How to succeed as a solo UX designer and product developer in 2024

The Bullet Journal Method is a comprehensive guide to using the Bullet Journal Method: a single-notebook productivity system Carroll designed to help himself and others add structure to their lives through comprehensive planning of and reflection on tasks and events. Carroll explains how to extend the method beyond productivity to a practice in mindfulness and intentionality, providing not only step-by-step instructions for how to begin your own Bullet Journal but also information on how to maintain a journaling practice that can arguably improve your overall quality of life.

In this guide, we’ll critically explore Carroll’s method by discussing its advantages and disadvantages. We’ll also compare his ideas on productivity, mindfulness, and intentionality to scientific research and the works of other authors on these topics. Furthermore, we’ll supplement some of Carroll’s journal design recommendations with innovations from the global Bullet Journaling community.

Running a successful business requires a lot of time and effort, but it doesn’t have to take over your life. In Buy Back Your Time, veteran entrepreneur Dan Martell says you can run a profitable business and make time for the things you love without having to work yourself to the bone. Simply buy back your time: Hire others to take over some of your work, and then invest your reclaimed time in activities that replenish your energy and advance your business. Martell shares practical strategies for managing your time better, including how to identify a task’s value, waste less time at work, and create optimized schedules for achieving your personal and professional goals.

In this guide, we’ll discuss how to prioritize and delegate tasks, run your business more efficiently, and create weekly and yearly plans to optimize your time. Along the way, we’ll supplement Martell’s strategies with advice from other self-improvement experts and provide additional practical tips for taking control of your time.

Join Mel Robbins, the accomplished trailblazer in personal development, in "The Mel Robbins Podcast" as she dives into the intricacies of entrepreneurial triumph and the art of time management. Reveling in the podcast's extraordinary achievements, being ranked among the top globally on premier platforms, Robbins and her all-female team exemplify the power of determination and strategic goal setting. Her journey from a celebrated keynote speaker to a social media influencer and now a podcast phenom frames a success story that's as instructive as it is inspiring.

Robbins offers an arsenal of actionable advice woven through her conversation with Chris Allen at the Entrepreneur Studio. Covering a spectrum that ranges from combatting negative news consumption to the merits and pitfalls of business partnerships, she arms entrepreneurs with the tools needed to foster resilience and growth. Incorporating a mix of personal experience and research, such as insights from Dr. Judith Willis on stress management, Robbins crafts a narrative that intertwines self-care with professionalism, encourages overcoming imposter syndrome, and redefines what it means to be a successful woman in business. This episode is not just a lighthouse for navigating business uncertainties, but a manifesto for personal and professional reinvention.

Inspired teaches companies and entrepreneurs how to build successful technology products. The book introduces a two-step plan for success:

1. Organize and structure effective teams.
2. Develop products using a flexible “discovery process.”

Inspired author Marty Cagan, a Silicon Valley product executive, details how important product managers are in implementing the two-step plan and in product development in general. Cagan teaches product managers how to be successful and explains some of the biggest pitfalls that product managers and tech companies fall into when designing products.

What are the secrets to being successful in your career? How do you build a world-changing product-based business? Entrepreneur Tony Fadell answers these questions and more in Build. The book is part career encyclopedia and part memoir, detailing Fadell’s extraordinary journey inventing the iPhone, and then starting Nest (a smart home device company) and selling it to Google for billions of dollars.

In this guide, we’ll first describe Fadell’s career trajectory—including how he failed to build a smartphone several times before finally hitting it big with the iPhone. Then, we’ll share Fadell’s advice for succeeding in every stage of your career, whether you’re just starting out or a CEO. We’ll also share his tips for creating a successful product-based business and building a great team. Along the way, we'll discuss how Fadell’s advice compares with other experts’ tips on building successful products, businesses, and teams.

Do you dream of owning your own business but aren’t sure how to get funding to start it? In The Minimalist Entrepreneur, Sahil Lavingia says you don’t need any. In this book, the successful business owner gives detailed advice for starting your own profitable “minimalist” business without using venture capital or spending a penny on advertising.

In this guide, we’ll explain Lavingia’s business model, from identifying a business you’ll love to run by finding inspiration in your own communities, to setting up, testing, marketing, and launching your business. We’ll also discuss how to run your business sustainably, with the ultimate goal of achieving “time affluence” for yourself, and making a positive contribution to the world.

Throughout, we’ll compare and supplement Lavinagia’s advice on starting a business with that from other books like The Lean Startup, The $100 Startup, and Blue Ocean Strategy.

If you’ve ever pushed a “pull” door or accidentally flipped the wrong light switch, you’ve experienced the impact of bad design. You may have blamed these mistakes on yourself, but in reality, the way we interact with the physical world is often driven by design. From smartphones to stovetops, faucets to fighter jets: Every object we encounter on a daily basis is designed. Good design streamlines our lives and makes everyday tasks easier. Bad design, on the other hand, causes frustration, errors, and even dangerous accidents.

In order to tell the difference, we need to understand how we perceive the objects all around us, and how our brains make sense of that information. Combining the principles of cognitive psychology and engineering makes all of us smarter consumers and helps designers create products that work with users, rather than against them.

In The Great Game of Business, businessman Jack Stack and writer Bo Burlingham propose that the best and most efficient way to create a successful business is by encouraging employees to take ownership—by encouraging them to see the company as theirs rather than just somewhere they work. If employees see the company as theirs, its success becomes their success as well—and people will work harder to ensure their own success than that of others.

In this guide, we’ll explore the principles of fostering employee ownership that let Stack take a failing division of International Harvester and turn it into a corporation comprising over 60 businesses. We’ll examine the benefits and difficulties of implementing these principles and the authors’ advice on how to do so. In our commentary, we’ll compare the authors’ ideas to those of other business experts such as John Doerr and Tony Hsieh and examine how their suggestions intersect with psychological principles.