The WP { CSS } course I’m working on needs a WordPress install to use for the examples and screenshots. I run several WordPress sites, but none of them would be appropriate to use in the course, so I had to create a new one. What better opportunity to have a bit of fun?

So, if you’ve ever wondered about what’s on the mind of a Lego brick, check out The Red Brick Blog and wonder no more.

I had the idea for this blog a couple weeks ago. I set up the WordPress install a few days ago, and I’ve been jotting down post ideas when they’ve come to me, but today was the day to finally sit down and make it happen. I spent the day writing a bunch of silly blog posts (with an the about page to match), and it was a blast (all but the most recent post have fake dates).

While fun, this project is not without its practical upsides. Having whimsical example material helps keep the course material from getting stale, and the examples I create will be more memorable than traditional (read: boring) examples, which helps students retain what they’re learning a bit better.

Another benefit is that this blog (and the overall concept of a sentient Lego brick that’s active on the internet) can easily be reused or extended whenever I need examples in the future. I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find myself spending way too much time trying to come up with a good concept for examples. One less thing to waste time on going forward!

All that, and the domain is pretty cool, too.

Now I have a plan.

First, I’ve decided to be radically transparent and document what I’m up to here on this blog. Doing so will provide clarity by forcing me to think deliberately and articulate what I’m doing as I do it. I’m also hoping I can build a bit of an audience, because shipping things to crickets sucks.

Keeping a written record will also allow Future Me to reflect on what went right and what went wrong. Time has a tendency to distort what really happened; the more detail I record here the better.

Most of all, though, I’m hoping that sharing my journey will help you. One of the things I’ve been working on since being laid off is coming up with my own personal mission statement. I’m still tinkering with it, but here’s what I have so far:

Help people succeed using the power of technology and design.

Hoarding what I learn as I go through all of this won’t help anyone. If even a single person learns something, avoids a painful mistake, or makes a better choice because I took the time to share it will all have been worth it.

Second, I realize the most valuable things I have are my knowledge, skills, and experience. I’ve spent years making a living on the web, so I’m going to start this new chapter of my life by teaching people about the foundation of every web page: HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS are the core technologies that power the web, and learning them well opens up a world of opportunities and possibilities.

Specifically, I’m going to start by creating three courses.

The first course is going to be called WP { CSS }, with the tagline, “Bend any WordPress theme to your will with the power of CSS.” If you’ve ever used a theme with limited or no customization options, this course will show you how to make the changes you want using custom CSS (which is a feature built in to every WordPress install since version 4.7, and also available on paid WordPress.com plans). I’m targeting WordPress with this course because it powers 29% of the web, and I want to avoid having the material be too general. However, even if you don’t use WordPress, you’ll still be able to adapt the material to any system that lets you define custom CSS, like Squarespace.

WP { CSS } will be a free email course, and will serve these four purposes:

1. Make sure potential customers are compatible with my teaching style before they purchase a paid course.
2. Demonstrate the value and quality of my work.
3. Help build my audience.
4. Provide value to everyone, including those who can’t afford a paid product.

At the end of WP { CSS } I’ll invite people to check out my two paid courses, which will cover both HTML and CSS.

My HTML course will be shorter and cost less than my CSS course, but both will be video courses with full transcripts. I’m also planning to offer them together at a special bundle price. My goal is to have the HTML and CSS courses be very high quality, extremely practical, and easy to digest.

I’m going to do all of this under my existing business name: Core Assistance. I’ve set up a quick-and-dirty coming soon page where you can sign up to be among the first to know when all this stuff launches.

I’ve got a few months of runway to get all of this off the ground. It’s going to be an interesting ride no matter how it turns out. If you want follow along subscribe to this blog using the feed, or get new posts delivered directly to your inbox. I already have a number of articles planned that will cover pricing, marketing, productivity, and more.

If you have any questions or topics you’d like me to cover in a future post, just send an email to Justin at this domain. I want to be as accessible and forthcoming as I can be during all of this, so please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.

Let’s do this.

It was a great job. I was working on some really great stuff with some truly outstanding people. Suddenly it’s all stopping. It’s a very strange feeling.

I’m still processing what happened and coming to terms with this new situation. I have a lot of feelings about a lot of things. There are things to mourn, things I’m angry about, things I’m sad about, things I’m frustrated about, and then there are all the feelings I don’t quite have words for. I’ve been pretty calm about the whole thing, but I am a very calm person.

Honestly, I’m kind of looking forward to the possibilities and the adventure. Don’t get me wrong; if it was up to me, the company wouldn’t have run out of money, and I’d still be working there.

I’m giving myself a few days to wrap my head around all of it. I need to examine the situation, learn whatever lessons this experience has to teach me, feel the feelings, and move on. This stuff needs to be worked out at some point; best to do it now. I’m going to need a clear head to figure out what’s next.

I don’t have much of a plan yet, but I know this: I need to take as much control of my own destiny as possible. I’ve been in too many situations where my life has been forced down a different path because of factors outside my control. I know that there will always be factors outside my control, of course, but I need to reduce them to an absolute minimum.

