I am not sure how this will all unfold, but as I work through my recovery I have realized that writing has been valuable. I am not sharing this to gain pity, but want to shine light on this dark secret that seems to be out in the world. Male childhood abuse, physical and sexual, is something that we don’t talk about. At least not openly or in a public way. I think a large part of it is because men for so many generations have been taught that to show or share emotion is a form of weakness. This societal belief is damaging one, one that needs to change. We are human, it is in our capacity to feel and express emotion. For some reason it is acceptable for men to show anger, one of the most destructive emotions one can have. Yet society frowns upon men showing or sharing love, fear, or pain. For years I struggled with my pain and only seemed to express it as anger. Over the years I have become more aware of those emotions and have worked to develop patience and understanding.

It wasn’t until I started therapy recently that I realized I had been sweeping my anger under a rug. Massive amounts of anger and pain that I hadn’t actually dealt with from my childhood abuses. To give some context, I suffered different forms of abuse from as early in my life as I can remember up until about the age of 19. In my early years it was at the hands of a physically and verbally abusive alcoholic dad who was raising my sister and I by himself. After the age of 7, an incident involving severe physical abuse, turned into cops and jail time for my dad. He underwent court-ordered therapy and quit drinking. The verbal and emotional abuse still continued off and on for many years after that. I struggled with thoughts of suicide for many years. Around the age of 12, my sister and I decided to go live with my mom and stepdad in the hopes of a better life. A few months after moving in, my step dad began sexually abusing both my sister and I. My abuse continued on until I turned 16 around the time I had my first girlfriend. Somehow, I managed to keep my stepdad away from me after that outside of a couple instances. Around age 17, my sister and I confronted my mom about the abuse. She was shocked and confronted my stepdad who denied all accusations. My mom chose to believe him and took his side. This sent me into a downward spiral where I soon made friends who were into heavy drugs. I was doing speed and staying up for days straight sometimes. I was also doing massive amounts of acid, ecstasy, mushrooms, special k, and drinking alcohol into blackouts. I nearly overdosed on several occasions, walking away with life by a breath at times. This context is meant to help you understand the amount of pain I was dealing with, and what I am working through today.

In my early twenties, I came across some folks who turned me onto the idea of personal development and recommended I read a book titled Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. This was the first of many catalysts in my awakening and self development. Over the years, I found other books which helped to pull me out of most of my damaging and self-destructive behaviors. However, I still had the word of abuse ringing in my mind with everything I did. I had the sexual trauma haunting my self worth and it still lurked in my subconscious actions. But I had another voice there too, one egging onward.

Over the next decade, I managed to find some small sense of peace with things, albeit superficial and not genuine. I challenged myself to be more optimistic as well as those around me. I developed close relationships with friends and worked on developing my career, something to pour my creativity and analytical mind into. The ghosts from my past continued to haunt my actions and behaviors in subtle ways. I constantly second guessed myself, believed that I was somehow unworthy of any success I had attained. But I somehow found the courage and strength to push forward each and every day.

I still have much of the anger stored away from so many years ago. It wasn’t until a volatile argument between my wife Heidi and I happened late in 2016 that it forced me to take a look at was still going on inside me. Heidi and I agreed to go to therapy together and that I would also go on my own. She was aware of the things that happened to me in my childhood and felt that there was a chance they were still affecting me in many parts of my life including her and I’s relationship. After months of dragging my feet to make things happen, I finally decided to get the ball in motion early 2017.

Heidi and I met with a therapist and worked through some of our challenges and are still working through some. Meeting with my therapist one on one, I began unboxing the events from my childhood. Even the therapist seems a bit surprised. Maybe it was from the sheer magnitude of events or possibly from my general communication and outlook on life considering those events. Whatever the case, she asked me to start writing letters about my thoughts and feelings around the people in my life that I was holding onto negative feelings about. The first person I chose to write about was my stepdad Ron, the one who sexually abused me.

I started off slowly, thinking about what I had to say and how to say it. Then I just started writing. While this first bit of writing started, I began looking for books on recovering from abuse and found a book on male survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Between the book and the beginnings of my writing, the first drops of a storm of emotion started to fall.

Everyday is a surprise to me. Some days can be passive and I just kind of muddy through the day. Other days are fraught with massive mood swings into pits of dispair. The feeling can come out of nowhere and completely consume me sometimes for hours at a time. It feels like something is sitting on my chest making it challenging to breath. I have a bizarre anxiety like that which you feel when about to go over the first drop in a roller coaster. Sometimes I can work through in and just trudge through. Sometimes, it brings me to tears and makes doing almost anything nearly impossible. Sometimes the feeling can swing in the other direction too. Seeing one of my sons do something or say something can bring me to tears, grateful of the life I have been able to provide for them. Grateful that I took a chance and decided to have kids. I spent most of my life vowing to never have children in fear of continuing the cycles of abuse brought on to me. I thought for many years that I would be destined to repeat out the things that I was taught throughout my childhood; abuse, pain, destruction.

After finishing the audiobook, I completed some of the exercises. I still need to work on some of the others. Overall, the book has been helpful. It has given me perspective and understanding. The perspective I have gained, is that male childhood abuse is something that exists. More importantly, it is something our society doesn’t talk about. I see this as contributing to more pain for survivors. If we as humans are unable to express our emotions, and work through our pain, how can we truly heal? This idea shouldn’t be reserved for only women. Men need to be able to express emotions as well. And our society needs to start supporting an “emotional man” in our world. It isn’t weak or less-manly to talk about or show emotion. We shouldn’t judge a man for expressing emotion. I am not talking about anger, rather joy, love, pain, happiness, grief, sadness, whatever the emotion may be. Supporting the emotions of women and men should be something we do naturally and with compassion. That is partly why I am writing this and sharing it openly. Do I have some fear and reservations about doing so? Hell yeah I do! Our world is still highly judgemental of an “emotional or sensitive man” and by me posting this, I imagine a few things happening. One, it goes unnoticed and unread. Two, it is read and violently opposed and/or ridiculed. Third, and my hope, is that it is embraced and supported and at least helps someone out there.

