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I feel you on this, and I felt that way for a long while, too. I think the best thing is to have regular activities and people in your life that pull you out of the everydayness of things. It helps to have someone bug you when you're working too much or falling down the rabbit hole. I know it sounds trite to say "get off the computer," but it's true. I'd recommend something physical, because even reading and watching movies can feel like a part of the same beast you've mentioned. (And, to be clear, those things aren't bad, they just aren't going to be a counterbalance to that kind of intellectual/creative indulgence.)

1) Writing and publishing a book is hard. Here's the tough part: you have a window of approval on your own work. For me, I typically only like the last 2000 words I've written. This is hard if you're writing a 30,000 word book—you're constantly tempted to go back and "fix" the previous mistakes to improve it. Doing the work makes you better, but also makes you dissatisfied with the work you've already done. I suppose any big project is like that.

2) Two big reasons for starting Another. The first you've mentioned—I want to involve other people and to make something that's bigger than just me, and a certain level, that happens with all client work if you're deeply collaborating with your clients. The second was that I simply got tired of being "Frank Chimero," at least insofar as Frank the Designer. I feel like people expect certain things from Frank the Designer, so starting a studio under a different name is an experiment in shaking off those expectations and starting fresh.

3) You do one thing at a time, in as big of a block of time as possible. One thing I always ask my stressed friends is, "What is your smallest unit of time at work?" For instance, do you have 15-minute meetings? Jumping from hour-long engagement to hour-long engagement? For me, I try to structure things so that I have two things to do a day: one thing occupies the morning, another thing occupies the afternoon. So, my smallest unit of time (usually) is half a day, which allows me not to freak out about juggling lots of different things. I know this isn't an option for a lot of people, but I can do it, and it's helped, so I'm going to continue.

1) I cook and eat. My family's Italian, so it is genetic. I find food is a great combination: cultural, but deals more with your body than your mind. I enjoy walking around the city, taking trips on the weekend to upstate NY, enjoying friends. Usual stuff, nothing too special... I have a low bar for enjoying myself.

2) I love the Eames, Sister Corita Kent, Robert Irwin, Lawrence Weschler, Bjork, Montaigne, Phil Collins, John Baldessari, Montaigne. Actually, just check this out. It does a much better job of explaining how my brain goes through the world.

Yes. Yes to all of this. Young people often have a ferocious idealism. I know I did. But, as you get older, you start to see the complexity of things and just how interconnected and variable they are. You eventually have to let doubt into the room. Any sane person would.

But, I also know I've read some pieces by younger designers that honor complexity, and that, in my mind, lends their opinions a lot of integrity. They might not have as much experience, but they are seeing clearly and learning to be articulate. That goes a long way. I want young designers going through that process. I needed it. Why wouldn't they?

I also have to remind myself to give people more credit: readers can sniff out a farce and are not shy to label something as such.

Oh man. This is tough: I have no idea. I was always lucky enough to have a group of friends with their own creative pursuits. So, even when I didn't have someone with a significant amount of experience to be a mentor, I at least got to feel like I was part of a gang and we could learn from one another.

Oh man, Jared. I get burnt out every 30 months or so. At least, that's been the trend of my career. Everything blows up (here are a few examples form my career: big job ends in a lawsuit, startup shuts down, editorial illustration work evaporates) and I contemplate going back to school for dentistry or accounting or anthropology or becoming a barista. I always said I'd rather be a happy barista than a sad designer.

My temperament has stabilized the past few years, but I'm still trying to figure out how to navigate my own design business. I don't think it's so much balancing work and life, but rather trying to make work fit inside of life and enhance it. Taking more time off has helped. Working on fewer projects at once has helped. Selling days of work to my clients instead of project-based rates has helped, because I can wake up and know what I'm doing the whole day. A deep breath helps, and acknowledging that you can change the things you don't like. That's the barista thing—you can nuke it all, start over, and still be you. You probably won't walk away, but just acknowledging it as an option brings a little bit of comfort.

But really, most of the time when I'm burnt out I need to eat better, exercise more, and take my vitamins. So you can only neglect the physical elements for so long until it trickles down into your thinking. The mind is inside the body; it took me 30 years to learn that because I am a total moron.

I haven't. But, I get your hesitation: generalist seems diminutive. Jack of all trades, master of none and all that, you know? There are a couple related terms I quite like: concepts around translation that suggest skill and fluency in multiple areas, and the idea of a director as someone with vision and taste to produce work by corralling and focussing a diverse range of skills to a unified whole. Those aren't as descriptive as "generalist," but I find a lot of times people better understand what you do by telling them your day to day instead of your title. That's tough to fit on a business card, though.

