Life’s unquiet dreams

Simplicity is often quoted as the key factor of an elegant product (eg. Apple product “just works”). To achieve simplicity, one must subtract non-essential things from the product. The same goes to communication artifacts (emails, messages, articles etc.) Whenever I read Axios articles (vs. NYT ones), I’m very imporesed by their balancing brevity and insightfulness.…

Home. It’s both a place and an idea. A place to come back to after a long day at work or a fun travel. It’s also an idea that symbolizes returning to one’s true self or the place one truly belongs and be comfortable at. Today I had a conversation with a co-worker about our…

I tried asking ChatGPT to generate an essay for certain topics that I was intereted in. Sure enough, the result was amazing. In no time, it spun out an impeccable, crystal clear essay with clear outline, highlights and takeaways. All with no grammar errors or misspellings (the issues I suffer being a non-native English speaker,…

I’m a sucker for the idea of consistency and persistence. Also a big fan of glorified training montage from movies or training highlight reels of famous athletes. The problem is, however, that fantasizing those glorious pursuit of greatness one day at a time is one thing but trodding along that painful path by myself is…

Starting today, I’m experimenting with this new sleep schedule. I go to bed at around 10pm and wake up at 5am. I decided to do this because I wanted to join the US Masters Swimming Club. The one closest to my place meet at 5:30am for the classes so if I want to join I…

I stumbled upon a YouTube video that led to the MovieClips YouTube channel’s highlights clips of this movie. And I was like… what did I just see? It’s definitely a hidden gem from the 80s that has all the elements of cult classic. I really liked the general vibe of the 80s movies (the grainy…

Every morning when I wake up, one of the first things I do is to open my Gmail inbox to check emails. I’m greeted by about 20+ marketing emails every morning. Many of them I unsubscribed already, but the ones I haven’t, I didn’t unsubscribe because they’re still the brands and services that I care…

I was looking for things to write about as I try to break this long hiatus of my daily writing sprint today. Then I saw this memo that I jotted down and I forgot about — When do you fall asleep? When it’s time. This led me to think about the idea of “In due…

I’ve been using Apple Watch since 2018 and been a fan. Its timer feature has been a lifesaver for me (Pomodoro technique, Gongfu tea timer) and I’ve been diligently logging my workout sessions with its workout app. Also the notification feature lets me take a peek at messages without triggering the Read receipt (it’s kind…

Jan Tschichold, a renowned and respected German designer, said that out of all the important design principles, contrast would be the most important one. Reading about this was the very first time I learned about the importance of contrast in design. Going beyond design, I see contrast playing an important role in the construction and…