from The Drama of Being a Child (Alice Miller)

//@solle
//London

Our lives cannot be sensed whole. We have to feel our way forward. And what we feel, we have to trust.

One of the hardest things is to trust our own feelings. Beginning with well-meaning parents and teachers, we hear so many instructions that thwart and ridicule our perceptions that we eventually internalise this mistrust of our own feelings. Far too many of us have voices of doubt playing continuously in our minds. soon it is hard to feel anything genuine, because these voices are always telling us that we are wrong.

Disappointments and setbacks reinforce these voices. Maybe we start out trying to be extraordinary. “I’ll be great!” we vow, but then we stumble a little, and the voices become louder.

But we have to stick to our perceptions and to our feelings. That is where experience, philosophy, and self-refinement come in: we know that we have accomplished things, we know that we can coordinate what we perceive with established principles, and we trust that our beings are finely tuned enough to accurately feel what is around us. **What we do in life is up to us and will not be known all at once.** Therefore, we have to feel our way along, little by little, building the vision to know what we are individually meant to do. We can’t let doubt interfere with our touch. We have to trust our touch.

//@solle
//London

“As emotions were the first motives which induced man to speak, his first utterances were tropes (metaphors). Figurative language was the first to be born, proper meanings were the last to be found.” Rousseau, Essay on Origins of Languages

- You don’t have to go ‘off the grid’ to be quiet. Knowing when to speak and when not to speak is your greatest weapon.

- I’ve started reading a hundred things but have only finished a couple of them.

- I know a man who lives in a grid. A framework of time that he considers well spent, less so and time wasted. A strict marking system analysing the worthiness of actions, endeavours, thought, how every moment is spent – day and night (slumber and dreaming do not escape). Everything is marked. Enjoyment is marked. Travel is marked. Conversation is marked. Nothing is marked.

His view on the world is as though through a periscope. Sometimes pointed up, sometimes down, or left, or right. His progress within the grid is played straight back to him through his mind’s eye. He always carefully considers how his peers will react and what they will think of him.

Each side of the grid he lives within is marked enabling him to rate and graph any activity at any moment across time (day and night). Marks are allocated at the days end and totalled up at the end of the week. This is how he lives.

- A big, tough lesson of 2011 is having the strength both to rise above things and to know which things really deserve your response or attention. Sometimes you just have to be a stronger person and ignore the troll. And while you’re at it don’t seek attention – you probably don’t deserve it.

- Timely response is fine but there are 100 other people chomping to/ready to wade in. I’m making more time for reflection that doesn’t always actually involve any kind of response. Again you got to know when to be big enough and keep your mouth shut.

- You can move from an audience of 5 to 5000 very quickly. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything. You can move back from 5000 to 5 pretty quickly too. You are still pretty much the same person.

- If you are going to call yourself something and then promote yourself as the bee’s knees at it, you better bloody actually be good at it.

- All your successes are too easy and maybe are just things that came to you without real challenges. Next year I’m going to try and have some success at things that I’m not that good at.

- I dip in and often dip right out. Pick up a few tidbits to digest later. I never reach or search for the edges, I just look at what is in front of me and often there is something good. Something useful. I never worry or concern myself with the imperceptible edges, I just move along with a toe outstretched in the wind. Balancing gently.

- ebook reading: What happens when highlights get so multiple, so many. How will it scale? When reading a fairly learned not overly popular book by noticing other people’s annotations you can feel the other people reading the title – as if they might be reading it at the same time, all within a digital hair breath of each other. (We don’t even get this close to each other in a library – though maybe we did at rows of school desks.)

- Main lesson of first forays into home rather than school learning for my seven year old son: “Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin

- Names. Never work for anyone who can’t get your name right. I actually appreciate people getting my name wrong (as they repeatedly do). It tells me exactly what I need to know about their ability to listen or read what’s in front of them. Helpful self-filtering.

- I have tried to cutback my noise and output. Trying not to make noise just because I feel a bit insecure. At times I’ve made noises just for the sake of it and have often regretted it and just felt empty and underwhelmed. My intention is make any noise short, compact, interesting and worthwhile. As is obvious to anyone with a connection to the web, a rare skill.

- It’s difficult to ‘follow’ and ‘strive and pine’ to be as ‘great’ as those other fantastic design hero people but much harder to consistently just accept oneself and ‘follow’ and ‘strive and pine’ to be as good/great/decent as you possibly can be.

- Those people you greatly admire are plain human and as chaotic and equally as capable of being idiots as you. And you often also discover that some of them really aren’t that nicer people.

- Face up to it. Not everyone is that nice. Expecting them to be is unrealistic and “Oh come on let’s all get along” doesn’t work. Stop trying to sew everyone into a happy happy patchwork of getting along. Anyway things would be very boring. Pick your friends because you like them. Respect indifference and know but ignore your enemies. The hardest one is the indifference.