Since the beginning of the year I have been listening to many audiobooks, many around personal development. There has been a theme emerging from them in my understanding. I need to push through my fears and reservations, create things, and then share them. If I feel a sense of apprehension or fear around doing something, I need to lean into it and do it anyway, likely because it is the right thing to do for me and the world around me. This happens to be another reason why I am publishing this. It feels the the right thing to do, even though it scares the crap out of me.

If my story impacted you in some way, I ask that you share it with someone. By sharing this message of support and understanding, men like myself can feel like we have support in recovering. Raising our boys with compassion and an ability to express emotion is another way of supporting the “emotional man” in our world. This doesn’t mean that emotional men can’t be strong, powerful and stable. On the contrary. I feel that an emotional man is genuinely in contact with himself, no reservations or holding back. This allows him to be authentic and give more of himself to the world around him. Versus an inauthentic man who holds back, generates frustration and guilt, building up stores of pain and negativity.

I don’t know exactly how to finish this, so I will just leave it at this. If you have read this, thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

My Journey Through Recovery was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It takes courage to be a designer. The longer I am in design, the more I recognize the courage it takes on a daily basis. When I reflect, I realize “wow, that took courage.” Even many years later, I still push myself, I still learn, I still grow. However, designers face many challenges day in and day out. I want to share these challenges to give you an idea of what is going on in the minds of the designers around you. I also hope it will help you develop a little more empathy for us versus seeing us as pixel-pushers.

Imposter Syndrome and Resistance

One of the biggest challenges I see designers face is to work with our fears and insecurities. I know many designers that work with Imposter Syndrome on a daily basis and still push forward. We put one foot in front of the other, sometimes slowly. Some may see it as procrastination, I see as Seth Godin puts it, “internal resistance.” It is the way our minds rationalize why we shouldn’t create something, share and idea, or speak up for something we believe in.

We do our best to not procrastinate, just put pen to paper, fingers to a keyboard or mouse, or push the publish button. When we choose to do something, it has the weight of so many other things behind it. Will others judge this? Will it be successful? Will it fail? Will this set me back in some way? Sometimes, pushing that button can be a huge struggle. However, the relief of finally “doing it” creates a strong emotion of accomplishment and freedom.

I have yet to meet a designer that doesn’t want to impact the world in some way. We desire to help others, design something unique, create something memorable, leave a legacy, or all of the above. Why? It becomes a small part of us once it has been created. We have left a small mark on the world. We have made someone’s life a little better. It becomes something we can point to and say “I did that.” But in some ways it is also a way to validate our efforts and ourselves. Most of us want to do good, but the “resistance” holds us back.

Critique

Design reviews and critique is another challenge we face depending on the environment and culture around us. If reviews are swoop and poop in nature, this squashes future innovation efforts. It usually just creates a culture of designers playing small so as to not offend people or get themselves in trouble. It also takes time to thicken design skin for feedback. It takes even more time, to create a habit of seeking it out. When we get over the fear of feedback, we can improve ideas and overall get better at design.

Speaking Up

Designers usually speak up because they see that something can be improved. Usually we don’t speak up just to piss people off. It’s an innate desire to make things better all around us. We are thinking, “if I don’t speak up, who will?” We also speak up when we are defending the needs of users. We see their pain and can see when decisions are going to negatively impact user experiences. We want to share our ideas to help make the world just a little better. When we share our thoughts and ideas this leaves us vulnerable to criticism and more imposter syndrome.

Also, many designers love to question the status quo. The all-important question “why?” I find myself asking this question so many times a day. Why is this like this? Why is this still like this? Why was this decision made? Why can’t we change things? Why can’t we all get along? In recent years, I have found myself asking another question with the “why” question and that is “how?” How can we do this? How can we fix this? How can I get this across so they understand? This focuses my mind in a positive way. I have also found that it creates constructive dialog with others.

Improving Ourselves

Becoming a better designer is a lifelong journey. We are constantly looking for ways to improve our tools, deliverables, process, craft, skills, our communication, confidence, the list goes on. Most of these need feedback for things to improve. That feedback helps us learn, but we also need courage to take action in the things we have learned.

Excitement

It takes courage to get excited about things. We also need courage to get others excited about things. We know that exciting others creates synergy that is contagious and creates flow within a group. It gets team members excited, collaborating, and working towards common goals.

Optimism

It takes courage for us to stay optimistic in a world of pessimists and self-proclaimed realists. We want to believe that things will get better, that we can meet the deadline, that users will be happy with the results. We believe we will get through rough patches. We know we can grow together as a team. We want to believe that things are brighter just around the corner.

Keep On Keeping On

It takes courage to keep moving forward in the face of all of these things I have mentioned. Sometimes, we just need to say “fuck it” and do something about it. Sometimes we just need to roar a little louder, push a little harder, smile a little bigger.

The work designers do takes courage on a daily, even momentarily, basis. Take a moment to thank designers you know. Tell them that you understand a bit more about what they face every day.

Do you have the courage to bring forth this work? The treasures inside you are hoping you’ll say yes.
- Jack Gilbert

If you have anything else that you would add or found valuable, leave a comment below or click the ♥. Thank you.

The Courage to be a Designer was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve struggled with Imposter Syndrome most of my career. It ebbs and flows depending on what is going on in my life. Sometimes it has to do with a new job, a promotion, new team, or maybe a new boss. When it happens though, it feels overwhelming and can sometimes be crippling.

Last year was particularly challenging though. I got a new job in a highly technical domain which I had no experience with. Later in the year I switched to a new project and a new team. It wasn’t until towards the end of last year as I was reflecting on things, that it dawned on me, I had been drowning with imposter syndrome.

I define imposter syndrome as the thought that someone (or everyone) is going to find out I am a fraud and my whole facade is going to coming crashing down around me. It is a daunting feeling and can be debilitating at times, so much to the point that it feels difficult to pick myself up and keep moving forward. Maybe it’s just my perspective, but it seems that many creative-type people suffer from this.

