Workflows, media and routine recommendations
I have been a sucker for recommendation walkthroughs where the protagonist shares his/her workflows, tools or hacks from their daily use.
This bug started when I watched videos of YouTubers who shared their use of new apps or themes. It started when I was in my college. Now, it has transformed into reading about the media diet of fascinating people.
This post is an amalgamation of answers to questions about media recommendation, workstation setups, workflows and digital tools.
Loversmagazine (because I am still a product designer at heart)
Each of them highlights the usage of tools in their own ways. I get to learn tons of nifty tricks thanks to my interest in these publications.
For a brief period i did my own rendition of newsletter/blogs thread on twitter.
But in this post, its littled remixed. We are addressing all of these and much more.
Tell us about yourself
I am Vivek V.S, an operator working on the intersection of Logistics and agriculture. I am also a product designer by vocation and engineer by education.
In the past , worked as a founder in logistics and agriculture. I am an avid consumer of content in the form of TV series and started a newsletter(this one) getting inspired by one. Loves to read a ton of interesting topics across the breadth.
Aspiring to be a writer documenting the thoughts, experiences and ideas. Big proponent of building it out publicly and owning the narrative of your life.
What does a typical day look like?
Unfortunately there is no typical day. There are very few days I am at the desk with the new job role. I am not complaining , I actually enjoy it. The one person I miss the most is my life partner due to these travels. We often get into a rythm when we co-habit a place which is a rarity with our careers at the moment.
So, to sum it up. A typical days starts with a good cup of coffee and some nice articles to read written by the slew of blogs/newsletter that i follow religiously.
What pieces of work are you most proud of?
The work we did at Subjimandi.app was the most fun and exciting. It made me really come into fore as a desiner of not just digital products but overall messaging, positioning, sales and marketing aspects as well. We engrained simple messages to relay the importance of grade to every stakeholder involved in the produce trade.
The work was predominantly done by Vignesh on the product design front and he did a fabulous job of capturing the essence.
What product have you recently seen that made you think this is great design?
I really liked the design simplicity of Obsidian. What didn't get me started with Notion is just that, it looked too beautiful. With Obsidian you can tweak it according to how the information is recorded.
If you are using it for documenting your thoughts alone and not for publishing work, you can tweak it just enough to resemble a scapbook of notes.
What design challenges do you face at your company?
Preaching the importance of design and the benefits of the discipline for any business. My skillset as a designer helps me focus a more naunced solution to a problem that the obvious or logical one.
Incorporating service design priniciples in a physical trade business has become my north star.
What music do you listen to whilst designing?
I don't have a specific listening track. I just turn on the Beatsinstrumental playlistfrom Apple Music. Recently, I started to follow this newsletter called flow sate which recommends some nice music for playing along with work.
What hardware do you use? What’s your workstation setup?
My main work devices are two seperate iPhones. One is exclusively for work and the other for personal. The device bifurcation is important to create the differences as there is no fixed location in my work. I travel for long durations of time and work in different places all the time.
An operator in the field of logistics involves lot of movement from one place to another. I am writing this after a gruelling 14 days on the field trip where we clocked in 1800 KMs of self driving to visit 7 villages and trade hubs. You get my drift. Phones and an added iPad for writing these posts come in handy.
My workstation involves a good cup of freshly brewed cofee with two phones and an IPad with a keyboard. The place really doesn't matter much if I get into the mode.
And what software?
I have been trying to formulate a Personal Knowledge management system for a while and now finally have given up finding one tool to do it all. I also use a lot of twitter for my daily consumption needs.
Obsidian powers my writing and documenting workflow where as RSS readers like Reeder and Netnewswire form my reading apps.
For designing, Figma is the one stop shop to knock off some mock-ups and explore designs. Recently though, excalidraw is turning out to be a diverse tool that helps with providing visual cues for my writing when communicating with team.
Lastly, Trello is my digital Library that takes the cake for being the most diverse article collection tool.
What would be your dream setup?
My dream setup would comprise of me learning to use the keyboard shortcuts. When you get a hang of them they are real productivity boosters. Adding to it would be a nice workflow regime with the Shortcuts apps like the once Fedrico Vittici keeps tweaking for his work and apple devices. And to top it off a perfect vault of obsidian that capture every use case possible that i might throw at it, like Building a Second Brain
Describe your media diet?
I like to follow writers through all thier channels and RSS is a true saviour over here. I subscribe to any writer's blog or newsletter by subscribing to their RSS feed.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it offers an easy way to stay up to date on new content from websites you care about.
You can subscribe to your latest youtube channel through it as well. Currently, I am enjoying reading the multiple agri newsletter from the likes of Janette Barnard who writes Prime Future Newsletter. Next we have Rishi Pethe, Venky, Niall and Shane who writes Software is Feeding the world, Agribusiness Matters, Agri-fintech and Upstream Ag respectively.
I have slew of lists that I follow on Twitter that help me categorise. They provide me a never ending doctrine of recommendations and articles to go through on any given day. Subscribed to The-Ken and The Morning context as well.
What’s the last great book you read?
Honestly, the last great book I read was of Visakan , Friendly ambitious nerd. I wish more young people would take the opportunity to read the book. It is a book on building a community of friends and navigating relationships as you learn to live as an adult.
It has been one of my favourite reads on navigating long term relationships, be it marriage, friendship and familial ties.
What are you reading now?
Reading this book called "The Pathless Path" by Paul Millred. It is about building a career that deviates from the standard path and becomes more aligned with what you would like to do.
Deeply interested as my current transition from a founder where your identity is only work to a place where work is now just a part of who you are.
Plane or train?
I have been a train person all through my childhood. Someone with the priviledge to never fret over what the ticket costs and class of travel. If you not from India, it means you have varying classes of travel.I travelled in the AC class.
But in adulthood, I would go with flight because its like a capsule throwing you from one place to another whereas in a train it is like a journey, traveling through places.
The airlines do need to rethink how they serve their customers as they become the dominant mode of transport for a majority of Indians domestically.
What is one place everyone should visit?
I haven't been to many places other than “Staycations” for the past few years. Any place you visit, its the people you visit with that makes them memorable.
It has been my learning that I am a different person when visiting a place for work or with my partner. So, any place is fine as long as it is with the people you want to spend time.
Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.
One that comes to mind is when I discovered David R Maclver writing through his twitter. I tend to do this with every writer whose posts I enjoy reading through and through. This helps me with getting a clearer picture of how they think and what are they thinking about.
Also a motivation behind having this newsletter is to publish a body of my own work that can be browsed by anyone through the internet.
Where do you go to get inspired?
In terms of inspiration. It is through reading other's work do I start to formulate thoughts in my mind. Getting to know different perspectives and ideas always get me going to either contribute or remix.
Often times you need inspiration when you are stuck solving a problem. Honestly, there are multiple instances that come to my mind when I think how does one get inspired. Most often, it is through talking to interesting people and something clicks serendepitiously.
Other times it is just walking the streets and looking at the same thing with a new perspective. The weird one would be walking the aisles of any book shop. The book covers represent the apt articulation of signalling the content through the cover.
Closing Thoughts
I really struggled to publish this post but I have been dreading breaking the longest streak that I set so far of any sort of writing. The work trip this time was brutal in all means possible, driving does take a toll which only catches up once the trip ends.
Signing off from the while resting,
Vivek V.S