Story Telling Tool

Introduction

Redesigning My Life Through Design Thinking

Design thinking can be a fantastic tool in designing ones life.

Design thinking has helped me create new products, imagine new retail concepts, & solve other  abstract challenges. It has also helped me to design a better life for myself. In fact, I believe design  thinking may have helped save my life and that it has the power to save the lives of others.

Design thinking didn’t help me survive death from an airplane crash or a car accident or falling off a  cliff. What it did do, was help me address a much slower but equally lethal health threat: the heavy  stress from feeling a loss of control in my life.

Challenge  Sometime ago, I went through a period of massive change. I was promoted into a position of much  greater responsibility at work. Concurrently, I was also navigating life as a new father to my four  children. These were changes I experienced while living in a new city with few friends and no family in  the area to lean on.

I became overly stressed. I quickly found myself feeling like I wasn’t excelling at the things that  mattered most to me. I started to “rationalize out” important aspects of my life. I stopped exercising.  I stopped watching what I was eating and started “stress” eating. I became more distant from my  closest of friends. I stopped taking the time to reflect deeply, to have meaningful conversations with  friends & family and also to do the things that made me happy.

I started feeling like I was losing myself. I felt suffocated from the weight of stress, the feeling of  dissonance from not excelling in the important parts of my life. I felt disconnected and alone.

I was also constantly tired. I went through a vicious cycle of not sleeping well, to overly-caffeinating  myself during the day to compensate for this lack of sleep, back to not being able to sleep when it was  nighttime again.

I was far from my “best-self” and I knew that I urgently needed to make a change.

I didn’t realize it until months later, that I was about to use design thinking to redesign my life.    Application & Insights – A Great Starting Point for Redesigning my Life  I knew I had to make an immediate change and I began a quick, yet intense evaluation of my life to  understand why I was feeling such loss of control. It was time for me to do what I always preached  was important to do for others but had clearly failed to do for myself: empathize.

Self-empathy sounded like it should be easy; I was already feeling sorry for myself which seemed like  a great start. However, I was only scratching the surface and not truly understanding why I was feeling

the way I was. As a brand marketer working with consumers, I’ve been trained to use tools like  interviews and ethnographies to gain empathy but wasn’t used to conducting a similar exercise with  myself.

I started a personal journal to build deeper insights into my own behavior and state-of-being. While I  felt I already knew who I was and what was important to me, I found that journaling myself helped to  surface insights and themes that I was not acutely aware of until they were painfully obvious on a  sheet of paper.

I put no restrictions on my writing; I wrote down any thought or feeling that came to mind without  editing. It felt scary at first, even knowing that I planned to keep my journal private. However, I quickly  found journaling to be mentally freeing and an activity I grew to cherish.

My journal surfaced a number of needs. The need for the support of family & close friends. The need  for rest and taking care of my health. The need to let go of long-lasting burdens. The need to live a life  of courage and without fear. The need to dream and push myself.

I synthesized the insights from my journal to better understand what was driving my needs and define  the specific problems (aka. “life design challenges”) that I needed to address immediately.

Approach

I began brainstorming ideas as to how I might address my challenges. I listed each challenge at the  top of its own sheet of paper and tried to generate as many different ideas for potential solutions as  I could.

I chose to ideate by myself first, as this “design challenge” was deeply personal and I didn’t feel  comfortable sharing the entirety of what I felt with most people. After my initial brainstorm, I did  choose to supplement it with some ideas from a few folks whom I believed excelled in my target  problem areas.

I paired some of the key insights from my journal with my favorite ideas from my ideation, and put  them into a notebook that I frequently use for ideation and deep reflection. This became my working  prototype or my so-called “playbook for my life”.

My prototype playbook had some straight-forward guidance for simplifying my life including:

▪  One cup of coffee per day, no caffeine after 4pm

▪  Get 6+ hours of sleep per night

▪  No bright lights/phones while laying down in bed before bedtime

One of the best parts of using design thinking for your own life is that you can implement each stage  immediately. There is no organizational buy-in, no coordination of facilities, participants, or  workshops. The only buy-in and resources needed come from you.

I couldn’t wait to test my prototype and see if my solutions were actionable and addressing the right  challenges in my life. After all my self-reflection & ideation, I couldn’t wait to “design-do” and hopefully  regain control of my life.

Outcome  I actually started feeling better and more in control even before I tested my prototype playbook. My  journal helped me to release the tension in my mind and understand what was going on in my head,  while the ideation helped me feel like I was proactively taking action and in control.

I was amazed with how quickly I saw results after implementing my prototype. Simple steps like  eliminating PM caffeine intake and developing an AM/night-time routine paid off immediately. I  instantly felt better and started sleeping more soundly within days. I also felt less stressed at work  and realized for the first time how much excess caffeine was exacerbating my general feelings of  stress.

There were many other components of my prototype playbook geared at simplifying my life (the  above is just a very small sample). Many of the components I’ve kept, some I’ve eliminated or  continued to tweak.

Design thinking helped me regain control of my life and I believe it can provide similar results in the  lives of others which is why I feel compelled to share my story. I hope I’ve convinced you in the role  that design thinking can play in designing your life, whether it’s a better career, a better lifestyle, a  better anything.

