Kyle Adams POV

Tag: mental-health

  • From Flip Phones to Fiction: Why Storytelling is the Most Powerful Tool We Have

    Image Source: Generated by CoPilot


    What if your Oura ring could predict your emotions before you even felt them? Or, what if you had a tattoo that was your biometric access to take public transit? Design Fiction is a concept that enables creators to make products that are future-forward. This is an opportunity to tap into your imagination, whether it’s envisioning a utopia or dystopia. Using design fiction, combined with visual storytelling, you create a catalyst for social and technological evolution that challenges the present world as we know it. Let’s first look at how design fiction is a proponent of change.


    Design Fiction as a Catalyst for Change

    Image Source: CNET


    Persuasion is most powerful when it’s grounded in a narrative context. You can have the most stunning visual, but beauty without a compelling narrative doesn’t convince policymakers or anyone in a position of power to execute real change. Richard Buday, the author of the article “The Reality of Design Fiction: How Storytelling Can Save The World,” references a proverb that supports the previous statement perfectly. “What is truer than the truth? A Story.” Buday goes on to offer several pop culture examples that capture the essence of how films, stories, and novels that employed this philosophy moved the needle forward. My favorite example is how Star Trek showed us flip phones in 1964, and three decades later, Motorola sold its first flip phone, the StarTac. After understanding design fiction and how it’s a catalyst when it’s rooted in storytelling to persuade people, you can use a framework to create story-driven design.


    Story-Driven Design: A Framework for Visual Coherence

    Image Source: Smashing Magazine


    More often than not, people think writers are the only creators who need to rely on a narrative to connect with an audience. This is false. Designers use storytelling to create meaningful user experiences that are memorable. Award-winning designer Chiara Aliotta has trademarked a five-step framework to enable designers to create visual coherence.


    1. Understand Your Protagonist And The Purpose Of The Product

    2. Define the Structure of Your Narrative

    3. The Beginning

    4. The Middle

    5. The End


    The second step of this framework supports the idea that combining Aristotle’s three-act concept with the “StoryBrand Structure” by Donald Miller, a philosophy that stories must be a chain of cause-and-effect moments, creates the most clear sense of continuity throughout any narrative.


    One of the best examples I can think of to reference that supports this is the first season of the Netflix Original, “Stranger Things.” This is a sci-fi series based on a series of supernatural events that happen in a small town in Indiana, following a group of young friends who discover one mystery after another involving the government and supernatural forces.


    The first season of Stranger Things is a perfect example of combining Aristotle’s three-act concept with the StoryBrand Structure because there are three clear acts with a cause-and-effect narrative.


    • Act I: One of the main characters, Will, disappears and initiates the first mystery (Setup)
    • Act II: The group of children meets Eleven, a child with psychic abilities who is a government experiment, and eventually discovers the “Upside Down.” (Confrontation)
    • Act III: The group of children confronts the Demogorgon (monster) and saves their friend Will, who went missing (Resolution).


    Despite the fact that this is fiction, you can still leverage the hero’s journey to anticipate change and design future experiences that are a reality.


    The Hero’s Journey as a Tool for Designing a New Reality

    Image Source: TedEd


    The hero’s journey is one of the most popular concepts that is not only a storytelling tactic but also used in design thinking and trend predicting. It’s a great tool for innovation in the design process because it grounds very abstract and complicated ideas into simpler stories that are relatable and puts the user in the spotlight.

    Leah Zaid, an award-winning futurist, authored an article, How to Use the Hero’s Journey as a Design-Thinking + Foresight Tool, that details a simplified version of how you can conceptualize the hero’s journey as a designer to better understand your customers and target audience.

    Learning about patterns in action to understand what a narrative arc, hero’s journey, and how to storyboard taught me how design fiction can be a catalyst for change. Once I knew more about the why behind this, I was able to shift my attention to story-driven design, specifically how to use it to turn speculation into a narration that’s compelling and emotionally relatable. Lastly, I reframed the hero’s journey and learned about its relationship with change and how to tap into it for user journeys to design future experiences that can become reality.

    All of this leads me to believe that in our world of uncertainty, maybe the most powerful design tool we have is knowing how to tell a good story.

