AndresD

Product Design Leadership

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

WARNING: Longer post (but worth reading or bookmarking for later).

Your life has seasons.

Each one is unique. Characterized by its own distinct desires, struggles, opportunities, and identity.

But one reflection I've had recently is just how easy it is to completely disassociate with the present season.

To give all your time and energy toward a longing for some nostalgic memory of a prior season or an anticipation for some beautiful state of a future season.

You look back at the past and all you see is sunshine. Because it all worked out. You forget (or glaze over) the struggle you endured. You're here today. You made it. You're alive. You're doing fine.

You look forward at the future and dream on what could be. You'll have so much more. More freedom. More purpose. More health. More deep connection. More everything.

The past is beautiful and the future feels limitless. So, logically, you slowly start to treat everything about the present as the bridge. A dash connecting your past and your future. A gap to be crossed as quickly as possible.

Everything you do today is in anticipation of some eventual end state.

I'm doing this now, so that I can have that later.

Unfortunately, the danger of that dissociation with the present is significant. You may spend your entire life living for a future that has a decidedly mirage-like property. You inch closer, but when it's right in front of you, it disappears and reappears on the horizon.

You may spend your entire life skipping through the present, deferring your presence, your joy, and your very humanity to a future that never comes.

In a classic French fable, a young boy is gifted with a magic ball of golden thread. He's told that if he simply pulls on the thread, time will leap forward. The catch, of course, is that once it's pulled, it can never be put back.

The young boy takes advantage of the newfound powers. Each time he's faced with a boring day at school, a frustrating set of chores, or a scolding from his parents, he pulls the thread, skipping through to the good parts.

As an adult, he continues, leaping through mundane struggles in his marriage, the friction of having a newborn, and the boredom at work. He finds himself pulling on the thread more and more, avoiding even the most minor inconveniences of his life.

But when he wakes up one day and sees an old man looking back at him in the mirror, he's filled with regret. He realizes in that moment that as he chose to skip through the boredom, struggles, and friction, so too did he miss the real texture of being alive.

How often do we all do the same? How easily do we default into this disassociation? Disconnecting from the present in anticipation of some future.

A mentor recently asked me this:

"Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?"

It hit me hard.

And to be honest, I haven't stopped replaying those words since he said them.

Why are you in such a rush?

The world wants you to rush into everything. Rushed decisions. Rushed conversations. Rushed relationships. Rushed timelines.

In doing so, you slowly relinquish your agency. You give up your claim on your own life. Surrender authorship to a pen that was never even yours.

In a world that wants you to rush, the ultimate act of rebellion is presence.

Be in the season you're in. Don't romanticize the past, don't fantasize the future. Be here. Be now. Be in this. All of its texture, depth, and struggle. All of its joy, tension, and pain. Sit with the uncertainty. Become friends with it. Fall in love with it.

Because every single thing you do today is something your younger self dreamed of and something your older self will wish they could go back and do.

The good old days are happening, right now.

And the next time you find yourself skipping through the present, remember these words:

Where are you going and why are you in such a rush?

[Alexis Ohanian 🗽 @alexisohanian]

Very well articulated. Taste is going to keep compounding in value as it gets easier and easier to create

[Keith Rabois @rabois]

Best post on the topic of building an iconic company in the age of AIz

[Axios @axios]

Remembering Om Malik https://t.co/mGFIfvMVnH

[Christopher Michel @chrismichel]

I’ve known Om Malik for 26 years.

We built companies during the first internet boom. We discovered photography together. We wandered Greenland, Svalbard, Wyoming, Idaho, and plenty of places in between. During COVID, he was part of my tiny bubble. We spent far more time talking about life, art, and philosophy than we ever did talking about technology.

The world knew Om as one of the greatest technology writers of his generation. He had a rare gift for seeing past the headlines and finding what actually mattered. He didn’t just explain what was happening. He explained why it mattered and where it might lead. Ironically, some of his finest writing came from his hospital room during the last two months as he waited for a new heart.

In the end, a heart never came.

There is something painfully unfair about that. Om was one of the biggest hearted people I’ve ever known.

His loss leaves a hole that stretches far beyond technology. It reaches into the lives of friends scattered across the world who laughed with him, traveled with him, argued with him, and came away seeing things a little differently.
I’ll miss his curiosity. His generosity. His perspective.

Most of all, I’ll miss my friend.

