Isaac Strack
Design Technologist and all-around mediocre soccer player.
GOOD EXAMPLES
TERRIBLE WARNINGS
@istrack
Isaac Strack
PRINCIPLES
Primus - first
fundamental
foundation
beginning
origin
base
FIRST PRINCIPLES
(first firsts)
DON'T SPEED
EXAMPLE
PRINCIPLES == BUILDING BLOCKS
TELL THE TRUTH
(or at least don't lie)
Our whole life is solving puzzles.
If you are curious, you'll find the puzzles around you. If you are determined, you will solve them.
- ERNO RUBIK
YOU ARE WRONG
A LOT
IT'S NOT A EUREKA MOMENT
IT'S A SLOW HUNCH
-STEVEN JOHNSON (HOW WE GOT TO NOW)
URQUHART CASTLE
STUMBLE FORWARD
PRINCIPLES == VALUES
CHAMBERLEN FORCEPS
SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCED MORTALITY RATES
INVENTED: LATE 1500s
KEPT AS A TRADE SECRET
FOR 150 YEARS
If you don't think that your career will be important or world-changing...
you're right.
HAVE A PURPOSE
(do something important)
Johannes Gutenberg (1454)
Aaron Lufkin Dennison (1861)
PRINCIPLE == CAUSE
The activist lifestyle is not just for social activism. As a technologist, you can recognize a wrong in the world. You can have a vision for what a better world could be, and you can dedicate yourself to fighting for a principle.
- Bret Victor
When I see ideas dying, it hurts.
To me it feels like a moral wrong. An injustice.
Most of us wouldn't witness a civil rights violation and say "oh good! An opportunity!"
It's not an opportunity--it's a responsibility.
God suffers in the multitude of souls whom His word can not reach.
Religious truth is imprisoned in a small number of manuscript books which confine instead of spread the public treasure.
Let us break the seal which seals up holy things and give wings to Truth in order that she may win every soul that comes into the world by her word no longer written at great expense by hands easily palsied, but multiplied like the wind by an untiring machine.
- JOHANNES GUTENBERG
[Dennison] created the first production line for mass-produced watches. Cost of the watch? $13.00.
Hundreds of thousands of these were sold during the Civil War. Common soldiers and farmers could now afford their own pocket watch. For the first time in history, precise time-keeping wasn’t just for aristocrats and the well-to-do.
Until Dennison, a mass-produced pocket watch was never even a consideration–too many tiny parts were required, too much precision craftsmanship was necessary. Yet, he kept asking questions, tinkering, learning and asking more questions until he had created something never thought possible.
My ambition is to employ still more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and their homes. To do this we are putting the greatest share of our profits back in the business.
- HENRY FORD
You can really learn a lot that way.
It will change you in the middle of the day...
A MOMENT OF CLARITY
- NEIL YOUNG
...After some deep soul searching, we realized that Pluralsight exists to democratize professional technology training for people around the world.
The premise of “democratizing” something is to make it available to all people. Technology education, however, has long been reserved for only a few. We aim to change that, not only in the U.S. but everywhere. We want anyone, at any life stage, to be able to take control of their learning and pursue technology as a passion and a career.
- AARON SKONNARD, CEO
This is what gets me most excited every day. We are improving lives by giving them access to opportunity. The world is inherently unfair. Although brilliance may be evenly distributed, opportunity is not.
We are changing that.
- AARON SKONNARD
PRIORITY
MAKE ONE THING GREAT
PURITY OF HEART IS TO WILL ONE THING
PURITY OF FLOW IS TO DO ONE THING
HAPPY / NOT HAPPY
DON'T HAVE SEX FOR MONEY
Hugh Macleod
Ignore Everybody (2009)
FULFILLMENT DOESN'T COME WITH A CUBICLE
PLAYING VIDEO GAMES
STOP
TRADE
SOMEONE KIND
BE
MARRY
HAVE SEX
A LOT
TRAVEL
READ
A LOT
THINK
DEEPLY
THE ADJACENT POSSIBLE
SAY NO
A LOT
NO SLEEP IS NOT
A BADGE OF HONOR
MAKE YOUR SCHEDULE
(and h*cking keep it)
KNOW WHAT YOU ARE
(You are cattle)
BE OKAY WITH THAT
PLAY THE GAME
IN-BETWEEN TIME BELONGS TO YOU
YOU'RE NEVER READY
WOMEN
EMPOWER
INCLUDE
WOKE
IS THE NEW CROSSFIT
DO IT
IS HE WRONG?
(or not profound?)
- Soren Kierkegaard
Do it or do not do it -
you will regret both.
To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.
DON'T WAIT FOR PERMISSION
People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
- THE CULT OF DONE MANIFESTO
The best way to complain is to make things.
- JAMES MURPHY
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the principles...
But trust me on the sunscreen...
bit.ly/strack-terrible
Good Examples Terrible Warnings
By Isaac Strack
