joshuago’s productivity Bookmarks

A well-articulated viewpoint that resonates: "I want to putter about, feel connected to the process, and have fun doing so. I want to make things that don’t scale. To see people tuck into them and enjoy them as people, not as stats."

The decision to work at a different rate than others can be a significant competitive advantage.

Of all the events that engage people at work, the single most important — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work.

If you screw up at your job you can always get another one, but if you screw up your family, especially your relationship with your children, it will stay with you and stay screwed up forever.

Being bored is awesome. Savor it. "My creativity flourished because of the soul-crushing boredom of my childhood."

If you want to dramatically increase your programming skills you need to be reading other people’s code.

Detailed, pessimistic account of problems in making data secure, legible for centuries to come. Do the obvious things—back up, print out—but they won't be enough.

By changing a problem slightly you can often do great work rather than merely good work. Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.

In the software world, the first, second, and third versions of any product are really pretty good, because everyone can use them. Then companies start adding more and more stuff to keep their existing customers happy. But you end up dying with your customer base, because the software is too complicated for a newcomer. We keep our products simple. I'd rather have people grow out of our products, as long as more people are growing into them.

Every seven years, the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister takes a one-year sabbatical. As he argues, that's not so crazy.