is your career a MVP? 🍵 design tea #33
Minimum lovable carers for the win!
Hi there - how have you been? 👋
Sorry I haven’t been in your inbox every week lately. I have a few things going on the side which need a lot of my personal time and energy.
All good things - I look forward to sharing them with you in their own time.
I won’t lie and say it has been easy prioritizing - prioritizing between my fulltime job, side endeavours, career, writing, family, mental health, friends, reading phew
I find myself applying a lot of what I do at work to my personal life. Finding the quick wins with most impact, differentiating needs vs wants, settling for a MVP..
..and then I realized we can almost think of our careers as products. Humor me, and follow along.
💎 double-diamond for career discovery
I bet almost all our careers can be mapped on a double-diamond. Beloved part of all design portfolios - it’s considered a visual representation of innovation.
The first few jobs nobody really knows what they are doing (irrespective of what they say). Though I do feel folks who ambitiously diversify in this first quadrant, look more satisfied with where there are at the end.
At the end of first quadrant, you end up jobs that are more situation drive, like most feasible viable jobs to pay off the debts, or rent a house. This is where most folks stop - at their minimum-viable careers.😅
But I feel the true fun lies in second half. Driven by gut and passion, this is where you get to start building an empire for yourself.
🧩 finding the PMF (Product Market Fit)
The million-dollar race run and lost by several startups each quarter - you get your shot at it too with your career. Some also call it ikigai.
While it’s fun to be changing lanes or try and replicate lanes by stalking LinkedIn profiles and following Twitter gurus - at some point you have to start building your own.
What is it that you want to be doing long term, you are actually good at, and Twitter is gonna eat it up. A clear value prop.
💛 minimum viable career → maximum lovable career
Reasons you need to strive to be in love with your career
A. life is too short to be doing things you don’t love
B. it’s really hard to stand out if you are just doing what everyone else is doing.
It’s only when you start bring in your USP, that your career story makes it way to profitability.
And the most contrary idea here is you don’t need to be doing more things to be successful. You need to be doing less things which are more you. It’s a process of selecting and eliminating - kinda like double diamond.
Oops looks like every tech bro out there, we managed to circle back to our point at the end.
What do you think? Too cringe?
💔 It’s heartbreaking to see the situation fold out in mainstream media this week. I have close friends being affected, and it’s been so hard to imagine how they are keeping it together while life seems to go as normal. Please protect your mental health, check on your friends, and be there for them. I found this Twitter thread to be really good overview. x
📝 10 Principles for a worth design career by
Always read such blogs with a bit of caution, but I loved this one. Genuine, practical, and rooted in reality.
📝 Weekly Prep by
I have been on a lookout to upgrade my notion setup, so I really enjoyed finding nuggets in how organizes his brain/life.
📹 Beckham on Netflix
I got Victoria’s autobiography from a charity shop last year and found it hilarious, so I watched the docu-series for her. Very cool Ted Lasso x pop culture in 90s vibe, would recommend as a background watch.
📕 Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros
This book has made me fall in love with romance fantasy again. If you are hoping to read one more book this year, try this one!
📸 Moment
My girl gang hosted this lovely sit down dinner - and it was so nice to escape my mile long to-do list to just sit and eat and laugh. Also, I am extra and I love that my friends are extra extra!!
Talk next week,
Chhavi
I had been pondering over this for quite sometime, everything just resonated ✨