July Picks: 🌳 Nonachievements and doing “good”

“What do you do for work?” The most quintessential introduction question we’ve all probably have heard as millenials. In a way, work has definitely defined our beings. We put it in our bios on our social media. Heck, we have a social media completely dedicated to showcase our work experiences.

With the pandemic, work takes a different toll. Office hours becomes difficult to separate from life hours. Even though I consider Sixty Two and myself to have a good balance between life and work, I do find myself sometimes in a time management blunder and thus, working the wee hours. This is not a complaint or rant whatsoever. But it makes me wonder, what is it about working that we can’t get enough of?

I am currently reading a book called, “Win at Work, Succeed in Life.” I’m not too far off in it yet, but I felt like the first chapter was a slap in the face. One thing that I took out of it was this bullet point:

“There’s incredible power in nonachievement.”

Controversial, I know. Working alongside tech companies, we often like to measure our progress. Whether (like me), it is checking off my to-do list, or keeping an eye on that KPI you’ve been working on.

Many of the most enriching, restorative activities in our lives are not quantifiable and it becomes the ends in themselves. Hobbies, art, friendship, wine, crafts, games and many more. Not everything is a goal. And it might just be worth to let of that achievements are always good, and nonachievements are pointless. Take time to do something just for the sake of doing it. It has a charm of its own.

Creativity to the test

Divergent Association Task Creativity Test
This is one of the shortest creativity test I’ve ever did. It was almost underwhelming compared to taking the 6 page MBTI quiz. But come to think of it, this test is quite interesting. It analyzes your word choices. For you quiz lovers, go ahead it seriously won’t take more than 5 minutes.

History buff x typography enthusiasts

Indonesia is made up of more than 700 language and dialects. One of them being Javanese. Java, home to Indonesia’s capital city comprises of the most heavily populated cities. In the video, Aditya Bayu Perdana talks about the history and development of the Javanese script. Influenced by sanskrit, we delve deep to unpack the typographic components of the Javanese consonant letters, punctuations, numbers.

Search for good

Ecosia
When you can search the web and plant trees at the same time, what’s to lose? This German founded social enterprise has achieved planting 60 million trees in June 2019. Use the plug in and start browsing the good way :)

Saving the world, one challenge at a time

GoodEmpire.org
As cheesy as it sounds, the team is doing exactly what I’ve always wanted to do. Make impact. We don’t get a lot of people creating social apps that pushes us to take challenges to make a better world. These fellas are doing that. Not only that, be inspired by people all over the world, who wants to make that change.

Design Systems can we ever understand it?

DesignSystems.com
Here’s a great article on the spectrum of design systems according to the maturity of teams. It is true that not all companies need a design system as solid as those tech giants. But where do we draw the line? Here are a few spoilers from the article. Plus, check out the site if you haven’t. It’s pretty bomb.

What’s your pick? We’re curious to know what you’re seeing, reading, listening, and doing. Drop us a line or those claps to see more of these content in the future!