I spotted this in a restaurant here in Chicago. Most people might not recognize it. But the million people that ride it each day would.

It’s a drawing of Chicago’s elevated train. Our “L”.

I love that an artist was able to elicit these feelings and pride about Chicago and its train from taking something as complicated looking as its map, and recasting it with just a handful of imperfect lines.

It’s also an interesting reminder to me that I don’t always have to create pixel perfect train maps when creating things. It’s easy to get bogged down in designing something that’s perfectly laid out, and must contain so many bits of information because EVERYTHING I have to get into this project is so damn important. But sometimes the job you’re trying to do doesn’t really warrant the layers of complexity you’ve convinced yourself you needed of the finished product.

Sometimes a...

A quote often attributed to Ernest Hemingway.

If you take the quote too literally, you’ll miss the power of what he was trying to teach.

Hemingway realized that we aren’t always the same person. We have at least two sides to us when it comes to creating something. Sometimes our brains see endless possibilities, where we feel we can create anything our minds conjure when hearing that whisper from our muse. And the muses are everywhere we look.

Other times, our brains are great at tearing down all the bullshit, and finding the kernels of what’s efficient. What’s practical. What’s actually good. And usually that brain doesn’t like what it sees of my other self’s work.

When I create, I try to take Hemingway’s advice.

To begin a new blog post, or even a new software feature, I’ll start when I feel I have a thread of something with tons of possibility. I start from a book I read that...

(Comic from xkcd)

There’s a lot I don’t agree with on the internet. I’ve got opinions coming out of my ears.

There’s this comment I saw on Hacker News that I vehemently want to rebut. There’s this company that pissed me off recently online. There’s a few people that were pretty rude on a bus ride in Chicago last month.

I could write some flaming pile of words about how someone has done something terribly wrong on the internet, and I could share an opinion where we could all get really enraged as we go to work.

But then I looked at my website analytics recently and saw this:

This reminds me of something very important that I think goes missed by a lot of folks trying to get more traffic to their blog or project.

Celebrate others.

There’s all sorts of negative stuff I have an urge to write.

But seeing the above screenshot reminds me of something I’m super proud of. I often...

Entrepreneurs often hear, “Your startup idea is stupid. The market is saturated. Move on.”

Of course it’s tough to work on products when you have oodles and oodles of people trying to compete. It looks daunting. If you fail, it’s easy for people to armchair quarterback the experience and point out that you went the wrong way, the market was just too saturated.

So what really excites me are the companies that figure out how to show everyone around them that while, yes, it is a crowded market, you’ve been looking at everything all wrong.

There’s a much better way.

Often cited examples you’ll find in a lot of books on innovation are Cirque du Solei, Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods. And of course Apple. Where they defy the fact that computers are coming out of our ears. The mp3 player market was totally saturated. The cell phone market was completely owned by Nokia and Blackberry...

21 years ago I couldn’t do a single pull-up.

Shit, 3 years ago I still couldn’t.

But the experience 21 years ago was awful. I was a freshman in high school and we had to do a “fitness test”. This involved all sorts of ick. The worst was the fat test. All of us had to stand around a pool in our school issued speedos and get pinched with those body fat calipers. Why would kids get subjected to this?

We also had to see how many pull-ups we could do. I could do zero. I wasn’t alone. Still, I’m not entirely sure what lesson I was being taught by making a 13 year old try to do a single pull-up and failing in front of a bunch of people.

I tell that story because it really etched into my brain my complete inability to do a pull-up.

Even after that experience and years of playing sports and exercising, I still reached my 30s and I still couldn’t do a friggin pull-up.

But something...

Many businesses create innovation by simply moving time.

They take time that’s usually spent doing things or waiting, and shift that time to other places in the process or to other people. The result usually at worst still feels original and novel to customers, but more often is a much more efficient and productive process. Here’s a few examples.

Keurig makes those single cup coffee machines. I’ve always been intrigued and now I finally use one at the office. They took the time I used to spend preparing a new filter basket with grounds, collecting water for my pot of coffee and heating the water, and just moved the time.

Now someone else at a factory has to prepare the coffee in a little single serve cup. And now instead of sitting there waiting for the water to heat in my coffee maker just before I want the coffee, the water in most Keurig machines is pre-heated many minutes...

Recently a company launched a product named Grid that comes from some pretty original thinking of how a spreadsheet can look and function.

Immediately there was a discussion about “Can this product really call itself a spreadsheet? It doesn’t do calculations,” which was pointed a little critically at Grid.

Paul Graham, one of the investors behind Grid said:

The reason I interpreted your question as a snarky one is that it seemed such a pointless one otherwise– like asking, say, whether a boat can be called a boat at a stage so early in its construction that it wouldn’t float.

Actually, I like that question a lot.

Can a boat still be a boat if it doesn’t float?

But not for the purpose it tried to serve in the above discussion. For the reason that it helps us break down the prejudices and stereotypes we have of the products we use every day.

It’s an incredibly enlightening...

Ernest Wilkins wrote a terrific piece last week in Chicago’s RedEye on a “cheat sheet to being a man”.

The advice is useful for anyone struggling to think about balance.

But what really stands out is his simple heuristic on creativity:

Create something, whether it be a screenplay or a deck. Build something with your hands or your keyboard. Take pride in losing yourself in something you love doing. Share it with people, even if it sucks. Stay on it until it doesn’t anymore.

Ernest Wilkins, RedEye

I’ve created a number of projects over the years. Some I’ve stuck with and some I haven’t. The few I regret are the ones I never stuck with long enough to get into a non-suck form.

I know a lot of people who struggle with choosing which idea to commit to. Or when’s the right time to abandon ship and move onto another idea.

Just pick one. Any of them. And make something out of it. Move...

A new Mars rover, aptly named Curiosity, landed today. I saw this quote at CNN.com from Steve Squyres, a member of the Mars Science Laboratory science team, in part of an article mentioning if the rover would be looking for evidence of anything in particular.

Let’s go to an interesting place with good tools and find out what’s there.

Steve Squyres

Often it’s easy to get caught up in a singular mission. Have a goal, and it’s that goal or bust. But the enormity of that goal can easily create a blindness to all the fun and opportunities that lie before me. I can forget to take some time to just explore and appreciate the things that appear in the middle of a problem space.

Steve shares a nice reminder I don’t always have to have a goal.

It’s ok to grab a favorite tool: a journal and pen, a pick and guitar, a laptop and favorite code editor, and just start making something. Anything.

If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it. The more things you do, the more you can do.

Lucille Ball

Lucille’s quote summarizes a ton about being busy.

Most people are scared to be busy.

When they’re asked if they took on that new project or hobby they keep talking about, they’ll usually reply that they’re just “too busy”.

They’re constantly fighting some battle to actually accomplish less.

But often these same folks lookup to others who seem to be doing and accomplishing so many more things in the same 24 hours a day they have.

How is it that successful people are doing so many things well and they’re busier than everyone else?

In high school, I noticed a strange correlation. It seemed that as I added more things to my plate to do, I actually got better at doing the individual things. When I had less to do, I performed worse.

In a single week I could be...