October 2009 Entries

Your life needs more whitespace

In the process of adding more whitespace to my life, I have been pruning my feeds and cutting back the time I spend reading them. This is why I am late to the game of reading Derek Featherstone's recent posts that hit very close to home.

Boxes must go. You know how you want to draw attention to something in a design? You draw a box around it. Then, you want to draw attention to something else and you draw a box around it too. Pretty soon everything has a box around it. And when everything has a box around it, nothing does. Don’t draw attention to or separate various aspects of your life with boxes. Separate them with whitespace. Derek Featherstone

He goes on to say:

Like the elements of a great design the elements of your life don’t need a visual treatment. They just need some room to stand on their own. The elements of your life need more whitespace. Derek Featherstone

This was a response to a previous post he wrote, entitled What Gives?. Both are excellent reads.

Seth Godin: Dunbar's number

Some people online are trying to flaunt Dunbar's number, to become connected and actual friends with tens of thousands of people at once. And guess what? It doesn't scale. You might be able to stretch to 200 or 400, but no, you can't effectively engage at a tribal level with a thousand people. Seth Godin

This has always fascinated me with the different social networks. People rush for the numbers. They rush to find as many friends as they can. In the end, they ultimately can't focus on this. Is it simply a desire to be popular online? Does it really enhance a brand to have more friends or followers than the next guy?

What is the quality of the relationships you are creating?