Any given design is the result of many small decisions that have been made by its creator(s). Not only is it interesting, but it is often illuminating to be given insight into the thought process behind those decisions – to see behind the scenes of the creative process. In this series of articles (of which this is the first), I will share a sampling of the ideas, tools, and processes I sought to explore while creating this website. To start, here are three big ideas that shaped A Simple Frame.

A Place to Write

I recently read The Great Discontent interview with Cameron Moll in which he gave some advice about writing that really stuck in my head. Specifically, this quote inspired me to create a site where I could write about design:

… find something you’re passionate about and write about that passion. There’s no better way to articulate what’s in your head than to get it on paper. … Think about any form of creativity—if you can write well about it, it changes the way that you see the world and amazing things can happen.

The thing I’m passionate about is design. I often find that I have more thoughts about design in my head than I am able to articulate conversationally to the people around me. This site is an intentional effort to create a place to publish my thoughts about design and get them out of my head. It provides the framework and the accountability to write regularly. My hope is that by writing, I will be able to learn more about design while synthesizing my point of view.

The Name

Names are very hard. Previously, I used the url markdschafer.com for my personal site. Admittedly, I didn’t do too much with it, but I wanted a better domain name to work with if I was going to invest more time in it. I wanted something that was easier to spell and more memorable. After jotting down different ideas over a period of time, I read an article that served as the inspiration for the new name.

The article is entitled Best New Year’s Resolution? A ‘Stop Doing’ List and was written in 2003 by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great. It’s an excellent article about saying no to things in order to focus on what’s important and make great work. Here’s the quote that grabbed my attention:

Looking back, I now see Rochelle Myers as one of the few people I’ve known to lead a great life, while doing truly great work. This stemmed largely from her remarkable simplicity. A simple home. A simple schedule. A simple frame for her work.

This gets to the heart of where I want to go as a designer. I want to create great work, and the path to get there is through focus and simplicity. This site is a simple frame for my thoughts and my work.

Limitations

To continue on the meaning of the name, a frame is also an image of limitations and boundaries. As stated under Principles on the About page, I believe that limitations breed creativity. Having limits to work within often pushes you to creative solutions you would not reach without constraints.

With this in mind, I’ve set out to create self-imposed constraints for this site. For example, I’ve set up the constraint that I will publish new articles four times a month – on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th. This constraint forces me to write with more regularity than I would otherwise. It also forces me to be somewhat intentional about the articles I post. Since I’m only posting four times a month, the form of articles will naturally be longer and more thoughtful.

The idea of a frame also brings to mind the French parenting concept of the cadre which Pamela Druckerman describes in her Wall Street Journal article entitled Why French Parents Are Superior:

… the French ideal of the cadre, or frame, that French parents often talk about. Cadre means that kids have very firm limits about certain things—that’s the frame—and that the parents strictly enforce these. But inside the cadre, French parents entrust their kids with quite a lot of freedom and autonomy.

As human beings and especially as children, we need limits to work within if we are to thrive. Without the frame, we are lost. Within its bounds, we are set free to explore, experiment and discover new things. This site is the frame. Within it, I hope to explore my own creativity, experiment with new ideas, and discover design in a new way.

In my next article in this series, I’ll write more about the specific tools and processes used in the creation of A Simple Frame.

I can’t do everything. It’s an obvious statement, but one that can be hard to admit is true. It’s true on a small scale. As in, I’m not going to get everything done on my to-do list today. It’s also true on the large scale. I won’t have time to accomplish all the things I desire in my lifetime. Peter Bregman sums this up nicely in a Harvard Business Review blog post:

The idea that we can get it all done is the biggest myth in time management. … Face it: You’re a limited resource.

The most difficult aspect of facing this fact is letting go of the things that will inevitably go undone. It’s lamentable that the time we have is short. But, there is a silver lining. In Bregman’s words:

Once we admit that we aren’t going to get it all done, we’re in a much better position to make explicit choices about what we are going to do. Instead of letting things haphazardly fall through the cracks, we can intentionally push the unimportant things aside and focus our energy on the things that matter most.

In other words, when we stop trying to figure out how it will all get done, we are free to focus our energies on what things are most important to accomplish.

Prioritizing Leads to Focus, Focus Leads to Excellence

Before we can set our focus, we must determine what things are most important. On the small scale, evaluating importance is relatively easy. We often prioritize our to-do lists based on our schedule for the day and upcoming deadlines. However, it can be harder to evaluate importance over longer periods of time. This is especially true in thinking about the big things of life. How do you determine the most important tasks of your lifetime?

