Twenty Five

I turn 25 today, so here are twenty five things I’ve learnt thus far, in no particular order.

  1. You, and every other person at the office is replaceable. Don’t sweat it. Relationships with family and community matter more.
  2. Windows Phone still surprises me, even after 8 months.
  3. Trials and difficulties come our way so that we can rely on His strength, not our own.
  4. You’ll always be your parents’ son. No matter how old you grow.
  5. Nothing irritates me more than people on Facebook who can argue for days as to why their football club is better.
  6. Ignoring Tumblr all these years was a big mistake.
  7. Startups are over-rated.
  8. “No matter how cool you think your interface is, the lesser of it the better.” – Vitor Lourenco, Twitter’s first designer
  9. The Lumia line has hugely boosted Nokia’s chances of a comeback.
  10. Marriage is the most fantastic journey you’ll ever take in life: treat it as such. I’m glad I did.
  11. If I wasn’t a designer, in another life I’d probably be an astrophysicist.
  12. Lenovo is the only laptop company with steady profits as of 2012.
  13. Standards; whether religious, professional, moral or social, must be uncompromisingly upheld. Else don’t call them standards.
  14. Facebook got it totally wrong with Home / First.
  15. Words make reality. If you keep saying things and believe they will happen, they happen.
  16. My life changed the day I understood ​“design is how it works”.
  17. “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” – CS Lewis
  18. Though there are a few freelancers and agencies doing great work; India needs far, far more designers of all kinds: UX, IxD, product, typeface, automobile, etc. And by designers I don’t mean kids sitting in their mom’s basement using pirated copies of Photoshop.
  19. Javascript still scares the hell out of me.
  20. Our minds are too limited to even comprehend God in His entirety. To truly believe, pray for faith.
  21. Have kids when you’re young. It gets a lot harder as you grow older.
  22. Meteorologists have the coolest jobs. Which other career allows you to be wrong half the time?
  23. Paperback reading beats iPad reading any day.
  24. Best professional advice of the year: to learn to design, learn to see.
  25. If I could have one accent in the world other than my own, it would be Irish.