Goal Setting

With significantly more time on my hands than I would like, I have to focus.  I start graduate school in a month, which is exciting and alarming.  I have so much to accomplish before then and get myself ready to dive in completely.

It has been proven that a majority of people do not set goals and those who do seldom review them.  The people who do regularly set goals and review them tend to be the most successful.  I think Teux Deux helps me keep track of my goals most.  I have huge goals and dreams and most of the time I don't have to means to accomplish them easily. 

What I have to do is make sure that I am always moving in the right direction.  This reminds me of Neil Gaiman's commencement talk where he talks about the mountain.

"Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be (...) was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal.

And I knew that as long as I kept walking towards the mountain I would be all right. And when I truly was not sure what to do, I could stop, and think about whether it was taking me towards or away from the mountain." -Neil Gaiman

As I go into the next stage of my life of adulthood and graduate school with all the joys and terrors it brings I cannot waste time.  Life and opportunities are precious.  I will set goals and review them as often as I can so that I may do it all!

A Little Late, But Very Inspired

Hokay, so.

These past few days I've spent creating and crafting.  It's been miraculous.  I've been experiencing a plethora of inspiring events nonstop for a few days.  So I apologize for the delay in posting. Time to catch up.

So, firstly, this was advice from a dear friend about my dancing.  It applies to basically everything though.  Also, it has been noted by numerous sources I'm happier when I do things I love.  I'm also happier when I create something or anything.  This brings me to the second. 

I've created 10-15 pieces of art since Thursday.  Some are crap, some are okay.  I don't care.  It felt remarkable to create something.  Between the 700+ photos I took this week, 4 hours of video to edit, a project mostly finished, a new portfolio and all the art, I feel practically tingly with inspiration.  It's bad for my bank account in terms of paper and canvases and my vanishing amount of wall space.  However, once again I don't care.

Lastly, a design thought.  I think the one size fits all mindset is excessively dated.  I got this idea from reading about education reform.  I've heard related concepts about place based solutions.  Very few if any solutions are universal.  So stop it.  Besides, one size fits all didn't even work in clothing,why would it work elsewhere? 

Post Script:  It's good I didn't delay any longer otherwise I would have run out or arm room.

Yoda, Definitions and Catching Up

Last night I liked the idea of the difference between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary.  They are not the same.  Often times people use trans-disciplinary, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary as the same thing.  This makes me peevish.  Having people in multiple disciplines is different from people working together across disciplines, which is slightly different from working between disciplines.  I think design thinkers flourish when they understand the difference and how to work within each group. 

 Today I picked the quote from Ray Bradbury, "You can't try to do things.  You simply must do things."  It is a little yoda-ish.  Still, my productivity soars when I just do things.  I can do miraculous things when I just throw myself into them.  Piffle is what comes from trying.  Or thinking about trying.  

Just doing things makes me feel impulsive and ridiculous, but I think I must embrace that.  The freedom it comes with requires that I move past fear and procrastination and my entire life should be lived that way. 

Career Path

Candy Chang did a project where she created stencils on the ground saying what I wrote on my hand to remind students of the bigger picture.  For me I wanted to be a banana as a kid.  Then a lion tamer.  Followed by learning every language on the planet to help people.

Today I want to change the world through good design.  I want to be a design thinker.

Creative Antithesis

I have issues with anger.  I have for years.  Seth's blog this morning starts out with this.  I need to be consistently creative and insightful.  It's good to know my anger is the antithesis of my dreams and needs.

Plus people respond to me and my ideas better when I'm not seething with rage.  Plus rage leads to stubbornness.  Stubbornness never leads to anything good/creative.

Einstein on Design

Okay, so not only is that man brilliant in general, his observations on life were astounding.  My roommate told me about the fish one recently.  "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

 
But back to the point, while using Stumble today (my new favorite obsession although I am a few years too late) I was sent to a page of Einstein quotes.  To me, this quote, speaks well to the idea of ideal design.  We love making things more complex than they should be or dumb things down.  Dumbed down ideas in an overly complex product looks cool but is just a waste.  It's easier, like most wasteful things.   

Dieter Rams has what some people call the 10 commandments of good design.  The last one is "good design is as little design as possible."  Simplicity is hard, annoying hard.  It's hard in mathematical proofs, it's a pain in education and just as annoying in design.  Ideas and design should not be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, just expressed as simply as possible. 

K.I.S.S.  - Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Failure

I think too highly of myself when I think I'm not scared of failure.  Perhaps trying really hard to not fail is just procrastinating success. Still, every time I've failed, whatever I was working on was vastly greater than projects that came easily to me.

My teuxdeux (awesome website) today is to go fail gloriously at something.

This saying comes from IDEO.  I've been reading Change by Design, which is where I found this one.