Well its that time of year again for new years resolutions. …Only for them to be broken a few weeks into the new year. Resolving to do something different is always going to be hard if it is not associated with a goal or a desired outcome - something to strive for. So instead if mumbling a bunch of new years resolutions on Tuesday (”I will get fit”), turn them into personal goals that will be measurable and (at a stretch) achievable.
And then frame them in the story your future self will tell one year from now; “In the last year I started running round the block every night. In January it took me 23 minutes, now I can do one lap in 15 minutes and two laps in 33 minutes”.
Success this way is more likely than “this year I am going to get fit”.
There once was a time that on Christmas eve that I’d be crawling round the pubs getting the worse for wear. Older and a maybe a little wiser; I’ve just committed a major fraud - I’ve downed the sherry, nibbled at the carrot and filled my daughters stockings with presents - Santa exists. Honest.
And now I can’t help myself. I check my mail and scan the blogs I subscribe to and I read something that makes me nod my head in agreement - Robert Hoekman laying into user centred design. He is so right - most projects don’t have the time for the luxury of doing user-centred design properly. That is not to say that it can’t be done. Thirty days to develop personas? How about thirty minutes? You can be agile and do user-centred design, at ThoughtWorks we do it all the time. I’m looking forward to his follow up posts.
