Today I think there are no roadmaps as to how to have a good life.
The old rules have disappeared and I was thinking about this the other day that, you know, when
I grew up there was kind of like a roadmap, a simple roadmap that if you went to school
perhaps if you did your masters and you got a good job, you got married, you had kids,
you know, you did your work.
And that was the definition of a good life.
And today I think that things have changed so fast that we don’t have that roadmap
anymore.
One of the things that I ask people to do is deconstruct their life so that they can
see what their life’s made up of.
So deconstructing your life holistically I suggest that you could do it against emotion,
intellect, physical and spirit of your life.
And once you look at those four quadrants it gives you really a sense of your life’s
big picture, like 360 degrees.
And then you could see oh I have a lot of this here and I don’t have a lot of this
here.
There is some repetitions and you start to see patterns.
And once you start to see that the next step is about developing a point of view.
So if you feel that oh, you know, the emotional quadrant for example is not as fulfilling
or rich as I want it to be what I suggest is to maybe think of a metaphor which is one
of the creative tools.
And metaphors are great for helping us imagine things using something that’s familiar to
us.
So maybe if you feel that you don’t have a lot of love in your life maybe think of
a metaphor that’s full of love.
And then using that as a hook imagine how you can bring more love into that.
So one thing that comes to my mind is for example a dinner party might be a great environment
for love and kind of friendship.
And then you could think about well, what’s in a dinner party?
Like who’s bringing the food and how do we share it and people bring gifts and so
could we use some of that to think well more sharing and more giving could be a way to
bring more love into my life.
And the metaphor kind of helps you through that process of thinking about love in a different
way which really what I love about design is it gives you tools and the process to think
about the things you know differently.
Life like a design project is full of constraints and challenges and we can’t have everything
we want.
And often what we want and what we need are opposing.
So design process and tools are actually a great way to think about design and to think
about the life we want with creativity and optimism.