A couple years ago, I remember psyching myself up to write my year end review, only to realize that I couldn’t remember any details about what had happened in the first half of the year. Has that ever happened to you?

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We’re down to the last two weeks of the year! Last week, I shared part 1 of the ritual that I’m using to set New Year’s Resolutions for 2021. In it, I walked through how you can create more time in your day to bulletproof yourself against times when things get busy, so that you don’t have to sacrifice your resolution. This week, we’ll dive into how you can set better resolutions that lead to action.

It’s almost the new year… finally! Like many of you, I can’t wait for a fresh start in 2021. I usually start the year feeling hopeful and setting a few New Year’s Resolutions. As the year goes on, I see great progress on some resolutions and limited progress on others.

I’m going to try something different this time. I will be transforming my New Year’s Resolutions into a two-part ritual this year, which I’ll cover in this post and the next post. This post will focus on how you can create more time in your day to bulletproof you against times when things get busy, so that you don’t have to sacrifice your resolution. The next post will focus on how you can set better resolutions that lead to action.

Each year, the Thanksgiving holiday celebrates the blessings of the year. This year certainly doesn’t feel like there’s much to celebrate. Between COVID-19, racial divisiveness, and massive wildfires, most people can’t wait for 2020 to be over.

And yet, ever the optimist, I’ve found things to be grateful for this Thanksgiving. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area with all of the pressure to have a big life, I’m appreciating the joys of a small life. From “ambient TV” to health, here are some serious and not-so-serious things I’ll be giving thanks to this holiday. What are you grateful for?

Recently, my alma mater, Lowell High School in San Francisco, decided to change their admissions policy for the upcoming school year to be lottery, rather than merit-based. I can’t help but feel bad for this year’s 8th graders. They bought into the admissions game. They worked hard following the rules of the game, but the rules changed on them mid-game. Those that were at the top of their class and don’t get in next year because of the lottery will be left feeling supremely let down.

I know how they’ll feel, because it happened - temporarily - to me. Not many people know this, but I almost didn’t get in. Because of my personal experience, I’m taking a break from my normal product-focused writing to share what happened to me and three lessons that we can takeaway to turn this situation into a learning experience.

Halloween is only about two weeks away and it’s clear this year’s celebration will be unlike any other. In past years, our family walked to a block party a few streets away. My husband and I stood shoulder-to-shoulder with our neighbors and admired the elaborate decorations, while our kids went trick-or-treating down each driveway.

We didn’t want Halloween to end up as another casualty of 2020. Halloween is one of the kids’ favorite holidays and they’ve already missed out on so much in the last six months that we really wanted to make sure that Halloween still has a little magic this year. I realized that I could take my PM wand out and “solve” Halloween, just like I would any other user problem. Read on to hear about how I used product principles to design a magical Halloween experience, with a COVID-friendly twist.

Previously, I wrote about how great UX makes technology “So easy a toddler can do it.” Now, I’m back with a distance learning edition! Read on to hear about what I’ve observed about distance learning and what we can learn from first graders about how to work more effectively.

Dark patterns are sneaky, deceptive, manipulative... maybe even evil. They conjure up nightmare examples of agreeing to privacy policies that (you didn’t realize) share your data with third parties, having to jump through hoops to unsubscribe from a service, or getting notifications to pressure you to speed through checkout.

But are dark patterns just misunderstood? Can dark patterns be used for good??? Read on to find out how I applied the persuasiveness of dark patterns responsibly.

Anyone remember drunk UX testing? The premise was that your website should be so simple, a drunk person could use it. I decided to do my own riff on this idea, replacing a drunk person with a toddler. Your website should be so simple, a young child should be able to use it, right?

Read on to find out what happened in my experiment. What websites did they test and did they pass the toddler UX test???

How does -1% = -30%? Getting stitches is never fun, and even a small injury becomes magnified when it restricts your movement. Like Shripriya Mahesh’s talk on “What the Suck”, read on to see how “the Suck” inspired me to be a product manager that clarifies the right problem to solve, designs for accessibility and inclusion, and embraces user empathy.