I see this experience a bit like what happens after an intense fire burns a stretch of forest down to ash: seeds that were dormant and waiting for just that moment suddenly germinate and stretch up to the clear, bright sun.

Years ago (less than I wish) I was part of a company that had to let most of the team go. I really liked the team and enjoyed the things we built together. But right before the layoffs came I had a feeling; a sense of walls closing in. We were trying so hard, pushing in so many directions, flailing against the inevitability of math. 

In my heart I knew the company would be better without me; and I even told that to my wife on the Friday before the layoffs. When the news come I felt a mixture of terror and relief. The job market was still pretty good so I figured I could find another job before too long. I was still scared, since the work represented 100% of our income at the time. But I was also relieved because I could finally hang up my shoes on that particular challenge. Everything I’d tried couldn’t stop a greater market change with the project. It was time to move on; and I was thankful. 

A secret I share about these transitions is that big changes only make sense in hindsight. Some day, years from now most likely, you’ll look back and tell a beautiful story of getting laid off or fired or whathaveyou, and how from that dark and terrible moment came a new beginning. But when you are in the thick of it, when you don’t yet have the gift of a rearview mirror, it won’t feel anything like providence.

I agree completely. In hindsight I’ve seen less a direct distinct path to my current place, and more a series of steps as I try to push forward and find my way; they often connect in beautiful, unexpected ways. 

(Via everything changes)

The rise of remote work and, in turn, employee-monitoring software sparked a boom in mouse and keyboard jigglers and other hacks to help staffers fake computer activity—often so they can step away to do laundry or a school pickup.

Now some companies are cracking down on the subterfuge, deploying tools that can better spot the phony busywork.

What is this crap? Was this written by an angry micro managing boss who finally learned that their minions didn’t bow to their every word? 

The whole tenor of the opening paragraphs is poison. If a boss has to resort to catching workers who are using jigglers; well they’re already missing the whole point of being a leader. 

Years ago I worked with a designer who—upon being required to report activity and being monitored by a busybody manager—quit and joined my team. He had the option to change and jumped at it. He knew what many designers (and anyone in a creative field) knew; that a butt locked into a in seat doesn’t equate to quality of work. 

It’s absolutely insane to think that the movement of a mouse will get more widgets or TPS reports done. The whole thing is insane. 

I can totally see how employees would look for ways around this, anything to push off the tyranny of tiny mindsets roving the office and looking for ways to toss around busy work. Has noone seen Office Space? Go give it a watch, I’ll wait. 

I’ve been incredibly grateful to have worked—for the most part—with teams and managers who got this. They knew that sometimes I needed to pace, sometimes I needed to think, sometimes I need to grab a notepad or iPad and start sketching; sometimes I need to go on a walk to solve a problem; and sometimes—heaven forbid!—I might need to sleep on a particularly challenging issue. These are the things that make for better creative work. 

Now; I’ll grant that some jobs aren’t that. But it’s pretty rich coming from Wells Fargo that their concerned about unethical behavior. 

(Via WSJ [Apple News])

Brown noise.

It’s essential to helping me sleep. Even though iOS has this built in now I still prefer Dark Noise and just turn on the Brown Noise option at medium to high volume. 

Also, it’s better than white noise, or pink noise. 

It started as a kid, where my mom turned on a fan in our room to create white noise. I love it and I still fall asleep to some sort of noise every night. 

My ideal is an iPad with Dark Noise turned on; reseting a few feet away from my pillow. An iPhone has a tinnier, sharper sound; whereas the larger speakers of an iPad (especially the Pro) create a bit of Bass and don’t feel as pitchy. An iPhone is fine in a pinch, but I love having an iPad. 

When I’m traveling, though; or sleeping in an area with new noises, I’ve often resorted to AirPods for a noise maker. It’s not super ideal since I sleep on my back and side; but I’ve found that cupping a hand around my ear helps me sleep and removes the pressure my ear would feel from the AirPod pressing into the pillow. 

