August 10th, 2009 §
Just found out my article was mentioned in Moleskinerie. So, welcome – readers from Moleskinerie!
I find that it’s almost impossible to do anything without penning down my thoughts in a physical diary or journal of some sort. I now have about four ongoing journals I keep notes on, and I didn’t think it was necessary to put everything down, but now I do.
Why Blogs Don’t Always Work
My initial reluctance to keep a journal was driven by the fear that I wouldn’t use it – simply because I would end up putting my notes on a blog, or on a wiki, or on twitter, or on little text files that I could sync across multiple computers using Dropbox (you can see where this is going)… and that would cause my £14 moleskine left there to collect dust – a thought that just drives crazy.
So, I initially toyed around with the idea of having a blog take care of that. Except that I have more than one blog, each addressing specific types of interests I have. Sometimes, the stuff I think about doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. Also, they need to be organized and polished a bit more before it comes out as a blog post.
Then, there’s the issue of private thoughts. Stuff I don’t want people to know. Or stuff that I’m still sorting out in my mind and I’m not quite done with them yet because they’re quite ephemeral and end up forgetting about them. A public blog won’t be good for that. And I don’t like the idea of protected posts.
So, I opened a private blog. But that didn’t work either, because I needed a computer to do that – and worse, a blog format is almost always linear – and trying to do doodles, sketches and arrows all over the place on a blog is possible, but difficult. I realized that my thoughts were pinging back and forth so often that writing it out as a blog post wasn’t always the best way to express what was going on in my mind.
Minimizing the Paralyzing Fear of not being able to control your own Destiny
Then I was about ready to give up, except that I often worry a lot about life so much that it gets me depressed, and there was just too many things I was trying to sort out in my mind, so I finally got down and started writing stuff down on paper. And doing that just solved my problems.
It wasn’t that I needed to write it down – but getting my thoughts out and putting it on somewhere permanent like a piece of paper was so liberating, it was like a huge burden being lifted off my chest.
And it didn’t just work for personal stuff, either. In fact, a lot of the stuff I worry about is about ideas. Like, how best to communicate something to my boss, or planning the next steps for my next sideproject, or calculating the cost of financing my dream home or something like that. Stuff that gets you depressed when you try to sort it out in your mind without any kind of external assistance, even if they were fairly stimulating when you first thought about them.
I drew up a simple diagram (actually took me a good hour) that describes how I view the different tools come into play, and how they help my thinking process, in general. While I still blog a lot to get my thoughts out, there’s a certain threshold I find myself struggling to get past, and this is how I end up using different tools to support my “thinking” needs.
Where I start really depends on what kind of message I’m trying to convey, and what type of output I’m trying to produce. If it’s something public, that I wouldn’t mind feedback on – then a blog or a public twitter message does the job nicely. But if it’s something more conversational (either with myself or personal friends), then I tend to use closed-off communities, or a private blog. Then, there are just other things that are way too complex to be pushing around using blogs or comments on social networking sites, then I ought just to pull out a piece of paper or my journal and start sketching or scribbling notes.
Other folks might do it in different ways, but this sort of works for me for now, and I intend to stick with it. I am starting to believe that writing unpolished scribbles and doodles doesn’t mean that I’m disorganized or incapable of communicating my ideas. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I find that it’s actually part of my communication process, and that it’s a skill that gets better over time.
July 31st, 2008 §
After spending a few hours polishing my wife’s resume today, I’ve decided to open my services to everyone else. I’ll probably go through what I did with my wife – a basic review of your existing resume, ask you a bunch of questions about your experience, lessons learnt, challenges, etc… and create eye catching points in your resume that clearly highlight your work fitness and employability.
If it’s a simple case I can answer over one email, it’s free. If you want a highly polished piece, I might charge a small fee for the effort.
Resume writing is a skill I’ve honed over the years. I’ve been through three jobs in the past, but I’ve constantly updated and polished my own resume for upkeep, and for each job that I apply for, I tune my resume to maximize impact.
