Don't be afraid to stand out

Time and time and again I've been confronted with colleagues that prefer to stand in the background and not be differentiated from the rest. Nowadays this invariably makes me think: why the hell not?

Sometimes I think it's a clear case of lack of confidence in themselves and their know-how, which is understandable. In those cases I like to remember a common quote by Richard Branson that says "If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you're not sure you can do it, say yes - then learn how to do it later.". I've lost a few great opportunities for fear of failure, but now I do my best to remember this as often as I can.

Other times, people stand in the background, and I think this is the most common scenario, for fear of being in the spotlight. Yes I know, it's an obvious justification, but let me continue: it's not that they don't know their trade, they do; the thing is they don't want to get noticed by "the brass" and risk too much responsibility, aka, leaving their confort zone.

I've been there before: that state of mind where you do your job, follow the tasks laid out by your management and when the option comes for more exposure you step back and opt out. Lately though, with all my efforts directed at learning more and more about gamification and evangelizing it in my company, I've been "thrown to the lions" more times than I can count. And you know what? That's ok! It can be scary when your audience is the CEO, or even your colleagues and friends that you'll want to impress the most and make them proud. But believe me that every experience is going to make you grow, even the ones that go wrong. Especially those.

And if you're afraid of making too much of a splash start small: after all, what's life but a series of stepping stones to greater goals? But do it.

Some people say I have a knack for public speaking, but believe me, that is most certainly NOT my opinion. But I want it to be. I want to be that guy that people invite to talk about whatever theme is required. The thing is, I feel that if you don't take a step outside your confort zone, you're almost certainly not going to grow into the professional or individual that you want to become. And that requires standing out, putting your name out there and risking some misshaps. But hey, as Fernando Pessoa would say "stones in the path? I keep all of them, one day I'll build myself a castle...".

And it's really weird to translate Pessoa.

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On spreading yourself too thin

For the second time in a relatively short span, I've received the same advice from two different people: don't spread yourself too thin.

It should be noticed that I've been receiving that same advice from friends for the past 4 or 5 years, but these last two people were not my friends, as in they didn't know of my propensity to throw myself into things. They were just faced with one of my bursts of creativity and reacted according to their know-how.
I should also say that these advices were given in totally different manners as well as totally different contexts: the first began with a destructive punch to the gut followed by a careful call for regroup; the second was more of a "look that's all nice and dandy, but here's what I think you should do" moment.

The message however was the same:

I know you have a lot of ideas, that's great! And I know you want to do it all, which is also great! It shows both creativity and initiative! But when you go for all of it, you're spending a huge amount of your energy and you're probably not going to be able to do it all at once. Or at least not as well as how you intended. The End Product is going to be below your standards, you'll get frustrated and that's going to expend even more energy, which in turn will impact your next ideas... you can see where this is going right?

Yes, I could. Of course, this is all very interesting and obvious and an homage to Captain Common Sense. The problem is: how do you solve this? Do you focus on just one or two great ideas and put the others on ice so you can concentrate on making the chosen ones your shining glory? Won't the frozen ideas lose their relevance over time? Or do you maybe go around distributing ideas like a creativity santa? Can you trust others to follow up on your precious concepts and brilliant contributions? And destroy them? A really epic idea can be made useless if handled by a less-than-able person.

As it happens, in both cases the proposed solution was the same: to concentrate on that one, or those two ideas that could really shine and make them awesome. None of them however said anything about the others that aren't picked for the starting line up. And I never remembered to ask, because that's me.

I can see the merit in focusing on just two or three ideas and working them into jewels, but as you can see, in the previous paragraph I was talking about one or two, and now I'm talking about three. When I start thinking about narrowing my focus I imediately run for the hills. When I start boxing my creativity outbursts I get hampered and start losing that ability to blurt out ideas, as random as they are.
And besides that, every one of these ideas are my babies: of course you'll have your favorites, but it'll be goddamn hard to choose which one to sacrifice for the bigger brother to live in prosperity.

