Manual

every day we're talking with users on Discord getting new ideas to make Manual better — 🔒 Christopher Grayson just built a handy attachments feature, so you can upload a traditional resume PDF alongside all the new and hopefully more powerful context on your manual. personally i haven't used a resume in a long time, so i don't even have one to add...but you can see how it looks on my co-founder Lexi's manual https://lnkd.in/ehN2r7kT or read more at manual.me/help

Last fall, we launched a product aimed at improving the people part of work – helping in-person, remote and hybrid teams work better together by understanding each other faster. Our hypothesis was that if people started sharing and expressing their needs personal user manuals, life at work would be happier and more fulfilling for everyone. That’s still our core mission. But during our beta testing, something else emerged we didn’t expect: 50% of people who came were people in transition looking for their next role. They were making Manuals because they wanted to be more intentional about what they wanted in their next role, and they ended up using our insights feature to do some self-discovery at the same time. Once we started talking to these users, their pain was overwhelming to hear. Submitting 200+ applications, hours of customizing a resume, the unique cringe of having to somehow explain all your hopes and dreams in the “objective” paragraph at the top of a CV…nobody likes doing this, and few people seem to find actual value when hiring, especially considering most people are just getting filtered based on LinkedIn profiles and other platform searches. If that sounds familiar, whether you’re applying for new jobs or just trying to make your case for a promotion, we’ve redesigned Manual from the bottom up with you in mind. Here’s how it works: >> Sign up and create your Manual. This is your core profile and operates as a source of truth about you, including personal details, relevant links, and context on how you move through the world. >> Create a new Glimpse — a custom profile that includes your work history and helps you summarize your career journey and your unique value, all tailored to a specific context, audience, or job listing. >> Share it and start telling people the whole story of who you are, not just where you’ve been. We’ve also redesigned everything from the bottom up, with more intuitive flows, and a much deeper insights playground where you can ask all kinds of questions to learn more about about yourself and get curious about others. It’s all live now on app.manual.me. thanks for reading and don’t forget to share your feedback here or on Discord! -Maya, Chris and Lexi

Starting today, we are taking the month of December to rest – and no, we are not considering this a vacation or paid time off. This is part of our job. Rest is work. And we are mandating it. Rest is not something to earn or work towards. It should be a basic human right and essential skill in order to do your best work. Doing great work has very little to do with productivity. It requires deep thinking, radical creativity and vibrant energy to solve big problems, grow businesses and lead teams. Even our favorite high performing athletes (word to Lebron) have intentional periods of rest and off seasons to let their bodies recover. We can’t develop the next great idea if there’s no room between the daily grind of tasks and to-dos for new inspiration to flow. As a founder, the idea of taking time off feels foreign given the narratives we’ve all been fed about what it means to be a startup. But we’ve spent more than a year talking with people, and it’s clear that the knowledge workers are beyond burnout. We are still measuring the lasting impacts of this era-defining crisis that included COVID-19, global conflict, racial injustice, inflation, and climate disasters. An inspection of pre- and post-pandemic mental and physical health reveals signs of collective trauma across groups. We experienced a deeper kind of fatigue that feels almost spiritual in nature. If you are a manager and this sounds like the cry of an entitled employee (stares at Kim K), you are actively choosing not to enjoy the full potential of your team. I like this idea that rest is work, that rest is different from vacation of personal time off, because I’ve noticed how hard it is to actually dedicate time for recovery without using it for travel, visiting family, or the administration of our personal lives. The work of rest involves careful planning, and my co-founders and I have spent the last month preparing. We expect to come back energized, with bolder ideas that can only bloom when we step out of the day-to-day. We believe a great life and great work can coexist. We want to be and feel well so we can do our best work and enjoy the journey. We chose December because it’s the time when everyone starts to check out – processes start to slip, meetings get canceled and rescheduled, we are exhausted from the year and naturally entering a reflective state of mind. So why is it one of the most jam-packed months of the year in terms of meetings and deliverables? Are we so ashamed of our basic human need to rest that we are deliberately creating structures that work against our natural rhythm? In January, I'll share the newest version of Manual, which includes a feature set built for people in transition — whether you've been laid off, recently quit, or are just starting to think about the next thing. Sign up here to be notified of our next drop: https://manual.me/ Wishing you deep rest, meaningful reflections and joyful relaxation this holiday. See you in 2024. m

