work when you're interested in what you're working on.

    But what if you hate what you're working on?
    It helps to examine the content of your loathing.
    What is it you hate?

    Verlyn Klinkenborg, Several Short Sentences About Writing
    • hate
    • work
  • The dual ladder

    The first task for growing designers, as opposed to managers, is to craft a proper career path for them, one whose compensation and sociological status reflect their true value to the creative enterprise. This is commonly called the dual ladder. It it easy to give corresponding salaries to corresponding rungs, but it requires strong proactive measures to give them equal prestige: equal offices, equal staff support, reverse-biased raises when duties change.

    Why does the dual ladder need special attention? Perhaps because managers, being human, are inherently inclined to consider their own tasks more difficult and important than design and need to deliberately assess what makes creativity and innovation happen.

    Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., The Design of Design
    1. ​​Senior craftsperson​​
    • work
  • Dad's study

    Screen Shot 2020-10-08 at 9_43_59 PM.png
    Hayao Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro
    • work
  • All-use environments

    Until the nineteenth century, virtually all cities were “all use” environments. Craft-scale production was typically carried out in a workshop below the home of the craftsperson, which often also served as the site of exchange.

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    1. ​​Small economies​​
    • production
    • work
  • Roman empire military

    Image from pketh.org on 2020-09-10 at 1.26.54 PM.png

    Rome military diagram.

    Most company structures are based on the Roman empire military. CEO Caesar says he wants something, and the lieutenant managers below him on the org chart break it down into smaller tasks for the soldiers to accomplish.

    On a development team, programmers are the soldiers of these shitty new armies. They open their Jira issues and add whatever feature it says to add, or fix what it says to fix. If I can save time by adding another dependency, or skip a meeting by implementing a mockup exactly as designed, why should I care?

    Pirijan Ketheswaran, Why Software is Slow and Shitty
    pketh.org
    • bureaucracy
    • work
  • 9. Scattered Work

    Problem

    The artificial separation of houses and work creates intolerable rifts in people’s inner lives.

    Solution

    Use zoning laws, neighborhood planning, tax incentives, and any other means available to scatter workplaces throughout the city. Prohibit large concentrations of work without family life around them. Prohibit large concentrations of family life without workplaces around them.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​Men are not an abstraction​​
    • work
  • Men are not an abstraction

    Placing work and commerce near residences, but buffering it off, in the tradition set by Garden City theory, is fully as matriarchal an arrangement as if the residences were miles away from work and from men. Men are not an abstraction. They are either around, in person, or they are not. Working places and commerce must be mingled right in with residences if men, like the men who work on or near Hudson Street, for example, are to be around city children in daily life—men who are part of normal daily life, as opposed to men who put in an occasional playground appearance while they substitute for women or imitate the occupations of women.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    1. ​​9. Scattered Work​​
    • gender
    • work
  • 80. Self-Governing Workshops and Offices

    Problem

    No one enjoys their work if they are a cog in a machine.

    Solution

    Encourage the formation of self-governing workshops and offices of 5 to 20 workers. Make each group autonomous—with respect to organization, style, relation to other groups, hiring and firing, work schedule. Where the work is complicated and requires larger organizations, several of these work groups can federate and cooperate to produce complex artifacts and services.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    • work
  • Manual labor

    Artisanal craftsmen have proved particularly promising subjects for job retraining. The discipline required for good manual labor serves them, as does their focus on concrete problems rather than on the flux of process-based, human relations work. For this very reason it has proved easier to train a plumber to become a computer programmer than to train a salesperson; the plumber has craft habit and material focus, which serve retraining. Employers don't often see this opportunity because they equate manual routine with mindless labor.

    Richard Sennett, The Craftsman
    1. ​​Making coal miners into programmers​​
    • work
  • A dry, husky business

    Despite the furor over their aggressive unmanliness, clerks, and with them the office, crept silently into the world of nineteenth-century America. Moral philosophers were mostly preoccupied with the clang of industrialization and its satanic mills, and most regarded as negligible the barely audible scratch of pens across ledgers and receipts that characterized the new world of clerical work. It was only a “dry, husky business,” as the narrator of Bartleby had it.

    Nikil Saval, Cubed
    1. ​​Dark satanic mills​​
    • work
  • Each fascinating crisis

    The problems themselves, though they once obsessed you, and kept you working late night after night, and made you talk in your sleep, turn out to have been hollow: two weeks after your last day they already have contracted into inert pellets one-fiftieth of their former size; you find yourself unable to recreate the sense of what was really at stake, for it seems to have been the Hungarian 5/2 rhythm of the lived workweek alone that kept each fascinating crisis inflated to its full interdepartmental complexity.

