#85: I'm back.
A piece about writing, agency and the 7 core focuses of my year
It’s been quite a while since I’ve published anything in here. The longest I’ve been away from writing itself, as far as I can remember. Like many others, I’ve been busy1 with my personal life. It’s been mostly great on that department, but not without the sacrifices in all the others, such as this. This post is about writing and where I’m choosing to focus on this year.
Writing takes a lot of mental energy and time. It is not the kind of activity you can just schedule and expect to have a definitive outcome (some writers may feel differently about this, of course.) It is a commitment to thinking. Whether it takes 5 minutes or 5 hours, it doesn’t really matter. Time isn’t more essential to energy in this case. You can have all the time in the world but without energy, the work is futile. (Don’t even get me started on AI-assisted writing. The whole idea of it worries me a lot in regards to the future of human literacy.)
The most self-satisfying part of writing is also, unfortunately, what makes it most painful: this act of caressing and then squeezing your brain so thoroughly—so aggressively, sometimes—for any sort of meaning about the thing you care most about. It’s a process that involves a lot of recollection, and continuous data collection at the same time. All of which would require some serious mental stamina and focus in order to produce anything of value to you, and the reader.
I wanted to be good, to be above average. For a self-taught writer, at least. If I couldn’t give myself the time and the energy to be that, I would much rather not write. That’s exactly what happened. Before I knew it, months have passed and here we are. I’m writing again. Absolutely nothing has changed, if anything, my schedule’s about to get tighter. My assumption is that no matter how hard it is to write, I’ll reach a point where it’ll be much harder for me not to. So, I’m betting on that pain. The itch to do things is too powerful, no matter the circumstance, it prevails. It can’t be contained easily.
And also, I would still like to see where this would take me.
A running monologue in my head that’s helping me think about this more:
I have an idea I’m chasing but speed won’t help me get there. But rather, direction. In order to get to where I am going, it is essential for me to get lost first. In the pits and valleys of my mind, where everything and nothing resides. It helps to know what I am looking for; There’s just no guarantee i’ll find it in the end. More often than not, my vision of it, of what it could be, is a mirage. Rarely do I ever get it in the form I imagine it to be. If I do my job right, it’s usually something better. This is how I know that the idea has teeth. It has gone through a complete transformation within the hour I sat down and started writing about it. Capturing these ideas is the fuel that powers my, oftentimes, struggling writing practice.
Calibrating my year
Last year, I gave myself all the time and leniency to let things fall into place organically. And they did, and it felt okay. This year, I’d like to make some adjustments to how I approach my life and my work. If I want more agency in a lot of what I do, I have to setup an environment where that is possible.
It’s my current favorite word: agency. It is the one principle that binds all of my desires together. It is the key to happiness and confidence on any given operation. The feeling of being trapped to an undesired state, mind or place is a will-killer. Avoiding that is a tremendous motivation for me to evolve, experiment and be better. I’ve seen this happen in real life to many people I’ve known and it is not pleasant. At least not from where I’m standing.
So, in the interest of building a lifestyle design with agency in mind, I’ve written a shortlist of things I’d want to focus on this year:
#1: Overhaul soft skills through additional training and real-world application.
… Because writing skills aren’t enough to really make an impact. It would be extremely hard to get what I want—anything that I want—without having, at least, an above average communication skills. Technical or product skills are great, however, they are not enough to thrive in a space as highly competitive as tech, even outside of FAANG companies. I don’t have to be the world’s most gifted storyteller; I just have to be a really effective PR for myself and my work, where and when it matters. Improving my soft skills significantly would get me there.
Much like the other problems I’m facing, I consider this as a design problem & I will solve it as such.
#2: Double down on craft, ship more.
The design industry of today is unrecognizable from where it was 10 years ago. I say this as a really good thing. The way we build things is changing everyday thanks to technology. Designers today enjoy a lot more privilege and power but this comes at a cost: In order to keep this growth trajectory, a lot more is expected from us. This means learning, all the time, from any place or situation we can. The brilliant book, It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be, tells this so succinctly: the path to great work starts where you are, not from some imaginary place in the future. The time to ship great work is today, including the work you do for yourself. I’ll do a deeper dive on this on a separate post.
#3: Design more physical spaces.
