This is an edited transcription from a talk I gave at UX Tree: Things to know When Starting in UX.

There’s a lot of information to process here, so I’ve broken it down with headers — dip in and out of sections of interest. I hope this helps you, reader!

Illustrations: me, with the help of the wonderful Phosphor Icons.

Starting in a team of one can feel a bit like veering into open waters — suddenly, there’s nobody you can turn to that understands your language as a designer. There might be a few sharks about. There’s no safe landing for the eye to see, but… it offers a really special kind of freedom that you can’t experience if you’re on a cushy cruise ship (otherwise known as an embedded design team). You get to chart your voyage, define your goals — you can really charge design decisions that shape the product and service for the better.

🎂 If you did get that job — congratulations! A new design role is a bit like a first day of school. It can be very exciting, and you want to jump into everything at once, and of course, you’ve got a lot of idealistic notions about what you’re job is going to be, which you’ll inevitably have crushed, but that’s okay! If you’re new to design, you’ll feel an urge to jump straight into an assignment. You’re potentially also the first in-house designer in the organisation, so don’t forget… somebody thought you were worth assigning a new department for and hiring, so it’s really important to remind yourself of that after the initial excitement runs dry and you’re wondering if you belong in this role.

👑 Something that can happen, especially for new starters, is the initial overselling of their position. “I am the UX, the Alpha and Omega, I am here to fix all of your problems. I speak for the user, I am the sole bastion of the user’s voice!”. There’s nothing more off-putting than descending from the design heavens and treating the org like a poorly patient that needs to be fixed. My first recommendation when you start a new job in a team of one is to keep it cute, keep it mute, and learn everything about the internal environment of the organisation. It’s really important to listen and show openness to everyone around you. You really want to sow your seeds of future influence and accumulate those brownie points.

🪵 Cut with the grain, not against. Do a lot of listening and don’t show resistance to your initial toolset or the initial processes and ideas. You don’t know where they’ve come from, it’s important to not make a lot of assumptions. You need to gain credibility as well for the big moves you want to make later on.

Document your every move

📚 It’s very important to document your role and expectations clearly from the start. This is to protect you when others misinterpret your job, particularly Product and Engineering. Make an assessment ofyour skills, your own weaknesses, and take notes about other departments — what’s the org structure? Don’t assume that others know what you do, and more importantly — don’t assume that you know what everyone else does. Talk to people and make yourself known to every team. Send hello messages, make sure you schedule 1 on 1 calls with other teams. It’s a bit harder to do remotely, but it is important to reach out to a key figure from every department. That’s how you leave a lasting impact and build your credibility and social capital.

📚 Again… document everything! Document your projects, workshops, exercises you do, make a short weekly review of how well you did that week, what you achieved or missed, reflections on how you handled a challenge. It’s surprising how quickly you forget everything when you’re in the moment, even a few weeks into a new job. When it comes to review time or a future interview, you’ll have a rolodex of growth moments to pull out.

On relationships with others

🤲 It’s important that you make friends with all the non-designers — everyone in the organisation from the bottom to the top. You want you want to find points of commonality between different members of different teams. As an example — maybe there’s a data scientist on your team, and you might think “I have nothing in common with a data scientist”. They might need help designing a dashboard, and in exchange, you might need help making sense of data that they’re producing, and now you’re interested in how you can use data to inform your work and they’re thinking of new opportunities to synthesise user feedback to tell a story of data. It’s really important as a higher-maturity designer to be amongst different groups of people and different disciplines. It lets you open your mind up and understand every facet of an organisation.

👋 Find your friends and allies. Your allies are a particular group of people in an organisation. You’ll need them in times of stress and when you need to make important calls. Having a support network is one of the biggest assets any employee can have. Do also consider external mentorship. There may not be a traditional track of design leadership. It’s very important to have someone to bounce back ideas or navigate through issues.

