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
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.