The WHY behind this: In order to maximize my full capacity for creation, I need air, I need time, I need a clear head. I need spaces free from distractions, both the good and the bad. It is not necessarily an environment free of people, per se. I can work well in a crowded area, with proper headphones and whatnot. It’s more a sweet spot combining a physical space (home/work office, elsewhere) and a mental headspace where creativity thrives through freedom.
#4: Rebuild connections with people I value the most.
#5: Seek to enrich my offline life even more through:
Be in constant proximity to nature, whenever possible
Some participation in local communities
Quick, makeshift & parent-friendly meditation practices
#6: Simplify my decision-making process even further.
To illustrate how I’m thinking about this, I made a little heuristic for myself:
If it’s actually important enough, and would have a lifelong effect on me, it is worth thinking through until my brain hurts, likely. Max-amount of acceptable time capital: case-to-case basis
If its effects are evidently just for the short-term, give it a couple of weeks to 3 months. Why 3 months? Anything past that signals to me that: I either misunderstood the problem I’m solving or that is bigger than what I’ve anticipated. I suspect that this will be the most common scenario.
If it is almost irrelevant to anything of meaning to my life, don’t waste a lot of time on it. Decide within hours/days,
Everything else, either automate, outsource or seek additional help with said decisions. (Second most common scenario)
Book that has been a huge influence on me about this: Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets
#7: Strive to make a good impression, when it matters.
This is a no-brainer. Post-pandemic, my opinion is that much of the world has shifted towards a more casual approach to dressing up, by default. Especially for the hybrid/remote crowd, this has become somewhat of a habit, actually. While I’m personally benefitting from this, I do think it takes away something important in the long run: the satisfaction of dressing up to impress (oneself and/or others). For as long as we can still work remotely, sweatpants aren’t going away. However, it doesn’t mean losing myself on all the other fronts. It may sound ridiculous but it is awfully, shockingly easy to do so if you are not careful.
Dress exceptionally well minus the effort. It’s important that the effort has to be invisible. Otherwise, it will look like you’re trying to please people a little too much. (And as a perennial people pleaser, I’m too aware of this)
Treat skincare as an absolute necessity, a sound investment for the future.
Maintain a reasonable weight, without removing joy from the table.
The work it takes to build an agency-filled life and career is massive. This cannot be done in a year. Arguably, this kind of work is never finished. There’s a reason why it’s quite elusive to the vast majority of people. It takes a lifetime to truly achieve, and even then people can still fail. But it sure does beat the alternative: not trying at all.
In the words of my clever son: No, I don’t like that. (I don’t like that at all.)
Thank you for reading working title,
Nikki
Favorite places on the internet:
a new section for the creators I’d want to put a spotlight on
I’m very picky with my media consumption—from films to books as well as with the newsletters I subscribe to. There’s a lot of noise out there, a lot of garbage content and it is getting harder and harder to find the gems among them. Amy Santee’s The Jawbreaker Weekly is a standout, in this dizzying world of design, UX and technology. It’s a brilliant piece of work, a platform that needed to exist—especially with the horrors of today’s political climate. She herself is a gift to the internet, with her writing, her work, her entire advocacies. She is easily one of my favorite voices on the internet (and elsewhere). Admittedly, one of the only reasons I still open my LinkedIn, where her short-form, digestible writing mostly lives. Go, follow her. I doubt you’d regret it.
Here’s a personal favorite piece from her, one that definitely lived rent-free in my head for some time: Why is LinkedIn so miserable these days?
On top of all of that, Amy also co-hosts her own podcast, What is Wrong with Hiring, alongside the equally amazing Laura Klein. For anyone who is in UX, these two are worth listening to. They know how to give listeners a grand time while teaching a thing or two about working in this crazy field. I am always a fan of people who keep things real. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you are as well.
Articles I’ve enjoyed a lot (in no particular order)
I dislike using this word, actually
Welcome back, nikki! Im super happy to have received a notification that you published ❤️❤️❤️
Thank you for the spotlight! I love your first newsletter of the year—so many juicy fruits to bite into here. The taste of this issue will linger no doubt. +1,000 for being in nature as much as possible. Birdwatching and hiking do it for me. I bet you saw some neat birds in the Philippines.