As entrepreneurs Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson explain, the further ahead they need to brainstorm, the thicker the pen they use—a clever form of simplification by stroke size: When we start designing something, we sketch out ideas with a big, thick Sharpie marker, instead of a ball-point pen. Why? Pen points are too fine. They’re too high-resolution. They encourage you to worry about things that you shouldn’t worry about yet, like perfecting the shading or whether to use a dotted or dashed line. You end up focusing on things that should still be out of focus. A Sharpie makes it
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