I’ve thought a lot about this question, specifically in terms of vocation. What is the most important work I can spend my life doing? This is a much more difficult question to answer¹, especially if you have multiple interests and skills. Since time is a limited resource, the development of some interests and skills must suffer in order to go deeper with others. How do you choose which to pursue as a career or even as a speciality within your field? Saying yes to one thing means saying no to many others.

Seth Godin reiterates this point in his small book The Dip:

You really can’t try to do everything, especially if you intend to be the best in the world.

Here, Godin adds an important dimension to the discussion – the idea of excellence. It’s possible to do many things if you don’t care about doing them well. He argues, however, that things are worth doing well. In fact, he argues that you should be the “Best in the World” at what you do. He continues:

Best as in: best for them, right now, based on what they believe and what they know. And in the world as in: their world, the world they have access to. … Best is subjective. I (the consumer) get to decide, not you. World is selfish. It’s my definition not yours.

In other words, “Best in the World” can have many different meanings. It’s ultimately up to someone else to determine if you are the best in the world to do a particular type of work at a particular time in a particular context. Find your niche, and be better than anyone else.

I love Godin’s focus on excellence. He doesn’t want people to fill the world with mediocrity. He wants you to do something great, and the rest of his book outlines strategies for knowing when to quit something and when to stick it out so you can achieve success.

Godin’s advice serves as a good starting point to evaluating the big-picture question of what work is most important in your lifetime. However, focusing solely on what you can do better than someone else presents problems.²

The Problems with Focusing on Other People

What if you can be better than anyone else at something, but it harms other people? Also, if you’re solely motivated by being better than others, your success will always be dependent upon the actions of other people. This can lead to crushing disappointment and jealousy when you encounter others who are better than you. And if you are the best, it can lead to pride and arrogance. As C.S. Lewis famously pointed out, pride at its root is competitive:

Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man… It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.

Competition alone is a poor metric for choosing the work of your life. Additionally, focusing so much on how you compare to others may hinder you from charting your own course if you are too fixated on simply outdoing what someone else is already doing.

A Shift in Perspective

Perhaps a better question than “What can you do better than anyone else?” is “What can you be the most competent at?” In his book Every Good Endeavor, Tim Keller quotes William Diehl who wrote:

Competency is a basic value. It is not a means to some other end, such as wealth or position, although such results may occur.

If competency has intrinsic value, it follows that we should be focused primarily on being as competent as possible in our work. This helps in prioritizing what to focus on in our life’s work. Instead of asking “What can I do better than anyone else”, the question becomes “What work do I have the potential to do with the most competence.” Shifting the perspective away from competition helps us avoid some of the aforementioned pitfalls.

However, it is still possible to be very competent at something that harms other people. Both Diehl and Keller address this problem from a Christian perspective. They view competent work as a way to love God and other people.³ Viewing competence in this way excludes harming other people in pursuit of excellence. In fact, it does the opposite. Keller expounds:

The application of this dictum—that competent work is a form of love—are many. Those who grasp this understanding of work will still desire to succeed but will not be nearly as driven to overwork or made as despondent by poor results. If it is true, then if you have to choose between work that benefits more people and work that pays you more, you should seriously consider the job that pays less and helps more—particularly if you can be great at it.

This advice has been very helpful to me in narrowing down my list of interests and skills in order to determine the work that is most important for me to focus on during my lifetime. Given my skills and context, what work can I be most competent at while helping the most people? How would you answer this question?

I once read about a person who drew a line through the first page of every new sketchbook. Why? Remove the intimidation of the first blank page staring back at you. It somehow makes it easier to move on and begin filling the remaining pages. Removed are the worries of making that first page perfect – thinking of something worthy with which to fill it. If the first page contains a scribble, there’s room for nothing but improvement on the remaining pages.

I’ve adopted this practice in my own sketchbooks, and it’s been helpful to me. The first page of my sketchbooks look something like this:

I always draw a line through the first page of my sketchbooks.

With a line drawn through the first page, my sketchbooks feel less precious. As a result, I use them more. I’m less concerned with perfection and more concerned with just getting ideas down onto paper.

This, the first article of A Simple Frame, is the scribble that fills the first blank page. It’s intentionally short and simple. It’s not perfect, but it’s done. It can only get better from here.