Producing highly creative work requires one to abandon this mystic pursuit and all its upshots along with it
When we learn about Zen or a “flow state” we think of flow as the magical place that writers can get to. The idea is simple: The writer sits at a keyboard, perhaps surrounded by ambient music, and the words flow effortlessly from his or her fingertips.
In reality, we need to be open to a flow state, but we must never think it is natural, sustainable, or worse, necessary for us to deliver our best work.
The purpose of a writer is to write, not to surrender to the fear of creating the mediocre. We’ve long known that only…
The signaling theory in marketing: How process-driven efforts can lead to more heartfelt engagements
We’ve all been there: you open your inbox to a newsletter full of links. Well, they’re not all links, but chances are good that if you opened the message, they would have been.
Just as they consume our energy in getting us to decide on the trivial matter that is which email subject to click on, which podcast to tune into, which tweet to retweet, or which blog post to share, content management systems (CMS) are also designed with precisely this task in mind: to consume our time. …
This is the subtitle to the article you’re about to read (or skip)
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
Most of us don’t have the luxury to ease off living at the dizzying pace of design, production, and marketing trends. As a consequence, we become averse to asking too many questions, leading to the justification of the intricate entities we create.
It is no surprise that many people took up the above maxim as a personal credo, and often going off-point to evince that simplicity is the only real sophistication.
Simplicity, however, can be expressed most strikingly such that it becomes impossible to ignore. It need not demand a life…
Quora blurbs
Well, it depends on how you’re approaching this whole thing. With technological advancements, the processes involved in setting up and running a business have become simpler individually.
On the whole, it’s only gotten harder.
In the olden days, it might be a big deal to begin a business, any business. There were so many middlemen (think what publishers were to creators, for instance). These middlemen might be a drag in how everything moves, often causing one to relinquish a lot of the control in running a business — among other problems.
The middlemen funnel to executing any strategy in the…
How exclusivity drives purchase
The brain is a fascinating and tricky thing.
I was watching the first season of the children’s show Looney Tunes with my seven-year-old sister, laughing and having a good time — not worrying about anything — when my eyes caught a sign across from a motel where the cartoon characters Bugs and Daffy were staying. It was a small eatery with the sign Eat Me written on its entrance.
My mind leaped. Billions of signals flashed in my brain. There I was, thinking of another time where I had read a similar sign. Eat Me! Where had I seen this…
How brands like Substack stood up to the giants in their niche
The adage “be the company you keep” has been used many times throughout my life. You probably say it yourself when you talk about how a friendship is kept or a job thrives. I know I do. It’s something everyone in any artistic pursuit should be aware of — including starting and growing a company.
Everyone that’s ever taken such pursuance was at one time or the other faced with the worrisome anxiety of getting copied by others. It is unsettling to realize that it only takes a spark moment for another to see through what you came up with…
The masters to the art of practical storytelling
We slowly develop the habit of aligning our core values with other humans until it became an intuition. And as we grow through the ocean of the ages, it gets even stronger, soiling itself amidst our deepest insecurities. Hence, all the stories we believe in from when we were kids to date carry a similar notion.
This is the same for a villager scouring to feed his livestock in the darkest of the forest as it is for a hedge fund billionaire in Wall Street. Behind the Dior suits and fancy neckties and sexy rides is our hope for an…
A few days ago, I was watching a course by the University of Maryland on Coursera about venture financing, when a write-up of 2014 was recommended to me by the instructor. I clicked through, with an enormous expectation to get wowed, and wasn’t disappointed . I have recently taken a liking for reading old articles and really enjoying it.
The article, titled “The New Venture Landscape” was written by one Manu Kumar (a firestarter that one is!), …
A look at Vrbo’s campaign series about togetherness
Marketing has always been a tangled experience to venture into. Powerful brands like Twitter still make decisions that make you loudly wonder about their choices. If you’ve been following trends in the marketing industry, the turn of events in advertising (especially) will have you questioning paragons you’ve believed in your entire life.
In the last decade, online paid ads have transformed how attention is harnessed by brands across the globe. Reaching an audience through local means has become outdated. Whether or not that is good news is a story for another day.
It has become rare to run an unplanned…
From sweeping floors to becoming the greatest moneymaker in modern finance
Imagine gathering all the over two thousand billionaires of the world in a large hall and asking them the same questions about their success. It is reasonable to assume they will all likely tell us the same thing. The irony, however, is the opposite. No two people are with the same story — not even twins, and certainly not strangers of different backgrounds, race, hustle culture, and distinct view of how everything works.
When it comes to comprehending concepts, say how one becomes a billionaire, for instance, we humans are used to believing in a version of a story we…
Al'ameen Si
Marketing and startups, especially when there is a touch of tech, are things I adore. Everything I publish is worth your time. I promise.
