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Speaker 1: of encouragement for me, go to when you feed dot
Speaker 1: net slash text, What is that voice in your head
Speaker 1: telling you that is so sure that you need to
Speaker 1: do something right the first time that it's going to
Speaker 1: interrupt that process of just creating something Welcome to the
Speaker 1: one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the
Speaker 1: importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think ring true.
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Sarah Stein Greenberg, the
Speaker 1: executive director of the Hasso Platner Institute of Design. Sarah
Speaker 1: helps lead the D School and interdisciplinary Institute at Stanford
Speaker 1: that nurtures innovators and spreads design thinking. Today, Eric and
Speaker 1: Sarah discussed her book, Creative Acts for Curious People, How
Speaker 1: to Think, Create, and Lead in unconventional Ways. Hi, Sarah,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Thanks so much. I'm really happy
Speaker 1: to be here. I'm excited to have you on. We're
Speaker 1: going to be discussing your book, Creative Acts for Curious People,
Speaker 1: How to Think, create and Lead in unconventional Ways. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, we'll start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandparent who's talking with their
Speaker 1: grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks
Speaker 1: up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins, and
Speaker 1: the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by asking you what that parable means
Speaker 1: to you in your life. And in the work that
Speaker 1: you do well. I'm very drawn to this parable, and
Speaker 1: I also have some mixed reactions to it. Part of
Speaker 1: it that's really compelling is it actually really conjures for me,
Speaker 1: like very deep memories of my grandfather putting me to
Speaker 1: bed as a kid, when when he and my grandmother
Speaker 1: would visit and singing me songs from the twenties and
Speaker 1: thirties from his childhood. And there's something about just thinking
Speaker 1: about the way in which wisdom is conveyed in different
Speaker 1: ways and passed down through generations that is really beautifully encapsulated,
Speaker 1: even in this very short parable. The mixed part of
Speaker 1: my reaction is the essence of this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: good versus evil. It seems so neat to me, and
Speaker 1: that's part of what's compelling, right, It's so neatly packaged.
Speaker 1: But in life, I feel like sometimes things just don't
Speaker 1: present as one thing or the other thing. And the
Speaker 1: way in which this really comes up in my work
Speaker 1: is that oftentimes when you're trying to address some kind
Speaker 1: of creative challenge, it's not clear what the answer is, right,
Speaker 1: There's not an obvious path, it's not an obvious choice
Speaker 1: between the right way or the wrong way, And we
Speaker 1: talk about that a lot with our students around. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you navigate ambiguous, uncertain challenges in a really
Speaker 1: creative and resilient way. That is for me, one of
Speaker 1: the dilemmas that this parable presents, right, is that we actually,
Speaker 1: as humans, we want things to be so crystal clear,
Speaker 1: and yet often they don't present that way, and we
Speaker 1: have to actually find a third way, or a fourth way,
Speaker 1: or a fifth way to navigate through some kind of
Speaker 1: tricky challenge. And that's particularly true if you're trying to
Speaker 1: come up with something new, right, if you're trying to
Speaker 1: be innovative and creative. So again, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: I really love the sort of optimism of this parable
Speaker 1: that it that it should be so easy to tell
Speaker 1: the difference. And then I'm reminded that often times life
Speaker 1: just does not make it that easy. Yeah, life certainly
Speaker 1: does not make it easy. What you're saying makes me
Speaker 1: think of another famous piece of wisdom, which is the
Speaker 1: serenity prayer. Right, you should accept the things you can't
Speaker 1: change and change the things you can. That sounds great,
Speaker 1: but the problem is the boy is it hard to know? Right?
Speaker 1: That Gray area in the middle is where the wisdom is.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, and navigating that space and understanding
Speaker 1: your disposition to that gray area and what that does
Speaker 1: to you emotionally. That's actually a really important part of
Speaker 1: learning how to kind of master your own creative abilities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I want to get to the role of emotion
Speaker 1: in design because you talk a lot about it. But
Speaker 1: let's start off by talking about what design is, because
Speaker 1: design is sort of at the heart of this book.
