BC DESIGN

Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher 5 years, 6 months ago 942 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.

More from Jack Butcher

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

Why you need to be selfish: (thread)

I have had countless conversations with people looking for a way to build a brand/audience/community online.

Here's the one thing I think everyone asking that question should be thinking about.

You need to be selfish.

Why?

Because (at a high level) if it helps you, it will eventually help others.

At a tactical level, it's provides the motivation to keep going.

The lack of instant feedback on what we share publically is enough to extinguish most projects before they even get moving.

But allow me to reframe the idea:

You need to do things that benefit you even if no one sees them.

Did posting @visualizevalue images into a void 18 months ago do anything for my career as a designer?

Yes.

Would I have kept going if there wasn't some selfish drive to be more competent? (and make more money, work with better clients, etc)

No.

Jack Butcher
@jackbutcher

Building a Personal Monopoly: (thread)

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

↓

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

↓

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.

More from Design

$\u232c Dr Grippo \u232c$

⌬ Dr Grippo ⌬...
@Grippo77

@pcmac41 @PaoloWalnuts I looked into this as I was very surprised and thought it could be quite dangerous to go against the trial design.

I learnt a lot while i was doing it! There are a lot of misunderstandings and quite a few counterintuitive bits as well.

Thread...

@PaoloWalnuts There's some obvious stuff like the fact that the JCVI is a longstanding body with a lot of very bright folks on it. Also, again stating the obvious, immunology and immune responses are really complex.

I've worked on a mAb and i will happily admit i didn't get the details! 1/

@PaoloWalnuts To digress a little, i think AZ have serendipitously learnt lots about adenovirus vaccines through the seeming unplanned hiccups in their study. This is all brand new tech and it wasn't entirely obvious beforehand that small initial dose and long interval would be good. 2/

@PaoloWalnuts It makes sense afterwards (for an adenovirus vx) and it also confirms why longer time between doses can be good. You let the vx get all the way through "teaching the body how to respond a little bit, and once it's developed its response it's way more efficient with the booster 3/

@PaoloWalnuts Which begs a critical question that really bothered me: why did pfizer go with a 21dy regime? We have to trust what they say don't we? 4/

$Pratham \U0001f468\u200d\U0001f4bb\U0001f680$

Pratham 👨‍💻🚀...
@Prathkum

Neumorphism is a trendy UI style nowadays. So let's create a neumorphic form using few simple steps

THREAD🧵

Neumorphic design is another UI design that has become popular these days.

Making neumorphic effect is actually pretty easy using only just CSS box-shadow

We'll be creating a neumorphic form in steps👇🏼

2.

STEP 1:

Place a light source(virtually) on screen. In this example I'm considering that my light source is placed top left corner of the screen

3.

STEP 2:

Create a container div and set background color slightly darker than white. I picked #ecf0f3

* Make sure that the color of body and container should be same

CONTINUE...

4.

As we placed our light source on top-left corner, make sure left and top border of container should be brighter than right and bottom border.

This will make the element looks like it has the light source illuminating from the top left corner of the screen.

5.

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

Pak
@muratpak

Let's chat.

so..

"Design solves a problem. Art raises a question."

"Design is conclusive. Art is an open debate."

"Design needs a collective acceptance. Art only needs an inner approval."

Ben Mitchell
@OhBendy

It's quite instructive looking at fonts with problems! I see the same mistakes when Latin-accustomed designers tackle Southeast Asian scripts. Here are the main ones...

1. In Latin, we make the arches of m a bit narrower than in n, but this is not a universal principle! As a rule don't assume this applies to other scripts. Don't start condensing letters with more bowls in Burmese or Thai. Use the same element...

...but be aware of exceptions! Better to take your lead from locally-designed fonts, where native designers know the proportions. There's no substitute for careful examination of plenty of other designs...

In Latin, though we may not see it, we balance shapes towards the baseline. The bottom half of B, 3, S or H is larger than the top half, as we see when flipping these letters. This is not a universal rule!

This logic doesn't apply to Thai and Burmese; remember these derive from Indian scripts where there isn't so much a baseline as a headline, from which letters hang. Knowing the history of the letters explains so much.

Meet Yang Ruifu, CCP's biological weapons expert https://t.co/JjB9TLEO95 via @Gnews202064
Interesting expose of China's top bioweapons expert who oversaw fake pangolin research
Paper 1: https://t.co/TrXESKLYmJ
Paper 2:https://t.co/9LSJTNCn3l
Pangolinhttps://t.co/2FUAzWyOcv pic.twitter.com/I2QMXgnkBJ
— Billy Bostickson \U0001f3f4\U0001f441&\U0001f441 \U0001f193 (@BillyBostickson) October 11, 2020

2. A jacobin capuchin dangling a flagellin pangolin on a javelin while playing a mandolin and strangling a mannequin on a paladin's palanquin, said Saladin
More to come tomorrow!

3. Yigang Tong
https://t.co/CYtqYorhzH
Archived: https://t.co/ncz5ruwE2W

4. YT Interview
Some bats & pangolins carry viruses related with SARS-CoV-2, found in SE Asia and in Yunnan, & the pangolins carrying SARS-CoV-2 related viruses were smuggled from SE Asia, so there is a possibility that SARS-CoV-2 were coming from

Sumit Grrg
@sumitgrrg

These 10 threads will teach you more than reading 100 books

Five billionaires share their top lessons on startups, life and entrepreneurship (1/10)

I interviewed 5 billionaires this week

I asked them to share their lessons learned on startups, life and entrepreneurship:

Here's what they told me:
— GREG ISENBERG (@gregisenberg) January 23, 2021

10 competitive advantages that will trump talent (2/10)

To outperform, you need serious competitive advantages.

But contrary to what you have been told, most of them don't require talent.

10 competitive advantages that you can start developing today:
— Sahil Bloom (@SahilBloom) March 20, 2021

Some harsh truths you probably don’t want to hear (3/10)

I\u2019ve gotten a lot of bad advice in my career and I see even more of it here on Twitter.

Time for a stiff drink and some truth you probably dont want to hear.

\U0001f447\U0001f447
— Nick Huber (@sweatystartup) January 3, 2021