It’s a workable arrangement, and using Apple’s accessibility settitngs to limit the volume potential (trying to avoid ear damage), I turn up the brown noise until the world drowns out and sweet sleep arrives. And now, with active noise canceling (ANC), it’s pretty amazing. 

The problem, though, comes in the battery life. Every AirPods model I’ve tried lasts no more than 4-6 hours, especially if ANC is turned on. And then, there’s the low battery notification. It’s a scourge to humanity; at times when I’ve finally managed to fall asleep I’ll wake up to the blasting alarm, letting me know the earbuds are ready to be recharged. It’s so infuriating. It seems this can be turned off (I’m so thankful!) but I haven’t been able to prove it yet. 

I can kind of make it work by putting in one AirPod for the ear facing up from the pillow, and putting a loop earplug in the other ear. But it’s not perfect, best case I sleep a solid 4 hours before having to switch things out. 

I tried Beats Studio Buds +, but with ANC the battery just doesn’t last a full night’s sleep. 

I’m happy to report that The Beats Solo Buds are fantastic for my purposes. They’ve got an 18 hour battery life built into the headphones. That means the case has no battery at all, but it’s the only Apple W1 Bluetooth chip compatible headphones I’ve found with enough battery to easily last eight hours. 

I’ve now tested them for a few nights and am happy to report my results. 

First, they do what I need. They push noise into my ears and I don’t have a subconscious fear of the battery running low. 

However, because they have so much battery built in, they have a much larger profile than AirPods. By cupping my hand just right I can make it work; and I can turn on my back and know I don’t have to do the switcheroo for extra battery. If I had to choose I’d take AirPods anyday over them, but they work well enough; and they’re the cheapest earbuds with W1 chips I can buy; so I’m thankful. 

Maybe Apple will release AirPods with a longer battery; one can hope. 

Watching Apple’s WWDC demos of Apple Intelligence, I too had my brain racing with the concept of just asking my phone to do things and have it go into apps and services to get it done, but I also can’t help but feel like we’ve been here before and a couple years from now I’ll still be opening apps just like I do today. We’ll see, though, maybe this time we are going to get a real shake up to our usage patterns.

I wonder if it will be more like orchestrated features built into the OS. Apple slowly does more and more, and niche areas open up with SOME build in automation, but if you care deeply about a particular app you’ll still use it manually. 

(Via Birchtree)

There’s a sound. There’s a note that begins everything. But before the note there is silence, silence is where everything begins. There’s a blank page before the words appear, there’s a white canvas before the picture materialises. There’s space and time between us, emptiness filled with words. There’s nothingness before a thought illuminates the mind.

There’s silence and empty space, there’s a white canvas, there has to be nothing before anything can happen. Making that space, finding that time, being with that person. All this leads to joy.

I learned to relish the moment before I create. I used to dread the blank page, the empty canvas. Now I look forward to each time when I can put idea to empty space; that tiny instant before a thing begins to exist. It’s beautiful, it’s joyous. 

(Via my friend Michal Zelazny)

Blogging and posting on social is easy. But why is it so hard to publish a whole book on the web? It’s not anymore. Writebook is remarkably simple software that allows you to publish text and pictures in a simple, browsable online book format.

Ok I’m intrigued. I’ve run across this situation numerous times where I want to publish something larger than a blog post, but I’m not ready to commit to creating a whole other book. 

I don’t have an immediate use case for this, but will give it a try. 

(Via Writebook)

A long time ago, in a universe far, far away, I used to write about / really care about digital reading. A whole chapter of my life / career pivoted around digital reading and books, what could be, and I travelled the world (?!) talking about this stuff. I lectured at Yale for nine years about this stuff! (“Margins”!!) But I haven’t really talked about reading on a screen in a long time. Mainly because: It’s been boring / depressing. Not much has happened. Patents and monopolies chopped the feet off digital books. Well, I’m happy to report that I think — I THINK — something is once again maybe — just maybe — happening:

I’ve been following the saga of the BOOX Palma ever since Craig first posted about it. I’m hoping the company (or other companies) is paying attention and will double down on a product suited perfectly for reading in a pocketable device. 