1) I am lucky and have a whole swath of friends and family who are more than happy to call me on my shit. My sister duct taped me to a pole when I was 9, and she could probably do it again now. That's how you stay humble. We're all just people, right? That's what I think. Anyway, I'm glad she let me loose so I could answer all these questions on the internet.

2) Oh man. Madness is GREAT! And I agree with you on ASOIAF stuff. I struggled through Book 4, and when I hit Book 5 with all my favorite characters, and I read and I read, and nothing happened... I just threw the damn thing across the room. Anyway, I'm reading Nick Harkaway’s Angelmaker right now and it is what we in the biz like to call "amazeballs." I also know next-to-nothing about comics, but I've really been enjoying the SAGA series. Also reading bits and pieces of Don Quixote, but taking my time with it since it's big and has lots of short chapters. Very easy to read a little and put it back down.

And, I'm going to check out the finale tonight. AND, I think I know thie "thing" you're referencing, and I am shocked it's not in there!

Sure! Things usually begin by connecting two things that I sense have something in common. For instance—how screens are like plastic: they can be anything, and they are everywhere.

From there, I start looking for supporting evidence or anecdotes or general ideas. Often times I reference diverse topics, and I'm pulling factoids or images from my pool. This is a library of photos and text snippets I've been collecting for years while surfing the web, reading books, etc.

And, this is probably the most important bit: I work in Keynote. Each slide has an image or a short sentence describing the idea. Maybe I'll toss in a movie clip. In the presenter notes, I'm actually writing the full talk/essay. I like Keynote, because it's visual. I can nest slides inside one another like an outline; I can click and drag things around to change the order; I can display all the slides in a grid to get a sense of the pacing of the story. It's really quite wonderful—much closer to how my mind naturally works. I find it's essential for the "rich, media-heavy" stuff you're referencing.

And no, I don't know the end: it's a wild goose chase. I'm a big weirdo and can't start writing in the middle. I have to start at the beginning to make sure the ideas flow in a logical fashion, then take a million walks through the ideas in order to refine and reconfigure.

Hey Luke! My design guilty pleasure is messing with my own site. I do it all the time, and it the frequency of the changes can annoy some folks, but it's a lab, so c'mon! You need somewhere to mess around with flexbox and all that new stuff, right?

And, I think my book, The Shape of Design, has been my most rewarding project. This has little to nothing to do with writing or designing it, and everything to do with the responses I get from people who read it, enjoyed it, and said it helped them sort through some thoughts. Victory! That thing was a total slog of a project, but now I feel like it was worth it.

1) Oh, not too much. Maybe 10 or 15 mins? I usually glance at what gets shared via Twitter.

2) No. I am so bad about this. Must improve. Too many croissants.

3) I try to wrap up by 7pm. I just made a rule for myself that says if I work past 8, I take a cab home. Sounds indulgent, but I hate spending the money, so it gets me out of the office at a reasonable time.

Great question! This month, I've enjoyed a week in Italy to speak at Kerning Conference. What a wonderful little event—such a warm crowd in a beautiful city. I have not enjoyed the amount of travel I've had, though: I've gone from NY to Europe to Vancouver, so I'm hopping time zones all over the place and my body is totally confused.

Is that a jell-o mold?!

1) I like simple tools. There are these PaperMate Flair pens you can buy on Amazon for 50 cents each or something. They're kind of like felt-tipped markers with a fine point. I draw on copier paper. Seriously—I was the least glamorous illustrator in the world. For years, my sketchbook was a 3-ring binder with hole-punched copier paper. I don't do much with fancy textures or thick medias. I just need something to get lines down, so I can scan them in.

2) I scan or redraw in Photoshop. If you want to fool around, Kyle Webster has some AMAZING photoshop brushes to purchase for a couple bucks.

1) I love Ornette Coleman, Herbie Hancock, and Ahmad Jamal. I've been listening to the most recent Marc Cary album quite a bit, too.

2) Of course! I'm kind of a playlist nut, and keep a monthly diary of my listening.

3) I'd say sprinkle frequent opportunities for reflection into the process. Those periods will be the times where you take stock of your successes and let them steer you.

Both? :)

Let's start with me: I have to acknowledge that this stuff is difficult, and it will take time and effort to understand.

Now let's move on to everyone else: we need to do a better job of describing the connective tissue of making things for the web. Everyone is describing the one little piece they've created, but don't explain (or even reference!) the larger concepts of how all of these elements link together. This is, in my mind, just a symptom of the web stack being so deep. The more interconnected and complex a system becomes, the more difficult it is to tease it apart. You have to see the progress while it's happening to decipher it, so if you're like me and missed out on a couple years, you only see the tangle of christmas lights.

And maybe that's why that post struck a chord with some folks. Understanding all of this feels more like deciphering a secret language than learning a new skill.

