An exponential is a multiplication of a multiplication.
If you multiply a quantity for another quantity that is less than one, you decrease the outcome.
Conversely, if you multiply for a quantity greater than one, you increase the outcome.
How can you use this to improve your outcome?
What if you could increase your skills by just 1% every day? One-hundredth of improvement every day. What would you get in one year, that is, after 365 days?
You should add 1% to your daily measurement. So, if your current performance is 1, you would get 1 + 1/100 that is 1.01. On the second day, you would have 1.01 + 1% of 1.01, which would be 1.02, and so on.
What if you repeat this process every day for one year? I did the math for you:
1.00
1.01
1.02
1.03
1.04
1.05
1.06
1.07
1.08
1.09
1.10
1.12
1.13
1.14
1.15
1.16
1.17
1.18
1.20
1.21
1.22
1.23
1.24
1.26
1.27
1.28
1.30
1.31
1.32
1.33
1.35
1.36
1.37
1.39
1.40
1.42
1.43
1.45
1.46
1.47
1.49
1.50
1.52
1.53
1.55
1.56
1.58
1.60
1.61
1.63
1.64
1.66
1.68
1.69
1.71
1.73
1.75
1.76
1.78
1.80
1.82
1.83
1.85
1.87
1.89
1.91
1.93
1.95
1.97
1.99
2.01
2.03
2.05
2.07
2.09
2.11
2.13
2.15
2.17
2.19
2.22
2.24
2.26
2.28
2.31
2.33
2.35
2.38
2.40
2.42
2.45
2.47
2.50
2.52
2.55
2.57
2.60
2.63
2.65
2.68
2.70
2.73
2.76
2.79
2.81
2.84
2.87
2.90
2.93
2.96
2.99
3.02
3.05
3.08
3.11
3.14
3.17
3.20
3.24
3.27
3.30
3.33
3.37
3.40
3.43
3.47
3.50
3.54
3.57
3.61
3.65
3.68
3.72
3.76
3.79
3.83
3.87
3.91
3.95
3.99
4.03
4.07
4.11
4.15
4.19
4.23
4.27
4.32
4.36
4.40
4.45
4.49
4.54
4.58
4.63
4.68
4.72
4.77
4.82
4.87
4.91
4.96
5.01
5.06
5.11
5.16
5.22
5.27
5.32
5.37
5.43
5.48
5.54
5.59
5.65
5.70
5.76
5.82
5.88
5.94
6.00
6.06
6.12
6.18
6.24
6.30
6.36
6.43
6.49
6.56
6.62
6.69
6.76
6.82
6.89
6.96
7.03
7.10
7.17
7.24
7.32
7.39
7.46
7.54
7.61
7.69
7.77
7.84
7.92
8.00
8.08
8.16
8.24
8.33
8.41
8.49
8.58
8.66
8.75
8.84
8.93
9.02
9.11
9.20
9.29
9.38
9.48
9.57
9.67
9.76
9.86
9.96
10.06
10.16
10.26
10.36
10.47
10.57
10.68
10.78
10.89
11.00
11.11
11.22
11.33
11.45
11.56
11.68
11.80
11.91
12.03
12.15
12.27
12.40
12.52
12.65
12.77
12.90
13.03
13.16
13.29
13.42
13.56
13.69
13.83
13.97
14.11
14.25
14.39
14.54
14.68
14.83
14.98
15.13
15.28
15.43
15.58
15.74
15.90
16.06
16.22
16.38
16.54
16.71
16.88
17.04
17.22
17.39
17.56
17.74
17.91
18.09
18.27
18.46
18.64
18.83
19.02
19.21
19.40
19.59
19.79
19.99
20.19
20.39
20.59
20.80
21.01
21.22
21.43
21.64
21.86
22.08
22.30
22.52
22.75
22.97
23.20
23.44
23.67
23.91
24.15
24.39
24.63
24.88
25.13
25.38
25.63
25.89
26.15
26.41
26.67
26.94
27.21
27.48
27.75
28.03
28.31
28.60
28.88
29.17
29.46
29.76
30.05
30.36
30.66
30.97
31.27
31.59
31.90
32.22
32.54
32.87
33.20
33.53
33.87
34.20
34.55
34.89
35.24
35.59
35.95
36.31
36.67
37.04
37.41
On the 365th day, the last of your year of practice, you would have increased your skill by more than 37 times. Thirty-seven times what you had on day 1.
