Welcome to the Story Rules Content Hub – the second best resource to learn all about storytelling techniques for work (after ‘Story Rules‘, my comprehensive book on the topic!).
In this Hub, 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:
Two weeks back I wrote about how the Industrial Revolution had been propelled by a bunch of hardware (energy, materials) and software innovations (people and their skills). On the software side, the Japanese management principles pioneered by Toyota Motor Company formed the predominant stack that has powered efficiency and scale in the world of manufacturing (and now, fittingly, even software development)! But the world has moved from the Industrial to the Knowledge Era. An era which needs different hardware (computers, smartphones, the internet) and software. Now there are various aspects to this ‘software’ of knowledge work, but they can be divided into …
It’s time for my content recommendations and reviews for Jul-21: a book, a podcast, articles and a couple of videos. Let’s get started. 1. Book a. ‘The Premonition – A Pandemic Story’ by Michael Lewis We are going through an epochal period – a period which will be studied by several historians for decades from now. Among the many questions they study, one prominent one would be: Could we have limited the impact of this pandemic? When they do that, this might be the first book they would pick up. Michael Lewis is among the most successful non-fiction storytellers in the world. Several of …
About a month back, I had just completed an online course called ‘Building a Second Brain‘ (BASB) by Tiago Forte, on productivity and personal knowledge management. I had earlier written about a memorable moment from that course. As I was going through the course and reflecting on its implications, I realised something. As a student in #BASB12, I was getting a ringside view to something remarkable. Something that folks a few decades from now will herald as a breakthrough in personal knowledge management and productivity. Something that is essentially a revolutionary new software OS for the Knowledge Era. Here’s why. A revolution requires …
Why should girls need rescuing? “So I used to tell her these fairy tales also, like Cinderella and Rapunzel and somehow when the story got to the part when Cinderella had to be rescued or Rapunzel had to be rescued, I would find myself changing the story because I didn’t like it. I didn’t want my daughter to grow up thinking that she needs to wait for some boy to come and rescue her and that she is going to be this passive person who doesn’t take charge of her life...” That is Sowmya Rajendran, a brilliant, thoughtful writer who I …
Phew, it’s finally ready! About a month back, I had published the first chapter of my e-book ‘Covid-19. Explained.’ on the basic science of Covid-19. I was quite overwhelmed by the response – thank you! Of course, the response just raised the bar for the next chapter for me. And, while working on the same, as I shared last week, I got a bit lost in the ocean of immunology. In this second chapter, I’ve tried my best to simplify an incredibly complex (and utterly fascinating) phenomenon – the human immune system and its response to Covid-19. Let me know what you think. Here you …
I plan to share the story of the past week’s work on the second chapter of the ‘Covid-19. Explained‘ e-book. It is about how I stumbled upon sources, the material I got from them and why I’m so excited to incorporate them in the story. With that context, let’s begin. A Crash Course in Immunology In last week’s blog, I had mentioned a book that I had come across about the Immune system, written by an Immunologist. (The Immune system is the body’s MOST important actor in our fight against Covid-19. It is important to know how it functions, hence my …
1. Book a. ‘Sapiens: The Graphic Novel (Volume 1)’ by Yuval Noah Harari Many of you would have read ‘Sapiens’. Almost all of you would have definitely heard of it. So this recommendation may seem a bit dated. But bear with me. Two things happened, coincidentally, in the previous month – which led me to a realisation. One I re-read Sapiens (the original book) – cover to cover. And two, my wife (Praveena; linking her venture here because she’s not active on SM!) came across a ‘graphic novel’ adaptation of the book. (The graphic novel covers only a part of the original book. …
The Story of India’s most valuable startup “So when I would start writing every day at 10:30-11 am, the first two hours would just be spent on rewriting, and editing the previous day’s work…. So it was not just once, I think I would have edited my own work at least 12-13 times” – says Mihir Dalal.12-13 times. Gosh, that can be tiring.But when you toil to this extent, the results are bound to be good. And they were.Mihir Dalal, a business journalist who’s been with Mint, Reuters and CNBC – wrote his first book ‘Big Billion Startup – The Untold …