    Nicholson Baker, The Mezzanine
    • work
    • problems
    • bureaucracy
  • An extremely closed structure

    Nearly all housing in Japan today consists of exclusively residential units for salaried workers and their nuclear families. Such residences have, by definition, no reason to interface with their surroundings.

    Salaried workers commute to workplaces outside, and often a considerable distance from, their homes. Residences built for these workers do not contain a place of livelihood—in the broader sense, a place for exchange. This "residence-only housing" is only a place for the nuclear family to eat and sleep, with no occasions for interaction with the outside world, and no need to foster a sense of belonging to the community at large. Thus the only organizational principle is the maintenance of privacy. Both in external appearance and in lifestyle, it is an extremely closed structure.

    Toshiharu Naka, Two Cycles
    • work
    • socializing
  • The cubicle

    The cubicle had the effect of putting people close enough to each other to create serious social annoyances, but dividing them so that they didn’t actually feel that they were working together. It had all the hazards of privacy and sociability but the benefits of neither. It got so bad that nobody wanted them taken away; even those three walls offered some kind of psychological home, a place one could call one’s own. All these factors could deepen the frenzied solitude of an office worker.

    Nikil Saval, Cubed
    • work
    • teamwork
    • solitude
    • privacy
  • Taylorism in software

    Interestingly, just as software people were talking about how we need to kind of follow this very Taylorist notion as the future of software development, the manufacturing world was moving away from it. The whole notion of what was going on in a lot in manufacturing places was the people doing the work need to have much more of a say in this because they actually see what's happening.

    Martin Fowler, The State of Agile Software in 2018
    martinfowler.com
    • craft
    • work
  • Freedom

    Thus freedom brings not stagnation, but rather the danger of overwork.

    Abraham Flexner, The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
    • work
  • The gathering darkness of a Sunday evening

    Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored.

    Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness
    • work
  • Long-term

    "Apart from his own design work, this is the second greatest achievement of Dieter Rams: establishing a design department within a company, which succeeded for decades in preserving its own individual approach and rigorously advancing it, without really being influenced by changing market interests." — Klaus Kemp

    He is right; it was a remarkable feat. It takes a considerable degree of doggedness and conviction to follow the ungratifying and difficult path of insisting on a consistently long-term view in a corporate world that is constantly shifting and full of short-term decisions.

    Sophie Lovell & Dieter Rams, Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible
    • work
  • Shorten the wings

    The labile tastes of certain decision-makers in a company are often a great burden for designers. Too many feel themselves qualified to pass judgment. And how insensitive, how superficial these judgments often are.

    Taste, believes Rams, is something that needs to be trained, since the aesthetic decisions at this level in product design are intrinsically bound to the entire form and function of the object. It would be unimaginable, for example, that the management of an aerospace company would ask the designers of a new plane to shorten the wings because they think it would make it look prettier.

    Sophie Lovell & Dieter Rams, Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible
    1. ​​Classical absurdity​​
    • work
    • taste
  • Selling your own ignorance

    When you sell your expertise - and what I mean by sell is to move ahead in a corporation, or sell an idea to a publisher, or sell an ability to a client - by definition, you’re selling from a limited repertoire.

    However, when you sell your ignorance to move ahead, when you sell your desire to create and explore and navigate paths to knowledge, when you sell your curiosity - you sell from a bucket with an infinitely deep bottom that represents an unlimited repertoire. And, you sell in a way that’s not intimidating, in a way that joins the explanation to the fascination that comes with understanding.

    Richard Saul Wurman, Understanding Understanding
    • work
  • Defining craftsmanship

    By craftsmanship I refer to a style of work and a way of life having the following characteristics:

    1. In craftsmanship there is no ulterior motive for work other than the product being made and the processes of its creation.
    2. In craftsmanship, plan and performance are unified, and in both, the craftsman is master of the activity and of himself in the process. The craftsman is free to begin his working according to his own plan, and during the work he is free to modify its shape and the manner of its shaping.
    3. Since he works freely, the craftsman is able to learn from his work, to develop as well as use his capacities.
    4. The craftsman’s way of livelihood determines and infuses his entire mode of living. For him there is no split of work and play, of work and culture. His work is the mainspring of his life; he does not flee from work into a separate sphere of leisure; he brings to his non-working hours the values and qualities developed and employed in his working time.
    C. Wright Mills, Man in the Middle: The Designer
    • craft
    • work
  • The star system

    The distributor is ascendant over many producers who become the rank-and-file workmen of the commercially established cultural apparatus.

