Notes
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Chicken or the egg
'The development industry is tough and you have to prepare students for that too. I expect students who start working to be available during evenings or weekends and to take harsh criticism. Otherwise it's a problem.'
Absolute bullshit. It's a chicken or the egg dilemma. Is the development world 'hard' or is it created that way? If you educate students with this mindset you are part of creating that unsafe harsh industry. We educate students for professional practice mirroring what companies need but we should also show the business community that things can (and should) be done differently.
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Dutch Housing Market
The Dutch Housing Market is broken. Buying a house is becoming impossible for more and more people (myself included). The prospect of sufficient and affordable housing has been lost and our government must give the fundamental right to housing the highest priority again.
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E-scooter
Bought an E-scooter and it's the best means of transport I have ever owned. Also wins the price of most illegal and most lazy product I have ever bought. In the Netherlands E-scooters are, for some reason, illegal.
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Fixed site build
Fixed build by fixing the .yaml in several different note files. Getting back into my habit of regularly posting articles, notes and links.
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Microsoft Teams
I have a theory; Microsoft Teams is just a way for Microsoft to make people buy more M1 MacBooks.
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Good lessons
It doesn't happen very often but when a student straight up tells me that they think I'm a good teacher and they enjoyed my lessons they have absolutely no clue how much that means to me.
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Buying things that exist
We went from spending our money on low-quality disposable products (often with a short lifespan) to spending our money to things that don't exist real fast. Crypto's, NFT's, SPAC's, Kickstarter's like what the hell are we doing.
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Modding 3D Printers
At the beginning of this year I bought a 3D Printer. A Creality Ender 3 V2 to be precise. A couple of months later I'm totally obsessed with 3D printing. I learned so much about how they work, what affects print quality and how to modify already good printers. 70% of all the things I print are more parts for printers.
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Mario Kart Live
Today, I drove around with Mario Kart Live during my lessons and meetings by using the HDMI output of the Nintendo Switch as a webcam. It was great fun. To every teacher; remember to have fun with your students. During 'home schooling' small little things like this have massive impact on the well being of students.
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HTML is a programming language.
HTML is a programming language.
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No-knead bread
On a no-knead bread recipe tour. Mix flour, water, salt & a little bit of active yeast. Let it sit on your counter overnight and have a beautiful hydrated dough the following day.
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Learning to code
Very proud of my first year CMD Amsterdam students who, with no prior coding experience, create beautiful semantic and well-designed websites after just 6 weeks of learning HTML & CSS. Learning to code is not only learning HTML & CSS. It's about learning about different file formats, folder structure, file paths, large file sizes, different screen sizes, different browsers, indenting your code, validators and many more implicit things.
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URL Shortener
Made a little privacy-friendly URL shortener which relies on Netlify Redirects. I only have to edit the _redirects file with url paths, commit the changes and done!
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Hello Big Sur.
Hello Big Sur. I like Control Center. Updating the OS also gives me a good reason to refresh my
dot files
. With a.macOS.sh
andbrew.sh
(with casks) you can get up and running with your previous settings in no time. -
Absence of technology
The absence of technology often makes people more creative since there are no technical boundaries. But more (and cheaper) technology also enables more people to make creative things.
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Big Sur Release
Waiting for a macOS Big Sur release tomorrow so I have a valid excuse to do a wipe of my hard drive and a clean install of the OS.
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FBR
Trying to get back into my daily writing habit. I've been slacking for the last couple of weeks. FBR (write fast, write bad and, write wrong) is still my Mantra. I open a blank markdown file in my code editor and write without any regard if it's 'good' or not.
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Theme your days
Introversion is widely misunderstood. It's not a synonym for being 'anti-social' or shy. For me it's that I don't excel in social settings with many people. I prefer small groups or even better, being by myself.
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Theme your days
'Theming' my days is one of the best things I started doing in the recent months. It's a bit like batch working so clustering similar tasks. Today was a 'meeting' day, a whole day dedicated to meetings, admin (communication), and video calls. This gives me lots of time for deep work in the upcoming weekdays. Instead of letting these meetings fragment my workday (you quickly lose 15 min here or 60 mins there), I can make progress on one big task in particular.
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Unknown unknowns.
People don’t know what they don’t know. That's why asking 'are there any questions?' is not a good question to ask. Even worse is assuming everybody understands if there aren't any. It's the difference between 'have you understood?' and 'what have you understood?'. With the second question, you can check for understanding
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Underpromise and Overdeliver
Underpromise and Overdeliver. Never make claims that are impossible to deliver and be a little conservative with estimates and then give a little bit extra, it works wonders.
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Delete social media
Back on my 'no social media on my smartphone' tour. Me watching The Social Dilemma documentary might have something to do with that.
