💎 Friday Gems (Creative Identity, Will To Learn > Good Prompting, Do Not Give Up!)
The will to learn something yourself will be much more important than a couple of hours training in effective prompting patterns.
Happy Friday, Dear Readers!
I want to thank each of you for your support and encouragement through the ups and downs since starting this newsletter. 💜
Your kind words help me more than you can imagine, and I hope this newsletter helps you continually learn, grow, and see things in a new light.
Feel free to share any feedback, comments, or words of encouragement; I need lots of those. 😀
💎 Here are the gems I found this week:
The Creative Identity Crisis
Prompting Isn’t The Most Important Skill
Creative Work Takes Time: DO NOT GIVE UP!!!
A Gem of a Quote
A Gem of a Song
The Creative Identity Crisis
Source:
in
We wanted the seat, but we didn’t understand what it entailed. Now we’re sitting at the table where big decisions are being made. But to hold on to our place here, we have to embrace our creative side while making room for the logical, analytical perspective, too. In our work. In ourselves.
Early in my design career, I walked around with blinders on. For me, the visual side of design was important, and nothing else mattered. Learning about business, metrics, and finance seemed extraneous and unnecessary for me to learn about. In fact, I actively shut out and shunned any opportunity to learn about those topics.
Which is why I felt stagnant in my career back then. I severely limited my abilities, impact, and career as a designer by only focusing on the visual aspect of design.
A few years ago, I realized being a designer is much more than just moving pixels; it’s being a partner, a collaborator, a supporter, and a challenger who leads with curiosity to understand better the context they are designing in. This includes understanding the people, the teams, the systems, the context, the finances, the metrics, the goals, the challenges, and the obstacles both from the customers' and the businesses' points of view.
As Mia puts it,
Embracing business is not loss; it’s amplifying. It’s helping us do more of what we love.
A mindset shift was needed to tap the power within and become a strategic designer who can move ideas forward together to achieve business and customer goals.
With this new expanded identity as a strategic designer, a new fire has been lit within me, and I feel more grounded as I see the impact I have when I apply my whole self to a business challenge.
This creative mindset shift has been a career-saving realization.
If you’re a designer who is at a crossroads in your career and you are tired of being boxed in, then take a moment to read through Mia’s post and start to change the image and identity you have as a designer to grow and evolve into an impactful and strategic designer.
Reach out if you want to discuss this post.
💎 Prompting Isn’t The Most Important Skill
Source: O’Reilly
AI tools won’t eliminate programming, but they’ll put more stress on higher-level activities: understanding user requirements, understanding software design, understanding the relationship between components of a much larger system, and strategizing about how to solve a problem. (To say nothing of debugging and testing.)
Admittedly, I’m not a Chat GPT or MidJourney user, so crafting the perfect prompt is not something I have spent much time on. However, I do understand the importance of writing a good prompt for AI to deliver quality results. This article brings up some important things to remember about AI, writing prompts, and the real skills needed in the age of AI,
First, I realized just how involved prompt engineering is; it’s basically writing a computer program with all the carefully crafted instructions in English instead of a computer language. So before you even start writing a prompt, you need to have expertise in the topic you are researching.
There’s surprisingly little magic here. But it’s important to take a step back and think about what chain of thought requires: you need to tell the AI how to solve your problem, step by step, which means that you first need to know how to solve your problem.
Secondly, AI is only a tool. The true expertise and wisdom lie with the human, not the machine.
You need to be engaged with the subject matter, not the AI.
Lastly, using AI as a shortcut to skip the hard part of putting in the time to learn and deeply understand a topic is a surefire way to irrelevance. The desire and the hunger to gain the knowledge ourselves, first and foremost, will help us use AI to its full potential. But first, we must have the ‘will to learn’ and a ‘wanting to know’ drive deep within us.
In the long run, the will to learn something yourself will be much more important than a couple of hours training in effective prompting patterns.
What has your experience been like with writing prompts for AI? Do you agree or disagree with the points made in the article? Share your thoughts in the comments.
💎 Creative Work Takes Time: DO NOT GIVE UP!!!
I came across this quote by Ira Glass, the host and producer of the NPR show This American Life. He is a master storyteller, so his message hits home.
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.
But there is this gap.
For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer.
And your taste is why your work disappoints you.
A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.
Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have.
We all go through this.
And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.
Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.
It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions.
And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met.
It’s gonna take awhile.
It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass
Let’s hear it directly from Ira Glas in this video.
If there was ever a message I needed to tattoo under my eyelids, it’s ‘DO NOT GIVE UP!!!!’
Wow, I needed to hear this today. Whether you’re a beginner or in the middle of honing your craft, know that becoming good at your chosen craft takes time. The gap from beginner to mastery is large, and the most important things to remember are,
Do not give up!
Do a lot of work!
These two points are critical, and as a result where, many of us (looking at you, Rizwan) trip up by giving up too early. Instead of thinking about being good, put in the time, effort, and commitment to practice and be kind and patient with yourself. ✊🏽
A Gem of a Quote
'Is it hard?' Not if you have the right attitudes. It’s having the right attitudes thats hard.
A Gem of a Song
40 Love by DJ Koze is a song that took me by surprise. His mixing in a nail-biting tennis volley makes you feel like you are on the court, feeling the intensity of the players as they fight to win the volley.
40 Love is also a new addition to the Low Fidelity Spotify playlist. A playlist to get you in the zone.
That’s it for this week’s gems. Do you have a gem you would like to share? Send it my way.
I’m thankful that you read this far.
Have a fantastic weekend!
P.S. Please don't hesitate to hit replay and say hello!✌🏽