Reading is a passion of mine, a hobby, a pasttime. However, I don’t generally read longform. Something about my attention span or how I approach life, but I feel broken in that regard. Everytime I try to pickup a book or read on Kindle I last about 5 minutes then switch away to do something else. That’s why audiobooks has been a lifesaver. I listen to audiobooks and podcasts for hours each day. 

Like, I suspect, many others I’ve longed to keep reading books the old fashioned way. I bought a Kindle and loaded it up. But then the battery died and I’d have to find a micro usb charger to plug it in again. I’ve considered buying a USB-C Kindle, but know it will end up the same way.

I’m tempted by the BOOX Palma; but the cost is just too high at this point. 

(Via Craig Mod)

 One thing is abundantly clear to me: the skills that made people good at building websites are readily transferable and even sought out skills in other fields. Not just the code or the pixels, but the ability to organize, to project manage, to break a big goal down into discrete steps, to collaborate with people with very different expertise, to deeply understand how people experience technology in their lives, to learn and to be constructively critical when the work could be better.

I love Mandy’s take on being part of buiding the early web. Thanks to my brother, who was an early adopter of all things related to building online, I learned HTML and CSS as early as 2006 and began tweaking and building things. Being a web designer in those days was a lot of fun. There was so much to learn; your skills were incredibly valuable, and each day presented a new challenge.

About a decade in, though, something changed. Maybe I was too burnt out, maybe I didn’t know where to grow, but I making websites just wasn’t fun anymore. I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to transition; moving more into product design and building and tinkering with UI/UX related work (namely, building apps). As Mandy called out my skills were able to transfer; and that transfer is what has me hoping I’ll be ready for whatever comes next. 

(Via everything changes)

After a year of publishing Fractional we finally hit some numbers that Lance and I were excited about, a recent episode hitting 2x the numbers of any previous episodes. We don’t really know why—we’ve loved meeting with so many fantastic guests before and look forward to talking having repeats on again! 

The process of trying to build an audience has gotten me thinking about the various things I do online. I want to create for its own sake. I want to write, draw, design, build, tinker, because those things bring me joy and fulfill my need to make. However; it’s helpful to have a feedback loop, to hear from others who appreciate the efforts of what I’m making and help me improve. 

If you’re new to creating I want to share that you’re not alone. It’s challenging, but also worth it, to keep tweaking and creating and making something new. 

For years—like actual years—I avoided TikTok. I was convinced the format would be short-lived and not impact how the rest of us were doing content. Then, on a whim, I used the bloody thing. Its algorithm and “For You Page” hooked me.

That has been me with Threads over the last year. I loved Mastodon once Twitter took a nose dive. I still check out daily, but the algorithmic timeline just works better for unearthing things I care about. I’ve curated it over months by liking and engaging with people that align with my interests, so it now surfaces things that I find interesting and save throughout the day for writing about later. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about WordPress and other content creation platforms the last few months, and even been considering other options. In an age where AI feels poised to steal everything from us, I feel the desire to double down and bring my humanity to the things I share and do online. 

I contributed to WordPress years ago, and from the side of a contributor found it hard, even then, to get involved. It took the help of several friends to get me up and running. 

I’m thinking about some future posts I want to write, currently in my backlog, where I want to double down on the creative, manual, process I go through to make things. For another day.

The challenge I see with WordPress is it is not easy to get started. It takes a lot of energy to get up and running on a blog; especially if you care about the design of that blog and want a custom domain. It’s nothing like Threads where you can create an account and post away. The friction between the two is worlds apart. 

It is, however, worth it. Having a presence where I can’t be shut down because of some glitch with a trillion dollar company—well that’s a good thing I think. 