I also read a number of articles on “overcoming” imposter syndrome last year. However, I don’t think we actually overcome it completely. I sure haven’t. I think I’ve just learned to live with in in some way, and how to work with it instead of fighting it. I wanted to share what I have found works for me when the feelings of imposter syndrome start to creep in.

Keep Notes on the Good Things

Keep notes on the positive things people have said about you. Also keep notes on the things that you get really excited about accomplishing, realizing, or learning. Then I read these when you are feeling down or having feelings of self-doubt.

Remember That You are Not Alone

Try to remember that everyone has it tough, in their own ways. The person you might be comparing yourself to might be struggling with imposter syndrome as well. I am slowly realizing that even the best of us don’t have it all together.

Share Your Story with Others

I have found that sharing my story is cathartic, and feels like some small amount of weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. Share your strife with others, get it off your chest, you might be surprised how good it feels to share. Who knows, you might help someone else who is struggling with imposter syndrome, they might be thinking you have it all together.

They want to hear you speak because they want to learn from your experience. They even want to hear about your struggles, all the gotcha moments you experienced, and how you overcame them. While you might be ashamed at how long it took you to overcome them, you shouldn’t be.
- Poornima Vijayashanker (article)

Practice Your Craft

You know the saying “practice makes perfect.” Well, I don’t buy into that so much as I do believe that “practice makes better.” Learning more about and practicing things in your craft, really seems to builds confidence.

Picasso created something like 50,000 works of art. Why did he do this? He probably figured out it was more about the process of creating more so than the outcome of creating something great “every” time. Some of his stuff was ok, some was great, and some were unquestionable. But over the course of his life, he had more great things than not. Practicing his craft built a massive amount of confidence.

One Foot in Front of the Other

Try to take it a day at a time, or an hour at a time, or heck, even a minute at a time if necessary. Keep moving forward though. Keep doing, acting, creating, improving. Small improvements over time add up to huge progress in the long haul.

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Don’t be Too Hard on Yourself

Give yourself some slack and remember, you have some responsibility in your success so far. You wouldn’t be where you are today without some part of you deciding to take action, make a choice or to not do something. If you stop and think about it, you have probably been more responsible for the things you have accomplished up to this point that you realize. Give yourself a pat on the back, you deserve it.

Remember that imposter syndrome is a queue that you’re outside your comfort zone and growing. You’re taking risks. It’s common. Acknowledge it.

Support the Newbies

You’ve been the new kid on the block (couldn’t resist that) before when it comes to something. Try to remember what that felt like. Maybe you are still feeling it. Nervous, scared, unsure, inadequate? That is probably what someone new on the team is feeling. Try being their for them, reassure them that it gets easier and that you have their back if they need anything. This act of giving can help get your mind off of the “imposter syndrome monkey on your back,” even if just for a short time.

Don’t Hold Back

This one is the toughest things to do and I still struggle with it. Holding back isn’t doing the world any favors. Sure, maybe everyone won’t agree with you, but if you don’t share, no one will be able to agree with you. Stop being afraid of whether someone will sneer at you or criticize you, because it will probably happen anyway. However, there will likely be far more people that appreciate you not holding back. It takes a massive amount of courage to stand up for what you believe in.

Most people grow out of desperation, and then they grow out of inspiration. The desperation is a catalyst. People have to be uncomfortable enough to be willing to move into new environments.
- Jim Bunch

If you have anything else that you would add or found valuable, leave a comment below or click the ♥. Thank you.

How to Work With Imposter Syndrome was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of being mentored by some really great professionals and also mentoring many designers and researchers myself. Along the way I have learned many things that I wish I had known back then, both as a mentor and mentee. This article assumes that you have already agreed to participate in mentoring with someone.

As the Mentee

Share your background

Share things about your skills and experience. This will help the mentor get to know you and what you may be looking to learn. It is also helpful to share what motivates you as it informs the mentor on how they can tailor discussions.

Be proactive

Be ready to drive some or most of the relationship between you and the mentor. Look at it from their point of view, you are reaching out to them to learn some thing or things. They have know idea what you want or need, you will need to help guide that based on your wants and needs. The mentor typically isn’t a mind reader and your guidance will bring value to your learning.

Have Some Questions Ready

One of the most important things as a mentee is to have some idea of what you want to talk about and learn. Sometimes I find it helpful to have a list of questions that I am looking for answers on. This could range from highly technical questions on skills or strategy all the way to soft skills like communication or conflict resolution. Having questions available will help grease the wheels of the relationship until things start moving on their own.

Meeting Length

Have some idea of how long you want a meeting to run for. Will it be a quick 15 minutes, a half hour, or a full hour? When you get the chance to talk with a mentor, they are trying to figure out how much time to dedicate in their schedule to supporting you. Ask for what you think is reasonable, then be prepared to negotiate. A half hour seems to be a good amount of time to start with. If you meet a few times, take a gut check on if the time feels adequate or too much and make adjustments.

Meeting Frequency

How often do you want to meet with your mentor? Once a week, once every two weeks, once a month? Again, be prepared to negotiate. Once a week for a mentee can be really useful, depending on the availability of the mentor.

Meeting Type

How are you going to communicate with your mentor? Phone calls are probably the simplest method and tend to have the fewest technical difficulties. Video chat is great as you can see each other’s expressions and match a face to a voice, in case you run into your mentor in public, you will recognize them. Will it be in person, for coffee, lunch, or in the office? This can be really useful for hands-on type learning such as hard skill based activities.

Send a calendar invite

Once you and the mentor have agreed on how long and often you will meet as well as how you will communicate, it’s time to schedule things. Help the mentor out by scheduling your first session together. After your first session together and you get a feel for the mentor and what they have to offer, schedule subsequent sessions too. Doing this will show the mentor that you are serious about learning from them and respect their time.

