Horeb International

I use a four-step interrelated process for my creativity and productivity called the 4Cs. Although I am strong in the first two components of Consumption and Curation using certain digital tools, I still need to improve on the latter two to consistently deliver creative outputs.

Consumption involves the intake of multimedia content, including reading books and articles, watching videos, and listening to podcasts. I use several iOS apps for digital consumption, such as Podcast, Kindle, Libby, Reader and YouTube.

Curation is where I strategically select and identify what resonated with me from the diverse information consumed. These are the highlights from books and articles, as well as quotes and stories from podcasts and videos. The tool that I use to make this process easier, especially for digital text consumption is Readwise.

Contemplation involves reflecting on the curated ideas more deeply to understand why they resonated initially and how they connect to other diverse topics of interest. This is where I reverse engineer and remix the curated ideas to figure out their significance. Unfortunately, this is my weakest stage, as it’s much easier to consume than to contemplate. But without adequate contemplation, the quality and quantity of creative outputs are diminished.

“Make a habit of reflection cos without reflection we do not learn, we are just busy. It is how we become aware of our patterns, interactions and habits.“

David Klob

Creation involves transforming the curated insights and highlights into new ideas and sharing them with others. My primary outlet for creative output is this website and my 2023 blogging goal is two posts per month.

In conclusion, it’s easy for contemplation and creation to feel like an afterthought. That’s why I’m making a conscious effort this year to be more deliberate about contemplating and establishing a routine for publishing and sharing my creative output.

I’d love to hear about the tools you use for one or more of these stages in the comments.

Gustaf Alströmer, a group partner at Y Combinator, created a YouTube video entitled “How To Talk To Users,” which provides insights into conversing with users from an entrepreneur’s perspective. However, his interview tips and questions {see above} are still applicable to user researchers. As a user researcher, talking to users is a vital part of the job, and it’s essential to have an in-depth understanding of their motivations and frustrations. Alströmer’s video is 17 minutes and 30 seconds long, and it’s worth watching.

During a user interview, it’s essential to ask open-ended follow-up questions such as “What do you mean by that?” “Can you tell me more about that?,” and “Why is that important to you?” Additionally, note-taking is crucial, even if you are recording the conversation. It’s beneficial to observe users in their natural context when using your product or your competitors’ products to gain insights into their frustrations and delights. Lastly, encourage users to provide specific and concrete examples and focus on their problems rather than pitching solutions.

In conclusion, Alströmer’s interview tips are valuable to user researchers. Regularly talking to users, asking open-ended questions, observing users in their natural context, encouraging specific examples, and focusing on user problems are crucial when conducting interviews.

Albert Einstein is famously attributed with the quote, “If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” This advice is particularly relevant to product teams, who often jump straight into solving user problems without taking time to truly understand the problem space.

While businesses live in the solution space, users live in the problem space. Without immersing themselves in the problem space, product teams are at risk of building ineffective solutions. They must take the time to comprehend, define and prioritize the right user problems to solve.

Users and product teams have different motivations. Users are focused on resolving their problems, while product teams should be focused on understanding them. However, users often describe their problems in terms of the solutions they want. Rushing to build these solutions without proper unpacking can lead to ineffective solutions. Product teams need to bring users back into the problem space despite user reluctance in order to gain a deep understanding of the problem.

Uri Levine, co-founder of Waze, said it best: “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution, and the rest will follow.” The product team’s ultimate goal is to build products that solve meaningful user problems. If a product doesn’t solve meaningful problems, users won’t engage with it. The quality of a product solution is only as good as the product team’s understanding of the problem. Therefore, product teams should be comfortable spending a significant amount of their time in the problem space to ensure they build effective solutions.

Pep Guardiola’s modesty will only allow him to embrace the label of an ‘ideas thief’. His teams have played some of the most thrilling and dominating football in recent years.

Guardiola is a coach who stood on the shoulders of his heroes and transcended them.

Austin Kleon in his book, Steal like an Artist, said

“Merely imitating your heroes is not flattering them. Transforming their work into something of your own is how you flatter them. Adding something to the world that only you can add.”

Guardiola evolved from an ideas thief to a creative genius by becoming the sum of his influences. He didn’t steal the ideas of his influences but stole the thinking behind their ideas.

The desire was not to become a clone of his heroes but he rather wanted to ‘see’ and ‘think’ like them.

His heroes’ ideas grounded in understanding filtered through his imagination produced his distinctive coaching style. This is a secret of Guardiola’s coaching success.

There are two key skills I am keen to improve as a user researcher – questioning and listening. I will focus on the latter in a future post.

My job involves asking a lot of questions of internal stakeholders and research participants. Anybody can ask questions. The true skill is the ability to ask the right questions that generate insights.

