Hi everyone!

It's kind of hilarious just how much we're influenced by the content we consume. 

And that's why finding excellent people to follow is so important. 

So this Jimmy briefs is all about sharing my favourite people to follow in case you need some variety in your online diet.

But why the sudden focus on expanding consumption habits? Well that's actually a funny story! A story you are absolutely welcome to skip if you're light on time and just want the good stuff (scroll down past the picture to the recommended reading list).

But for the rest of you, here's the backstory ...

A short story about me being an idiot

My current website was only ever intended to be an MVP and replacing it is well overdue. I've been chipping away at the design which is coming together, but I've been really struggling with colours. Choosing colours to represent ideas and feelings is incredibly hard. I mean, what colour best represents Jimmy? What colour captures my particular brand of irreverent + thinking + analysis? 

In short colours are tricky. 

But hold that thought a moment.

Finding good music to listen to while working out is also tricky. It has to have enough oomph to keep you motivated and enough womp that you can't hear your own gross breathing. The struggle to keep my workout playlist fresh and exciting (but also not distractingly random) is very real. I rely on my app suggesting new songs based on my current favourites.

A playlist recommendation is how, approximately a year after it being a thing and at approximately the same time as boomers found out about it, I discovered Charli XCX's album brat. 

It shouldn't surprise anyone to find out that I'm a slightly obsessive cat. So when I discover a song or an album I like, I end up just playing it over and over on repeat. Albums on my workout playlist end up on my work playlist and vice versa. 

Which brings me back to the website and colours and the fact that I had an epic colour breakthrough a week ago: Happily, after a ton of thinking and design work and options analysis, I had finally settled on a great colour for Jimmy! Yay!

I had pulled the current yellow towards green and ended up in the lime zone. It was fresh! It was fun! It was looking great! And I was stoked! 

I had independently and with careful thought and rationale solved my colour conundrum and had finally cracked the Jimmy colours. 🍋‍🟩💚🤢🥑

Except I hadn't.

I had just slapped brat slime green on my design. 🤦‍♀️

(Context in case you've managed to not find out about brat: here's the album cover. Here's the remix album cover. All green. All brat. Even Kamala got in on it. In short, I'm very late to this party).

So it turns out I'm as influenced by the content I'm consuming as anyone. Which is comical and seriously embarrassing but brings me to the point of this absurd story.

What you (mentally) eat matters

I know that this is an absurd example, but what I've been stressing about ever since is how often is this happening without the realisation that I'm being influenced? How often is my analysis comically flawed?

If I can justify brat green to myself, what else have I justified?

What we read matters. If we live in our own echo chamber then that's all we'll think. We'll start believing that there is only one way. We'll be able to justify lime green. Or whatever next year's massive cultural touch-point is. 

I've always looked outside the business analysis world for learnings, ideas, and inspiration. And I kind of think of those outside perspectives as necessary counters to building a limited world view. I think it helps me avoid a brat green mistake in my work.

So I thought I would share.

Some brain veggies

Here's my track list of excellent folk to follow / read / consume for good non-echo-chamber thoughts. They're all the opposite of trashy music. This is the good stuff:

Christina Wodtke, curious human, lecturer at Stanford, and writer of Radical Focus (and other great books). Her blog Elegant Hack is a treasure trove of great thoughts on a ton of stuff! If anyone could inspire me to throw in the towel and become an academic it would be Christina. Six stars is a thing, yeah? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pavel Samsonov, design lead at AWS. Pavel publishes thoughtful and considered content on LinkedIn and Medium on design, product, delivery, and also just being human in complex systems. His tagline sums him up pretty well: "Problem designer at AWS. Sick of rectangles. All opinions are my own and do not represent my employer". Big fan. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lisa Baird, who (fabulously) describes herself as a "Whole-brain thinker and wicked business model designer. Believer in the Oxford comma. Excel savant. Sartorial dabbler." Heck yes. Less frequent a poster than the rest on this list, but each post is worth the wait. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

John Cutler, product leader, "Coherence Wrangler In Residence", and the writer behind The Beautiful Mess newsletter. John manages to output an insane amount of high quality thinking. Well worth following along. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Karen VanHouten, who uses "human-centered design principles to build useful & accessible digital products and healthy & impactful product teams". Which makes her sound boring but she's anything but. If you need a lady who is basically using LinkedIn as her twitter replacement and posts random thoughts and articles in a profoundly human way, Karen is your girl! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Maarten Dalmijn, the 'driving value with sprint goals' guy! A book I've not actually read because I ordered it from Booktopia and then they went into receivership and it never shipped. And now I receive regular emails from the appointed administrators because I'm a creditor. True story! But one with zero to do with Maarten's excellent content which generally focuses on delivery, teamwork, and agile (the non-cult version). ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Teressa Torres, product discovery coach. Teressa is the lady who came up with opportunity trees so already has my respect for that. But the reason to follow her is her "worthy reads" where she reposts great articles she finds. It's all in the name, they really are worthy reads! And if you don't believe me, here's an example! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

And that's the list! I hope you find someone there to shake up your thoughts and avoid an echo chamber of lime green.

I cannot tell you how much I like hearing from y'all!

And until next time, stay excellent! 💖
Hannah