Speaker 1: It's at the heart of your work. And people may
Speaker 1: have a very limited understanding of design, like I design
Speaker 1: a web page, I design a chair, But you and
Speaker 1: your students, you do way way more than that. Can
Speaker 1: you share a little bit about what design means to
Speaker 1: you and how far it stretches. Yeah, design is one
Speaker 1: of those things that you know, as so many things
Speaker 1: are changing and evolving in our world, design really is
Speaker 1: a practice and a field that is changing quite rapidly
Speaker 1: at the moment. And you know, for many, many years,
Speaker 1: I think most of us would have said, like, design
Speaker 1: is about a chair, or it's about how the space
Speaker 1: in your room feels once you design all your furniture,
Speaker 1: but increasingly still means those things but it also means
Speaker 1: thinking about the design of the experience that you might
Speaker 1: have at your local grocery store, or thinking about the
Speaker 1: design of the system that is underpinning how we call
Speaker 1: up substitute teachers, which is one of the examples that
Speaker 1: I talk about in the book, and those are places
Speaker 1: where creativity and design practices can actually really make a
Speaker 1: customers experience better, a teacher's, or a kid's experience better
Speaker 1: in a school. And what we see happening in the
Speaker 1: world of design is that people are taking these same
Speaker 1: principles and practices that have served more visual or aesthetic
Speaker 1: design so well for so long and figuring out, well,
Speaker 1: how do we actually bring those into more complex social
Speaker 1: sector challenges or larger scale business challenges, and even into
Speaker 1: the personal realm thinking about how your family might decide
Speaker 1: to design your vacation. Yeah, I was impressed in the
Speaker 1: book about the scope of the sort of projects that
Speaker 1: your students were working on. Do you want to pick
Speaker 1: one that might be a favorite of yours to talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit just to frame this up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that sounds great. Let me talk a little bit more
Speaker 1: about substitute teaching, because that's one of the stories that
Speaker 1: I share in the book. So we had a wonderful
Speaker 1: fellow a few years ago named Jill Violet and Jill
Speaker 1: is best known for starting an organization called play Works,
Speaker 1: and so she has been in that kind of education
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs space for a long time. And play Works is
Speaker 1: a really cool operation where when kids experience very structured play,
Speaker 1: well run play and games, they learn all kinds of
Speaker 1: leadership skills, they learn about conflict resolution, but oftentimes recesses
Speaker 1: like the thing that teachers don't want to deal with.
Speaker 1: It's like the extra part of the job. So Playworks
Speaker 1: provides trained coaches who can really show up and run
Speaker 1: recess in a way that really benefits kids and it
Speaker 1: really benefits the schools and the teachers. And Jill noticed,
Speaker 1: the way she describes it is that a certain problem
Speaker 1: was following her around for many years. And that problem
Speaker 1: was she would sometimes get asked by principles, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: we had a substitute who didn't show up today, or
Speaker 1: a teacher who got sick at the last minute, Can
Speaker 1: I borrow one of your coaches to be a sub
Speaker 1: And so she realized, like there's something kind of weird
Speaker 1: and interest thing going on where this problem just keeps
Speaker 1: coming up. So she decided to take a year, and
Speaker 1: she spent her year at the d School really learning
Speaker 1: about and investigating like what can we do to improve
Speaker 1: the systems and the design of substitute teaching. And at
Speaker 1: first she thought it's about the pipeline, right, there aren't
Speaker 1: enough qualified people who are coming into substitute teaching. Then
Speaker 1: she realized, like, well, there's a piece of it that's
Speaker 1: really about the training that may be in some places
Speaker 1: there are lots of folks who want to sub, but
Speaker 1: they don't know how to run a classroom, right, they
Speaker 1: have other skills. And one of the areas that she
Speaker 1: uncovered was that there wasn't a reliable way in most
Speaker 1: schools for the teacher to hand off his or her
Speaker 1: lesson plans for the day to the sub, and then
Speaker 1: the sub would arrive in the morning and be like
Speaker 1: totally disoriented and nobody knew where the plans were and
Speaker 1: nobody knew what they were supposed to do. And that
Speaker 1: is not a good experience, right to feel very underprepared
Speaker 1: when you're showing up for a day of work. And
Speaker 1: so the problem in some ways was less about recruitment
Speaker 1: of subs and more about retention. And so by thinking
Speaker 1: carefully about how do we improve the experience of the
Speaker 1: subs getting the right information they need, knowing where to park,
Speaker 1: like really being welcomed into the school, that could lead
Speaker 1: to higher retention rates for those substitutes and a better
Speaker 1: experience for everyone. And what's interesting about this is like
Speaker 1: sometimes when you start to poke at a problem, you
Speaker 1: find out like, oh, it's really quite significant. So kids
Speaker 1: in the US spend up to ten percent of their
Speaker 1: time with a substitute teacher. That's just kind of a
Speaker 1: normal statistic, and so there's a very significant role that
Speaker 1: subs play. And Jill really felt like this is a
Speaker 1: very worthwhile challenge to be working on that you wouldn't
Speaker 1: normally think about from a design perspective, from an experience perspective.
