Wes's Research

"That’s the thing about delightful details: they’re not just another thing you can add on top. Unless..."

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 09:51:29 -0400

“That’s the thing about delightful details: they’re not just another thing you can add on top. Unless you sweat the details all the way through the user experience, the ones that delight quickly get drowned out by the ones that constantly annoy.”

- Apple and the Kindle (Aaron Swartz’s Raw Thought)

"I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is..."

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 12:33:15 -0400

““I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business.””

- Das Tumblr: Steve Jobs on Startups

"He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart..."

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 19:50:32 -0400

“He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.”

- A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs

"My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good..."

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 12:38:00 -0400

“My father was very sure about certain matters pertaining to the universe. To him all good things—trout as well as eternal salvation—come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy.”

- Norman Maclean, via Best Made Co.

"One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet..."

Sat, 22 Oct 2011 21:10:34 -0400

“One of the surest tests [of the superiority or inferiority of a poet] is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different than that from which it is torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.”

- Great Artists Steal the Future

"Effectiveness is that which you do that gets you closer to the goals you want to achieve. Efficiency..."

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 14:04:24 -0400

“Effectiveness is that which you do that gets you closer to the goals you want to achieve. Efficiency is how quickly you can get things done, whether it is important or not.”

- Rick Ellis | Journal | Efficiency Vs. Effectiveness

"Motivation, productivity, efficiency—these things are not constants. In my experience, they come in..."

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 15:33:18 -0400

“Motivation, productivity, efficiency—these things are not constants. In my experience, they come in waves. They ebb and flow, and there’s no sense in fighting it. The key is to recognize a productivity surge when it appears, so you can roll with it.”

- Jason Fried, Co-founder of 37signals, on How to Get Creative

"In the process of making the film, we reviewed the material every day. Now this is counter-intuitive..."

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 09:04:33 -0400

“In the process of making the film, we reviewed the material every day. Now this is counter-intuitive for a lot of people. Most people—imagine this: you can’t draw very well, but even if you can draw very well, suppose you come in and you’ve got to put together animation or drawings and show it to a world-class, famous animator. Well, you don’t want to show something that is weak, or poor, so you want to hold off until you get it right. And the trick is to actually stop that behavior. We show it every day, when it’s incomplete. If everybody does it, every day, then you get over the embarrassment. And when you get over the embarrassment, you’re more creative.”

- Getting over embarrassment in order to get things done | | ProtoShare BlogProtoShare Blog

"When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn..."

Tue, 31 May 2011 08:29:09 -0400

“When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.”

- You Are Solving The Wrong Problem « Aza on Design

"So, can you make do with a ZipCar instead of owning a car? A gym membership instead of buying that..."

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 13:37:46 -0400

“So, can you make do with a ZipCar instead of owning a car? A gym membership instead of buying that treadmill? What about just borrowing stuff from friends? The less frequently we use something, the stronger the argument for valuing access over ownership. Sure, valuing access over ownership usually requires a bit of forethought, but you’re trading that effort for flexibility and lightness.”

- Your Shit, My Stuff, Goldilocks, and Making the Bed You Sleep In

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me 4 Years Ago | Amir Khella

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:00:13 -0400

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me 4 Years Ago | Amir Khella:

There’s so much good tucked into this one small post, but I have to at least mention a few things:

The magic moment really happened when I made peace with the fact that I’d just wasted a good deal of time learning things I didn’t really need, believing there was a magic word someone would utter that would launch me into action. Every event, every conference, and every blog post was just another excuse to postpone action one more day. I made peace with it and moved on with a beginner’s mindset, believing that I will figure out what I need along the way.

Just start work and learning will follow.

I taught myself through small projects. I broke down ideas into small manageable chunks, and gave myself deadlines to finish each of them. Projects and experiments are amazing teaching devices, because you learn as needed, and you learn first-hand.

