<ul><li>It seems to come out of nowhere — a strange, disturbing thought or a troubling image that pops into your mind. It might be violent or sexual, or a recurring fear that you’ll do something inappropriate or embarrassing. Whatever the content, it’s often unsettling and may bring on feelings of worry or shame. The more you try to push the thought from your mind, the more it persists.</li><li>Sometimes intrusive thoughts are associated with a mental health disorder. They are also common in post-traumatic stress disorder. But many people who experience these thoughts don’t have a mental health disorder.</li><li>Intrus<warningtag>ive thoughts are often triggered by stress or anxiety. They may also be a short-term problem brought on by biological factors, such as hormone shifts. </warningtag></li></ul>

Intrusive thoughts

While intrusive thoughts may be disturbing, they aren’t harmful or a sign that you have a secret desire to do the things that popped into your mind.People are often too embarrassed or ashamed to talk about it.

What intrusive thoughts mean

There are some signs to look for:<ul><li>The thought is unusual for you. An intrusive thought is usually very different from your typical thoughts. </li><li>The thought is bothersome, something you want to push out of your mind.</li><li>The thought feels hard to control. Intrusive thoughts are often repetitive and won’t go away.</li></ul>When these thoughts emerge, try taking the following steps:<ol><li>Identify the thought as intrusive. </li><li>Don’t fight with it. When you have an intrusive thought, just accept it. </li><li>Don’t judge yourself. Know that having a strange or disturbing thought doesn’t indicate that something is wrong with you.</li></ol>

Identifying intrusive thoughts

See a mental health professional if unwanted thoughts are starting to disrupt your daily life, particularly if they’re impairing your ability to work or to do things you enjoy. However, even if intrusive thoughts aren’t affecting your life in a significant way, you can still see someone to get help.Intrusive thoughts can also be managed by addressing the underlying problem, such as anxiety, stress, or a personal history of trauma. While it may be helpful to share the particular thoughts you are having, keep in mind that even if you aren’t comfortable talking about them in detail, a therapist c<warningtag>an still help. </warningtag>

When to seek help

How to identify and manage intrusive thoughts.

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted thoughts or mental images that make people feel uncomfortable. They're common, affecting some six million Americans, and can be effectively managed using tools such as cognitive behavioral therapy.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

health

Health

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Managing intrusive thoughts - Harvard Health

How to identify intrusive thoughts

<ul><li>Don’t fall into the trap of trying to cover everything in a single talk. Instead, convey one big idea that leverages your personal experience.</li><li>A big idea can take an audience on a journey that alters the way they view the world. You should be able to define your idea as a throughline that is 15 words or fewer. Essentially, what is the core point of your talk?</li><li>Think about the audience, their context, and why your problem matters to them. As a tip, choose one person that you like and assume you are presenting the talk to them.</li></ul>

Convey One Big Idea

Script the opening minute and the closing lines. These are the most important parts of the talk. Use good images and stories to ignite curiosity and reflection. How people remember something is largely influenced by how it ends.

Open and Close Strong

Avoid sales pitches or talks that focus on what your organization does.For the visuals, No slides = better than bad slides. For each slide, convey just one idea and remember that less is more. For photos, have them take up the entire slide. Use only one typeface and 3 fonts throughout the presentation. Avoid bullets, italics, and underlines.

Bad Talk And Bad Visuals

Rehearsals help shape the talk. Ask for advice on clarity, tone, variety, and examples.Structure: One potential structure for your talk: introduction, context, main concepts, practical applications, conclusion.

The Shape Of The Talk

<ul><li>When you build trust and connection with your audience, your idea will resonate. To do so, consider the following tactics.</li><li>Make eye contact as you walk confidently onto the stage.</li><li>Show vulnerability.</li><li>Drop the ego – consider being self-deprecating.</li></ul>

Build Trust and Connection

Our minds co-evolved with storytelling, a byproduct of fire; elders were often the best storytellers that helped us imagine, dream, and understand the minds of others. Stories are easy to follow, and they give us the ability to understand complex ideas and understand imagined realities. Adding stories to your public speaking toolkit will enhance your effectiveness.