I need to be my own boss. I need to run my own company, generate my own revenue, and have that revenue come from as many tiny sources as possible. I’m not quite sure what that looks like yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to be some mix of teaching, services, and apps (with maybe some products thrown in here and there).

Losing my job wasn’t up to me, but what’s next is up to me. This is a chance to shape my future and build a better life.

Who knows, I might even start blogging again.

🔍 Claire Lew pens a fantastic piece about why a company’s vision matters, and how to figure out what your vision is.

🍰 Carl Erik Fisher writes a thought provoking piece about willpower.

🌐 Dan Luu shows us exactly how much the web sucks on a slow connection (and reminds us that millions of people around the world are still stuck with very slow connections).

📱 Mark Stanton provides a surprisingly interesting deep dive on the nuances of rounded corners. Now I know what a curvature comb is!

🎛 Jason Fried writes a case study that shows how complexity can creep in and cause problems.

🌈 Alex Denisov decides to alter the Stickies app that comes with macOS in order to change the colors. A fantastic look at reverse engineering.

🔴 Ken Segall shares an entertaining look behind the scenes of Apple’s HAL ads from 1999.

🖥 Stephen Hackett talks about some of his favorite Apple displays. That 17-inch ADC Apple Studio Display is quite the looker.

🗺 Apple announced WWDC pretty early this year due to a change of venue from San Francisco to San Jose. John Gruber has a nice writeup about it.

🏊‍♀️ Jason Kottke shares and writes about a delightful short film by Maximilien Van Aertryck and Axel Danielson called Ten Meter Tower.

🍽 And, finally, Sarah Kay talks about Table Games.

Struggling, believe it or not, is often a good sign. Struggling means you’re pushing yourself. Struggling means you’re not resting on your laurels. Struggling fuels growth.

If you haven’t felt challenged recently take it as a warning that stagnation is setting in. You might be making progress, but you’re not growing. You don’t have to grow all the time, but you should be a bit outside your comfort zone on a regular basis.

Success feels great, but if that’s all you feel it will provide diminishing returns. You need challenge and accomplishment in equal measure, as the former enhances the latter. A hard-fought victory is more rewarding than an easy win. Easy accomplishment lacks substance, but challenges have lessons to teach.

Bring challenge and accomplishment into balance. Too much struggle will drag you down into a dark place. Too many easy wins will hollow you out. Harmony and happiness are found, as usual, somewhere in the middle.

The Public Domain Review showcases a number of stunning hand-drawn infographics showing the state of Black American life in 1900.

Alex Q. Arbuckle provides an incredible look at The Terra Nova Expedition of 1910, including some breathtaking photos from over one hundred years ago.

Bertrand Jayr shows us that anything can be whimsical, even toilet paper storage.

Lucas Zimmermann shows us that anything can be beautiful, even traffic lights. Don’t miss part two.

Jason Fried writes about the value of time and the importance of not letting other people steal it.

Julia Love gives us a peek at the incredible attention to detail Apple is demanding during the construction of their new campus.

Gordon Mah Ung performed some extensive battery tests on the new MacBook Pros.

Federico Viticci provides an in-depth look at the new Magic Variables in Workflow 1.7 for iOS.

If you enjoy bookstores you’re going to enjoy these photos.

Work from home? Read this.

Augmented reality + Portal = nothing would get done, ever.

GIF of the week.

I was about to put a warning here about the political links below, but these links aren’t political. The current state of affairs in the United States stretches well beyond the realm of politics. These links are about life, how people are being impacted by what’s happening in this country, where things might be going, and what we can do about it. So, warning, links about life are below.

Jason Kottke provides both an excellent summary of, and comment on, the senate stopping Elizabeth Warren from reading Coretta Scott King’s letter by invoking Senate Rule XIX.

Cecilia Kang pens a story about Trump’s F.C.C. pick targeting net neutrality rules.

Jake Fuentes shares his take on what might really be going on with the current administration. He hopes he’s wrong, and I hope so, too.

Under 35, progressive, and want to run for office? These people want to help.

Arianna Huffington writes about escaping the cycle of outrage many of us are trapped in right now.

And, finally, here’s a link to a tweet from the dictionary.

Let me ask you this: What would have to happen for you to feel qualified? There’s no magical qualification fairy that’s going to flutter down and tap you on the nose with their magic qualification wand, so that’s not a valid answer.

Seriously, think about it. What would make you feel qualified? In some cases, for some jobs, it’s an easy answer because there are exams or boards to pass. Doctors and lawyers, for example, can be labeled as qualified once they’ve completed a certain series of tasks and trials.

Creative work, though, is a bit different. There’s no board certification you have to obtain before you start teaching someone how to write code. There’s no bar exam to pass prior to creating a beautiful piece of art. Most endeavors lack officials standing by to proclaim your qualified status to the world, or endow you with a sense of being worthy to do something.

