“Which job offer should I take?” is among the questions I get asked the most these days. While I rarely tell people exactly what to do (almost any opportunity can be a good or bad one depending on what you want to do and what you make of it), I offer questions:

1. Which opportunity will allow you to grow in ways you want to grow?
2. Which opportunity will allow you to avoid the things you don’t enjoy doing?
3. Which opportunity has the culture and people you will most enjoy?
4. Which opportunity best sets you up to do work you’ll be proud of?
5. Which opportunity would make you the most jealous if your best friend took it?
6. Which opportunity best supports your highest intention/purpose in life?

Let’s take a closer look at each of these…

Which opportunity will allow you to grow in ways you want to grow?

Any transition in life, whether it’s a relocation, a breakup, a job change, is about change and growth. If you’re looking for new career opportunities, it’s because you want to grow. Consider what you feel is lacking in your currentsituation, and use that to inform your next move. Are there specific skills you’re hoping to learn? More senior people you want to learn from? A change in your work environment? Different problems you want to solve?

Beyond skills, experiences, and culture, what are you curious about? What kinds of endeavors require effort and hard ware that feels like play to you?Use your next career move to feed your curiosity and gives you a chance to play.

Which opportunity will allow you to avoid the things you don’t enjoy doing?

It’s much easier to know what you don’t like doing than it is to know what you like to do. How would you know whether you like broccoli or not if you’ve never tried it? On the other hand, if you’ve tried it before, it’s easier to know whether you like it or not.

The same is true for knowing what you want to do in life. It’s easier to know what you don’t enjoy doing in your daily work life than what you do like.Make a list of the activities that deplete your energy and take care to avoid a role that requires you to do those activities, at least, on a regular basis.

Which opportunity has the culture and people you will most enjoy?

People work for bosses, not companies. Working with a great team and supportive manager can have a significant impact on your career and emotional health which ultimately affect your well-being. Moreover, you’re likely to spend more time with your coworkers than your own spouse, children, and friends. Choose carefully!

As you interview for jobs, take time to get to know the people you would potentially work with. Who are you going to look forward to seeing when you have to wake up in the morning to go to work? Do people seem happy or are they negative and stressed out? Do they laugh and have a good sense of humor or do they make inappropriate jokes? Look at the work environment. Is there delightful energy in the office or does the place feel frantic or dead?

Which opportunity best sets you up to do work you’ll be proud of?

There are few things that are more demotivating than putting in your best effort into an endeavor and feeling like you have little to show for it. Life is short — don’t waste time climbing uphill battles if you feel your best efforts are going nowhere (on the other hand, if you feel that every place has uphill battles you don’t want to or can’t fight, maybe you’re the problem).

When choosing amongst different job opportunities, consider which one will give you freedom to be creative in ways that play to your strengths.

Which opportunity would make you the most jealous if your best friend took it?

Jealousy and regret are great litmus tests because they instantly tell us what the heart wants. Imagine if one of the opportunities were taken away from you, by a friend or rival. How would you feel? If you think you would regret not acting sooner on the opportunity, your heart is telling you something.

Watch out for your ego though — if you want a job because it confers greater status or more money, that’s not going to sustain you in the long run.

Which opportunity best supports your highest intention/purpose in life?

We get the most fulfillment and satisfaction from work when we find the best intersection between what we enjoy doing and what the world needs from us. The more you understand what your life’s purpose is and what is meaningful to you, the more clear you will be about whether an opportunity serves your highest intention in life.

Amongst whatever worthwhile intentions you may have to make the world a better place, remember too that your own happiness is at stake. Your job should fit into your life in a way that allows you to live the life you want.Among the considerations described above, prioritize them against other things that matter to you (e.g. the ability to pay off your mortgage or rent, being able to exercise every day, saving for your kids’ college education, avoiding a long commute, etc).

