Doing less, finished

The home page of this site has one image, one sentence and one email address. It is the one that took the most thought.

Adding is easy. Every extra thing has a good reason to exist, which is why almost everything ends up crowded. The hard part, where craft shows, is each time you say no to a good thing for the love of a whole one.

Constraint is not lack of ambition

The objects I like most, a notebook, a piece of cutlery, a text editor, share a quality: someone decided what they are not. The restraint does not impoverish them. It gives them shape, and gives whoever uses them the rare feeling that every detail is there on purpose.

In software that decision is harder, because nothing forces it. There is no limit of weight, space or material. The only limit is the taste of whoever decides, which is why taste is a technical skill.

The last ten percent

Anyone can reach ninety percent. What separates something made from something finished is the rest: the empty state someone anticipated, the error message written with care, the text that holds up on a phone and a big screen, the animation that knows to stop when asked for less motion.

That work is barely visible, and that is exactly why it is felt. People cannot explain why something feels solid to them. They simply trust it.

A rule for myself

Before adding anything, ask: does this serve the person arriving, or the person building? Often it serves the second, and that is honestly the one to say no to.

Doing less is not making less effort. It is spending all of the effort on what stays.