Pilcrow #20
Discover more from Pilcrow
Hey friends, hope you’re having a great weekend so far!
20 editions later and we are here, it’s a new milestone, and I can’t wait to see what the next 20 editions will look like. This last week got pretty intense with two new features on my Figma plugin and a lot of discussions with the design community, I loved it.
Here are today’s topics:
What I’m working on
Tool(s) I’m currently trying
Thoughts on rewarding yourself
Interesting works of the week
What I’m working on
Let’s recap, less than 24 hours after the Figma Variables feature announcement, I published my plugin Styles to Variables (fancy name, I know…), allowing users to convert their local color styles to variables. It got more than 1000 downloads the following day.
And even if people loved it, it seems two features were missing:
create modes based on the styles group structure;
bind styles back to the variables created.
Create modes automatically
So the following weekend, after a few hours of wrapping my head around a simple way to match modes with the styles group structure, I chose to match the first level of the group to create modes, based on my experience with how teams structure their styles.
→ I released it on Monday, with a working example based on Radix Colors.
Bind styles back to variables
I used it to migrate all Specify color styles to variables and then realized that updating all components by hand will take days — and we didn’t have this time.
So on Wednesday evening and during my lunch break on Thursday, I added a second option that automatically binds styles to variables, allowing teams can update all their UI components in minutes, not days. The circle was complete.
What’s next?
Well, the plugin got downloaded more than 5000 times and got featured on the Figma Community homepage and design system category, I’m so thankful for that!
Colors are only the first variable type to be compatible with local styles, I can’t wait to see text and effect styles join the party, so I need to prepare the plugin for that. I also need to fix some minor bugs and add options to ignore some tokens.
Tool(s) I’m currently trying
These last weeks I heavily relied on Screen Studio for my Figma plugin: each new release was backed by a demo video, showcasing how the feature works and the result, with zooms on specific parts of the UI.
I made myself a dedicated preset, with already set up background, padding, zoom levels, cursor movements, and size, resulting in a very quick process to produce a video ready to be shared on Twitter and LinkedIn.
If you haven’t already, I really encourage you to give it a try to Screen Studio, it’s one of the rare apps I instantly bought after playing for only a few minutes. You can download it from my affiliate link below if you want to support me:
Thoughts on rewarding yourself
Like every human being on this planet, I tend to push back certain projects, features, tasks, stuff, anything. Sometimes it can be related to procrastination, sometimes it’s just my brain that prefers to work in the background during the day or night, sometimes it’s just the fear of failure, and sometimes I just need rest.
I changed a bunch of things in my process in the last 5 years, from making sure that the goals set were clear enough and using a burner list, to learning to divide tasks, sharing proofs of concepts, saying no, and finally, rewarding myself after launches.
First thing first, you need to make sure that the goal you need to hit to unlock your reward is high enough to be motivating but not too high or you’ll probably end up demotivated — or even ashamed (don’t be so hard on yourself!). Of course, we’re all different, the concept of the comfort zone plays a key role here, and you need to learn how your brain, energy levels, and motivation work together.
Rewards don’t need to be something material in my opinion — even if I often offer myself LEGO sets after launching projects, I’m guilty. There is no rule here, it’s more about how the reward resonates with a specific part of you.
For example, I love listening to Hip-Hop vinyl records while cooking, I tend to think there is something about my senses here that gets me motivated: I work all day long, and some evenings in front of a computer, it’s essentially my vision sense that gets triggered. But by cooking meals and listening to music, I get all my senses activated: the smell and the taste of traditional pasta alla carbonara, the look of an (almost) perfect plate, the feeling of placing the diamond onto the vinyl record and course the beats, lyrics, and melody of The Next Episode.
It’s the same thing with LEGO sets, hands are playing with something other than keystrokes, no blue light hitting your eyes, I’m at peace.
And you, what are your favorite rewards?
Interesting works of the week
That’s all, friends — have a great Sunday! 🖤