    The star system of American culture – along with the commercial hacks – tend to kill off the chance of the cultural workman to be a worthy craftsman.

    C. Wright Mills, Man in the Middle: The Designer
    • work
  • Office survival

    “The caveman was undoubtedly very pleased to find a good cave but he also undoubtedly positioned himself at the entrance looking out. Protect your back but know what is going on outside is a very good rule for survival. It is also a good survival rule for life in offices.” — Robert Propst, The Office: A Facility Based on Chicago

    Nikil Saval, Cubed
    • work
  • Instruments of cooperation

    When work isn't shared, the instruments of cooperation – listening, taking note, adjusting – atrophy like muscles that are no longer in use.

    Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology
    • work
    • teamwork
  • An unfolding network of associations

    We know strategy is an unfolding network of associations:

    The evidence from the case suggests that the concept of strategy can be reappraised. From strategy as a static set of choices made at a specific point in time to strategy as an unfolding network of people, shared experiences and artifacts that is constantly being remade.

    And we know that only 30% of employees can articulate a company’s strategy.

    And I believe in the hyper-connected age we live in both of these things are becoming more true - that strategy is increasingly “in motion” and that most organizations are realizing their OODA loops are too slow for the modern world.

    This causes the articulation of strategy to stall and get left behind - how do you articulate something in motion? It’s easier to write strategy down when it doesn’t change right?

    As a result - there’s a widening gap between the perspective on strategy that the executive team has and the received ideas of the company’s direction that teams and employees have.

    Tom Critchlow, Narrative Strategy
    tomcritchlow.com
    • work
  • Displacement

    ...the man fitted to his job like a man to the exact pocket of space he displaces.

    David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
    • work
  • Strings and clots

    The walls' texture was mostly smooth, but if you really focused your attention there were also a lot of the little embedded strings and clots which painters tend to leave when they're paid by the job and not the hour and thus have no motivation to hurry. If you really look at something, you can almost always tell what type of wage structure the person who made it was on.

    David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
    • work
  • The Real World of Technology

    A Lecture by Ursula M. Franklin
    www.amazon.com
    1. ​​Technology is a system​​
    2. ​​Fish and water​​
    3. ​​Defining activities​​
    4. ​​Holistic and prescriptive technologies​​
    5. ​​That which requires caring​​
    1. ​​From hands to machines​​
    2. ​​The design systems between us​​
    3. ​​Stress systems​​
    • technology
    • work
    • society
    • craft
  • Managing Oneself

    A Book by Peter F. Drucker
    1. ​​Only from strength​​
    2. ​​Feedback analysis​​
    3. ​​Taking pride in ignorance​​
    4. ​​But bulldozers move mountains​​
    5. ​​Waste as little effort as possible on low competence​​
    1. ​​Never change the technology​​
    2. ​​What to learn​​
    • management
    • discipline
    • wisdom
    • work
  • Cubed

    A Book by Nikil Saval
    www.penguinrandomhouse.com
    1. ​​Dolor​​
    2. ​​A dry, husky business​​
    3. ​​A segment of the enormous file​​
    4. ​​Taylorism​​
    5. ​​Divided against itself​​
    1. ​​It is a little world​​
    • bureaucracy
    • work
  • I've designed it that way

    A Quote by Townes Van Zandt
    genius.com

    I don't envision a very long life for myself.
    Like, I think my life will run out before my work does, you know?

    I've designed it that way.

    1. ​​Your life adds up​​
    • death
    • work
    • design
    • art
    • melancholy
    • life
  • What Le Corbusier got right about office space

    An Article by Tim Harford
    timharford.com

    In the 1960s, the designer Robert Propst worked with the Herman Miller company to produce “The Action Office”, a stylish system of open-plan office furniture that allowed workers to sit, stand, move around and configure the space as they wished.

    Propst then watched in horror as his ideas were corrupted into cheap modular dividers, and then to cubicle farms or, as Propst described them, “barren, rathole places”. Managers had squeezed the style and the space out of the action office, but above all they had squeezed the ability of workers to make choices about the place where they spent much of their waking lives.

