IA Summit 2017: 5 Minute Madness

Note: this article reflected my feelings on IA Summit at the time of attendance. As of 2018, I've learned of serious safety violations at the conference over many years. Please consider that when reading this, as my experience may not be typical. Until further notice, you should not attend the IA Conference (which is what IA Summit is now known as) or support the IA Foundation. – Ed.

Like everyone else at IA Summit, I had the option of talking about anything at 5 Minute Madness. A full writeup of the conference is forthcoming. Here is a hastily-written up transcription of my notes and thoughts from 5MM.

Resist.

Resist ignorance in our work, our value, our values, what we do, and who we are.

Resist people who will tell you “no”. Listen to them, consider it. But press on.

And echoing Christina Wodtke's fantastic 5MM from last year: you are empowered. Do not architect hate. Privilege is freedom from explanation. Let us move toward a feminist IA, because the future and the world is non-binary.

Persist. Nevertheless.

You are helping others! We need you and your skills, your experience. Everything you bring. We need that.

This gets challenging, and this gets hard. But you can do this.

Rest if you must. Take care of yourself.

Exist. (totally cribbed my blog post here)

I want people to exist and bring their full selves to their lives when and where they can.

They might not be able to be visible in some situations for safety or personal reasons.

But it's critical for me to know that my friends and followers and coworkers and family and acquaintances are out there, pushing on, being themselves and just existing in this challenging time.

You are a part of my family of choice, in part because when I come here you see me. I see you too.

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Suuuuper big thanks to Veronica Erb and Christina Wodtke for their inspiration and letting me steal a quote or two.

Changing Bigger Patterns

In the past I've espoused the idea of focusing on the small things in your life in order to bring about design changes. They're the “microinteractions” of our lives, if you will. In my experience, that is arguably the easiest stuff to tackle. I'd rather focus on something like not drinking caffeine in the afternoon in order to improve my health, versus going all out and saying I'm going to eliminate all caffeine for three quarters of the year (ACK!)

That's one example, of course, and you may be at a place to do something bigger. That's when it's time to look not just at your goals – those things way up high – but larger patterns. They're at the “product design” level.

I've got to admit, I've been feeling a little bummed lately. I've been more irritable, I've been exercising less, and my attitude towards my body has shifted to a negative place right now. And when I've had only now in focus, it's felt new and singular. I've wondered, “Wow, how do I get through this?” A few days ago I found myself rifling through old journal entries; I was very curious about what I was writing and thinking a year ago. And do you know what I found?

Much of the same stuff.

I wrote about very, very similar feelings on very, very similar topics. It was a small but important aha! moment. It started to reveal something bigger: this is something that happened to me last year at around the same time. So, what caused that? I was curious about it, so I read some of my other entries from around that time. I found that I had worked through some of these things. It gave me comfort and assured me that it was something that Past Me had also confronted.

Now, though, I'm able to see that this is something that has happened two years straight – so I can address it if I choose to. I might take action on this, or I might leave my future self more clues – more information about how this moment feels, how this all is going right now. But having that information and knowing the scale of this pattern is really, really helpful for me.

The Size of It

When it comes to our daily lives, then, how can we tell what kind of pattern we're in? How do we know if this is something small, medium, large, or even larger? Here are a few pointers.

1. First off, notice what you're doing. When you're in the middle of something – anything – and you notice it, also take that time to notice the way you're feeling about it. When I was writing my journal a few days ago, I felt very wrapped up in the emotions I was capturing but – and this was key – I was also curious about what had happened before. And I let that curiosity assist me.
    
2. Drill down into the “why”. Now that you've observed something about yourself, to borrow research lingo, it's time to analyze it. You don't need to write a 50-page PowerPoint deck on it... unless you want to, of course... but be present in that moment, with those feelings. What's really happening? Ask yourself “why” multiple times. Be honest with yourself and you will find that the answers get bigger and bigger.
    
3. If you want to change it, design it to scale. Of course, you have to choose to want to change the pattern. You don't have to. You can do it later, or not at all. But should you choose to change it, brainstorm and think about the actions that can lead to what you want. In my example, if I don't want to get into a self-care rut right around late January maybe I need to do multiple things in order to improve my attitude – and it wouldn't hurt to do them in advance of this time period, either. But one change that I see as small probably won't be enough. It's an experiment I'm willing to try.
    
