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What does it take to build a successful career? Why should you build a career? These are some of the questions that have been on my mind lately. After doing some thinking, I have concluded that building a career requires grit, consistency, patience, and tenacity. To be successful, you also need a community and some level of support. Co-pilot generated this! But what does it mean to build a career? Simply put, it means developing and advancing one’s professional life over time. This involves setting and pursuing goals, acquiring relevant skills and knowledge, gaining practical experience, and adapting to changing circumstances. Building a career is a journey of continuous learning, personal growth, and professional development, often guided by a sense of purpose and ambition. It encompasses strategic decision-making, networking, and overcoming challenges to achieve success and fulfilment in one’s chosen field or industry. How do you build a career? To achieve this, you need to do your homework: Ask yourself what you are good at and what you need to improve on. Identify the unique skills and knowledge needed for your chosen career path, whether it is in strategy, marketing, revenue, or collaboration. Determine which skills are most important and develop them. Prioritize your task…. To prioritize your tasks effectively, follow these steps: 1. Start by setting clear short-term and long-term goals for your career path. 2. Analyze each task to determine how well it aligns with your career objectives, its urgency, and its potential impact. 3. Create a schedule for completing tasks, prioritizing them based on their importance and urgency. 4. Consistently seek feedback and adjust your priorities as needed based on new information or changes in circumstances. 5. Allocate your time among tasks based on their level of priority. 6. Regularly re-evaluate your priorities to ensure they align with your evolving career aspirations. Building exceptional products …. If you want to design exceptional products that people love, you need to understand what problems people have and what an exceptional solution looks like. You also need to know what makes people love something, what is easy to build, what is hard but possible, what is impossible, and what shape your solution will take. You must also decide what functionality you will enable, how you want people to think about it, how they will discover it, how you will make money from it, who you need to build it, what the end product will look like, and how you will improve it over time. Remember, building a career takes time, effort, and dedication. But with the right mindset, support, and prioritization, you can achieve your goals and build a successful career.

Have you ever wondered how some people are incredibly proficient in their work? The answer is that they have mastered the art of using effective productivity tools that give them a competitive edge. As a professional, one of the keys to success is mastering the art of using effective productivity tools that provide a competitive edge. While talent and natural abilities are important, it is equally essential to keep up with the latest technologies that can help one excel in their work. Below are 5 useful content writing tools that you can use to enhance your productivity and elevate your writing skills. Grammarly: If you're looking to improve your writing skills and create top-notch content,  Here’s why Grammarly is  worth your try: Grammarly provides a range of features to enhance writing quality and productivity. It identifies spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. The software suggests better word selections and encourages the use of active voice in sentences. It improves sentence structure, readability, and reader interaction. Grammarly's AI writing support helps in producing top-notch and relevant content. Hemingway: This is another amazing tool you can use to improve your writing. Although often compared to Grammarly, here are reasons you would love it: Hemingway offers formatting tools to enhance the visual presentation of the writing, ensuring it is well-structured and visually appealing. The app provides readability scores and suggestions for improving the overall readability of the text, making it more accessible to a wider audience. It highlights passive voice constructions, adverbs, and excessive wordiness, encouraging concise and impactful writing. Trello: Is a highly adaptable tool that provides a vast range of customization options for teams involved in content writing. This tool can be used for managing projects, collaborating with team members, planning content calendars, or brainstorming ideas. Trello's unique boards, lists, and cards system allows you to visually organize and prioritize writing projects, thereby streamlining your content creation process and boosting productivity. Tribescaler: Is a dedicated content creation tool tailored to assist users in crafting engaging hooks for social media platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn. Its functionalities include an AI-powered Hook Generator, a Hook Refiner, and a comprehensive Hook Library containing a multitude of hooks spanning diverse categories. Autocrit: Is a writing tool that caters specifically to fiction writers. It is known for its ability to help writers improve their manuscripts by providing detailed style and quality reports that are benchmarked against top-selling authors in each genre.  The tool offers over 20 different editing options, ranging from dialogue to eliminating cliches, and guides writers through the editing process. Although it is not a substitute for a human editor, AutoCrit is a valuable resource for fiction writers seeking to refine their work. Its insights are based on a vast database of fiction books. This one is a bonus! answerthepublic.com If you're looking for fresh and captivating content ideas that align with your audience's preferences and queries, Answer the Public can be a valuable resource. It provides a wide range of insights into what people are searching for online, allowing you to tailor your content to their needs and interests. By leveraging this tool, you can enhance your content strategy and engage your readers more effectively. Answer the Public is a great source of new and engaging content ideas that cater to your audience's interests and questions. I hope these tools will help you in your writing journey and enable you to create content that is both engaging and informative.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed while navigating the design journey, just like me? Recently, I started to ask myself what I could do to ease the situation. During my search, I came across the 80/20 rule and thought it would be great to share it with everyone. After all, I did promise to share my journey and not keep anything to myself. Being an entry-level designer can be challenging, especially with the constant influx of new design developments, trends, and innovations. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed or distracted by the endless possibilities. However, there is a simple principle that can help you work smarter and achieve better results: the 80/20 rule that I mentioned earlier. What is the 80/20 rule? The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that roughly 80% of your outcomes result from 20% of your causes. In other words, a small portion of your actions or inputs will have a disproportionate impact on your results or outputs. This principle can be applied to anything, including design. For entry-level or junior designers starting their careers, applying the 80/20 rule or Pareto Principle can be especially valuable in prioritizing efforts and maximizing impact. How do you manage this complexity and ensure focused growth in your career? Focus on the most impactful and valuable aspects of your work. To do this means you have an idea of what this means for you, and this could be; prioritizing mastering fundamental design principles, tools, and techniques. It could also mean focusing on building a solid understanding of user-centred design principles. Recognize the primary area of interest within the design industry and concentrate efforts there initially. I use the word initially because I believe that being a generalist has a significant advantage (I will explain this in another article). Develop a system of continuous learning; these should include both short-term and long-term goals. Break this down into manageable segments, focusing on one skill or concept at a time. Prioritize areas that align with your career aspirations and remember to pace yourself; there is always something to learn. Instead of trying to cover all design trends, gradually incorporate new skills and styles into your portfolio. Pay attention to quality over quantity. To excel in your field, you must discover the important 20% of information that can influence your success. This knowledge is unique to you and can only be gained by understanding yourself and your goals. Keep in mind that the design industry is vast, and it’s impossible to know everything.

