📱 Distractions

Took a two-week hiatus but I’m back at it. Sometimes I get caught up in my own personal projects as well as family time.

I spent a lot of the past two weeks wasting time and that’s ok. Nothing in nature blooms all year long. We often forget that there is bliss in solitude, rest, and in relaxing.

With that being said I’ve had a few thoughts. Technology is getting more and more addicting. I see myself picking up my phone the same way a smoker reaches for a cigarette. I’ll talk through some of the learnings from this below.

I ask myself “why do I feel so anxious all the time” as I stare at this small screen in my hand 24/7 telling me all about the war, inflation, and all the bad news in my local area.

✍️ Quote of the week:

Time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted.

🎶 Song of the week:

Cómo Le Haré - by Emilio Navairna

Haven't heard this song in about 15 years. My grandma would always play it. It randomly came on my Spotify playlist and reminded me of her. It's always so interesting how a song can bring you back to a certain moment in time.

🧠 Top 3 learnings:

🏃‍♂️ Desk treadmill: I recently bought a desk treadmill and it’s been good so far. It is loud but people on my Zoom calls say they can’t hear it. I can design with it although sometimes I have to slow down or stop to get the last pixel perfect. Link is in the title.

🇺🇸 Work cultures: I was speaking with an Australian who took a trip here to Texas. He was telling me how Australians love to hire Americans because they work so hard. That they find Americans need to grind a little exploitative. It makes sense when you come from a country that has 20 days of guaranteed paid time off on top of 7 paid holidays. I’m not saying America has its faults or that Australia is better. Just interesting how other cultures around the world see the U.S. Travelling does really broaden the mind.

📱 Distractions: It’s become clear that devices take a lot of productive time away from our day. I’ve started to do some morning and afternoon phone detox. In the mornings I go on a walk and leave my phone at home. This walk usually lasts 30 minutes but it gives me the ability to think.

At first, my mind wanders and it goes all over the place, but then I get fixated on one idea. That idea tends to be where I spend most of my time thinking. From there I can either turn that idea into a goal or table it for later. But it makes me find clarity for that day.

🖍 Designer thoughts:

I’m upping my design chops with animations and been a lot of fun. I’ve been using a tool called Jitter to make some animations. It’s a lot easier to use than After Effects and has a big library of templates you can already run with. Animations on a webpage or app raises engagement stats and lowers bounce rates. So let’s find new ways to make the web less static. You can export these as videos, gifs, or lottie animations which is less load on a media server.

👴 Dad thoughts

You don’t have to be doing something with your kids all the time. Sometimes I see myself as a lazy parent when my kid watches TV, or when she’s playing with her dolls and I’m on my phone. I think to myself “we should go to the park”, or “we should bake cookies” but there’s nothing wrong with doing nothing. We don’t really give ourselves time to be bored nowadays which is really sad. That’s where the best ideas come from. We have a culture that’s so fixated on “doing” that it's somewhat frowned upon when we sit back and relax. So let's find some solitude in just being.

Happy Friday the 13th!

📬 PS: Please do reply to this email if you have anything to add / any questions. I quite enjoy replying to comments/emails as a source of procrastination from revision.

📬 PPS: Please hit the <reply> button and let me know what you thought of this email if you have a spare few seconds. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what was useful about it and what could be changed. Thanks <3