Paul Ford, aka @ftrain: Talent is What Annoys You [FirstMark's Design Driven]

WHAT IS TALENT?Paul Ford / [email protected] / @ftrain

WHAT IS TALENT?

Writing

Engineering

Design

Product Management

…other talents✦ The sciences

✦ Sculpture

✦ Photography

✦ Conceptual art

✦ Music, dance, theater

✦ Athletics

“Power or ability of mind or body viewed as something divinely entrusted to a person for use and improvement: considered either as one organic whole or as consisting of a number of distinct faculties”—OED

“10,000 hours”

But what will inspire you to spend that long on anything, ever?

Medium slides

So talent is…✦ God-given?

✦ Product of 10,000 hours?

✦ Human capital?

✦ The product of hard work?

✦ The product of genetics?

✦ The product of maternal narcissism?

A QUICK READING

WHAT IS FORM?

What is a form?

A well-understood set of constraints

Novels

Books

Short stories

Sitcoms

Movies

Keynote presentations

Apps

Web pages

Consumer software

Apple pies

The perfect pie

Appearance (10%)

Crust & Filling (40%)

Overall Flavor/Taste (50%)

“You can’t have art without resistance in the materials.”—William Morris

“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”—Martha Graham

“For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.”—Ira Glass

Talent is…

…the demonstrated ability of an individual, when they perceive errors

of form, to take specific actions to correct those errors.

Talent is what annoys you

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Writing

Bad paragraphs, lazy endings

Terrible plots, weak characters, loose ends

Inconsistent style

“I could do better”

Engineering

Runs slow

Poorly structured code with bad indentation, not modular

No tests

“Could be better”

Design

Lack of underlying system or grid

Lazy color choices

Bad type, feels “incomplete”

Clearly derivative, “just not good enough”

Product Management

No clear user

Broken user flows; design and tech not working together

Useless MVP

The big question:

how does your writing influence your coding?

How does your coding influence your writing?

Talent is what annoys you