I’ve never had to sit through more than 2 interviews before getting a job. That being said, my resumes are very focussed because I know exactly what I want in a job, and while the resume gets me the interview, the interview gets me the job. I always know what I’m getting into because I enjoy getting into the interviewer’s mind.
One of the reasons why I’m not as apprehensive about interviews is because people are always looking for a match. It’s like dating. This is why matchmaking feels so much like an interview. You’ve got a personal bio, which is probably all in text, and says everything about you from your pet peeves to the last movie you watched that you loved despite everyone else hating it.
Resumes can be used to handle idiosyncrasies in unique ways. This is what I call “weirdness matching”. You’re trying to match your idiosyncrasies with your potential employer’s. The resume is the first part – a resume fit for Google will look different than one that’s fit for the Red Cross. This is where idiosyncrasies can play a part.
Anyway, I’m looking to increase my readership as well. Tell your friends you heard about this guy who writes resumes for his wife and now wants to write resumes for the whole world. They might get a kick out of that and drop a comment for fun.
Or maybe you can.
July 23rd, 2008 §
Today, I officially announced my resignation to my colleagues at our weekly team meeting. Resignations don’t take me by surprise, because people come and go all the time. What surprises me more is how people react differently to departures.
My first resignation was extremely low-key. I didn’t tell anyone short of one or two people, until the very last day. One person in particular got offended that I didn’t tell her I was leaving. She saw it as indifference, and that she was a nobody to me, although we got along OK at work. I told her that she didn’t get singled out, since I told almost no one about it, but I also apologized for any ill feelings. The rest didn’t care that much.
My second resignation took place in light of a downsizing exercise of the startup company I was working for. Although the company prepared new roles for us at an affiliated company, I wasn’t the only person leaving. But when I told my boss about it, he was concerned and asked me a lot of questions. The others were mostly silent. But everyone understood and supported my transition.
Resignations are about managing relationships
I don’t think I’ve ever burned a bridge before in my life, but I’ve dealt with all sorts of reactions and people change their views as time goes by.
I still have many of my ex-colleagues on facebook and on IM, and we talk occasionally. Most people get over the fact that a job is still a job. It’s not like Bobby running away from home.
This time though, I took more effort to manage my personal and professional relationships about my resignation.
Tell your managers ahead of time
Firstly, the moment I made the decision to leave, I told my line manager and my CEO about it, months ahead in advance. I know this doesn’t play well with everyone, but I’ve always managed the relationships with my line manager and my CEO to be able to do this. I feel it’s only important to take responsibility for the company’s needs and its people. This is because most HR departments are mostly a function of finance.
I was a senior member in the team, so losing me would mean a gap in the leadership and technical lead area. Still, they didn’t counter offer me anything, but I did get friendly support on my decision.
This is what it’s like to manage your own career, which is how it’s like in most companies
You’re expected to make your own choices, and unless a specific culture or policy has been put in place, communicated, and encouraged, it’s a norm for people to make up their minds to just get their work done, go home, come back the next day to do the same thing.
Prioritize your relationships accordingly
Secondly, the sequence of which I informed people of my resignation was based on my relationship with them. This depended on their authority, how close I was to the person, and on circumstances. Bosses and managers came first. People who were close to me came next. Next were people who worked with me on a project that had a stake in my work. After that came the rest of the team, and then the whole world (which is why I’m writing now).
Some say it’s politics. Some say it’s being nice. I just think it’s important.
Invest in people
I didn’t do this for my first job because I was a noob, but relationships will become more important than a resumes as years pass. Even LinkedIn CEO Dan Nye says this.
Thirdly, I told people why I was leaving. I’ve been accepted to pursue a Masters in HCI in the UK. There are many good reasons for me to do this, so when people asked, I told them. This was okay because I wasn’t going to a competitor firm, and it made sense.
People want the comfort of understanding that their decisions are sound
Almost everyone I spoke to understood my conviction and supported my decision to leave. They also clarified their own positions and didn’t feel threatened by my departure.
No employee should be afraid to leave a job for the right reasons. If it’s well-managed, it can be beneficial and amicable. You just need the right perspective and some effort.
Resources:
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July 2nd, 2008 §
I’m tweaking my blog design bit by bit to improve the usability of the site. And usability is one topic I’ve been harping on about for years, but I still find myself learning it about again and again.
I’ve not done much – the paragraph lines are closer to each other to allow readers to scan through my articles faster, and the margin between the title heading and the article text have increased, so that they both stand out better and have a space of their own.
Readers don’t read everything – they scan for information. Which is why I spend time emphasizing text, adding headlines and sectioning my articles. It just helps readers get more out of that 2 minutes they spend on my site, which is an average for most websites.
So good usability is about giving the user the least amount of problems and allowing them to accomplish all of their intended goals within that 2 minute space (or less).
Good usability practitioners understand that you really need to use the site constantly to get a feel of the little things that are wrong with it, and understanding what users are looking for when they spend that small amount of time on your site.
Focus on your content
To help users get the most out, you should first focus on your content:
- Write concisely
- Use fewer words
- Tell a story
- Arrange paragraphs to compose your thoughts, priorities, and focus
- Summarize at appropriate points (at the beginning, at the end, etc.)
- Remove “I feel”, “I think”,… half-baked wording
- Use captivating titles
- Use lists
Adjust your layout
Then, focus on the layout to assist reading, scanning, and remembering:
- Choose an appropriate font-size: 11 to 12px is OK
- Balance this with the appropriate line-height. Mine’s set to 1.15em. It’s a bit technical, but you can read up about it.
- Margins between title headers and content – too near means it’s hard to scan, too far means it’s breaks the flow
- Put all the other stuff on the sides and bottoms – comments, tags, similar posts, bookmarking, etc.
- Highlight things you want people to scan and remember – catchphrases, important terms, section titles, links
- Use clean colors for text and backgrounds (black on white, etc.)
At the end of all this, spend hours and hours reading your own content, scanning your own articles, using your own website – to fully appreciate everything the user has to go through when they use your site.
Make small changes.
Rinse and repeat.
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June 30th, 2008 §
Most people don’t blog – they don’t have any real reason to. But most people can discover the benefits of blogging, and some even want to try. The problem with starting isn’t about being technical. You don’t have to be a techie to start blogging – otherwise generation MySpace wouldn’t have happened.
People have all sorts of reasons for not starting a blog, but I mostly feel that people are trapped in a consumption culture, and don’t bother to try. Bloggers tend to be production-inclined. We believe that the stuff we blog about needs to be:
- archived
- shared
- discussed
It’s not as though blogs appeared on the scene and that it was absolutely the best thing since sliced bread. People who started blogs already had specific traits on which to build on, but were open enough to adapt with and sustain the emerging blog culture – whatever that may be (it keeps changing).
They could be anyone – visionaries who thought deep about specific topics, a socialite wanting to publish their whereabouts, a mother reflecting vicariously about childhood, or any regular Joe.
But to blog is to learn, give, and adapt.
If that’s what you’re after, then you’ve pretty much covered the basics of blogging. The rest are just details. And that’s what most blog how-to articles focus on, and there are tons of them. Articles on how to set up your blog, how to make it pretty, what topics to discuss, what style to write in, and on and on and on.
Blogging is an extension of yourself. It’s not the whole you, but just a part. It’s a part of you that you give to others – which is actually the permission to allow people play around with, talk about, and share your thoughts.
Therefore, you need to decide which part of you to share with the rest of the world. I feel this part is important, but I think everyone gets this. Whether or not these things are appropriate to share is subjective. Sometimes it’s worth just trying it out, while keeping certain things under wraps – like your identity, location, and so on. This is what creates the blog’s identity.
