Log / Transition

Some great thoughts from Keenan Cummings on deciding to leave client work behind to work at a startup. Pretty well sums up exactly why I did the same.

I am was an agency-trained, senior-level, print/branding designer & I want to left to work at a start up. Here’s why:

This article was written near the end of an extended and intense job search last summer. I decided to document this career shift on an anonymous blog called Log/Transition. I have since moved into a position as the Creative Director / Co-Founder of Wander and will continue to write about the learning process here on Field Study.

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I want my work to feel valuable.

It seems the higher up the institutional chain you climb, the more abstract the value you generate, and the more you are worth. The roles become so far removed from the end goals they are managing, and you have to wonder how long you can stay focused on what matters — making peoples lives better.

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Metal-fabricator Neil Youngberg never planned on taking over his grandfather’s business and is now faced with passing on his legacy. 

via brickandmortarbuilt via steadyprintshop

How to Become a Great Finisher

“…when we are pursuing a goal and consider how far we’ve already come, we feel a premature sense of accomplishment and begin to slack off. For instance, in one study, college students studying for an exam in an important course were significantly more motivated to study after being told that they had 52% of the material left to cover, compared to being told that they had already completed 48%.

When we focus on progress made, we’re also more likely to try to achieve a sense of “balance” by making progress on other important goals. This is classic Good Starter behavior — lots of pots on the stove, but nothing is ever ready to eat.

If, instead, we focus on how far we have left to go (to-go thinking), motivation is not only sustained, it’s heightened. Fundamentally, this has to do with the way our brains are wired. To-go thinking helps us tune in to the presence of a discrepancy between where we are now and where we want to be. When the human brain detects a discrepancy, it reacts by throwing resources at it: attention, effort, deeper processing of information, and willpower.

In fact, it’s the discrepancy that signals that an action is needed — to-date thinking masks that signal. You might feel good about the ground you’ve covered, but you probably won’t cover much more.

Great Finishers force themselves to stay focused on the goal, and never congratulate themselves on a job half-done. Great managers create Great Finishers by reminding their employees to keep their eyes on the prize, and are careful to avoid giving effusive praise or rewards for hitting milestones “along the way.” Encouragement is important, but to keep your team motivated, save the accolades for a job well — and completely — done.”

via Harvard Business Review

A lot of programmers get to that second 90%, get tired and bored and frustrated, and change jobs, or lose focus, or find excuses to procrastinate. There are a million ways not to finish a project, but there’s only one way to finish: Put your head down and grind it out until it’s done. Do that, and I promise you the programming world will be yours.

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Quake’s 3-D Engine: The Big Picture by Michael Abrash

Replace programmers / programming with whatever it is you do and the result is still the same. Get things done, finish projects, be prolific and doors never stop opening.

The Storm and The Line

viafrank:

…everything we do, everything we make, is not about the beginning or the end of things. We may draw a line, but we are in the thick of life. We make for these middle parts. Every time we sit down to write, draw, design, paint, dance, we do so because we believe there will be a tomorrow. Every movement and each creation says, “The world is not done yet.” To make is to be optimistic. We get to make tomorrow for ourselves and one another, and we are lucky, because we are allowed to be engaged with the world and one another in this way.

We create to ease pain, to increase pleasure, and to get happy, believing that the goodness can be sustained. We make in the hope that what we produce can carry us somewhere better, to a place more satisfactory. If we can do this for ourselves, we are lucky. When we are able to do so for others, we are tending towards glory.

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A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.

— François Auguste René Chateaubriand (via bestmadeco)

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

— Gustave Flaubert

(Source: austinkleon.com)

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants.

— Bob Dylan (via theimpossiblecool)

There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

— Bruce Lee

I will solve your problem for you. And you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve the problem for you the best way I know how. And you can use it or not – that’s up to you. You are the client. But you pay me.

— Paul Rand - paraphrased by Steve Jobs (via ragnarfreyr)