So how do you get qualified? You do the work. You practice. You get started, even though you don’t know what you’re doing. No one knows what they’re doing in the beginning.

Think of someone doing what you want to do, someone who you feel is qualified. Why do you feel that way about them? Is it because of their accomplishments? Their body of work?

Do you think you would have considered them to be qualified back when they were first starting out, before they had any work to show for it? Do you think they, themselves, felt qualified without any evidence of their abilities to point to? A common refrain among accomplished creative people is that they had no idea what they were doing when they got started, but they got started.

People you see as qualified all have one thing in common: They didn’t let anything stop them from getting their work done. They achieved something, and now the world can see it and proclaim them qualified. They, themselves, can also look back at their work and feel the same.

Feeling qualified is the result of work and practice, not a prerequisite to it. You will not feel qualified to do something until you do it multiple times. You don’t start out qualified, but starting is the key to being qualified.

So are you going to continue to feel unqualified for the rest of your life, or are you going to get started?

Tobias van Schneider pens a thought provoking piece about motivation and environment: The Broken Window Theory in Product Design.

Jonas Downey urges us all to remember that we’re creating things for people, and advocates designing with heart.

Some interesting thoughts and ideas relating to the constraints of working with non-profits and other clients that are resource constrained from Ethan Marcotte.

Lewis Wallace wrote a piece about the impossibility of true objectivity and neutrality, then got fired for writing it, which resulted in some interesting commentary and observations from Felix Salmon.

A great video about putting people in boxes from a TV station in Denmark.

I’m a bit late with this, but The New York Times has some great pictures of the women’s marches from around the world.

A great little story.

And, finally, step zero of the development process, illustrated.

The best way to figure out the steps required to accomplish your goals is to work backward. Your destination, in this case, is actually the best place to begin. This might seem counterintuitive, but trust me, it works.

I’ve developed two variations to this method of planning. The two variants work well in different situations. Neither is better than the other. Pick the one that works best for the goal you’re trying to figure out, and switch between them if you get stuck.

In order to make this process easier make sure you pick only a single goal. Things will quickly get out of hand if you try it with multiple goals at the same time.

Both versions of this method require you to have a very clear vision of your goal and what, exactly, your life looks like once you’ve accomplished it. Before you start make sure you have a solid understanding of your destination.

Method One

Pick a single goal and write it at the top of a blank piece of paper or new file. Then, right under your goal, write the thing that has to happen immediately prior to that goal being accomplished. Be specific, and make sure it’s a single thing.

Now, on the next line, write what has to happen prior to the previous item. Again, be specific, and only write one single thing down.

Keep repeating this process until one of two things happens:

1. You find the beginning of the path to your goal.
2. You intersect where you are right now.

When you hit one of those two points you’ll have a map that will guide you from where you are now to where you want to be.

A simple example would start with a goal:

• Eat Breakfast

The first thing I write under it might be “Cook Eggs” since that’s the thing I do just before I sit down to eat breakfast. The item before that could be “Cook Bacon”, and so on. This example might eventually end when I get to something like “Buy Ingredients” or “Learn to Cook Breakfast”.

Method Two

The second method is similar to the first. Start with a single goal written at the top of a blank piece of paper or new file. Now, instead of starting immediately under the goal, start midway down the page, and write what the halfway point between where you are now and your goal looks like. Then, at the bottom, write “now”.

Now you have three points: Now, the midway point to your goal, and the goal itself. The next step is to figure out the two midpoints between those three points. Then you’ll have five points with four new midpoints to figure out, and so on.

Keep repeating this process until you’re confident that there are no midpoints (read: no gaps) left to fill in.

Working backward like this is difficult and time-consuming, but it’s worth the effort. At the end of the process you’ll have a map that will lead you right to your goal, and it’s hard to overestimate how useful having that map would be.

Tom Gauld’s The Life-Changing Magic of Decluttering in a Post-Apocalyptic World made me smile.

Jamie Wong provides the best explanation of bezier curves I’ve ever come across. Don’t let the math intimidate you; the animated diagrams work wonderfully on their own.

Brad Mangin, a freelance sports photographer who’s primary clients are Sports Illustrated and Major League Baseball, explains how and why he earned more from photo gigs shot with his iPhone vs. his DSLRs in 2016.

Outlinely is an interesting outlining app for the Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

Elizabeth Sampat tweets 100 lessons that are well worth your time.

John Gruber links to an article and a tweet that might make you think about Facebook a little differently.

Oliver Burkeman penned a fantastic long read about why time management is ruining our lives.

My wife and I produced and released the second episode of Introvocabulum, a game show on The Incomparable podcast network.

If you have an Amazon Echo and you’re a Star Trek fan I have good news: You can now use “computer” as the wake word.

Lucy Rycroft-Smith shares her experience wearing men’s clothes for a month. (It’s more interesting and enlightening than it sounds.)

There’s a lot of interesting stuff coming from Apple in the iOS 10.3 update, which is now in beta.