The difficult part about blogging is in managing this identity.
It sounds silly at first – why would anyone care about managing a blog’s identity? It matters when you realize that the blog is a part of you. It’s like shaving or dressing up.
One good way is to maintain seperate blogs that have separate identities. Another way is by keeping specific posts private. Yet another way is to use categories. Blog templates and themes can assist in some aspects. There are many ways to communicate a cohesive blog identity.
A lot of people get blogging wrong because they don’t realize that blogging isn’t like writing a book. It’s like a public journal, and bloggers can make mistakes, but good bloggers learn from their mistakes and publish them out and communicate their lessons with their readers. You’re not supposed to be perfect before you can start a blog. In fact, being imperfect is one real reason why you should.
But most people don’t want to look stupid, so they would rather avoid it. Bloggers, instead, find healing and connection with seemingly anonymous audiences that it drives them to write better and give more. It’s kind of a “good world”-”bad world” perspective. But it’s a perspective worth exploring.
The good thing is that you can start small, and find your way around until you reach a comfortable spot.
I started off writing personal thoughts and reflections, and my readers were mostly friends. I began to realize a lot of things I wanted to say were meant for a larger audience, and I created new blogs for that. I began to talk to other bloggers about the things they said. Some responded. Some were trolls. I killed off some older blogs, and kept some regularly updated. But the more I blogged, the more I realized that blogging is really about adapting socially. The benefits of blogging are due to its social nature.
If you’re not sure how to start a blog, start with asking yourself the question – why? It gets a lot easier after that.
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June 2nd, 2008 §
I was fortunate enough that my dad took us on trips abroad and other excursions. He would always make my sister and I write our experiences down, in 1000, 2000 and 3000 words (it got bigger as we grew older).
The writing habit
We would get a F4 pad, and start doodling everything we could remember, and add sketches and stuff. At first, it was just writing down our thoughts – little details we could remember about the trip. I would remember as a kid, I would start off like how children’s stories go – a brief introduction about where we went, and the juicy details in between, ending off with a nice summary about going back again (or not).
It helped me appreciate the habit of writing, and everything on paper pretty much stays the way it is – it’s like a photograph, a snapshot of your mind at that point in time.
Conversations with myself
I kept a journal in high school, and I wrote about all kinds of stuff. At the time, I was writing out my thoughts and feelings, and that helped me to develop a conversational style. I wrote more than I read.
Conversations with others
I stopped writing when I went to college, but I did write a lot of emails to my then-girlfriend over long distances. I don’t know if that counts, but I think that helped me understand a part of writing for relationship’s sake. It was hard to manage the relationship over so many thousand miles (we were at opposite ends of the world), and emails and phone calls helped. She didn’t seem to like IMs very much.
Critical thinking
I did appreciate English 102 and Lit for the formal ways of crafting a position in an argument, rebuttals and the critical thinking behind it. But I learnt most from reading excellent journalistic material during the last 7 years of my working life – from technical tutorials, gadget reviews, news reports – especially when I was looking hard for specific answers. I even learnt from forums. I also learnt from writing technical documents like requirements specifications, how-tos, user manuals, and the like.
Blogs
I started blogging in 2004, continuing where I left off in my journals. I wrote about all sorts of things, and avoided serious stuff for the most part. I only really started writing critically when I asked my boss if it would be good to have a blog about innovation and the stuff we’re doing in the office. When he let me, I started the innovation blog.
So, that’s when I started writing commentaries and opinions based on stuff I was reading around innovation topics, Web 2.0, and career articles from Penelope Trunk. No one read the innovation blog, so I let it die a natural death, and kickstarted leapwalking.
Writing forces me to think critically. It helps put things in the right perspective, especially when I’m confused or depressed and have no one to talk to. I’m glad that I have an avenue here with the blog, and I think most blogs are a lot like that.