1) I have my dad's name! It's all his fault!

2) I wrote and wrote. Then, I got a few invitations to speak. People presume if you can present ideas in writing, you can do the same verbally. Words are words!

1) I think it is almost always a bad idea to hide navigation.

2) I sleep until I wake up (which is usually about 7am), I freak out about everything I have to do that day, get ready, take the train to the office, and then freak out about everything I have to do that day. I am terrible about this, but I haven't been able to find a morning routine for myself since moving to NY. I should try harder—it kind of gets the day off on the wrong foot.

I've read it and I think Mills is incisive. My only criticism is that I actually enjoy using Facebook Paper. It's the only way that Facebook makes one scrap of sense to me. I get lost around the other apps, because I wasn't there to slowly normalize the complexities/additions.

My criticism of the current tech scene is that the software feels so opulent, but lacks a necessary richness and vitality. It may look beautiful and lush, but the actual point of the technology is pretty tawdry. I find myself being wowed with a technology’s execution, then asking, "To what end?" and feeling pretty gross about the answer.

Perhaps there's a bubble in tech (aside from the finances—I'm not informed enough to comment on that) simply because the industry is floating above the real world. Most of the software being made doesn't feel like it's for a standard life any more—at least not anything that resembles my life. And I'm a straight, white, urban, American male. I can't even begin to imagine how the vast, vast majority of the world that hasn't genetically lucked into my advantages must feel about all this stuff.

I let ideas sit. I go from having really fruitful periods to having dry spells. Like right now: I have no ideas, so I'm using the time to develop some old drafts.

For finding the topics, I typically write to express a response or solution to a problem I'm having.

I think you should stop using the word perfection and start believing in improvement through iteration. You want progress from article to article, so the question isn't "Was that article perfect?" It’s "Was that one better than the last one?"

And there's a lot of different kinds of better. Maybe the writing is better. Perhaps the writing is the same, but it took less time to write. Maybe it hurt less to get out. Perhaps more people read it, etc etc etc.

Writing is really difficult, so I believe the important thing is to keep encouraging yourself. That makes perfection the enemy: nothing is a bigger anxiety trap.

I totally understand what you're saying! I'm glad these tools are around, because I think the kind of prototyping they enable is essential. But, things are spread a bit too wide right now. I'm holding back until there's more consensus which tool(s) to use.

Hey Melissa! I started making fan websites for my favorite bands when I was 14 or so? I don't know what compelled me to do that (boredom?), but I did.

And nope! Not looking for an intern right now. Trying to sort out a few things right now, so maybe in the fall?

I think it's great! Sometimes frustrating, but what isn't?

Hey Neil! I think if you pick through my other answers, you'll be able to piece together one for your question. A few others talk about where the ideas come from, the editing process, and the tools I use to write.

Hey Reuben—I'd say the most important thing in starting a freelance career is broadcasting your availability. You don't need to buy ads or anything, just launch a portfolio and send a quick email to your friends saying "Hey, I'm doing this now, so if you hear about something interesting and you'd think I'd be a good fit, I'd love to hear about it."

And, I will pass on the podcast. Those things are like torture to me! Ha! Sorry man—I think you've asked me before, and this is the second time I've said no. :(

Jay: Ease up! You're a student. Your grades are your main feedback mechanism from teachers. If you want more, ask for their thoughts on how to improve what you've made. Things can always be better, of course. Just make stuff, show it to people, ask for feedback, and listen to the folks whose work you respect. You don't really ever stop doing that, and you never feel like you're work is ever "there."

Also excited to get you the mag. Hope you like it!

Swim. Walk. Bang head on wall.

Thought leadership! I am fancy!

1) Oh god, you suffer through it. That is all you can do. Maybe some kind of Stuart Smalley routine?

2) Each of the chapters is meant to be able to stand (mostly) on its own, while contributing to a larger point. So, I sat and wrote each chapter, and finished it before moving on to the next. I know that's asinine, but that's how I had to do it. I wrote about 14 chapters, we cut several, realized the shape the book needed to take, then I wrote a couple other ones to smooth out the narrative curve. That whole process was really tough for me, but I was lucky to work with a great editor like Mandy Brown. Metaphorical and theoretical books are tough to write, because you have to turn your bullshit radar onto yourself. It helped to have someone else sanity check my ideas and offer insight into how to best frame them.

Yep. And I think it's about preserving the integrity of the intent across all of those spaces. It needs to feel similar, and enhance with the opportunities of each format in a way that rings true.

1) Right after school, I sent my portfolio to a few local shops and was sub-contrated to design some chocolate packaging. It was pretty straight forward. Things have rolled pretty naturally from one project to the next after that.

2) You know, as a designer, I've never worked for someone else. So, I'm defacto self-employed?