stephango-com-tiumoc.txt (6258B)
1 [1]Steph Ango / [2]Writing [3]About [4]Now 2 3 Style is consistent constraint 4 5 September 3, 2023 · 2 minute read 6 7 Oscar Wilde once said: 8 9 “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” 10 11 When it comes to ideas, I agree — allow your mind to be changed. When it comes 12 to process, I disagree. Style emerges from consistency, and having a style 13 opens your imagination. Your mind should be flexible, but your process should 14 be repeatable. 15 16 Style is a set of constraints that you stick to. 17 18 You can explore many types of constraints: colors, shapes, materials, textures, 19 fonts, language, clothing, decor, beliefs, flavors, sounds, scents, rituals. 20 Your style doesn’t have to please anyone else. Play by your own rules. 21 Everything you do is open to stylistic interpretation. 22 23 A style can be a system, a pattern, a set of personal guidelines. Here are a 24 few of mine: 25 26 • I wear monochromatic clothing without logos 27 • I use YYYY-MM-DD dates everywhere 28 • I pluralize tag and folder names (e.g. #people not #person) 29 • I use [5]plain text files for all my writing 30 • I ask myself [6]40 questions every year 31 • I meal prep lunches every week, shave my head twice a week 32 • I write [7]concise essays, less than 500 words 33 34 Collect constraints you enjoy. Unusual constraints make things more fun. You 35 can always change them later. This is your style, after all. It’s not a life 36 commitment, it’s just the way you do things. For now. 37 38 Having a style collapses hundreds of future decisions into one, and gives you 39 focus. I always pluralize tags so I never have to wonder what to name new tags. 40 41 Style gives you leverage. Every time you reuse your style you save time. A 42 durable style is a great investment. 43 44 Style helps you know when you’re breaking your constraints. Sometimes you have 45 to. And if you want to edit your constraints, you can. It will be easier to 46 adopt the new constraints if you already had some clearly defined. 47 48 You don’t need a style for everything. Make a deliberate choice about what 49 needs consistency and what doesn’t. 50 51 If you stick with your constraints long enough, your style becomes a cohesive 52 and recognizable [8]point of view. 53 54 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 55 56 Appendix 57 58 I am starting a collection of interesting personal style choices. Please [9] 59 send me examples and I’ll add them to the list. 60 61 • [10]Scott Yu-Jan [11]paints all his tools white. 62 • [12]2ynthetic uses a [13]limited palette for outfits and [14]office decor. 63 • [15]Johnny Decimal is a system to organize digital data. 64 • [16]Casey Neistat labels everything [17]in his studio with paint markers. 65 • Ryan Hoover [18]never changes his profile picture. 66 • Wes Anderson uses [19]the typeface Futura in many of his films. 67 • [20]Steve Jobs wore the same Issey Miyake black turtleneck and New Balance 68 991 shoes every day. 69 • George R.R. Martin writes his novels on the 40 year old DOS operating 70 system 71 • Beethoven always counted exactly 60 coffee beans to make coffee, especially 72 for visitors. 73 • Jesper Kouthoofd of [21]Teenage Engineering [22]only uses lowercase because 74 uppercase communicates too much authority 75 • Osvaldo Cavandoli created the cartoon [23]La Linea using an animated white 76 line, colored backgrounds, and unintelligible vocalizations 77 78 Linked mentions 79 [24] 80 Don't specialize, hybridize 81 Specialization is too heavily encouraged as a career path. The world needs more 82 hybrid people. 83 [25] 84 Buy wisely 85 Whenever I buy things I try to prioritize cost per use. Sometimes I consider 86 other priorities such as cost per smile, cost... 87 [26] 88 Obsidian Vault Template 89 My personal Obsidian vault template. A bottom-up approach to note-taking and 90 organizing things I am interested in. 91 [27] 92 Flexoki 93 An inky color scheme for prose and code. 94 95 You might also enjoy 96 97 • [28]Buy wisely 98 • [29]Concise explanations accelerate progress 99 • [30]Scars are beautiful 100 • [31]Choose optimism 101 • [32]Quality software deserves your hard‑earned cash 102 • [33]Don't delegate understanding 103 • [34]Nibble and your appetite will grow 104 • [35]How I do my to-dos 105 • [36]Calmness is a superpower 106 107 [37]Receive my updates 108 109 Follow me via email, [38]RSS, [39]Twitter, and [40]other options 110 111 [41][ ] [44][Sign up] 112 [45] [46]Mastodon 113 114 References: 115 116 [1] https://stephango.com/ 117 [2] https://stephango.com/ 118 [3] https://stephango.com/about 119 [4] https://stephango.com/now 120 [5] https://stephango.com/file-over-app 121 [6] https://stephango.com/40-questions 122 [7] https://stephango.com/concise 123 [8] https://stephango.com/in-good-hands 124 [9] https://stephango.com/about 125 [10] https://www.youtube.com/@ScottYuJan 126 [11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GBPYRG9jM0 127 [12] https://www.youtube.com/@2ynthetic 128 [13] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xMo2PsLi3c 129 [14] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RqBrl0-qOA 130 [15] https://johnnydecimal.com/ 131 [16] https://www.youtube.com/@casey 132 [17] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb60rrtTddQ 133 [18] https://www.ryanhoover.me/post/why-i-never-change-my-profile-pic 134 [19] https://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/RoyalTenenbaumsWorldofFutura 135 [20] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs 136 [21] https://teenage.engineering/ 137 [22] https://scandinavianmind.com/feature/human-touch-interview-jesper-kouthoofd-teenage-engineering 138 [23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Linea_(TV_series) 139 [24] https://stephango.com/hybridize 140 [25] https://stephango.com/buy-wisely 141 [26] https://stephango.com/vault 142 [27] https://stephango.com/flexoki 143 [28] https://stephango.com/buy-wisely 144 [29] https://stephango.com/concise 145 [30] https://stephango.com/scars 146 [31] https://stephango.com/optimism 147 [32] https://stephango.com/quality-software 148 [33] https://stephango.com/understand 149 [34] https://stephango.com/nibble 150 [35] https://stephango.com/todos 151 [36] https://stephango.com/calmness 152 [37] https://stephango.com/subscribe 153 [38] https://stephango.com/feed.xml 154 [39] https://twitter.com/kepano 155 [40] https://stephango.com/subscribe 156 [45] https://twitter.com/kepano 157 [46] https://mastodon.social/@kepano