(Via James Giroux)

Long ago I learned the trick to helping my brain remember something. Whenever I learn something that feels important I’ll make sure to immediately capture the thought in some form. That usually involves a screenshot, writing it down, sending a voice memo to a friend, taking a picture of a timestamp from an audiobook, photographing a physical book, or saving a Thread to my account. The goal is to save the information I’ve learned in some form. 

That’s just the first step. I have literal thousands of examples of saved information across all my digital devices using the above methods.

The next step, if I really want to remember, is to share it. In the past I’d get on the phone with my wife or brother and talk through some interesting thing I’d learned. I still do that, but I’ll sometimes write a blog post, or send that information along to a friend with some context about it. 

In that way I’ve made a small action to tie to a moment, and give it the chance of becoming a memory for later. If I read a great book I’ll share my favorite parts with friends for several months (often against their will), further cementing the concepts in my brain. 

I’ve been following M.G. Siegler for a long time; back in the days of Techcrunch. I remember back then posts about the struggles with movie theatres. 

In his recent post (requires a paywall) he touches on multiple points of why movie theatres are struggling, and will continue to do so.

I’ve had reason to think about this a lot in the last year, and have really appreciated the takes from Jason and Julia as we’ve seen streaming and movie giants struggle since COVID. With announcements of Avengers 5 I feel a bit nostalgic for the closing moment of Endgame. Still gives me chills everytime. 

P.S. I’m not a paying subscriber, yet. Waiting for an audio version of his posts (yes, I know, a very unique problem on my part).

This list from Brilliantcrank is, well, brilliant. Reading through I find myself nodding with each. This one especially resonates:

Designers are incapable of working well with developers and engineers if they can’t collaborate. Throwing work back and forth over a fence never produces great results. So stop doing it. Designers and developers should work side-by-side

As a designer I look to my fellow developers as partners to help with feasibility and possibility. We are in it together to solve a problem, and I don’t hold the keys to “design”. I’m not the gatekeeper, I’m the custodian and as such welcome feedback and pushback from the others working directly alongside me. 

Designers are incapable of coming to work excited, energized, and ready to deliver amazing work when they are merely asked to color in wireframes or make whatever engineering cooked up look “good.”

I’ve failed in teams where I was told to chuck things over to developers without getting their feedback. I’ve also failed when I was told to make things look pretty. 

When I have autonomy, time to wrestle and struggle through things, am part of a team where we’re pulling together with the right vision—well, that’s when magic happens. 

One thing I want to add to my previous post is my method for capturing screenshots. Since December 2017 I’ve used Droplr for taking screenshots. I haven’t seen anyone else use this method so I want to share it here. When I’m writing down todos in Things 3, or Apple Notes, I often need to include visuals along with those todos. But I don’t want to deal with inserting images inline, and I want to maintain the rhythm of my typing.  

I’m a product designer in my day job, and often in team meetings we share screens. If a teammate shares their screen, more often than not they want to reference another design idea, a note, a tool, a ticket, or some sort of visual. The conversation flows quickly, and often I only have a split second to see what they’re sharing before things move on. 

Outside of meetings I also have dozens of times a day where I want to reference something I saw, and include it with text I’m typing. 

I could record my screen constantly, so that I could search later. But as we’ve seen with the news from Microsoft Recall, I don’t think that’s ready for primetime. I’ve heard from others that Rewind has a lot of potential, and I may consider that at some point, but it doesn’t sit right with me yet. And it also doesn’t really fit with how I think and work. 

A second option would be to keep Zoom recording things during team work sessions, and check the video logs later. But that brings on a ton of friction, and changes the tenor of the conversation when we all know our words are being recorded.

A third option is to use some sort of AI bot to summarize the meeting. 

That’s not good enough, though. I don’t need just words, I need the visual context around what we discussed. If I was in a Figma file and saw a great idea, then a colleague dropped a link to an app with a specific screen in Slack, and then we referenced a ticket in Linear—well you can see it gets messy real quick. 