    ...It should be easy for the office to provide a vastly superior working environment to the home, because it is designed and equipped with work in mind. Few people can afford the space for a well-designed, well-specified home office. Many are reduced to perching on a bed or coffee table. And yet at home, nobody will rearrange the posters on your wall, and nobody will sneer about your “dog pictures, or whatever”. That seems trivial, but it is not.

    • work
    • personality
    • ownership
    • modularity
    • choice
  • Background textures of work

    An Article by Lucy Keer
    lucykeer.com

    One thing I've been enjoying about working as a technical writer is that the minute-by-minute texture of the work feels right. Something about formatting text, faffing about with SVGs, trying to rewrite a sentence more clearly... it's just enjoyable in itself, and I feel at home with it.

    ...Working as a programmer was very much not like that. There's something in the rough vicinity of professional dev work that I do like, which I could probably label as 'iterative hobbyist tinkering with websites'. I like working on something with a strong visual component, and I like to be inside of a fast feedback loop, and I'm mostly interested in just somehow bodging through until it works. I'm not very interested in either the computer-sciencey side of programming — data structures, algorithms — or the software-engineerey side of making things run reliably at scale in a maintainable way. So maybe it's not surprising that the minute-by-minute texture of professional programming was just... kind of bad. Occasional fun bits when I got into something, but the background experience was not fun.

    • work
    • productivity
    • making

    What a great idea – work as material, tangible, textured.

  • I don’t believe in Zoom fatigue

    An Article by Matt Webb
    interconnected.org

    It’s not Zoom fatigue, it’s Zoom whiplash.

    It’s a hunch. I can’t prove this.

    The trick to get around this is to move smoothly up and down the gradient of social interaction intensity, never dropping below a basic floor of presence: the sense that there are other people in the same place as you.

    Instead of having two modes, “in a call” and “on my own,” we need to think about multiple ways of being together which, minimally, could be:

    • In a video call
    • In an anteroom to a video call, hearing the sound of others
    • In a doc together
    • On my desktop but with the sense that colleagues are around

    And the job of the designer is to ensure that their software ensures the existence of these different contexts, instead of having the binary on-a-call/not-on-a-call, and to design the transitions between them.

    • communication
    • work
    • transitions
    • software
  • Say yes and never do it

    A Quote by Mel Brooks
    www.newyorker.com

    You have some wonderful stories of basically getting away with stuff at the studios.

    I’d learned one very simple trick: say yes. Simply say yes
You say yes, and you never do it.

    That’s great advice for life.

    It is. Don’t fight them. Don’t waste your time struggling with them and trying to make sense to them. They’ll never understand.

    • management
    • work
    • making
  • Thanks Doc

    An Article by Robin Rendle & Craig Mod
    www.robinrendle.com

    A couple of months back, Craig mentioned in a video that he has a doc filled to the brim with snippets of text—nice words, compliments, and thanks that had been sent his way for his work. Whenever someone says something nice he just copy/pastes it into that doc.

    It sounds silly at first and perhaps a little egotistical. Behold! I have a document that proves how great I am!

    But I started doing it just to see what it feels like and
hey
actually? It’s so great! When I’m feeling low (often) or whenever the world feels unstable (extremely often) it’s so very nice to return to a few kind words about my work. It reminds me just how much these words of praise mean, it reminds me that I ought to pass that favor along.

    1. ​​Good Things​​
    • happiness
    • work
    • friendship
  • Efficiency is the Enemy

    An Article
    fs.blog

    Many of us have come to expect work to involve no slack time because of the negative way we perceive it. In a world of manic efficiency, slack often comes across as laziness or a lack of initiative. Without slack time, however, we know we won’t be able to get through new tasks straight away, and if someone insists we should, we have to drop whatever we were previously doing. One way or another, something gets delayed. The increase in busyness may well be futile.

    1. ​​It’s Time to Embrace Slow Productivity​​
    • efficiency
    • productivity
    • work
  • Spreadsheet Portfolios for UX Designers

    An Article by Erica Heinz
    ericaheinz.com
    Image from ericaheinz.com on 2020-09-22 at 11.07.08 AM.png

    The “case study?” column was the whole point of the spreadsheet — identifying which projects I still needed to write up for my portfolio — but at this point I looked at the sheet, and thought “This is honestly a better overview of the work I do than any ‘portfolio’ I’ve seen”.

    So I tweeted a screenshot, joking/trolling that it WAS my portfolio (I didn’t include any winks or notes that I was still planning a “real” portfolio), but people didn’t respond with the lulz I expected — they got the idea, or took it at face value and said they were going to do their portfolio this way too!

