Targeting the Apple Watch (or a cheaper version of it) to kids is the smartest thing Apple has done in years. 

Last year on ATP, Marco talked about setting up his pre-teen with an Apple Watch. It was the first time I’d heard a parent trying this, so I set on a journey to figure it out for my (now) 11 year old. 

Because my cell phone carrier doesn’t support Apple Watch Family Setup, we opted to add a phone line for an old iPhone and pair a new Apple Watch SE with Cellular (2nd gen) to that iPhone. 

We then put the iPhone into a drawer and leave it off most of the time. The Apple Watch, now on cellular, has become the perfect device for our kid to use and communicate with us. 

It’s now a few months in and I’m really happy with the results. The Watch doesn’t have any infinity wells, has very basic games, and communication is utilitarian at best. It’s a fantastic stop gap between now and when we have the conversation about a cell phone (or smartphone), which will likely come when our kiddo needs to start driving. 

(Via Threads)

Life’s hard, and it will bring pain, emotions, challenges, tears and scars. There’s no need to generate more pain, and bring more tears where they aren’t necessary.

Love these words from Michal. 

I’ve talked to a lot of people over the years who don’t enjoy reading. Some of it is personality, some of it is feeling forced to read for school. My premise is that most people can enjoy reading under the right circumstances. 

For me it comes down to doing it through audio. I can’t find a great way to read physical or digital books, but I love audio.

For some it comes down to finding the right genre. I love to switch between fiction and non-fiction regularly. Sometimes I’ll read both concurrently, sometimes I’ll alternate every 3-4 months. Doing that helps keep reading exciting and refreshing. I also have recently started re-reading books. 

I wrote a list of my top books years ago, and wanted to share an updated list here. The goal is, if you’re not a reader, one of these might just be the gateway for you to get started. 

Each link is an Audible link, unless otherwise noted. 

HISTORY

The Guns of August – This is my top history recommendation. It may sound drab and boring as a concept, but something about the way Barbara describes the political drama of the rulers leading up to World War I is so profound and enticing that it feels impossible to put the book down. I’ve read a lot of history books, and enjoyed most; but this is my favorite by far. 

How to Hide an Empire – A fantastic history of America and how we have wrestled with protecting our imperial interests as well as wanting to defend and support the innocent. It examines our past and how we’ve both desired and despised being an empire. 

America and Iran – Knowing very little about the history of Iran this book was helpful in understanding the friendship and anonmosity between these two countries, going back hundreds of years. It helped reset my thinking about some of the struggles we’re seeing in the Middle East. 

How to Fly a Horse – Innovation doesn’t always work the way we think it does. Let’s examine how creativity can happen through the history of innovation.

Leonardo da Vinci – A fantastiic biography of the inventor, looking at a key trait that set him apart: curiosity. 

BUSINESS

Juliet’s School of Possibilities – an allegory about finding what we really want in life and not trying to do all the things that won’t matter. 

Essentialism – I could read this every year. Instead of doing a million things to no result (I’m guilty of this), narrow down to the things that will really drive us forward. 

Effortless – A fantastic followup to Essentialism, examines how we can make work and learning fun. 

Turn the Ship Around – Follows the history of the worst submarine in the American Navy and how they were able to become the highest rated submarine in a short period of time. The key was to allow each person to act one level above their ranking. 

So Good They Can’t Ignore You – Cal Newport is a brilliant author. I’ve read most of his books. He has an ability to dive deep into a topic, understand it, and describe learnings in a way that I can extract meaning. The major premise of the book is how to do work that is meaningful. Instead of following your passion for a career, he suggests that passion results from craftsmanship. Instead of jumping entire careers, he suggests finding the overlap from one job to another, and bringing insights from the previous forward into the next line of work. It’s a great career book and has insights for life as well.

The Dip – Some things are worth quitting and others are worth sticking at. This book wrestles with how we can tell the difference between the two. It’s short and worth re-reading. 

Build – The guy who made the iPod with Steve Jobs talks about what it takes to build a great product. He’s one of the few who has made successful hardware products more than once. It’s riveting! 

How to Do Nothing – Maybe we’re doing too much, maybe we should slow down a bit. Maybe? Not sure, but this book got me thinking about that. 

The Cold Start Problem – A really good read for any startup founder. If you have two sides of a market, how do you bring them together, which side is harder, and which side do you go for first?

Subtract – Remove things from your life and work to move forward. 

The Unicorn Project – Tells a fictional story of a manager in a failing startup, and how she navigates how to turn a company around.

Alchemy – I’ve read this book twice now. How irrational thinking helps us do better work. 

