Wake up early.

(which has to compensate by going to bed early too, or else it'll be worse if you don't have enough sleep)

It's amazing how much you can do in a couple of hours. Zero distraction, but unlike working at late night - your mind calm, your brain fresh, your body not tired, your self control still intact, and a sense of accomplishment that you can beat your procrastinated self (and some silly thing like the good feeling when you found that you wake up before most other people in the town)

This is the "20" in Pareto's 20/80 principle, where important stuff get done. It's best for..., seriously, anything you want to do.

I used to be in night owl camp all my life, but getting older, my body tells me that it's not healthy to work overnight like that anymore. Plus having to work full time job made me tired and don't want to do anything productive anymore when I back home.

So I switch my sleep habit...and I wish I could found it earlier. 10/10 would do again.

http://selfcontrolapp.com

Modafinil :))

Lightweight documentation – Writing about the interactions, and cover each case in the flow. Talk about the micro interactions (when the user scrolls, drop the keyboard). Talk about the non-happy path stuff (if a connection times out, present the dialog again) Writing helps me both crystallize and error check my designs.

There are so many times where I've laid out a design for an engineer and as I write, I realize I forgot about a scenario, or didn't think through an interaction well. I jump back into Sketch, redesign a few screens, then jump back to my flow layout and continue writing.

I should blog about this sometime.

One of the most significant change for me from an efficiency standpoint was switching from Photoshop to Sketch a few years back. Indirectly, it made me focus on the design itself more rather than making the software work the way I want it to.

I've become fierce about

demanding clarity - what exactly do you mean, why, why.

design systems - versus one-offs.

Stopped commenting on DN.

Writing lists :-)

I jot down a list of all the things I need to get done in the morning, prioritise each item and then knock them off one by one.

Buying a dumb phone and reading this book : Deep Work. Both have helped me with focus and have decreased the amount of stress/anxiety in my life.

A book called "Designing with Type" by James Craig I think. Simple, basic, but it was eye opening for me when I read it.

What helped me cope with life as a designer:

Realise that EVERYTHING related to design is just a set of tools.

"Set of tools" means that something might be a hammer or a screwdriver, and one of these is better at nailing a board to a wall than the other. Occasionally, even though you're an expert hammer-wielder, you might have to use the screwdriver instead or, alternatively, leave the job to lil' Bobby Screwdriver, who's better at it then you.

This goes for ui patterns, software, design processes, coding frameworks, conversation techniques, etc. Literally anything that relates to the field should be considered a tool.

This should help you make less biased decisions during your career about which approach, technique or process to pick for each individual project. This, in turn, will make you a pleasure to work with since you'll be flexible, open to discussion and able to get to resolutions faster.

In fact, even the approach outlined above is just a tool. You can make an exception to the "consider everything" approach, for example if you want to create a process that will smooth out your production because you DO stick with 1 pattern, app or system.

But the point is that this lets you take a step back on everything and analyse without bias.

.edit: This skill is best combined with a metric tonne of empathy. Empathy will allow you to look through the eyes of a third party, imagining what tool would be ideal for the situation.

.edit²: This tool-based-approach also will make you realise why "tool X" vs "tool Y" discussions should never be about better vs worse, but about strength vs weakness, unless the discussion clearly defines the situation in which the tool is used.

For me it was getting a Lenovo Yoga Book. I had been struggling to go "all-digital" for my brainstorming notes and sketches (I used to do all thinking on paper, but I got tired of lugging notebooks around). Now I keep the Yoga Book on my desk and as soon as I need to sort something out (design, development problem), I start scribbling on it (directly on the digitizer, not using the paper). Because I have infinite colors and pens and highlighters my scribbles are more lively and I find I get to my answer more quickly and confidently than with paper.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/9/2/12769094/lenovo-yoga-book-love-poem-ifa-2016

Working through problems on paper before jumping into Sketch.

I spent ages trying to learn processes and methodologies; should I learn to code? Do I need to do more testing? Do I need more features? Do I need to carve out more time for myself? Write more? Find more inspiration? Steal more?

The thing that changed the way I thought about everything was a simple maxim:

Ultimately the user experience is the product/service that the users engage (or don't engage) with at the end of it all.

As Dirk explained really well - everything else is just a tool to get you there. Wireframes and prototypes aren't the user experience, just communication tools.

This idea, challenged me to focus on greater collaboration, creating shared understanding across teams, less documentation, more experiments and learning. A lot of Lean UX stuff.

As I work for an agency I started to spend a lot more time 'thinking business' and helping clients set themselves up to build successful experiences (based on these principles), as ultimately, that'll make the UX work I do, more successful