    1. ​​My Anti-Resumé​​
    • ux
    • work
    • whimsy
  • My Anti-ResumĂ©

    An Article by Monica Byrne
    monicacatherine.com

    A couple years ago I was having dinner with a playwright, Bekah Brunstetter, and her director David Shmidt Chapman. We talked about how rejection is just part of the landscape for all beginning artists, no matter how talented or hardworking they might be or how successful they might appear. David said he’d love to publish his “anti-rĂ©sumĂ©â€ someday—a list of all the things he didn’t get.

    1. ​​Spreadsheet Portfolios for UX Designers​​
    • work
    • failure

    Emphasis added.

  • The Third Way

    An Article by Kevin Kelly
    kk.org

    But all the civilized cities of the world were also filled with third places that people loved. Not quite private, not quite public, these third places were intimate but open to anyone. Like settling down at a table at a cafe. It felt like your space, but you were not the landlord. They were public, open spaces that you could “own” for a while.

    
We need a new third category of work — something between “employee” and “not an employee”—that encompasses digital gig laborers. AirBnB is neither a hotel, nor a private resident. It is a third thing, and we need to create a new category to deal with it
This is the era of the third way.

    • place
    • society
    • work
    • culture
  • Individuals matter

    An Article by Dan Luu
    danluu.com

    One of the most common mistakes I see people make when looking at data is incorrectly using an overly simplified model. A specific variant of this that has derailed the majority of work roadmaps I've looked at is treating people as interchangeable, as if it doesn't matter who is doing what, as if individuals don't matter.

    Individuals matter.

    1. ​​On Talent​​
    • teamwork
    • planning
    • work
  • Deadlines are bullshit

    An Article
    contrariantruth.substack.com

    In software development deadlines are a necessary evil. It is important to understand when they are necessary, and it is important to understand why they are evil.

    1. ​​External vs. internal deadlines​​
    2. ​​Why are internal deadlines evil?​​
    3. ​​Engineers who love their work​​
    1. ​​Hofstadter's Law​​
    2. ​​The Thing-deadline calculus​​
    3. ​​Never enough time​​
    4. ​​Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake ​​
    • bureaucracy
    • software
    • process
    • work
  • When their salary depends on not understanding it

    A Quote by Upton Sinclair

    It is difficult to get people to understand something, when their salary depends on not understanding it.

    • understanding
    • work
  • Touch the keys

    An Article by Rach Smith
    rachsmith.com

    In his course Being Productive: Simple Steps to Calm Focus, Kourosh Dini emphasises the importance of taking a moment to “be with” the work every day (or however frequently you need to tackle a project). “Being with” your work is to be fully present and intentional about that activity and doing nothing else.

    This idea was inspired by Dini’s piano teacher, who encouraged him to sit at his piano and touch the keys every day. Even on the days that he felt he had no time or inclination to practice. Sometimes touching the keys would lead to a good practice session, even when he didn’t feel like it would before he actually gave it a go.

    Just like Dini, I find that once I give the task my full attention and be present, the actual doing of it turns out to be much easier and more enjoyable than my mind had been expecting. As usual, the resistance to getting started is far more uncomfortable than actually doing the thing.

    1. ​​To pick up my pen​​
    • productivity
    • work
    • creativity
    • practice
  • I haven't experienced imposter syndrome, and maybe you haven't either

    An Article by Rach Smith
    rachsmith.com

    I have never felt like an “imposter”.
    I have always deserved to be here, I’ve worked hard.
    I don’t suffer from a “syndrome”.
    Identifying the gaps in my knowledge and being aware of what I don’t know is part of my vocation.

    In recent years it’s become trendy to discuss how we all apparently suffer from this imposter syndrome - an inability to internalize one's accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. I take two issues with this:

    • it minimizes the impact that this experience has on people that really do suffer from it.
    • we’re labelling what should be considered positive personality traits - humility, an acceptance that we can’t be right all the time, a desire to know more, as a “syndrome” that we need to “deal with”, “get over” or “get past”.
    • work
    • knowledge
  • Learning About Work Ethic From My High School Driving Instructor

    An Essay by James Somers
    www.theatlantic.com

    Should we really demand that the guy who checks ticket stubs at the movie theater hones his craft?

    Well, yes. No job is too low to not warrant care, because no job exists in isolation. Carelessness ripples. It adds friction to the working of the world. To phone it in or run out the clock, regardless of how alone and impotent you might feel in your work, is to commit an especially tragic—for being so preventable—brand of public sin.


