One of the things I do for a living is to create experiences for product users to make their life easier, known in the professional field as user experience design. Writing has been my passion for as long as I can remember. For the last couple of years, I’ve been conceiving ideas of topics to write about, utilizing what I consider to be my ultimate super skills that may possibly help other people out in the world.
- Staying calm (serenity).
- Making friends (selective friendship).
- Inspiring happiness (life design).
- Travel and work (digital nomad).
I define the quest to realize the potential of my self-improvement skills as an ongoing journey; however, there was a pivotal point that sparked the intent to redesign my life.
I was in a sensitive situation that implied giving up my cherished time and geographical liberty (travel and work from anywhere) to a 9 to 5 job, something I stopped doing more than a decade ago.
While sitting on a couch in a luxurious hotel, I took a moment to think. Detached from feelings, I took five minutes to calm my mind. I said to myself, I am going to calm my emotions, I am going to add high-quality rational thoughts to this crucial decision in my life.
The conclusion of this insightful exercise was nerve-wracking to me. I couldn’t believe how I didn’t notice these things before, fooled by meaningless distractions.
To sum up, I had a conversation with myself. I ended up writing down on a paper:
- You have a bunch of unhealthy habits, toxic behavior patterns that make you waste time. Isn’t time the resource you are supposed to value the most that you are about to give up here? What are you doing with your time Luis?
- You claim to have geographical liberty thanks to the nature of what you do for a living (freelance), but are you making the most out of it? Are you really traveling as much as you would like to?
- When you were a kid, you had dreams and interests to follow that are now trapped in a vault of insecurities. What is stopping you from pursuing those interests? From fulfilling your life?
- You brag about being a selfish human. Is it that really how you want to be remembered when you are no longer here?
Oh boy, the impact of this exercise struck me. Dramatic life changes started here. I definitely wanted to become a better human; I definitely wanted to embrace the opportunities of a purposeful lifestyle.
My approach was to apply what I know about design-thinking to life, in terms of a systematically organized framework. I scrutinized my life in all its aspects, I traced down the root cause of most of my problems, defined goals, studied pain points, my wants, created a plan to execute and started an ongoing iteration cycle.
All out of a sudden, by accident, I had developed a personal growth framework that worked for me. I don’t like to brag, but there are some things I have accomplished thanks to my ongoing journey that I immensely value because they are small decisions that built a solid foundation for my life.
- I created a reading habit from scratch.
- I started meditating on a regular basis.
- I boosted my productivity thanks to focus and time awareness.
- I traveled to more than 30+ countries while learning languages.
- I co-founded a community of remote workers.
- I taught myself how to walk with my hands.
- I got broke with zero dollars in my account while living in Paris and got back on my feet.
To be honest, I never imagined that I could write in a way that could inspire fellow humans to motivate any sort of improvement. But during my approach to design my life, I faced many challenges from several angles, one of which was finding content during my research phase.
The problem with personal growth content is that it is unavoidably extensive. I know that to understand the foundation of the issues, it’s necessary to dig deep into the theory of human nature, psychology, philosophy, dung juggling, voodooism, and rocket science sometimes.
However, it intrigued me to find ways to make this type of content more digestible, more practical – something that you can read in a five to ten minute format, that can give you a grip on a specific situation you are facing.
This is the reason why I decided to create 👋🏻 Five Minute Human. To share my stories, to remove the dust from my journals, to gather the practical notes I took during my experiences, and share them with people who may have encountered the same problems I did. Maybe I can help people out there. And why not make you cry a little bit with my unbearable jokes?