BC DESIGN

Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher 5 years, 5 months ago 922 views

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10 ideas that changed my life: (thread)

Illustrations by @visualizevalue

1/ Get more done by doing less.

2/ You can't get better unless you get started.

3/ Zoom out. It's getting better. (IP via @behaviorgap)

4/ 'Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.' — Charles Addams

5/ No one owes you anything. Figure it out.

6/ Invest time now, earn time later.

7/ If it's too easy, you're leaving opportunity on the table.

8/ To get nowhere, obsess over what other people think.

9/ Bad decisions compound faster than good decisions.

10/ Shoot.

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Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher

Building a Personal Monopoly: (thread)

How to combine competence, curiosity, and character to create a category of one.

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1/ Competence

If we want anyone to spend their time, attention or money on anything of ours, we must first be competent.

Lots of people are competent, so there's lots of competition here.

Let's say this is "school teachers"

2/ Competence + Curiosity

If we add curiosity to the mix, competition starts to thin.

This separates the generalist practitioners from the irrationally passionate.

Let's say this is "school teachers who are curious about learning innovation"

3/ Competence + Curiosity + Character

Now combinatorics put us in category of one territory.

Let's say this is "school teachers who are curious about learning innovation, building a gamified school inspired by SpaceX's Ad Astra." (real example: @anafabrega11)

4/ Making it Tangible

All this is great until it comes to communicating it to the rest of the world.

Which is why bad packaging kills amazing ideas.

Writing, design, marketing — our job here is to lose as little as possible in translation from the intangible to the tangible.

Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher

Circle of Competence 101:

@SahilBloom x @jackbutcher

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1/

A Circle of Competence is the set of topic areas that align with a person's expertise.

If the entire world of information were to be expressed in a circle, an individual's Circle of Competence is the small sub-circle that represents their expertise.

2/

The idea surfaced in the 1996 BH annual letter.

"You don’t have to be an expert on every company...you only have to be able to evaluate companies within your circle of competence. The size of that circle is not very important; knowing its boundaries, however, is vital."

3/

A Circle of Competence is built over time.

It is built through experience, reading, dedicated study, and effort.

It is dynamic, not static.

It can expand as you deepen your knowledge in new areas. It can contract if you fail to nurture your existing areas of expertise.

4/

To engage this mental model in your life, there are two key processes to go through:

(1) Identify what falls within your circle
(2) Identify the boundaries of your circle

(1) is all about figuring out what you know, while (2) is about humbly admitting what you don’t.

Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher

Hindsight in 2020: (10 thoughts)

Relationships > everything:

My relationship with @celiapreihs is the foundation of all the good things in my life, and has amplified the quality of hundreds of relationships with people I've got to know and learn from this year.

Shiny objects make us duller:

The grass is always greener until you're standing on it. "No" is still the highest ROI word in my vocabulary.

The internet is very, very big:

Make something work for one person (could also be yourself), then work on distribution.

Scale is seductive but you can't get it if you don't have something people want.

You can't please everyone:

If you could, there would be no point anyway - it's tough when someone doesn't love your work but it's how markets function.

The blows hit harder in the early rounds, just keep getting up.

Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher

Why promoting yourself/your business/your ideas feels uncomfortable:

You must repeat things that are obvious to you until they become obvious to others.

This is why most people hire marketers or outsource the amplification of their message.

The problem with that is no one is an invested as you are, and no one knows your message like you do.

And why those who break through their discomfort reach an escape velocity that eludes most.

This is a difficult and unnatural process, hence the upside on the other side.

Another way to think about it is the famous shelf analogy:

No one wants a drill they want a hole, no one wants a hole they want a shelf, no one wants a shelf they want to a place to put books to look smart, etc.

People care about the 2nd, 3rd, 4th order effects of your work.

Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher

10 reasons your product will fail.

Words: @BrianNorgard

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1. Too complex

2. Can't be easily described

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Eric Hu
@_EricHu

I've been thinking about the "reframing of powerlessness as righteousness" with regards to design education, and I want to jot down some loose thoughts...

A person who adamantly argues for why you are powerless and takes offense at your self-determination could not be more clear about what role they prefer you in.
— Salom\xe9 Sibonex (@SalomeSibonex) December 30, 2020

Around 2012, while on summer break from what I felt was a lackluster school year, I was kind of at a breaking point. A prominent designer was peddling this self-help program, a $6000 weeklong workshop that centered around dinner with him and his influential friends.

His response to a fan who was deeply inspired by him and wanted to be a better designer, who asked "what if I can't afford the $6000?" was "You simply don't *want* to afford it." It's not a priority for you. I remember seeing it on Facebook and getting up from my chair.

It was gross, and it felt like the latest incident in what seemed like a long generational road of manipulating impressionable young people into thinking that the only thing stopping them from having the lives of these visible figures was passion

It felt wrong. Absolutely wrong. I thought about my best friend from high school. Someone just as—if not more—talented than me in art. Both of us dreamed of going to the same art school. Only one of us did. His familial socioeconomics as his undocumented status made it impossible