That was just a thought experiment, a game if you want—an extreme simplification to give you the sense of what an exponential could do in your life.
Systems, not goals
Change your behavior, not your goal. If you can aim at acting so that, anytime you can, you can have a positive compounding multiplier in anything you do, and you have the first block of this betterment machine.
The second block of this abundance creation machine is consistency. You have to do it always as in every day.
The Multiplication Compounding Machine Effect (TM) has the power of an avalanche, but for your good.
The only downside is the need to develop patience. It’s only after having compounded several (as in hundreds) iterations that you will remain astonished by the results.
Exploit the power of exponentials, do something beneficial in anything that you do, every single day of your life. The compounded effect will lead you to unthinkable achievements.
Did you do it today? Go back, and do it. You still have time.
You can’t track it if you don’t measure it. It’s the primary justification for doing retrospectives, but tracking what? I have always been annoyed by keeping track of repetitive, boring data. As a flat and dry life accountant, writing the numbers about things I did has left me perplexed. I wrote a river of words: and so what? I walked to the moon: excellent! and why should we care? Oh, you read books, cools, we did that too.
I feel the risk of virtue signaling: I am good, I am better than you. And it feels out of place. So let’s focus on the right context: I am doing this only for me. I’ve always been struggling with committing for the long term to an activity. It’s just me. Neoteny is my second name. I am already bored while writing this without getting to the point. I am trying to challenge myself to be better. I perceive the potential I hide (almost always), and I have enough with living in dreams.
The greatest lesson of this year is about building habits. Slowly. Piece by piece. Day by day. Not that I wasn’t building habits the whole of my life. But were those the right habits to build? Not all of them. That’s my great win in 2020. I’ve decided I wanted to create some specific habits. And, dear collective brain sparse in the universe, I did it!
I don’t cry in pain when I walk. Not any more. I started in 2017. I dropped tears after 100 steps. Now, I can walk for 10 Km and feel good. How could I live seated for so many years? The bright screen is one of the worst drugs of our times. Using technology to work and think is one of the most important areas in which design can help make our lives more balanced. There is a lot of work to be done.
Self-reflection
Everybody thinks. Of course. But is everybody dedicating focused time to think about something? Intentionally? It was a new experience for me to reflect on the past day. What did happen? What did I do? Why did I feel like that? Did I learn something? Has it ever occurred to me already?
Daily journaling with the help of prompts is one of the superpowers we underestimate. Thinking about our thinking is one essential step in the feedback loop of self-development and self-leadership. Writing is the most effective medium to accomplish that but also recording your voice helps a lot. I recorded dozens of hours of free-flowing talking. Men, if I am boring! It’s only after having put out all of the words you keep somewhere in your brain that you start to feel fluent. You need to talk a lot to talk better. You need to write a lot to write better. And all of that, if you intertwine it with the right questions, it can only lead to you thinking better.
Journal writing
Writing what you are thinking has enormous benefits. You get to know three people, at the least—your past self and what you felt when you lived that past. Your future self: an unknown and unknowable person, much similar to you but not really you. What do you want to send to the future? How do you want to support your future decisions? And then there is you at this moment: who are you now? What are your dreams and your fears, now?
It might seem stupid but knowing you can be decentralized in time makes you feel less lonely and alien.
Blogging and online publishing
It starts with a blank page on an empty web server. There are so many white pixels: how shall I fill them? So you feel the stupidest in the universe by stating your existence online. Nobody will read you, and still, you check the analytics to see if that one only visit becomes two.
After 100 hundred torture sessions, everything is different. I am not ashamed of what I publish anymore. Excellent or ugly, grammatically correct or not, it needs to go live, now. I will think about it later on, when it is detached from me, living its online life far from my fingers and my neurons.