This is why the quote above resonates with me, especially when interviewing research participants. I don’t always facilitate the transition from question-to-answer to a question-to-story in all my interviews. This is usually because  I am trying to extract as much information from an interview due to time constraints. Most of my interviews with time-poor teachers tend to occur during school hours.

The transition between the two phases {Q-A to Q-S} requires using well-timed follow-ups and the willingness to embrace the pregnant pause. This embrace requires the interviewer to handle the uncomfortableness of silence after the participant’s answer.

The interviewer’s instinct is to rush to the next question after getting an answer. Participants should be given just enough time to fill the silence. They will let you if they have nothing to say.  People speak in paragraphs according to Portigal and they want your permission to go on to the next paragraph. The interviewer’s silence permits them the freedom to do this.

Most people are not skilled storytellers and their stories will usually be unpolished. But there are nuggets in those unpolished stories.  Like Portigal said the richest insights are in stories, not answers.

My 2023 goal is to make and share what I love on this site and I hope it resonates with you. I will be publishing more posts this year compared to previous years. Make sure to subscribe below to get post notifications when I publish something new.

The format for most of my 2023 posts is an interesting quote as the inspiration for a commentary. The selected quotes will cover different themes of interest.

I am doing some creative projects this year and will keep you posted as they unfold.

Happy New Year!!!

Thanks for stopping by

One of my favourite movies so far this year is Vengence. There is a scene in the movie in which a writer/podcaster {played by B.J. Novak} asks a music producer {played by Ashton Kutcher} for advice on how to find his storytelling voice.

Ashton Kutcher’s character delivers succinct advice that made B.J. Novak’s character gasp in astonishment and made me pause that scene several times to write it down.

Q: If I came here for advice about my voice, writing, and podcast. What would you tell me?

A: I’d probably say that nobody writes anything. All we do is translate. So if you ever get stuck and don’t know what to say – just listen, even to the silences. Listen as hard as you can to the world around you and repeat back what you hear. That translation is your voice.

One of the topics I am interested in exploring in 2022 is storytelling. I consume a lot of content{ books, films, TV shows and podcasts} in the hopes of figuring out how good storytellers engage their audience’s attention. The use of ‘the familiar and the strange’ is one way good storytellers do this.

I am a big fan of Quentin Tarantino and love this description of him by David L. Robbins. It captures Tarantino’s use of familiarity and strangeness in his storytelling construction.

“Quentin Tarantino has crafted things out of the quotidian never seen before. His appreciation of the cinema status quo has long been that of an inventor surveying a junkyard. Time and again he’s picked the past apart, reassembled traditions and clichés alike into forms we recognize only in pieces. His movies burn in our eyes strange and familiar, all at once. Tarantino backs into the future.”

 If a story is too strange then the audience will find it incomprehensible but if it is too familiar then it will bore them. It needs a delicate balance of the strange clothed in the familiar so the audience can see something old and new in the story.

Toni Morrison advocated for storytellers “to familiarise the strange and mystify the familiar.” Samuel Johnson also echoes this sentiment: “the two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar and familiar things new.” The audience wants strangeness in their stories but they also want familiarity too. The goal of a great story is to be strangely familiar. 

Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister, once said “the secret of success is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.” Disraeli’s quote focuses on the prep time spent in the shadows for that moment in the spotlight.  Collins Dictionary defines ‘overnight success’ as something that becomes successful very quickly.  Most of us desire to be an overnight success but sometimes it takes years to become one. 

Bernardine Evaristo in her book, Manifesto, said  “I wasn’t an overnight success, but everything changed overnight.”  She would unpack this further in the book with  “When I won the Booker Prize in 2019 for my novel Girl, Woman, Other, I became an ‘overnight success’ – after forty years working professionally in the arts. My career hadn’t been without its achievements and recognition, but I wasn’t widely known. The novel became a #1 bestseller sold in many foreign languages and received the kind of attention I had long desired for my work.”

Jose Mourinho, a football manager, at the peak of his managerial powers in 2004 said that “after 15 years, I’m an overnight success.” 

To become an overnight success requires stamina and perseverance because there would be certain periods when giving up seems a better option than going on. This requires the willingness to play the long game even if there are no guarantees of becoming an overnight success. 

The true motivation for creative work shouldn’t be the spotlight but for the production of the creative outputs. You have no control over how the world reacts to your creative outputs. You only have control over the production of your outputs. Hence you keep on creating because you don’t know which piece of work would resonate with a huge audience. Every piece of new work builds on the previous one and this helps you improve your craft and your creative voice. 

I can guarantee that if Bernardine Evaristo’s novel wasn’t a runaway hit; she would still keep writing books and doing the work. Winning the 2019 Booker prize and getting international recognition is a wonderful bonus. There is no guarantee that her next book will get similar accolades but that won’t stop her because she is playing the long game.