Day 6: Chillin with design

Todos for today

Carried over from yesterday. I decided to just focus on Young Makers because I need to get that mojo back. Mood has been feeling low after that bout of diarrhoea 2 - 3 days ago.



Random Designs

Dropped this in today for Read What, a project that has been archived almost 5 years ago? Very Reading Supply-esque for a few good reasons:



1. Start without distractions and focus on function – you can hardly go wrong when you focus on helping users get to where they want to fast and well. For example, QQ Music.

   
   

2. Work with constraints to force myself to be more creative. By keeping to just black and white and any shades in between, I focus more on the information hierarchy and how I access that information.

   
   

3. To be able to step back and observe. I've also been reading The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero, as recommended by Jim. I took inspiration from these lines:

   
   

   There is a second part where the artist steps back from the easel to gain a new perspective on the work. Painting is equal parts near and far: when near, the artist works to make his mark; wen far, he assesses he work in order to analyze its qualities. he steps back to let the work speak to him.

   
   

   I want to be able to step back like that and observe how my designs behave in reality. I don't care so much for the extras like shadows, colors and gradients. They are secondary.



Introspection



Upon stepping back from the easel and looking from afar, I noticed that it's not achieving my intended effect. I want it to explain to users why the books fit the purpose and mood. Where's my reviews?!? Where's the meta-analysis (if any at all)??!?



Progress Report

Ok, back to Young Makers.



1. Do interview page

2. Link all the data models together

3. Add an admin namespace to allow me to manage interviews

   Decided not to do this because I can just whitelist /edit for admin role 😉

4. Add markdown for interviews

5. Add form to allow me to add business + maker within the interview page?

6. Add slug for interview page

7. Add the simplest way to upload images for the post

8. Add a status for the interview (draft, published, hidden)

9. Add a paid tier for the interview (paid, unpaid, paid+exclusive)

10. Fix markdown styling for interview pages with rails + tailwindcss (i'm rusty with scss but i grokked it)

11. Add Businesses scaffold

12. Add Businesses slug







Interesting Notes



I might actually be more productive after 11pm? It's 3.38AM now and I crushed most of the tasks in the todo list.



One of the things that helped is reframing my mindset to something like:



It's ok for this to not be perfect. Let's get this finished and we can create another task as an improvement. If I focus on trying to finish this, I will do my best to learn whatever I need to get it done. And if it's too difficult, I will know to pare it down so it's achievable.



Instead of trying to learn how to use stimulus or react in my application right now, I decided to start with a simple form. This is because trying to add stimulus/react now would mean the task of adding that 1 feature would become really complex.



By deferring the complexity, I know how to manage my time better – learning how to add stimulus/react is now a separate task which I can plan for.



Planning for shipping and planning for learning are 2 different tasks. The earlier I master this, the better I can master my time. Mastering my time better includes planning my tasks better, and being mindful about completing it within a reasonable duration. This will eventually translate into being more mindful about how I can learn faster.



Bit by bit, I'll become better at my craft while shipping stuff on time. 💪💪