Words alone aren’t enough to convey that chaos. 

But, a tool like Droplr is perfect for this. 

Years ago I was lucky enough to get a lifetime license to Droplr, so I paid one time and haven’t had to pay again. I’m very thankful for that, and keep hoping I won’t get kicked off my plan. In case you’re looking for a similar tool, Cleanshot X seems to do the job just as well. 

Whenever I need to capture a visual on my Mac I’ll press my custom keyboard command (Shift+Command+3) to select an area of the screen. Next I quickly drag the area I want and let go of my cursor. This triggers Droplr (or Cleanshot X) to save that image, upload it to the cloud, and give me a custom URL. I paste that url into my notes doc (or wherever I’m typing) and have a visual I can reference or share with colleagues. The process takes two seconds, and I’m able to drop links to visuals inline with the words I’m sharing. 

It’s the perfect blend of words and images. 

Imagine I’m typing out a task:

“Move the button inside option A up beside the list in option B”

If I type that out on a Friday and come back to work on Monday I’ll have zero clue with that means. But if I took a quick screenshot of what I was looking at, and include the link; I suddenly have much more context on what I was thinking in that moment. So instead it would look like:

“Move the button inside option A up beside the list in option B [https://d.pr/f/exampleurl]”

This may look messy, but it allows me to stay in my stream of consciousness and pick up later if needed. Then, if I didn’t remember what the heck options A or B were about, I can look at the screenshot and connect the dots. 

This method is glorious. Whenever I setup a new computer I instantly install the screenshot capture tool. I’ve also tried every other tool out there (as of today) and these two are the only ones that meet my needs. 

For settings you’ll want to turn off any previews, disable retina images (it slows down the apps and upload time), don’t allow the image to save to your computer, make sure it uploads straight to the, and turn off any notifications.

The app should just quietly exist in the background, available at a moments notice when your shortcut is invoked, and not cause any visual clutter to your workflow otherwise. It all should happen so quickly that you don’t even skip a beat when typing out your thoughts. 

I took notes for a 30 minutes session today where we asked a user to review our app. During that session I included 17 inline screenshot links. That help to give context to what we were looking at and line it up to my written out notes. 

P.S. I also have a shorcut setup for annotations (shift+command+4), where I set the app to bring up its preview window with arrows and text, where sometimes I want to draw a big red arrow to the part of the screenshot I’m referencing; and include a few words. I need this far less; probably 5-10% of the time, but still find it useful enough to setup. 

P.P.S. Droplr is acting up on Sequoia if you’re on the betas. Cleanshot X just released an update this week, so it’s back to working. 

The only thing that’s worked reliably for me for more than a decade has been simple tools and habits.

I add items to a handful of bulleted lists, and pick a few to do that day.

After a lot of tweaking and testing of every productivity system around I’ve landed on something similar. I use Things 3 to list out my daily todos. At the end of the day I check everything off or (and in most cases) move remaining items to the next day or a few days later. 

If a todo item is more complicated, I reference a similiar named Apple Notes doc with more checkmarks on it.

That’s it. 

This system works for everything. Even work related items. If I have to track tasks in a company tool, such as Linear, I reference the ticket number in Things 3 or the related Apple Notes doc, and either check it off or move it to a future day. 

(Via adhdftw)

Over the last year and a half I’ve been growing out my hair. As I’ve learned there are a lot of ways to deal with messy longer hair. The simplest is to wear a hat. I’ve tried a number of different hats and don’t like how they fit and look. 

I recently picked up the REI On The Trail Cap, and love it. It’s got a shallow top, is light and breathable, and has a drawstring cinch on the back. It’s currently my favorite hat. 

Since Double Dap was announced I’ve wanted to use it on all my Apple Watch apps. Though it has some problems, namely that it has a lag and doesn’t respond as soon as I think it will, it’s a cool feature that I want to build a habit around. 