Warning: Political links below!

Regardless of how you feel about the current political situation in America it’s important to stay informed. Track Trump is a site that will track and document the policies put in place by the Trump administration for the first 100 days, concentrating on the pledges made during his campaign. Their goal is to be a useful and informative resource for everyone regardless of their political viewpoints.

Dana Hunter writes about Trump gagging various government agencies, and the employees of those agencies defying the censorship by creating alternative social media accounts.

Shani Silver wrote an eloquent piece explaining why she marches for what she believes in.

On January 21st millions of people around the world marched to protest Trump and his policies. Some of the people behind the marches launched a new campaign, 10 Actions for the first 100 Days, which provides steps everyone can take to make sure their voices are heard in a meaningful way.

Want to take even more action? The 65 provides weekly calls to action to fight for a vision of a diverse, inclusive America.

First, all work has flaws. There is no perfect painting, no flawless piece of music, no design without issue. Flaws are something that will always exist no matter how much time, effort, and resources are applied. It’s critical that you become comfortable with this fact both in the abstract and as it applies to your own work. Specifically, you need to realize that your work will always be flawed. Accept that, and make peace with it.

Second, the majority of your audience is not actively trying to seek out flaws in your work, even though it might feel that way. There will always be negative people, trolls, and haters, but they are not worth an ounce of thought. They are also not the majority of your audience, so it’s both safe and recommended that you completely ignore them. Instead, realize that most of the people who value your work do so because they love it holistically. They don’t even see the flaws you’re fretting over.

When you look at your work you see a collection of individual pieces, and the pieces with flaws stand out to you. Your attention is drawn to the flawed pieces because, as the creator, you want to make your work better. It’s natural that your focus is drawn to areas where things can most obviously improve.

When someone else looks at your work they the whole, not the individual pieces, which means they do not see the flaws like you do. They’re not focused on how to make things better, they’re focused on the total package. They see a single, cohesive entity, the good parts of which outshine the flaws.

You have to realize that no one is going to scrutinize or spend as much time with your work as you do, so small (or even large!) imperfections will likely never be discovered by your audience. Even if your work is incredibly popular and put under a microscope by millions of people there are flaws that will go completely undiscovered. Want proof? There’s a visual effects mistake in Star Wars that went undiscovered for 38 years. Yes, Star Wars, an incredibly popular piece of work that’s been viewed countless times my countless people who obsess over it. Once you see the mistake you’ll realize it’s not a small mistake, and yet no one noticed until recently. The mistake didn’t even get fixed in any of the remastered special editions when professionals were being paid to find and fix mistakes in this incredible piece of work.

How can this be? It’s because Star Wars, as a whole, is fantastic. It has all kinds of flaws, but they don’t matter, because people see the whole. The glare from the awesomeness that is Star Wars literally blinds people to the flaws. And when flaws are found they rarely diminish the whole. Is Star Wars less great because Obi-Wan’s lightsaber has a visual glitch, or a TIE Fighter is missing for two frames? No, of course not. It’s still Star Wars, and it’s still incredible.

Third, keep in mind that other people only see what you share with them. Most importantly, no one else can see the ideal version of your work that you have in your head. You can see your ideal vision, so that’s what you compare your work to. This is why your perception of your work is out of whack. The vision you have, the ideal, is often not a practical thing to realize given the limits of time, resources, and energy. But comparing your ideal vision to what you’ve created is something no one else will ever be able to do. What seems like work that’s flawed and falls short of your ideal is work that, to someone else, is stupendous, because that work is a reflection of the vision you have. A flawed reflection of a perfect ideal is still something awesome, especially to people who can’t compare it with the better version you have in your head that isn’t practical to create.

Fourth, and this is key, your audience would rather have an imperfect version of what you create than nothing at all. Read that last sentence again, because it’s vital that you not only understand it, but believe it. Remember, flaws will often be rendered invisible by the overall awesomeness of your work as a whole. By holding your work back you’re depriving your audience, and the world, of experiencing that awesomeness because of flaws that no one else will see or care about.

Now, even if you realize all of that, take it to heart, and truly believe it, your own internal scale is probably still going to be out of whack. You’re still going to look at your own work and consider it sub-par and not ready to ship, when it is in fact past the point when you should have released it.

In order to get your internal scale properly calibrated you need to find some people you trust to be 100% honest with you and show them your work at various stages of completion. Then you need to take what they say to heart. If the people you trust say it’s ready to ship, it’s ready to ship.

Now keep this in mind: What they say is almost always going to differ from what you feel. They might look at a piece of work that you consider 80%, or even 70% complete and tell you it’s ready to go as-is. Remember that they’re seeing your work as other people will see it. They don’t have the mental baggage of an ideal version to compare it to, and the flaws don’t stand out for them the way they do for you. You have to trust these people and recalibrate based on what they say so you know when to release your work. If you don’t do this your internal quality scale is going to remain out of whack, and the work you do that could be bringing joy to people will be held back for no good reason.

