(This is part of an open ended series of posts where I write down random things I feel are sharable from the years of mailing lists I’ve not caught up on…)

I’ve had my Storyteller Tactics deck from Pip Decks from when it first launched. I’ve wanted to buy others … but I don’t even use this one if we’re being honest. They are gorgeous from a tactile perspective though, and if I was consulting again I would likely bust them out. Oh, and they have a cool online app to visualize the decks you have purchased. Though I like holding them.

I’ve got an invoice at the start of this mailbox from November 2021 … and 212 other emails in there along with it. Seems I unsusbscribed at issue 75 (October 2023) so let’s do this one in 2 parts. You can see them all at thier Newsletter Archives, which implies that they stopped these. Heck, I couldn’t even see it linked from the main homepage.

One of the first messages is to join a Slack group … which has apparently stopped being a thing. And a discount code. Whoops.

Anyhow, the format of “Pip’s Practical Prompts” is bite sized prompts (similar to how the cards work – nice little bit of consistent branding there!) which I’m going to then slice into even smaller pieces.

  • “When designing, ask not what you can add, but what you can take away.”
  • “Before you go putting jacuzzis everywhere. Make sure there’s a toilet.” – You can swap AI for ‘jacuzzi’ here, and ‘toilet’ for ‘actual business value’
  • “There’s no such thing as the average person.”
  • “When things are going well in a design, we don’t pay attention to them. We only pay attention to what bothers us.” – I wish I could find the original reference I saw to ‘Quiet AI’. At some point I’ll write up my AI thoughts. Maybe after I find another job. :D
  • “It is much easier to be fired for being illogical than it is for being unimaginative.”
  • “Not everything that makes sense works, and not everything that works makes sense.”
  • “If you are doing something and you don’t know why, it’s likely you aren’t following a strategy.”
  • “Ambition requires love”
  • “Give us a person, someone who represents or is affected by the data.”
  • “Your individuality defines you and makes you stand out from the crowd.”
  • “Building a product is easy. Building a product people want/need is hard.”
  • “A team member with a clear understanding of their role within your strategy will be more confident in making decisions that help reach your goals”
  • “Genuinely successful people rarely feel the need to boast about their success.”
  • “Get used to being uncomfortable”
  • “The only accurate measure of leadership is influence.”