    Bob [the driving instructor] oozes concern; he wants to infect the state of New Jersey with good driving habits. He respects his public role, the fact that the minute he's done with these kids they head straight for their parents' car keys and out onto the roads we share. When I asked him what he likes to do outside of work, he laughed: "This is my life."

    His reward is the pleasure of depth itself.

    • craft
    • work
    • ethics
  • If we didn’t live to work

    A Fragment by Charlie Warzel
    warzel.substack.com

    When you talk to people who reject the modern notion of a career, many of them say the same thing: They crave more balance, less precarity, and better pay. They also, crucially, want to work.

    What’s profound about the career rejectionists is that their guiding questions are simple. What if work didn’t make you feel awful? What would life be like if we didn’t live to work? What do workers and employers actually owe each other? What if we structured our work lives around a different idea of success?

    • work
    • values

    From the article, What If People Don’t Want 'A Career?

  • 136 things every web developer should know before they burn out and turn to landscape painting or nude modelling

    An Article by Baldur Bjarnason
    www.baldurbjarnason.com
    1. The best way to improve software UX is regular direct observation, by everybody on the team, of the work done.
    2. Have some personality.
    3. Minimalism is garbage.
    4. Metaphors are fantastic.
    5. Naming things is fantastic.
    6. Try to write HTML that would make sense and be usable without the CSS.
    7. The buyer is quite often wrong. That fact never changes their mind.
    8. Working on a functioning app’s codebase does more to increase its quality than adding features.
    9. A good manager will debate you, and that’s awesome.
    10. The term ‘project’ is a poor metaphor for the horticultural activity that is software development.
    1. ​​Two Hundred Fifty Things an Architect Should Know​​
    • www
    • work
    • ux
    • collections
  • The brag document

    An Article by Julia Evans
    jvns.ca

    It’s frustrating to have done something really important and later realize that you didn’t get rewarded for it just because the people making the decision didn’t understand or remember what you did.

    The tactic is pretty simple! Instead of trying to remember everything you did with your brain, maintain a “brag document” that lists everything so you can refer to it when you get to performance review season!

    • work
    • experience
    • memory
    • collections
  • Why We Build the Wall

    A Song by Anaïs Mitchell
    genius.com

    What do we have that they should want?
    We have a wall to work upon
    We have work and they have none
    And our work is never done
    And the war is never won
    The enemy is poverty
    And the wall keeps out the enemy
    And we build the wall to keep us free
    That’s why we build the wall
    We build the wall to keep us free

    1. ​​So that its destruction cannot begin​​
    • work
    • freedom
    • capitalism
  • From the desk of

    A Blog by Kate Donnelly
    fromyourdesks.com

    A site dedicated solely to canvas of the Desk.

    A Desk is where we work. Symbolic. Physical. Present. A second and third home. A Desk is a platform. A hearth. Roots are planted. It’s a place, a sanctuary, where hours upon hours pass.

    1. ​​From the desk of: Austin Kleon​​
    • work
    • furniture
  • The saddest designer

    An Essay by Chia Amisola
    chias.blog

    I am tired of the premise that creation means productivity––especially in the laborious sense...Creation has become mangled with labor in a world that demands man to monetize all of their hobbies and pursuits. In return, it seems empty, almost sad, really––to be the designer spending weekends again on the screen.

    To tell you what I like to do in the weekends, I like to do the sad thing...The ‘good’ people tell you to detach your life from your workspace, but this summer, I think I’ve just realized how much I adore what I have the luxury of working on everyday.

    In the weekend, I make. I make not because it’s the only thing I have ever known, but because it’s the most certain way forward.

    1. ​​To see the fulfillment of the work​​
    2. ​​Your life adds up​​
    • making
    • identity
    • work
  • Contrafreeloading

    A Definition
    en.wikipedia.org

    Contrafreeloading is an observed behavior in which an organism, when offered a choice between provided food or food that requires effort to obtain, prefers the food that requires effort.

    • work
    • behavior
  • In defense of disorder: on career, creativity, and professionalism

    An Essay by Chia Amisola
    chias.blog

    Professionalism is a lie, build what you love, explore everything. In today’s age of creation, anyone who attempts to tell you otherwise is lying. You’ll end up seeking what you traded for the rest of your life.

    1. ​​Successful careers are not planned​​
    • work
    • creativity
    • bureaucracy
  • Two types of work

    An Article by Jorge Arango
    jarango.com

    There are two types of work: growth work and maintenance work.

