Daily Exhaust

Time-Shifting

2012-05-17T13:00:00Z

My wife and I (and our Chihuahua and my turtle) moved to Los Angeles on 1 April and I've been time-shifting to accommodate east coast-based projects I've been working on for my company.

Working from home has many benefits but getting up between 5 AM and 6 AM can still be painful, even if all I have to do is throw on jeans and walk downstairs to my office. But I've noticed the more I condition myself for this new schedule, the more I like it.

How much I like my time-shifted schedule came into sharp focus yesterday when I flew out to Boston to be with my project team to prepare new designs for our client presentation today. When I'm in Los Angeles, I'm used to having my work done by around 3 PM. It's obvious too - my email and instant message programs go silent. It's a great feeling.

Under these 'normal' hours today in Boston, I still had work to finish at 6 PM last night.

I'm looking forward to going back to my 'normal' schedule.

Infinity Times Infinity

2012-05-16T13:37:34Z

via sippey

Frustration

2012-05-16T01:27:05Z

My Aunt Judy is whipping my ass at Words With Friends time after time and it's fucking pissing me off.

The problem is, I'm not playing her on the inside as much as I should. When I say 'inside' I mean playing tight combos in between existing words, not extending new words out vertically or horizontally into the void. Every time I even come one block short of a double or triple word block, she takes it.

I'm an educated man. College degree. I've read John Updike. I can parse XML.

My lexicon can't be that much smaller than hers, can it? "It's not the words, Mike, it's how you use them. I mean, look at Hemingway." Yeah, yeah. Spare me.

I feel like Fredo in The Godfather II, “It ain't the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!”

A few years ago I watched a 60 Minutes episode where they interviewed Tiger Woods. He said no matter the activity, he hates losing.

I know how he feels.

Let's do this. Enough already.

Mr. Quiche

2012-05-15T17:47:58Z

The Key To This Joint

2012-05-15T14:01:00Z

Last year Andreas Markdalen wrote a post on frog design's blog on what visual designers can learn from Biggie Smalls. It's well worth a real.

Andreas breaks down the key take-aways from Biggie:

A Central Theme
A World of Context
Rehearsal and Repetition
The Non-linear and Organic Process
The House of Cards

Process is one of the most important things you can learn from any artist, although my favorite bit of advice from Biggie is in the opening of Jay-Z's track, My First Song (I wrote about this back in 2009):

Well, I'm just trying to stay above water, you know? Stay busy, stay working. I was telling you like, the key to this joint, the key to staying on top of things is to treat everything like it's your first project. Know what I'm saying? Like it's your first day, like I wasn't even an intern or nothing. That's how you try to treat things, like just stay humble.

Treat everything like it's your first project.

Have you been staffed on a little dinky internal project? Or maybe a one for a really boring, life-sucking corporate client. It might be hard, but rock the shit out of it. Find something about the project you can latch onto to keep your motivation up.

I can't say I'm always successful at treating every project like my first, but I try to.

When I fail, I at least make sure I have a side project to keep me energized (What do you think this site is?).