  • How Small Details Tell Big Stories

    Image Source: Generated by ChatGpt


    From the loud sirens, car horns, and hustle and bustle of working all day trying to grab a quick bite to eat at a street vendor outside of your city office, to the warmth of family laughter, smell of tomato sauce, and sitting at table bumping elbows waiting for an Italian family-style meal, food is a universal love language and no matter where you are, what you are eating, and who you are doing it with, there’s a story to tell.


    Stillness at Midnight After Meals

    Image Source: Pikwizard


    Restaurants serve as windows into culture, emotion, and authentically show us who people are and what they value.  When it comes to diners, they serve as an American cultural icon of escapism. Maybe you’ve had a long night and want to indulge in that big omelet breakfast you couldn’t have because your boss needed you in the office early this morning, or you’re looking for somewhere to go on a Saturday night with your high school friends after the movies. The ambience of diners and this specific image lean into the second principle of visual storytelling, sensory. In a world that’s moving at a million miles a minute, the soft lights, cushioned booths, and brightly colored interiors create a sense of safety and reprieve. Let’s juxtapose this by looking behind the scenes of a restaurant.


    Behind the Pass: Pressure Meets Precision

    Image Source: Bon Appétit


    It’s the responsibility of a restaurant’s staff to control the chaos by orchestrating a perfect culinary symphony. Customers don’t see the grueling number of hours line cooks and their teams put in to unpack deliveries, prep all day, do research and development to refine a menu, and everything else in between to create magical memories for patrons. This is a glimpse of the culmination of all those hours of grit, sweat, tears, laughter, and smiles. What you see in this image is a dramatic storytelling technique. There isn’t much to interpret, and we are completely absorbed in the action, the line cooks prepping food. Shifting gears, it’s time to look at another image that evokes a different feeling.


    Pausing Before Pouring: A Morning Routine

    Image Source: SIPTHESTYLE


    Finding your version of peace and quiet to start your day is one of the best things you can do to boost your mood. For lots of people, that’s grabbing a cup of coffee or tea at a café like this one. Designing a café with large windows to let lots of natural sunlight in and outfitting its interior with plants and warm earth tone colors creates a cozy mood. This is the kind of space someone would want to work remotely from. In visual storytelling, creating and capturing a “moment,” a fleeting bit of time that creates emotion and empathy, is one of the toughest things to do. This picture is focused on a very specific moment, the opening of this café.


    The Theatrics of Taste


    Image Source: Kobé Ichiban


    A restaurant experience can be make or break based on the taste of your food and the service. Something that’s often forgotten about or pushed aside? The entertainment factor. Hibachi is one of those restaurant experiences that zeroes in on this. Whether it’s your birthday, a graduation, or maybe an anniversary, this type of restaurant’s main goal is to make you laugh, smile, and take a picture or video to show your friends what you did. The chef’s facial expression and the flame flaring up from the grill capture this emotion perfectly.


    Sizzling Sounds Underneath Street Lights


    Image Source: Eater


    Grit and drive. Those are the first two words that come to mind when you see food vendors on popular boulevards in the downtown of a densely populated city or urban neighborhood. The composition of this picture goes beyond telling a story of just this woman grilling meat. The image gives you contextual clues that she’s in downtown Los Angeles based on following the rule of thirds. You can see the Roosevelt Hotel sign in the upper middle grid and a Hollywood star on the lower right-hand grid.


    Conversations Can Come in Small Plates


    Image Source: Visit Philadelphia


    One of the most important visual storytelling concepts is to show, don’t tell. This picture is doing that perfectly. I immediately hear many conversations happening and the noise of a tin shaker pouring a new cocktail into a glass. The yellow, orange, and green colors exude a warm and approachable atmosphere that’s still chic. This picture gives enough context to viewers to think of what type of archetype would dine here. Someone who values higher quality food and beverage experiences, who is maybe trying to get away from their child to have a date night with their significant other. Turning the page, let’s look at one more restaurant picture.


    Generations Around the Table: Tradition in Every Fold


    Image Source: Cincinnati Magazine


    Generational depth and legacy are woven into the DNA of family-style Italian restaurants. The candles lit at each table, the red plaid tablecloth folded perfectly, this scene represents casual dining that evokes a friendly and homey feeling. This image follows a non-dramatic storytelling framework, created from different perspectives, and requires the audience to complete the picture themselves.


