Increase your Design Productivity with an increase in awareness [Systems] [craftsmanship] [Velocity]

Foreign, give yourself some like a little boost of confidence today. Like, you're here, you're doing this, you're going to be, you're going to be an absolute incredible creator as you start to continuously build awareness around these things, right? So with design productivity, we also have the existing core, like product development workflow of things that happen throughout our given life cycles of our projects, right? All of these things have little, little levels that can get better and that can be more efficient. We did also talk about how this played into the design energy side. So when we look at our priorities, we look at how we're efficient, the speed of when we do things, the skills of where we're doing it, how we build integrated products, how we use our routines and use our rituals to help us move forward, right? These are things that we just, they're ingredients that we have to have so that we can keep things moving. But then we also talked about design clarity, right? Communication, collaboration, elevating the work, focusing, timing, like, when are things happening, like our strategic plans and workshops. And then we also talked about like just reframing, like, okay, this is where we're at, setting some context, helping people know how we can improve things. But like, design productivity does something very similar, but it's almost taking another step back and looking at all these things outside of your design clarity window. But because you do have projects right now, you do have okrs that you're working towards. You do have specific timelines that you need to keep track of and focus on. You do have passion and purpose and personal and career and project goals, right? Don't throw those things out the window. Think about those, connect them to your values and principles and right, then we get to this action stage. The action stage is where you actually create the, that productivity experience and mindset. But taking these things and turning these actions into meaningful actions is where we really can excel in design productivity. So the goal of design productivity is to optimize our design effectiveness. Like when we're designing, how effective are we with that prolific quality output? And as we scale our teams, our individual selves, our individual human, we, as we learn together, as we grow together, how are we optimizing that design effectiveness? It's really a challenging thing. But when you can start to kind of decompose, like dissect your, your skills and your, and your craftsmanship of what you do, you start to see like, oh, I can prove in this, I can get better at this skill, I can get better at this, I can get better at my communication here. All of Those little optimizations are going to help you become more productive. It's like that, the, it's just that like maturity is building. It's the maturity is building. The more you think about it, the more you act on it, the more you learn from it. And the desired outcome of what we're trying to do is so that you can connect to that thing we called flow, right? So we can produce better, so that we can see those results faster. Because you, I know you all have experienced flow, the flow state before, but when you can get into the flow state every single day, every time you have to sit down and do the work, every time you have to go to a meeting and you feel, you can feel what it is you need to do at the core and you have awareness of what those things are like. You can become a whole, a whole like force of energy that's going to create some amazing things. But you got to be able to tap into that flow and know how to do it. That's what we want to do. So let's keep talking about this. So we have the product design workflow. We just showed this. We have the design clarity. Boom. Got it. We also now need to start thinking about all these things with a design productivity lens. And the design productivity lens starts with these four big questions. Okay? So I want you to zoom out for a second and think about, alright, well, I know I need to do all these things, I know I need to think about these. And this is a lot of stuff to consider. Now we got to start thinking about when, how, what and why. And I'm going to break down each of these things because a lot of time people really struggle with productivity because they don't know what to do, they don't know when to do it, they don't know why it's important and they don't know what they should be doing. Like there are things here that, you know, there's just, there's just problems behind, behind. Not optimized, not optimizing your schedule, not optimizing your systems. Right? Systems was that number one thing, right? So we're going to talk about that right now. So the systems we go through, right, we have this, you know, I'm sure you've gone through all these, these stages before, like preparing, understanding, focusing, generating ideas. Right? These are just all little microsystems. But the microsystems also need to have the lens of design energy and design clarity. Design clarity, like how we communicate and collaborating, elevating the work. How are we focusing our timing and how we reframing things. And then when we get into that level of, okay, well, now we need to start thinking about what are the three things that are going to help drive design productivity? Right? We got to master these systems that