Take Notes

This is probably the most important one. You are there to learn. You won’t remember everything. Notes are a great way to reference things that were said and learned. Doing this will also give you a place to capture follow up questions for your mentor sessions.

Give Feedback

After you have developed some rapport and trust with the mentor, give them feedback on what you are finding valuable, or not valuable. This helps them understand how they can tailor the learning in more effective ways. It will also help them become a better mentor for you and others out there.

As the Mentor

Share your background

Sharing things about your skills and experience will let the mentee know what you can talk about and are able to teach or guide. It also helps paint a picture on what sort of experience you have in certain areas so that the mentee can know where they can really dig in on things and maybe pass up on others. This isn’t so much about bragging as it is creating a clear picture for the mentee on the things that the two of you can cover over the mentorship.

Feel Out the Situation

Do you lead or let the mentee lead? If you notice that you are working with someone who is shy or unsure of how things go, you will need to step up to lead the conversation, maybe only in beginning, or maybe for the entirety of the mentorship. If the mentee seems to have an idea of what they are looking for and asking questions right off the bat, let them lead.

What Are They Looking for?

Ask them questions about what they are looking to learn about in the beginning. This will help you get an idea of how you can answer questions and discuss topics in a way that is valuable to them. Be prepared to probe a little if you get vague answers, but if you continue to get vague responses, maybe they aren’t ready for a mentor. If this happens, you might want to suggest they come back to you in a few weeks after they have thought about some specific questions they are looking for insight on.

Give Feedback

Giving the mentee honest and direct feedback will help them tremendously. Don’t be an ass about it, but don’t shy away from saying something on things that you notice. They probably came to you for answers and guidance on how they can get better at some thing or things. You holding back doesn’t do them any favors.

Ask for Feedback

Some mentors out there may or may not like this, but I think as a mentor, you need to be looking at yourself and become aware if there are things that you can improve upon. Maybe you ramble. Maybe you’re late to sessions. Maybe you give great insights on a particular topic. Knowing these kinds of things and working on them will make you a stronger mentor and mentees in the future will benefit from that.

Methods of Communication

In-Person

I believe this is the most effective and favorite method of mentorship. Not only can you see each other face to face, you can read body language, vibes and tone. There is something valuable and somewhat authentic about in-person communication. You are also able to create a bond differently with each other than any of the other methods I have listed. You can share things with each other in real time, with no latency or technology hiccups.

Video Chat

Video chat gets honorable second place for methods of mentorship. You still get to see each others faces (usually), hear tone, and see body language. Though it is far more challenging to pick up on body language and vibe through video chat. Video chat still isn’t perfect yet though and can be frustrating at times. You might talk at the same time and then wait for the other to talk. Audio might cut in and out regularly depending on connection strength. Someone might not have the tool you want to use or know how to use it effectively. Be patient with this method if glitches happen. Be adaptable if something stops working, have a fallback plan.

Phone

This is probably the easiest to do and you will still get tremendous value from it. You won’t get the body language or facial interaction, but you can still pick up on tone. As long as one of you isn’t having to dial out of the country, connecting via phone usually only takes a moment. The connection glitches these days are far and few between. However, if you know you are in an area where it is notorious for poor connections (buildings, dead zones), remember to be courteous and find a better spot to chat beforehand.

Chat (Slack)

I have yet to try this one myself in a mentorship capacity, but I use Slack a lot and could see it being a useful way of communicating, especially with the recent addition of Threads. This communication tool allows some freedom in when you want to connect and reply. You might be able to just have a running thread of messages that you can read and respond to at your leisure. It also can become a recorded reference that you can easily come back to.

The downsides are that it can be really easy to forget about responding to one another in a timely manner or having expectations of how soon you expect a reply. This is something that you will probably want to set expectations on early in the mentorship. Another worry, is that it is time consuming to write out responses to questions. So you may get shorter or shallower answers. Lastly, you don’t get the personal connection or tone in responses.

Email

This is last for a reason, it’s the least appealing method to mentoring I see. It is similar to Chat but doesn’t have the timeliness of responses. I find that I respond to Chat messages quicker than I do with emails. It also has the same downsides as chat with personal connection and tone. However, a plus is that you can keep the emails indefinitely for future reference. Whereas with Sketch and other chat services, they tend to expire after a while.

Conclusion

Mentoring is probably one of the best ways to quickly learn about some thing or things. You have the benefit of learning from someone else’s successes and failures so that you can choose to make them again or not. I also find that the unstructured method of communicating tends to shed insights that you wouldn’t necessarily get in traditional learning systems. You also get the benefit of someone pushing you along and giving guidance. Lastly, be prepared and respectful, it’s a learning experience for both people.

If you haven’t already had the pleasure of being a mentor or mentee, I say find someone and help them grow. If you have anything else that you would add or found this valuable, leave a comment below or click the ♥ below.

If you happen to be interested in being a mentor or mentee in UX, leave a comment below. Jennifer Aldrich posted an article on design mentorships a while back that helped inspired this post. She also mentions that there is a portal spun up to help facilitate this now: https://mentorola.com/.

How to Have a Great Mentor/Mentee Relationship was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A couple years ago, my job had increasingly become more dynamic and I needed to learn how to manage myself and tasks. I was introduced to Getting Things Done (GTD), a prioritization and task management process. I used it with Evernote which really helped me organize tasks in my life, and it was a huge relief from not having to “remember everything.” It felt like a to-do list on crack.

Challenges with GTD

After working with it for a while, I realized that it wasn’t perfect for my style of organizing things. I slowly began neglecting the process. After not using it for a couple months, the stress began mounting again due to my numerous tasks. I realized that, while not perfect, GTD was helpful. I decided to analyze what I was having challenges with.

• Decision-itis: needing to make too many decisions in the GTD process
• Moving deferred tasks into different notebooks “Work” and “Personal”
• Everything had the same priority
• Tasks looked like a giant wall of text with little differentiation
• All tasks have the same priority
• What task do I do first?
• What task do I do after that?
• How do I quickly know what type of action needs to be taken on a task?