Really excited to share what i’ve been working on… Over the last year, i’ve spent time thinking about and researching the future of work. I’ve reflected on my own experiences as a Black woman in the workplace and talked with hundreds of leaders and teams from companies across every size and industry. Here’s what i think is most broken: the way we handle the people part of work. the people part is the most important part. It’s the reason we leave jobs. It’s the reason we join them. It’s the reason we engage and the reason we shut down. It’s the thing that brings us energy and the thing that drains us the fastest. we solve for so many other things about work  – where we work, how we work, productivity, efficiency, etc. What I’ve heard is the thing people want most is to be understood and feel understood. A few things stood out to me: --we spend 70% of our lives at work.  It’s the most dominant place and influence in our lives. so you’re experience at work dictates your experience in life.  --of the time we spend at work, ⅔ of it is spent in communication with others – our boss, coworkers, colleagues, teams, partners and vendors.  --the primary way we learn about others is through in-person cues and observations. as we shift to a remote/hybrid first world, getting to know and understand people is going to become much harder. we’ve gained so much with this shift. more freedom, flexibility and time with our favorite people. the answer is not to make everyone go back to work. we think the answer is finding new ways for us to better understand each other no matter if you’re in-person, hybrid or remote. please meet Manual, our new company designed to improve the people part of work. here's how it works today: --build your personal user manual: you know you better than anyone else. share your work style, needs and preferences in an easily shareable way.  --see how you work with others: run collabs…compatibility reports to see how your style and needs align with another --get personalized advice in real time: powered by ai, ask the dynamic communication coach anything about another this has been a wild journey so far and we’re just getting started.  we raised some preseed money and have an incredible cofounding team (🔒 Christopher Grayson, Lexi Nisita, Olivia Chen) who are so smart and the best people. now we need you. we need some beta testers and early users to help us make this great. the product is still basic and messy but we need to start getting feedback from people in the wild. if any of this resonates with you, please click the link and be one of our beta testers. we’d love to meet you and collaborate with you as we build. thank you to every person who has helped us get here. here we go…. m

I'm #hiring! We're still quite early but we're getting some attention and have a lot that needs to be built. I'm looking for a founding #product #engineer to join the team - someone who can not only deliver code but can also wear a product hat and figure out _what_ we should be building too. JD is here - https://lnkd.in/gciiSz-K Let me know if you're interested with a DM :)

This is one of the first examples I've seen of an AI improvement that improves efficiency while also preserving human values. Imagine if every employee in your office came with a user manual. At Movement Strategy, we have these manuals filled out by every onboarding employee. But if I'm going to be honest, they often sit unused. Now, imagine if these manuals were plugged into a Generative AI platform that offered deep insight into how to best interact with them. That’s what Maya Watson's new AI venture Manual does. I think it’s brilliant. It uses AI to provide you with straightforward suggestions on how to communicate, deliver feedback, and navigate complex interactions based on the personal user manual of your colleague. Empathy and communication are essential in a high-performance culture. It creates a better workplace for its employees and, consequently, a superior product or service. Finding the balance between efficiency and empathy in the workplace is incredibly tough. AI tools like Manual will make it easier for workplaces to achieve both. And this is just the beginning.

manual is a new tool for the people part of work. this idea came from our firm belief that people are what make good jobs good, and bad jobs bad. the human part of life at work is why we join companies, and ultimately, why we leave jobs in most cases. that all makes a lot of sense considering we spend 60% of our lives working and 2/3 of our day communicating with others. really smart people have proven that those are great this part of the job advance faster in their careers, make more money and have more influence. But most importantly, getting good at the people part of work makes our working lives better…and don’t we all want to find the joy in our jobs again? we're currently seeking beta testers — learn more about the product and join us at manual.me