Pilcrow #11
Hey friends, hope you’re doing well! Today I’ll try another format based on feedback I received in the last edition. I’m still wanting to learn more about what you think about the first 10 editions of Pilcrow.
It would mean a lot if you could take 3 min of your time to answer this survey.
Here are today’s topics:
What I’m working on
Thoughts on practicing skepticism
Tools I’m currently trying
Interesting works of the week
What I’m working on
A few years ago, I learned about Shape Up — a guide on product development by Basecamp, written by Ryan Singer. Among all the principles, tactics, and tools it provides, one of them really fascinated me: Hill Charts. While it will sound simple to some people, it helped me a lot in understanding how to tackle my projects and tasks.
Basecamp integrates this “view” seamlessly as a part of its To-Dos feature. But not every team uses Basecamp to manage projects. Some use a combination of Notion + Linear, and some others only use Linear, GitHub Projects, Jira, Trello, you name them…
So I started to think about a small tool for teams wanting to use Hill Charts without Basecamp. It would be the perfect companion for syncs in product teams. Here’s a GIF of the app in construction in Figma:
I started to code it this afternoon with Next.js and Framer Motion. More on that in the next edition and on Twitter.
Thoughts on practicing skepticism
According to our robot friend:
Skepticism is an intellectual approach that involves questioning claims, beliefs, and ideas before accepting them as true or adopting them as a basis for action. It involves using critical thinking skills to evaluate evidence and arguments and demanding rational justification before forming conclusions or making decisions.
Disclaimer: I'm an INTJ-A (Architect), so I’m naturally skeptical and have biases on these topics. According to 16Personalities:
Architects question everything. Many personality types trust the status quo, relying on conventional wisdom and other people’s expertise to guide their lives.
But ever-skeptical Architects prefer to make their own discoveries. In their quest to find better ways of doing things, they aren’t afraid to break the rules or risk disapproval – in fact, they rather enjoy it.
On practicing it in your work environment and on the design side, here are a few thoughts on why and how skepticism may help you. Feel free to be skeptical about it, haha — happy to chat about it in the comments or on Twitter.
Limit our influences: as designers and visual communicators, we tend to be influenced by trends we see on our timelines. Here, skepticism may help you in finding the appropriate approach or direction to tackle a project.
Level up your standards regarding trust and vision. Being among the ones that often question decisions is not easy at first, but it will dramatically impact the way you’ll see things. Asking great questions is an art on its own, and it will benefit your entire organization/team to make sure everybody’s aligned, decisions are understood, and data is correctly used.
Observe 3 dedicated phases while being skeptical: list assumptions, verify them, and write conclusions. Skepticism and mistrust are often mixed up. From my point of view, skepticism is a neutral state, wherein in a mistrustful situation, you wouldn’t even ask questions. Mistrust is way more negative and doesn’t really help anyone in the long term.
Tools I’m currently trying
For a few weeks, I’ve been writing code with Zed, a code editor from the creators of Atom and Tree-sitter. It recently became compatible with Copilot, and customization options are coming progressively.
If you’re still scrolling, wait! I’m thrilled you’re enjoying Pilcrow — can you please take 3 min of your time to help me in making this newsletter better?
Interesting works of the week
That’s all, friends — have a great Sunday! 🖤