Hey there 👋
Oversimplified is a digest of the best links I stumble upon each week, and any new posts from me. If this is your first issue, welcome aboard!
📚 Where to Draw the Line?
This essay from Gordon Brander got me thinking about how to be more structured in decomposing things and drawing lines between parts. I do this often in Product Manager-land, but it’s very ad-hoc and unstructured. This is a nice seedling that I’m thinking about this week.
📚 The Art of Finishing
I often find myself waffling between ‘stop when you aren’t excited anymore’ and ‘finish it out’ modes for projects. I like this argument for finishing things. Most of what I hear is on the other side.
📚 The Qualified Self
This take on the intersection between writing and LLMs is a fun one. I have a hunch there are a lot of cases where you’ll get more signal feeding an LLM your thinking vs. the thinking of the masses.
🔗 The UX of LEGO Interface Panels
Another great write-up from Interaction Magic, this time focused on LEGOs: “These iconic, low-resolution designs are the perfect tool to learn the basics of physical interface design. Armed with 52 different bricks, let's see what they can teach us about the design, layout, and organization of complex interfaces.”
🔗 Monthly Recs & Rabbit Holes
If you’re interested in curation, especially curation very different from this newsletter, I highly recommend checking out Patricia’s newsletter. It’s a beautiful, thoughtful, and fun digest at the end of the month.
Food for Thought
Rules are there for a reason. You are only allowed to break them if you are a master. If you’re not a master, don’t confuse your ignorance with creativity or style. Writing that follows the rules is easier for readers, because they know roughly what to expect. So rules are conventions. Like all conventions, they are sometimes sub-optimal. But not very often. — Jordan Peterson
Wrapping up
As always, if you're enjoying Oversimplified, I'd love it if you shared it with a friend or two. If anything stood out, whether good or bad, I would love to hear about it. Reply to this email or tweet at me and let’s chat. Feels great to be back. 🙏
Until next time,
Conor