…a prince who is not himself wise cannot be well advised…
This line from Niccolò Machiavelli in The Prince nicely sums-up my thoughts on the value of advice, tips and hints. The irony of any advice—whether the topic is branding, dating, dancing, painting, fencing—is that it can’t be fully understood without some personal experience in the matter.
Dale Carnegie, when describing how readers can get the most from his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, quotes Bernard Shaw:
If you teach a man anything, he will never learn.
One can only really learn by doing, by making mistakes, and not by following someone else’s abridged instructions. The tips might get you a quick ‘n’ dirty result, but after that, you’re none the wiser and will need more hints to get you through the next problem. (A five-step assembly sheet for an Ikea table will get me a table but won’t make me a carpenter. By the same token, a Smashing Magazine list might get you a few sexy effects for your next site, but does that really make you a designer?)
To anyone with genuine aspirations to be great and to really improve themselves, drop the ridiculous lists of quick fixes and shortcuts and start learning for yourself by doing and by making mistakes.
15 Comments
Totally agree. I’m thinking back to some “amazing” article which provided a simple way to interact with the twitter API using a custom PHP class. The twitter API is absolutely trivial to use already - but pretty much every comment on the article was from people looking for the author to extend his little library to add the ability to do x or y without taking the two minutes to read the (very comprehensive) API documentation. These sorts of shortcuts are often a step backwards.
Posted by Dave Concannon at 12:18 pm on 22 July, 2009.
Guess I’ll scrap my “5 Ways Web Design is Like Professional Wrestling” blog post
Posted by Stewart Curry at 12:24 pm on 22 July, 2009.
| One can only really learn by doing, by making mistakes
I think that about sums it up! Would defiantly agree, it may take longer to learn something yourself but it will save you time in the long run and make you better at what you do.
Posted by Chris Colhoun at 12:24 pm on 22 July, 2009.
It is easy to feel like a Sen-Sei by passing on information designed in such format that already seems Sen-Seifyed, as in the lists that you mention, that no one knows who has made and under what criteria.
As far as information goes, they are resources for amateurs.
But hey, some people like to call themselves and love being amateurs.
So, yes, in short, they wont do anything by ill-advice the ill-informed.
Its a matter of changing the attitude and start asking questions yourself.
Also, I refer to my tweets:
“When I see lists of supposedly good things I remember discovering as a teenager the girls of my class looked much much better as a group.”
https://twitter.com/bohoe/status/2689355222
And:
“Im glad to see less lists in Twitter.”
https://twitter.com/bohoe/status/2387454818
Thats my list.
Posted by Angel Luis Gonzalez at 12:29 pm on 22 July, 2009.
Well put Eoghan - design is not painting by numbers.
I personally think this trend of the list is currently a bane of web design. Who needs skill and experience when we have 10 ways to in …
On a more day-to-day and real level they can only really help towards cheapening what people like ourselves have spent years to get clients to take seriously. First it was Frontpage and Dreamweaver, now it’s the Envato network.
Posted by Ray at 12:30 pm on 22 July, 2009.
So, just to clarify:
1 Do not read lists
2 Do not seek or follow advice
3 Try doing things for yourself.
OK, think I have it now.
(Sorry, Just being contentious, and miserable in work)
Posted by Ronan at 12:45 pm on 22 July, 2009.
Hi Eoghan
Yep, I agree with you to a point. Some of the lists are ridiculous. “257 examples of shopping cart design” type posts are certainly tedious and somewhat pointless. Personally, on my own blog, I only rarely write list posts, but when I’m writing for Sitepoint, well, they like lists.
Lists are popular because the number in the headline is an attention grabber, and it’s been knocking around since advertising copywriting began.
I 100% agree that only by doing, can you learn and improve. I’d like to think that people aren’t naive enough to think that they are a designer/photographer/developer/whatever because they read list posts.
Sometimes though, you find something in a list, maybe an amazing designer or illustrator that you’ve never seen before, and even if the rest of the list is rubbish, you decide “I want to be as good as them” or “I want to know how they did that”, and you push yourself to do it. So for that they have their value.
Posted by Jennifer Farley at 1:26 pm on 22 July, 2009.
don’t wonder how to do something
just do it, and wonder how you did it!
yay for old people
Posted by Rich Dale at 2:53 pm on 22 July, 2009.
The same can be said for reading book after book on winning friends, influencing people and being an astute political operator. Some day you have to put down the books, hope a few choice sentences have sunk in and go out into the world.
Of course, some people make a living out of reading those books and others a living out of publishing lists.
Posted by Paul M. Watson at 3:40 pm on 22 July, 2009.
