Best practices to my(junior)self
55.5 days/25 lemonades — made by me/a cherry season and a strawberry season/moving from one apartment to another/buying a bike/participating and organizing a bachelorette party — this is the summary of how my life changed since I am a UX junior. But what happened with me from professional point of view. After the first week, I realized that every single day I am learning something new (mostly) about the working process and how my tasks should be done correctly. So I started to notice them and now I made some hard decisions as well (Jump to last chapter to see my new daily schedule). I will start with some motivational advices which I made based on my notes from the beginning of my junior’s life.
1. Please be kind with yourself…
and accept that you are not the God of UX
Starting something from scratch has never been easy. Especially if you are that kind of junior, who wants things to be perfect immediately and if not, than you think that you are not good enough. I have good news for you:
you will be good enough after accepting that you know nothing (and you are a piece of shit, as in the video below)
But what if I fail? — you may ask. Yepp, that is possible too, but let’s just concentrate to the next step, and nothing else. Do you remember the first day when you went to school? Remember how fascinated you were about first issues of school? You were curious about all the knowledge you will gain there and the wisdom of your teachers. This excitement didn’t let you concentrate to anything else but your tasks. You were not concerned about the admission for University, because you focused on those steps which you have to do right then.
2. Live healthy
Not because you want to live 100 years long (…actually why not?), but because if you live healthy, you will be more resistant to stress, illness, people stupidity and your work will be more effective.
3. Have a break!
Don’t forget! First of all you are a human. Yes, you need some break as well (maybe it’s not a bad idea to go out and drink something with a friend, discuss about anything or go in parties) sometimes or do some sport…
4. Accept that learning progress is slow
especially if you are surrounded with a bunch of attention-thief devices… so take your time and find out something against spending your time on social media for e.g., because many a little makes a mickle. I uninstalled tinder, Instagram, signed out from Facebook and reduced time spent on Tumblr to daily 15 minutes.
5. Make your daily schedule
And last but not least I finally made my daily schedule. I have been waiting for this since I was hired in Halcyon, but thanks to the lack of experience in this field, I didn’t know what kind of habits should I have in order to finish my work properly and make some time for learning as well.
At the beginning it was extremely confusing for me matching these two activity with each other, because I wanted to do everything insantly. Then I realised that if I would make a practice of some things, that would be much eaisier. So my plan is the following:
- wake up as early as I can
- Have a breakfast
- go to work with my bike
- Get a shower, and start the day with all the questions and articles saved from the previous day (not project related) until 8.30
- From 8.30 until 9.15 review project related mails and feedbacks
- Work until 17.00
- When I arrived home, I get a short nap/prepare some food and after this I read some articles/make courses.
- Weekends should be about intense learning as well with some household obligations.
This week will be my first one with this schedule, so cross your habds :D.
I hardly wait to write about something more professional (beyond these workflow-process best practices).
I suppose the following post will be about Spec best practices because I am really struggling with those huuuuge and looong documents. I hope I will find something to make our work eaisier, if you have some tips/tricks, please let me know :D