    Restaurants, cafes, and food vendors around the world all carry human stories behind every meal and interaction. The smallest details, like the position of someone’s body, where their eyes are looking, and what’s on the table, are visual cues to what the mood of the moment is. When you consider elements of visual storytelling, including composition, sensory feelings, and whether it’s dramatic or non-dramatic storytelling, your connection to that photo is stronger, and you can create a full story to tell.

  • The Key to Becoming a Flower that Flourishes Through Concrete

    Image Source: Generated by Copilot




    When you gain enough self-awareness to realize that it’s your job to create an environment that meets your needs, it lights a new fire in you. Being imprisoned in a culture that pushes you to primarily interact with screens instead of using your imagination is ruining your attention.




    There’s a strong body of evidence that supports this claim as one of the biggest problems for children. I am going to spend a few minutes taking it one step further by explaining how this applies to anyone and why you need to demystify motivations and be wary of becoming a jack of many trades, but master of none.



    Demystifying Motivations



    Decades of research and thousands of studies have proven there are two types of primary motivation. Intrinsic and Extrinsic. Johann Hari, author of “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – How to Think Deeply, uses a great metaphor of a runner to explain the contrast of these two motivations.


    “If you go running in the morning because you love how it feels, the wind in your hair, the sense that your body is powerful, that’s an intrinsic motivation. Now, imagine you go running because you have a drill sergeant dad who forces you to go with him. Or you go running to post a shirtless video on Instagram for the likes. This is an extrinsic motivation. You are not doing it because the act itself gives you pleasure or fulfillment.”


    Image Source: NPR



    The author and researchers he’s interviewing about this concept conclude that it’s easier to focus and stick with it when your motivations are intrinsic.



    When I think about my extrinsic and intrinsic motivations, I couldn’t agree more. One of my intrinsic motivations is playing Pickleball. I play regularly, not to impress anyone specifically or get something out of it, but because I truly enjoy the game. I’ve noticed my attention on the court is very sharp, and I am steadily improving over time because I am focused. In contrast, one of my extrinsic motivations is going to the gym. I don’t go out of pure joy of working out; my main motivation to go is to get in better shape and stay healthy. During the digital detox experiment several weeks ago, I really noticed the contrast when I would find myself on my phone in the gym with minimal attention and focus on the exercises.



    I believe creating a balance of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations is one of the best ways to regain your attention and focus.  


    Jack of Many Trades, Master of None


    Throughout life, you’re exploring hobbies to develop passions, and just like how seasons come and go, so do your hobbies – especially throughout childhood as you’re establishing an identity.




    When thinking about how to regain focus and attention while reducing anxiety and stress, regardless of age, one thing comes to mind for me. Setting attainable goals. According to an article from NPR, practicing these skills can help build a reservoir of positive energy that you can draw on when it’s time to cope with challenges or annoyances.


    Image Source: NPR




    This article cites further evidence from neuroscience research that shows repeated practice of certain positive emotions can even change our brains.



    Although the idea of freedom and confinement mentally and physically is one of the biggest challenges children face today regarding their attention and focus, I believe it’s something impacting people of all ages.



    One of the best things you can do is take a step back and demystify intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to understand how to harness the positivity of both types in your life. Also, avoiding falling into the trap of letting an environment convince you that you’re a jack of many trades, master of none, will help you get one step closer to regaining your attention, deepening your focus, and not letting anyone or anything hinder your creativity, social bonds, or lust for life.

  • How Orchestrating Organized Chaos Frees up 99% of Your Headspace

    Image Source: Generated by Copilot




    Developing a process to capture your thoughts, turn them into actionable tactics, and streamline working with a team to achieve a shared outcome are a few of the backbone principles of project management. Regardless of your job, industry, and experience, good project management compared to poor project management can make or break the success of your work, and overall joy of a job or project.




    After learning about some of the history and methodologies, and creating a project management workspace for myself, I have two pieces of advice for how anyone can orchestrate organized chaos to overall improve processes and collaboration with others.



