In this episode of 5to9, I had a chat with Ximena Vengoechea, a writer, speaker, illustrator, UX researcher, mother, and lover of fiction.

Ximena has always loved bringing design thinking to our everyday world, which led her to spend a decade in the tech industry at companies like Linkedin, Twitter, and Pinterest as a user researcher. During that time she also manifested many side projects such as The Life Audit (which got written about on Life Hacker, CNBC, and INC), while contributing to articles in Fast Company, and many illustration projects. Her side projects led her to author two books - Listen Like You Mean It (which is about building better relationships through listening) and Rest Easy (a book that’s about reclaiming rest in our work-obsessed culture.)

We talked about her early career, why she’s insistent on not picking a lane, the importance of side projects, her experience with burnout and how it led her to write a book, a deep dive into what is rest, why we need rest, how to rest and more!

This is Ximena Vangoechea for 5to9.