Some final thoughts

A few closing thoughts —

Don’t decide until there is a decision that needs to be made. I’ve talked to people who fret over the question “Which job?” before they even have a job offer in hand. There is no point in spending energy on this choice until a decision actually needs to be made. Until then, as long as an opportunity seems interesting, continue to have conversations with the company. Put one foot in front of the other: take the journey one conversation at a time.

Trust your gut. Pro/con lists don’t work in this context. It’s a major life decision, and decisions that matter come from the heart. If the heart doesn’t know, it probably means you need to spend more time with the people at these companies. And if you’ve spend enough time with these people and you still don’t know the answer, it means you need to sit with yourself to understand what the heart wants.

A job is not forever, and you are not your job. This may not be the first job you have ever taken, and it probably won’t be your last. Trust your gut, but if it proves to be a bad choice, you can leave and find another job. Whether it works out or not, you will learn something from the experience. And that’s really all that you can expect.

We’ve cultivated internship opportunities with some of the most interesting startups in our portfolio and are working with the top U.S. design schools to invite students to apply.  For students who want to pursue a career making technology, services and products of the future, there is no matter way to learn than by doing.

In contrast to school projects, real world settings introduce a whole range of challenges that make design hard that many people don’t fully understand.  What often gets in the way of delivering great design is not lack of skills or knowledge, but the context in which the work is being done.  Maybe there is too much design by committee and there is no clear decision-making process or owner.  Or maybe the designer isn’t empowered to make design decisions stick; after all, when design decisions are a matter of creative judgment, whose opinion is the one that matters?  Maybe there isn’t a robust collaboration between design and engineering that leads to useful, innovative technological solutions directed towards fulfilling people’s needs.  Even organizational politics or inertia just makes change hard.

That’s why so much of what it takes to be a good designer derives not just from hard skills and knowledge but soft skills that are rarely taught:  empathy, taste and working with other people.  In the design profession, the soft skills matter at least as much as the hard skills.  Soft skills are what designers invoke to work effectively with collaborators and stakeholders, to empathize with the people they’re designing for, and to bring inspiration and delight to these people through the experiences designers create.

Some designers struggle to land jobs because they haven’t gained enough real-world experience collaborating with cross-functional teams to build something greater than an individual working alone could ever do.  This is why we believe coursework would be interwoven with internships so that knowledge gained in an academic setting could be applied, and one’s experiences in the workplace would then inform future studies.

While many startups would love to hire interns, it can be really hard to connect with students.  Early stage companies often don’t have the brand recognition or resources to reach out to top schools to attract students for internships.  Yet, they are often great environments for students to gain real world experience.

Khosla Ventures aims to help solve this problem by connecting startups with design students.  In doing this we hope to create a win-win situation by advancing design education while assisting our companies.

We are now accepting applications for summer 2015, for any student interested in user research, visual design, interaction design and front-end development.  Applicants are considered on a rolling basis, so apply now to be considered for these opportunities.

Have you considered the possibility
that everything you believe is wrong,
not merely off a bit, but totally wrong,
nothing like things as they really are?

If you’ve done this, you know how durably fragile
those phantoms we hold in our heads are,
those wisps of thought that people die and kill for,
betray lovers for, give up lifelong friendships for.

If you’ve not done this, you probably don’t understand this poem,
or think it’s not even a poem, but a bit of opaque nonsense,
occupying too much of your day’s time,
so you probably should stop reading it here, now.

But if you’ve arrived at this line,
maybe, just maybe, you’re open to that possibility,
the possibility of being absolutely completely wrong,
about everything that matters.

How different the world seems then:
everyone who was your enemy is your friend,
everything you hated, you now love,
and everything you love slips through your fingers like sand.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

(Thank you Satish Ramachandran for sending this to me.)

Lumiata wants to change how we manage our health – as individuals and as a population.

Imagine a world where your physician is able to determine care plans not only for the conditions you currently have, but conditions you may be at high risk of in the near future.

A place where rural providers in underserved communities all over the world have access to the best of clinical knowledge in real time and can deliver the highest quality of care.