Even after all of that shipping is still going to be difficult. When you try and release your work you’re going to feel trepidation, anxiety, and fear. These are normal feelings that all creators feel. Shipping is hard because shipping is a skill, and it’s one you probably haven’t practiced enough. Make shipping a natural part of your process. Normalize it. Ship early, and ship often.. The world will be a better place with your work than without it.

So, please, release your work. Ship it before you think it’s ready, because it’s probably ready sooner than you think.

You can do this.

I used to fear failure, but over time I’ve come to fear something else entirely: stagnation. I realized that if you’re not failing, you’re not trying. And if you’re not trying, you’re stagnating. No one gets things right the first time unless they have a ton of luck on their side. A ton.

Sometimes I’ll write some code, run it, and it’ll appear to work flawlessly. That scares the crap out of me. It freaks me right out that I didn’t fail the first time. I would rather see an error, or have it spit out something wrong, or get some other failure condition that I could diagnose rather than see a piece of freshly-authored code seemingly run correctly the first time.

Why? Because writing code is difficult. Most things worth doing are difficult (which does not mean they can’t be enjoyable). If I write some code and it appears correct right out of the gate that makes me think there’s something really, horribly wrong with it in the most insidious way. Like pretty much anything else, code needs more than a single pass to get it right.

Writers don’t write a paragraph and call it done. They write something, they read it, they refine it, they tweak. Sentences get thrown out, parts get rewritten, and sometimes the entire paragraph is trashed and they start again.

So was the original paragraph a failure? You can certainly look at it that way, but it’s a required failure. You can’t skip ahead to the good paragraph, you have to go through the process to get there. You have to iterate. You have to start with failure.

This concept is hard for many to grasp, because people want shortcuts to exist. They think there are ways to skip all the failures and jump right to the success. There isn’t. It doesn’t matter how good you are, how much experience you have, or what you’re doing; failure is a part of your process. Some fail more than others, but failure and iteration are integral to making things, period.

I understand fearing failure. No one likes to fail, at least at first. Failure feels bad. You want to do better. You want to be better. Failure is frustrating, embarrassing, and eats up time and resources.

But here’s the thing: Failure is incredibly valuable. Each failure teaches us something new. Each mistake is a lesson. Each error is one step closer to greater understanding. Proficiency is the product of repeated failure. It’s dangerous to look at each failure in isolation, you have to look at them as part of a whole, as part of your process.

Failure is not a dirty word. As I said, everyone fails, but we live in a culture that tucks all those failures under the rug and keeps them out of sight. We, as a society, have shunned a critical, non-negotiable part of the creative process. We only talk about and celebrate wild, outlandish success, giving us all a view of both the world and ourselves that is ridiculously out of balance.

Some people don’t expect failure. That’s a dangerous, arrogant, and toxic viewpoint. Failure is as important to the process as success. Hell, it’s more important. Everyone, every single person, has failed a lot more than they’ve succeeded. Everyone. Yes, that famous singer. Yes, that painter. Yes, that author. Yes, that podcaster. Yes, that movie star.

Successes are beautiful, bright flags atop mountains of failure. You have to climb the mountain before you can plant that flag.

So if you fear failure, don’t. Disliking failure is natural, but remind yourself that failing itself is natural. You’re not going to find some magic shortcut to success, you’re not going to make some incredible breakthrough that somehow elevates you to some magic plane that’s above failing. No one has ever done that, and no one ever will. What you are going to do is fail, a lot, before you succeed.

Making things is messy. Failing is part of the mess. The ones who create, the ones you succeed, are the ones who have figured out how to handle the mess that is their process. The mess is annoying, the mess is troublesome, the mess is uncomfortable, the mess is an eyesore, and the mess is a hundred other negative things, but it’s also the biggest positive there is. If there’s a mess, you’re making progress. If there’s a mess, things are happening. If there’s a mess, you’re building something to plant a flag on.

Today you should do better than yesterday. The project you’re working on now should be better than all your previous projects. The work you’re doing now should be better than the work you did last week.

This post should be better than the last one I wrote.

Improvement is expected. It’s assumed. The idea that we’re all going to constantly do better every time seems to be an inherent expectation of everyone, everywhere.

But what if you do something that’s not better?

That sounds horrible, I know. I’m living it. I am my own worst critic, but even I admit that my last post was really good.

And that’s a problem, because I don’t think this post is going to be better.

But you know what? That’s okay.

That’s okay?! What? How could that possibly be okay? What about constant improvement?

Woah, stay calm. Let me explain.

So this post might not be as good as the last one. Okay, what if it isn’t? What will happen? Will the last post be diminished in some way because this one is not quite as good? Does this post’s quality being a bit lower mean I didn’t learn and improve through practice by writing it? Does the drop in quality mean that I’ve lowered my standards and have decided to stop trying to be a better writer?

No, of course not.

Constant improvement as a goal is great. It drives us to challenge ourselves, to strive for what might be, to stretch ourselves as we reach a little further each time.

