Reminders for myself

Whenever you hear yourself saying “I have to…”, change it to “I choose to…” Remembering you have choices does wonders for your well-being.

Julie Zuho

You can only optimize what you can measure. This explains both why it’s impossible to optimize for happiness (not measurable), and why we so often optimize for things that don’t actually make us happy (money, social media likes, how much you can deadlift, etc—all easy to measure!)

Julie Zhuo

A concept is strategy, visualized

Great designers are able to distill the essence of a strategy and transmute it (through a mockup, a storyboard, a sentence, a quote, a metaphor, or a story) into a form that stakeholders can grasp and embrace.

https://www.doc.cc/articles/concept?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The thing when designing - especially B2B tools in particular - is that there are so many guardrails and constraints to consider. This is where true creativity shines! Rather than thinking of designing within constraints as a boundary, I think we should embrace it.

There are only 3 methods to learning: 1) increase your exposure to new knowledge (conversations, blogs, books, podcasts, etc.) 2) improve retention of knowledge (active listening, highlighting, reflecting, teaching, etc.) 3) increase your pace of personal experimentation (try doing new things). Most people focus on 1, but 2 and 3 yield more gains.

J

Taking a chance on a person is making a bet not on what they are now, but the potential of what they can become.

David Hoang

Availability doesn’t mean being ready

The first design management role you have might be because you’re handed the opportunity: there is a need, the manager left/got fired, or something else. Availability does not wait for you to be ready. It asks you to give a direct answer if you will say yes to the call of duty². When I took on the responsibility

"I was waiting for something extraordinary to happen, but as the years wasted on, nothing ever did unless I caused it.”

—Charles Bukowski