are going to help us show up for each of these moments. We have to level up our craftsmanship for how we present things, how we show things, how we navigate things, complexities of our products we're building, and we connect all these dots. And then we can start knowing, like, oh, I need a little bit more support. I can ask for some support from my manager, or I can dial up my velocity and start thinking about, okay, well, if I have two hours in the day to do this one thing, how could I get it done in an hour? Or how could I get it done in 30 minutes? Why is it taking me two hours versus why is it taking me an hour versus why is it, how could I do it in 30 minutes? You start to have a different level of awareness for your optimization and what you need to do. And I think when you start to do something like a hundred and two hundred times over, you start to see, like, well, did I really need to spend that extra time to do this? Or, you know, where is the impact? And next week we'll talk about design impact, so you can have that, that another level of awareness for how you show impact for the work that you do. But velocity management helps you kind of have that other deeper level awareness, so you can set that tempo, that pace and figure that out. We also need this productivity awareness when we look at the workflows of the teams, right when we're getting started, all the way to we're ramping and learning of a new feature, those systems of what the team is doing, what you're doing to monitor it. You have one foot in the door for new things, one foot out the door for things that you already have designed and things that you've already built. You got to be thinking about future and present as a product maker and as a creator on a continuous basis. But to do that and have sanity and to do that and have clarity, you have to have a system in place where, okay, this is when I'm looking at new things, this is when I'm looking at old things. And I'm not just jumping over and I feel like I'm all over the place. You don't want to be. You don't want to be all over the place with this because it'll stress you out. And, you know, a system is not to stress you out. System is to help bring a little bit more like, oh, I can, I can repeat, rinse, repeat the same system. It's going to help me. And that's what, you know, creates those routines, it creates those habits, it creates those rituals. Like those are, those are things that are going to serve you. But don't create those in a way that is making you stressed or having an increase of anxiety or an increased frustration. Like all those things, throw them out the window. We don't want those things. We want to have better quality systems. The other thing about this is when we're talking about like the when, what, why and how, when are we doing this stuff? When are we being productive? Well, we have all of these different types of meetings and I'm sharing. You might have these in your company, you might not have access to these companies or these teams things yet, but I'm going to share them with you because if you haven't yet done these, these are good foundational things that you can do. So the first thing would be a stand up, the standups with your team, right? You're coming into the team with like 5, 10, 15 people and you're talking about what you accomplished, what's upcoming, and maybe if you have any blockers, think about the purpose of a stand up. The purpose of a standup is not to just like, you know, kind of laissez file, like just being like, oh, okay, yeah, we're doing these things. This is great. It's really, you know, to zero in on what everybody's working on and how it holistically is connected together. So as a leader in your organization and you're in a stand up, you can start thinking about, okay, well this engineer reported this, this designer reported this, this product manager reported this, this QA person reported this. How is it all connected? Are people making really communicating in a way that is building on each other? And then, you know, there's so much that you can, you can gain from that because then you're like, oh, well, how could I have made that moment more productive? Well, I know that Engineer 1 and Engineer 2 is working on this thing, but they're waiting for this thing. How can I prepare that? And I anticipate they're going to ask for it maybe in another session or another week. How can I prepare those moments so that they can have those things beforehand? You can always be preparing and anticipating what your team needs. And the same thing for interviews, okay, we have like weekly interviews with people that we're trying to bring on the team. How do we stay productive? Well, we have little cycles and windows of time where we do that. We do feedback, and then it goes into the system. Status updates are things, you know, we do on a weekly basis, one on ones grooming, product reviews. All these things have opportunities to be more productive and efficient. So when you go into a meeting and you think about the intention of that meeting and the purpose of that meeting, take it another step further and how you prepare for that meeting, what do you do to bring value to that meeting? Those things help with productivity because it's helping everybody be more efficient, helping everybody be more aware, helping everybody be in tune and connected. And so that not just you can be in flow, so that your whole team can be in flow. Right. It's a beautiful thing.