    Use Kanban to Implement K.I.S.S.



    One of my favorite concepts that my manager at my first full-time job taught me was the K.I.S.S. rule. Keep it simple, stupid. This is a cheeky reminder to avoid unnecessary complexity, whether you’re working with the CEO of your company or explaining to your 5-year-old son what you did at work during the day. It’s a fantastic design principle to remind you that simplicity is a key to success.



    Creating a Kanban with Trello and using it as a project management tool is one of the best ways to implement K.I.S.S.


    Image Source: Interaction Design Foundation



    As you can see in the two pictures below, I stayed true to the roots of a Kanban by designing a system with three stages that tracks how my tasks (parts) need to move through stages to completion (production within the factory).


    Image Source: Created by Author


    Image Source: Created by Author


    Reality is a Roller Coaster: How to Make the Ride Smoother


    One of the biggest upsides I found with creating this Trello board and learning about project management is that it’s not a linear process. Implementing Trello as a project management method is a low-effort, high-impact strategy. It enables you to quickly get organized and move through your work with minimal confusion, and creates more efficiency for yourself and your team.



    Something that stuck with me regarding the general and historical overview of project management is the fact that the common, clear indicators of a successful project are determined by factors like:


    • Completion on schedule.
    • Staying within budget.
    • Producing work aligned with agreed upon quality standards.




    Using a Kanban in Trello as an agile project management method gave me instant flexibility, was easy to control how much work is in progress and how granular I want to go with tasks so I could improve my overall focus and avoid overload, and has a visual display that uses colored labels to organize and create easy associations in my head for me to better remember and prioritize, almost like a version of a mind map in some ways.



    Whether you start using Trello for your project management, or another popular platform like Basecamp, learning about the history of project management, doubling down on a Kanban as an agile method, and implementing it to get organized, focused, and make your roller coaster ride smoother is one of the best ways you can free up headspace and orchestra whatever organized chaos is in your life.

  • Eyes Wide Shut: Why Technology is a Hidden Blindfold

    Image Source: Generated by Copilot




    The immediacy of access to information and connections with people is an expectation in 2025. Technology firms and parent holding companies creating these products are at a point where there are stakeholder demands and pressure to keep users’ attention, almost always putting profits over people. Yes, I won’t deny the fact that there are great outcomes made possible because of technology and social media connecting people, but after learning more about the humane aspects of technology from the Center for Humane Technology and additional research, my perspective has evolved.




    I’m going to take a few minutes to explain what persuasive technology is and unpack some of its implications on attention and cognition, as well as social relationships.



    Attention: The Most Precious Resource



    Society is moving at a pace where the “instant economy” is the new normal. Whether it’s getting an item only two days later thanks to Amazon Prime, no longer having to wait for the next episode of your favorite television show to air, and spending hours of your day after working your 9-5 scrolling an infinite feed watching short-form videos, our brains are being rewired to crave dopamine and immediate gratification through all these forms of entertainment powered by persuasive technology, devices that use tested design strategies to manipulate human behavior towards a desired goal.



    Nicholas Carr, author of the New York Times Bestseller, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains, describes this phenomenon perfectly.


    “What the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”


    Image Source: Full Focus



    According to Science News Today, research indicates that attention is deeply linked to emotional and spiritual well-being. If you have shallow attention, it fragments your emotional life. This article references studies that prove constant switching, especially during childhood and adolescence, is detrimental to brain functions such as impulse control, delayed gratification, and sustained attention.



    I notice myself struggling a ton with sustained attention, especially at work, when I am put into certain situations forcing me to multitask. If I am creating a website registration page for a new event my department is hosting, I can’t have my email window open to see a new message about an alumni profile I should add to our social media queue. Whiplash between tasks makes it tough for me to stay in flow state and puts unnecessary pressure and anxiety on myself to dive into non-urgent work that doesn’t have my sustained attention.


    Image Source: Science News Today



    The Paradigms Isolating Instead of Uniting Us


    To better understand why technology companies are under pressure to capture engagement and prioritize growth, we need to start by examining the negative implications on people, communities, and societies.



    The Center for Humane Technology created the Ledger of Harms, a report of facts supported by citations to explain what some of these paradigms are and how they are affecting all of us.



