Defining your 2020 north star

Representative of the North Star. Photo by Mike Setchell on Unsplash

Have you been working on 2020 vision projects to define the future of your work products? How long has this been going on—3 months, 6 months, 3 years? While at Facebook, I remember a team working on an inspiring 2020 sprint to redesign News Feed. And this was all the way back in 2018! The 2020 sprint eventually evolved into a facelift for Facebook that launched earlier this year showing the power of visionary design sprints. Think of the hours & effort you’ve spent dreaming of a future for your products. But what about for you?

How might you apply a 2020 North Star to your own life?

I’m not talking about making a New Year’s resolution that’s kept up all the way through the end of January. Yet starting a new year is momentous. Whether we embrace it or not, the year is based on our planet’s journey around the sun. We share a common physical environment that changes due to seasons, weather, daylight savings, etc. Summer feels lighter with more sun and longer daylight. And even though I haven’t been a student in decades, fall still evokes a feeling of the start of a new school year.

So with this new milestone year, have you thought about making goals, including 5-year or 10-year plans? Maybe you make them? Or maybe you don’t and feel guilty about it? Or perhaps they’re an expectation about what you’re…