Constant improvement as a rule is damaging. The constant, relentless pressure to do better every single time is unrealistic and detrimental. That pressure, that fear of “what if I can’t do better this time?” is poison to productivity.

That fear almost paralyzed me into not writing anything today.

But I recognized that fear, that pressure, that big tangle of negativity masquerading as a useful goal. I confronted it, which was hard. I reasoned it away, which took time and effort. Then I wrote this post about it.

This post, which almost didn’t exist.

This post, which I’m glad to have written.

This post, which isn’t as good as the last one.

We see a tall building with wonderful architectural detail, so we compare it to our own sketches.

We see a great website that’s fast and usable and well written with great visuals, so we compare it to the two dozen mock ups we made last night that are obviously not the solution.

We see an app with a silky-smooth sorting animation for hundreds of items, so we compare it to the code we wrote last week that isn’t doing nearly as good a job.

We see a breathtaking photo with perfect lighting and composition, so we compare it to the hundreds of photos we took last month with subpar lighting and composition that just feels off.

We see the finished work of others.

We see our own creative process.

We compare what we can see, even if it’s not fair.

We don’t see the months-long slog the architect of the building suffered through, or the constant pressure of their looming deadline.

We don’t see the dozen people on the design and development teams behind the great website. We do not see the countless number of rejected ideas they had, nor do we see their shouting matches.

We don’t see the app developer with decades of experience sorting and animating on a myriad of platforms starting with the Apple II. We do not see the innumerable sacrifices she made to focus on her work and hone her skills.

We don’t see the thousands of rejected photos taken by the photographer, nor do we see the hours they poured into editing and tweaking the one shot you did see.

So often the only process we can see is our own.

So often the only thing we have to compare our process to is the end result of others.

So, we compare what we can see. We compare, despite the fact that it isn’t fair.

We compare what we can see because it’s easy, because it’s a tendency, because we aspire to greater things.

It’s important to have a destination, but you can’t compare your journey with another’s destination.

We compare what we can see, so look deeper.

Stop looking only at finished work. Look behind the scenes. Find out what was invested. Discover what was sacrificed. Uncover the truth behind the work.

Be fair to yourself. See more than just your own process.

Because we compare what we can see.

1. Where you are now.
2. Where you want to be.
3. What’s between those two points.

I’ve talked to a lot of people who are trying to move forward without knowing some or all of those things. You can’t plot a course without them, and you need specifics.

Where you are now.

In order to know where you are, you need to have answers to these questions:

• What do you enjoy about where you are now?
• What do you dislike about where you are now?
• What’s keeping you where you are? (In other words: Why aren’t you somewhere else right now?)
• What are the various paths leading away from where you are now?

So many people think they know where they are, but they really have no idea. People tend to look toward the horizon, they tend to dream about what isn’t instead of examining what is.

Reflect on your situation and figure out exactly where you are right now.

Where you want to be.

Asking someone to drive to “the west coast” or plot a course to “somewhere in the pacific ocean” is not useful. Where on the west coast? Where in the pacific ocean? When do you depart? When do you want to arrive?

And yet, people say, all the time, they want to “be rich” or “be famous” or “have more followers” or “be more successful.” Those aren’t destinations. If those are your goals, then you’re directionless, and you won’t get very far.

Answer the following about where you want to be, and then you’ll know which direction to travel:

• What does it look like?
• What does it feel like?
• What makes it better than where you are now?
• When you get there, what will you do each day?
• How much time are you willing to invest in getting there?
• How many resources are you willing to invest?
• What are you willing to sacrifice in order to arrive?
• What’s keeping you out?

Once you know, specifically, where you are and where you want to be, a direction will present itself.

What’s between.

There’s distance between the two points. If there wasn’t it would just take a step, it wouldn’t be a journey.

Imagine the distance. Imagine the path. Answer the following:

• How’s the terrain?
• How’s the climate?
• What are the obstacles? Huge mountains, giant canyons?
• Where can you get support while traveling?
• How great is the distance?
• What will fuel you over that distance?
• Will there be enough fuel?

Figuring all this out might challenge your expectations. That’s good. You may end up heading in a direction you didn’t think you would. That’s both exciting and much better than not moving at all.

When you know where you are, where you’re going, and what the path between looks like your next steps will present themselves. Take those steps. Make progress. Have an adventure.

Has someone ever said something like that to you? Have you read something like that before now? Probably. It’s pretty common advice. But have you thought about what it really means? Have you considered what it would mean for your life if you really didn’t let fear stop you?

Let’s turn it around. How would you act, what would you do, if you knew you were going to succeed? Take a moment and think about it, because that’s what we’re really talking about here. If you expect to succeed you’re not going to let your fear of failure stop you.

Think of the path to your goals as a road trip. Some road trips are short, others are long, but all road trips require three things: planning, time, and money.

