Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process

In any complex effort, communicating a well-articulated vision for what you’re trying to do is the starting point for figuring out how to do it. And though coming up with such a vision is difficult, it’s unquestionably more difficult to complete the entire circuit, to come up with an idea, a plan to realize the idea, and then actualize the plan at

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To find a good relationship, you do not start by saying, “I want a relationship that looks like this”—that would be starting in the wrong end, by defining form. Instead you say, “I’m just going to pay attention to what happens when I hang out with various people and iterate toward something that feels alive”—you start from the context.

I wish when I was at my previous startups I had focused more on building and less on winning. Sure, I may not have done exactly what I had thought I wanted, but finding ways to love the process would’ve allowed for better outcomes anyway. What we want is such an abstract idea, built on a foundation of shifting sand, that it is pointless to try to p... See more

Wildenhaus’s description has stayed with me because it reflects how the best software products aren’t just assemblages of functionality ,exposed by particular formal elements (links, buttons, icons, menus). Rather, they organize and shape how you think, and they create or sustain a particular lifestyle: