This came up in our ND&MW meetup the other day and I was so happy to hear it I was bouncy like Tigger. The personal user guide is a document that has a few origins out in the world[1]. I found out about it from an autistic friend that works in the UK. She’s a complete powerhouse, and works in WebDev with a solid commitment to mentorship of Women in Tech. She described that in one of the teams she was working in they each created a User Guide for themselves. Just like a manual for using a new piece of tech a Personal User Guide gives clarity to things that motivate you as well as the things that just drive you into a bad place.
Coming into a job at director level I decided to share mine with the people that I work with most closely as well as my direct reports. It’s tricky as a neurodivergent worker, there are so many things that you toss up as to whether to explain or not, how out you want to be, and what the risks/rewards are of opening up. The great thing about a Personal User Guide is that you can be open about neurodivergent needs without having to have a red carpet and parade moment about being ND.
Project Management author Julie Zhuo has a great article unpacking it and it’s worth a read on how she came up with and uses her own one[2].
And here is my User guide in case you are interestedhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1swGuvcEXTVvz167WFyhVDjZfxaTCsVYYkuqT_ZzNuMQ/edit?usp=sharing
Best,H
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Further Reading: [1] https://friday.app/p/personal-user-manual-for-work[2] https://lg.substack.com/p/the-looking-glass-a-user-guide-to
Thank you so much for sharing this, Heath! I really love this idea and want to implement this not only in my workplace but at home as well!
I think it's really cool for a number of reasons. It's great to ask for accoms and have to do a big song and dance. It's great for managers as well.
Absolutely! I love so many things about it. The process of writing it is invaluable for ourselves, it fosters communication and community with those you share it to, as well as manages expectations for the team.
I also appreciate you sharing your own user guide, Heath. It was good to learn a little more about you and also see an applied example. I liked how digestible it was; when I think of the term, "user's manual" I think of a lot of information that most people don't bother to read, but that's not at all the case here.
Thanks again!
I agree. It's an excersise in pragmatic brevity. Every time go into it I learn a whole lot more about myself.
I love this Heath, thank you for sharing!
I’ve run an emotional culture deck workshop that leads into creating a user guide similar to this for each person in our team. I found it to be a super useful thing to do as a team to discuss communication preferences (eg teams vs email vs phone call vs video call), interests and learning edges - particularly when navigating hybrid work and new faces. We didn’t touch on all the areas as yours but left plenty of space for folks to be as brief or expansive as they like.
Its been awhile since I ran this workshop, I’m looking forward to pulling my responses out and having a look over it post my own ADHD diagnosis and learning so much more about my neurodivergent brain!
Heath, this was really interesting; thank you for sharing! I think this is definitely an exercise I will undertake at some point soon, especially as I like definition and labels and things in neat little boxes.
Hi Jessie! Do you have a guide for running your emotional culture deck workshop? I want to do something similar with my team/ organization because I would love to get better at communication and working collaboratively.
I have done a lot of work on myself this past year after my ADHD diagnosis and now I am more self-aware of my behaviors and those around me. Heath's guide is amazing and I can basically copy/paste most of it for myself and never thought in my wildest dreams of creating such a document. Mental health in the workplace has come a long way since I started my career.
Heath Wilder Thank you very much for sharing this. I was able to bring this up with some of my team and these resources were so helpful. I admire your vulnerability in sharing your User Guide with all of us. Your example is going to really support strengthening the accessibility in my team's framework. The hardest part of getting started was solved with this post, thank you for planting this living seedling. I appreciate all you and Shelly are bringing to this space, so appreciate that I can go back and revisit older posts & resources. I always look forward to your next discussion items.
Glad it could help. The Personal User Guide was a really interesting concept that helped a pal in a pretty (i'm going to say) "diversity challenged" environment. Some things like this can be a way to open the doors to equity and bypassing the reactive defensivness that I sometimes encounter from people when I disclose. To me it seems to protect the listener from awkwardness as they get into details and actions before they hear terms.
Great it see user guides used widely in the latest Advisory Board for the Arts Webinar Implementing User Guides to Strengthen Psychological Safety A Case Study From The McCarter Theatre