Learning Nerd’s Diary #04 ❤️‍🩹

Jul 6

Hi folks!

Welcome back to the the Learning Nerd’s Diary.

I had a lot of time to think this week so I come with a lot of questions and musings. So bear with me if some of these are half-baked -

3Rs - rest, recover and reflect

I injured my foot and was asked to rest it out for most of the week. To top it off, work was also kinda slow. Given the forced free time on my hands and nowhere to go (literally), I ended up thinking about how much we take for granted. And I don’t just mean physically but also time, work, people among many other things. And if you’re wondering what that looks like I have just the visual -

Coolest Things I Learnt This Week

Swiss knife vs Cleaver: We’ve all heard the generalist vs specialist debate. I’ve been thinking whether this is binary or is it more of a choice you make - “I want to do only this” vs “I’m open to doing a bit of everything". If I look back at my own career, there have been times where I have chosen to be a generalist aka a Swiss Knife and there have been times where I have chosen to be a Cleaver aka a Cleaver. But does everybody have the luxury to make that choice? Holler at me if you want to chat about this!

Saying goodbye to iteration?: Last year during the pandemic, I tried to make my own sourdough bread. TRY being the key operating word here, because 3 months & kilos of flour later - I still didn’t manage to bake a single loaf successfully. To top it all my starter Panda (see image below) died while moving back home and I just gave up after that. Looking back at this rendezvous with sourdough, I can’t help but feel a little bitter. Did I not try hard enough? Was I doing something wrong?

Iteration is a word that is glorified quite a bit. It’s a term I’m guilty of using a lot too - often as a bandaid “Yes we will iterate on that”. We don’t talk enough about if and when it is okay to stop iteration. Why is stopping equated to not trying enough?

Therapy by doing : My love for craft is what got me to take up product design in college. There is just something meditative and therapeutic about doing something with your hands. I had an absolutely crazy last week and this is pretty much the only thing that kept me sane! Here is a peak -