Jed Lehmann

I just published 7 reasons your interface designs look worse when they’re coded, and why it’s probably your fault link.medium.com/6xeIYshMC4

The hallmark of expertise is no longer how much you know. It's how well you synthesize. Information scarcity rewarded knowledge acquisition. Information abundance requires pattern recognition. It's not enough to collect facts. The future belongs to those who connect dots.

A surprising number of instances of bias for action are really about a bias against critical thinking. (this observation also applies to potential replies here that might go “well, but you can’t just keep analyzing and never act”) Often even taking an extra minute or at most an hour to critically think through the situation and simulate the likely futures can go a long way towards increasing odds of success or decreasing odds of disaster.

"Text is precise, compact, indexable, transmissible, translatable, asynchronous & quick to absorb. Intelligent, busy people prefer text." @naval

My broken record advice is quite simple: Designers and developers, talk to each other. Work with each other. Tooling is secondary. Automation is secondary. Process is secondary. Titles are secondary. Everything is secondary.

Before giving critical feedback, ask if they met their own expectations. Before telling them what to do, ask how they'd proceed without you. Before accepting a problem to solve, ask for their recommendation. It's often not wisdom they lack, just the confidence to use it.

BIG NEWS: WATCH 👇

In-house designers know that "process" is never neat and linear. When it comes to delivering quality design, flexibility, adaptability, and resilience take precedence over any rigid process.

My favorite short story is 2 sentences long: “Picasso,” the woman said, “It only took you thirty seconds to draw this little masterpiece.” “My good woman,” Picasso said, “It took me thirty years to draw that masterpiece in thirty seconds.”

The False Idea of One Creative Routine: JK Rowling uses outlines. Stephen King doesn’t. Neil Gaiman writes every day. George RR Martin doesn’t. Brandon Sanderson writes best at 1am. William Faulkner at 9am. The lesson? Do you.

@hogfish Those fools...

I watched the sun rise from the top of Mt Coot-tha this morning. There were many cyclists congratulating themselves and saying "worth it though!" I didn't have the heart to break it to them that you can also just drive up there like I did.

Comprehensive map of every high speed railway in Australia, complete with stations and service frequencies. Map also shows coastline.

@hpdailyrant I dream of getting a compliment like this one day.

Something to keep in mind if you want to criticise the quality of software: The people who work at the company almost certainly know it’s a problem, and they’d improve it if given the chance. In many cases you’re criticising the company’s priorities, not their ability.

An astonishing amount of creative success comes down to picking the right goal and consistently progressing toward it every single day. Boring, but effective.

@Mappletons 👋

Who do I know who works on product at a developer focused company? Meaning your primary customers/users are developers. Might be infrastructure, tooling, a popular library, etc.

my overall wellbeing skyrocketed once i surrendered the notion that i had a singular all-encompassing calling to faithfully pursue & accepted that i just want to do stuff that i find fun and interesting and meaningful until i die