Habits and Annoying Behaviour

• In design leadership, you often deal with stakeholders whose persistent habits frustrate the team. We use specific structures to express recurrent actions and annoying tendencies.
• Structure
• Function
• Example
• will + verb
• Annoying predictable habit
• He will change his mind right before the launch in Seattle.
• be always + -ing
• Continuous irritation at a frequent habit
• She is always second-guessing our wireframes in Boston.
• keep (on) + -ing
• Insistent repetition of an action
• They keep on asking for new features in Austin.
• Remember
• Use 'will' to talk about typical, predictable behavior that causes annoyance.
• Use 'is/are always + -ing' to emphasize how frequently and annoyingly an action happens.
• Use 'keep + -ing' or 'keep on + -ing' for actions that repeat persistently despite requests to stop.
• Examples
• Mark will always request layout tweaks at the very last minute.
• Our client in Chicago is always shifting the project goals.
• They keep sending conflicting feedback from their New York office.
• Common mistakes
• He always changes his mind again and again.
• He is always changing his mind.
• They keep to derail the timeline.
• They keep derailing the timeline.

Complete the sentences

• Why (he (always request)) ____ last-minute updates for our Chicago app?
• The director (keep (flip-flop)) ____ on the color palette in our Seattle studio.
• Whenever we present, Sarah (will (interrupt)) ____ our pitch in Boston.
• Management (be always (shift)) ____ the requirements in Austin.
• They (keep on (second-guess)) ____ the UX research from our Denver team.
• My client in New York (will (call)) ____ late at night with new ideas.

Sources: photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels