Motivation and design thinking
In addition to last week’s topic ‘procrastination’ I would also like to talk about motivation this week. Lots and lots of articles give advices on how to get motivated or push oneself to do things without a drill instructor, mum or project lead shouting in your ear. Many people I met and friends with, every once in a while get a moment in their life when a lack of motivation just happens. (btw – I think it happens much more often than everybody talks about. For example every Monday or so. ;) ) So, I got a recommendation from a friend to read an article by Alex Vermeer (he ‘works for the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a non-profit that researches the fundamental mathematics behind machine intelligence and works to ensure future improvements in machine intelligence work out well for humans.’) and get his How to Get Motivated: A Guide for Defeating Procrastination flowchart. It is one of the coolest things I saw on the internet till now that actually works for me. Take a look for yourself. I also really like his 5 general principles for self-improvement. Incremental progress. Protect attention. Keep it simple. Use habits. Busyness is a lack of priorities. You can read more about these here – Life-hacking.
Also I’m exploring, a chapter at a time, the book ‘The Design Thinking Playbook’ from the last week’s recommendation list. I find it so interesting to read about the basic principals of how a project can be transformed into a better functioning project just by re-arranging the development flow. This mindset for solving complex problems is a great help for projects to evolve through continues iteration of ‘understand the problem – observe – define POV – generate idea – develop prototype – test’.
If want to get more into it, read about Design Thinking processes and try to implement it in your projects. To get hands on the process you can visit events or meetups. If you are by chance in Munich or in London you should definitely take part at a Design Jam. This is a day event/ workshop where you create a product, a service or just a solution with a group of people with different knowledge background using a similar design thinking methods to create prototypes based on a specific topic. You can sign up for the newsletter to get an update when the next event is happening. Check out their page for more details – designj.am.
Reading recommendations:
Articles/ online:
- 6 trends that are changing the face of UX by Kenny Chen on creative bloq – article on creativebloq.com
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MetPublications: free publications on art history – read on metmuseum.org
- Locally coordinated synaptic plasticity of visual cortex neurons in vivo – an article about plasticity of cortical responses and activity-dependent changes at synapses. – article on sciencemag.org
Other recommendations:
Recipe of the week:
Avocado-Banana Dip (Portion for 1 hungry person or 2 not very hungry people)
You’ll need
- 1/2 ripe Avocado
- 1/2 Banana (middle size)
- a pinch of salt
- a teaspoon or less of lemon juice
- 1/2 teaspoon of wasabi paste
Put everything in a blender or use a fork to create a homogeneous mass.
Dip is ready. Enjoy.
(Don’t forget to put it in the refrigerator, if anything left)