Creativity, Inc. – The story of pixar and how they succeeded, and almost failed. 

Creative Selection – Ken, one of the first half dozen engineers working on the iPhone, writes about his long history at Apple, and the opportunities he had to build some of the most used software in the world. Ken describes the creative process that his team approached to building software for the iPhone, the Mac, and the iPad. He also describes interactions with Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall. Throughout this narration of his time at Apple, Ken weaves anecdotes on the connection between design and engineering, and gives concrete examples on how to emulate that in our own work. I’ve read this book twice and will probably pick it up a third time.

SELF-HELP

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone – Lori uses her story as the backdrop to explain what great therapy can accomplish, and why it’s important. She shares her own need to see a therapist, and breaks down what’s happening in each session while working through problems in her own life. The key takeaway is the realization that our brains don’t perceive distress as relative. While our analytic mind can say that our problems are smaller than someone else’s, our emotions have no way of recognizing the difference. It’s important to allow those emotions the space they need in order to work through them. This book was an inspiration, and I’ve recommended it many times to friends.

FICTION

The Martian and Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir has an ability to connect with the audience and characters in a way that brings depth and richness to his stories. The Martian is one of those rare books that I’ve read more than once. Instead of a story about a man who is trying to save the world, this book flips the script and has the world trying to save a man. Books and movies will sometimes evoke a feeling of humanity coming together; The Martian accomplishes this beautifully. If you don’t mind a little colorful language – the protagonist is in some dire straits throughout the story so it feels warranted – then I believe you’ll love this story. My favorite parts are the deep dives into the daily life of the main character, and the ingenuity required. It’s a lot of fun. Also, if you already read this book, I highly recommend Project Hail Mary, by the same author. It’s a spiritual successor to the book, and I enjoyed it just as much. Where the first book primarily follows a single character, Project Hail Mary follows a different type of story telling narrative.

World War Z – This book is pure joy for me. Warning, the book is about zombies. But it’s one of my favorite stories from that genre. It does something unique, using journalism for storytelling in a fiction story. Instead of following a single character, the book jumps across time and continents to capture the retellings of people who saw and felt the effects of the world’s change under a viral attack. This book helps to bring the feeling of human connection and humanity, all working together for a greater cause. Although the genre is different, this story captured the same feelings as The Martian. It’s one of the few fiction books I’ve read twice. I’m also linking to the paperback because you can’t get a fully unabridged audio version of this anymore. 

Circe – The author is a genius at taking an exciting premise and breathing life into an ancient story. I knew nothing of the tales of Circe, the witch from ancient mythology. This character, a weak god among greater gods, must live as the lowest of all in the great courts of antiquity. Through various events she’s forced on a small island, and must live her days as queen of the island. It’s a premise that should lose my interest, but it doesn’t. Each chapter pushes the story forward and brings color and character to this mythical protagonist. The book was a joy to read, and I’ve recommended it several times to friends.

The Blade Itself – This starts off a 10 book series that I absolutely love. Warning there is violence, language, and other adult content in this series. The reason I love it is because of how it dives into the gray area of people’s lives, how each person is shaped by their environment, and how despite that many strive to be better (and often fail). It also has wizards and medieval warfare; a huge plus for me. I’m currently re-reading the entire series and am on book 7. 

11/22/63 – Many people are wary of Stephen King. His penchant for horror is often offputing. This book isn’t horror. It’s a basic what if book. It asks what if you could travel back in time and save JFK from assasination. The catch? The protagonist falls in love with someone and has to decide between love and saving the president. A fantastic (and a bit chaotic) read. 

The Final Empire – I can’t say enough good about Brandon Sanderson. His ability to pull me into a simple story, make me fall in love with characters, and eagerly read each book he puts out is pretty amazing. This book follows the story of a protagonist who realizes she has magical powers and must decide whether to step up and do something good with them. 

The Way of Kings – If you liked Mistborn this is a fantastic series (and much deeper) from the same author. I don’t recommend reading it though until you’ve read Mistborne, so that you’ll know if you like how the author builds worlds and stories. 

Semiosis – What if the world was ending and humans fly to another planet to start over? And what if plants were sentient on that new planet? What a fantastic series (and part 3 comes out this fall!). I’ve read it twice and love the interaction of humans and plants trying to decide if they can exist together. One note: The first book jumps timelines quite a bit, and you’ll keep having to get used to new characters. That settles down half way through the book and it’s worth continuing. 

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – What if you could live forever, but peopel can’t remember you after you leave their presence? An amazing book that jumps between back and forth in time following the life of a single character as she tries to exist in a world that forgets her. 