While in the beginning, I felt the urge to satisfy a non-existing audience with its impossible to know desires; now, I write first and foremost for myself. For my present self and for my future self.
Luhmann! If I like this word! I’ve been collecting notes on paper forever. All of it is lost, forever like tears in the rain. Not any more. Now I gather my thoughts. Still messy, yes. But I have built the habit of adding notes to my slip-box, my second brain, my note archive, my fricking beautiful Zettelkasten!
After many days of just adding notes, I had finally had my epiphany a few days ago. Two notes collided! I had two notes stating one the opposite of the other! What a beautiful realization! I have the creative tension of two opposite perspectives on the same concept and with arguments. I am finally generating ideas. I am note-making. I am lovemaking with ideas!
Reading
I’ve read books. And so what? Reading is the most overrated skill. Can you tell me how you changed thanks to what you read? I feel so guilty about not reading enough. And then I feel even worse when I read a lot, and I remember so little about it. That is what I will change in 2021. I will write-while-reading so I won’t forget what I want to keep. And I will have more materials to connect with my notes.
Online meetings
Too many. Not all of them useful. It was tiring.
And that’s not all, folks!
I am proud. I’ve set goals, and I worked hard to achieve them. I’ve learned so much about myself, my past, and my future. I have so many ideas and inspirations about future projects that I can’t contain them.
What I am sharing about my year is only 5% of what I did. And it wasn’t even about my job.
All of this during one of the worst year in the history of humankind.
Don’t take the context of your message for granted. Or you will do a supercazzola.
I experiment a lot. I subscribe to many products and services under development, in the alpha, or beta phase. Some of them promote their projects and ask to leave your email to be contacted in the future to send you development news.
Many of them are enthusiastic that they are growing or releasing a new version and invite you to visit their website to try it.
Problem: communicating your enthusiasm without an introduction
They talk a lot about the day’s news, but they do not say who they are. The message they sent is from some cool names, and they abstractly communicate their joy of being alive missing badly to give context to the communication.
Problem: your name is not descriptive
Your name, your business name, or your product is not explaining the value I should find in following your communication. So I am confused.
So you find yourself with an enthusiastic message by people probably working hard to polish their jewels shooting in the darkness of unpopularity.
Problem: failure in anticipating the value
What will I see if I click your link?
See also the usability heuristics: “Visibility of system status” and “Recognition rather than recall .”We could paraphrase it as “Who are you? Would you please remind me what is your product?”
Result: indifference
Once per day, I celebrate in my inbox with perfect strangers their business achievements. From time to time, I don’t remember who they are or what their product is about. And they get ignored. That is the sad truth.
Set the context for effective communication
Communication needs to be designed. And communication design can help you in creating a message well-formed and well received.
To capture your audience’s attention, you need to establish the right context to prepare the communication you want to send. Clarify the receiver’s mind about the message you want to convey. Then communicate your content.
Let me tell you a story. I hate stories. Why is the human brain so attracted to stories? What is a story? It can be a wholly invented set of facts on an extremization, or, in the best case, a novelization of real facts, changed in contexts, actors, and outcome.
How would two different people tell an event they experienced together? By telling two different stories. Different according to a wide range of variations according to the context, the mood, the perception, the cognitive biases, the point of view, the skill, the experience, and so many other factors for each storyteller.
And what is the truth, then? Can we tell the truth by telling stories?
Perspective is everything. Rory Sutherland.
To have a map as accurate as the reality, we need a map as big as reality, with the same level of detail. We can describe what we see only with what it is.
What is the purpose o a story, then? Why are we so immersed in stories? Why do they influence us in our everyday lives to base our most critical decisions on them?
You’ll never know the truth. You’ll always have stories to tell and stories to listen to. Which stories we believe in is what our reality is going to be. Choose wisely.
You don’t need to do Interaction Design from scratch.