On detractors

😡 Unfortunately, it’s almost a certainty that you’re going to have detractors. People who don’t share your vision or spark, or people who see you as a subordinate task-doer. Watch out for “Can you do my clipart for my document”, “Can you do the logo for the email”. How you handle that will define your role and how other people see you. You’re also going to have co-workers who like playing designer, often at your expense and without the expertise and insight you bring to your role. I used to think it was important that everyone got in on design, then someone made a really good point to me about being a professional designer — non-accountants don’t tell accountants how to run their books. In that sense — don’t let people tell you how to run design. It’s important to foster collaboration and facilitate it, but you’ve got to still be the owner of your work and use your authority.

💭 Maybe when you started getting interested in design, you imagined yourself spending your hours doing wonderful design work, and everyone would be like “oh, your designs are so wonderful, we’re so glad to have you here”, and you complete user flows, flawless usability tasks, fabulous design systems. The fact is is good design execution is really all about relationship management. I would say managing your relationships and navigating those battles is as important if not more important than the task work itself. You’re not an island as a designer, and you need those people around you to translate the recommendations into action — they are key to the business too.

Managing relationships

🤝 With remote and hybrid work, I find it can be extra hard to manage relationships and get a feel for the atmosphere amongst colleagues, so try to read the chatroom in a situation and check yourself too; how you react to other people is important to know. Your feelings are going to be on high at times and things can get tense. Text chats and long meetings can be the seeds of bad feelings and misinterpretations. Not everyone has great communication skills — and that might include you, Almighty Designer! A developer that you’re talking to and having a clash with, they might seem to be acting difficult, and you might think “Why are they so against me?” but it might have nothing to do with you at all, or maybe this individual is not receptive to the conversation style you use. It’s important to see their perspective. They might be overloaded with work, they might be having an issue with their team, they might be having a bad time personally. They may also feel that you’re getting all the credit for their work.

☁️ When you’re managing relationships, when you get more comfortable with your teams, here’s a piece of wisdom Debbie Levitt has to offer to ensure you retain respect — “no soft cloud landings”. When it’s needed, give your point firmly. Make it clear that if your time isn’t being valued or you have nothing to contribute, you don’t need to be at that hour-long meeting. Ask a team if they can move on from a point that isn’t constructive or is sidetracking you constantly. If things start to go awry, take a breath, take your hands off your keyboard, go for a walk, talk to your allies, if you have a mentor, talk to them too, because they can really help.

💬 Understand the language of each different departments. Different departments can speak very differently to one another. It’s not uncommon for there to be information silos and for people to have different ideas of the same project. If lines get crossed, use the defined rules of engagement, take it easy, don’t go straight to nuclear, see if you can resolve it internally. Try to get the big picture, try to understand other people, and try to be a communicator, and empathy goes a long way.

Timekeeping and productivity

⏳ It’s likely that you’re going to be your own boss as a team of one. You’re reporting to someone who probably isn’t a designer. You’ll need to define your own time outside of task work. It’s a blessing but also a curse, so be strict in your own time planning. It’s to protect yourself from overwork as well as getting through a slump in a week where you don’t have any goals. It’s definitely okay to have off-days, it’s a universal experience, but structuring your time helps in the long run.

⌛️ Figure out where you add value to the company and figure out where you’re being valued in weekly meetings — if you don’t feel like your presence is giving value and you’re not learning everything, you don’t always have to be at every meeting. Ask yourself, “What would this look like if I wasn’t here?”. If the answer isn’t significant, your time is probably better spent elsewhere.

📝 If you’re a productivity goddess you have nothing to worry about here — for the rest of us, it can be really hard to find a system that works for you. However you manage your thoughts and outputs, here are a few core principles. Keep it consistent, keep it impartial, and make it easy to refer to and share with others.

I document work on Confluence, which is highly visible to team members. Once, I got a message from someone I never worked with, who told me that they found my documentation interesting, as it gives a peek into the work I do, of which previously they were blind to. That really helps with getting leverage in decision making.