- An idea is great and satisfying but how do you make it into something beyond the idea. It’s about being able to think beyond the getting stuck. Often it only takes a small nudge forward.

- Another big lesson has been where to work. Not just the search for decent projects and decent companies, but increasingly actual people, my relationship to them and my loyalty to them have become contributing factors when choosing who, where and how to work.

- If you run your own business or do your own thing: don’t be greedy and avoid insane workloads.

- Next thing for smart ‘UX’ designers: product ownership. Been mumbling about it to whoever will listen since early spring.

- 2012 is going to be the year of camera as prototyping tool.

- Bruce Sterling is my most interesting man of the year.

- Talentless shits will follow trends, but good people will continue to make it up as they go along (and more importantly not pretend to know what is going to happen next). (via Bashford)

- Do less and whatever you chose to do do it more carefully.

- Robert Frost believed that his poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” included everything he knew, encapsulated all his knowledge. Are we capable of producing or doing something that encapsulates all our knowledge or should everything we do be bestowed with that honour?

Frost’s poem:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- This has been a big year for friends and some of the best things I have managed have involved them. I dedicate my year to them.

//@solle
//London

If it is of even the slightest interest to you I still suggest you take all points with a generous pinch of salt.

Many thanks for reading.

- Was never meant to be taken literally and was meant to be taken very much in general
- Some people did take it far too literally and even thought I was talking directly about them and a particular company and a particular job
- Was meant to spur on anyone to Do something about the work they are doing if it was making them unhappy (if they wanted it, only if they were looking for some kind of push). No one is much use to either themselves or their employer (if they have one) if they are unhappy. It is easy to rant/rail/moan/gossip about a job but if it ain’t working out and you are doing something that is wasting your – and other’s – time, then you really owe it to yourself to do something else.
- Believing you can change most things is the easy bit. To keep believing is where it gets harder.
- It’s not the fact that it’s work, it’s the fact of what the work is.
- And contrary to popular believe, you probably build better relationships with clients when you are contracting/providing services.
- Recruiters when trying to hire and not explaining what the work involves (and more often than not having no understanding of the work itself) encapsulates everything wrong with UX recruitment.
- If your not passionate go do something else.
- The previous post really seemed to hit a spot with quite a lot of people as though I had single handedly encouraged a dismantling of all responsibility.
- The previous post wasn’t directing people to walk straight out the door. It was a reminder to always think carefully about what you are doing, where you are and how your working life is working out for you. Small adjustments can make the differences.
- No piece of writing let alone some inconsequential blog post is for everyone. If you don’t need encouragement, if you are happy, then it wasn’t for you. But there are some people who have itches and itches that keep itching and these people need to keep moving, doing their own thing. (Maybe the post was for them, maybe it wasn’t.)
- No need to complain about encouraging folk to do their own thing. Some folk are cut for the long haul and some get those itches. Everyone needs to encourage people flows. Itches shouldn’t be allowed to bleed. You don’t need to get up people noses. There maybe unsettling periods as different people find their comfortable positions and their place in the world. Reward the right people with the right things for them. It is no simpler than that. Hostility rarely attracts loyalty. We are all different and we all have different skills. There isn’t just one solution.
- In terms of the UX design community in London, you can’t have everyone in a full time job and in the same way you can’t have everyone contracting, running their own little shows. Balances have to be struck.
- Great people come in many many different shades and don’t always work/operate exactly the way you want them to. Don’t try and box them in.
- You should go it alone/start your own thing up for the right reasons. Don’t just leave a job to coomand higher rates. That’s a shit reason. Don’t do it for money and less responsbility. Do it because you want to make something, create something. Do it because you want to be able to select projects where you can make a difference, take responsbility, work hard. Deliver.
- Don’t expect everything to just be delivered to you on a plate. Nothing comes easy, least of all being worthwhile, doing something worthwhile (either on your own or in collaboration with others).
- The action is to start something, be something, take risks, don’t panic, don’t fear, explore, think beyond your horizon, don’t be dominated by money don’t think in terms of money. Try it.

//@solle
//London

Crafted from an old collection of cut out ‘heads’ both famous and non-famous then given a bit of a paper bending treatment.

(View/download full size on Flickr)

I’m crap at reading. What do I do?

I’m not one of those people who can fit proper reading into the mechanics of the day to day. I manage bits, fits and starts. Scans. A mountain of read laters. Given the chance to read in a stretch of time I am too easily swayed by getting things done – rarely reading an item on a list.

What is required is a time and space and surrounding – an organised ‘thing’. Then I might get somewhere.

The idea for a ‘something’ – an idea for a small audience – has been swimming in the background for a while, encouraged by a writing weekend last February, the Do Lectures in September and many little reading puzzles from many sources along the way.