    Growth work involves making new things. It can be something big or small. In either case, growth work often follows a loose process.

    Maintenance work is different. Maintenance work involves caring for the resources and instruments that make growth work possible. This includes tools, but also body and mind.

    Maintenance is ultimately in service to growth. But effective growth can’t happen without maintenance. As with so many things, the ideal is a healthy balance — and it doesn’t come without struggle.

    • organization
    • information
    • making
    • work
  • At least everything was important

    A Quote by Mads Mikkelsen
    www.vulture.com

    My approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing. That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference, because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something — a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career. Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important.

    1. ​​The most important thing you do​​
    • work
    • craft
    • goals
  • Apprenticeship: An Internship Replacement

    An Essay by Ivana McConnell
    louderthanten.com

    Universities are often too large, dulling the student-educator relationship. Internships are often transitory and involve large volumes of work without context or learning: building web pages or presentations from pre-built components to meet a deadline, for example. It’s work that people need to do, but it doesn’t require learning or understanding the client or the project. Thankfully, there is a middle ground that we seem to have forgotten about in tech: the apprenticeship.

    • craft
    • learning
    • work
  • Senior craftsperson

    A Fragment by Wilson Miner
    staff.design

    The thing that you’re talking about though, which I’ve never seen a mature company really have a sustainable space for, is the “senior craftsperson.” They’re not pivoting at some point in their career to saying “I’m going to take what I know and leverage it through other people.” They’re saying “I want to get better infinitely at the thing that I do.” I believe that that’s possible.

    You see it more in pure-art kind of careers. Like “I’m an illustrator” or “I’m a concept artist” or something, and there’s a need for that person being really fucking good at that one thing, and continuing to do that one thing. I think a lot of people can intuitively understand why that would be really satisfying for someone as a career path.

    1. ​​The dual ladder​​
    • craft
    • work

    From an interview with Miner (a designer at Apple) on the Individual Contributor career path.

  • When we were all together in-person

    A Quote
    www.theverge.com

    “We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future,” said Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of retail and people, in a video recording viewed by The Verge. “If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person.”

    • collaboration
    • work
    • making
  • Building Momentum

    An Article by Dan Mall
    danmall.com

    Fight the Waterfall

    Start all of the pieces of work a little bit earlier. The key to starting work early is not succumbing to the pressure of having to finish the work. Don’t worry about finishing. If you’re a developer, you can start doing things while your design or information architect are working because a lot of your work actually isn’t dependent on their work. Some of it is, so you probably won’t be able to finish, but that shouldn’t stop you from starting.

    Share Work-in-Progress Early and Often

    When you share work-in-progress, share it with the caveat that no feedback is needed at this point. You’re simply sharing it to let people know where you are. For example, if you have to make 12 wireframes, share it when you finish 2 or 3. Rather than spending a whole week to drop 12 wireframes, share 2 – 3 wireframes every 2 days. The more often you do this, you start to build rhythm, and rhythm builds momentum.

    • process
    • work
    • collaboration
  • Life as Protest

    A Fragment by Craig Mod
    craigmod.com

    I’ve written this before but I constantly need to remind myself of it, so, once again: A certain kind of work, lifestyle, mode of living — in and of itself — is protest. That is, work that is curious and rigorous is implicitly an antipode to didactic, shallow bombastity. It is inherently an archetype against bullshit. That to be committed to this work or life of rigor (be it rigor focused on “art” or, as they say in Japanese, sakuhin, or family or athleticism or whatever), and to share it with the world is to opt-out of being paralyzed by idiocy, and help others who may be paralyzed find a path back to whatever fecundity of life it is that they deserve.

    • life
    • work
    • society
  • What doesn't seem like work?

    An Essay by Paul Graham
    paulgraham.com

    The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do.

    So I bet it would help a lot of people to ask themselves about this explicitly. What seems like work to other people that doesn't seem like work to you?

    • work
    • interest
    • life
  • How to do what you love

    An Essay by Paul Graham
    paulgraham.com
    1. ​​To do something well you have to like it​​
    2. ​​Wow, that's pretty cool​​
    3. ​​Prestige is just fossilized inspiration​​
    4. ​​Always produce​​
    • work
    • life
  • Questions to ask on a new job search

    An Article by Sally Lait
    sallylait.com

    The role and expectations

    1. What does this job entail?
    2. What's driving the hire?
    3. What are the biggest challenges?
    4. What scope is there to do x, y, z?
    5. How/when/why would you consider hiring me to be successful?
    6. What does progression from here look like?
    7. What's the biggest mistake I could make?