I also use Sharepoint and Powerpoint for corporate-facing work. I’m not a fan of these tools, but I know my audience is. Nobody wants an invite link to sign up to a tool they don’t know how to use. They just want to see work.

Inheriting and maintaining design docs

🗄 On the subject of housekeeping from a design perspective, you’ve probably going to be in one of two situations: You’ve inherited designs (and hopefully documentation), or you’re starting from scratch.

It could be that there are no standards established by the company. That can give you the flexibility to suggest tools that you’re most comfortable with. If you’ve received a messy document set with no workability, consider rebuilding or using another tool. Once, I got a crazy set of Adobe XD files that looked like it was built in a website builder and copied as SVG. Nothing made sense and I knew I’d need to scale these documents over time. I made a decision to rebuild everything, but that time was saved tenfold when everything was built for scalability and ease of use. I’d like to think the designer after me was grateful!

🦸‍♂️ If you are starting from scratch, don’t try to be the hero that builds everything from scratch. Do you need a bespoke icon set, or a design system from the ground up that doesn’t have developer buy-in? If you’re starting off as a team of one, don’t make this your primary output and time-sink. There are hundreds of people who have come for you who freely share comprehensive icon packs, design systems, and UI kits. Use these to kickstart your work and adapt it into what you need. You’re going to deliver so much more value when you can focus on the high-level experience and strategy.

🗑 One thing that I used to do a lot, and I really regret it now, is I’d work on a few designs and I’d delete or overwrite them, realising later that I couldn’t go back to those older designs, or they had no context attached. I suggest version control or other non-destructive methods of design progression, and give context to everything you do as you go along. It really helps to build a story and show what you went through to make decisions. Personally, I use a mix of Figma’s page feature (one page per iteration/exploration) and Confluence to reflect on decisions made (also accessible to team).

Strategise for the future

Let’s fast forward — you’ve gotten settled, you’ve gotten your first project work done, and you’re working quietly (hopefully) building your influence. Now it’s time to strategise and grow your presence. You may be the only person who has both the on-the-ground and the bigger-picture view. If you wait for permission, it’s never going to happen.

If you don’t stand for something in your work, you run the risk of being an SX Designer (Stakeholder Experience), and there are enough of those around.

Talk about UX as a business tool to drive customer delight, revenues, and as a competitive advantage. Nobody in management wants to hear “what about the user?”, they want money and success metrics, and you need their buy-in.

Promote your processes when you’ve developed them. Depending on how mature your company is, there may be no formalised research. It might be the case that “research” is a few members of the team testing the app during a coffee break. It’s important to slowly push for the right thing. Aim for the easy wins. Evidence is always harder to fight with than subjectivity. You need evidence to be able to make the bigger design wins in the org.

Avoid design theatre and the design thinking parade — you are the professional, and the team can contribute to the process, but if you don’t make yourself known as the person who has the expertise and influence, you’ll end up being steamrolled, because everyone can design now and you will be relegated to ‘kind, passive design person’ role, code for; ‘we tell you what to do and you be happy’.

When to take the next steps

The next big job is always tempting, but it may not be time. Before you jump overboard, consider your position, the pros and cons, growth opportunities, what can you still try here? have you seen through the projects you’ve been involved with, can you still take them somewhere new afterwards? Maybe there’s more strategy to be done, maybe there’s a research repository to be built. This is your sandbox space, and you may not always get a safe space like this to continue refining your skillset without the pressure of performance in a larger team.

Be realistic about your career needs. If you’re hitting a wall — why is that? Can your org support training to help you grow? Are you stopping yourself from raising the bar? Maybe nobody is challenging you — it might be an opportunity to rise to the challenge. Watch out for premature promotion offers. You’re still gaining experience, and you don’t want to create an awkward spike on your career track. Being the Chief Design Officer when you know how to use Figma and you completed a usability test may not prepare you well for your future employment. Make sure growth is sustainable.

