The highly specific, yet oddly relatable wisdom of “what I wish I knew”
PX design, talking to trees, and your next 100 days (Issue #288)
One of my favorite things about Medium: The best stories give you a window into people’s idiosyncratic, highly specific lives — and, usually, the more specific their stories are, the more familiar they feel, too.
One example: Veteran psychotherapist Ira Israel’s 36 lessons from his career as a marriage counselor. He describes mastery as paradoxical: Becoming a great marriage therapist is not a matter of simple “practice.” Instead, it’s “about constantly evolving… tolerating uncertainty, and embracing the often irrational and patently absurd complexity of human beings.”
Sounds like most jobs!
Then, Israel lists pieces of wisdom he wishes he’d known at the start of his career, like:
Therapy is less about teaching people how to live and more about helping them unlearn what keeps them from living fully.
Trust is subconsciously established through mirroring and matching.
The times you kick yourself for uttering the wrong thing may save a patient’s life; the times you hurt your arm patting yourself on the back for stating the perfect thing may lead a patient to despair.
You can extend those three pieces of advice to much more than psychotherapy. And, in fact, “things I wish I’d known” is an entire genre on Medium: there’s Lu Zhenna’s “What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming a Data Scientist” (your job description will often differ from your actual job); Trudy Horsting’s “What I Wish I Knew Before Renovating My Home” (you won’t regret doing things the right way, even if it costs more); and Mehekk Bassi’s list of advice she wishes she’d been given before becoming a UX designer (your tools don’t matter; great designers can do a lot with a little).
Two things stand out to me: Each of these lessons are highly specific, yet oddly relatable? More than that, it’s comforting to browse hundreds of “what I wish I knew” lists. They’re proof that we’re all doing our best with imperfect knowledge.
⚡ 1 story, 2 sentences
- Duolingo’s UX designers are “PX designers” now (it stands for “Product Experience”) — which some believe is a stroke of genius and others are calling an unnecessary marketing stunt. Personally, I kind of like it, especially in the context of Duolingo’s other teams (Product Writing, Product Research); you can feel how they’re all part of essentially the same team. (Punit Chawla)
- How to (literally) talk to trees: Find a large one, put your hand on its trunk, and feel for warmth. “Trees operate on specific frequencies, so if we are to have a conversation with a tree it is up to us to adjust to them.” — Jane Cobbald
- Steven Gambardella shares a series of highly specific, often surprising observations about having a small child, including: “Having a child was the worst thing that happened to my former self. Good riddance.”
🤔 Your daily dose of practical wisdom
Food for thought: If you repeated what you did today for 100 more days, would your life be better or worse? (Andy Murphy)
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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis
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