    The wider business

    1. Can you tell me a bit about the company?
    2. What about the culture?
    3. How does diversity, equity, and inclusion play into this?
    4. What's the most exciting thing on the company horizon?
    5. What's been the impact of COVID-19 on company finances/strategy?
    6. What are the best and worst things about working here?

    Day to day

    1. What's the size/structure of the team I'd be around/have reporting to me?
    2. Which other people would I work most closely with?
    3. What technologies/tools would I work with?
    4. What could I do that would make your life easier?

    The practical bits

    1. What salary are you offering for this role?
    2. Additional package/benefits
    3. How do you approach distributed working, and is there scope for this?
    4. What timescales are you hoping for?
    5. Holiday
    6. Job title

    Give yourself an extra shot: Is there anything I've said today that makes you hesitate?

    • work
  • Dolor

    A Poem by Theodore Roethke
    www.goodreads.com

    I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils.

    • work
    • melancholy
    • bureaucracy
  • Difficult to work with

    A Tweet
    twitter.com

    "Someone recently told me that 'difficult to work with' often really means 'difficult to take advantage of' in creative industries, and I haven’t stopped thinking about that for weeks" — @AdalynGrace_

    • work
    • management

See also:
  1. craft
  2. life
  3. bureaucracy
  4. productivity
  5. making
  6. creativity
  7. melancholy
  8. teamwork
  9. society
  10. management
  11. design
  12. ux
  13. www
  14. software
  15. process
  16. collections
  17. collaboration
  18. values
  19. knowledge
  20. quality
  21. taste
  22. critique
  23. problems
  24. socializing
  25. solitude
  26. privacy
  27. technology
  28. freedom
  29. capitalism
  30. gender
  31. production
  32. beauty
  33. boredom
  34. whimsy
  35. interest
  36. walking
  37. notetaking
  38. words
  39. euphony
  40. zen
  41. darkness
  42. gardens
  43. learning
  44. hate
  45. time
  46. efficiency
  47. experience
  48. memory
  49. goals
  50. organization
  51. information
  52. discipline
  53. wisdom
  54. architecture
  55. behavior
  56. material
  57. identity
  58. drawing
  59. furniture
  60. ethics
  61. practice
  62. innovation
  63. understanding
  64. economics
  65. planning
  66. place
  67. culture
  68. failure
  69. happiness
  70. friendship
  71. communication
  72. transitions
  73. personality
  74. ownership
  75. modularity
  76. choice
  77. death
  78. art
  79. documentation
  1. Nikil Saval
  2. Richard Sennett
  3. Peter F. Drucker
  4. Sophie Lovell
  5. Dieter Rams
  6. C. Wright Mills
  7. Ursula M. Franklin
  8. David Foster Wallace
  9. Christopher Alexander
  10. Murray Silverstein
  11. Sara Ishikawa
  12. Paul Graham
  13. Craig Mod
  14. Chia Amisola
  15. Baldur Bjarnason
  16. Kate Donnelly
  17. Rach Smith
  18. Richard Saul Wurman
  19. Steve Jobs
  20. Frederick P. Brooks
  21. Jr.
  22. Alain de Botton
  23. Nicholson Baker
  24. Abraham Flexner
  25. Theodore Roethke
  26. Toshiharu Naka
  27. Tom Critchlow
  28. Edward Tufte
  29. Martin Fowler
  30. AnaĂŻs Mitchell
  31. Jane Jacobs
  32. Pirijan Ketheswaran
  33. Michael Sorkin
  34. Bill Mollison
  35. Erica Heinz
  36. Sally Lait
  37. Hayao Miyazaki
  38. Nick Trombley
  39. Ivana McConnell
  40. Wilson Miner
  41. Verlyn Klinkenborg
  42. Dan Mall
  43. Julia Evans
  44. Mads Mikkelsen
  45. Jorge Arango
  46. Walter Isaacson
  47. Dorothy Sayers
  48. Austin Kleon
  49. Charlie Warzel
  50. James Somers
  51. Henry Petroski
  52. Upton Sinclair
  53. Dan Luu
  54. Kevin Kelly
  55. Monica Byrne
  56. Guy Debord
  57. Robin Rendle
  58. Mel Brooks
  59. Matt Webb
  60. Lucy Keer
  61. Tim Harford
  62. Townes Van Zandt