A place where care providers can analyze whole populations to identify patients who are not aware that they are risk of very serious conditions so we can deliver proactive care.

Lumiata seeks a visual designer to join the team.  We want people who are passionate about making brilliant products and improving how we offer health care at individual, societal and global levels.

Description:

As our Visual Designer, you will help lead the development of innovative, dynamic and elegant health information systems. You will be an integral part of the product team, working closely with the Chief Product Officer, to help inform and realize product visions. You will also have the opportunity to develop Lumiata’s general visual style and design sense across a portfolio of products and assets.

We aim to build products that people can’t live without, so you will work as part of a product team that focuses on users to create our product.   You will also collaborate with Lumiata front end engineers to execute our vision.

Responsibilities include:

• translating the brand into the visual interface
• creating an experience that is aesthetically pleasing and simple
• developing a visual design system that carries through across the entire product (and/or suite of products), such as typography, grid, layout, button style, color palette, iconography, visualizations
• prototyping for ideation and iteration

You must be:

• driven by design excellence
• user centric, with a strong understanding of users’ motivations, triggers, and goals
• demonstrate clear and critical thinking
• be comfortable exploring the unknown
• understand how to dissect large problems
• familiar and comfortable with agile methods in a way that supports design quality

To apply:

Please send your letter, resume, and portfolio to hello@lumiata.com

In the end
you won’t be known
for the things you did,
or what you built,
or what you said.

You won’t even be known
for the love given
or the hearts saved,

because in the end you won’t be known.

You won’t be asked, by a vast creator full of light:
What did you do to be known?

You will be asked: Did you know it,
this place, this journey?

What there is to know can’t be written.
Something between the crispness of air
and the glint in her eye
and the texture of the orange peel.

What you’ll want a thousand years from now is this:
a memory that beats like a heart–
a travel memory, of what it was to walk here,
alive and warm and textured within.

Sweet brightness, aliveness, take-me-now-ness that is life.

You are here to pay attention. That is enough.

Among all the companies I’ve seen working on business intelligence, I am most impressed by ThoughtSpot.  I know from years of working at Google that query formulation is one of the most difficult user experience problems:  how do you let users know what kinds of questions they can ask, and how do create an experience where they can ask intelligent questions and get meaningful answers back from the data?

With a clean, minimal user interface, ThoughtSpot’s UI is as simple as a consumer product, but as powerful as the best business software.  Their whole focus is to make the user experience as easy as possible to identify and display structured data.  CEO Ajeet Singh has personally invested a tremendous amount of energy and time into scouring the internet for the best people possible to bring on board, and the team and product reflect the fruits of those efforts.

The company is looking to add a few more designers to the team.  This is a great opportunity to join a terrific team, especially if you like to solve hard design problems.

Read more about ThoughtSpot in a recent article from TechCrunch.

Learn more about the opportunity to join as a designer and apply by sending your resume, portfolio, and cover letter to design@thoughtspot.com. ]]> https://ireneau.wordpress.com/2014/07/08/job-opportunity-product-designer-thoughtspot-redwood-city-ca/feed/ 0 8 Irene https://ireneau.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/how-to-start-practicing-yoga/ https://ireneau.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/how-to-start-practicing-yoga/#respond Tue, 01 Jul 2014 23:41:00 +0000 http://ireneau.wordpress.com/2014/07/01/how-to-start-practicing-yoga Continue reading How to start practicing yoga →]]>

As a yoga teacher I’m often asked for advice on how to start a yoga practice.  Here are a few tips:

Try different styles of yoga.

The variety of yoga styles that exist (Bikram, Ashtanga, Jivamukti, Anusara, power yoga, restorative, yin, Iyengar, etc) can be staggering and difficult to navigate.  Try a variety of styles until you find one that you like. Each style has its own unique quality, but the most important thing is that you find a style that inspires you and motivates you to keep going back.