Identifying my niche was one piece of advice I received while I was still a design student. I’ve also heard and read in podcasts and posts that having a specialty offers you an advantage. To be honest, given the state of the industry right now, I believe that being a generalist can be a more constructive approach, particularly for an entry-level designer. I have witnessed many individuals who started as generalists and have achieved great success in their careers by transitioning from traditional design roles. Why Generalist? As an entry-level designer, you may feel pressure to specialise in a specific area of design to be more competitive and attractive to potential employers or clients. However, being a generalist, or having a broad range of skills and knowledge across different domains, can be more beneficial for your career development and growth. Being a generalist enables you to work on different types of projects and challenges, explore your interests and strengths, and discover new ones. It helps you adapt to changing needs and contexts, as design is constantly evolving and responding to new technologies, trends, and user expectations. You can also develop your style and voice, express your creativity and personality, and find your niche. While being a specialist offers a clear career path and allows you to establish expertise in a particular field, embracing a generalist approach can provide a unique set of advantages. It creates a sense of curiosity that helps you excel at seeing the bigger picture and connecting the dots across various domains. Moreover, it helps you adapt to rapidly changing industries where a hyper-specialized skill set might become obsolete or less relevant if the industry evolves in a different direction. There are numerous examples of successful generalist designers who have shown the perks of being a generalist. Among them is Don Norman, a usability engineer and cognitive scientist who has worked on a variety of goods, including computers, appliances, automobiles, and doors. On subjects including design, psychology, technology, and human aspects, he has authored books and articles. In addition, he founded and provided consulting services for IDEO, Apple, and Hewlett-Packard. He is renowned for his ability to close the gap between theory and practice and for taking a user- and human-centred approach to problem-solving. Taking on a variety of challenging projects, working with and learning from people with different backgrounds and perspectives, keeping up with new tools, technologies, trends, and best practices, and exhibiting adaptability and resilience in the face of uncertainty and complexity are all advisable steps to take as an entry-level designer who wants to become a generalist. Although specialisation provides a distinct and targeted career path, adopting a generalist approach can provide a unique set of benefits. It’s not a question of one being fundamentally better than the other; rather, it’s a reflection of personal tastes, career aspirations, and the demands of a constantly changing industry.

Discipline is a word that many people underestimate and overlook. However, discipline is one of the most important and powerful qualities that anyone can have. Discipline is the ability to control oneself and one’s actions, to follow a certain order or rule, and to achieve one’s goals and dreams. Discipline is essential for every aspect of life. It takes discipline to live, to get out of bed every morning, to show up for yourself every day without fail (even if that means taking a break), to stay healthy, to build a career, to overcome any obstacle, to fight the temptation to stay in your comfort zone, and to keep learning and unlearning. Discipline is not something that is given to us, but something that we have to cultivate and practice ourselves. Discipline has many benefits and advantages for us. It helps us to be more focused, organized, productive, and efficient. It also helps us to develop self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem. Discipline enables us to grow, improve, and achieve our full potential. It also makes us more resilient, adaptable, and flexible in the face of challenges and changes. Discipline is not easy, but it is worth it. It requires commitment, dedication, perseverance, and patience. It also requires sacrifice, hard work, and sometimes pain. Discipline may seem boring, restrictive, or harsh at times, but it is liberating, rewarding, and fulfilling in the long run. Discipline is not a punishment, but a gift. It is not a burden, but a blessing. It is not a weakness, but a strength. It is your key to success and happiness in life. It is a power and value that we should all cherish and embrace. As we embark on our various journeys to be a better version of ourselves in careers, relationships, or finances, we must remember to embrace the discomfort that discipline brings to us because that is how we grow.