The "Output before Input" Project

I have a podcast / audio category of this blog called Output before Input.

I’m often inspired by Tom Sach’s work. Recently I read about his philosophy of output before input, which is evidently something he learned from my quantitative design hero Edward Tufte.

I’ve been doing my own daily “output before input” ritual for my guitar playing. Each morning that I successfully get out of bed without looking at my phone, I sit at my electric guitar, hit record, and do a quick improvisation, usually 2-3 minutes in length. There are often warts + weird moments, but I’m happy to include those - this is the part of the creative process that precedes a “demo”, and I think it’s fun to see that + share that.

I’ve done enough now that I feel confident sharing them as their own blog category, and I’ll keep it up for as long as it bears something interesting to me. Hopefully anybody who listens will find it interesting as well.

Here’s the podcast on Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts, and as a standard podcast feed.