#52 / Time to Rethink my Side Projects

Hello my friend! 👋

I’ve known for a long time that just trading time for money won’t make you rich, but I really felt it hit home today.

This came from a little reality check I did recently. If you want to sound fancy, you could call it first principles thinking. I work a standard 40-hour week, and on top of that, I can spare about 10 more hours for personal projects. Any more than that, and it starts to affect my health and family time.

If I use those 10 extra hours to do hourly work at $100 NZD per hour—which is a pretty decent rate for a professional, and what I get for some freelance design gigs—I could make up to $1000 NZD a week. Over 50 weeks, that’s $50,000 NZD a year. That’s already the max I could make on the side, and it’s not like I’ll have work every single week.

So, I need to focus on creating things that bring in passive income or take on bigger projects that pay more overall, rather than just hourly gigs.

I’ve understood this for a while, but this calculation really drove it home and showed me where I need to focus my future efforts.

Here’re a few things I’d like to share with you today 🙂

• Designer’s mushrooms

• 3 simple tips to become a confident designer (Junior friendly)

• Teeth as a product?

• The moments of Nolan’s films

• Readwise Reader Custom Summary

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Designer’s mushrooms

I have a design analogy that comes from a childhood memory.

When I was younger, during the rainy season, we’d head into the bush to hunt for mushrooms, which are delicious–especially the wild ones. However, some mushrooms are poisonous, and it takes an experienced eye to know which ones are safe to eat.

As a family, we kids would scatter and gather as many mushrooms as we could find. We might avoid the obviously dangerous ones, like those with bright red colors, but beyond that, we couldn’t really tell the safe from the unsafe. We’d bring all our finds together, spread them out on the ground, and then my grandparents would sort through them, identifying which were edible and which were not. Then, we’d head home for a joyful meal with the safe mushrooms.

This experience translates well to the design process. Initially, it’s crucial to gather as many concepts as possible, much like collecting mushrooms. The diversity in these concepts is key. In the next phase, sharing everything with your team is critical. They act like my grandparents in this analogy, picking out what works and what doesn’t.

When I share a project with my team–be it designers, engineers, or product folks–I’m not looking for applause or easy approvals. I’m searching for critical feedback, the kind that points out flaws or raises questions. This feedback is invaluable as it refines and improves the design.

This approach might seem counterintuitive and can be tough to handle initially. It took me some time to get comfortable with it. Just remember the mushroom analogy: lay out your ideas, let others help you sort them, and you’ll avoid a lot of trouble down the line. This way, you’re not just avoiding problems, you’re actively creating a better product.

3 simple tips to become a confident designer (Junior friendly)

1. Fake it till you make it. Identity - I’m a designer, not I want to be a designer.

2. Find a model and act like him. Learn from a single person. Find one designer as your role model. Could be in your team, or someone are influenced.

3. Accepting not knowing. Learn to say “I don’t know” and how to ask proper questions.

Teeth as a product?

I’ve been thinking lately, changing teeth feels a lot like a perfect product development process. Imagine this: your baby teeth are like the beta version of a product. You launch the first version, use them for a while, and learn from the experience. When your body is ready, it begins to replace your teeth one by one, not all at once. It’s iterative, just like a well-executed product design cycle.

The moments of Nolan’s films

Christopher Nolan’s films are renowned for their grand scale, but intriguingly, when I reflect on them, the scenes that most profoundly impact me often involve just a few characters engaging in dialogue.

Take “The Dark Knight,” for example. It’s not the vast action sequences that stick with me, but rather a morally fraught scenario crafted by the Joker: Passengers on one boat face the harrowing choice of whether to detonate explosives on another vessel filled with prisoners. Unexpectedly, it’s the prisoners who make the most ethical decision.

In “Dunkirk,” the most memorable moment for me is a subtle yet powerful exchange: After a volunteer rescue pilot’s father witnesses his son’s accidental death on the boat, he chooses not to disclose this painful truth. When the pilot unknowingly inquires about their wellbeing, his father calmly responds, “Fine. No problems.” This one-minute dialogue resonated with me the most throughout the film.

And in “Oppenheimer,” the line, “They were probably discussing something… more important,” encapsulates the essence of Nolan’s allure: a profound exploration of complex human nature.

Readwise Reader Custom Summary: A Game Changer! (and how to set your prompt)

With just one click, I can get the essence of any videos, newsletters, or articles in my native language. I’m using a customized ReadWise summary prompt. I will show you why and how to do that in this video.

Check the full prompt from the video here: https://www.beartalking.com/readwise-summary

Have a great one and see you soon!

Bear Academy Newsletter@2023

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Bear Academy Newsletter

Non-crap tips and thoughts on design, product and technology ✨

🐻 Bear Who?

Hi there 👋, I’m Bear, a seasoned Product Designer with 15 years of overall design experience and six years in product design, transforming the user experiences for millions 📝

As an Apple Award-Winning Podcast Host at BearTalk and a Design Mentor at Springboard and CareerFoundry, I apply my self-taught design skills and science background to solve complicated problems and mentor budding designers 😃

In my downtime, you’ll find me reading, drawing, podcasting, and making videos about everything from tech to design and productivity 👨‍🎨

🤓 Work

• 💼 What I do：Product Designer at Xero

• 🌃 I also do：Design Mentor at Springboard and CareerFoundry / Founder at Bear Academy

• 🎤 Side hustle：Podcast host at Award-winning podcast BearTalk

💡 Goodies

• Bear Academy - my courses around UX Design, AI, etc

• Bear Academy Newsletter - my free newsletter, which you are reading now

• Beartalking.com - all my posts, English and Chinese

• Youtube.com/@Bearliu - A video is worth a thousand words

💬 Contact

• https://twitter.com/bearbig](https://twitter.com/bearbig) - Majorly I post in Chinese

• bear@beartalking.com - The old fashion email way

• LinkedIn.com/in/bearliu - My professional life