Because Apple is sometimes a bit slower to release public APIs on things, they’ve spent the last year allowing it on their own apps—and per WWDC’s announcement, plan to launch as a public API this Fall. I don’t know if the feature is actually good enough to really build into my way of using apps, but I’m intrigued to find out.

Most of my audio listening is done via Apple Music, Audible, and Overcast. That means 2 out of 3 of my top used apps on Apple Watch don’t benefit from Double Tap. I’m excited to see if I can actually use this feature.

I’ve struggled to figure out how to take things I like—such as great articles written by others—and how to save them. When I read something that stands out to me, speaks to me, I often look for a way to do something with that. 

Over the years this has led to me taking thousands of screenshots, saving into bookmarks, saving into the various apps I consume, and generally trying to store those things away. 

I’m trying a different tack now, something inspired by John Gruber. Whenever I see something interesting I save a link to an Apple Note. Over time that doc builds up with dozens, if not hundreds of links. Then, through the various podcasts I’ve hosted, or through my blog, I editorialize and publish my thoughts on the great things I’ve read.

It’s a calmer way of writing. I don’t have to force myself to think. I just go to the treasure chest of goodies I’ve saved over time, look through things, remix my own thoughts, and Steal Like an Artist. It’s a lot of fun. 

I don’t have a goal anymore of an article a day, or a specific wordcount. Instead I eagerly await the quiet moments where I can sit down and type out my thoughts. 

If, like me, you’ve been working in technology for a while, you’ve likely felt that tightening in your chest as ore and more news of layoffs and AI breakthroughs piles up. This feels different than before. I’ve been at this line of work for 17 years now. 

Shifts in tech have come and gone. I’ve been a web designer, graphic designer, illustrator, web developer, product manager, team leader, visual designer, and most recently a product designer (UI/UX design). 

When I meet people outside the tech space I tell them I design apps and websites for a living. 

The shifts in my work haven’t always been because I wanted them. Instead I modified my skillsets based on the overlap of work I enjoyed, what I was good at, and where I thought things were going. Oh and I wanted to make a decent living to provide for my family at the same time.

At one point I seriously comtemplated becoming a developer full time. But, half a dozen failed attempts I stopped trying and focused on what I was good at. 

So, I’ve managed to weather big shifts and keep moving forward with a mind full of curiosity, and have met amazing people along the way to work together with. 

I find myself watching the latest wave pouring in and wondering a few things. I wonder if this will hurt my ability to provide for my family as a career, I wonder if it will discourage new entrants into the field, and I also wonder if it will open up new opportunities that I just can’t see at this point. 

Where I try to land is that I know I can help others, and I enjoy making things. If I can continue to do those two elements, then I may be alright. Over the last few years I’ve focused my design skills more on the wide open and nebulous problem space, and less on the specific interface details. That may be a good thing. 

We’ll see what happens. Time to buckle up!

I’ve been away from work the last week, so I’ve been catching up on little bits and pieces of Config 2024. The biggest thing to come out of it, and the most impactful to designers, is the AI elements. I haven’t had a chance to test things yet; I fired up Figma and updated, but it doesn’t seem like anything is available on my end. 

Along with many other designers I felt this pit in my stomach catching the news of the AI features. It seems—again I don’t know until I test it—that the AI features will do basic UI things, along the lines of ChatGPT prompts. That’s not a concern for what I do as a designer, but it does have me wondering where all this is headed. 

For my part I focus on asking questions when I approach a design project. I am more curious about the problem a stakeholder is facing than immediately understanding any solution. Then I take that whole spaghetti of chaos and sketch it out, by hand, until I see something that starts to make sense. This is something I love deeply, and it’s more of the user experience side of design. That’s something I hope isn’t up for grabs by AI. If it is, I’d find myself rather sad. 

I’ll be watching all these new features and seeing where it goes, and am curious to see how other designers and business owners respond.