This is a small collection of what 26 years of friendship looked like.

https://t.co/WpiI7Y6IYl

[Gabriel @gabriell_lab]

Since Opus 4.8 is out and more and more designers are getting into Design Engineering, I thought I’d share some of the interaction patterns I use most often:

Use proximity, not just hover. When the cursor gets close, nearby elements can subtly scale and darken based on distance.

It makes interfaces feel more responsive, less binary, and way more alive

onpointermove = e =>
document.querySelectorAll(".dock>*").forEach(el => {
const r = el.getBoundingClientRect();
const t = Math.max(0, 1 - Math.abs(e.clientX - r.x - r.width/2) / 120);
el. style.scale = 1 + t * .5;
});

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Interesting.

[Claude @claudeai]

Introducing Claude Design by Anthropic Labs: make prototypes, slides, and one-pagers by talking to Claude.

Powered by Claude Opus 4.7, our most capable vision model. Available in research preview on the Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise plans, rolling out throughout the day.

[Julie Zhuo @joulee]

I see a lot of designers who want to stay "designers," like the role is some kind of warm, fuzzy blanket focusing purely on experience and aesthetics.

But this is not how the best designers think.

In my interview with @soleio ​on what separates top 1% designers from mediocre designers, he says it brilliantly: “If you delegate impact to PMs, you cannot ask for the title of excellent.”

At the end of the day, it’s your job -- not your manager’s, not your PM’s, not your CEO’s — for your design work to change behavior positively for the user

[Stitch by Google @stitchbygoogle]

We are completely humbled by the amazing response to our launch last week! 🫶 Now, we want to help you get the absolute best results from Stitch.

In this new video, David East walks you through how to consistently get premium results.

We also launched a new prompt enhancer (located under ‘+’ menu) to help you quickly collaborate on your vision before you submit your first prompt.

Stitch doesn't replace the design process—it is a tool for fast exploration and refinement, which is most effective when you step into the role of Creative Director.

Here are David's top strategies for taking your designs from generic to amazing:

🧠 Start with Intent: Define exactly who the design is for and how you want them to feel before you start building.

🎨 Enhance your prompt: You can use the new prompt enhancer (under the ‘+’ button’) to teach you design language and swap abstract words like "sporty" for tangible aesthetic descriptions like "high-end stationery" or "architectural limestone".

📐 Master Color Hierarchy: Treat colors as visual weight—Neutral for the canvas, Primary for ink, and Tertiary for your loudest accents.

Watch the full breakdown and see the transformation here👇images in 🧵

[Amjad Masad @amasad]

AI enables everyone to build apps, which leaves the best engineers to focus a layer deeper and do more ambitious things to advance the platforms themselves and expand what’s possible.

This is what I meant when I started talking about “the 1000x engineer” four years ago.

[Cheng Lou @_chenglou]

My dear front-end developers (and anyone who’s interested in the future of interfaces):

I have crawled through depths of hell to bring you, for the foreseeable years, one of the more important foundational pieces of UI engineering (if not in implementation then certainly at least in concept):
Fast, accurate and comprehensive userland text measurement algorithm in pure TypeScript, usable for laying out entire web pages without CSS, bypassing DOM measurements and reflow

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Starship launch attempt soon

[Brian Wallach @bsw5020]

I have ALS, a currently 100% fatal disease. And yet each day I hold my head high with a resolve to fight. If I can do it, I know you can too.

[NWS Bay Area 🌉 @NWSBayArea]

All eyes 👀are on tomorrow's storm. Rain and wind heading towards #California. Our colleagues @NWSWPC have our service area marked for slight risk of excessive rainfall, starting tonight in #NorthBay then sliding south Tuesday morning.

Today is your prep day.

#cawx

[Barack Obama @BarackObama]

Merry Christmas, everybody! One of the best parts of the holiday season is getting to spend time with the special people in our lives. I hope you all have a wonderful and joyful Christmas.

[Brian Wallach @bsw5020]

We have caused a lot of good trouble together. I sometimes wonder what we could do with 1 million folks. It ain’t gonna happen but a guy with ALS can still dream…

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Are there others that want to donate Starlinks to places in need?

[Vala Afshar @ValaAfshar]

How to use a fork to help hanging pictures much easier

[Brian Wallach @bsw5020]

BREAKING NEWS: The FDA just approved AMX0035.