—

There are SOO many more books I could recommend, but if you’re not sure you want to read, I’d highly suggest picking one of these and try it out for a bit. If you get bored jump to another one. Reading is fun if you find the right books.

Dribbble is a fantastic place. If you’re a designer you’ve probably used it. I setup an account too long ago to remember, and have benefitted greatly from being able to find inspiration for my work. 

A few years ago I was inspired by a colleague to find inspiration from a better source. Instead of Dribbble he suggested pulling screenshots from websites and apps that were live and in production. 

The challenge with doing this is the work is often less polished. With rare exceptions most designs that make their way into code aren’t as nice as what you’ll see on sites like Dribbble. They are, however, real. And for the work I do, where I’m trying to create a great user experience, I’d far rather steal from work that has been tested than something crafted in the mind of a single person and placed in an art gallery for viewing. 

My priority is not to make art; although I’m happy when it happens and jump at the chance to do so. My goal, instead, is to figure out how to find the intersection between a thing being useful for a real person and the service generating revenue. 

So next time you’re looking for inspiration for a design, dive into the real world. I have roughly 7,000 screenshots on my iPhone, thousands floating around on my computer, and more still in Figma and Freeform. 

One tool that’s helped with the insanity is to pay for a subscription to Mobbin, a far better repository than I have on my own. 

I have a unique way of designing. I’ve rarely seen it used by others, and early on my in career I thought it meant I was broken; that I just wasn’t getting it and doing things the professional way.

Now I’m so glad for my slightly different process, and I’m incredibly comfortable in it. It’s flexible, it allows me to think the way I need to think, and it helps teams get results. 

If you find yourself looking around and wondering if you’re broken, if everyone else is right and you must be wrong—frankly that just might be the case and you need to change, I’ve changed my mind lots of times—but sometimes it means you have something special you should hold to and allow it to grow and blossom. 

You really do have too much to do. Prioritization might be best in theory, but plain, gut-feel procrastination might be the right way to go. 

I love this way of thinking. I struggle with this immensely. I’m incredibly productive at times, and also let things drop for months on end. The trick to procrastination is to also not feel guilty about the things you’re letting go. If you figure that out please let me know. 

An important meeting turns out to be unimportant. The email you didn’t answer resolved itself.

If you can set aside the little things and focus on a thing or two that matters then you’ll come alive and find meaning in the few essential things you say yes to. 

Even something critical like accounting can be put off. Late fees, lost receipts, penalties from the IRS: financial burdens more than compensated by additional revenue gained by signing up one more customer.

Not offering any tax or financial advice here, but I love this take. Focusing on more, on the critical thing you can do, instead of all the draining things that sap your focus? That sounds thrilling. 

Companies succeed because they got just a few things really right, not because they had no problems, no bugs, no design flaws, and perfect books.

Bravo. 

(Via A Smart Bear)

Today we will be communicating to approximately 1,800 employees, which is 10% of our workforce, that they will be leaving Intuit.

Intuit letting 1,800 people go.

we will hire approximately 1,800 new people primarily in engineering, product, and customer facing roles such as sales, customer success, and marketing.

Intuit firing 1,800 people. 

We’ve significantly raised the bar on our expectations of employee performance, resulting in approximately 1,050 employees leaving the company who are not meeting expectations

I’m incredibly torn on this news. On the one hand, mass layoffs suck for all those involved, and cause so much chaos within the organization. Also, the metrics used for letting that many people go are (in my experience) are iffy at best. The way information and ability of individuals gets communicated at such a large organization is challenging and so much gets missed. 

This reminds me of the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple and realized they had incredible talent in various areas of the company, but the folks were limited in their ability to do anything because of poor leadership.

How does a company know that hundreds of people are a poor fit? The ability for politics and posturing to get in the way is far too easy. 

On the other hand Intuit is offering (for US Employees at least) 16 weeks of paid leave and 6 months of health insurance. That’s better than I would have expected. 

I’ll be really curious to see where Intuit takes things, where they grow, and what they build as a result of this change. 

(Via Intuit)

In recent years, I feel like it has been less common to find books to challenge me, and by me I mean their readers, and by “books” what I really mean is “publishing,” which can feel very focused on the sure thing, the brand name, the splashy debut that somehow speaks to millions and millions of people.

In the last few years I’ve taken to re-reading books I love. I first saw a friend doing this and couldn’t understand why he’d go back to a book if he already knew the ending. Now I realize why. 

Re-reading a book is like re-discovering a lost friend. You know you enjoyed spending time together, and are excited to catch up. When I go back over the pages of a novel, or even one of my favorite books to re-read, I know it will end up in a place I’m happy with, but I’ve forgotten just enough details for it to be interesting again. 

