💎 Friday Gems (The AI Button, Trust your process, Decentering the designer, Shokupan, and much more!)

And...we're back after a short break.

Aug 10, 2024

Welcome to Low Fidelity, a free weekly newsletter where I share freshly squeezed insights from hand-picked articles, books, music, and quotes on a variety of topics such as mindfulness, design, running, and food to inspire you to empower you to show up in life, thrive in your work, and achieve your full creative potential. ✌🏽

Hi there!

It’s been a while since I have written the Friday Gems. I gave in to the undulations of life and took a break from posting. Each time I thought about writing, I felt like I needed to practice what I was preaching…being in the moment and present with whatever life brings. During the break, I started painting which I had been wanting to do for a very long time, and now I have a creative outlet which I will continue to develop and dedicate time to.

I’m also restarting a few other activities I love that I stopped during this break such as running and baking. As I got back into those activities, I realized just how much I love them and missed the joy and fulfillment they brought.

Big thanks to

Mary Kahle

🫶 for her support and encouragement during one of the chats in which she reminded me of the importance of taking breaks and being kind to myself during this process.

Also, a heartfelt shoutout to

Read before You Ultra

🫶 for checking in to see how I was doing.

And a special thanks to you, my readers for sticking with me through the ups and downs. 🙏🏽

On to this week’s gems!

In this edition of Friday Gems:
✍🏼 Writing: Stay Strong: Never Let AI Fill Your Blank Page
✨ Creativity: On trusting in your art and in your process
😶‍🌫️ Design: Decentering the Designer
🍞 Food: Shokupan (Japanese Milk Bread)
🎵 Music: Us Together by Supreems

Writing

💎 Stay Strong: Never Let AI Fill Your Blank Page

"Students are going to use it to start essays.
Managers will use it to start emails, reports, or documents.
Teachers will use it when providing feedback.
Scientists will use it to write grants.
Concept artists will use it for their first draft.
Everyone is going to use The Button."
Ethan Mollick in Co-Intelligence

The dreaded blank page or canvas is intimidating. How do you write the first word or make the first mark to get started?

What if I’m wrong?

What if the idea is bad?

What if nobody likes it?

In this moment of vulnerability, we now have access to the all-powerful generative AI or “The Button” as Tim Wenz suggests.

"Just click me,” it whispers, "and I'll solve all your problems.”
"I'll get you started”
"I'll do the hard work for you”
"I'll make you more creative”

If I can get a head start in my creative practice and get through the messy middle without wasting effort and time, then why not, right?

I’m not going to lie, but the allure of going from 0 to 1 with a mere push of a button is seductive but…

When you press The Button, you delegate the act of writing. And if writing = thinking, who does the thinking when AI does all the writing?

I believe there is a middle ground we can work with AI. Instead of surrendering to GenAI completely, we can use it to enhance our thinking and use it to enhance, validate, research, and explore, within constraints we provide and are intentional, time bound, and specific, so we don’t give up our thinking and creative powers over to The Button.

"My first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.”
William Deresiewicz in Solitude and Leadership

Let’s keep the fun, creative, and meaningful parts of our creative process for ourselves, no matter how challenging the process seems. It’s what makes our ideas great!

Stay strong!

Source: Animalz

Creative Process

💎 On trusting in your art and in your process

“I’m not a real artist!”

As I share my art with others, this limiting belief pops up in my head. Then the doubt, impostor syndrome, and anxiety all follow. I end up feeling small and as a result, I don’t share my art or I minimize it when I do end up sharing it.

As I was recently in a similar thought pattern I came across this enlightening conversation with artist Suchitra Mattai in which she discusses her journey to growing as an artist in which she learned to trust her intuition and as a result made time to creating the art she wanted to.

As Suchitra tells it…

I always knew I was going to be an artist. But the question was when was I going to jump into it with the confidence and courage that it takes to be one?

When are we ready to jump into what we love to do and commit our time and effort to developing our skills and doing more of what we love?

I think being an artist is something you know that you are, and you might not recognize it for a long time because, you’re right, I think there are these preconceived ideas about what it is to be an artist and engaging in a professional practice. But the thing is, as we all know, it’s super complicated to be an artist. How do you have the time to make all the work? How do you fund the work? How do you grow your practice? These are all things that, when I was younger, seemed like a mystery. I think if you just trust in the art and the process, that is the only thing you can control. And the other things fall into place. I know that sounds maybe silly, but I do feel like whatever limited time you have, whatever resources you have—if you use that time to make, and to make your work better, and to develop new ideas and curiosities, that’s super important too.

Trust the art and in your process.

Commit to your art, whatever form or shape it takes, and the path forward will reveal itself.

being an artist ultimately is about searching for a kind of freedom, a freedom of spirit, and a freedom in making. The moment when that is possible comes at different times for different people. You should never give up, because being an artist—there’s no one path to it. It’s not like some other fields. If you’re an artist, you’re always an artist. It’s just about finding that moment when you are willing to give it what it needs—to nurture those abilities and those possibilities.