Expert designers’ shared experience can be used to increase the quality of the User Interfaces that you design: collect, review, and apply the most useful Usability Heuristics to design your software better.
What is a heuristic?
Heuristics are general practical rules based on practice and experience rather than formal theory. A heuristic is an approach to problem-solvingthat works in practice but is not guaranteed to be perfect. You derive a heuristic from your experience with similar problems, you can’t be sure it will always work, but it worked so far.
Try (and learn) it until it works.
Trial-and-error is the most common heuristic when trying to solve a problem. Making several different attempts from different angles and alternative approaches should allow you to make errors leading to the eventual solution.
Heuristics and design: Usability heuristics
In Interaction Design, a usability heuristic principle guides how to design software products to make them usable.
Heuristics aim at giving directions to design more usable software tools rather than dictating prescriptions.
How to design usable solutions using usability heuristics
Since they come from experience and are not prescriptive, the most popular usability heuristics originate from different schools of thought. Still, anybody tapping from their personal experience can create and adapt their set of heuristics.
Some of the most famous usability heuristics are the ones created by Nielsen Norman Group. They published the first version 15 years ago, and a few days ago, they updated that seminal article: 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.
The Nielsen Norman Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
It’s advantageous to keep these in mind when designing a User Interface, but I find it even more useful to collect real-life examples showing how they are used or violated.
For now, let’s have an entirely useless list of Usability Heuristics you could find at the source:
Visibility of system status
Match between system and the real world
User control and freedom
Consistency and standards
Error prevention
Recognition rather than recall
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Help and documentation
Let’s see if I will ever dare to go deeper in each of them to link my elucubrations in the previous list. I like risk.
You can improve your User Interface Design by checking it against usability heuristics carefully selected, adapted, and integrated according to the context of use.
Simplify: make your process a 1-2-3. First: set the context and prepare to work; second: develop your idea; third: package the final deliverable.
Sometimes we get lost in complication. We love to lose ourselves to the dance of complexity. It could be nice to live romantically in a floating world, a never-ending experience. But when poetry and romance are not fitting your constraints, better making it simple.
Simplicity helps to understand linearly. It also promotes iteration, and since “repetita juvant,” the more your repeat, the better you learn (with the right feedback loop, of course).
3. Develop the final solutions and assess their validity.
It’s a simplification, yes, it is, but the creative exercise of summarizing in three points pushes you to be practical and pragmatical.
Think about exploring:
1. Explore the environment, understand the context.
2. Make a move, without getting hurt, in any direction. Test waters.
3. See what happens, react, adapt, and iterate.
There are so many frameworks inspired by those three steps, and you’ll find so many famous names directly bound to that: OODA, Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Systemic Design, and Einstein knows what other.
Be brief in anything you do. When you can’t, play this game: can you say it and do it in 1-2-3? You’ll exercise your brevity, conciseness, and summarizing skills. First: set the problem; two: develop possibilities; three, implement, test, and iterate. Four: have fun.
Conception, ideation, implementation. And iteration.
Listing and enumeration can be useful creative methods. Start with a clear prompt to drive idea generation with clarity, set a fixed time, constraints help creativity. Write one idea per post-it/note/node. When done, present each idea with one sentence to give context, and aggregate the explained ideas to create clusters by topic or other useful aggregating ideas.
This facilitated creativity activity is similar to the “Post-it, post-up” gamestorming tool.
Generating ideas about Problem-Solving
Thanks to Lady Bear, we’ve come up with a list of ideas related to the question, “What do you think and do when you have a problem to solve?”
The initial list.
A list of possible concepts, actions, ideas related to problem-solving, generated in 5 minutes:
It’s hugely satisfying to spend no more than 10 minutes with another person to come up with raw creative material to work on. That’s what it took to create the previous list.
List, enumerate, itemize, count, inventory.
When you’re stuck and don’t know where to start from, take a partner and play to list their ideas following a clear and concise starting question. You will have the maximum creative outcome with the minimum effort.
Put all of your ideas on the beach. See connecting waves. Collect shiny ideas as pearls on the shore.
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.OkNo