But I still want to advocate for sometimes, at least sometimes, going out on a limb, out on a genre vacation, or just out into the wilds of a tale you don’t feel like you entirely understand. 

Diving into the unknown with books that are uncertain is daunting; and I’m hesitant to go away from what I know. Still, as someone who has written a few weird, but hopefully delightful, books, I love the idea of giving other authors a chance and going on journeys of discovery with them. 

(From Molly Templeton at Reactor)

Butter for drafting, Linear for managing projects and to-dos, and Readwise for wrangling research material. The glue that holds them together is the universal “command-K” shortcut.

I love learning about the other process of writers, how they work through things, and ultimately the tools they use for their craft. 

Joan’s process is much more methodical than my approach, but I could see changing things up if I keep writing at the pace I’ve been doing lately. 

Note: I’ve also never seen a writer using Linear. I associate it closely with a tool for work at my day job, but it may be worth trying for personal things. 

(Via Westenberg)

It’s fun to get and receive recommendations from friends, and the highest praise is when someone lets you know they appreciated the thing you recommended. 

Inveitably you come across a great movie, show, or book. You want to share with a friend just enough to get them excited, but don’t want to give away the plot. 

To get around this I’ve leaned on sharing my emotions in consuming a particular piece of media, giving examples of other types of things its similar to, or spoiling the first 10% or so. 

Debt, not barter, is the true origin of money.

Admittedly my understanding of money is limited. But I’d love to learn more. Much of my initial journey into money and its uses came from listening to Dave Ramsey, reading his books and helping facilitate his courses, twice. 

I then ignored everything from him for a decade and recently popped back in to see what he’s been up to. I realize that there’s been a divergence in how I think about money now, but I don’t feel anywhere near qualified enough to understand what the divergence is. 

I imagine the core nugget comes from the idea that debt can be useful, an idea that was enathema to everything I learned from Dave’s stuff. 

I’ve been curious to read a book on the topic, so found this article on debt jubilee fascinating. 

For the corporate person, shedding debts through bankruptcy is an honorable practice. Far from being a source of shame, the well-timed, well-structured bankruptcy is just evidence of financial acumen.

I love the contrast this article paints between how corporate entities can work with debt and money, but it’s quite different for smaller individuals. 

if we accept the jubilee view – that debt is the result of accumulated misfortunes, often including the misfortune of birth into poor station – then bankruptcy represents a second chance with an opportunity to dodge misfortune.

I’ve been lucky (or blessed?) to avoid massive misfortune up to this point in my life. But some of my beloved friends and family have not, and I really appreciate this take that it’s not a moral failure. It’s that life is messy and sometimes doesn’t work. 

After people are given the benefits of bankruptcy, they are less likely to rely on public benefits. They get better jobs. Their families live better lives. Their creditors get some of their money back (which is all they can realistically expect, since “debts that can’t be paid, won’t be paid”).

If this data is correct that’s a beautiful story of the jubilee working for some people. 

(Via Pluralistic)

Journaling helps me resist the dopamine-driven cycle of social media sharing. When I post on social media, I get an immediate hit of validation in the form of likes, comments, and shares. It’s the craving for dopamine and attention that keeps me coming back to social media, constantly checking for updates and looking for my next hit of validation.

What a beautiful take on this idea. I, along with most people I know at this point, struggle with the balance of how much versus how little to share. 

Not every idea is a winner; most aren’t. But I want to capture and create and find a way to capture my ideas. 

I’ve struggled with journaling every since I was able to write. Mainly in that I didn’t know what to do with it; always quitting after a few days or weeks of trying. 

The most delightful time ever, though, was when I wrote every day for three years (6 days a week); rain or shine, most of it in the form of novels, but some just spitting out ideas. It was a lot of fun and I wish I was still doing it. 

Also, when will Apple release Journal for Mac? 

(Via Joan Westenberg)

I’m amazed every day by great writers. They take an idea, sometimes rather obscure or plain, and give it an angle or lens that makes me rethink the whole idea. 

I’m trying to get better at that myself. Too many times I’ve passed on an article idea because it seemed uninteresting. Now I’m testing, learning, and attempting to have interesting takes on things. 

I’d encourage you to do the same. Not everything is a winner, trying is worth it. 

Years ago I kept a list of my todos in a Field Notes notebook. I carried it around in my back pocket and loved having my list available to review and edit. 

At the time my oldest was a toddler, and as curious as toddlers are he was fascinated in my notebook. In an instant he grabbed it and dropped it into the filled-with-water bathroom sink. 

