I’ve got new boots (again).

They kinda grew up. They’re all, like, sophisticated and stuff. And they are going places.

They are actually the same boots I had originally used back in 2006…but retooled a bit. And they have legs now–excitement!

The new tagline is “notes from a UX geek”. UX = user experience (design).

My goal with the redesign is to give the blog a focus.

In 2011 I gained a lot of clarity about who I am and what I want to do. And it boils down to “UX”. UX for software, and UX for life. I’m an optimizer.

A few months ago I gutted the blog, removing most of the older posts because I wanted to establish new lines between public and private and eliminate the “processing out loud” aspect. I couldn’t see any value in them if you weren’t interested in my personal history, and I don’t like just leaving crap laying around.

But I still didn’t have a focus and it felt like this blog existed for no reason. Perhaps it had outlived its purpose?

Perhaps it has, but with this new design I am attempting to take it in a new direction and we’ll see if that pans out. =)

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Note: my apologies to subscribed folks about the old post getting mailed out. I un-hid some old posts and FeedBurner decided they were “new” even though they are clearly not new at all. So it sent you the Easter Jesus one again…sorry!

On Monday, Emily and I launched a project we’ve been working on for nearly two years: a new website for Acorn Host, and a new backend system to manage the customers and billing. It’s extensive and awesome and will greatly relieve some billing and customer service headaches.

Creating a billing system…sounds boring, right? But actually developing this project has been one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my life. What I’ve discovered is that software architecture and usability design utilizes new parts of my brain and soul, and it fully engages me like nothing else has.

There are many things I’ve dabbled in (and been obsessed with) over the years, and although it might seem like software development uses a very specific skillset, my role in the project was multifaced. I’m not the programmer (Emily is). But I’ve done programming, I’ve done design, and I’ve worked with data. I know enough about all the pieces of the software puzzle to enable us to collaborate in a unique way on the level of ideas and structure and user experience.

Not only that, but the methods we used to work together we also engineered as we went. Starting out from the classic development model of creating a spec and then trying to create software from it turned out to be hard. And dull. Documentation gets outdated quickly, and it’s hard to maintain; it doesn’t live.

Halfway through our project, we switched gears to an agile development process called Scrum. They have mottos like “discussions over documentation”. You work in “sprints” of one or two weeks, creating focus and clarity. The team all works together on the same part of the project and creates usable code each sprint, so you have an immediate sense of accomplishment and teamwork.

Scrum is more gratifying  than traditional ways of working. It increases happiness as a developer. And it releases you to improvise and develop software iteratively, instead of trying to match a spec that is months old and no longer reflects the great idea you had last week while chatting over coffee. It helps the project live and breathe. It produces better software.

This experience has opened a whole new world for me. I always knew that I wasn’t a programmer. As a designer, I’m good, but I’m not great. (for example, I am more of a font snob than a typographer). I like to write, but only when I’m inspired. Given how fascinated I am with personal growth, I’ve thought of becoming a coach or a therapist, but I’m not suited for it. I’m an ideator, a strategist, a creator.

This–being the idea part of software development–this I can be great at. This I dig completely. It brings in all the skills I’ve developed and all my strengths. And things that have frustrated me about myself make sense–like, why am I eternally annoyed at tiny inefficiencies in the day to day world that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things–oh, because I care about user experience! I don’t need therapy, I need to create software!

At the very end  of this project, we started creating a new project to help us work better. It’s nominally a bug tracker or a task management system, but it’s really a way to work in this Scrum style, which makes quite different assumptions than typical task trackers.

The billing system I had to build; this I want to build. I want to create something that helps people work happier. I’ve always believed work should be fun, but it turns out that it’s not as simple as “do what you love”. When you start working on teams, on large projects, doing what you love can quickly become awful. Structures matter: they can empower creativity or frustrate it. I loved the process of working on this project, and I want to help other people feel that way.

I don’t know exactly where this is all going, but I’ve never been so excited about work. I’ve always felt like a dabbler. I built Acorn Host so I could support myself, and that it does, and it’s a quality product that I’m committed to, but I’m not like, in love with web hosting. I have always felt like I wasn’t fully utilizing my brain, and yet I hadn’t found anything that fully engaged it. So this is a happy day for me. I’m not sure where it will lead, but I wanted to share that much with you.