4. Keep tabs on it. Obviously, I'm a fan of journaling. But one of the actions I can take to help me keep tabs on it is to pop a reminder for myself into my calendar ahead of time. That's a way to get it out of my head and let me think about it later. And in the GTD bonus round, I'll just make a project in my Someday bucket (or schedule it for much later this year) so I can proactively take care of myself.
    
5. Do it. The hardest part. I know I'll be scared, or be tempted to brush it off. But now I know from experience what brushing it off has felt like!

You wouldn't redesign a microinteraction with the intent of affecting change in the entire system. As in design, it's all about the scale of the challenge.

Untrusted System

It's kinda funny to admit, but one of the cornerstones of my Better Living Through Design talk is how flawed my brain is. It's a straight up blow to the ego, and it's humbling. It's almost embarrassing to admit it. But it is true.

And when it comes to Getting Things Done (GTD), the organizing system I've been interested in for a few years, my brain has fiercely held on. I first noticed it nearly two years ago, and have been feeling it ever since. I ended up in a place of quasi-GTD where some things were really, really handled well by my “trusted system” and others that remained in my head.

Within the past few weeks, I've had a change of heart. I am on the precipice of plunging right into GTD and truly implementing it. But I admit, I am afraid to do so.

Holding myself back

The biggest fear? Full on acknowledgement that I can't hold everything in my head. It's admitting, in a way, that my life is complex and complicated. It's admitting that I can't remember everything I need to do in the coming week, day, month, and so forth. It's an attachment to a way of being that is not... me. And wow, my brain is not a fan of that.

I've also been seduced by the marketing angle of all of it. GTD has felt like a Way of Life, in title case, and a big thing. That is both intriguing and repulsive to me.

Due in part to that perception, my mind then distracts me from the tasks at hand. It feels a lot more productive to reevaluate OmniFocus versus Things (my app of choice) again than just plunge in and organize my Things Inbox. And, in terms of the way I've handled GTD, the Inbox is where all of my loose to do items go. They require organization, clarification, and refinement – straight up work.

It's an IA problem

When I step back and look at the root of the problem, though, it's more about the IA (how I've organized my lists) than the UX (the tools and processes). There have been times when I've done the brain dump – getting all of those to-dos and items out of my head and into the Inbox – and nothing else. And I tell you, that alone feels good! Until I look at an Inbox with 75+ unsorted items. Then it's back to Overwhelming City.

GTD provides a system to organize these bits. It leans heavily on Next Actions: individual, physical actions that one can take to get closer to a particular outcome. Small tasks. Doable tasks. Then there are Projects, which sound daunting but are really a number of tasks grouped together. Some Projects and Next Actions go into a Someday bin, which means I care about them... but not necessarily right now. And there are Waiting items, those that are dependent on others.

On top of that, there are the concepts of Contexts and Areas of Responsibility. Contexts address where a task can be done (I surely can't change a light bulb in the kitchen when I'm at work), and the Areas of Responsibility live above Projects, addressing my bigger goals.

The system, as you can see, is carefully designed. There are processes and rules. I understand them. My brain gets it. But that fear? That is real. And it's coming from a place of concern that if I organize my entire life – setting aside the drama – then where will the spontaneity be? Where will the creative things be?

Yet, if GTD is reframed as not a thing to organize my entire life, but to organize the bits that crave to be organized... it's a tool, instead of a Way of Life. It's another thing I can use in order to clear up my head and get to the good stuff.

And so, in revisiting my post on GTD from April 2013, I feel I can end it with the exact same words.

So, I can say that thus far my experience with a trusted system has been fine - but I need to actually trust that trusted system first. Letting go is a big step.

Inaction is a choice

A slide from my talk, Better Living Through Design:

Roz Duffy's excellent post, Just Start Flossing, brought up a slew of emotions and thoughts for me. I was also influenced by watching the entire GTD series (with David Allen himself!) on lynda.com.

The theme? Just do it. Get your shit together and do it.

What gets in the way? Often, it's my brain.

My brain is an awesome tool. It's not perfect, but it has served me well for 37 years so far. But sometimes, it helps get me royally stuck. I stand on the precipice of possibility and freak right out. Or rather, my brain freaks out. It starts asking too many questions in what feels like a nanosecond. What if the other choice was better? What if I'm doing it wrong? What will I think about it? What will others think? How much will this be messed up? Will it actually be good?

That, in turn, oft seized me up. I would do nothing; or, rather, I would do something else that required a lower level of effort. Like tweeting. Or shopping. Or going down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. Or putting the dishes away. All of that stuff that never goes away. This is so low effort that I call it inaction because it's a lack of movement on the big, scary stuff.

