If you're a senior designer, a new manager, or a manager who's struggling, this series of exercises might help. These are not advices. I believe folks have the capability and the right intentions but in the day-to-day, the basics get lost. Consider these exercises as simple reminders.

1. Exercise #1: Work visibility

Here's the second of next twenty-eight exercises you can start immediately to become better.

Thinking clarity is important for the position you'll be in or will be in. This is a bare minimum expectation people have from their managers. This is an expectation that reports may or may not be able to articulate or think of.

Once things are clear in one’s head, it creates opportunity to think better, see more connections between different disconnected things… sometimes they lead to new ideas.

Most importantly, in your context of organisation, it’ll make all of you better at communication; within your peer group, with your manager and other seniors in the org, and even with your reports.

Now, here's the exercise:

Write about your day — goods, bads, things you felt, about other people, about folks in this group. Be very candid. Do it digitally — use any journaling app, notes app or anything that you can type in. Why digital? Will cover it in the second part later here.

For this week, don’t optimise for readability — you’re writing for yourself. It’s okay to ramble, bitch, feel proud, talk about insecurities etc. Try to write a minimum of 500 words. 

Why to write digitally:

In one of the future exercises, there's going to be an activity to come back to this week's written journals and edit them. Edit them to make concise, clear, and simple to understand. To edit faster and frequently, you need them available digitally.

Simple, clear articulations make decision-making easy & faster; for you and others. They help spread the idea faster as they are easy to consume and build on. They become useful — again, for you most importantly and others.

But, don't focus on it now. We'll get back to this later.