😶🌫️My Mood Board: April 2025
A visual way to anchor my mood and actions at work
Do you want to drive intentionality into your actions at work? Have reminders of what’s important and not just urgent? Match your mood and actions to the business and team needs? Create a totem to avoid your negative emotions by default?
You should create a mood board for your work life. ChatGPT’s latest image generation tools make this more fun than ever and when you print it out, it will be an ongoing reminder of how you want to show up.
👋Hi there! It’s Adam here with my fourth annual Spring Mood Board. After reflecting for an hour to create visuals for how I want to show up, what’s stressing me, and what’s most important as a product maker and leader, here’s what I got:
Our recent reader survey showed that this is one of our subscribers’ favorite posts of the year, so I’ll share a few thoughts on my creation process.
Be a Builder
It’s a fun time to be in tech - never has there been more new tools to help build innovative ideas. I want to show up as a builder (vs. advisor, editor, feedback synthesizer, idea generator) and that is the first piece of artwork anchoring my board this year:
I recently had my Technical Advisor ask to return to being a Product Manager - “it is time to build, not advise” were her words and I found that so inspiring.
I’m also adding this here as a cautionary tale. Never has it been easier to critique plans or create great-looking PowerPoint visions - but my job is to go beyond idea generation and focus on delivery and outcomes.
Transforming the Organization
I had ChatGPT generate an image based upon the three words I think are required in tech leadership today:
It’s not a time for planful estate management of a tech portfolio, it’s a time to move fast and learn. In my own performance evaluation, I talked about rehiring myself as a leader focused on:
Agility: Helping the org move fast and make quick decisions.
Paranoia: “Only the paranoid survive” is a popular Andy Grove quote, highlighting the need for leaders to examine any potential places where the status quo isn’t good enough.
Curiosity: Every week there is major tech news and new AI tools to try, so this is a reminder to sustainably incorporate this tsunami of inputs into my product making vs. get burned out from it.
Customer Empathy
Back in 2016, when I was working with design and research on a major UX reboot for our product, we adopted the phrase “E is for empathy” to reflect staying grounded in customer needs. So it is with a smile that I add that to this year’s mood board:
Like many, I worry about being too tech focused - and I see that a lot from the Applied Science part of the company. There is a whitespace opportunity for any product manager to be the absolute best at translating tech into human needs.
Wow, this is Hard
You can tell - there is a lot in my work life that isn’t working yet - AI is not yet mature & our organization is evolving to meet emerging needs. After 20 years in the workplace, I know my primary negative emotion - it’s not anger or despair, it’s cynicism:
This is on my board to remind me to assume the best intent from others and use optimism to generate energy.
Storytelling
I had the opportunity to interview Guillermo Rauch, the CEO of Vercel recently and one of his recent tweets inspired me: “How you present the technology matters just as much as the technology itself.” So, as a holdover from last year, I again added a storybook:
I consider myself good at enterprise product storytelling - both internally and to customers. And I like having a strength on my mood board - a balanced life focuses on leveraging strengths as well as closing weaknesses.
Welcome to the Fishbowl
This is another repeat from last year - as a VP, my words carry outsized weight, and my actions are often examined. I live in the fishbowl with other senior leaders:
I find this part of my job especially hard this year, as more frequently changing status quo is required. It’s not all about peacetime role modelling but rather being an agent of change, with mistakes magnified due to this fishbowl effect.
Work Hard, Play Hard
I replaced the graphics on my mood board from previous years that prioritized presence & savoring & play. The tech industry mood has changed to one of intensity and focus. When you are on the job, you are all in and it’s intense - and you build up barnacles just like a ship at sea:
You can agree or disagree with this industry-wide tone shift, but it’s happening, so I’m embracing it. And it’s also a reminder to prioritize vacations and use them to recharge.
My Motto
This is the only graphic that has been on all four of my mood boards: my motto for how I want to show up at work.
Do = Act, not think or talk.
Hard Things = We do what’s difficult so our customers don’t have to.
In A Calm Way = Attention, focus, and optimism.
With Me = We are in this together.
My Story Arc over the Years
Now that this is a Spring tradition, I have four years to look back on:
2022:
2023:
2024:
2025:
I’ve noticed a few things:
My first board - 2022 - was right after my sabbatical and it was entirely self-generated and not a response to external events. I was at a peak of self-awareness and self-intentionality, but a valley in being curious about what the market needed from our products.
My second mood board - 2023 - was at the very beginning of an industry-wide paradigm shift. A period of stability had just ended. There is a “keep calm, carry on” vibe to the whole thing that you find when you must lead without knowing what’s coming or where you are going.
Last year, I noticed how much external stressors dominated what I wanted to put on the board. It made me reflect on if I’m being reactive and “on defense” - a good self-reflection I uncovered because of the exercise.
This year, the focus is on speed and transformation from within a large organization - urgency picks up as the scorecard for AI is maturing.
Over the years, I’ve used a mix of Canva, Microsoft Designer, DALL-E, and ChatGPT’s image generation tools to create my mood boards. If you create one yourself, share it with me!