“Great stories happen to those who can tell them”
- Ira Glass
The Story Rules Content Hub
Welcome to the Story Rules Content Hub – the best place on the web to learn all about storytelling techniques for work. Here’s where you get rich storytelling examples, analyses, viewpoints, interview nuggets, visuals, quotes, and much, much more. To find out how you can make the most of this resource, please watch this 12-minute video.
You can explore this (for now free!) resource in four ways:
Trending from the blog
The Story of Us’ told by the world’s raddest blogger
2022 is going to be a year of massive change for me. I’ll be announcing several new initiatives through the year. Why the change, you may ask? So, I’m constantly tweaking my business model to optimise for the 4Fs. Optimising for the 4Fs Once I was lucky enough to have found my Ikigai, I realised that is not a destination but an ongoing journey (more on that in a later post). And a journey needs a north star. My north star is the 4F framework. When choosing the direction in which I want to take my work, I’m optimising …
My best books and podcasts of 2021
Warm wishes for a healthy, fun and fulfilling 2022 for you and your loved ones! Last year, around this time I had shared a compilation of all the book reviews through the year. It’s a great way to close out one year and welcome the next. Today, I’m sharing two documents with you: A summary of all my Book reviews from 2021 (PDF, 63 pages. I know – this one became a bit of a monster! Last year’s was just 25 pages… I guess I’m enjoying writing longer reviews with more excerpts and analysis) A summary of the Podcast recommendations from 2021 (PDF, 7 pages) It’s …
A framework to test opinions and win arguments (Part 2)
Here’s wishing all of you a Merry Christmas and a safe, memorable and fun New Year celebration ahead! In last week’s post, I shared a foundational framework for testing the strength of your opinions. Here’s a quick summary as a recap: Alright, now let’s take this model out for a test drive. Test-driving the framework with some real opinion pieces I’ve chosen two opinion pieces by respected thinkers. Here’s the first one: 1. ‘Why farmers won, government lost’ by D Subbarao, former Governor, Reserve Bank of India In this fascinating article (PDF of the article for those who can’t …
A framework to test opinions and win arguments (Part 1)
How badly do you want to win arguments at the workplace? With friends? At home? Ok, that was clickbait-y. Instead let me ask – how badly do you want to know the truth, the real truth, about what you’re debating? I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s back up and start with how we form opinions worth arguing about. We form opinions all the time: Which political party to support? What should the government do about the farm laws? Should there be a super-rich tax? How much should we spend on education? The questions need not be at a national level. …
The art and science of insights
Welcome to my content recommendations and reviews for Dec-21: a book, a podcast, articles and a video. Let’s get started. 1. Book a. ‘Seeing What Others Don’t: The Remarkable Ways We Gain Insights’ by Gary Klein Two cops were on a routine patrol when they saw something unusual. Here’s how the author describes what happened next: As they waited for the light to change, the younger cop glanced at the fancy new BMW in front of them. The driver took a long drag on his cigarette, took it out of his mouth, and flicked the ashes onto the upholstery. “Did …
E12: Mahima Vashisht, Storyteller – ‘Womaning in India’
In an old fable, two young fish are swimming in water when they pass by an older fish. The older fish goes, “Morning, boys! How’s the water?” The younger fish just nod politely and continue to swim ahead. But then one of them looks at the other and says, “Hey, what’s ‘water’?” Despite swimming in it all their lives, they didn’t know that there was a name for it. A lot of times, we are living in a state of affairs, which may not be right – but which we take for granted, because it is all around us. It’s our water. …
The most important question before any project
In September this year, I’d taken the popular course, ‘The Art of Clear Writing‘ by Amit Varma. I’d written about him in an earlier post and had highly recommended the course to anyone who needs to write at work. The course was eye-opening for me in many ways. I learnt about the dos and don’ts of word choice, sentence construction, rhythm in writing and other obstacles that impede the reader’s understanding. Oh, but that’s not why I would recommend the course. The real value from Amit Varma’s course Don’t get me wrong – the writing guidelines are valuable. After the …
That moment of blinding insight in a Zoom breakout room
About 10 days back. I’m in a Zoom breakout room of a course that I’m participating in. The coach has given us an exercise and asked us to share our response with each other. It’s my turn. I talk about my ‘ABCD’ Data Story framework. You could tell I’m excited about it. After all it took me several years to distil it to its essence. I’m expecting words on the lines of: “Oh that’s so simple yet clear!”, or “You’ve broken down the topic so well!”. Instead, I get a few points of feedback that make me go: …
E11: Brent Dykes – Author of seminal book on Data Storytelling
Sajith is a VC at Blume Ventures and arguably the most astute observer and thought-leader on India’s vibrant start-up ecosystem. …
The art of stealing well
Hope you had a memorable Diwali celebration with friends and family. Let me know if any of you tried the Story Housie game! Welcome to my content recommendations and reviews for Nov-21: a book, a podcast, articles and a couple of videos. Let’s get started. 1. Book a. ‘Decoding Greatness: The Hidden Strategy for Achieving Extraordinary Success’ by Ron Friedman The year was 1983, and Steve Jobs was incensed. He had realised that a certain Bill Gates of Microsoft had gone ahead and launched his own operating system, something called Windows. Here’s how the author describes what happened next: Jobs was livid. …