Tell Stories

<ul><li>With whatever you set out to explain, you need to incite curiosity. Make the audience care. You also should be incremental with new concepts. </li><li>Don’t confuse everyone with too many concepts. Use metaphors to help people understand. </li><li>Finally, show people drafts of your talk to avoid the curse of knowledge – assuming that other people have the same context as you.</li></ul>

Explanation

Enhance your persuasion by offering a counterintuitive idea that convinces the audience that their worldview isn’t exactly right. If you can effectively prime people, add humour, and leverage anecdotes, you will increase your chances of success.

Persuasion

While there are many time-tested principles of public speaking, don’t be afraid to do things differently. Show your unique style and character. Challenge the norms. At the very least, be interesting. It also helps to believe in what you are talking about.

Do Things Differently

You have three options: write out a full script, write out a structure, or go unscripted.With a script, it’s sometimes difficult to translate written words into a talk. You also don’t want to sound too rehearsed, so if you go with a script, you need to fully master your memory of the talk so that you can add your character back in.Whereas scripts can make every word count, unscripted talks can be half-baked and rambling if they don’t have sufficient preparation. With unscripted talks, it can be helpful to have transition steps or a clear map of the journey that you can follow.

Script Vs Unscripted Vs Loosely Scripted

Have a mantra to keep you focused on why your talk counts, “This idea matters.” Five minutes before your talk, breathe, do push-ups, and drink water. Remember the power of vulnerability. If you screw up, say, “Oops, sorry, a little nervous here.” Look at the audience for sympathetic and encouraging faces. And finally, remember that it’s not about you, it’s about your idea.

It's Just Your Idea, Not You Personally

Wear something that makes you feel good, and rehearse your talk in that clothing. Ensure it is comfortable and you feel confident wearing it.

What To Wear

Zoom out to the vision of your talk. Show the possibilities that your idea unlocks. Have a clear call to action to help people engage with your idea or pay it forward. Paint a vision of what the world looks like when the idea spreads.

Ending Your Ted Talk

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A must-read insider’s guide to creating unforgettable speeches and changing people's minds. Done right, a talk can electrify a room and transform an audience’s worldview; it can be more powerful than anything in written form. This “invaluable guide” (Publishers Weekly) explains how the miracle of powerful public speaking is achieved, and equips you to give it your best shot. There is no set formula, but there are tools that can empower any speaker. Since taking over TED in 2001, Chris Anderson has worked with all the TED speakers who have inspired us the most, and here he shares insights from such favorites as Sir Ken Robinson, Salman Khan, Monica Lewinsky, and more— everything from how to craft your talk’s content to how you can be most effective on stage.

communication

Communication

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Books

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

The Premise: Pitching a startup idea or a company to investors using the Pitch Deck.One slide, in particular, is given the same feedback by a venture capitalist across a bunch of founders: Competition.Why competitor slides are often less than ideal is because founders are experts of their companies and users (or at least they should be), but often are not experts in their competitors. But they spend the same amount of time structuring this slide as every other slide.

The Problem With A Slide In The Pitch Deck

The headline of the competitor slide is how your company has meaningful, defendable differentiation. We sometimes call this the moat, which needs to follow at least three principles:<ul><li>Prove that your company has defendable differences from competitors.</li><li>Prove why these are THE differentiators that’ll make your company a winner.</li><li>Prove you are accurately portraying the information above.</li></ul>

The Ideal Competitor Slide

The first principle is easy. You need to provide how your company is different from everyone else. Most companies can get this far. This comes primarily in a mix of two flavours:(1) How our solution is different (unique insight) or (2) How our execution is different (<a href="https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6e-how-to-evaluate-startup-ideas">unfair advantage</a>).Recommendation: Go beyond the easy step.

