Thinkcage

Today, Holly and I celebrate 13 years of marriage. It is hard to believe that we’ve been married so long. I feel like even now we’re still discovering things about each other and learning what makes the other tick. I hardly feel old enough to have a 13 year old marriage and a 11 year old son.

But what I have learned about marriage is how great life can be when you have a partner who is your biggest fan, your best friend, and your favorite person to spend time with. Even when “life” is winning she’s there to give me strength. Heck, she’s lived with me for 13 years — clearly she is a saint-like figure.

So Holly, thank you for being with me. I can’t wait to see what the next 13 years holds for us.

All I know right now is that I want to do all of it better. Everything better. Better, better.

I don’t know how else to say it: Merlin Mann inspires the living shit out of me. His recent post, Better, incapsulates so much of my feelings about the web, my passions, and why I do what I do. He is right in so many ways; it is all about getting better.

Getting better is what drives me. I pray to be better daily. I am in a constant state of analysis — always trying to figure out what it is I’m doing, seeing, experiencing, making, building watching, drawing, listening to, whatever… and how it can be better.

Getting better is fucking hard. I can do a good job. I can make my client/boss/wife/kids happy, but it can always be better. And not everyone wants to be better. You wife doesn’t want to hear that dinner could be better. Your kids don’t care to hear that obviously their grades could be better. Your boss doesn’t want to know that his decisions could be better. But I won’t stop trying.

Merlin’s post is all about the bullshit that we can all easily fall into when we let others tell us what is important and feel the need to do everything. If you ever read anything I share, read this.

And when you’re done, read the brilliant getting started page on 43folders. And when you’re done reading that, go make something. Something fucking awesome.

“We are the music makers, and We are the dreamers of dreams.”

Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

The fact that I haven’t posted this says a lot about my work/life balance right now. But a couple of weekends ago I couldn’t fight it any longer — I wanted to make something with my hands. So I bought a new bottle of india ink and pulled out my pens, watercolors, and an unused Moleskine watercolor notebook. I did a few simple sketches, inked them and then painted in some color. It felt incredible. There is something in using traditional tools to make something real that cannot be replicated when you work on the computer most of the time. In fact I have been daydreaming about the brush on paper, the smell of the ink, and the utter concentration ever since. I am off of work next week taking a much-needed break and I hope to spend a lot more time off the computer and at the drawing table. I will post the results later.

The first was just a reproduction of a photo I found. The original had lots of great dark areas that would allow me to use lots of ink. The second image was an attempt to do some Frank Miller-style washes over ink silhouettes. I will have to work on that a little more, I think. It has been a long time since I drew or painted regularly and it is a shame. I hope to correct that soon.

I have been reading more than my share lately about creativity and productivity. A brief mention in the a recent issue sent me back to read Kevin Kelly’s New Rules for the New Economy from Wired 5.09 in September 1997. This passage, in particular, caught my attention (emphasis mine):

Wasting time and being inefficient are the way to discovery. The Web is being run by 20-year-olds because they can afford to waste the 50 hours it takes to become proficient in exploring the Web. While 40-year-old boomers can’t take a vacation without thinking how they’ll justify the trip as being productive in some sense, the young can follow hunches and create seemingly mindless novelties on the Web without worrying about whether they are being efficient. Out of these inefficient tinkerings will come the future.

Everything we know about productivity and what it is to be productive seems wrong. Ideas are the currency of the future. Measuring them by the metrics of the past is only holding us back.

Just spotted ShoeGuru, an online shoe store that has one of the nicest interfaces I have seen for shopping online. The site features a beautiful, subtle backdrop for really nice images of the products. The list view has only the essential information: the image of the shoe, the price, and the name of the model. The display isn’t burdened with categories, item numbers, reviews, ratings, “digg this”, and all of the other things that typically compete for your shopping attention.

The individual product detail page is even better showing a large photo of the shoe. The description, pricing and cart tools fade into the background, though still readable, making the shoe image really stand out.

Sure, this solution might not work for a company with significantly more or diverse products. But it is a great solution for what it is and a compelling offering of a great looking line of shoes.