That's why I advocate for small changes, something that is echoed in Roz's post and the GTD philosophy too. Small stuff, my brain can handle. Turn off notifications from Mail on my phone? Oh yeah. Start eating more avocado? Most definitely. Be mindful of nutrition when picking foods? Yep.

Hear me now and believe me later: inaction is a choice you make, and it is actually an action! In the parlance of design, it is akin to reviewing the research and choosing to do nothing. It is valid, yes, but it has consequences – just as other actions do. And really, it just doesn't feel the same as a concrete action does.

There is a sea of choices, possibilities, and decisions out there. It's on us whether we want to dive in or not.

Misalignment

What happens when our actions are misaligned with our intentions and our values?

Before I dive in, a brief aside. The way I started working on designing myself included (surprise!) a framework. I positioned it as three parts of my self: the drivers, the mind, and the body. Now that I've sat with this talk and philosophy for a while, I feel “drivers” could be updated to better account for the heart and the gut. These two parts are similar, but distinct.

My heart is a source of compassion and care. It is empathic. It focuses on feeling and emotion. My gut, in slight contrast, draws on my heart but also pulls on my experience, knowledge, and immediate, deep reactions to things. It's the part of me that “knows” if something is right or wrong, generally in the here and now; my heart is the part that knows how I will feel about that decision over time.

Got it? Great. Now then. Misalignment.

On a very cerebral level, misalignment occurs when your heart, gut, body, and mind are unable to make an idea, a concept, into something else. It may be due to attachment to a specific desired outcome. It may be due to fear. It may be due to anxiety. It might be all of these things.

Root cause analysis for my feelings

Lately, I've been quite misaligned: my mind has been in the driver's seat. Longtime readers and listeners know that for me, that's a common place to be; I've been seeking to actively change it over the past few years. But, as they say, old habits die hard and there is a comfort and familiarity when my mind is in charge that remains tough to resist.

When my mind is in the driver's seat I notice it in my body first. I've felt increasingly disconnected from it for the past few months. There's a lot less of the, “Wow! I can run a 5K!” type of feeling and more of the, “Huh, I don't feel much about my body” notion floating around my head. That's curious to me so I sit with these feelings and track them down. It's like a root cause analysis for my feelings, but way less analytical. I try to relax my inner critic and just listen. When it comes to matters of the body, the first thing I check is how my activity level has been. And I know that it's been low – I know it in my gut, and in my heart. I also check in and see how else I've been treating my body.

Once I've listened to what's going on, I quiet the desire to fix it immediately and consider how it all happened and how I feel about it all. That puts my mind at ease, and satisfies my curiosity... and also lets me address intentions: the things I know and feel in my heart and gut. In the case of low activity, it's a combo of (again) old habits and also new roadblocks I've put up in front of myself: I won't go out for a run today because... I'm getting used to a new schedule. I need time to adjust to all of these big life changes lately. And the classic, But there's so much other stuff to do on your to do list! Then, other parts of me pile on. It gets pretty noisy.

But bringing in the heart and the gut here is key. Because they know what's going on and they also know how I feel about the misalignment. They also help me realize that right now, it seems like my intentions and my actions are on two different planets. Because if I'm doing something or not doing something, and I can't connect it to something of importance to me, it becomes very difficult for me to proceed. I start to resist it. I fall back into old patterns and habits.

Are your habits valuable to you right now?

So, then, once a disconnection is identified and understood at some level, that's when I start to address it. This is tough because there's a reason I fell into the old habits, right? They're comfortable. They're known. They're valuable, for some reason. But I need to ask myself if they're valuable to me right now. And if they are, well, then that leads to further questioning. But if they are not – again, drawing on my intentions and my heart – it's like an action plan springs up before my very eyes. I start to feel like the parts of me that love to plan can start to do it. It gets more exciting.

That doesn't mean the changes are easy, and some are bigger than others for sure. But knowing why and how these habits return, understanding what they're doing for me, and ensuring they align with my intentions help me turn ideas into something more substantial – actions and plans.

All Apologies

As a parent, I read a lot of kids' books. There's something really lovely about them, in general: when they're looking to teach a lesson or inform a kid, man, they are direct. No 100+ pages of examples or stories; just one straight narrative and a purpose. I love that.

One of my son's frequently-read books is Tumford the Terrible by Nancy Tillman. It's the story of a cat who makes mistakes and messes, and never says he's sorry... until one day he confronts his actual feelings and finds that telling the truth and apologizing makes him feel good. Deep, right?

