It’s a guidebook for the creative process, not just for architects (The MIT Press).

Recently, a little book called 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School (The MIT Press) was set out near one of the self-serve candy bowls in The Chronicle’s office. It was opened to a new page just about every day, so passers-by could gain a little insight into the design process, all while sucking on a piece of chocolate.

There probably aren’t any architects at The Chronicle, but Matthew Frederick’s primer has something to teach us anyway. Oh sure, there are Things that only designers would need to know, like Thing 90: “Roll your drawings for transport or storage with the image side facing out.“ Mr. Frederick, who has taught at Boston Architectural College and the Wentworth Institute of Technology, explains how that will help the drawings lay flat when rolled out on a table.

But 101 Things is really a book about the creative process generally, not just about architecture. After all, what journalist (or jaded academic) couldn’t appreciate Thing 48: “If you can’t explain your ideas to your grandmother in terms that she understands, you don’t know your subject well enough.” (Each of Mr. Frederick’s Things comes with a little cartoon or sketch, and Thing 48’s shows an architect standing over a model and saying: “This project wants to be about a complexity of multiplicities.”)

Honesty in the creative process — with the work, and with oneself — is a recurring theme of the book. “True architectural style does not come from a conscious effort to create a particular look,” Mr. Frederick says in Thing 82. “It results obliquely — even accidentally — out of a holistic process.” In other words, he says, Colonial-style houses look the way they do because of the technology available in Colonial times, not because designers were pursuing that style.

Like any honest work, the book second-guesses itself with contradictions, like Thing 61 (“Less is more,” said by the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) and Thing 62 (“Less is a bore,” said by the architect Robert Venturi). Thing 81, perhaps a Zen-inspired nugget of advice, captures the creative process that many would understand: “Properly gaining control of the design process tends to feel like one is losing control of the design process.”

But the best Things are short and sweet. Thing 97: “Limitations encourage creativity.” Thing 99: “Just do something“ — don’t be paralyzed by the task ahead.

And then there is Thing 86, which every future star architect, acclaimed writer, distinguished professor, or influential artist would do well to remember: “Manage your ego.”