Small projects are how I learn, I need to take a small steps towards my goal that aren’t necessarily my goal at all.

I first got things done, then I got them done right. I learned (the hard way) that momentum mattered most. If I can’t take action right away on my idea, chances are I never will. Whenever I get an idea nowadays, I do something to pin it to my reality, and to make it tangible. I do it in a quick and ugly way, then figure out how to do it better, and learn only what I need for that.

Start with something, anything because I know I’ve spent far too much time spinning my wheels with what if’s. Try something, take a look at the result, refactor, and move on.

"The secret of success turns out to be so incredibly simple: Work your ass off. Really care about..."

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:11:43 -0400

“The secret of success turns out to be so incredibly simple: Work your ass off. Really care about what you’re creating, not the fame or fortune you’ll get. You’ll succeed.”

- Farming vs. Mining

Wes Baker

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:01:46 -0400

Wes Baker:

A little heads up here: I have a new blog, one where I’ll be writing in longer form than what you find here. Also, this blog—-my Tumblr blog—-will be more of a gathering point for the longer articles I’m planning on writing. As such, the domain and title will be changing, but the content should remain roughly the same.

Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 11:53:00 -0400

Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

If you’ve ever wondered why that beginner thinks they know more than you do, the Dunning-Kruger effect is in play. It comes from the amateur not knowing what they don’t know and the expert knowing that there is a lot they don’t know. Combine those two and you have overconfident beginners and self-deprecating experts.

Hat tip to Nathan.

John Cleese on Creativity (by zeekomkommers)

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 08:56:01 -0400

John Cleese on Creativity (by zeekomkommers)

"Good writing experiences are self-discovery. Each word pulls back the veil a little more."

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:37:30 -0400

“Good writing experiences are self-discovery. Each word pulls back the veil a little more.”

- Tweeting and Writing and Deflating Like a Balloon

This is the reason why I’m writing these days.

"Listen to your customers, but don’t let them tell you what to do. Let me explain. Consider a feature..."

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:23:54 -0400

“Listen to your customers, but don’t let them tell you what to do. Let me explain. Consider a feature request such as “GitHub should let me FTP up a documentation site for my project.” What this customer is really trying to say is “I want a simple way to publish content related to my project,” but they’re used to what’s already out there, and so they pose the request in terms that are familiar to them. We could have implemented some horrible FTP based solution as requested, but we looked deeper into the underlying question and now we allow you to publish content by simply pushing a Git repository to your account. This meets requirements of both functionality and elegance.”

- Ten Lessons from GitHub’s First Year

Steve Martin And The Steep Canyon Rangers LWJH Jubilation Day...

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:02:16 -0400

Steve Martin And The Steep Canyon Rangers LWJH Jubilation Day (by MrGtmouse)

"After that fateful first meeting, it didn’t take too long for me to figure out one key..."

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 03:29:56 -0400

“After that fateful first meeting, it didn’t take too long for me to figure out one key characteristic of Jim’s: he didn’t like stupid people. And by stupid, I mean people who don’t think for themselves, end up asking dumb questions, and are more into creating excuses for not getting work done instead of just doing it.”

- Contempt and Caring - Cognition: The blog of web design & development firm Happy Cog

"SHAM (the Self-Help and Actualization Movement) takes advantage by cleverly marketing the dualism of..."

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 02:40:13 -0400

“SHAM (the Self-Help and Actualization Movement) takes advantage by cleverly marketing the dualism of victimization and empowerment. Like a religion that defines people as inherently sinful so that they require forgiveness (provided exclusively by that religion), SHAM gurus insist that we are all victims of our demonic “inner children” who are produced by traumatic pasts that create negative “tapes” that replay over and over in our minds. Redemption comes through empowering yourself with new “life scripts,” supplied by the masters themselves, for prices that range from $500 one-day workshops to Robbins’s $5,995 “Date with Destiny” seminar.”

- SHAM Scam: Scientific American