Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
— John F. Kennedy
An old girlfriend of mine said she knew our relationship would never last once she saw my obsession with understanding things instead of chilling out and accepting things or, as she put it — “surrendering to the emptiness of life.
When they say “Would the Saudis allow a church near Mecca” they, in a back-handed way express their admiration for the bigotry of Islamic states, by wanting to mirror that intolerance in the US
Losing friends is inevitable. Making enemies is not.
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”.
When people offer unpaid gigs by saying, it’s “good exposure,” I like to ask how much exposure they made last year.
— Merlin Mann
the probability of making the right design decision was vastly improved when given the tiniest amount of empirical data
When you think outside the box, what you’re actually doing is questioning the decision before the decision.
—
That decision is far more important and much more difficult to change than the decision you actually believe you’re about to make.
via The decision before the decision by Seth Godin
talking about design is like performing interpretive dance about architecture. Words, while critical, often don’t do our ideas justice.
About half of Internet users are using Google search, so if another company builds something and two people start using the Internet because of it, we’re going to get one of them
— Google Research Director Peter Norvig on Being Wrong (
via)
I firmly believe that you are paid what you’re worth, so when I hear people complaining “they are underpaid”, in my mind, I translate that as you’ve “undersold yourself”, get skilled, spend time on weekends or early mornings to learn more, and apply new projects, programs and skills –or leave.
starting adult life with an autistically explicit “goal” that’s never been tested against any kind of real-world experience or reality-in-context, we can paradoxically miss a thousand more useful, lucrative, or organic opportunities
Speed of iteration beats the quality of iteration. You can test more options more often.