Layla Hamieh > Layla's Quotes

“Even multitasking, that prized feat of modern-day office warriors, turns out to be a myth. Scientists now know that the brain is incapable of paying attention to two things at the same time. What looks like multitasking is really switching back and forth between multiple tasks, which reduces productivity and increases mistakes by up to 50 percent.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The downside to working from certainty is that the more certain we are about what we’re doing, the more we tend to achieve similar results over and over again. Even if these results turn out to be reasonably well received, we will still be captives within the world of the mundane. To get out of this loop and open the door for Other Ideas, we must embrace the second type of work: uncertain.”
― Yonatan Levy, The Other Ideas: Art, Digital Products, and the Creative Mind

“We freak out when we get lost. As soon as we don’t know where we are and where we’re heading, our strong attraction to certainty and familiarity takes over. We almost can’t help it; we’re hardwired this way. The brain craves certainty—it’s a product of our evolution, a part of our survival instinct.”
― Yonatan Levy, The Other Ideas: Art, Digital Products, and the Creative Mind

“By remaining in the realm of uncertainty, we might just find an interesting new path leading to our desired destination—one we never would’ve found while driving on the main road.”
― Yonatan Levy, The Other Ideas: Art, Digital Products, and the Creative Mind

“When we don’t have a problem to solve, we don’t feel a sense of urgency or a need to demand inspiration. We don’t feel a need to change things, challenge ourselves, widen our perspectives, or strive in any meaningful way for something greater.”
― Yonatan Levy, The Other Ideas: Art, Digital Products, and the Creative Mind

“Even when you’re in a moment where you feel fatigued and cynical, even if the product you’re tasked to develop seems boring, you can always push yourself to find the unexplored creative space within the materials at hand.”
― Yonatan Levy, The Other Ideas: Art, Digital Products, and the Creative Mind

“Get yourself a ream of paper, a good fast pen, and a timer set at intervals of thirty seconds. Start sketching. Every time the buzzer sounds, you have to immediately start a new drawing, and the new drawing can’t be the same as any of your previous drawings. You have to keep going until all your paper is used up.”
― Yonatan Levy, The Other Ideas: Art, Digital Products, and the Creative Mind

“It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Man’s search for meaning is the primary motivation in his life and not a “secondary rationalization” of instinctual drives. This meaning is unique and specific in that it must and can be fulfilled by him alone; only then does it achieve a significance which will satisfy his own will to meaning.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I doubt whether a doctor can answer this question in general terms. For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: “Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“To put it figuratively, the role played by a logotherapist is that of an eye specialist rather than that of a painter. A painter tries to convey to us a picture of the world as he sees it; an ophthalmologist tries to enable us to see the world as it really is. The logotherapist’s role consists of widening and broadening the visual field of the patient so that the whole spectrum of potential meaning becomes conscious and visible to him.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“From this one may see that there is no reason to pity old people. Instead, young people should envy them. It is true that the old have no opportunities, no possibilities in the future. But they have more than that. Instead of possibilities in the future, they have realities in the past—the potentialities they have actualized, the meanings they have fulfilled, the values they have realized—and nothing and nobody can ever remove these assets from the past.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“So, let us be alert—alert in a twofold sense: Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“You’ll focus on everything from the big picture to the small details. One day you might brainstorm the three-year vision for your team, while the next day you work through the details of the buttons in a dialog.”
― Gayle Laakmann McDowell, Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology

“In the coming phases, everyone on the team will have questions, including “why are we working on this?”, and the PM will need to have answers.”
― Gayle Laakmann McDowell, Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology

“Lost. It makes it sound as if I misplaced my loved ones; perhaps I left them where they don’t belong and then turned away, too confused to retrace my steps.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“She wanted to bottle how safe she felt in this moment, so she could drink of it later when loneliness and fear left her parched.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“How can I start at the beginning, when all I can think about is the end?”
― Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“you can visualize a system, you can probably implement it in a computer program.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

“If you can visualize a system, you can probably implement it in a computer program.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

“Complexity is anything related to the structure of a software system that makes it hard to understand and modify the system.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

“Isolating complexity in a place where it will never be seen is almost as good as eliminating the complexity entirely.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

“Complexity is more apparent to readers than writers.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

“Your job as a developer is not just to create code that you can work with easily, but to create code that others can also work with easily.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

“Change amplification: The first symptom of complexity is that a seemingly simple change requires code modifications in many different places.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design

“Cognitive load: The second symptom of complexity is cognitive load, which refers to how much a developer needs to know in order to complete a task.”
― John Ousterhout, A Philosophy of Software Design