The First Principle

<ul><li>Founders lose credibility because they purposely or inadvertently downplay their competitors.</li><li>Spend the time thinking deeply about your unique insights and unfair advantages. It’s very possible you don’t have it. This step will not only help you raise, but also increase your chances of building a successful startup.</li><li>Think and communicate in terms of trade-offs. Your competitors are not dumb. Why did they choose one model over another? What are the trade-offs? And why did you choose this trade-off that positions you to win. It needs to relate back to your core messages.</li></ul>

Advice To Follow

<ul><li>Founders "straw-man" competitors, replacing the product of competitors with more convenient ones from which to differentiate.</li><li>Excluding real competitors, and only share competitors that are easy to differentiate.</li><li>This happens when they are living in denial, and even claim that they don't have any competitors, which is always an illusion.</li></ul>

Straw-Manning

Over the last few years, I’ve provided feedback to my friends and colleagues on their pitch decks. As a former venture capitalist, I’ve probably seen a few hundred pitch decks, and built a few, now…

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

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The Most Common Problem Slide in Your Pitch Deck

If you create a great product, communities will inevitably form, with or without your help. However, building a community around a mediocre product will be very difficult.

Create something worth building a community around

Most people are oblivious to communities forming around their product. If you have a great product, you have to find self-appointed evangelists and ask them to help you. If you can't find them, you may not have a great product.

Identify and recruit your thunderlizards

A community needs an identifiable hero and inspiration from within the company. Many employees would like to build a community, but one person needs to prioritise this task. Therefore, hire a person to be a community champion.

Assign one person the task of building a community

Your product should be "customisable," "extensible," and "malleable." Consider Adobe Photoshop. Without the company's plug-in architecture, a community might not have developed quickly. But giving them something to chew on means your engineers did not create the perfect product. This will engage and grow the community.

Give people something concrete to chew on

There are two requirements of an open system. <ol><li>The Software Development Kit (SDK) is documentation and tools to supplement and tweak a product.</li><li>The Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) is information on how to access the various functions of a product.</li></ol> A non-tech example is an open system school that enables parents to teach courses and provides a manual for parents on how to teach.

Create an open system

Companies often feel great if their communities continue to say nice things and buy their products, but if the community says anything negative, the company will retract their community efforts. This is not good for a long-term relationship. However, if a company welcomes or celebrates criticism, it will cause stronger bonds to form with its community.

Welcome criticism

Discourse or verbal exchange should be encouraged. Any company that fosters community building should participate in exchanging ideas and opinions. Your website should provide a community forum where customers and employees can engage with one another. This will help you to listen to what they say.

Foster discourse

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Product & Design

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Society, Arts & Culture

The Art of Creating a Community

Businesses often overcomplicate their product strategy and end up navigating through a maze of competing objectives and needless requirements. Product managers in any industry can implement a simple and adaptable framework to streamline their product process.

A product strategy doesn't need to be complex

A product strategy requires three essential elements: <ul><li>Reputation</li><li>Capabilities</li><li>Market need</li></ul> These three forces work together. Without reputation, the product is not trusted. Without market need, there is no demand. Without capabilities, the product cannot be made.

Three driving forces of product strategy

A market need includes:<ul><li>Better serving an existing need. For example, Uber took the taxi-service industry and found a better way to meet driver and customer requirements.</li><li>Uncovering an unknown need. For example, developing a product no one imagined was possible to create.</li><li>Creating a new need. For example, the iPhone created a platform for applications to simplify peoples' lives and then created consumer needs for the applications.</li></ul>

Market need

To develop new product ideas, ask:<ul><li>If you decided to end your current product line in six months, what impact would that have on your customer? If there would be little impact, consider not expanding this product line.</li><li>Is your new product going to disrupt the market? If it only creates a ripple on the surface, you need to reconsider whether to pursue it at all.</li><li>What would happen if you were to delay the release of a new product to make it more advanced? A good product roadmap consists of balancing timing with opportunity.</li></ul>

How to develop new product ideas

Consider your current capabilities and those that could be acquired. The minimum capabilities are:<ul><li>Technical. Without this capability, your team will be unable to create the product. It may seem obvious but is often overlooked.</li><li>Manufacturing. Pay attention to the criteria when evaluating potential manufacturers, such as experience building similar products, robust quality control, suitable financial and inventory terms and conditions.</li><li>Distribution. Without a sound distribution system or network, you will not be able to support the demand of your customers.</li></ul>

Capabilities

Reputation impacts the success of your product in two ways:<ul><li>In the ethical and moral behaviour of the company.</li><li>In the company's expertise in a particular area.</li></ul> The success of the sales, marketing, and distribution channels is based on your reputation with customers. One way to improve your chances of success is to analyze your company's reputation from an outsider's point of you. Read press releases, listen to investors' feedback, gather data on complaints and requests with your marketing or customer teams, research online reviews, and invite customer responses to your new product idea.

