Words of Wisdom: Making the Inevitable Obvious

May 3

Many people in the website/web design industry are young. As for myself, I’m 30, which I consider to be very young. And while I think my technical skillsets in coding are advanced, there are many life and business skills that I can only get from years and years of experience. So I’m always on the lookout for articles like this:

Kevin Kelly, over at Technium, on some life advice from his 68 years.

The whole article is great, and worth reading, but if you’re pressed for time (aren’t we all?)…

Here are my favorites that I feel apply to website development:

Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
Art is in what you leave out.
Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.