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
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!
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.