Reputation

A simple but effective product strategy framework that consists of three key elements.

Sometimes the simplest approaches are the most effective. Use this product strategy framework, comprising just three key elements, to streamline and focus your next product journey.

The 3 Essential Elements of a Streamlined Product Strategy

At the beginning of 2013, Chrome was yet to become the default Browser on Android, it didn’t have a tablet version and has just been release on iOS.&nbsp;Mobile became the primary focus in the years separating the beginning of 2013 and the Chrome Android material design revamp of 2015.&nbsp;We started seeing the desktop/laptop landscape shift into a state where touchscreen were no longer the exclusive attribute of mobile but also the one of more productive platforms such as laptops.

Timing and planning

As part of this big update cycle, Chrome received a revamp of its mobile properties, iOs and Android.&nbsp;The desktop UI future was slowly taking shape and clearer opinions on the matter were forming. It is at that time, almost two years from now, that the chrome desktop redesign process started. It is at that time, almost two years from now, that the chrome desktop redesign process started.&nbsp;

The Flat Design Era

From an engineering perspective Chrome is spread across 4 Frameworks/Codebases: views, cocoa on Macos, Java for Android, and Obj-C/Swift for iOS.To keep our sanity and to enable better long term asset management, we try to share as much design resources as possible across platforms. For example Windows, Chrome OS and Mac share a lot of common visuals.&nbsp;If you launch Chrome on an iPad or an Android tablet, they will look very similar.

The Hybrid layout type

To do so, we needed two things:&nbsp;<ul><li>Regular mode was initially going to be deployed on the overwhelmingly largest portion of our user base.</li><li>A way to create, export and implement our assets that would gracefully scale in the broad layout type and PPI landscape of desktop.&nbsp;</li></ul>

New layout type, new process

<ul><li>Bring the new tab shapes to life on desktop&nbsp;</li><li>Bring a new set of icons, derived from MD using desktop sizes&nbsp;</li><li>Align and simplify our color palette and our theming system. Bonus: Bring the new “dark” incognito to desktop&nbsp;</li><li>Start the revamp of secondary UI elements such as buttons, toolbars, bubbles, etc…&nbsp;</li><li>Create a more touchable version of Chrome for convertible devices&nbsp;</li><li>Come up with a set of rules for Third party OS consistency&nbsp;</li><li>Implement MD motion when possible&nbsp;</li></ul>

Visual consistency and design details

The native frame on windows is taller than its Chrome OS and Mac OS counterparts.It makes the frame easier to click and grab at the cost of a bigger footprint.&nbsp;To achieve balance, we split the UI in half: tabs+ Window frame/ Toolbar. Tabs are 28pt, equal to the Omnibox height. We leave an 8pt top padding between the tabs and the top of the frame.

General layout and UI footprint

We used 16X16pt based icons to match our new normal and hybrid UI. We reduced the container from 24pt to 16pt and added some flexibility around the initial internal padding: 2pt change to 1pt to 2pt depending on the icon.&nbsp;We also made the icon line weight slightly thinner (2Px on 100% and 3Px one 200% from the initial 2Px in 100% and 4Px in 200%) this way, they are more elegant and balanced within our UI.

Iconography

In normal mode, we went for 28X28pt touch targets, holding 16X16pt icons. While icons kept their 28X28pt touch targets, we increased their surrounding margin to 8pt, giving the UI more space and reducing user touch errors.&nbsp;We use 16X16pt iconography throughout. This minimizes the amount of design asset requiring maintenance, making long term scalability as well as feature iteration. Easier to maintain.