    One specific example that I believe will resonate with anyone, regardless of your profession, gender, ethnicity, or location, is social relationships. It’s important to acknowledge and not refute the fact that social networks do connect us, but they also distract us from connecting with the people right in front of us.




    The Center for Humane Technology references evidence of this from a long-term study of 11,000 people, with strong results concluding that people with higher social media use had a direct correlation with a higher level of neuroticism and anxiety only one year later.



    As I reconsider my habits, uses, and the time I spend on these platforms, I hope these insights provide some new perspectives on how to harness technology and leverage its positive attributes instead of the persuasive ones that create more harm than benefits.

  • The Devil is in the Details: How Data Offers Answers

    Image Source: Generated by Copilot



    For the first time in my life, I tried something new to think more clearly and gain time. I attempted to complete a digital detox. As I am reading “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – How to Think Deeply Again,” by Johann Hari, I’ve been challenged to change my perspective on attention, focus, and thinking deeply. So, I chose to give up the app Facebook Messenger for five days for this digital detox.



    Although I admittedly broke this digital detox several times during the five days, I felt a newfound sense of calm, clarity, and focus, whether it was more energy after I ate lunch at the office, or an increase in joy from focused time spent at the gym, not checking my phone in between sets.



    I’m going to explain two key lessons this experiment taught me, and why I recommend that anyone try doing one to improve their relationship with technology and social media.


    Creating Your Own Sunshine



    Almost all my days typically start with a blaring alarm, light flooding into my room, and rolling over to check messages I have from my friends. From a literal perspective, changing this routine to have my phone out of arm’s reach forced me to get up, turn the alarm off, and get ready for the day.  



    The three out of five days of this experiment that I didn’t check Facebook Messenger in the morning resulted in:


    • Getting to work earlier.
    • Having fewer headaches from screen time after I immediately woke up.
    • Increased focus while building a to-do list.


    Image Source: Created by Author

    Image Source: Created by Author


    As seen in the two graphs pictured above, I checked Facebook Messenger on the second and the fifth day in the morning during this digital detox. Both mornings, I arrived at work around 9 am instead of 8:30 am and felt more fatigued earlier in the day.



    Johann Hari’s conversation with Google and Facebook data strategists about Send the Sunshine, an app to cure seasonal depression, was built on the belief that to shape behavior, you make sure users get hearts and likes right away.



    The immediacy of this dopamine is a psychological motivator for me to check Facebook Messenger. Breaking away from it was one of the best habits I could consider building at the start of each day.




    The Invisible Force Pulling the Puppet Strings

    Social media algorithms are complex data formulas that keep us on our screens and create attention atrophy. This article from Science News Today explains the influence of algorithms well:



    “Algorithms are designed to keep you scrolling. They do this by identifying patterns in the content you engage with most – be it cat videos, political memes, or fitness tips, and showing you more of the same.”




    Image Source: Science News Today



    Although this isn’t directly applicable to my intrinsic motivation to check Facebook Messenger, explore pages on apps like Instagram and TikTok do this with their algorithms to keep me on their apps in an unproductive way.



    Setting app screen time limits, or using any of these third-party apps to help manage your digital wellbeing, have been great tactics for me to test and implement after this digital detox.



    If you are interested in doing a digital detox, I highly recommend you consider a short-term one. You’ll learn how to create sunshine and better understand how to not let algorithms pull your strings, making you a helpless puppet to these apps.

  • Why You Shouldn’t Underestimate the Power of Doing Nothing

    Image Source: Generated by Copilot



    The year is 2025. You wake up, immediately check your phone, rush to get to work, spend the day sitting at your desk typing away, scroll through your phone at lunch with your eyes glued to the screen, come home and unwind by watching Netflix while texting your friends, go to bed, and repeat it all over again the next day.



    When was the last time you started the morning with a walk without your phone? Or went to a nearby deli for lunch to enjoy a meal by yourself, sitting at the table outside, staring at the clouds.



    As pressure continues to pile up on all of us every day to stay connected with the world and stimulated by all the noise that comes with it, I would love to have just a few minutes of your time to explain to you why doing nothing can sometimes be the best reset for you.