It all starts with planning. You don’t just get in your car and drive hundreds or thousands of miles on whim. You make sure you really want to go to your destination. You figure out your route in advance. You plan your stops along the way. You get your car checked out before you depart. You schedule your road trip and dedicate time to it. You come up with a budget, which means you might need to save a little or earn a little extra before you leave.

You make many arrangements long before you get behind the wheel, but you know what you don’t do when you’re planning a road trip? You don’t let fear stop you. You assume and expect your road trip to work out just fine as long as you plan it out and use common sense despite the fact that there’s a ton of stuff that can go wrong during a road trip:

• Your car might break down.
• A critical highway might be closed.
• You might get mugged.
• You might get sick.
• A motel you plan to stop at might have no vacancies.
• You might run out of money.
• Your car might get a flat tire.
• You might get lost.
• You might get into an accident.
• You might get hit by a meteorite.

Those are just what I could think of off the top of my head. A road trip is far from risk-free. A lot can go wrong. So why doesn’t fear of failure stop most people from taking road trips?

They know that most of what can go wrong can be mitigated by planning and common sense. They know that they have a support system they can depend on along the way, be it friends or family they can call or roadside assistance they’ve budgeted for. They know that many other people take road trips every day without any issues. They know that getting hit by a meteorite is such an unlikely possibility that it doesn’t even factor in when they plan a road trip.

What it all boils down to is that people go on road trips all the time because they expect to get where they’re going. They expect to succeed. They plan, they prepare, they take the risks, and they arrive.

So are you making progress toward your goals, or are you letting fear of flat tire stop you? Are you fretting over running out of money or are you planning a budget and saving? Are you worried you’ll get lost or are you planning a route and finding a support system you can depend on? Are you worried about a meteorite, or have you realized that you can never eliminate all risk, and some risks are worth taking?

You have to expect to achieve your goals. You can’t just hop in the car one day and start driving, but if you plan, prepare, and take calculated risks you can achieve them.

Don’t let fear stop you.

It felt awful, right? You feel this wet, goopy, disgusting mix of a bunch of emotions: Worry that you’ve disrupted their day. Sadness that their opinion of you has been diminished. Disappointment that you could be so inconsiderate. A yearning to give them their time back.

The frustration of knowing that you never can.

That’s the thing about time: It’s limited, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I can’t transfer some of my time to you. None of us can do anything to make more time. Time is a fixed, limited, and unknown quantity for each and every one of us.

Thus, we do our best to avoid wasting other people’s time. We schedule things. We leave early so no one is waiting on us. We respect the fact that time is a limited resource when it comes to other people.

But what about your time? Do you worry about wasting your own time the same way you worry about wasting the time of other people? Do you treat your own time with the same reverence you would the time of another?

Before I started writing today’s entry I caught myself scrolling up and down my list of drafts, trying to pick one to work on. I kept telling myself that none of them felt right, it wasn’t the right moment for this one, I’m not in the right mood for that one. I was procrastinating.

I was wasting my own time.

When I realized what I was doing I immediately opened a new sheet and forced myself to write. The first few paragraphs I wrote were horrible, and no one else is ever going to see them, but those three paragraphs were, in many ways, the very best paragraphs I’ll write all day.

Those three paragraphs, as bad as they were, sparked some ideas. They made me think. They built momentum. This entry would not exist if it weren’t for those three paragraphs.

And those three horrible, wonderful, delightful, deleted paragraphs would never have existed if I hadn’t realized that I was wasting my own time, and realized how disrespectful I was being to myself.

Think about how you’re spending your time. Think about how you would be spending it if it belonged to someone else. Think about how bad you feel when you waste someone else’s time, and realize that you should feel even worse about wasting your own time.

Respect the time you have. Don’t waste a minute of it.

This is a very dangerous mindset; the ideal solution could be sitting right in front of your face, but if it doesn’t look complex enough, you might dismiss it if you’re not being careful.

One of the most important things to keep in mind while working on a hard problem is that the road to simplicity is long, rough, and winding. Elegant and refined solutions are backed by a history littered with artifacts that are anything but. You have to be aware that, when it comes to design, your destination rarely resembles the path you travel to get there.

This is why breaks are so important. This is why sleeping on things is so important. A renewed mind and a fresh perspective helps reveal the fallacy of the thought that something is “too simple,” or seems too straightforward given how much work it took to produce.

Remember, the solution stands on it’s own. The end result is never going to sit side by side with the hundred iterations and a log of the hours it took to create. The effort and the final product, in many ways, have no relationship to one another. The final product either achieves the goals, or it doesn’t. It either achieves them well, or it doesn’t.

Do not judge your work solely through the lens of effort applied.

With so many options comes the paralysis of choice. How can we select just one thing to do from so many? How can we be sure the choice we make is the correct one? We become so concerned with making the right move that we don’t make any move at all. We let our fear of selecting the wrong thing stop us from choosing anything.

There are indeed good and bad choices, but they are extremes, and they’re obvious. Making your website load as fast as possible is a good idea. Using copy that insults your customers is a bad idea. Obvious.

