Visuals increase the velocity of your message by an order of magnitude.
You can (and should) get better at writing, speaking, selling, etc. All brilliant skills with massive leverage.

But realizing that "design" isn't a skill reserved for art school or design specific careers, is a ridiculously powerful force multiplier for your ideas.
The barriers that used to exist: expensive software, tuition, certification, etc are no longer there.

Fire up YouTube, crack open Figma and experiment.

99/100 people will never do this because they aren't "creative."
But, those same people will often see the merit in laboring for a 1% improvement skills that everyone else is already practicing.

Design + anything is a massive, massive advantage.
Like anything else, there are people who have been practicing this skill for decades and it'll feel terrible comparing your work to theirs (but that's also how you know you have taste.)
I used to believe this wasn't true. It's something you have or you don't (idiotic and incorrect.)

But I've since seen (and I mean this very literally) hundreds of people go from zero to one as designers in very compressed periods of time.
Some have switched careers and now make a living with design, others have massively augmented/differentiated what they were already doing.

I'm yet to meet anyone that didn't start seeing more opportunity after spending some time learning the fundamentals of design.
In the same way expanding your vocabulary allows you to more accurately express what you want to say, design adds an entire new dimension to your ability to communicate.
A sketch on a napkin can do the same amount of communicative lifting as a page covered in wall of text.

That's the power of good design. Saying more with less.
But we discourage people from publishing the equivalent of napkin sketches because they aren't "pretty."

Pretty has something to do with it, but it's the last 10%.

The first 90% is the ability to better communicate an idea.
If you want to learn, I want to help.

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More from @jackbutcher

6 Dec
Publishing your work is a force multiplier for opportunity.
An unfair advantage of a “creative” career - the table stakes expectation that you show up to an interview with proof of work.

This practice is massively under leveraged in most other industries.
“Hello I’d like a job as a graphic designer please.”

“Show me your work.”
Read 5 tweets
2 Dec
Arbitrage makes the world go round.
This is an exclusively financial concept to most, but I like to think of it as it applies to value in general.

What can you do for someone that they couldn't (or wouldn't) do previously?

That's an arbitrage opportunity.
The ability to spot arbitrage opportunities in a spreadsheet or a financial terminal ultimately results in the same outcome as identifying a need for a product in an underserved market:

Profit.
Read 7 tweets
2 Dec
Sell your sawdust: (thread)
One of the fundamental ideas behind building reputation online is consistently generating proof of work.

The beauty of this idea is that most people are already doing it (they're just not sharing it).
Everything you do is valuable to two audiences:

1. Clients will trust that you can do it for them.
2. Customers will trust that you can teach them how to do it.
Read 13 tweets
23 Nov
Mistakes are the price of entry.
I think it would be good if we collectively decided that the majority of things we categorize as mistakes are simply the necessary stumbling blocks between being bad at something and being competent.
Celebrate mistake makers, they fail so you don’t have to.
Read 6 tweets
21 Nov
Product is the answer to frequently experienced problems, content is the answer to frequently asked questions.
The questions you get asked most frequently are the signals that can help direct the things you publish.
The people you meet as a result of the things you publish will provide the insight you need to develop product.
Read 5 tweets
20 Nov
One of the biggest barriers to earning a good living is refusing to work "for free."
If you want to create the leverage to get paid more, produce proof without permission.
I'm not advocating for underpaying anyone - quite the opposite.

You determine your market value by what you can prove.

By waiting for permission, you generate less proof.

By generating less proof, you have less leverage.
Read 5 tweets

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