    Decoding the Message & Deciphering the Medium



    We are regularly communicating with tons of people in several ways. Texting, phone calls, emails, social media direct messages and comments, Snapchat, to name a few. Johann Hari, author of “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – How to Think Deeply Again,” tries to make sense of this concept and provides a clear metaphor to understand how you can decode messages and decipher which mediums they’re coming from. “Every time a new medium comes along, whether it’s the invention of the printed book, TV, or Twitter, and you start to use it, it’s like you are putting on a new kind of goggles with their own special colors and lenses.” I believe Johann is right. Once you develop self-awareness and understanding of what someone is communicating to you and know why they chose to deliver it in that way, you will strengthen your relationships with others.  



      Image Source: Remark



      Haste Makes Waste: Mind Wander Instead


      There’s an overarching fear amongst most people that boredom is a waste of time and useless. What if I told you that’s wrong and there are clear benefits you are missing out on? One easy way to think about this is to look at the animal kingdom. Naturebang, a radio show by BCC, partnered with psychologists and professors to explain why we should be doing a whole lot more… nothing.  “The natural world seems like a busy place. But the truth is that most animals spend most of their time doing nothing. We’ve created a society where we fear boredom and we’re afraid of doing nothing. But in trying to avoid boredom, we miss out on its benefits. When we’re bored, we daydream, and that has been linked to creativity.”



      Whether you are an ant watching others in your colony forage, or you’re a 20-year-old in college studying for your physics final, something all forms of life have in common is the inability to create time. None of us should fear this; instead, we should embrace it by doing nothing and taking a step back to understand the different messages we receive, the mediums they go through, and let our minds wander.



      Image Source: BBC



      I’m excited to learn more about the data associations and specific techniques I can use to think deeply and regain my attention.

    1. Finding Your Flow: Uncovering Where Focus is Hiding From You

      Image Source: Generated by Copilot



      With peeling an onion, you realize how many layers there are until you reach its core. Just like an onion, when you consider the crises of our diminishing collective ability to hold attention, there are many layers to understand it. The concept of “stolen focus” goes far beyond an individual’s personal relationship with technology. It has been accelerated by the ecosystem of our world.



      Johann Hari, an accomplished author, explores this topic deeply in his book “Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – How to Think Deeply Again.”  As Johann chronicles his pursuit of a digital detox and discusses what the first month is like, there are two core concepts that stand out to me as potential explanations as to why we can’t hold our attention anymore and what we can do to improve our focus.


      Why Your Word Means Everything


      A universal truth proven by social scientists is that whenever someone wants to overcome a destructive habit, one of the most effective methods is pre-commitment. According to Johann Hari, this is when “the you that exists in the present right now wants to pursue your deeper goals and wants to be a better person. But you know you’re fallible and likely to crack in the face of temptation. So, you bind the future version of you. You narrow your choices.” Pre-commitment manifests in several areas of my life, but one that comes most to mind is my connections, like my bond with my brother. When I make a promise to my brother or confirm I’ll do something with him, I mindfully create space in my calendar and organize my other social activities, career commitments, and personal chores using a calendar and planning system to pre-commit to him. Doing this with him and several of my other friends has greatly improved my relationships.


      Listen to Understand, Not to Reply


      It’s easier than you think to fall into the trap of conversing and connecting with people in a way that’s only self-serving. One of the most common ways this shows up is through narcissism, a corruption of attention where it’s turned in only on yourself and your ego. When I think about how listening with intention shows up for me in my life, especially at work, a few of these tips from Harvard Business Review are ideas I practice to do my best at becoming a better listener.


      1. Give 100% of your attention.
      2. Do not interrupt.
      3. Do not judge or evaluate.
      4. Do not impose your solutions.
      5. Ask more (good questions)

      Image Source: Harry Haysom Getty Images


      As I start to consider how I can strengthen my ability to focus, I have several ideas about simple lifestyle changes I can make, like setting app limits to reduce my screen time, minimizing distractions, and piloting learning methods like the Pomodoro technique to try to improve my focus and memory. I’m looking forward to learning more about what’s causing these diminishing returns and what other areas of life are most impacted.


      Image Source: verywellmind