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Highter punishment
Does 'higher punishment' change behavior? E.g. being strict in assessing students does this improve their behavior (and grade) in resits? Especially the last couple of years I'm becoming more 'loose' in my assessments giving higher grades for students that made a considerable effort. I felt like there was no point anymore by being strict and see students lose motivation and failing.
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Slightly less
Not advocating for buying cheap products (I'm against consumerism) but more often than not a less expensive product gives you 80% of the value. It also works the other way around. Usually, if you spend a little bit more (let's say 50 euros instead of 30 euros) that gives you a huge spec bump. Not the best example but buying an iPhone falls into this category for me. With the cheaper model, you get 90% of the smartphone 'value?' by paying 60% less than top tier models.
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Looking at desks
Call me weird but I like looking at people's desks (either in real life at offices or form pictures online). A desk says a lot about a person; how much they value materials and products, if they are organized etc. I'm always on the look-out for new gear that can improve my own workflow and desk set-up at home. I like small little tools that do one thing very well.
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WalkThru's
TIL: A 'walkthrough (walkthru / draaideur)' student is somebody who only goes to school for classes and doesn't embrace the student culture (lifestyle).
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Take time to move away
If your always in it, you can't get out of it. You got to get out of something to think and approach something from a different angle. Take time to move away from what you are doing. You don't come up with a solution by brute-forcing a problem.
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Feed Detox
What's obvious to you might be amazing to others.
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Feed Detox
It's a good idea to a 'feed detox' from time to time. To critically look at what you are consuming and remove resources. That means unsubscribing from newsletters, unfollowing people from twitter, etc. I do this every couple of months (did it last week) and it feels like a reset. Sort of a clean slate to cut out the noise that has been accumulating over the past few months.
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Enforce COC
A Code of Conduct means nothing if you’re not actively enforcing it.
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All the answers
It's hard to admit that you don't have all the answers. But even worse is pretending you have all the answers.
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If you can't be the cheapest.
If you can't be the cheapest, there is no value in being 'second cheapest'. You might as well not be cheap at all but go for a higher price range. There will always be cheaper.
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Video hosting platform
I spend the whole afternoon looking at OXO products and being intrigued by how cleverly designed most of their products are. Buy a random OXO product and I guarantee you it will be something that will vastly improve your life.
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Video hosting platform
Most video hosting platforms suck for (university type of video's not online courses) educational content. I build a plain good ol' page that 'just' uses HTML5 video instead. I don't want ads. I don't want a 'recommended' algorithm. I don't want to pay 100 euros for a pro account. I want a page to showcase the videos. I want to be able to make playlists. I want to be able to customize the player. A 'basic' HTML page fulfills al those needs. No need to upload my video's to a third-party platform.
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Have a starting point
Some sort of pre-made template is a powerful way to get me going. Having some sort of starting point really helps me to just start doing and working on something. Like journaling; an empty page scares me but a template with a couple of pre-defined questions (from the bullet journal template) works wonders. It was really hard for me to get into the habit of journaling but having that pre-defined template changed everything. I've been journaling steadily for the last two months and never skipped a day.
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Most things can wait
Most things can wait. There are very few things that cannot be done in a couple of days from now.
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Be descriptive
I get a ton of requests from students asking me for my time without specifying for what. Always ask your students to be descriptive of what they want to talk about. If you (as a teacher) schedule a feedback (or coaching) session, tell your students what you want to hear from them so they can prepare in advance.
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Wait before you say
Wait before you say. When you feel a negative reaction coming up, become silent and think about it. Give yourself some breathing room. It's okay to take some time to think or even postpone your answer for another moment.
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Zettelkasten
Thinking about building a digital 'zettelkasten' workflow completely using Markdown. Mainly because the zettelkasten principles are based on setting links between notes. Something that my current workflow is lacking.
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Teaching history and fundamentals
Why do we teach students who have no prior coding experience the fundamentals? Why should they know the difference between
<em>
or<strong>
? Why should we teach them how to float something to lay-out? Isn't it best to teach students good mental models and the latest spec? So not always the history of how a thing came to be but how to achieve something right now with the easiest to understand syntax. -
Group chats
Group chats are basically e-mails where you are continuously kept in the CC without the content of the e-mail being relevant. It's probably the worst type of conversation.
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Going to college
Going to college is not all about knowledge. It's about connections with people: your fellow students and the instructors. It's about meeting new people. It's about having a drink on friday. It's about going out for dinner when your class ended in the evening. It's about working together towards a tight deadline. All that is lost in the current situation.