Could it be a succession of reading weekends at some kind of remote house – with in winter a real fireplace and in summer splendid beach views – located suitably for bracing any-season walks and inviting pubs. Invite a combination of people happy to mix up introversion, concentration and discussion. The opportunity to have undisturbed free time to focus on something that you may find hard to do for a sustained period within your regular days, weeks, months. Is this the something?

The inspiration really gets its lift from the chapter Serendipity in Steven Johnson’s book Where Good Ideas Come From…

“While the creative walk can produce new serendipitous combinations of existing ideas in our heads, we can also cultivate serendipity in the way that we absorb new ideas from the outside world. Reading remains an unsurpassed vehicle for the transmission of interesting new ideas and perspectives. But those of us who aren’t scholars or involved in the publishing business are only able to block out time to read around the edges of our work schedule… The problem with assimilating new ideas at the fringes of your daily routine is that the potential combinations are limited by the reach of your memory… One way around this limitation is to carve out dedicated periods where you can read a large and varied collection of books and essays in a condensed amount of time. Bill Gates (and his successor at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie) are famous for taking annual reading vacations. During the year they deliberately cultivate a stack of reading material and then take off a week or two and do a deep dive into the words they’ve stockpiled. By compressing their intake into a matter of days, they give new ideas additional opportunities to network among themselves for the simple reason that it’s easier to remember something that you read yesterday than it is to remember something you read six months ago”

A great way to get into a network of new ideas.

Anyone vaguely interested please do ping me

//@solle
//London

Here is their answer which I’m sure they don’t mind me sharing:

In regards to R&D the tax relief amount rose on the 1 April 2011 and looks to rise again on the 1 April 2012 so there is an opportunity to receive tax relief on more of any monies you spend on R&D.

If you look at the HMRC’s website, one of the main points to note is as follows;

“Your company or organisation can only claim for R&D Relief if an R&D project seeks to achieve an advance in overall knowledge or capability in a field of science or technology through the resolution of scientific or technological uncertainty – and not simply an advance in its own state of knowledge or capability.”

Furthermore, For accounting periods ending on or after 9 December 2009, the project must satisfy the following condition:

“it must be related to your company or organisation’s trade – either an existing one, or one that you intend to start up based on the results of the R&D.”

So it’s quite specific but certainly in a very positive and constructive way i.e. that the R&D should be based on something you will be doing through your company and essentially to aid the benefit of everyone in that field.

Read more details here

We all like the serendipidous nature of our social media graph and specialised curated content content but what if the whole thing was a carefully planned ruse and in fact all this graphed content was just being randomly selected by a robot. Not any old type of robot. A clever robot. Would you really be able to tell the difference. How long would it take you. Would you actually be looking. How quickly would you notice when the random started slowly to go wrong. Would you not just put it down to some curation slips, your social media graph with a combined hangover. And really really would you care (if you didn’t actually know the truth) and would you really really care if you did know. Would it make any (real) difference if the stuff you were reading was just plain good robot-impersonating-human curation.

And then what if the stuff you thought was being selected by a robot was actually being selected by unnamed humans in an unnamed part of the world. Again would you notice, when would you notice, and would you really really care (or would you just be confused and apathetic).

Maybe the option is a good old fashioned switch just sitting there on your desk, or maybe by the door when you come home or maybe you’d prefer it in the kitchen by the kettle. Any type will do.

Maybe even a nice pot dial to get some real fine tuning – a sort of fine tune of human and robot.

Or maybe only a combination will do.

//@solle
//London

The curation of Hidden Heroes: The Genius of Everyday Things exhibition at the Science Museum misses a few tricks. It should have extended beyond a limited random (shipping containers?) out into a more expansive random in a much bigger space and filled it with a mass of objects, products, things to expand on the idea of everydayness and mass appeal, mass use, mass consumption and how so many things are entwined into everyday life. It could have been an exhibition that connected these everyday things, their stories, and their history. It could have plucked things from other areas and the stores of the Science Museum and brought them to life under the everday banner. There could have been more education, more access to “How we make use of these things”. It could have avoided the neat repetitive rows (like a respectable peep show) that presented the tip of an iceberg and designed a network of presentation styles driven by real stories and awe and wonderment.

//@solle
//London

It is at these intersections of time, memory, friendship, history and union that you have the opportunity to reflect on your own life from the prespective of an unanticipated meeting. How does the other person remember you, what impact does it have on their live. You cannot recreate this kind of surprise and time and history all jam packed into a matter of seconds. It is also the opportunuty to reflect that on any given day whether you are in the hubbub of a large city like London or standing out on a sea wall on the edge of the Thames you could be at a mark in time 10 steps or two minutes away from intersections with a lost friend, colleague or neighbour from 20 years ago. The countless passing shadows, sometimes paths crossing a matter of seconds apart, gaps no bigger than single sheets of paper.

You of course never know, merely guess, but it is at the very rare times when intersections occur that you are able to reflect like this little entry.