The rule is something like this: “Consumers” get one button, “prosumers” get 10, and “professionals” get 500.

Grandma shouldn’t be able to mess up an iPhone, but the seasoned pilot can crash a jet any way she chooses.

That’s the logic.

But as we head into a world of ubiquitous AI, every device still needs the “you’re an idiot” warning.

“Your audio is 15dB in the red. You’re an idiot.”

“Your video is 5 stops over exposed. You’re an idiot.”

“You left your broadcast on mute. You’re an idiot.”

Devices shouldn’t assume that just because someone is a professional they don’t need the warning. Now if the pilot still wants to crash the jet after repeated idiot warnings, that’s on her.

But product and software manufacturers? Don’t assume that intelligent, well-trained people don’t also need “you’re an idiot” pop-ups, even if they choose to ignore them.

The greatest speech of all time, delivered by one of the greatest orators of all time, was the I Have a Dream speech from Martin Luther King.

Decades have passed, and these immortal words still ring true.

But why do we know it as the “I Have a Dream” speech, and not the “Civil Rights” speech, or the “Free At Last” speech?

It’s because he repeats a variation on the phrase over ten times in a near 15-minute speech.

That’s nine times more than most of us are comfortable repeating any one message.

Whether it’s a website, or a video, or a keynote, or anywhere our words need to be remembered, we’re terrified of repeating ourselves lest we look foolish.

But decades later, King’s ideas endure, and you still know exactly what he wanted you to remember.

In music, it’s a well-known phenomenon that we can tweak and tweak and tweak and tweak a project, often getting no better with each “improvement”.

This is why producers and songwriters have songs like Daylight_Master_Final_FINAL_FOR_REAL_Done_V21_Bass_up_DONE.wav sitting on their hard drives.

Case in point, even at the highest level, legendary mixer Bruce Swedien was asked to keep re-mixing Billie Jean 91 times because Michael and Quincy weren’t happy with the mix. Something could always be a little better. “Bring up the snare!” “The bass isn’t coming through.”

But which version made the record? 91? 86? 75?

Nope. #2.

After countless agonizing hours, they realized that they had had the magic right at the start. Luckily for us, they were smart enough to eventually realize their mistake, while many of us are so blinded by our quest for perfection that we lose all access to the voice of knowing within us.

Some will tell you to take a walk—to get distance from the project. Others will tell you to show your work to strangers.

But the most important thing to do, with anything we make or are ever close to, is to continually try to see our work with fresh eyes.

Whatever business you’re in, the effort is always worth it.

Modern VR headsets, like the Apple Vision Pro, contain the equivalent of two teeny-tiny 4k TVs, one for each eyeball.

Not long ago, it would have taken a supercomputer to push this many pixels, but now, a portable chip will do the job.

But there’s a trick happening here—misdirection worthy of a seasoned magician.

The truth is, today’s chips aren’t powerful enough to run two displays like that, even now.

But because these headsets can track our eye movement, they know to only really render the pixels we happen to be looking at. This is called foveated rendering.

The rest is an approximation that we don’t notice, because we can’t focus on the periphery. The change happens so fast, the illusion is that we have pixel-perfect resolution everywhere we look.

Not only is this clever, it’s also true of life: We see what we’re focusing on in incredible detail, and everything else is just a sea blurry shapes that feel more-or-less right without further inspection.

The question of “when is it done?” is not an easy one to answer.

When working on any project, we can easily get bogged down in details that don’t matter. But the problem is, many of them do.

We shouldn't be asking: “Is this font 1px too big?” “Are these wheels 10g too heavy?” “Is this video 5% too bright?”

The right question is: When does it sing?

When do all the elements come together to turn something from audio into music? From pixels on a screen into art?

All human work is art. And it either sings or it doesn’t.