Try different yoga teachers, several times.

Just as a wide range of yoga styles exists, yoga instructors are all different, each with his/her own personality and qualities. If you take a class with an instructor and find that you don’t like his or her style, keep going to different classes until you find someone that you like.  You should feel a connection with your teacher, and your teacher should be someone that motivates and inspires you.

A good instructor will give students options in class to make their practice more accessible or more challenging, and will cue you so that you have proper alignment and attention to safety.  In my opinion, a good class should be balanced, with an appropriate mix of cardio, strength, flexibility, and agility training, and one that is comprehensive, with attention to core, the spine (moving the spine in all six directions:  forward, backward, twists right and left, and side stretches right and left), the shoulders, the hips, and major muscles (IT band, hamstrings, psoas, hip flexors, thighs, arms).

Also, keep in mind that as you grow your yoga practice, the same teachers that may not have been a fit for you at first may be great for you later.  I’ve experienced firsthand not liking a teacher initially and then that teacher later became my favorite teacher who inspired me to deepen my own yoga practice!

Don’t judge yourself.

When you first start your practice, it’s common to feel discouraged because the poses feel uncomfortable, or because one lacks flexibility or strength to do all the poses as beautifully as others in the class. Keep in mind that this is exactly why you are in class, so you can gain flexibility and strength. Remember that the practice of letting go of one’s own ego is also part of “doing yoga” (and is perhaps one of the biggest lessons to learn!).

Focus on the breath first.

In terms of the physical practice, if you do nothing at all, do this one thing: breathe mindfully. This means cultivating a long, slow, steady breath, and any time you feel stress or challenge, return back to that long slow steady breath. Learning to breathe is one of the greatest gifts yoga gives, along with helping you create more space in the body for more breath.

Consider private instruction.

If you feel really self-conscious about going into a yoga class for the first time, consider hiring a private instructor. Some beginners like having a few private sessions to understand the basics of stretching and fundamental poses. Others have to build up enough core strength in order to sustain a practice in class. Still others have very little “body awareness” and have a hard time moving their body according to verbal instructions, so a slower paced private class can help them get what they need out of a yoga practice.

Or, go online.

If private instruction is too expensive, you can also try some online yoga classes at home. Try any beginner Hatha class to start with.  Here are a few sites that have great videos:

• YogaGlo
• Yoga International (includes terrific articles)
• Grokker
• YogaU
• Yoga Journal

Don’t buy a thing, unless you want to.

You don’t need to buy $100 yoga leggings to start a yoga practice (unless wearing sharp yoga clothes makes you more motivated and excited to go to class, in which case I am all for it).  You can wear a T-shirt and shorts.  You also don’t need a fancy yoga mat or any yoga mat at all; most studios and gyms have mats you can borrow or rent. Props are also usually available so you don’t have to bring them.  Sometimes chairs, sand bags, and bolsters are used as props for restorative and yin practices.

If you have started a yoga practice and want to invest in some gear, here are a few suggestions:

• Buy a nice sticky mat that will last.  There is a huge difference between practicing on a cheap yoga mat and a nice yoga mat, and that could mean the difference between looking forward to your practice or not.  My personal favorite is the Manduka PROlite because it’s durable, sticky, and lightweight, but there are many others you can try.
• Get blocks that are made of high density, durable foam.  Blocks that are made of foam that are too light are difficult to manage.  Blocks made of wood are uncomfortable.  I like these blocks from Hugger Mugger.  Blocks are often used in pairs so buy two.
• Beyond a mat and blocks, other accessories are used depending on your interests and needs for a home practice.  Mexican cotton blankets can be folded and rolled to use as a prop for support.  Yoga straps help you extend your reach and can be used as resistance.  Bolsters and sandbags are nice for restorative practices.

A few related articles I’ve written about getting into yoga:

• “I’m not good at yoga”
• Yoga for Designers
• Redefining “Advanced Yoga“

See you in class sometime?  Namaste!