Touch targets and layout

There are two tenants to our omnibox and dropdown layout design: <ul><li>Give a strong emphasis on security states. </li><li>Fast access to the information or URL you need to go to. </li></ul>

Omnibox, results dropdown and security indicators

The Core UI is formed of three key elements:&nbsp;<ul><li>The frame, created by the OS itself, changing on a per platform basis&nbsp;</li><li>The Active tab and toolbar. Which includes the selected tab attached to the ommibox and controls&nbsp;</li><li>The inactive tab(s).&nbsp;</li></ul>

Colors and accessibility

<ul><li>Hover state&nbsp;</li><li>Active state&nbsp;</li><li>Single click/tap (onClick-release)&nbsp;</li><li>Single click/tap to active&nbsp;</li><li>Long click/tap to active&nbsp;</li></ul>

Motion

After the completion of the Implementation-Ready Specs and Mocks for the core UI, I dabbled a bit in chrome’s secondary UI.&nbsp;We include in that category every chrome element not directly visible such as menus, Dialogs, bubbles, buttons, Info-Bars, Find-In-Page and Download shelf.

What’s next

As a closing note, I’d like to share some of the lessons I learned during this project as well as some release reaction, both internal and external, hoping that these will be helpful to you, in your projects.

Lessons learned and initial release feedback

Programmatic rendering and motion design were crucial in getting the design right.&nbsp;If you are lucky enough to be working with motivated and engaged engineer, you might realize that they can sometimes be a better designer than you.

1. Engineers are great designers

In the present case, they were involved right away and were an integral of the design and conception process. Engineers' motivation to deliver better design through better engineering solution made the product what it is today. Maintaining constant communication was key to bring the right design to life.

2. Involve engineers early

Delivering extremely precise spec work is necessary, however, in some cases, leaving your preliminary work open for feedback and new ideas can bring your design to another level. As long as your end design stays true to its original goal or intent, let others enter your process and improve on your design.

3. Know when to be precise, learn when to be loose

I won’t lie, I do not have the miracle solution to it but there are things that you can do to minimize change aversion: <ul><li>Always have a deck ready to explain your vision to your audience.</li><li>Stay the course. It is very beneficial to strongly believe in the choices you made. Don’t get stubborn but stay confident. </li><li>Be prepared to back up your design decisions with facts, studies or past experiences. If you cannot answer back, you might find that their feedback is worth considering.</li><li>The bigger the product, the longer it might take.</li></ul>

4. Beware of change aversion

The biggest improvements brought by this redesign project are under the hood. Finding satisfaction in your work and the result through your own eyes is more important than seeking validation through others.&nbsp;If you are truly and honestly satisfied with what you have done. You’re good.

5. Manage your expectation

In the beginning of September 2016, the new Chrome Core UI redesign, or so called “Chrome MD” (for Material design), rolled out on Windows as part of our 53rd update. It is the last step of a three…

Redesigning Chrome Desktop

HCD is “a design and management framework that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.” (Wikipedia) But people are not the centre of the universe even if we carry on as if we are. We have a lot of problems to solve, but humans don't live in isolation. We are just one piece in a very large puzzle. When we view problems that impact people, our solutions are often developed in isolation while we often ignore the broader impacts of our human-centred solutions.

Human-centred design (HCD)

Bee-centred design is about shifting our mindset to open up new perspectives for the things we create. Bees are a sentinel species, meaning they detect risks to humans by providing advance warning of danger. If our design process shifted to centre them or to focus on weaker links, we would have to consider the impacts of our actions beyond our immediate health and safety.

Looking beyond our own perspective

Bees work in service of their hives. The hive system delivers maximum value because every bee has a clear view of where they are going. Humans generally don't have shared goals. The closest thing we have is the profit motive. However, if we can have collective goals around empowerment, inclusivity, sustainability, equity and opportunity, it could become a base filter through which we evaluate our designs. Having collective goals would ground the process in a shared ethos.

