Words


Srikanth Kalakonda at Candolim, Goa

The words count, not the word count.

Popular posts from this blog

The Creator Mindset: The 16 Rules

1) Never ask permission 2) Start before you're ready 3) Master the fundamentals 4) Learn just-in-time 5) Process is the first reward 6) Resourcefulness, not resources 7) Think multidisciplinary 8) Think first principles 9) Don't hoard ideas 10) Don't hedge 11) Define perfection 12) Consume less, create more 13) Disband all validation 14) Collaborate 15) Failure is better than regret 16) Create your own rules
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The Writer Mindset: The 10 Rules

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1) Write every day. 2) The words count, not word count. 3) Don't seek permission or validation. 4) Don't hedge. 5) Don't hoard your work. 6) Progress, not perfection. 7) Write to express, not impress. 8) Discover yourself and the world will discover you. 9) Decouple output from outcome. 10) Break all rules, except for two: grammar and format.
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The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy: A Book Review

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Book: The Compound Effect: Jumpstart Your Income, Your Life, Your Success Author : Darren Hardy Learn the power of compounding and the influence it can have on your life and work. A book that can help you evaluate your choices, improve your habits, and most important of all, can help you find momentum. (Big Mo) This gained momentum can be positive on negative, as compounding works in both directions. This book also helps you in "finding your why". Compounding is not a just a money principle, it applies to every aspect of life. If you understand the compounding effect, you'll focus only on things that matter, build the discipline, habits, and energy to break inertia, gain your momentum, rapidly move forward and become unstoppable.  What are you compounding? Grab your copy here. I would also recommend you to read Essentialism and The One Thing .
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The 100th Post

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As planned and committed, here's my 100th post. Here's why I started blogging. To work on my writing, build discipline, and gradually develop my book projects. I'm in the process of developing a daily writing practice. It's been around three months I started this blog and I think it was quite an intense experience in terms of staying committed to the goal and moving towards the target one post at a time. I enjoyed the writing process, accomplished the goal, and also generated lots of new ideas for my book projects.  Well, initially I had a plan to publish only 50 posts. However, midway I completed this goal and changed the target to 100 posts .  Here's what I learned.  You have to show up on the bad days. I have started to treat my writing as a task and not overthink in terms of my voice and outcome. Once you decouple output from outcome, things become easier. In fact I strongly feel the outcomes get better when you decouple, detach, and move on to the next idea. I ...
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The Art of Hiring UX Designers (Read 7 Chapters for Free)

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Here are 7 free chapters from my book The Art of Hiring UX Designers: A Quick Guide for Design Managers .  I included the preface for a better reading experience. Preface Chapter 1: The Clarity Equation Chapter 2: The Culture Catalyst Chapter 3: The Competency Amalgamation Chapter 4: The Design Conundrum Chapter 5: The Leadership Factor Chapter 6: The Portfolio Limitation Chapter 7: The Independent Thinker Preface Hiring and enabling exceptional talent is the single most important job of a leader. Organizational excellence is an outcome of hiring great leaders, who in turn hire exceptional people and empower them to think more, do more, and achieve more. Only excellence breeds excellence. As a hiring manager your success is directly proportional to your ability to spot and enable great talent. I have interviewed hundreds of designers and had the opportunity to closely work and learn from competent executive leaders. I have also been on the other side of the table, over the years — ...
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Upgrade Your Life

In the race to upgrade your lifestyle, don’t forget to upgrade your life. Read more, travel more, experience more, walk more, play more, dream more and most importantly, rest more. More than life, most people are interested in upgrading gadgets, cars, and their wardrobe every year. Not bad! They are somewhat required to lead a comfortable life. Likewise, one should also continue to upgrade the mind, body and soul every year. When was the last time you upgraded your mind? What's the point if you have the best of beds, but you don’t rest well, best of personal transportation, but you don’t travel well. The best of living spaces, but you don’t live or walk well, and best of food options on demand, but you don’t eat well. What’s the point of acquiring the best of things and upgrading your lifestyle, but can’t upgrade your life and live at your best? Lifestyle and life are two different things. Wellbeing is building both in parallel. They should feed each other. Invest your time and mon...
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5 Ways to Learn Filmmaking

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Filmmaking is a versatile art form encompassing various formats: including feature films, television shows, music videos, commercials, social media videos, and animation. While this article is specifically for film directors who want to make narrative feature films, the fundamental principles of visual grammar are universal and can be applied across mediums. Let's look at the 5 ways you can learn filmmaking and nurture the skills of this highly demanding subject and craft. I don't see one way as better than the others. In fact, combining all these 5 ways in the right proportions is your best bet forward in terms of building creative confidence and competence. Filmmaking might sound and look entertaining for the outside world. However this is a highly serious business, with lots at stake, and one which demands a continuous learning mindset. It's good to respect the masters who have laid the foundational rules and defined the universal visual grammar of film. Equally, one sho...
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The Second Job

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The UX designer has two jobs: to design, and to advocate. You should evaluate a candidate on both these aspects. Design is only one side of the coin. Selling design, advocating with internal and external stakeholders on and about design is the other side. You should look for their passion for the subject and their contribution to the design community and industry. This is going over and above the job description to stand for design and advocate for the user needs in the best possible manner. A design advocate can have a tremendous impact on your team in terms of learning and the respect that they command from both internal and external stakeholders. Creating a better world is an outcome of continuous design advocacy. With constantly changing projects, UX designers work with people who have no idea of how design works, nor its importance in business. This is where the evangelist in them kicks in. This is the UX designer’s opportunity to show leadership, empathize with stakeholders, buil...
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Building Business Acumen (Book Chapter)

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This post is a chapter from my book The User Experience Consultant: 10 Reasons Why UX Designers Should Consider a Career in Consulting Chapter 5: Business A UX practitioner is in the business of design and the design of business. At the forefront, a UX consultant needs to build a solution mindset. If you’re not inclined to finding solutions, you’re creating another problem for your client and your consulting firm. Clients hire consultants with a single point agenda — Solutions. We must understand that Solutions are not variants or mere options. Most beginners make the mistake of providing variants over solutions. The outcome of any problem solving exercise should ideally be a set of potential design solution paths. However, it’s a common practice for UX designers to just change layouts, colours, fonts, and content to create some so-called variants or options and call them different solutions to a given problem. This is not a sensible and professional approach by any means. These option...
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