In a second I saw weeks worth of tasks disappearing before my eyes. I panicked, realizing that my carefully thought out plans for that day, as well as upcoming tasks for the days and weeks ahead, could be lost instantly. 

Thankfully, I was able to dry out the notebook; and despite some pen smudging, recover all the data. 

That, though, cemented in my mind the importance of trusting my systems and knowing that when I recorded something I’d have a means of knowing my task was properly sorted. 

This is why I’ve switched todo and note systems over the years. At one point I was an avid user of Evernote; but due to some issues with syncing I couldn’t trust that my notes were safe. I had the same with Apple Notes at one point and moved exclusively to Bear Notes for years because of this. 

For the last few months I’ve kept a list of every article idea I wanted to write, and dutifully crossed off items once I’ve written (or decided not to) write on a specific topic. 

Last week I made a mistake on the Apple Note that holds the main list of article todos. I didn’t realize the mistake until I’d gone too far to undo. As a result I now have a list of hundreds of article ideas, a certain percentage of which are things I’ve already written on. 

I’ve attempted to search up each item and cross reference against my past list of articles. However, it’s not as easy as I would expect, and I’d rather spend time writing new content than verifying against old content. 

So, if over the next few months you see a repeat of an idea I’ve written on before, please forgive it and hopefully my new take is better than my first! I’m going to move on and let go a little, trusting that even though my system broke down a little, on the whole it has more value than not. 

Next time you buy a single serving of yogurt reach under and feel the false bottom dipping upward into the plastic cup. 

That? It reveals a lie, a breaking of promises, a tiny crack in the dam of food inflation that’s pouring out around us. 

Once you see it it’s impossible to unsee. Nearly everything you buy in the store, especially if it’s a plastic container, has a false bottom; lying to us about the size of what we’re about to buy. 

I get that revenue would likely drop if products showed their true size, but now that I’ve seen it I can’t unsee it, and the moment I find a product that’s true to size I will happily buy it instead. 

Rich kids should go to public schools. The mayor should ride the subway to work. When wealthy people get sick, they should be sent to public hospitals. Business executives should have to stand in the same airport security lines as everyone else. The very fact that people want to buy their way out of all of these experiences points to the reason why they shouldn’t be able to.

I’m sort of burying the fantastic lede of this article, but a point that stood out to me is how this applies to designers who are responsible for building apps. 

If we’re not actually using the app in the normal course of our lives, we don’t feel the pain of people who are trying to navigate our designs as a very real part of what they are trying to do each day. 

For instance, I’ve helped design and build apps that were quite far from anything I’d have used were I not working on the app. 

The best way I’ve found to understand the pain and challenges of real people is to ask them, talk to them, watch them use the app, and use those learnings to improve, circle back around, and ask them again. 

(Via How Things Work)

AI doesn’t need to be as good as the best designer. There are plenty of people in the bottom 50th percentile to snack on.

Someone shouldn’t have to be exceptional in their field to have stability; but sadly, I expect the job pool for early-career designers, production designers, and others to continue getting tighter.

A grim, but realistic outlook on the whole AI and design situation we’re facing. 

Over the last year we’ve seen AI take over technology and media by storm. It’s the number one topic that startups are discussing. Any discussions of crypto have long been shuttered. 

I’ve been wrestling with the news from Config last month, and trying to find peace with it all. As Myke Hurley and Federico opined on Connected, I think people who are more advanced in their careers; or have a built-in audience, will be ok with the rapid transition of AI eating the world. 

But that doesn’t help the rest of us, the new entrants, the career transitioners looking to get into creative fields like design. 

What happens if the bottom 50% of designers; the juniors, have nothing available for them to get started? My first few years of design were not great, but I had fantastic taste and continued to chase it until my abilities started to catch up. 

If you’re a tech optimist, you see the march of technology as a good thing. Sure, jobs are lost, but new things are created and new opportunities are unearthed; ready to be siezed by anyone open. 

But, so many get lost along the way. Is that worth it? 

The blank canvas is intimidating for sure; but it’s also an opportunity to consider what you are about to make, where you should start, and what belongs on the canvas at all. To skip ahead to decisions in reaction to an AI’s output is to sacrifice all of the possible insights, ideas, and small decisions the process of “getting started” engenders.

The struggle of designing is, for many, the joy of designing. I love to sketch through ideas, to wrestle with a blank page, to look at dozens of great designs from others and conjur my own into being through lines on a page. I don’t want to give this up to AI, I want to keep doing this on my own. I have to wonder if that will become a relic. 

(Via Jovo)