These are idea 'seedlings' that need more water. Strong opinions, loosely held.
What differentiates a good essay and a bad essay? With a great essay, you can see the larger tree that connects all those branches, leaves, and twigs together into a single unit of a 'tree'. A bad essay is where you only see the random assortment of leaves...
My favourite ritual whenever I travel to an Asian country is to try their version of the "chicken and rice", aka "biryani". From Nasi Biryani Alam (Malaysia), to Khao Mok Gai (Thailand), to all the regional variants of biryani found in India. Some are prepared in...
Strongly recommend everyone to keep private notes about people. These could even be some random jotted keywords: "served in the navy", "capuccino lover", "biker", "loves going on long walks", and so on. When private notes accumulate over time in the form of...
Imagine you're building a house. You could break down the act of building into various steps: first comes the foundation, then the framing, then the roofing, and the plumbing, and the wiring, and so on. Or you could try to do it all at once, ordering a jumble...
In the world of nutrition research, contradictory findings are as common as fad diets. One day, a study proclaims the benefits of a low-carb diet for weight loss. The next, another study champions a plant-based diet for overall health. This constant flip-flopping of dietary advice leaves most of us feeling...
Zettels are the best way to connect and preserve ideas. I've tried various tools and systems for online writing, but nothing beats the power of Zettels. What are they, really? They come from the Zettelkasten method, developed by Niklas Luhmann, a German sociologist who was incredibly prolific. He...
Showing proof-of-work as a designer is quite simple. You made an app, you communicated the output product and exhibit how the product evolved over time ranging from the paper napkin sketch, low fidelity, high fidelity prototypes and finally a fully fledged product. The iterations need not just be tangible, but...
I've been hiring people (and conducting more thorough reference checks) more recently now, and I've learned something important: most reference checks are useless. They're like those mandatory training videos you have to watch at big companies. Everyone goes through the motions, but nobody really...
In the book Inspired, Marty Cagan talks about dividing one's day-to-day tasks into three major buckets: people, process and product. I'd experimented with categorising my tasks into similar such buckets based on the framework by Shreyas Doshi: To make this possible within my workflow, I started...
Not starting with a blank slate has been a great productivity boost in my writing. I wrote 50K words in 2024. And I can safely say that these 50K words have been written in a well thought manner, instead of an AI generated word salad. All this, because I'...
I decided to revive a long-lost interest and try my hand at cartooning. But it was an unlikely dream, given my complete lack of artistic talent and the rarity of success stories in that business. So I decided to try something called affirmations, which I will describe in more detail...
While designing health campaigns for Noora Health's work in Indonesia and Bangladesh, I was overseeing the health communications strategy for pregnant and newly-delivered mothers. There were messages in a specific format that needed to be rewritten in a more easy to digest Whatsapp format appealing to the people...
This is a list inspired by Kepano in his blog: 1. What would you do if you had 6 months to live? 2. What would you do if you had a billion dollars? 3. What advice would you give yourself 10 years ago? 4. What do you hope will be...
Brad Adkins, a fellow Indiehacker wears the same Mornino wool t-shirt every day. He has three pairs of shorts, one pair of sandals, and one pair of shoes. Other than that, it's just a jacket and some workout gear. He doesn't like wasting energy thinking about...
Have you head of the Eudaimonia machine? Imagine a one-story, narrow structure, a straightforward rectangle divided into five rooms, in succession. There's no quick escape route here. This design insists that as you move through, you're plunging deeper into the world of intense productivity. You start...
Take a small block of paragraph and sprinkle 8-10 hyperlinks in it— Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec tristique elit sit amet diam fringilla posuere sodales a leo. Cras auctor efficitur purus in suscipit. Sed ornare lectus at nisl dictum semper. Donec efficitur lorem in nisi dapibus...
Product roasts are the best way to enhance one's sensibility around building better products. It's called a "roast" because it often involves a no-holds-barred, brutally honest critique of the product's features, design, user experience, and overall value proposition. In the spirit of...
I recently transitioned from leading a product team in a region to a more centralised role overseeing products across multiple geographies. As part of that transition, I needed to onboard the new product lead of that region, ensuring they were fully briefed While a virtual onboarding could have covered the...
If you think most product managers spend time in meetings, you're mistaken. The larger chunk of a PM's time is spent in preparation for those meetings - having the "meetings before the meeting", "the meeting", and the "meetings after the meeting....
Interview hackers are those who frequently attend interviews and develop a muscle to become better at it. They might not necessarily be good at the actual job
Jakob Nielsen’s heuristics are probably the most-used usability heuristics for the design of interfaces. If you go to their website, you might encounter these dry prescriptive statements as shown in the image. Recently came across this blog by Michael Prestonise and loved the way he had repurposed the old...
Startups are interesting even if most startups fail. I’ve found Patrick Collinson’s argument to be the most convincing: “Part of the reason startups resonate with people is because the outcome is not guaranteed. If it were guaranteed, it would be boring… Whether or not you’re the best...
Design methods are life jackets. Not straight jackets. Structures, whether they’re processes, frameworks, or plans, are excellent tools to navigate complicated problems. They bring efficiency, reduce ambiguity, and offer defaults. However, when dealing with fundamentally complex problems, applying structure too early can lock in outdated notions. Because structures tend...
Initially popularised by McKinsey consultants to draft internal reports, this became quite widespread as a global standard for business writing. Start with the main statement, draw some conclusions and provide some data/facts and figures for further understanding. This could be a simple way in which most Slack updates could...
When it comes to task management, a fundamental principle stands tall: explain the reason before the details of what and how. By letting others know the why behind a task, it facilitates faster completion. Recently, I had a pressing deadline for an urgent activity that needed immediate attention. I had...
‘’What might seem to be merely the initial step — deciding what to work on — is in a sense the key to the whole game’’ — Paul Graham A good start when it comes to product building is half the work done. While running the Build program as a Program Director, a...
Imagine you're about to make a decision that could profoundly impact your health, potentially for years to come. You're not choosing a new diet or exercise routine - you're selecting a personal doctor. It sounds simple, right? After all, they're all qualified...