https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU30bHF-rlI If you are a product professional, the above talk by Ryan Singer is an important one to watch. In his 30-minute talk, he presents an overview of a product design technique called Breadboarding. Breadboarding is a powerful technique for sketching out a product or a feature, centered around J. ...

A challenge can be an opportunity. While this statement seems obvious at first glance, I’ve come to realize that it’s really hard to embrace both in a personal life and in the business world. Below, I will explain why it is hard, and how to overcome the habit of unconsciously neglecting challenges. We face many challenges of many kinds...

As a software developer, I used to think “This new library (or pattern/architecture/framework) is so cool. Let’s try that at work.” And tried to fit that stuff to the system I was working on. “It’s cool because the solution is cool. I am cool because it’s cool.” More often than not, this kind of solution-first approach ends up adding s...

Some of you are people pleasers. A survey shows about 50% of Americans identify themselves as people pleasers. Truth to be told, I am one of them. And in my early days, I was a people pleaser to a problematic extent. My people pleasing behaviors were not helping me develop my own values. It was not good. Some decades passed. I am now i...

In the commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, Steve Jobs said, “I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” Many of ...