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. 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 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, to do the things that made me happy.

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. My journal helped give me the structure and insights I needed to  help clearly identify my problems. 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.

Sampling of ideas that surfaced from my ideation:

▪ Don’t do it alone, lean on others, especially close friends and family

▪ Put myself out there with my friends, even if I’m worried about being

judged or misunderstood

▪ Eliminate “ankle-biter” activities and either structure a way to get them

done through automation or delegate. Make some hard decisions and cut,  cut, cut.

▪ Develop a purely functional AM routine that prepares me to tackle the

day and saves my decision-making stamina for the more important  decisions beyond what to eat for breakfast

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 pretty  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

▪ 10,000 Fitbit steps a day or equivalent level of movement

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.

