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If one or more of your New Year's Resolutions look like this, and you really want to stick to them, read this post![/caption]We are arriving fast to that time of the year where we reflect about what we've done for the last 365 days of our lives. While reflecting on what we have accomplished is a good practice, taking into consideration what we didn't accomplish and why, is better and may appeal to your problem-solving personality.
We shape our buildings and then our buildings shape us. - W. Churchill.
I started my career as an User Experience (UX) Designer back in the mid-2000s, taking several design decisions every single working day of my life, and that's why, as much as I try to embed my profession with my own style and personality, I think that UX Design has influenced me as much during the past decade, influencing my daily activities inside and outside work.We have a nice tradition on Mexico in New Year’s Eve that involves eating 12 grapes while the New Year's bells are ringing, and with each grape you state a Resolution (my math tells me that this allows for roughly 12 resolutions).The years went by, and I noticed that my resolutions remained similar year after year: Go to the gym, lose weight, save more, be kinder to people, travel more, etc. But essentially I didn’t accomplish any in a meaningful way, or at least I couldn’t measure their impact in my life.Working in the Software Development (SD) Industry, specifically in the UX Design has taught me a number of work resources to organize and prioritize software updates and the measure the impact that User Centered Design processes has in software. These same resources are quite handy outside the SD world, like learning how to define User Pain Points, Goalsand Problem Statements and how to prioritize work into Potential Shippable Increments (PSI) to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). And hopefully after reading this, you'll get a feeling on how you can use these tools to craft batter New Year’s Resolutions.
If your resolutions look like the ones I mentioned above, the intent of the resolutions could be assumed, but relies however, on the context that the resolution is written, if the context changes the original purpose of the resolution gets easily obfuscated; not to mention that it doesn’t allow us to evaluate success.Traditional Resolutions Set1.Lose Weight2.Save MoneyThe UX Designer’s Resolutions SetI.Lose WeightLose 0.25kg weekly so that I avoid the risk of developing diabetes or cardiovascular diseases.II.Save MoneySave $50 weekly so that I can buy the camera I need to become an acclaimed photographer.Points 1. and 2. suggest the existence of underlying pain points, but they are not explicit at all. The person that writes this may want to have a healthier lifestyle or get disciplined about saving, but why? Why is the key, it gives you purpose, and purpose is a change agent. So let’s uncover the purpose.
Points I. and II. sound like User Stories or Problem Statements, and this is no mistake. While writing a resolution. We’ve embedded the purpose to the resolutions by finding a root cause. To get to the root cause of all the items in your resolution try asking why again and again. (See this Wikipedia entry on asking why five times, in order to identify root causes), For example:
The desire to save can be motivated by a huge range of different reasons. Saving money is too broad. Saving money because you want to get a new camera to upskill yourself and use it as source of income has more thought put into it.RESOLUTIONPAIN POINTS1.Lose WeightOverweight with chances of developing cardiovascular disease or diabetes.2.Save MoneyNot happy with current photography skills / gear / job.
As we mentioned before, Pain Points are not enough to keep going, we need to translate those into goals. Try to use units of measure whenever possible. See examples below.RESOLUTIONPAIN POINTSGOAL1.Lose Weight…Lose 13kg to get back to 70kg.2.Save Money…Save $2600 to buy the camera.The problem with the goals as we have described them is that they tend to be all or nothing, a full chunk of resolutions at the end of the year. The year hasn’t even started yet. Most likely you haven’t either. If we stop right here, chances are that we are going to end up acting upon our resolutions three or four times during the year for short periods of time, which is not advisable, as it increases the risk that we won’t deliver upon our resolutions, so we need to constantly measure and track progress to mitigate risks and adapt to changing conditions.
In order to mitigate the risk of forgetting all about our resolutions, we need to have a Heartbeat check regularly with a clear defined metric that allow us to have small wins more regularly than yearly. Both weight (13kg) and savings ($2600) are numbers which can be split evenly across the year in smaller numbers. We can decide to have the heartbeat check every week (dividing 13Kg or $2600 by 52 weeks), or every month (dividing those values by 12). See table below.RESOLUTIONPain PointGOALPOTENTIALSHIPPABLEINCREMENTHEARTBEATCHECKFREQUENCYDURATION1.Lose Weight……0.25kgWeekly52 Weeks2.Save Money……$50Weekly52 WeeksOther complex, non-quantifiable items or things that depend on other people to be successful in your resolution list, could be broken down into simpler tasks, which can either be measured by milestones or indirect quantifiable measures. For example, trying to get a job does not depend entirely on you (since success would depend on somebody else giving you that job) but what you can control is how many applications you submit per day, week or month).
Remember to write the resolutions in the form of "I want to <<goal>> so that I can <<overcome this painpoint>>". And we are ready to go.
Last but not least, try to sort your resolutions from most important to least important, so that you keep the focus on what really matters. You could even do some user research with your friends and ask them, in their eyes, out of the resolutions you’ve made, which ones are the most important.Remember that by doing the analysis above, you will always keep traceability between your resolution goals, pain points and their metrics. You will also be able to recall the reason and context behind you doing it in the first place and most importantly: you will be able to measure success and be engaged constantly.One last thing. At the beginning of the article I mentioned that in Mexico we have the grape tradition, with 12 grapes. Although it’s good to be aware of 12 different things to be a better human being, you’ll soon notice that it’s tough to track and measure 12 changes at the same time. Start with 3 and add bonus or optional ones as a result of your prioritization process and avoid going beyond six. At the end, it’s better to have 3 accomplished resolutions from a list of 3, than 1 from a list of 12.Would you agree, after reading this post, that:
We shape our careers and then our careers shape us.
Go crazy and be as creative as you can! Happy 2015! Salud![caption id="attachment_219" align="aligncenter" width="584"]
This is the way we drink to our resolution's on New Year's eve in Mexico. The traditional way to the left, and the new, proposed way to the right.[/caption]