Yes, there is no one set path to being an artist, writer, designer, or any other creative pursuit. It’s all about finding that moment when we are ready to give our creative process the time, care, energy, and intuitive trust it craves so it can shine a light on our path forward.

I hope this article gives you the inspiration, motivation, and trust, to lean into your creative process and pursuit.

Trust your intuition! ✌🏽

Source: The Creative Independent

Design

💎 Decentering the Designer

The most common approaches to design today center those with learned expertise over those with lived expertise, those who had the means to join the exclusive club of a professionalized field over those who did not, and the individual hero over the collective.

It’s interesting to hear about Betsy Ramaccia’s experience as an architecture student, which I assume is similar to being a design student in a program where the designer is taught about the long legacy of individual designers who left their mark on the field and also to play the role of the hero themselves…

They reinforced a definition of what it means to be a designer — the designer — someone who, as a result of their training and creative brilliance, has the right and privilege to flex their authority over the design process.

Betsy asks a great question we should all ask ourselves as designers in any design field…

What right did a degree give me to imprint my ideas on others?

After graduation, Betsy sought out other voices and practices from people and groups that were creating change in the public realm that shattered the hero designer narrative by involving the people they were designing for and most important together with.

In some of these spaces, designers and planners were present, but rather than being protagonists, they played a supporting role, providing technical skills in support of a vision. In many of these moments, they were absent altogether — and yet the design process was still very much alive, producing places, spaces, programs, services, and products.

When the designer fades into the background and plays a supporting role to lift the people they are designing for and brings in people and communities to participate in the design process, that is what makes design special.

Design can be a process for building power, fostering leadership, and building social solidarity through relationships.

How can we start to decenter the designer and evolve our design process? Betsy shares a few suggestions:

Hold space for decisions - Questions are better answered together in partnership with those closest to the challenge.

Open up ideation - The divergent and convergent activities in the design process are not owned by the designer. By bringing in the people we are designing for into the ideation process and then stepping back as the designer, we enable those whose lives and livelihoods are affected to be a part of the creative envisioning.

Work relationally - Typically the design decisions are presented as transactions where the design experts hand down the design decrees and then leave. Instead, we can form relationships that are necessary to build the trust and sense of solidarity to bring about the change we seek

Share the air - When design is being discussed or shared, it is usually the designer speaking of how great their designs are in helping to solve the problem. What if we shared the air with the people we designed so they can share their experiences and expertise since they are just as important to delivering the solution?

Who holds the microphone, literally or figuratively, reflects not only who is believed to have the credentials, expertise, and power to relay an experience, but who should be bestowed credit, respect, and public acknowledgement for the work.

As Betsy concludes, It’s time to retire the outdated and destructive hero designer paradigm.✊🏽

Source: Greater Good Studio

Food

💎 Shokupan (Japanese Milk Bread)

Japanese milk bread, or shokupan, is one of the world’s true wonder breads. An ultra-soft, squishy, and impossibly light loaf, shokupan has a mild but distinct sweetness, with a fine, pillowy crumb the Japanese call “fuwa fuwa,” or “fluffy fluffy.” The bread is baked in deep rectangular Pullman pans, giving the loaf a tall profile.

This bread is just deeeeelicious!

Shokupan is now my go-to recipe to make. It takes a bit of time to make but the hands-on prep time isn’t too bad.

What makes this bread recipe great?

Many shokupan recipes employ a yudane—a Japanese technique of whisking flour and boiling water together and cooking on the stove until thickened—which helps the bread retain its soft texture. This method is more commonly known as tangzhong, its Chinese equivalent. Bakers collectively refer to these sorts of techniques as “flour scalds.”

The other unique ingredient that makes this bread unique is the use of sweet rice flour.

Sweet rice flour is made of 100% amylopectin molecules which are long chains of glucose linked together making it ideal for retaining moisture in the bread which in turn keeps the bread from staling quickly.

For a detailed yet easy-to-follow scientific explanation of this process, you need to read the article, which is why I love the Serious Eats recipes.

I doubled this recipe this time because I’ve learned that making a single loaf at home mysteriously causes the bread to disappear right after it is out of the oven.

My family loved this bread and now I am on the hook to make it regularly, and I’m all for it. 🙌🏽

Excuse me while I go make another batch.:)

Source: Serious Eats

Wisdom

💎 On Waking Up

Is there such a thing as One Minute Wisdom? There certainly is, said the Master.
But surely one minute is too brief? It is fifty-nine seconds too long.
To his puzzled disciples, the Master later said. How much time does it take to catch sight of the moon?
Then why all these years of spiritual endeavor?
Opening one’s eyes may take a lifetime. Seeing is done in a flash.
- Anthony de Mello