Bee-design is about the quality of design solutions

Bee-centered design would expand our view of the world. It would mean getting out of our human bubble and look around.&nbsp; We tell ourselves so many stories when we create something, but we don't question the validity and value of solving problems that affect only us. It may be time to break out of our human-centred bubble and view the world from a broader perspective.

Widening our view of the world

Design thinking keeps us locked in our human-centered bubble. We’re building for ourselves — and only ourselves. What if we tried… bee-centered design?

Human-Centered Design Is Broken. Here’s a Better Alternative.

<ul><li>Myth #1: To get our message to break through, we need to gain conscious attention. Attention works at different levels, not just the conscious.</li><li>Myth #2: For marketing to work, it must be remembered. Wwhen we remember something, we <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstructive_memory" target="_self">reconstruct</a> it in the moment.</li><li>Myth #3: We need to elicit emotions to build an emotional connection. You can create emotional connections through the tone and personality of your brand’s communications.&nbsp;</li><li>Myth #4: Consumers can tell you what they want. Take what consumers say with a very large grain of salt.</li><li>Myth #5: Consumers make rational decisions. </li></ul>

The Five Biggest Myths of Consumer Psychology

This was said by a senior marketer at a very large consumer brand, reacting to an idea from its’ advertising agency. This marketer assumed, as most do, that for an ad to work, it must pull people…

Language is a way that people communicate concepts to one another. Visual design is a visual language. And learning visual design is no different from learning a new language.Good visual designs aren’t born. They are made. The key to becoming a better visual designer is rigor. You will only improve as a visual designer if you make a conscious effort.

Design as language

<ul><li>You can tell a lot about a designer by looking at their typography. This is because type is a fundamental basis for design.</li><li>Use space to create balance Spacing helps establish vertical and horizontal motion in your designs.</li><li>Use size to establish visual hierarchy. When it comes to creating visual hierarchy, sizing is second to none. By using size to convey visual relationships between elements, you can establish flow.</li><li>Use color to convey meaning. Color plays many roles. It conveys meaning, creates emotional resonance, and brings unity to designs.</li></ul>

Mastering the fundamentals

<ul><li>Identify the purpose of your design before choosing a color palette. Good design align its color palette with its purpose.</li><li>Identify your audience. People perceive colors differently. Colors have different effects on people based on their personal preference, cultural upbringing, and experiences.</li><li>When choosing a color palette, simplicity is key. Choose a neutral background color. Then choose a primary and secondary accent color. Finally based on your other colors, choose an error and success color for your different UI states.</li></ul>

Using colors

As I was thinking about how to answer this question, my mind wandered to my experience with learning Mandarin Chinese. Recently, I decided to teach myself Mandarin. When it comes to learning a new…

Before you can master design, you must first master the fundamentals

When the iPhone X launched, a lot of designers were put off about the screen shape. Those complaints have mostly died down, but I haven’t seen much design-nerd talk about cool corner treatment detailsOnce Apple knew they wanted to take advantage of new full-screen technology, that gave them the opportunity to alter screen shape because they would need to address the manufacturing process anyway. Presumably, the expense was mostly built in.

No Cutting Corners on the iPhone X

iPhone X rounded screen corners don’t use the classic rounding method where you move in a straight line and then arc using a single quadrant of a circle. Instead, the math is a bit more complicated. Commonly called a squircle, the slope starts sooner, but is more gentle.Apple has been doing this to the corners of laptops and iMacs for years, but this type of rounding didn’t penetrate iOS until version 7. This shape has classically been difficult to achieve, because it wasn’t available in 2D design editors, though that’s starting to change.

Screen Corners

The left and right sides have two rounded corners. Because of the curve falloff, one curve doesn’t complete before the next one starts — they blend seamlessly into each other. As a result, no tangent line on this edge actually hits a perfect vertical.

The Notch

When the iPhone X launched, a lot of designers were put off about the screen shape. Those complaints have mostly died down, but I haven’t seen much design-nerd talk about cool corner treatment…

Managing intrusive thoughts - Harvard Health

TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

The Most Common Problem Slide in Your Pitch Deck

The Art of Creating a Community

The 3 Essential Elements of a Streamlined Product Strategy

Julie Hicks