Every designer knows this thought:

_"Everything made around me has a form and a function. So everything had to be shaped by a designer. But who are they? Where are they? And why—if they really were designers—why were they so careless?"_

Seeing the rise and fall of the interaction design industry I am beginning to doubt if everything really is designed in the proper sense of design, as a discipline that gives shape in the tension between thinking and acting. Things are simply carelessly produced.

I would say: every designer who really cares knows this thought.

Logging My Intentional Actions

I log quite a lot of things I do online using Things 3 Logbook feature to use this in my weekly creative summaries. I log what I do intentionally, of course, otherwise this would be way too noisy. One example is watching this video about Siegfried Hansen, a respected street photographer1. Reading an article in Omnivore is another intentional action that I want to log.

The process is simple: I have many pending tasks in Things 3, in a project called “To Read, Watch, Listen & Process.” I do select a task, do it, then mark it as completed. It then goes into Things 3 Logbook. It’s cool.23

  1. If you are interested in street photographer, it’s a great interview with lots of great photos. ↩︎

  2. I wonder if there is a name for people who log the things they do on a daily basis. ↩︎

  3. I’m not sure why I do log these actions. ↩︎

I just finished a quick Facebook session to see what’s new for my Mac Pro that I put for sale on the marketplace. I switched to my late father’s Facebook account to see if something needed attention. Nothing. Depressing. What the fuck is Facebook now?

@Denny wrote:

I don’t view myself as a “content creator” and recoil at that phrase. I keep a blog as a way to stay involved in the world. Simply put, my motivation is to write, share, read, engage, learn. My contribution is a drop in the ocean and irrelevant to me beyond it being my tiny contribution to the collective whole.

This thought really resonated with me. So much that I’m considering to replace “compulsive creator” to “compulsive contributor” in my bio. It is so much more meaningful and positive.

Since March 13, 20201, I mostly work from home, coming to the office only once a week2. One negative side effect of this important change of habit is that I don’t go out often, so photo opportunities are close to none. I don’t know how to compensate for this. 😔

  1. Remember COVID-19? ↩︎

  2. I do skip one in a while. ↩︎

I’ve been setting up a group of to-do lists in Apple Reminders for managing our home improvement project. Each list is shared with my wife which means that each task can be assigned to one of us. I really like my experience so far.

Today, 2024-03-24, it’s Sunday, and it’s time for the latest edition of my weekly creative summary, edition 2024-11, available right here. Available later today by email to my dear subscribers! Enjoy.