So, I decided to “trim some fat” on the process.

Priority List Process

I realized that I had unknowingly modified the GTD process a number of times to suit my needs . I still did quite a bit of the process around managing incoming data/tasks, but I tweaked it. This is how I have modified GTD and found that it makes things a lot simpler for me.

Filtering Incoming Things

I do the initial filtering process of deciding whether things are actionable or not. If they aren’t actionable, I “File it” away into the appropriate reference folder in Evernote or “Delete it”. If something is actionable, I usually tend to “Prioritize It” to a folder labeled Priority because a lot of my tasks aren’t able to be done in 2 min. I also don’t usually have anyone to delegate it to.

Also, if an email comes in that is actionable, I will forward it to my Evernote email address which puts it in the Priority folder for me. If it isn’t, I will archive it or delete it. This also helps me maintain a state of Inbox Zero with my email, which saves my sanity. I also do this with messages/requests in Slack and meetings. Everything goes into the Priority notebook.

Prioritize with Note Titles

Tasks arriving in Priority get a number prefix on each note/task. A prefix of 1 is a top priority, followed by a 2 being second priority. The higher the number, the lower the priority. I only ever have one number 1 listed, one number 2 listed, a few 3’s, a handful of 4’s, and bunch of 5’s. This way, I always focus on my top priority for that day, and have an idea of what I can start on next.

I also I start each note title with an action identifier that describes the activity needed such as: Document, Call, Design, Review, etc. So at a glance, I can tell what I need to do, or if I have a few minutes between things, I can knock out something small.

Lastly, things that have a definite due date, I add a reminder so it shows up above the list (gently reminding me that something is coming up).

Personal Stuff

Yes, I actually mix together my professional and personal tasks into the same Priority notebook. I found that having two different places to look, was taxing and I eventually ended up ignoring my “personal tasks” notebook. Having them in one place keeps all things work and personal at the front of my mind and I can prioritize them accordingly.

Daily Reviews

I review this list every day, first thing when I get going in the morning. I reorganize things that have changed priority by changing the number. Boom, done. I have some things that have been at the bottom of the list for months and admittedly these could go into a “someday maybe” folder, however I when I did this before, I just completely forgot about them. Keeping them in here keeps them on my mind. When I get some time, I just dip into my Priority notebook and knock out something small, or if I need a distraction for a bit.

If you liked this process, hit the ♥ below. If you have modified the GTD process or have some feedback, let me know with a comment below.

This post was inspired by John Zeratsky’s post on Giving Up on To-Do Lists

Using a Priority List Instead of a To-Do List was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

First off, I want to say that I absolutely love my SELF Journal. I use it daily, it keeps me focused, and I feel it is dramatically improving my ability to complete goals. That said, I think there are things that could be improved.

A few months ago, I came across a product called SELF Journal by BestSelf.co, from an ad of all places. I liked the idea of a “goal-based” daily journal. I ordered it and when it arrived, I tore open the packaging and immediately began reading about how it worked. I read about halfway through the introduction and stopped. My initial thought was, “this sounds a lot more involved than I had originally anticipated.” I didn’t pick it back up for weeks.

It sat on my counter, staring at me, longing to be opened and used. Eventually, I took a few minutes to sit down with it and asked myself, “why did it seem so tough to get started?” This lead me to begin a heuristic analysis of the journal and document the things I liked about it as well as improvements that could be made. And yes, I did share all of this feedback with them via an email. I am hoping that they incorporate the feedback. I believe it could dramatically improve the product and increase rate of completing SELF Journal, and make customers more successful.

Onboarding

This was the first hurdle in the journal. I know that I have a strong bias due to my background in digital product development, but onboarding shouldn’t only be reserved for digital products. There are a bunch of articles about user onboarding (and this) out there describing the methods that will get users into your product and show them the value.

My preferred onboarding experience describes what is going to happen, then gives the user the opportunity to actually do the activity themselves. This enforces the practice while creating immediate value in the product. In the instance of the SELF Journal:

1. Read about a Roadmap, then create one
2. Read about a Daily Planner, then build one
3. Read about a Retrospective, then complete one

13 -Week Roadmap

Next, the 13-Week Roadmap is a great way to choose a goal and break it down into smaller milestones. Then break each milestone into smaller, daily tasks to complete. This process helps you create a plan to actually achieve your goal(s). Here are some thoughts on this section.

• Follow Roadmap description by actual blank Roadmaps. This enforces the onboarding described earlier. There would need to be minor additions to the content to describe doing the Roadmap activity.
• The blank Roadmaps in the end of the Journal. It confused me wondering if they were mistakenly put there or if they were blanks in case I made a mistake. Moving these to where the first one appears in the front of the book would alleviate confusion.

Daily Planner

This is where the rubber hits the road so to speak, where the work gets done. I have my journal open to the current day and work from it over the day. It has all I need to keep me focused on my goal. However, these are some ideas that would improve the pages.

• The Daily layout is odd. The content describes a process for completing each day. However, the way a Daily is laid out, you end up bouncing around from page to page, as well as up and down the page. It’s quite distracting, especially first thing in the morning. The sections should just be in order: 1–7 and adding in the quote and notes area. I sketched out a couple of different page layouts that make follow the described process as well as extra notes space.
• Dotted lines or dotted matrix, pick one, it’s odd having both. It feels unintentional that some areas are dot and some are line. It’s somewhat visually disruptive. Personally, I prefer the dotted lines.
• The daily Quote is a great part, it helps focus my mind on positive thinking. I would move it further up in the process though, have it be one of the first things seen in a day. I believe this primes the mind

Reflection & Tracking

Reflecting on how a previous week went is incredibly valuable. We call them retrospectives (retros) in product development and they always uncover great insights as does this activity in the SELF Journal. The retro activity is probably one of the more challenging parts of the journal. Here are some things I liked and thought could be improved.

