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