Other choices, other ideas (especially the ones you’re struggling with) are neither good nor bad. They’re starting points. They’re titles without stories. Execution tells the story, and the story is what turns out to be good or bad.

If you find yourself unintentionally doing nothing, make yourself do something. Pick something at random from your list of choices and do it.

Yes, at random.

If it’s on your list of possibilities, it has the potential for greatness. If there are things on your list that don’t have the potential for greatness, you need to get them off your list.

Try things. Start telling a story. If you realize you’re telling a bad story, stop, and start telling a different one. Don’t get too attached. Strive to tell good stories, but realize that telling bad ones is a normal and healthy part of the creative process.

Just don’t end up telling no story at all.

Here’s why programming — unlike plumbing — is an important skill that everyone should learn: programming is how humans talk to machines.

His article goes on to explain that, now that machines are doing more and more of the work, everyone needs to learn how to talk to them so they can get work done. Instead of telling people what to do with spoken and written words we all need to be able to tell machines what to do with code.

Quincy fails to take into account two factors: the relative infancy of modern technology, and the rapidly evolving nature of it.

If you want to tell a computer or machine how to do some work right now, today, you might need to write some code, but probably not. If your task is a common one there are likely many choices of both machines and software running on them to help you do what you want to get done without knowing the first thing about programming.

Now, if you have a task that’s not common, or new, or you want it done in a particular way then yeah, you might have to write some code to get your machine to do what you want.

But that’s today. Today, programming is how humans talk to machines about these things. Today we are in the caveman era of computers. We currently have the equivalent of cave paintings and grunts to communicate with our computers.

That will not always be the case.

In the earliest days of computing people had to jump through extraordinary hoops to get their computers to do anything. They had to create hundreds of punch cards and feed them into a computer the size of a room, one at a time, in exactly the right order, to do the simplest of tasks.

Using punch cards is like drawing rough shapes and lines in the dirt and gesturing to a pile of rocks. If you’re careful, and if you gesture in exactly the right way, you might get the outcome you want.

But there are better ways. Physical switches, teletypes, assembly, interactive displays, keyboards, a whole host of different programming languages, graphical user interfaces, mice, touch screens… and who knows what’s coming? The way we talk to our machines has evolved, and is still evolving.

In the earliest days of computing the only way to talk to computers was using code. Now some people talk to computers using code, some talk to them by typing commands, some click on buttons with a mouse, and others tap on a touch screen.

As I said earlier, we’re at the cave painting level right now. As sophisticated and advanced as our various abilities to communicate with computers are these days, we’re still in early days. What we’ve got now is much better than scratching around in the dirt, but we still have a long way to go.

Today, lots of people write code, because it’s still the best way (or, in a lot of cases, the only way) to accomplish certain things. Tomorrow, hardly anyone will use programming languages, because simply talking to your computer will be easier and faster, because computers will have evolved beyond the cave painting stage.

Coding is the new literacy. Like reading was in the 12th century, writing was in the 16th century, arithmetic was in the 18th century, and driving a car was in the 20th century.

No, it isn’t. Creating and feeding punch cards into a mainframe is not something anyone in today’s world should be required to learn. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are fundamental skills. Programming is not, just like using punch cards is not, just like drawing on cave walls is not.

Millions and millions of people order their computers and machines around just fine, today, without knowing how to write even a single line of code, and it’s getting easier all the time. The dialog is getting richer every single day. It won’t be long before we don’t even think about how we’re talking to machines.

Now, don’t get me wrong: the last thing I want to do is discourage you from learning to code if that’s what you want to do. In fact, I actively encourage anyone with an interest in programming to dive in and see what comes of it, and I believe that anyone can learn to code if they set their mind to it.

But not everyone is interested. Not everyone wants to learn this skill. And that’s perfectly okay, because not everyone needs to learn how to code. That’s true today, and it’ll be especially true as time and technology move forward.

If you want to code, learn. If you don’t, that’s fine, don’t feel pressured to. You’ll be just fine either way.

Creating something will often require research. Research leads to new knowledge and new possibilities. Many of these new possibilities will be shiny and new and compelling, but do they apply to your current project?

And cats exist. Cats are naturally drawn to people engaged in the act of creation, and tend to insert themselves at the nexus point of that physical act. This nexus point is usually located where you and your tools intersect, meaning there’s often going to be a cat on your keyboard, or rubbing up against your paint brush.

While strongest in cats, this behavior is also exhibited by various other animals, including dogs, birds, spouses, friends, relatives, and even ferrets.

It’s all very distracting, and that’s okay. It’s okay to get distracted. It’s natural, expected, and all but impossible to avoid. It is, however, not okay to stay distracted. It’s a constant struggle to maintain focus, but the fruit of that struggle is success.

Be wary of distractions. If you find that you’ve become distracted, set the distraction aside and refocus (note that cats will often have to be set aside multiple times). Remember why you started. Remember what you wanted to accomplish. Stay focused on achieving your goals.