• Nest each weekly Retro within the Daily pages, after 7 days. This way you finish seven days, then a do the retro activity. With all of them at the beginning of the book, you see them once, then have to remember where they are each time you go to do one.
• This also makes the analysis part easier as you know which days to look back at. I had to flip back and forth and hold pages to know which ones I was analyzing.
• Having a Retro at the end of a week also makes it very apparent that it is the next thing you “should” do
• Tie the habit/activity content back to the Daily Planner. I think these are Today’s Targets on the Daily pages.
• I like the tally/tracking idea. It makes progress easier to understand. Am I on track to completing my goal, or do I need to step it up?
• Similar to the Daily Planner, dotted lines or dotted matrix, pick one.
• The tracking indicator is redundant at the bottom. You could merge the top and bottom ideas into the top. This would also free up some space for additional content space below.
• I had to re-read the Reflection & Tracking section again to understand what the Goal fields were for. Having the content describing a retro precede the first blank one, would help with understanding.
• I found it challenging to toggle back and forth between the different Daily pages to capture the Targets/Habits and

Other Things

These are some additional ideas I had about improving the SELF Journal

Band and ribbon(s)

• Might be nice to see the elastic band on the journal be the same yellow (branding)
• I really like the quality, though I haven’t used it much yet. Will have to see how it does over time as I expect it will get a lot of use
• The binding is well done. I wonder if you guys have looked into binding process similar to Moleskine. I am concerned that as I work through the middle of the book, that the journal will fold up on itself
• I like the yellow bookmark ribbon. It’s a nice touch and ties in the branding of BestSelf. It is too wide though. It could be half or a third as wide as it is now ($ savings for you guys)
• Another option, is to have multiple, smaller bookmark ribbons. I ended up hacking the one that is on there by cutting it in half, and then fusing the edges to keep them from fraying. I found the two bookmarks helped me with bouncing between sections in the journal quicker.

Pen holder/placement

• I have hacked this on a number of notebooks. I pull the binding apart at the top part of the spine so that I can slide the clip of my pen in.
• I recently saw a similar journal from Nomatic Journal where they had a somewhat clever solution for this. They offset the binding of the paper inside to create some space above the pages. When you put the elastic band on to close it, there is a small pocket at the top of the journal where you can clip your pen to the snap band.
• I am actually able to do the same thing on the Self Journal, but there is additional tension added to the snap band. I worry after a couple months of doing this, that it would stretch the snap band out and not keep the journal closed well.

Two notebooks

• I take notes regularly, as do a number of my colleagues (product, development, and design). This means I have one Moleskine notebook and now my Self Journal. Ugh.
• Have you thought about pulling an “Apple”, and merging the two ideas? Add some extra note pages with the dot matrix. Half and half seems like it might be too much, maybe 2/3 Journal and 1/3 notes (dot matrix)? I would even pay extra for this version. Or the improvements I have mentioned may offset this cost.

Page format

• I can do without the perforated pages. I might not be the norm, but it seems like an extra expense for you guys that you might be able to trim. If I doodle an idea or take notes in this Journal, I don’t want to remove them, at all.
• I would like to have the dots go closer to the edges of each page. Maybe 50% more. This would give me more writing room, as I find I tend to go over the space allowed quite often.

Calendars

• The fold-up 13 week calendar is slightly larger than the journal when it is kept in the journal. It would be nice if it fit without overhang. I didn’t read anything in the journal about it. Not sure if it is supposed to stay with me/journal or hang up somewhere
• Monthly Calendar: not sure what this is for. You have explained most of the other tools in the book, this one is just dropped in. May need some context or guidance around it’s usage.
• I don’t even use it. Some folks may use it, but I don’t and wouldn’t mind the cost of it going to something else.

Cheer you on section

• this isn’t something that is in there now, but I could see some value in cheering users on for the progress they are making at set intervals in the journal. With there being 13 weeks in the journal, maybe doing this just after weeks 5 and 10 right after the retro is completed. Maybe just a page congratulating the user and enforcing it with some positive personal develop stats or something. Sort of a virtual “pat on the back” from SELF.

Packaging

• It comes with a really nice box, but it seems somewhat useless. I get it that they intended for it to house your finished Journal and you can write on the spine of the box to know when the journal took place.
• Why not just put a label on the spine of the journal and save the additional cost of packaging? I don’t want to pull a box off my shelf, then open the box, get my journal out, and then read something from it, I just want to pull the journal off the shelf and read.
• Put the the cost savings from the box towards other business efforts or lower the cost of the journal overall.

Referrals and Affiliates

• Make it easier for happy and enthusiastic customers to refer your product.
• Many other brands and products have done well in simplifying this process. They have it integrated within the product’s site and is usually part of the user profile information.
• I had to tweet BestSelf.co to find out that there was a way to refer others to this product.

Best Self on Twitter

@RedDolan @ty_frank https://t.co/d9AZVh4wbi 👌🏻

In Conclusion

As I mentioned in the beginning, I love my SELF Journal and this article is in no way a scathing review of a bad product. It is my perspective on things that could be done to dramatically improve the value I get out of using it. Also making it easier for new customers to get started and be successful.

If you folks at BestSelf.co have read this, I hope it helps and that some if not most of these improvements can be made. I wish you folks continued success.

How the SELF Journal Could be Improved was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In early 2016, I was fortunate enough to start a new job. With the new job I was also going to be joining a new team. Some months later, I was able to move to another product and also join another new team. While recently reflecting on how well I felt I integrated with each of the teams, I thought it would be worth sharing the things I did that lead to those successes of me fitting in.

Build trust

This is the foundation for building pretty much any relationship, especially with teams. The sooner I was able to build trust, the sooner I felt like I was fitting in with the team. These are some of the key things I did to build trust with them.