Speaker 1: But by applying some of these same tools that are
Speaker 1: in the book, she came up with all of these
Speaker 1: interesting ideas and has been testing and piloting better ways
Speaker 1: to train subs, better ways to recruit and retain subs
Speaker 1: um and actually launch an organization called Substantial to do
Speaker 1: just that. You sort of mentioned emotion there a little bit,
Speaker 1: and you tell a story. It's not a story. I guess, well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's a story about something that really happens
Speaker 1: about a group that was doing Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to pronounce, is it NeuRA? That's exactly right, new Health,
Speaker 1: new health, And I'll let you tell that in a minute.
Speaker 1: But you say, in that new a journey, like most
Speaker 1: design and most learning experiences, has emotion running right through it.
Speaker 1: It's the electrical current that changed the insights and powered
Speaker 1: the supportive team dynamic and sparked the hope lit by
Speaker 1: the initial positive feedback to the early ideas. And it
Speaker 1: was really interesting to me how emotion allowed them to
Speaker 1: reframe the problem statement, Yeah, that's right, And and reframing
Speaker 1: is one of those key ways to think about that
Speaker 1: gray area that we were talking about earlier. Rights like,
Speaker 1: oftentimes the way that a problem gets handed to you
Speaker 1: doesn't turn out to be really the problem that is
Speaker 1: worth solving, and you are the one, as a designer
Speaker 1: who often has to uncover that and figure that out.
Speaker 1: So in the case of the New Health team, we
Speaker 1: had a group of four students who were working in
Speaker 1: partnership with the hospital in southern India, and this hospital
Speaker 1: has an amazing mission which is about delivering very high
Speaker 1: quality care but at low cost and a broad scale.
Speaker 1: So the students went in thinking, with the original problems,
Speaker 1: we're going to be about efficiency or reducing cost, or
Speaker 1: changing some process to be both efficient and cost effective.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that they noticed when they
Speaker 1: arrived to do interviews and observations and really connect with
Speaker 1: the people who were at the heart of the situation
Speaker 1: there is that there were lots of folks who were waiting,
Speaker 1: and like in all hospitals everywhere in the world, people
Speaker 1: were waiting in waiting rooms, but they were also waiting
Speaker 1: in the hallways and outside, and the students got very
Speaker 1: curious about what was happening here, and they learned that
Speaker 1: a lot of the folks were waiting were extended family
Speaker 1: members of the patients, and this was a cardiac care hospital,
Speaker 1: so the patients had really gone through something quite serious,
Speaker 1: usually heart surgery, and there was a lot of anxiety
Speaker 1: and fear that the students really started picking up from
Speaker 1: the interviews that they did and the conversations they were having,
Speaker 1: and they realized that the family members just didn't have
Speaker 1: enough information. They didn't know what was going on, and
Speaker 1: they were really worried about, Hey, what's going to happen
Speaker 1: to my beloved father or aunt or sister once we
Speaker 1: take them home from the hospital. And so the students
Speaker 1: came back from this research trip and they had a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of ideas for all the challenges that they
Speaker 1: could solve, but they just couldn't let go of this
Speaker 1: really emotional experience that they had had connecting with people
Speaker 1: who were right in the midst of you know, like
Speaker 1: maybe the worst experience that they had had so far
Speaker 1: in their lives, like really painful, you know, challenging emotions
Speaker 1: and dealing with healthcare is often one of the most
Speaker 1: stressful experiences you can have. So the students really resolved, like,
Speaker 1: that's the problem we want to address, right, we want
Speaker 1: to actually figure out what could we design that could
Speaker 1: alleviate the suffering that we're seeing that maybe could actually
Speaker 1: be addressed with just a small amount of information. And
Speaker 1: so they started experimenting and creating these ideas for training
Speaker 1: videos that would better inform the family members how to
Speaker 1: take care of loved one who had just had surgery
Speaker 1: once you return home, things like, you know, all of
Speaker 1: the things you have to do to make sure that
Speaker 1: a wound stays clean, or that you're understanding what are
Speaker 1: symptoms that might cause you to have to return to
Speaker 1: the hospital. And really the idea was, if we can
Speaker 1: equip folks with some basic understanding of how to be
Speaker 1: part of the care process once someone comes home, they
Speaker 1: will be much more empowered to actually make a difference
Speaker 1: and to reduce some of that anxiety that they were feeling.
