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Day 9: Channel Your Inner Cat

5/30/2017

We all experience the boiling soup in our heads when an agreement on a delivery with a teammate manifests itself as a completely different outcome than the originally discussed idea. "Wait. Whaaat? Didn't we agree on so and so? I thought we were on the same page when they left the room galloping full gusto!!! I thought they were going to come back with what we finally agreed on... Arghhhhhh.... Why? What? Whyyyyyyy?" I get how annoying this is. When I am in a state of what feels like my ideas are discarded and disrespected, my inner child starts screaming all tones of screams. Highs and lows. No medium range notes. Nada. I first doubt myself, then start either feeling angry at the person or I give up on the battle completely, because I have no more energy left to discuss the project any further. So, what to do?

Take a deep deep blue breath and go back to the original meeting minutes to remember WHY the original decision took place at the first place.
Then, imagine as if you are a little cute kitten. So cute. Once, you connect with your cute little inner kitten, get curious like a playful kitten would, WHY this person/group took a detour from the original agreement? Please really embody the kitten in your being. Otherwise, you will still be under the influence of your angry inner child. You might find out that the person generates ideas more comfortably when they work alone.
Play a yes, and game to find the middle way to draft a new agreement and help and encourage the person to be more collaborative. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder, because you are helping someone grow.
Record the new agreement.
After everyone finally agrees for reals, just keep coming back the agreement notes for each iteration. Breathe, persist, repeat.

Persistence is a lesson I learned from MR. Claw. When he wants something, first he gets closer to his want. For example, he would go by the door and start staring at the door knob in silence. Then, he would make eye contact with me. Then, he moves his gaze back at the door knob, then looks at me, then looks at door knob again, then looks at me. He does this with patience and persistence. The moment I tell him he needs to use his cat door, he starts meowing at me persistently. I roll my eyes and open the door for him. So you see, he is a master persister.

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Day 8: When Someone Throws You Under the Bus

5/17/2017

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Challenge Excepted

When you feel like you were "thrown under the bus" in a meeting or over an email:

Acknowledge how you feel
Take a deep breath and hold your neurovascular points
Instead of saying to yourself or out loud 'You just throw me under the bus!" Say out loud, "Challenge accepted!"
Wear something that activates your superhuman powers to take on the challenge

By changing the way we respond to events, we can help the energy that is generated in the micro instance of our interaction with a coworker to go to an empowered self, instead of going to the victimized self. When we step into our power, we take on the challenges with gusto and create in a World that nourishes and supports us. Feeling expansive is more productive that feeling shrunk and not feeling in our power.

Alex is empowered with the magic "Bells & Wishes" necklace that I made on the spot. He is guarded with the the superpowers of:

Learning things super fast
Ability to wrap time and space to be able to meet deadlines
Immunity to other tasks that wants to be a meal on his plate

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Day 7: I Don't Like Theme Parks

5/9/2017

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Day 6: You Say Banana, I Say I am Not a Gorilla

5/9/2017

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Day 5: 3 Things I Learned Today That Thought Me How To Save The Day When Someone Throws Curveballs At My Inner Child

5/1/2017

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Greetings from Portland, Oregon. I am here to attend the User Experience Engineering: Interaction Design Conference (#UXInteractions) this week. As advertised, we are learning to sail beyond our limits in Interaction Design. My first session for the week was Hagan River's Enterprise Apps: To Boldly Simplify Where Nobody has Simplifies Before. Her lecture was engaging, funny and made me reminiscence about the bloody usability battles I lost negotiating with stakeholders and also reminded me of the ones that I won that made our users go merrily on their paths. Merrily merrily merrily song goes here...

3 Takeaways from Hagan's workshop:

Arbitrary iconography sucks
Pagination is evil
Best Practices for form, navigation design and goals for style guides.

However, today's gift writing is not about the design principles that would help us sail in the muddy waters with less mud with clear blue skies. I think we would all like the coordinates for those waters. Please keep reading on.

Design Exercise That Switched The Lights on On My Bulb

Exercise: Design a homepage for the library.
User: Patron of the library
Needs: A visitor who wants to find new books, see what she has checked out or overdue, see what is in on order....
Time: 5 minutes
My Sketch:

I realized what made me feel at ease after I sketched my mini design challenge. Here are the 3 things that might help bring harmony in your being in times of an urgent request.

2Cs and 3Ws: Exercise instructions are very clear and concise. There is no question about the direction, or who the end user is for this design. Often times this is never the case for software development. It generally feels like, the person who is writing the requirements does not have time to fully bake the bread. It feels like one of those take home and bake goodies, but without the knowledge of what it is exactly that we are baking, who we are baking it for and why? So, instead of engaging with unproductive inner dialog, help the person who throw you the red ball answer 2Cs and 3Ws as soon as possible.
Trust and embody that you are absolutely doing your best within the time you have. It does not matter if you have 5 minutes or 5 hours. Refer to project management triangle and tell the requester to pick any 2 in the triangle to set expectations. It is better than asking if they would you like fries to go with that?
No matter what it is that you are doing, do it with a joy and curiosity of a clown by sneaking little gifts that maybe no one else would ever notice. Perhaps a little smiley face is hiding somewhere in the page... :)

If you experiment with these 3 things, will you let me know how your inner child reacted to this?

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Rethinking organizational & personal transformation for creative problem solving

Day 9: Channel Your Inner Cat

Day 8: When Someone Throws You Under the Bus

Challenge Excepted

Day 7: I Don't Like Theme Parks

Day 6: You Say Banana, I Say I am Not a Gorilla

Day 5: 3 Things I Learned Today That Thought Me How To Save The Day When Someone Throws Curveballs At My Inner Child

Design Exercise That Switched The Lights on On My Bulb

Let's Fly!

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