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Age is a weird thing
What’s weird to me is that people that are 10+ my age (like 30) or even older, care about things I’ve already 'moved past'. It feels like they care about the micro-stuff, about workflows, about tools, things that feel irrelevant to me. It feels like I’ve already been ‘over that’. And each time I think; 'wow, what if I’m at that age'. How much can my views and opinions change?
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Becoming an expert
You don't have to be an expert to give your opinion. You can become an expert by having your own opinion.
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When the time is right
Don't wait with your idea until the perfect moment. I used to put things off until 'the time was right'. The thing is, the time will never feel right. You can always improve along the way so just get going. You will always have the feeling that you wish you started sooner.
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HTML and CSS are not easy
HTML & CSS are put down by the industry as 'easy'. Like those two languages are somehow inferior to JavaScript. It's hard to write 'good' HTML and CSS.
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Balance between guidance and figuring out
As a teacher, it's a balancing act between guidance and letting students 'figure it out' on their own. Reading documentation, playing around with code and experimenting is a skill that will help a lot later in life.
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You will never catch up
I can't keep up with all my YouTube video's I 'have' to watch, all the podcasts I 'need' listen to and all the newsletters I 'must' read. All those resources are infinite, the internet is infinite. The only solution is to ignore.
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Watching lecture footage
I was forced to watch footage of me giving a lecture and couldn't watch until the end. It took me off guard to see that I'm very 'strict' when I'm speaking. It's completely different in how I talk with individual students or helping them with their work. In those situations, I'm way more personal and enthusiastic. Overall a more 'fun' teacher. It feels like when I'm speaking (lecturing) I need to deliver my story, straight to the point with no mistakes. That focus makes me a very different person which probably has an impact on the ambiance of the classroom.
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Kawaii'zation of design
Feels to me that as designers we add fluff to try to make mundane tasks (like filling in a form) more fun instead of thinking about how we can remove the form (or design an alternative) altogether. Tobias van Schneider coined the term; Kawaii'zation.
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Followers and money
How many followers you have doesn't mean you have lots of money. That says nothing about your financial situation.
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Remember and learn names
The name of a student is one of the most important things to remember. Whenever I teach a new class, one of the first things I do is put the names on flashcards and learn them.
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Tasks for the day
Since you planned activities for the day, anything that comes up (trough e-mail or messaging) immediately move that to the next day. Put it on a list (or your inbox) and plan the task for the next day during your daily review. Unless it’s really that urgent and something should be done the same day, but most often that isn't the case.
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Custom Android launchers
The main reason I'm still on android: the custom launchers. I've been using this 'Before Launcher' for well over a year and it's the best for a distractionless phone.
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More people should be prototyping
More people should be prototyping. The purpose of prototyping is not to create 'hi-fi dribbble shots' but to learn. The whole point of a prototype should be to 'throw it away' at a later point. You don't want to be attached to it. I see students work on one prototype and stop experimenting. That's why prototyping on paper works really well, it feels quick and dirty.
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Don't remember code
There is no point in remembering code. If you need specific syntax just look it up. By definition, you are not a 'better' developer if you know things from memory.
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The best medium for learning
Not every student learns in the same way. They should find out what works for them. I don't think you should force students to use one type of learning material, the study material should be diverse in formats.
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Idle hands build nothing.
Idle hands build nothing, never stop making things. My best side projects are the ones that I didn't take seriously. There are no expectations and I can experiment all I want.
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Health is important
The circumstances we are currently living in is a good reminder that health is important. Take a walk, eat healthily and sleep well. Especially when working from home, it influences how you feel throughout the day.
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Presentation design
A presentation shouldn’t make any sense on its own. That’s a good thing. It should give context to your speech and presence. Aim for one idea per slide and save most of your text for your presenter notes.
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Buying time
Time is not something you can buy more of. Every person on Earth has 24 hours in a day. The only thing you can do is make better use of that time each day.
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Wabi-sabi
The beauty of imperfection, beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". From an engineering or design point of view, wabi may be interpreted as the imperfect quality of any object, due to inevitable limitations in design and manufacture especially with respect to unpredictable or changing usage condition.
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Giving advice
We each have our own unique perspectives and approaches to solving problems. When you give advice it's important to tell the other person it's your advice and that you might not be 100% right. They should seek advice from as many people as possible.
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Figuring things out
Don't pretend to be an expert. 'I'm figuring things out the same way you are and this is what I figured out so far. Come along with the ride and let's figure it out together'. That's a better approach.
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What makes a good teacher
After almost 2 years of full-time teaching, I still have no clue what makes a good teacher. You pick up little tricks along the way but I don't think there is one clear blueprint.
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Quitting a project
People see quitting as failing but sometimes quitting a project is exactly what you should do. Walk away. You can't get that time back but even worse is investing time into something that's already failing.
