Yutong Xue, Product Designer @ Meta: "Growth is to be initiated. No one can hand it to you."

Author Grace Loh Prasad reflects on the process of writing her debut memoir: "I had unconsciously internalized the indifferent reader—the person who could not be bothered to make any effort to know me better. And that was a disservice to what I finally realized and embraced as my primary audience—the reader who is curious, who is invested in me and my story and wants to know more."

"Such a fun and interesting reflection on the nuances of culture and language. I really enjoyed this with my own morning cuppa!" —Zulie Rane, Product Marketing @ Medium

"Slava Polonski, PhD, a research lead at Google, breaks down what can be so weird and off-putting about personalization—we like getting customized recs, but don’t like the feeling of being spied on—and charts a course towards a more human-centered approach: Teach people how personalization actually works, make it less creepy by giving them more control, and stop reducing them to a single 'type.'" —Scott Lamb, VP of Content @ Medium

"I learned a lot from this framework for growing your career, written by a senior engineer at Amazon. (We also have performance reviews at Medium this week, so it was on my mind.) Growth boils down to earning trust by doing good work. Once you earn some trust, you can 'spend' that trust on taking risks." —Harris Sockel, Content @ Medium

Raphael Moutard, software engineering VP and former tech lead at Amazon, redefines 'tech debt'—a term often used to mean, roughly, 'past decisions that slow down future software development.'

Joan Westenberg, writer and entrepreneur: "You can control exactly one thing: that you show up. Every day. That’s about it. Showing up isn’t a silver bullet. It’s not an easy win. It’s not a lifehack. It’s not a shortcut. But it’s the only way to build anything."

Eva Schicker, designer and painter: "The pencil line tells the stories, not the machine, not the prompt. I write my tale by using my hand, I put pressure on my pencil, and my mind tells it where to go. Drawing is human, AI is not."

Kelly Smith, contextual designer: "Imagine a huge wall covered in thousands of dots. Each dot represents a piece of knowledge that you’ve acquired. In your hand you have a ball of string, and you wind the string between the dots to create patterns. Connecting the dots in a new way is creativity."

"I... loved this?? It's some of the most honest writing I've read in a while. This is not just an essay about the ups and downs of life as a screenwriter, it's an essay about how to stop lying to yourself and other people about who you really are." —Harris Sockel, Content @ Medium

Enjoy our latest roundup of most-read stories, most-highlighted sentences, and posts by new writers. Leave a response to let us know what you'd like to see in next month's edition!

"Liza Donnelly's illustrated dispatches from the Trump trial are so detailed, unique, and human—they really make me feel like i'm there. I'm obsessed." —Harris Sockel, Content @ Medium

"A self-described 'recently, unexpectedly laid-off graphic designer/writer,' Lynch offers advice that’s as refreshingly honest, funny, and sympathetic as it is practical. —Jon Gluck, Content @ Medium

Product designer Taras Bakusevych shares 58 rules for designing thoughtful proces. He maps each rule to one of eight overarching principles. These principles apply to everything from design to writing, leadership, and life.

Music critic Jeffrey Harvey: "Kendrick Lamar is one of the most insightful, self-aware, and nakedly honest writers in this generation of music. Kendrick is so viscerally cognizant of his most debilitating traumas and toxic insecurities that, two years ago, he unwittingly unpacked the genesis of the savage vitriol at the root of his current scorched earth carpet bombing of Drake..."

"A really sweet and funny tribute to an aging canine companion." —Pax Ahimsa Gethen, Curation @ Medium

Liza Donnelly, visual journalist, offers a first-hand POV from inside the courthouse during Michael Cohen's testimony: "Bottom line, the defense did not do well and I heard that the jury seemed inattentive and some were yawning. It was a confusing cross examination."

"As a chronic interrupter, who usually interrupts out of excitement not necessarily wanting to overpower the other person, this one hit home for me!" —Harris Sockel, Content @ Medium

David Mokotoff, MD, on the history of misguided beliefs about cholesterol and dieting: "One of the biggest reasons it is so difficult to nail down the healthiest diet is the nature of diet studies or clinical trials. Most of these invariably depend upon the participants' honest and accurate recall of what they ate in one day. And this seldom happens."

Shin Jie Yong, scientist and researcher, shares insights from "the most convincing breakthrough yet in the key pathomechanisms (patho- means disease) involved" in Long Covid.