It seems that the simple act of apologizing becomes a lot less simple as we become older. If we hurt someone, intentionally or not, we put up barriers. We may eschew responsibility and pin it on someone or something else. The email never left my outbox... this person doesn't speak for the company... it wasn't intended that way. But in my own experience, doing this makes me feel uncomfortable. It is a little nugget of a burden that sits on my back and becomes another thing I need to carry, need to nurture, even though it's deserving of neither.

If you already know the truth, then be brave and face it. It may hurt a little bit. But like Tumford, once that apology is out there... your self, your true and wonderful self, can heal.

Constraints

After my WebVisions talk last month, there were quite a few fantastic questions from the audience. One of them was, “When you're figuring out what you want to do with your life and how you want to be, how do you take into account the needs of others - like family?”

I clarified by addressing “children” in that “family” bucket, although it can apply to families of all types, really. But my initial answer was this:

All the best designs work within constraints.

I do not have unlimited time nor energy. My wife, son, and other family members all have their needs and wants too. So as I'm planning my days and choosing how to exist in this world, I must take them into account as well. Because, frankly, if I don't, then I'm not being truly myself.

What happens when specific goals or actions conflict with each other? I'm working through this right now: my wife and I made a number of choices that are super important to us, but other people in our family are less comfortable with them to the point of completely disagreeing with them. My old default reaction was to turn around and question my own decision – all in an effort to please the other person, putting my own joy and happiness aside.

But, that's not where my heart is anymore. Now I know these decisions – the ones that I feel are best for me and my family – lead to really uncomfortable conversations and possible consequences. I can't predict how other people will react, even with lots of experience, so my wife and I talked about a few possible outcomes and how we'd feel about them, and how we'd react as well. (This was instrumental, and really soothed the part of me that likes to plan everything out.)

This is a constraint, but an important one. Our decisions and actions have consequences, and how we handle them is also indicative of how we are in the world. No matter what I face, I remind myself of my intentions and work to apply them.

Compassion in Tough Conversations

Recently, I was talking with a person who knew exactly how to press my buttons. We were talking back and forth about something big in the news — a heated conversation — when the topic shifted. Suddenly, I started hearing things about me: I had made bad choices, I had done the "wrong" thing, and I had disappointed people. I was now in an argument, and I was the one who felt attacked.

What do you do when you're under attack? My first instinct was to defend myself. I felt blood flowing through me at a faster rate; fight or flight was kicking in. Adrenaline was powering me through this. I couldn't just leave the conversation so I had to stay.

And I unleashed. I was angry. Everything I heard from the other person wasn't true or, at least, wasn't as I intended. But my actions were being twisted and changed into something far worse, something malicious, and something hurtful. Parts of me chimed in, “But... that's not me! That's not. I'm not a hurtful person! You're wrong!” Lots of defense. Lots of shielding.

The conversation was messy and did not end well. Both of us walked away at the end of it feeling hurt and angry. It did parts of us a world of good to vent and complain and attack like that, but other parts of us were left on the sidelines. We just couldn't be present in those moments. Right?

The illusion

This very driven and heated conversation stirred up our emotions and the bits of both of us that we had each been sitting on for a good long time. Heightened emotions and heightened actions. And yet, compassion and empathy were out the door in this case. Make no mistake: these are really hard instances in which one can practice these things but it is not impossible.

Setting aside our ego and our defenses in order to listen and be compassionate with that person can open the door to greater understanding, care, and connectedness. And yeah, yeah, it's something that I know, but in those moments? Way harder to tap on that. So much of me wanted to respond in kind... and I chose to do so. Of course, it's normal to be angry and pissed and upset in the moment. But we need to keep our ears open and working and present, and truly listen, even when a part of us saying, “Noooooooooo!”

How we respond is a choice. It always is, even when it feels like we have little say in the matter.

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Dig this post? Come see me speak at WebVisions Chicago on September 26th! Tickets are available, and code MCALEER gets you 20% off. Register today.

It Might Hurt a Bit

On the past couple of episodes of Designing Yourself, Whitney and I have discussed some great stuff - how we handle stress, and how we recharge ourselves. The great thing about these discussions is that they've provided context and perspective for the work I've been doing on myself over the past few years.