Above all else, take care of yourself. Make self check-ins, mark problematic behaviour. Around the 12 month mark, make that call — but if you’re working in a toxic environment and you’re hating your job, just jump.

I keep a folder on my desktop filled with achievements, messages of thanks, impacts I made on others. If I need a boost, I go through that, and it grounds me. On a related note, consider vision cards.

Some helpful links and resources

And lastly — a collection of helpful links and stories that helped me along my solo voyages:

Reading List:

The User Experience Team of One, by Leah Buley
Articulating Design Decisions, by Tom Greever
Just Enough Research, by Erika Hall
Jobs To Be Done, by Intercom

Some great sources of UX knowledge:
vaexperience
DeltaCX
Hang Xu
Tanner Christensen
Smashing Magazine
Cognitive Bias Codex (so fun!)

Safe sailing, friends.

Navigating the UX team of one was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

So, with all the best intentions of it being ‘just an application’, you surprised yourself and got to the first, second, third round of interviews with a position that seemed too good to be true, actual realistic job criteria in a company you can see yourself being part of. You get on so well with the team — you already feel like you are a new recruit, hanging out at the water cooler while you invite these new friends into your bedroom office, shirt and undies. You start to think ‘OK, this may actually be ‘the one’ and you start planning your new life, home plans, what you’ll call your 3 babies, and then your recruiter wants a 15 minute chat titled “Interview Feedback”, and your sandcastles begin to blow over —

We won’t be progressing your application to the offer stage.

Like a breakup, being told you didn’t get the job you were gunning for can feel like a rush of emotions and futures that will never be, particularly if you got to the later stages of a thorough job application process.

However, this is not failure, at least, not if you don’t want it to feel that way. There are no losers if you put in the work and present your best self — you’ve showed several professionals that you are not to be overlooked, and you can leverage that by making sure you get to know who you’re interviewing with and make sure they remember who you are. After the bad news, this is the chance to make connections and ask questions. Your failed application is my win — I came out with key connections, a reading list and mentor opportunities.

Give credit and thanks

It can’t be stated enough — show gratitude! You’re not the only one investing time and moving around commitments for interview time. The people you are talking to likely have had to sift through dozens, hundreds of applications, spending hours talking to other applicants while trying to do their own work. Consider any interview time a privilege to connect professionally and share ideas — make sure to thank who you speak to after each session for their valuable time. It is a small overlooked detail that really matters and shows that you value their time spent freely on you.

Take All Souvenirs

We all know ‘that person’ at breakfast buffets that stuffs the leftover butters and croissants into their backpacks. They have the right idea — take what is being offered on your way out of a process. “What, Jamie, could I possibly take when I’ve been told no?” Lots! Ask for all the feedback you can, find folks on professional networks, start post-job conversations. Write an article about it! You have everything to gain from each experience, and it is a great way to work on your growth mindset.

Get the Negatives

Look, you already know you’re good — that’s why you were considered and kept until late in the process. Time is critical when asking for post-job feedback, and being told ‘you were really great’ is not advice you can work into the next application. Specifically ask for critique and be ready to check your ego at the door. If you had a tough interview where you felt that interview was particularly critical, this will be the person that gives you the most insight into your performance. Remind them not to worry, they’re going to apologise and try soften any blows, but you’re well able for it.

Accept

This can be a hard pill to swallow if you felt like it was their loss. Maybe it was their loss — but maybe it wasn’t. It’s important to empathise with the hiring staff, who are considering not only who has the best set of skills, but minimising the risk of that person not enjoying their job and moving on within a year or 2. It’s expensive to onboard staff, even an intern. Maybe the hiring manager could sense that the specific work they required was not what came across as the thing you love to do — or maybe someone loved it more. Only just over a third of ‘right’ applicants get the ‘right’ job, for so many different reasons you can’t influence directly. You will get your chance, and this might not have been your best opportunity. You can take steps to make those opportunities present themselves. Allowing yourself time to debrief and collect yourself is important, but don’t linger on what simply wasn’t to be. If you can turn your loss into a gain, you’re much more likely to walk away stronger and more armed for the real dream job.

