The Looking Glass: What Incentives Good Work?

Humbling stories, market dynamics, right playbooks at the wrong times, and other threads.

Dear friends,

The month slipped away from me like red leaves from trees. It’s been an eventful one! I have stared into the dark recesses of a Twitter mob and lived to tell the tale. I have celebrated 2000+ Amazon reviews on my book. I have participated in an Angry Birds Halloween skit (what? That was big 10 years ago? Tell that to my kids.) I hope you’re making nice with cozy knit blankets this autumnal season.

The theme of the past few weeks in these threads? What incentivizes good work?

Enjoy.

Our superpower for cognitive dissonance.

Some examples of the contradictions that race through our minds daily.

Julie Zhuo @joulee

Us: I love it when a colleague asks me for help because I feel useful and generous and I can think of no better use of time than empowering someone else. Also us: I avoid asking my colleagues for help because they must think of me as a huge imposition and burden on their time.

The Right Playbook at the Wrong Time is still Wrong

4 steps to avoiding the pitfalls of misapplying “playbooks.”

Julie Zhuo @joulee

The 2 greatest clarifying questions in product development: "On what time frame? Under what circumstance?" Everything that is true can become false, and vice versa, depending on how far in the future you are looking.

Everyone, no matter how high they’ve climbed, has humbling stories to share

Why don’t we all tell ours?

Julie Zhuo @joulee

Do others get the impression that you've "made it"? If so, share a humbling story about yourself when you first began, and one from recent memory. No matter where you are in the journey, everyone struggles with self-doubt in the face of new challenges. Let's normalize that.

Market Dynamics and Careers

And why I really really admire video game designers.

Julie Zhuo @joulee

It's kind of an open secret among tech designers that the most cutting-edge user experience work tends to come from the video game industry. Alas, video game designers earn much less than FAANG designers. Thread below on market dynamics + careers 👇

3 Ingredients for Creative Work (and how to get them)

Note: there are no mention of muses or candles in this thread.

Julie Zhuo @joulee

If you want to do truly creative work, there are 3 essential ingredients: 1) You understand deeply the fundamentals of your craft 2) You believe you have interesting ideas to contribute 3) You believe you have more to lose from not creating than creating something bad Thread👇