Let me be direct: I have spent a lot of time being "busy" in an effort to avoid dealing with feelings, identity, relationships, and a shitload of other things. Collectively I feel like we have made the notion of being busy too simple to attain and boy, there is a part of me that feeds on that. I can always catch up on Twitter, watch a complete series of a TV show, and plug away at that never ending to do list. But what does that all mean? What does it get me? When does the well-organized person organize in some downtime?

Now, downtime is something I define differently than you do. Sometimes downtime includes zoning out reading blogs or shopping for clothes. Sometimes it means lots of activity with my family, and sometimes it means being very alone. Often, it's an independent thing though - breathing, slowing down, and being observant of the world instead of my busy-ness.

Without downtime and work on the self, I experience profound avoidance. Gang, it's hard to work on emotions and relationships and intentions. It is extremely emotional. I have had lifelong assumptions about myself challenged, and moving from a place of observation to action can be downright terrifying. But it is also profoundly freeing. It is both. And that's where, historically, I have walked away from the challenge.

I've walked away because it's beyond logic and beyond my brain, which has been a driving force for a significant part of my life. I've walked away because I don't know how to do it. No one told me how to best manage this stuff, or not manage it, and just... be with it. Be with myself, be me in those moments. There's no manual. And even then, it delves into the very definitions and notions of who I am. Not trivial, ultra challenging, huge stuff.

I've put some ideas around this. and will be sharing these tools at WebVisions. It may be great for you, or it may not, but it's working for me. I sincerely hope that you can find something that works for you, no matter who you are, in what I share.

Because what I've discovered, nearly by accident, is that my imperfect and wonderful brain can only take me up to a precipice of fear. It's a combination of all my parts, and my support system, that can truly push me through it.

Onward.

Found out

On Friday my friends Amy Silvers and Lori Widelitz-Cavallucci spoke at Madison+ UX on Imposter Syndrome. (This was also the talk they presented at IA Summit, and you can see the summary here.) Watching and listening to their talk over the web kicked up my own feelings on this matter.

In short, for years I waited for the other shoe to drop and to be found out as a fraud. Years. Even when I was a young, good programmer, a part of me held on to a fear that one day someone would basically shoot holes in whatever I was doing, and as a result I would feel incredibly humiliated and embarrassed.

During that time, there was a direct impact on the way I worked. It might not have been so noticeable in the darkroom or in the code, but the part of me that was a vocal critic and on alert for being called out was always present. It was always there. As a result of this, I rarely spoke about my work - and promoted it even less. That's because there were enough parts of me saying, "This isn't all that good." It might have truly been good stuff, and to be honest, probably was! But I had a hard time recognizing that and an even harder time taking a compliment. (I mean, people were complimenting me on my work? My internal barometer on that was just way off!) This is also part of the reason I preferred to work by myself for so very long.

But I've had to adjust

Good design work is people-focused, whether it's research or life design or aesthetic design. And that means it's far more open to criticism - but it's also far more open to connection and appreciation, as well. The risk is higher and the reward is higher too.

The biggest things that I've had to account for are my own self-confidence (which is only emerging due to intense work on the self) and my experience.

My experience is something I can now count on, and it appeals mostly to my brain and not so much to my heart. It's relatively easy for me to justify design decisions based on decades of work, including what works well and what doesn't. I say this not to brag (my ego will chime in momentarily!) but I say this as a point of fact: when you work in a field for a very long time, you simply start to see the broad patterns and gain that understanding. I considered it to be table stakes when it came to myself, instead of giving it the true honor it deserves. (It was hard work!)

But the self-confidence is the much, much harder piece. It has required sustained, intense focus on my self, identifying who I am, and being able to even get to a place where I see my work having value and being worthwhile - even to myself.

For instance, it is only within the past 6 months that I have been able to hear a compliment from someone about my work, take a moment, absorb it, and thank them instead of doing the knee-jerk "thanks!" response. I would do the latter because it was polite (brain-focused, other person-focused, society-focused) and not really do what I needed to do to truly hear the other person and take that in (me-focused).

In addition, working on Designing Yourself has given me ample opportunity to promote this great thing I'm doing. On the one hand, it may look easy to post a tweet saying that the show is great. On the other hand, it stirred up a lot of conflict in me. I was overly concerned about appearing too self-promotional, too selfish, too... lots of things that I saw as negative. That, in turn, would make me more vulnerable.

But as my work has continued to get closer and closer to me (less of an abstract), this vulnerability goes part and parcel with it. I can't hide behind code when I'm on stage talking about my experiences. It leaves me totally open. And that's where I want to be because that's where I need to be. Even if someone in the audience, or someone online, thinks I'm a total fraud.