constraints and creativity.
Up until today, this was my approach to weekly content for Functionally Imperative:
Pick an idea to explore on Sunday.
Tease out the idea for a few days.
Commit to a structure and thesis.
Finish it on Thursday night.
Sleep on it.
Review it again on Friday morning.
Ship it.
This serial process of doing one thing at a time has worked well for my first twenty-five weekly posts, but I ran into something odd this week: I’ve approached a topic that I’m excited about but is a bit more complex. I need more time.
I had a choice to make:
Simplify the topic and ship it anyway.
Miss my deadline and donate to the Flat Earth Society.
Pick a new topic for the week on a Thursday night, and let the other story breathe.
Option two is completely off the table. I’ve committed to writing weekly; that won’t change anytime soon. So that leaves me option one or option three. Sometimes, I have opted for option one; in general, it’s a great option. Time constraint is a powerful motivator for completing your work, but this week is different. What I’ve been working on needs more time for research and structural tuning to reach its proper shape. This week, option three is the best choice.
It’s important to introspect on your constraints. New and creative solutions can emerge by sticking to the nonnegotiable parts of your process. This is “Yes, and” in action. Give the writing more time and keep to a weekly writing cadence. This sticks to the spirit of the commitment while allowing for creativity in the process.
Notable links this week
An interesting look into how Apple handles virtual cores
Error correction seems to be the big blocker here, but a company has built a 1000+ qubit quantum computer
Rus Cox has written an excellent post exploring the history of trusting trust
a video on the history of thought in non-euclidian space
I had no idea that the number 288 was so special.