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If you need to say no to something (because of a lack of available time) say 'it isn't a priority' instead of 'i don't have time'.
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Part of my personal User Guide is a list of my 'non-negotiables': small promises I keep to myself that I will not negotiate on. Making decisions will be a lot easier if you have those in place.
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Many people spend to much time in the learning phase, it's a balance of learning and making. Making is usually the best method to learn.
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Stopped using the :ok-hand: in all forms of communication (slack, mail, messages) and replaced it with :thumbs-up: 👍. The reason: I re-read Tatiana Mac her self-defined dictionary to be more thoughtful in my writing and communication to students.
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Design is not art, but design is definitely creative. The outcome is more focussed on function. It leans more towards the usability of the product than aesthetic appeal.
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Who cares what they are doing? You'll just spend time worrying about other people instead of improving yourself.
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Eat your “frog”. Stay away from your mailbox and start with the most important task (highlight) of the day.
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Soft to humans, hard to the product. Remember that giving negative feedback is on the product, not the effort that someone puts into it.
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A good Bootcamp or Programming course will encourage you to play around with code, break things and celebrate error messages while explaining how to fix them.
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The topic of yesterday's front-end lesson was inclusive design and it's really amazing to see how interested students are when I'm talking about a11y on the web.
It gives me hope that when you remove 'the unawareness' around a11y, students really care about creating accessible interfaces. Give them starting points (e.g. alt text, focus styles) to start implementing and they go all-in.
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Dutch research from @nosop3 shows most universities can claim intellectual ownership of products you created while you're studying. Some universities even force you to give up all intellectual ownership, otherwise you won't be allowed to follow education.
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Automator on macOS is such an underrated tool. You can create very advanced workflows with the standard built-in actions from the library. Combine it with Alfred, the macOS Swiss army knife, and you are all set to become a power user.
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Micro-deadlines work well for me. By setting small goals throughout the day that 'light pressure' makes me work a little bit harder.
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Company culture is not expensive equipment, a fancy office space, foosball or a ball pit. It's no e-mail on weekends, everybody quitting at 17:00 and realistic deadlines.
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Always show your mistakes, especially when live coding. It shows that teachers make mistakes all the time and it gives students insight in your problem solving process.
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Proud to say that this personal website fits on a Floppy.
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Navigate trough search and command. I Use alfred on macOS, use the Before Launcher on Android, swipe down from the top bar in iPad and search for things in Google Drive. I rarely navigate a folder structure.
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Move past tutorials. It's a balance between seeing context, learning syntax and actually building. Do a couple of tutorials to quickly master something new and then start building.
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Played around with monetization on the web inspired by @ShopTalkShow episode 379. You can tip me with BAT on this website if you are using the @brave browser.
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Always have people in your environment who believe in you and push you to go further and get more out of something. People who put you in positions that you are not really ready for.
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Instead of grading students with a 'fail' it should be a 'not yet'. It highlights that their current work isn't bad, it's just not quite on the right level to pass this specific exam.
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Lately, I've been sketching lots of things with a Sharpie instead of a fine point pen or pencil. A technique I read in Rework. Sharpies encourage you to quickly get an idea out of your head and ignore details early on.
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Working on something for yourself is hard, you are more emotionally attached to the output. When you work for a client you are somewhat ‘divorced’ from your client. There is some sort of 'invisible distance'.
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People buy things they don't need, with money they don't have, to impress people they don't like. Don't buy dumb expensive things for people you don't care about.
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It feels weird to me that designers are not used to sharing their files early and often. Usually because they are ashamed to show work in progress or wait until it's really finished to hand-off to a developer.
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Theme your days. Designate specific days of the week to work on specific projects. It reduces context-switching and allows for more deep work sessions. Putting those time blocks in my calendar also works really well for me.
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You might want to prototype things quickly with “throwaway code”. When building components it might be better to write it 'non-production' level and just make it work. When it matures there may be certain use cases where you need to refactor.
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Focus on making good work that stands the test of time, not on having the latest style. Trends come and go.
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If you arrive late to a meeting, you give the other person the impression that your own time is more valuable than theirs.
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The best thing I ever did was putting my phone in my backpack when I'm not using it instead of my pocket. And only checking Slack and Mail from my laptop.
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I don't like the term pixel perfect. It implies that we should 'measure' static design files or mockups. 'Element X should be nudged 20px to the left of Element Y.' That goes against the fluid nature of the web, IMO.
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Instead of looking for a solution, people spend all that (wasted) time looking for somebody to blame.
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Freedom is not having more options, it's about choosing your own limitations. Be conscious of what you give up.