People’s attention spans these days are becoming increasingly shorter, so working as a UX designer you learn to work with that and design solutions for users who need to be led through the customer journey despite the many distractions that crop up.

In my personal life, I am conscious about the impact that the digital revolution is having on our day to day lives. We live in a time where from the second we wake up to the time we go to bed, we are performing as users. We watch advertisements, we tap and click banners and we’re constantly sharing information about ourselves to marketing companies. Through our smartphones and other screens, we are bombarded with a constant stream of (mostly) irrelevant information, even in the most private moments of our lives. This all creates internal noise.

That’s why knowing about mindfulness, and the teachings of Buddhism, helped me to be more aware of the shortcomings we create and continually live in. These teachings have helped me to embrace minimalism in my design process and focus on offering only what is necessary.

I was also fortunate, in my thirties, to discover and read the most influential book of my life, Mediation by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (120-180 A.D). It shows the private notes of a humble man writing to himself, being hard on himself and showing tolerance towards others. This piqued an interest in me for Stoic philosophy, and how we must accept what is out of our control and focus on what is under our control: our feelings and emotions. I would like to leave it here with this quote:

“Adopt a systematic study of the way all things change into one another: pay constant attention to this aspect of nature and train yourself in it. Nothing is so conducive to greatness of mind. One so trained has divested himself of his body: recog- nizing that in almost no time he will have to leave all this behind and depart from the world of men, he has devoted his entire self to justice in his own actions and to the nature of the Whole in all things external.”