Onwards and upwards, my beautiful failures ❤

Overview

Use of public transport is growing in cities, and is necessary in order to control increasing congestion in cities like Dublin which have not been built in mind with the level of car usage seen today. With Dublin consistently featuring among the top 20 congested cities in the world, it is clear the city needs to be reconfigured to reduce single-person, inner city car journeys. With some serious funding and consideration being made for larger cycle routes in the city (and the infrastructure of said cycling routes a whole different story…), it’s a chance for a service for Dublinbikes to really grow, gain much-needed profit and become a part of a new cycle culture.

Dublinbikes is a public bicycle rental service which lets users pick up a bicycle from a Dublinbikes station, ride, and park at another station. These bicycles are available for shared use and intended for short-term trips, typically for inner-city trips. These bikes are locked, but can be unlocked with a membership associated with a user’s Leap Card (prepaid public transport card). These subscriptions can be bought at any station or through the Dublinbikes website.

For the purpose of this article, I’m going to be looking at the website experience to figure out what works and what could be improved.

The Problem

Dear jamie, Your dublinbikes annual subscription is due for renewal on 13-Mar-2021. We would like to remind you that unless you wish to unsubscribe from the NOW TV dublinbikes scheme your account will automatically be renewed and you will be charged the re-subscription fee of €35 (previously €25).

I like when services are honest with their intentions, particularly when it comes to purchases. In a world increasingly dominated by the new wave of UX — ‘User Exploitation’ , where dark patterns are aiming to confuse users in order to prevent losing them, it’s nice to get something as simple as a reminder like the above.

I received this email a few days ago, and remembered the time I ended up paying for a Dublinbikes subscription having never used it all year. Of course, I had forgotten I had even subscribed to Dublinbikes — I had been a regular user for a few years when living in the city centre, but had since moved out of town, so it was a nice reminder to cancel my sub.

So, this was to be a simple follow-the-link and click unsubscribe right?

Not exactly.

When I came across the login screen, I wasn’t really processing what I was seeing, and proceeded to enter my email and my PIN. An ominous looking ‘no entry’ cursor appeared as I tried to enter the PIN, and I realised I had to use the on-screen buttons to enter my PIN. What was likely a well-intended secure login, comes across as needlessly complicated and frustrating, a cryptex of sorts. If anything, forcing a user to slow their input to careful presses makes it more visible to onlookers. Creating an unfamiliar keypad layout has accessibility ramifications for every kind of user. It’s just… wrong.

The Landing Page

First impressions matter immensely on the web. It took me some time to figure out where I could login to the page. There’s a big headline and something below, but it’s camouflaged by the full-screen, brightly lit image of the bikes. Unfortunately, it’s the same in mobile view. While the image gives you a great idea of what you’re in for, there is a sense of being lost on what to do next. The top nav bar for the site does not appear until the user has accepted cookies and refreshes, or navigated elsewhere on the site then returned to the home page. If I were a new user with little patience, this is about the time I’d try search elsewhere for information.

Contrast issues appear throughout, with the signup/login options barely visible on the bottom navigation either. Now I’m not just confused — I’m irritated.

The navigation itself has some inconsistencies. The login button is the profile icon, but this icon isn’t immediately apparent due to the lack of contrast and placement between the logo and language selection buttons.

Speaking of language buttons — this English button does nothing. It’s clickable, but nothing happens on clicking. I’ve tried editing the URL to see if there are indeed other languages available, and this leads to 404s. At the very least, the service should be offering Spanish and French options in line with the kiosks at the physical docks.

The 404 could be a little more imaginative — it doesn’t even show the bike that the service promotes, opting for a generic image. Worst of all — all forms of navigation disappear! Leading users to dead ends is not only disorientating, but potentially disastrous if they’re using the likes of a touch interface which may not have a back button available.