What I realized was that my biggest problem resided with the fact that I just couldn't let go. In all honesty, I don't know if it's "Lord of the Rings Syndrom" (mine, my own, my precious!) or if it's lack of confidence in others.
Once, in a conversation with Rui Cordeiro, a portuguese reference on gamification, I asked this question about letting go of your ideas while still claiming ownership, to which he said "isn't it all for the greater good? so what's the problem in letting go? and if you're worried about quality, make sure you hand it to the best guy (or girl) you've got and keep checking in for guidance. and if you tell everyone about it, it's going to be known whose idea it was in the first place.". I was feeling pretty childish right about then.

So, my conclusion was that, in hindsight I could focus on just two or three ideas to really make them shine (just the one is impossible for me, I'd get bored out of my mind!) and with the rest of them I decided on a mixed approach: I'd share some of them with others, not the second best ones, but still ideas worth pursuing, or ideas in which my contribution wouldn't be that essential, while keeping the second best ones on ice until I found a rockstar that I really felt could lead them to victory.
Does this mean I think of myself as a rockstar? No. What it means is that it's so hard for me to trust another person's work, that in order for me to do that, that person has to be really really good.

Fact of the matter is: despite knowing all of this, I keep needing to hear this advice. I keep having these moments of epiphany that in fact feel like deja vu because I've been here before. But the ideas keep coming, and I keep wanting to do them all, so I keep finding myself spread too thin. Creativity is a dangerous "power" if left unfocused.

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gamification in portuguese

And so it came to pass that in May 6th I took another step in my quest for a better understanding of gamification. This step had two main objectives:

1. to understand who're the key players on the subject in Portugal;
2. to hear about gamification Portuguese.

It consisted of me participating in a User Experience Design & Gamification workshop organized by APMP and led by a gentleman called Rui Cordeiro.

I must admit that I was a bit skeptical about this workshop. I was quite content with saving my money for other flights. Such as this. 

And my skepticism was mostly due to two reasons: first was the fact that I hadn't heard much about gamification being done or discussed in Portugal, and therefore was expecting beginner's level content; second was my very portuguese habit of doubting other portuguese talking about stuff that came from abroad. Yes, we can be a little conceipted.

But the truth is that when you think about it, if the goal is, like my friend Ricardo says, "to become the parents of gamification in Portugal", it might be useful to at least get to know the playing field. Worst case scenario you learn a few things and hurray for networking! It bears notice that it was after this conversation that the need to also blog in portuguese came up.

So, it was with all this in mind that Murphy decided to slap me across the face.

As I walked in I was faced with a really heterogeneous group: professionals from several fields, ages, genders and of course musical tastes! But most of all, I was faced with this gentleman.

Rui Cordeiro is, as is stated in the workshop page, a game designer with more than 20 years of experience, that after a sucessful career making videogames at some of the biggest companies in the field (Activision/Blizzard, Gameloft, Sony, 2K Games), decided in 2010 to start looking at what he calls "...the 'intrusion' of games in life and other 'things'...". Since then he became an expert in UXD (user experience design), working internationally with topics such as Gamification, Design Thinking and User Centered Design.

And I knew nothing about this.

So it was that for almost 3 hours I was presented with some content I already knew from the online courses I took, delivered with a clarity, enthusiasm and sheer mastery that put me in my place. Also, to hear about gamification in portuguese is another experience in itself, particularly the terminology - "stuff" (cenas) was priceless.

In the second set of 3 hours I got my first real exercise in colaborative gamification design, with a less than expert approach at using Design Thinking and positive and constructive feedback at the end.

Also of notice was the fact that my lunch hour was spent mostly talking about gamification, discussing the subject and of course fooling around. Networking made fun. ;)

To sum it up, it was a day well spent at ETIC that renewed my faith in this subject in Portugal and my will to leave a mark in it. 

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