Speaker 1: So that was the hypothesis. So the students designed these
Speaker 1: training programs, they went back, they really worked closely in
Speaker 1: partnership with some of the nurses within the hospital, and
Speaker 1: they started piloting and they did rigorously analyze, you know,
Speaker 1: is this actually working. And what they found is that
Speaker 1: not only was the anxiety substantially reduced for the family members,
Speaker 1: but they were actually reducing the rate of hospital readmissions
Speaker 1: and of post surgical complications through this training. And so
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, they had, you know, really stumbled
Speaker 1: on this very low cost but very effective way of
Speaker 1: bringing the family members into the process of being part
Speaker 1: of the care team. And that's a really different approach
Speaker 1: than what they had thought they were there to maybe address.
Speaker 1: But they found this tremendous need that was worth working on.
Speaker 1: And that happened because they tuned in to that strong
Speaker 1: signal of the emotional need that was being expressed. And
Speaker 1: that is often what we find that we want to
Speaker 1: direct our students to pay attention to. You know, students
Speaker 1: can be very logical, very intellectual, very smart, but the
Speaker 1: thing that you're often needing to pay attention to in
Speaker 1: design is like, well, what feels weird or wrong or
Speaker 1: good or exciting? And paying attention to that stream of data,
Speaker 1: that emotional data is so so critical and sign Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such a great story. And I wish that the
Speaker 1: hospitals here in the u S. At least the one
Speaker 1: in Columbus. I wish they did that because I've had
Speaker 1: to take my mom home from the hospital several times
Speaker 1: and pour through page I'm like, what am I supposed
Speaker 1: to do? Like what this is? Could this be any
Speaker 1: more cryptic? It's a global problem, right, and it's really
Speaker 1: a shift in thinking about Wow, you know, family members
Speaker 1: have the biggest steak in the healthcare outcomes, right, and
Speaker 1: yet we're often not actually seen as part of that
Speaker 1: care team that is going to get to you know,
Speaker 1: positive outcomes for our loved ones. Yeah, you talk about
Speaker 1: your approach to design. You say, our approach to design
Speaker 1: brings productive creative tensions, an emphasis on human nous in
Speaker 1: a time of technological prowess, in embrace of naive on
Speaker 1: prejudiced questions in a sector that specializes in expert answers,
Speaker 1: and a Joscelyne of hierarchy and status to break down
Speaker 1: barriers across fields and amplify collaboration between unexpected allies. And
Speaker 1: so much of that, and what you've said so far
Speaker 1: speaks to me about a principle that is fundamental in
Speaker 1: my spiritual practice of Zen, which is beginner's mind. How
Speaker 1: do I approach this from open and beginner's mind, And
Speaker 1: a lot of the practices in the book I felt
Speaker 1: like also helped to do that right there, a way
Speaker 1: of sort of clearing the slate a little bit. That's
Speaker 1: a beautiful way to describe it. And I think that
Speaker 1: one of the ways that we talk about that in
Speaker 1: design is about the curse of knowledge or the curse
Speaker 1: of expertise, and that comes from a couple of places.
Speaker 1: One is it comes from your own sense of your
Speaker 1: lived experience and the ways in which you've seen certain
Speaker 1: challenges addressed or needs that you might have. So when
Speaker 1: you're working in what we call human centered design, really
Speaker 1: trying to help people design for others, right, So you
Speaker 1: kind of have to get your own experiences, your own biases,
Speaker 1: your own needs out of the way to clear that way.
Speaker 1: So you're really tuning in and listening to other people's experiences.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean you're negating your own experiences, but you're
Speaker 1: really making sure that you're other focused as well. And
Speaker 1: then the second piece is that you know, we've all
Speaker 1: just like accumulated ideas about like either what the problem is, right,
Speaker 1: So it's like, the problem is efficiency in the hospital, Well,
Speaker 1: that is maybe a challenge, but there might also be
Speaker 1: other problems, And so staying open to what you might
Speaker 1: notice that has been overlooked or what you might see
Speaker 1: if you have those fresh eyes, if you have that
Speaker 1: beginner's mind, that can be a source of tremendous opportunity.
