writing about user experience

The Start

Published on
Part of the “5 Minutes a Day” series

It’s Monday, the start of the work week. It occurred to me today how often I take that for granted. The beginning of anything is usually a critical part of getting it right. The start sets the tone for how the rest is going to work out, and so it should be with the work week.

What made me think of this? People often times ask me “Are you nervous before you go on stage to speak? How do you get through it?”. My answer is always “Yes, I’m terrified. BUT I try to have a really solid opening, a really great start to the presentation. This launches me into the rest of the session, sets my foundation, helps me engage the audience from the beginning and makes me feel comfortable even with many eyes looking at me”.

What I realized is that this metaphor could apply to anything in life. That having a really solid foundation allows one to build, layer on, make better, and that is what I aim to do with each aspect of my life. I think you should want to try that as well… you’ll be surprised how many good things just start to “happen to you” once you set this aim.

So, this Monday (and hopefully many after) I’m going to take a few minutes to visualize the rest of my week and how it will play out. I’m going to visualize the successes, the hurdles, the goods and the bads (mostly the goods), and see if that helps me to take a new and different approach to my week, a better approach that extends me beyond my normal possibilities. Let’s see what happens!

5 Minutes a Day

Published on
Part of the 5 Minutes a Day blog series

Recently, I’ve started trying to focus more on my business strategy as well as my personal growth “strategy”. As part of this, I’ve committed to myself to write for at least 5 minutes a day. I’m trying to write in the morning time, when my ideas are still fresh, and I’m trying to write without rhyme or reason, meaning I don’t have any specific topic in mind. Each day I am to sit down, start the timer, then see what happens.

Initially, my aim was not to share these writings. I thought of them more as diary postings or notes in my journal, if you will. But, what I realized this morning was that all too often we hide our thoughts from the world. Obviously, broadcasting your inner most thoughts and secrets is probably not comfortable for you (it’s not for me!), but we tend to close off way more than just our inner most thoughts.

We hold back our thoughts, for fear that we are not smart enough, that we will be judged, and that those judgements define who we are. I believe that that is a mistake. I, personally, have been holding back too long, and I see many others, within my profession, and outside of it, doing the same thing.

We need to open up. Opening up means writing down or speaking random ideas that your sub conscious, or your conscious has been trying to tell you. Opening up means removing the veil and letting light into your brain. By opening up, sharing your ideas, putting them out in the world for everyone to see; you are making room for more ideas to come in, or for existing ideas to grow.

And so today starts my attempt at opening up. I had no plan for this piece, nor do I have a plan for future pieces. This is simply me opening up, leaking information out of my brain, hoping you’ll read it and provide more ideas on it so that it can either grow, or I can let go of it for all time.

Oops! There’s my timer.