Life: the good, the bad, the ugly

In the end all that matters is: How much joy did you have during your time here on earth? Optimize towards that.

It turns out my really big problem was thinking I might one day get rid of all my problems, when the truth is that there's no escaping the mucky, malodorous compost-heap of this reality. Which is OK, actually. Compost is the stuff that helps things grow.

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books (Dostoevsky and Dickens) that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves c... See more

Life is an endless string of problems that compound into meaning when solved and suffering when ignored.

The concept of efficiency — how much one can accomplish per unit of time (or per dollar, etc.) — requires a quantitative numerator as well as a denominator. It requires a metric. Therefore, it tells us nothing about results we cannot quantify or measure. When we gear our society around efficiency, we produce more and more of the measurable, while t... See more

We are all Frankenstein monsters—patchwork quilts of past experiences—trying to pass ourselves off as whole and cohesive things.

Where am I going with design? That's a hard question because none of us has the ability to understand our path until it's over.