I’m always curious about others’ learning processes, so I thought I’d share my own, stream-of-consciousness style. I should mention here that everyone has different amounts of free time and their own preferences as to how they’d like to spend it. There is no “right way” to learn new things, this is just what it looks like for me.
My contribution for August’s Palette Party, a little project where some internet friends and I make a something based on a particular color palette. I started messing around with collage for this one and it just ended up in this creepy science-fictiony place.
Subject-matter notes I updated this month: accessibility, animation/motion
Week of July 30
- I meet with the rest of the CSSWG for a face-to-face meeting in Paris. The group wraps up open issues on existing specs, discusses process, and presents a few new proposals, like additive CSS, a new approach to styling Shadow DOM components, and UA properties/variables.
- My first PR for web-platform-tests is merged in!
- Nice bits of internet: Nail polish bot, tiny care bot, Bon Appetit Healthyish
- Good reads: 4 ways to use functional animation in UI design, Monitoring Jank: How we found the slowest parts of our UI
Week of August 14
- It’s hard not to start off many of these logs with “this week feels so heavy”…Relevant read: So You Want To Fight White Supremacy. The work will never be done. But whatever we can do to relieve iniquity is worth doing.
- I finish reading Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan. One thought that particularly struck a chord during the section on soliciting feedback from trusted sources: “When you get constructive criticism, recognize that that person thinks it’s important enough to share despite the discomfort in delivering it.” I know this to be true when giving feedback, so it’s important to remember while receiving it.
- Good read: Things you could be doing instead of designing & building that card component for the umpteenth time
Week of August 21
- Loving the concept and art style of Breakup Squad
- Nice bits of internet: Meowza’s #DrawllowFriday project, funicular freak
Week of August 28
- I’m so struck by this quote from an interview with Brit Bennett: “Toni Morrison said that writers aren’t blocked, they’re just empty.”
- Nice bits of internet: The Stealing Project (via Primitive)
This is the week of reminders for truths that are occasionally challenging to internalize:
- The only thing you can’t improve upon is a blank page. Instead of continually deleting, restarting, rinse, repeat, just get something, anything down. It’ll save time in the long run, even if you end up scrapping most of it.
- This distinction Julie Zhuo mentions between a fixed and growth mindset. Buzzwords, but a worthy application:
I feel like I mention mindset pretty much every week, but I’ve found it to be completely transformative in my thinking. Really, go and read Mindset by Carol Dweck if you haven’t already. A fixed mindset presumes that what you are capable of today is how capable you really are, which means every time you get critical feedback, you read it as a judgement on your person. Hey, this thing you did isn’t great gets translated to I’m not great. A growth mindset presumes that no matter where you are now, you can improve. If you believe that, then whenever someone tells you, Hey, this thing you did isn’t great, you think, Okay, that feedback was useful and it’ll help me do better next time. With a growth mindset, you start to crave feedback from as many people as possible, even critical feedback, because you realize it’s the fastest way for you to learn and improve.