Here is thing I learned when I was 29, which I now give away for free:
If you want to do a thing, do it now, or as soon as feasible. Because there might not be a later.
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But to succeed at a thing–a job, a relationship–in the long term, the thing is: You Must Commit, even though commitment is scary. And commitment is scary because once you’re in you’re in. It’s not bobbing around close to the shore, paddling with your feet. It’s both feet and swimming as hard as you can out where the rip currents and the sharks are, where the water turns blue.
— Elizabeth Bear, everybody’s scared of things that they don’t understand and all the living they don’t do.
Author: Nadreck
Links on Conversational UI
The latest fad in user onboarding has been adding a bot or pseudo-bot to chat and interact with users, called a “Conversational UI.” I say fad because it’s getting a lot of attention and attempts right now — it may well be a useful tool for the arsenal, but I’ll be happy when it’s out of vogue and is “just another tool.”
My grumbling aside, there’s some useful articles over at A List Apart about it, if you care to learn more:
Link: I put the (ADD WORD LATER) in Procrastination
I put the (ADD WORD LATER) in Procrastination! by Bonnie Burton, guest blogging over at Wil Wheaton’s blog.
A friendly reminder that we all procrastinate sometimes.
Creativity and Finishing Things
Over on her site, Jessica Abel has a series of articles going discussing creativity, and getting out from under your idea debt (I like the term):
Being Who You Are
And sometimes that’s hugely painful or difficult, especially when we’ve been socialized to believe that who we are, deep down, is somehow immoral and incorrect. Because the first thing you have to figure out is who you are. And what you want. And that it’s all right for you to want and be those things, even if somebody else told you it was wrong. Even if it’s risky. Even if your family might not understand. (Of course, it’s also risky because it might involve important relationships changing drastically, giving up things that are precious to you, and re-assessing your investments or renegotiating your life path.)
That can be a tremendously painful process, this letting go of what you thought you ought to be, what you were invested in being–and just being what you are. Feeling your feelings, Writing your words. Making your art, which involves telling your truths.
Read the rest of the post (and really, a lot of her posts lately). Worth it.
Link: The Pain With No Name
The Pain With No Name by Abby Covert over at A List Apart, talking about Information Architecture (IA), an aspect of UX that often gets overlooked, but is (imho) hugely important as we get more and more overwhelmed with information throughout our lives.
Pausing
I wish I had time to pause. It may be the one real regret about life that I have — there’s always one more thing, or five more things, that need to be tended, to keep the wolf from the door, to keep the roof from falling in. I have silent, solitary winters, like this one, but I don’t get to pause.
Mood Driven Development
Chris over at CSS Tricks, telling it like it is:
But what is highly prized in our industry is productivity, in whatever form it takes.
“Hey, I refactored some of our mixins to be more efficient and made sure they are used properly site-wide.”
“Good morning, I looked over a lot of the copy around the site and have some ideas on what we can change to make it more clear and cohesive.”
“This afternoon I closed out a couple of long-standing bugs that have been bothering me.”
Any place I’ve ever worked, any of these things would have been applauded. Especially if they relate to the current team/project at hand. That’s what productivity is.
The danger is that you fight against urges to work on something different. You feel like you should be working on converting some layouts, and you feel guilty for tweaking some color palettes. You’re kind of into cleaning your inbox out right now, but feel like you are being lazy for not getting the JavaScript scaffolded out for that new thing. You’re finding a funny image to respond to a playful customer with, but you’re a little mad at yourself for not updating those docs.
That’s too bad, since you are being productive anyway. You’re following your mood.
Chris Coyier, Mood Driven Development
Loving Language
I was talking with a friend the other day about what I call “intellectual fappery.” This is in reference to the sort of academic papers (in particular in art criticism or art theory) that are so wrapped up with jargon and linguistic flourishes that it’s unreadable to a lot of people. It never made much sense to me that they’d do this (why make it harder to win people over to your point of view), and I sort of presumed that it was some sort of smug self-aggrandizement, speaking opaquely to keep out the riff-raff. (Another alternative is that they’re simply too inept at communicating their ideas, and so hide it behind linguistic flourishes.)
I had a minor epiphany, though: while some may be putting on airs, a lot may simply be in love with language. Not in terms of communication, but as expression. Flowery turns of phrase, using ornate, overly complex language not because they want to obscure their message, but simply because they think ornate, overly complex language is pretty. In short, an entire body of writing (looking at you, art theory and art critics) that prioritized form over function.
This doesn’t really make it any more fun to read (especially since you’re usually subjected to it as part of studies, rather than reading it by choice), but it does at least seem like a kinder way to look at things.
Wil Wheaton on Rebooting his Life
7 Things I Did to Reboot My Life by Wil Wheaton. It’s a good read, and resonates a lot. Something I should be doing myself, I imagine.