The subscriptions page — one of the most important for acquiring new revenue, is presented haphazardly, with the only 2 types of subscription available being presented like Matryoshka dolls. If a user were hesitant as this point, you may have already lost them.

The payment process feels unfinished and scattered, and as a user, I’m hoping my payment data has been handled with a greater competence than this page suggests. The tone of voice is irregular — I’m not sure who’s talking to me, but they seem to be erratic, sometimes excitable, sometimes inanimate.

That’s not to say the site is without good functionality — the Maps and How It Works pages offers a pretty decent overview of the service, with a functional interactive map with available bikes and stands at each stop available. A favourites and bike review feature is available on the map, however it’s unclear whether this feature is useful to anyone or why it is there. Sometimes, less is more. Worst of all, the favourite icons go against virtually every known convention of an active state of a filled heart, with the selected favourite becoming an outline.

Quick Suggestions

Here’s a quick design sketch of some proposed changes to the landing page based on what I talked about above. The idea is to make the website a portal for visitors to sign up to the service and prioritise new subscriptions.

Fix The Login

The login PIN input feels like a brain teaser and creates frustration. The fact that it actively disallows a text input feels like it is deliberately creating friction, and makes any accessibility layers useless. The solution is simple — just use what everyone knows. The text field could be substituted for a 6-box PIN entry too, but again — why complicate? Adding in a help dialogue to find this PIN as well as a more standard terminology would make this easier.

Create Consistency and Identity

From browsing the site, the impression is there is a primary and secondary teal colour that represents the visual identity of the brand, in line with the colours on the bikes. However, this is rarely consistent on the site, with varying approximations on every page. Font sizes and families also vary wildly, giving the sense that the page has been developed at different stages by different people without consideration to what came before. A basic design system is an easy way to solve this problem and ensure that elements are consistent across the site. I created some basic colour identities to outline my point.

Get to the point

Reducing friction and offering immediate paths to the user goals should increase conversion. Offering subscription options on the landing page gives people an immediate opportunity to get their pass. A clearer login and signup button makes it easier to get to account details. Moving important information and secondary information into clearer hierarchies means fewer clicks and less time spent hesitating or at worst, giving up.

In Conclusion

I love Dublinbikes because it offers a service to make the city less reliant on unnecessary single-person car trips. With more consistent government-level funding paired with less reliance on visually unappealing advertising as a primary funding source, the service could become something that is synonymous with life in Dublin, much as cycling is synonymous with Dutch living.

Users expect sites to be clear, direct, and frictionless. Public state-owned services in particular need to understand the return on investment that good design brings to their digital experiences. I think something as simple as a low-intervention redesign of touchpoints such as websites or kiosk interfaces can dramatically increase uptake and usage of a service, thereby generating more revenue for future growth. Happy cycling!

This is my first design article, and I’m planning on writing more! It’s been nerve wracking putting my thoughts out into the ether, but adopting a beginners mindset makes it easier to let go of the worries and embrace uncertainty. As Alexa Shoen reminded me, it’s better to just post the thing than imagine an impossibly perfect work! I’d love any feedback you have.

Case study: A rogue spoke — Dublinbikes.ie was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either:

1.) a new skill

2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business

3.) more knowledge

You didn’t ever lack the time, you lacked the discipline.

Link to the original tweet by Jeremy Haynes.

If you’ve been using any form of social media recently, and have somehow dodged the presence of this tweet or a reply to it — you’ve probably been doing better than most people. It’s caused a bit of upset.

When I first saw this being shared around, I shared it myself. It felt like a great morale boost at a time where a lack of certainty or schedule was daunting. Like many, I was temporarily laid off due to changes in business operations during the current pandemic, and it all happened so quickly. The night it was announced that the public were to stay within 2km of their residence, I panicked. What was I going to do? Will I be able to pay rent next month? Will I be stuck at home? Will my family be okay? I had also been clouded with unfinished projects, half-baked ideas, and being generally a bit scatterbrained regarding my daily routines. Seeing that message was just the thing I needed to ground myself, assess what I could do, and make use of what I had available to get through these challenging weeks. I saw an opportunity.

