On this date ten years ago, I reflected on the first decade of my career as a designer, a professional milestone not unlike reaching a scenic overlook on a steep mountain climb or a mile marker on a rocky long-distance trek. As I looked back over the years and wrote each lesson, I conjured up …
Tag: life
Choosing Your Own Career Journey
What do you want to do with your life? Who hasn’t dreaded hearing this question? Finding the answer can take many forms: a buddinging talent during childhood, a sudden epiphany, a meandering life-long quest. Often, the choice is specific and fairly well-defined, some thing to aspire to: doctor, lawyer, teacher, painter, musician, football player, and so on. …
Towards the Good
For me, 2016 will go down as the year of the gut, when reason and restraint took a holiday. Foundations were shaken, bigly. Concepts like data, information, fact, and truth were all sent through the wringer. Reality became a crowdsourced phenomenon, a channel you could change with the push of a button if the broadcast didn’t …
A Life Less Designed
“What the hell am I doing?” I ask myself on a Sunday morning, half-covered in grass clippings. The weather is warm and immaculate, ideal for a hike or picnic or lazy stroll through town. Instead, here I am clutching my Sears Craftsman line trimmer, dutifully mowing my overgrown lawn. There are blisters forming on my rawhide-gloved …
Embrace the Wait
Have you ever stopped to think about waiting? We spend so much time just waiting for some things to happen, other things to pass. Consider the moments of waiting that happen over the course of a typical day: on line at a register, in traffic, in a doctor’s office, on a plane, etc. The very concept of waiting — a momentary suspension …
The “Busy” Trap
I used to think being busy was a good thing, a necessary thing. “Busy” meant your mind was occupied, gears turning, neurons firing, things getting done. A mind at work was a healthy mind, an efficient mind that saw no challenge too great, no work pile too daunting. As I’ve cycled through different phases of “busy” in my still …