On Many Interests, Audiobooks & Screen-free Time
Intergalactico Digest is a multi-part series of articles about the conversations I have with the people of Intergalactico and about what they are reading.
This series is my attempt at breaking out of self-isolation by proactively reaching out to the people I work with. It is about creating the space to chat about the things that keep us informed and inspired.
Join me in conversation with Elena Kazakova, UX Developer based in Helsinki.
On many interests
Elena is a person of many interests. On one of my first few days at Intergalactico, I remember noticing how active she seemed. She could go from geeking out about folk-fashion, to participating in a yoga session, and then back to her desk to tackle the technical challenge of building web components — all in the span of an hour or two. On any given day, I suspect, she gets through a dozen things while I barely scrape through a single task on my to-do list.
Recently, Elena finds herself so preoccupied with her work she has little time to do any relaxed reading. Instead, she finds herself spending hours reading about ways to test React components. “This is a new topic and I haven’t done this before,” she says. Having to pour over technical documents and sift through StackOverflow for tips and tricks, she says that this is mostly “educational reading to understand how to do it by myself.”
This kind of purpose specific reading doesn’t give her much time to dive into the depths of a single book. In our conversation she reflects on a few books she has read in the past year that have been thought provoking.
Some books she recommends are:
- Doorbells, Danger and Dead Batteries by Steve Portugal for a collection of stories related to field study and user research.
- Evil by Design by Chris Nodder for an eye opening experience that “lets you see the tiny details,” and the tricks “that big brands use to manipulate people,” delivered to the reader “with some dark humor.”
- Ruined by Design by Mike Monteiro for a conversation about design ethics, what design has got wrong and how to fix it. “Ethics in design is very important and as designers we can’t ignore it” she says. Elena recommends giving it a read and framing your own opinion on what Mike has to say and how he says it.
- Blood Sweat and Pixels by Jason Schreier for “stories about how video games are made” and “also about project management.”
- The Evolution of Man. Book 2: Monkey, Neurons and Soul (she refers to the Russian version) by Alexander Markov for a “fundamental reading on human psychology and behaviourism,” she says, “which is crucial for good UX.”
- The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, as wiki suggests, “focuses on the extreme impact of rare and unpredictable outlier events — and the human tendency to find simplistic explanations for these events, retrospectively.”
Elena’s 2020 reading list ranges in topics from philosophy and ethics to psychology and anthropology — in both English and Russian. In talking about these books Elena reflects on the repetitive nature of some contemporary books on design. “Many books about Design and UX,” she says, “repurpose similar ideas.” She prefers to stick to the classics to work around this. Elena suggests that Don Norman’s The Design of Everyday Things for Design, and Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow for Psychology are examples of these classics one could stick to.
Audiobooks
When she gets the time to do more reading, Elena tends to have a few books to read in parallel. Sometimes she chooses different formats for each book depending on the type of book. For science and study material, she says, “I like to have paper copies so that I can take notes.” And for lighter books, “I simply listen to them as audio books.”
Consuming content via audiobooks is an option I have considered but never really managed to enjoy. But with the increase in the amount of time I stare at a screen each day, I now see it as a feasible option. Elena agrees that audiobooks are a great way to break free from the screen. She adds, “it allows me to do other things like working out or cleaning” while listening to a book, making it suitable for multi-tasking. Although, she cautions me in saying “there is a limit to how many audiobooks you can listen to as well” — that it can get overwhelming to listen to too much content.
On screen-free time
While we speak of ‘doing’ so much, predominantly via displays and screens, Elena and I discussed our tendency to slip into overworking our brains and onto a path of burning out. In one big sigh she reflects on how hectic the year has been so far. “2020 has been chaotic. I am trying to switch off the news more often,” she says, as a way of relaxing the mind. “Everyone wants some sense of stability and a return to something familiar.”
My conversation with Elena prompted me to think about how much we put ourselves through in trying to know more, getting better at work and being more productive. It made me think about the changing nature of work in general, about the importance of asking for help when needed, and about finding ways to create pockets of screen-free relaxation time into our increasingly hectic lives.