Seeing the responses to this tweet, and reappropriation of the original message, I realised this rubbed people up the wrong way. A lot. People have been rallying against ‘hustle culture’ in recent years, feeling it creates toxic non-stop working environments where employees burn out. Naturally, not everyone is blessed with this kind of situation. There are those working remotely from home, in businesses that were not equipped to handle the nuances of remote working, and constantly pinging their employees with unnecessary conference calls. There are families — some of those that may be experiencing domestic abuse. People facing financial difficulty — small businesses at the point of collapse.

It’s fair to say — I don’t think anyone is going out of their way to invalidate your own personal struggle, and I don’t think even Jeremy was saying it either, despite the ill-informed wording. Unfortunately, it is the nature of the Internet that what you say will be interpreted by every member of the human spectrum, and there are few words that can positively impact every one of them. The tone of the tweet was widely perceived as insulting and ignorant — there’s no doubt why it was viewed that way by many, and rightly so. However, instead of using this as another opportunity to project negativity, finding a more positive message from it can be a lot more meaningful to your individual situation.

One thing I have seen a lot recently is the term self-care. I believe in self-care, I do — we all get a release sometimes from a takeaway, a hot soak, a drink — but the Internet’s current black-and-white capitalist model of self-care, which seems more revolved around binging on sugar and Netflix in the promises that ‘treating yourself’ will fix everything, is not something I buy into or endorse. That’s self-indulgence, and it’s totally valid to partake in it even a little more than normal these days, but an excess of it is going to end in a crash.

Real self-care is unfortunately less instantly gratifying — because if the Internet’s model worked, we simply wouldn’t have so many in the world feeling anxious and vaguely unhappy regardless of their living situation. It takes reflection and personal development and sometimes doing things that the ego wants to resist and push away. It is a personal journey that a single guide or message can’t solve. I feel like this was the message Jeremy had intended to send out — but padding it in an accusatory tone meant it was reframed as a ‘telling off’ rather than a message of owning the situation. Unmoderated social media spaces find it hard to find the balance because there are many who believe in either purely indulgent self-care and those who are about workaholic hustle culture. It’s a shame there isn’t space for something in between for the rest of us.

It’s better not to judge those who do subscribe to this tweet’s message either — consider that for some, putting time and focus into project work and productivity is their own way of making the most of what they have and escaping the barrage of negativity that these times bring.

If you are one of those people at home with time on your hands — if your family is in a safe situation and you find yourself with excess free time — do take advantage of this opportunity in a way that is fulfilling and balanced. Do that morning workout you said you were going to do for months; read a book that has been looking lonely on the shelf. Draw a picture, organise a quiz with friends. You don’t have to do it all at once, and some days something as simple as walking to the shop for groceries and back can be that small way you took control of your situation.

This is an important time for many to be vigilant against damaging news and social media storms — absorb only what you need to; if you find yourself actively flicking through stories, false claims, negative arguments about the current situation, it’s up to you to block them and focus on what keeps you sane. Check your mood during these times and note what hurts it or nurtures it. For me, it’s YouTube commentary on anything to do with this current situation — it’s a seething morass of misinformation and ‘one-upping’ of others opinions. It creates frustration and helplessness — I’m not going to allow that to affect my day.

This is a struggle, one of those few that the whole world can relate to, that much is true. No matter where you stand and what your situation is, don’t spend this time focused on what you can’t control and losing yourself in passive-aggressive social diatribe. Being yet another angry response on Twitter isn’t making Jeremy’s life any easier or harder — but it’s almost certainly going to affect your own. The mental reframing of this pandemic can be the make or break in allowing yourself that opportunity to do things that elevate you and enrich you, be they ‘productive’ or not.