{"id":629,"date":"2011-12-29T21:19:25","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T04:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=629"},"modified":"2011-12-29T21:19:29","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T04:19:29","slug":"2011-recap-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=629","title":{"rendered":"2011 Recap: Lessons learned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a rather hectic &#038; intense year with travel, summits, workshops, etc. Many achievements &#8220;unlocked&#8221;, so to speak. However, it&#8217;s also good to sit back and itemize the critical lessons learned in the course of all the madness of the past year. Here are my top lessons which I will try to carry forward into the new year&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t go actively seeking to mentor someone; just let it happen naturally. People should seek you out, not the other way around. (yet, gently let folks know you are available!)\n<\/li>\n<li>Not everyone responds to your instinctive passion for design excellence the same way. Gotta be sensitive to others&#8217; personal and professional motivators and calibrate yourself accordingly, particularly in difficult situations.\n<\/li>\n<li>Always verify someone&#8217;s assumptions before suggesting a design idea. You might be wrong, and be unnecessarily intruding into a space not your own.\n<\/li>\n<li>Know when to be efficient, and when to be messy. It&#8217;s a balancing act that takes care and sensitivity.\n<\/li>\n<li>Always clarify who&#8217;s exactly the driver\/owner\/contributor (DACI) first, don&#8217;t just jump in. Suss out the situation first (and verify with key folks), even if it takes more time. A variant of &#8220;measure twice, cut once&#8221; when it comes to organizational issues.\n<\/li>\n<li>Especially in firedrill mode, try your very best to be calm, constructive, and optimistic in offering peer design feedback, or even general design strategy advice.\n<\/li>\n<li>Assume constant regular communication \/ education \/ repetition because everyone is swamped and rapidly context-shifting from project to project. People often forget what you advised or delivered, so don&#8217;t get worked up over it. Just gently remind.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a rather hectic &#038; intense year with travel, summits, workshops, etc. Many achievements &#8220;unlocked&#8221;, so to speak. However, it&#8217;s also good to sit back and itemize the critical lessons learned in the course of all the madness of the past year. Here are my top lessons which I will try to carry forward &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/?p=629\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;2011 Recap: Lessons learned&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":631,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}