The SoulCollage Evolving  book talks about archetypes as mythic energetic patterns. Mythic meaning bigger than an individual, part of the collective unconscious, eternal and powerful. Basically, they will come and have their way with you. They want to be expressed.

But do you want to express them?

The Creator Archetype feels like this raw rush of wild energy. I want to make and make, write and write. I stay up all night creating something. I babble excitedly. My mind goes in a million directions. It feels like drugs.

But when it’s all over, I find my sleep patterns are disrupted. I’m tired, worn out. Cranky. Empty. Hung over.

Sometimes I have something cool to show for it. Sometimes I just have a long bunch of idea babble in my journal.

So I’m thinking maybe it’s time to have some boundaries with the Archetypes. I’m not your bitch, Creator Archetype! I’m  not going to surrender my will to take care of myself just because you have some great ideas you want to force through my mind/body. You don’t have a body, you don’t know what it’s like. I’ve got to take care of things, or I feel shitty. So you can just take a number, and I’ll do your bidding on my time.

I don’t want to be driven any more. I want to do the driving. This is my car.

This is the first blog I ever stuck with.

Which means it’s full of old posts. Almost 400 over six years.

And lately, it’s felt like I was carrying a big bag of junk around. I wanted to get rid of it.

So for the last few weeks it’s been shut down. I put up a nearly-blank theme with a link to Tao of Prosperity, which I recently redesigned.

And it felt great. Big weight, gone.

But then I kinda missed having a place to post random things. Things I like. Things I’m doing.

And I realized that it’s not so much that I want to ditch cheekyboots forever. It’s that I want to start over.
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The Moon from Tarot of Trees © Dana Driscoll

When I do Tarot, the Moon card shows up a lot. It’s a card about our unconscious, and the subtle, rich integration process that accompanies the long slow journey into ourselves.

Inevitably I resist it.

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This post on Study Hacks takes a look at the classic theories of extrinsic motivation vs. intrinsic, and updates in the field, and it got me thinking.

If you’re not familiar with this terminology, roughly, intrinsic motivation is doing something for the sake of it, and extrinsic is doing it for what it will give you (a reward or benefit).

The classic theory states that extrinsic motivation can replace intrinsic motivation and destroy it. (Experiment: have someone play a game that they enjoy, then pay them to play it, then stop paying them, and they stop playing the game.)

Apparently newer work in the field has differentiated various types of extrinsic motivation including integrated regulation. This is classic extrinsic but with two other factors – that your reasons (the rewards) are in alignment with your deeper values, and that you get to choose how to approach the task rather than it being determined for you. These two factors bring it closer to intrinsic motivation.

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I’m an advocate for small.

Maybe it was growing up with the Marxist idea that as the finished product of our labor gets abstracted from our day to day work, we lose meaning.

Maybe it’s because hierarchies and institutions seem like giant soul-crushing entities.

I like small business. And I hate it when a small business gets all competitive and stupid like a big business.

In a small business, a micro-business, the personality and uniqueness of the owner can come through. Business can be an expression of our truest and best qualities: our vision, our inspiration. When a company grows, its hard to hold onto that magical quality. It gets burnished out as all the edges get smooth.

Not that I don’t appreciate the smoothness. I love Amazon. Target. They’re great. I just also like the tiny people doing individual things that are cool.

I think of the people doing them as artists. Every day they wake up and decide to believe in their business and their work. They put it out there. They define their own value by showing up and stating it. It’s a claiming of power. It’s the courage to self-validate.

Sure, your customers give you feedback. But at the end of the day, nobody but you knows how much work you put into your business.

Like right now I’m working on tiny details in migrating a lot of Acorn Host data to a new system, much of which is for accounts and customers that are long gone, and probably a lot of it my customers will never see or care about it. I could do a sloppier job, and it would not affect my bottom line at all. Precision does not really pay in many cases.

But I care about it. And I like to care about it. And somehow all that caring and precision adds up to a service that is good and makes the world better. And that’s enough.

In micro-businesses, that kind of caring is embedded. Efficiency and profitability really isn’t the bottom line. It could be–but I don’t think most people are motivated by numbers alone. It’s when people get in hierarchies and the numbers start to be used to judge worth that numbers become meaningful. Without that, we do what we care about. I like that.