• I got to know team members one on one
• I went out to lunch with them, one on one and as a group
• I shared things about myself personally: family, interests, hobbies, and my goals in life
• I asked them about themselves personally
• I genuinely listened and ask probing questions to understand more
• I learned about them through the “way” they talked
• I made an note about them (in Evernote) and those details: name of their partner, kids names, things they like, where they’re from, birthday, and life goals if they shared them. I did this to help me remember those details for later conversations.
• I continue to chat with team members one on one regularly, and indefinitely

Join In

After getting some momentum with team members I start looking at ways that I can fit in to the team as a whole and what value I can bring. These are ways that I did that.

• I learned about the team’s process, if one existed. I tried to figure out how to integrate myself into that process if it made sense
• I looked for opportunities for improvements and spoke up about them when I felt ready to
• At first I just listen at meetings. then I begin to ask questions or comment on things. I don’t wait long to do this. Once I start feeling the need to say something, I know the time is right.
• When an opportunity presents itself for me to help out on, I offer my assistance
• I don’t try to do everything or offer help on all things, I don’t want overwhelm myself. I set my own pace
• When the opportunity presents itself and I feel comfortable, I will ask how I am doing and if there are things I could improve upon
• Oh, and I don’t stop doing any of these even if I have been with the team for a couple years

Remote

The most recent project that I moved to has an entirely remote team. Which has presented some challenges as many of the things I would do to build trust involved face to face situations. However, I do most of what is above with minor adaptations for the remote case and feel it is working out well. Here are the tweaks I have made.

• I use tools to communicate regularly. We tend to use Slack, Hangouts, and WebEx pretty often. I try to chat with teammates at least daily.
• We get together as a team face to face once every couple months. This has helped tremendously with building relationships.
• While we are together, I spend time one on one with folks talking and getting to know them. I also try to make all “after-work” events that the team plans. This makes for a long week, but has paid off significantly.

References

I borrowed some ideas from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and C.O.A.C.H. The Final Act of Leading is Leaving by Kelley Freeman and Rick Jernigan. Both are great books and I highly recommend them if you are looking get some additional ideas on working with a new team or even to become a stronger leader.

Thanks to Poornima Vijayashanker for her idea on Inventory Method. It was what sparked the idea for this article.

Thank you for reading. I would love to hear anything that you have done that has had a positive impact in integrating with a new team.

How I Fit in as the New Person on a Product Team was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I have been asked a number of times what books I would recommend for people interested in learning about User Experience (UX). I haven’t read every UX book out there, but I do believe that the these are a great set foundational books.

I also included some books on UX Research, UX Management and the area of Product Development. I added the ones from ProdDev specifically because I believe that the more you understand the full cycle, the greater an asset you can become to the product team.

UX, Design Thinking, Usability

User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide

Leah, while being a great and approachable speaker, has authored one of my favorite UX books. I learned about many of the different UX skills and specifically when to use each of them. If you only read one book on this list, read this one.

The User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide

Lean UX

This was the first UX-related book I read. It showed me how to integrate UX into the agile product development world that I work in. I implemented Lean UX on every project that I worked on, and saw major improvements to collaboration, shared understanding, and more well rounded solutions.

Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience

The Design of Everyday Things

One of the cornerstones of UX and Product Development. Don Norman, happens to be one of the pioneers to usability and user centered design thinking. I learned about why affordances, signifiers, feedback and constraints are important to design.

The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition

Don’t Make Me Think

This happens to be another cornerstone in UX materials. Steve helps to makes sense of some technical aspects to modern web design. It also helped me understand the flow or intuitive methods that people interact with things online as well as the basics of information architecture.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter)

UX Research

Validating Product Ideas: Through Lean User Research

Tomer Sharon has put together a great reference guide on when to different research activities based on answering some simple questions. It’s not meant to be a read through, however I can see reading through it and understanding how each of the research activities work.

Validating Product Ideas - Rosenfeld Media

Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

I found this book to be incredibly helpful in understanding the best practices to interviewing users. It covers pretty much everything I could think of from preparation to analysis. Most important, was understanding how to ask questions as well as the right questions to ask.

Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights

Product Design/Development

Sprint

The folks from Google Ventures put together this great book about solving a problem or testing an idea in 5 days. It walks you through each and every activity across the 5 days, explains the value, and even discusses who should be involved. It’s fast-paced and thorough.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Atomic Design

I have been working on developing design systems for a few years now and this book would have been a great tool to have back when I got started. It has helped shape some of the murky ideas I had, as well as giving me ideas to bring back to my team. Even if you aren’t sure about building a design system where you are, having the language and ideas on how you can improve your design and development workflow are quite valuable.

Atomic Design by Brad Frost

Designing for Emotion

How do you differentiate yourself from your competition? Well, this book gave me a lot of ideas on how to do that. It comes down to designing personality into your products and solutions that fits with your brand. This personality helps things feel more authentic and like a person versus a computer or machine.

Designing for Emotion by Aarron Walter

Hooked

This book came highly recommended to me by a colleague Michael Wong. It helped me understand what makes great products so great. It also gave me steps to follow to build great products with “stickiness.” I will say, that “with great power, comes great responsibility” though and hope that readers will use this power for good.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

UX Management

User Experience Management: Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams

While I am not a UX Manager, I got a lot of value on how to help lead the UX team efforts from this book. It’s a deep and thorough read with a ton of practical things to implement. Even if you aren’t a manager, this is a great book for senior or lead UXers out there.

User Experience Management: Essential Skills for Leading Effective UX Teams

Leave a comment if you have any books that are part of your essential UX collection that I didn’t mention.

Thank you

Books to Help You Start Learning UX was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I step back and think of the habits that have had profound impact on my career and the careers of other successful UX designers, I started to see patterns. I will start with the more design-specific ones and move to the ones that are applicable to most other professions.

I realized as I was writing this, that each of these habits could be a an article unto itself, so I did my best to keep them concise.

Let Go of Your Work

This is one of the toughest things for new UXers. We get very attached to our work. Letting go of our attachment to our work opens us to improving our solutions and designs through feedback. Opening ourselves to the feedback also toughens our designer skin. This in turn makes us better designers. It also shows those around us that it is about the solution and not us (designers).

