Bye-bye productivity, hello creativity!
This week was crazy – I did:
- A half-day workshop in Pune on Monday
- Flew to Delhi and did a couple of online sessions in the second half on Tuesday
- A full-day workshop in Noida on Wednesday
- A masterclass on Storytelling in a non-profit event in Delhi in the first half and a book-launch event of a dear friend and mentor in Mumbai in the evening on Thursday (I wrote this newsletter in the flight to Mumbai)
- Took a late-night flight and conducted a full-day workshop in Bangalore on Friday
Crazy as the week was, of all the events, one was closest to my heart – the Mumbai book launch.
My mentor and good friend Deepak Jayaraman has just released a book, ‘Play to Potential‘, a detailed guide to living a fulfilled life.
In the book, Deepak has profiled six individuals who are, in his opinion, striving to live to their full potential. Deepak has been kind enough to include me as one of the six people (major imposter syndrome alert!).
You can get the book here. Happy reading!
And now, on to the newsletter.
Welcome to the ninety-first edition of ‘3-2-1 by Story Rules‘.
A newsletter recommending good examples of storytelling across:
- 3 tweets
- 2 articles, and
- 1 long-form content piece
Let’s dive in.
𝕏 3 Tweets of the week
| Source: X |
Should we be impressed? Or scared?
| Source: X |
There could not be a more stark contrast between what cities contribute to the nation versus what resources they are able to raise on their own.
| Source: X |
The best conversations are long, uninterrupted ones with a lot of generous attention being lavished by all parties.
📄 2 Articles of the week
a. Roger Federer’s tribute to Rafael Nadal on X
Nadal recently retired and Federer paid a beautiful tribute on X. He starts with the impact Rafa had on his game:
Let’s start with the obvious: you beat me – a lot. More than I managed to beat you. You challenged me in ways no one else could. On clay, it felt like I was stepping into your backyard, and you made me work harder than I ever thought I could just to hold my ground. You made me reimagine my game—even going so far as to change the size of my racquet head, hoping for any edge.
I loved the use of subtle humour, where Federer is admiring but also gently ribbing Rafa:
I’m still grateful you invited me to Mallorca to help launch the Rafa Nadal Academy in 2016. Actually, I kind of invited myself. I knew you were too polite to insist on me being there, but I didn’t want to miss it. You have always been a role model for kids around the world, and Mirka and I are so glad that our children have all trained at your academies. They had a blast and learned so much—like thousands of other young players. Although I always worried my kids would come home playing tennis as lefties.
These two are a role model for sporting rivalry – may they inspire many more!
b. ‘One minute blog: the Elon special’ by Shaan Puri
I loved how Shaan Puri frames the impact of Elon Musk on the recent US election result, by giving the ‘full backstory’.
He starts the story from 2020, when, he says, Musk was not political
1/ Back in 2020 – Elon is not political. He’s an engineer. He just wants to build things. Cars. Rockets. Tunnels.
2/ A congresswoman in California wakes up and decides to tweet “F*ck Elon Musk”.
3/ Elon (who has Tesla HQ in California, providing thousands of jobs) replies “message received” and moves his companies to Texas.
I didn’t realise the extent of regulatory scrutiny/oversight that Musk received.
| Source: Shaan Puri blog |
Shaan may be over-simplifying here, but this makes for a great story, right?
11/ So to summarize (we’re halfway there). At this point, Elon is backed into a corner. The Democrats keep trying to attack him – through lawsuits or regulation.
So what does he do? He goes ALL IN on Trump for 3 months.
12/ He moves to Pennsylvania. Starts giving speeches. Gives away $1M per day ($150M total). Hosts town halls on X. Gets Trump on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
The richest, most busy man in the world – decides to become an unpaid campaign volunteer for Trump.
And here’s Shaan’s key insight – Musk decided to go all-in:
14/ But Elon doesn’t process risk the same way the rest of us. Most people saw a 50/50 election and thought it was “too risky to go all in”.
Whereas Elon sees risk differently. He’s a gamer, and the game theory is:
– If I do nothing – the Democrats might win
– If I do a little – it might not have an impact
– If I go all in – I can tilt the odds from 50/50 to be in Trump’s favor
15/ This is what Elon always does. This is the Elon Method:
– Figure out what is the most Existential Problem
– Identify the key lever (eg. PA swing state)
– Go all in. Burn all boats. Throw your entire weight at it
We all know the final outcome, and Shaan does the basic math for us:
17/ He spent $150M out of pocket… but his companies are worth $1 Trillion. If this gives his companies even a 1% goodwill boost – then he spent $150M to get $10B in gains. It’s a +EV decision.
Fascinating perspective.
📘 1 long-form read of the week
a. ‘The End of Productivity’ by Sari Azout
Sari is the founder of ‘Sublime’, a creativity-focused note-taking and writing app.
Her essay makes a critical point – in the age of Gen-AI, what will matter for knowledge workers is not our productivity (how quickly can we work or how much output can we crank out), but the creativity of our thinking:
In a world where we can outsource productivity to technology, the people who reap the biggest rewards aren’t those who work the fastest.
They’re the people who make things that are wonderful, original, weird, emotionally resonant, and authentic. As our feeds become flooded with instant, AI-generated content, the most dangerous thing you can do is play it safe.
The era of standardized productivity and note-taking tools may be coming to an end:
Productivity tools shape our thinking in ways that favor standardization, efficiency, and predictability. They demand structure before inspiration has a chance to strike. They ask for timelines when the problem itself is still hazy. But creativity is not linear. Often, it involves struggling down several blind alleys before finding the right path.
Sari uses a simple classification of information…:
Information that is worth saving usually falls into two buckets:
– Administrative information: The daily minutiae of our lives (e.g., grocery lists, meeting notes, to-do lists)
– Creative information: Information that fuels our projects and ideas (e.g., that perfect quote for a presentation, the scientific study that inspires your next big essay, the podcast episode that sparks a new business idea)
…and she contends that for admin info, a normal search bar is sufficient. But for creative information, the standard note-taking tools are not built to optimise for creative connections. I loved this analogy:
If you think of tools as places where you spend your time, then Linear is a factory production line, Asana a conveyor belt, Evernote an office cubicle, and X an overcrowded bar. A tool built for creativity should feel like a sunlit artist’s studio—spacious and inspiring, with windows you can open to allow the unexpected in.
Sari’s concept of the three steps in the creative process is similar to the 3Rs model (Read, Reflect, wRite) that I use. But I like the idea of connections better than that of just ‘reflection’:
…the creative process typically involves three steps:
– Collecting: Gathering interesting ideas
– Connecting: Drawing connections and organizing materials
– Creating: Producing something new
She implies that most note-taking tools only focus on the ‘Collecting’ aspect, when they should also facilitate the Connecting and Creating requirements. She uses a lovely example of adding a quote to a normal notes app (without any connections) in contrast to her Sublime app – in which that quote is read by AI, which then prompts connections with other notes.
I haven’t checked the app yet, but I think something like this is critical for creators like us.
Here’s a lovely quote from the essay to wrap up this email:
When it comes to AI, we need to aim higher than the question: “What if you could press a button to generate an essay?” AI can produce infinite amounts of content; quantity is its game. Quality, intention, taste, originality, vision—that’s where we come in.
That’s all from this week’s edition.
Photo by Diana Polekhina on Unsplash
