Dear friends,
I know I haven’t been writing in a while. How are you guys? I’ve taken a break from working full-time and instead I jumped back towards my roots, temporarily—Independent work.
Quitting a stable job in the middle of a global pandemic and recession deserves a separate post, for sure. That is not the point of this post though.
Today, I want to talk about the hard stuff.
Even without factoring in the pandemic, it’s already incredibly challenging to live the life you want. There’s a gazillion mental roadblocks on your way. Mine are:
How do you build a career in a rapidly automating world?
How do you think long-term without losing sight on the present?
How do you deal with the Black Swans of your life without dragging yourself to misery with anxiety?
I could go on, and on.
As a designer who creates digital experiences, I think of mental models all the time. This is my core tool. Not Figma, or Sketch, or Adobe XD. Even deeper than that, I also suspect it is the key to the questions from above. When the lockdown started and the world momentarily stopped moving, I knew this was inevitable: Evolve, or get left behind.
Everyday, I keep telling myself this as I go through my daily quarantine routine: Be more proactive with what you want. Force yourself to think long-term. Exhaust all possibilities. Do everything you can to not lose faith. Don’t just write you are a self-starter, self-motivator because it’s what your future employers would want to see, actually LIVE IT. Start small, and make it scrappy. Treat everything as an experiment. Develop your skin in the game.
And, of course, the most timely lesson I’ve been slowly learning: Never take a crisis for granted.
I firmly believe the world is moving forward, even when it, sometimes, doesn’t feel like it. Evolutions don’t happen overnight, and that includes humans. Every day, we are evolving. It’s just terrifying, and sobering at the same time to witness the world do so, during this historic moment in time.
For this month, here are some of the resources I've been reading, devouring to help me think better about the future.
Articles/Videos
A world without work by Nigel Cameron
Slack CEO, Stewart Butterfield, on the future of work
The Ingredients for Innovation by Farnam Street
Books
“Be emotionally invested in your work; Define success as equal parts loving work, having a positive impact, and making money; and empathize with people— take time to walk in the shoes of others.”
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Every university believes in “excellence,” and hundred-page course catalogs arranged alphabetically according to arbitrary departments of knowledge seem designed to reassure you that “it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you do it well.” That is completely false. It does matter what you do. You should focus relentlessly on something you’re good at doing, but before that you must think hard about whether it will be valuable in the future.”
- Peter Thiel, Zero to One
Quote I couldn’t get out of my mind
“This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live.”
- George Bernard Shaw
I personally found comfort in books (generally business, psychology, memoirs) this entire time in quarantine. I will continue to share some bits and pieces from those that is certainly making an impact to my thinking. Please stay tuned!
Thank you for reading.
Nikki
I welcome any and all feedback for my writing. Would be great to hear from you!