antonioono

I meditate a couple of times a day, as needed, for about thirty minutes.

I generally use it as a refocusing process. Whenever I feel discouraged, overwhelmed, apathetic, or like my head will explode if I can't get this button to render properly in Firefox, I stop, sit in my Big Comfy Chair, and focus on breathing. Usually I count to a certain number with each inhalation and backwards to zero with each exhalation. Sometimes I focus my mind's eye (and other mental senses) on a simple object like a piece of modeling clay or a pebble. Often I do both by visualizing varying quantities of an object (one pebble, two pebbles, three pebbles…). I used to listen to music (something in the vein of either Bach or Tangerine Dream), but now I just absorb the ambient noise.

Usually, after twenty or thirty minutes, the irritant is no longer an irritant, and I'm eager to resume my work. Once in a while, an idea or a solution to a problem will surface. (Maybe this is because the din of compulsive thought drowns out subconscious thought.)

And even though it's not technically meditation, I have found mindfulness — or at least not staring at a glowing rectangle every second — to be helpful. Instead of compulsively pulling out my phone when I'm waiting for someone, I attend to my surroundings. Instead of listening to podcasts when I walk, I listen to the traffic. Instead of ploughing through RSS feeds when I eat lunch, I enjoy the food — or maybe even speak to another human. Basically, less doing and more being. The irony is that the less information I engorge, the less guilt I felt that I'm missing something.

So it is absolutely worth it. Especially if you make concomitant changes to your habits to reduce digital ADD.

"I think [Steve Jobs'] choice of a minimalist aesthetic comes from his fear of making the wrong aesthetic choice."

If Alan Deutschman is correct, you are in good company.

That said, I think many people forget that, while it's harder to screw up a "minimalist" design, it's also harder to create truly outstanding minimal design. The recent minimalism trend only perpetuates the conflation of simplicity and easiness.

People also seem to conflate functional and aesthetic minimalism a lot.

There is a difference between IP and trade secrets. MS relies on IP, while Google relies on trade secrets.

IP is illegitimate because each concept exists in effectively infinite supply, and therefore cannot be owned anymore than the Pythagorean theorem or the color blue can be owned. _Access_ to a concept, however, can theoretically be owned, since access can only be gained through physical channels (books, bandwidth, oration, etc.), which are inherently limited in volume. Google limits the “supply” of _access_ to its code, while MS (tries to) limit the “supply” of the code itself.

So closed source could still exist in an IP-free world. There’d be nothing to stop people from distributing binaries freely, of course, but there’d also be nothing to stop anyone from concealing the source as a trade secret.