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I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.
- Jamie Oliver 2010 TED
Volvo Chasing
A quote from A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller:
If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d fee robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.
But we spend years actually living those stories, and expect our lives to feel meaningful. The truth is, if what we choose to do with our lives won’t make a story meaningful, it won’t make a life meaningful either.
The question I want to ask myself is, is there some sort of Volvo I’m chasing? Maybe the Volvo is a metaphor that represents any meaningless objects that we feed we need so badly in our lives. If that’s the case, then am I wasting aways years of my life chasing after meaningless things and objects?
Rather than chasing after my own objects of Volvo, and living boring and shallow lives. How can I actually live a life that’s meaningful? A life that’s worthy to be told repeatedly as a story?
That’s it right there. How do I lead a life that’s worthy to be told repeatedly as a story? Maybe the first thing I should ask myself when I wake up is: “How can I create meaning today?”
10 Usability Heuristics
- Rehashing the 10 heuristics guidelines for whatever that “something” that you’ll be building for other to use.
- Visibility of system status
- The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
- Match between system and the real world
- The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
- User control and freedom
- Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
- Consistency and standards
- Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
- Error prevention
- Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
- Recognition rather than recall
- Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
- Flexibility and efficiency of use
- Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
- Aesthetic and minimalist design
- Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
- Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
- Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
- Help and documentation
- Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
Purge to free yourself
“More and more I heard the words: ‘Stop what you are doing now – all this luxury and consumerism – and start your real life’,” he said. “I had the feeling I was working as a slave for things that I did not wish for or need.
"A vessel is useful only through its emptiness. It is the space opened in a wall that serves as a window. Thus it is the nonexistent in things which makes them serviceable."
Lao Tse
Best line of the video came at the end, when he said: “One of the biggest risk is being too cautious.” Well said by the Professor of Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University.
Four Questions about Your Job
As I’m reading 10-10-10 by Suzy Welch (yes, Welch, the wife of Jack Welch, someone you might’ve heard of), she offers four questions to ask about your job. It’s her way to steer you towards making meaningful career choices:
- Does my job allow me to work with “my people” — those who share my sensibilities about life — or do I have to zone out, fake it, or put on a persona to get through the day?
- Does my job make me smarter by stretching my mind, building my skills, and taking me out of my comfort zone?
- Does my job open doors for me?
- Does my job give me meaning?
And of course, everybody’s answers are different and the important of their answers to each question might vary. But I thought those were a great set of questions to help you think and make sense of your current and future jobs.
And another random point. Some say couples often look alike each other, but they’re attracted by the similarities. I might be crazy but I do see some similarities between the facial structures of Jack and Suzy.
Astoria Scum River Bridge
Amazingly, I walk to the subway every morning without noticing that someone installed this. The bridge itself is hilarious. And I do remember seeing the frozen “river” on the sidewalk about 3 weeks ago on an extra cold day.
