I’ve started rereading Rework (the English edition is titled Rework: Change the Way You Work Forever), and the first chapter is called “Ignore the Real World.”

I realized how my attitude toward these kinds of bold concepts has changed:

1. Yes, great! Do whatever you want! They don’t know anything and don’t understand!
2. But the world became what we see now, so the rules of the game clearly work. A norm is a viable order.
3. (you are here) Sometimes play helps you get unstuck and change something (at least your point of view, to start with).

Now I look at it positively. Maybe I’ve simply come to see that rules and norms allow for mistakes. That doesn’t mean the mistaken thing will take root (probably not). But as a designer, I understand that experiments and play are necessary.

That’s what design thinking is. Not the version with sticky notes on a wall, but the one about understanding the balance between norms and errors.

I want to understand why dictating text works not only as a speed boost, but as a different mode of thinking.

I used to talk about fast capture, but it’s not just about speed. In an interview, Andy Matuschak mentioned that he walks around the room and dictates text instead of typing. What caught my attention wasn’t that it’s faster, but that speaking seems to switch off the inner editor. When you type, you’re constantly tweaking, deleting, rewriting, and that can look like thinking. But sometimes it’s more like a brake.