Design Reviews

Design reviews are about presenting your solution or design to someone to validate its effectiveness. There are some great articles on how to do effective design reviews, so I won’t go into the details here. I will say that lead with your solution solving the problem. Also, ask to receive specific feedback on things, not just a vague “what do you think?” When you get feedback, write it down. It shows you care about what’s being said.

Collaboration

Collaborating with other people builds trust, common language and buy-in to solutions. When done with a product triad, you are able to make sure the solution is valuable, usable, and feasible. If one part of the triad isn’t stable, the product or solution can go off the rails quickly.

Effective Communication

This one goes beyond design, but is especially imperative to UXers. Learning to effectively communicate will affect all areas of your work. Want to understand why someone chose a specific solution, why someone is resisting the solution you are recommending, or how to get the team to work together? The solution is effective communication. The old adage “we have two ears and one mouth for a reason” is very accurate. The majority of effective communication is listening to what is and isn’t being said before we speak.

Know Your Strengths

This one sounds easy, but until you really understand what your strengths are, and how to work with them, you could just be spinning your wheels. I will also say that working within your strengths will save you energy for those tougher things you don’t love as much and make the things you really enjoy, that much more enjoyable. Once you understand your strengths, it can be a game changer for you.

Leadership

It seems to take a while for junior UXers to understand why this important. Unless there is a senior UX resource on your project, chances are you will be the only UX resource on a project. This means that the product team will be looking to you for answers a lot of the time. You have to speak up for the things that are right for the user. It also means that when you don’t know the answer, say you don’t, that you will find out as soon as possible, and get the answer to the team.

Ownership

This ties into Leadership in that we have to own the results of the project. Are things not making sense to users? Are people on the team not reaching out to you? Does it seem like more discovery or research needs to be done around something? We have to own the success of everything around us. If something isn’t working, what can you do to get it back on track. This may mean that you need to get other people talking to one another.

Accountability

Holding those around you and yourself accountable can be tough. It can still be tough for me at times. Generally reminding someone that they said they were going to do something will get things rolling. Sometimes, that person needs more than one reminder or it’s becoming a pattern. Politely let them know how that behavior is affecting the success of the project and ask for a firmer commitment from them. If it’s you, figure out why you aren’t making your commitments and do your best to resolve them, or have your manager give you some ideas.

In Conclusion

Some of these may seem like no brainers. Others might take some work. Though I strongly believe that learning these habits will make work life more enjoyable and open many doors for you in the future.

Are there any that you would add?

Habits Every UX Designer Should Develop was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many years ago, I actually started my career as a front-end developer. I spent a few years really understanding how to code web pages, structurally and stylistically. I even spent time tinkering with Javascript from time to time thinking that I would need to get better at it as a front-end guy.

One day I had the fortunate event of inheriting a conference pass from a coworker that had just left. I don’t remember the name of it, but the theme was around user centered design and product development. It immediately hit home with me. I came back from the conference really fired up that there was a process/practice of the things that I had been talking with my team about which revolved around talking to users and customers about what they need, versus just assuming that we knew all of the answers and would build from those assumptions.

Maybe a year later or so, I attended An Event Apart and it continued to enforce the idea that I was onto something that resonated with my beliefs about product and solution development. Again, it was all about the user. What do they need? What are their pains? What are they trying to accomplish? Answering those questions got me on the right track of mind to think of solutions that solve those questions.

Soon after this, User-Centered Design started being known as User Experience, or commonly referred to as UX. Some UX-specific blogs started popping up that I would read regularly. I started to understand that there were many different types of activities/skills that could be applied to answer certain questions at strategic points in the product development cycle. I have to thank my boss (Brandon) at the time for supporting the idea of pursuing UX centered activities on the projects that I was working on.

One day while I was driving, my son Griffin was playing on an iPad and had a meltdown. I asked my wife what was going on, and she told me that he was playing with some app that has all sorts of ad popups and they get in the way of him wanting to play with the app. My wife told me that there were many kids apps that seemed to have similar experiences that frustrated him. Being a parent, I wanted to alleviate his pain in any way I could. This was one of the first things that galvanized my love for UX.

Some time after, I was hired specifically as a UX resource, the first the company had. Which also meant there wasn’t a UX culture that had been established yet. I really had my work cut out for me. I was developing a UX-mindset with the teams I worked with, creating a UX culture up the leadership chains, an developing a UX team, all while still doing my day job. I am grateful to that company for the time, patience, and support in getting that of the ground.

Shortly after starting there, I was able to attend UX Strat and was blown away by the thriving and supportive community of UXers that attended. I was introduced to some great speakers, whom I got to talk to or have a drink with one on one. I also met several great UX leaders in many different industries. This event was a pivotal one for my love for UX. Paul Bryan, who organizes all of the UX Strat events, has a strong passion for making the events valuable and memorable for attendees and I would highly recommend attending one if you have the chance.

I had also read Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden before UX Strat and had the pleasure of listening to Josh speak about Lean UX. He and I chatted after one of the conference days at a social mixer, and I was impressed by his passion for what we do and was a great guy to talk with in general.

From the UX Strat conference, I also listened to Leah Buley’s talk and had the pleasure of talking with her for some time afterwards. I shared my challenges of being a “team of one” and was looking forward to reading her book User Experience Team of One: A Research and Design Survival Guide. After reading the book, I would put it in the list of essential UX books to read for anyone looking to get into the field.

The last major contributing factor to me getting into, and staying within, the field of UX was local meetups. Meetups happen to be one of my favorite ways to experience what we do, be it someone speaking, someone leading a workshop, or just a lunch/dinner with likeminded UXers. I have always found that engaging other folks of the trade inspires me to be more active and find more ways to give back and grow the value of UX.

Thanks for making it this far. If you are a fellow UXer, I would love to hear your story. Either leave a comment below, or hit me up and maybe we can do a Hangout or something. I am always fascinated by peoples’ stories on how they got into UX.

The Steps I Took to Become a UX Designer was originally published in Red Dolan on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.