Paul:
“Some day you have to put down the books, hope a few choice sentences have sunk in and go out into the world.”
Absolutely. That’s my point.
Posted by Eoghan McCabe at 3:56 pm on 22 July, 2009.
But this is the same blog that says you should not ignore convention in design?
Sure, I hope that Smashing Magazine is not trying to make anyone into a flat-packed professional.
But bringing together a set of conventions and best practices is pretty useful, allowing you to decide for yourself what works and what doesn’t, without having to crawl over the web to find your candidate idioms.
Or perhaps it’s just because I’m ‘design-challenged’
On the whole I’m agreeing. Treat all quick paths to nirvana with skepticism.
(Talking of which, if you really want lame tips, check out http://carsonified.com/blog/dev/six-useful-tips-for-web-designers-and-developers/ )
Posted by James Pearce at 4:11 pm on 22 July, 2009.
Great post Eoghan, I’m a big believer in the ‘Learn by Doing’ principle.
I remember hearing once that “what a man hears, he forgets, what he sees, he remembers and what he does, he knows”. And I totally agree with this.
But I’m not so sure that these aggregated lists are such a bad idea. They help a lot of beginners find the right road early on. Obviously, they go over the top sometimes but a lot of them can be great at saving time while I look for whatever it is I’m looking for.
When you think about it, a lot of blogs are just one large ultra slow motion lists post. Except they go into more detail and often take years to read.
I know you know this, but impatience is pandemic on the web. Everyone wants information summarised and they want it fast.
So just to illustrate my point lets take this concept a little further. Take your last 10 blog posts for example, if I wanted to do a lists post based on them I could give it a typical eye grabbing title, something like “10 Tips to Being a Kick Ass Designer” and then summarise each post into one short line. Something like this:
300+ from Machiavelli on advice - Learn by doing;
There are no small changes - To be done right, everything must be considered;
Representing your brand monster - It is out of your control;
Design decisions for iPhone - Make the tough decisions first;
What not to do - Remember to say no;
Wrong division - Don’t confuse your users;
All a company’s activities - Success is the some of all actions;
Gmail finds a new Uncanny Valley - When on the web, design for the web;
Tasty little cupcakes - Launch early launch often;
Every pixel counts - Carefully consider every design decision.
This would make a pretty compelling post in itself. It’s short, to the point and takes a fraction of the time to read then it would to read all the individual posts. So whether it’s because of a lack of time, patience, or skill I reckon there’ll always be an audience for lists posts, despite they’re obvious attempt at link baiting and cheap blogging.
But who are we kidding anyway, it’s really not that dissimilar from the whole point of quality writing either.
Posted by Iarfhlaith Kelly at 12:43 pm on 23 July, 2009.
Hey Iarfhlaith,
Cheers for the feedback. Your comment nicely sums up why I hate lists.
If someone writes “To be done right, everything must be considered”, it sounds like a truism, at best it sounds like a PWC motivational poster. It’s only in the exploration of the point that anyone can hope to gain anything. Yet I imagine/hope if that person read my post they’d see a realistic example played through which would make them really think about features and priorities.
There is a “quick hit” culture amongst net junkies, where they read the bare minimum and foolishly believe they’re getting value or insight. These are the same people who bookmark links “to read later” but never do, and order piles of amazon books to sit on shelves forever.
Someone thinking they’re getting value of 10 sentences along the lines of “Launch early, launch often” or “Your brand is beyond your control” is in need of far more than a top 10 list in my opinion.
As you say it’s all about quality writing, and about people with the patience/skill/ability to read posts that go above 40 words.
Posted by Des Traynor at 12:56 pm on 23 July, 2009.
If I’m throwing pots, writing code or learning to paint I want to do it myself, but its not a universal rule.
I Like the man who said, ‘I don’t want to learn from experience, I want to learn from the other guys experience”. In situations where the experience involves sinking in quicksand, loosing all your money in a scam, or getting your arm ripped off by a wild animal the other guys experience is always worth listening too.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Posted by Joe Drumgoole at 1:06 am on 24 July, 2009.
I really enjoy that book.
Posted by Joe Duggins at 7:19 pm on 3 September, 2009.
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[...] One can only really learn by doing, by making mistakes, and not by following someone else’s abridged instructions. The tips might get you a quick ‘n’ dirty result, but after that, you’re none the wiser and will need more hints to get you through the next problem. To anyone with genuine aspirations to be great and to really improve themselves, drop the ridiculous lists of quick fixes and shortcuts and start learning for yourself by doing and by making mistakes. —Contrast blog [...]
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