Speaker 1: And then also thinking about how do we not jump
Speaker 1: to the first solution that comes to mind? Right, That
Speaker 1: first solution is usually like a thing you've already seen, right,
Speaker 1: or it's the conventional wisdom. And so making sure that
Speaker 1: you have practices that push you to explore the second
Speaker 1: and third and you know two hundred idea that you
Speaker 1: might come up with. That's often where you find yourself
Speaker 1: into much more novel territory. But what we have this
Speaker 1: desire as human beings to get there quickly right, and
Speaker 1: to to get to closure right, to actually get to
Speaker 1: the solution. And so a lot of what we do
Speaker 1: with our students and our teams is you know, one
Speaker 1: going into the problem space with the open mind, and
Speaker 1: then to preparing ourselves to not you know, leap into
Speaker 1: that solution mindset with the first thing that we see. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so hard to do because, like you said, I
Speaker 1: think there's a natural desire to be smart and be right.
Speaker 1: You know, if I can come up with a solution
Speaker 1: very quickly, I'm smart, I'm right, I'm good. So there's
Speaker 1: that pressure, and then there's just the very real pressures
Speaker 1: of time, you know, pressures of time of like get
Speaker 1: this thing done. Something I noticed recently because I design
Speaker 1: online programs and online workshops, and I realized recently I
Speaker 1: love to get feedback from my partner in the business
Speaker 1: in life, Ginny. She's incredibly helpful. However, if I wait
Speaker 1: to bring her in near the end, I am very
Speaker 1: unreceptive to feedback. I'm more attached to my ideas and
Speaker 1: b I think I'm almost done, and once I think
Speaker 1: I'm almost done, I have no desire to undo. And
Speaker 1: so a realization for me was, if I really want
Speaker 1: her feedback, I need to bring her in much earlier
Speaker 1: in the process and then it's much more of a
Speaker 1: co design. That is stunning self awareness, I have to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, really, you just put your finger on something
Speaker 1: that we see over and over in terms of that
Speaker 1: dynamic of when are you open and when are you
Speaker 1: actually closed? Even if you're asking for feedback towards the
Speaker 1: end of a process, you're really seeking validation. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: exactly it right, Like you actually don't want to hear
Speaker 1: something that's like going to challenge the fact that you
Speaker 1: might have proceeded in a direction that like isn't the
Speaker 1: same vision that someone else would have. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that the thing that you created isn't good or isn't
Speaker 1: going to work, but it also might not be the
Speaker 1: most extraordinary thing you could have designed. And it's very
Speaker 1: hard to take that in if you have already mentally
Speaker 1: shifted into the like I'm done, isn't it great? Doesn't
Speaker 1: everybody agree, So really thinking about preparing yourself for how
Speaker 1: do you be open when you're seeking feedback? And actually
Speaker 1: we have some very practical ways of doing that in design.
Speaker 1: So one of the just core practices that we talked
Speaker 1: about is, you know, show your work early and often right,
Speaker 1: so don't wait until the end. And really to do that,
Speaker 1: what you often have to do is to figure out,
Speaker 1: even before you're ready, how do you put your idea
Speaker 1: into a form that might be share able. So it's
Speaker 1: like if you are designing a website, instead of designing
Speaker 1: the website and then getting feedback, and maybe you're still
Speaker 1: like you haven't settled on the final font, but it's
Speaker 1: like kind of done, make three different sketches of what
Speaker 1: that front page could look like and show those to
Speaker 1: someone very early on in the process, and that will
Speaker 1: both signal to the person, I haven't invested too much
Speaker 1: time in this, I really want your feedback. But then
Speaker 1: also by having multiple directions that you're showing you yourself,
Speaker 1: have the opportunity to receive both positive and negative feedback
Speaker 1: about each one. And then it's not like thumbs thumbs down,
Speaker 1: I'm a good person or a bad person. I'm a
Speaker 1: good designer or a bad designer, you're actually giving yourself
Speaker 1: an opportunity to learn. And then, of course you could
Speaker 1: recombine some of those best ideas into something new, or
Speaker 1: you could really get clarity about the direction that you
Speaker 1: want to pursue from that. But being able to translate
Speaker 1: your early ideas into a form that's shareable is that
Speaker 1: key skill. So we talk about that as low resolution prototyping,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the wonky way to think about that.
Speaker 1: Keeping things at a very rough and ready stage, and
Speaker 1: you can build your idea into legos. You could do
Speaker 1: it with a quick sketch, you can do it with
Speaker 1: a little skit. These are always to keep the resolution
Speaker 1: the fidelity very low, and that makes people more likely
Speaker 1: to give you honest feedback and it helps you to
Speaker 1: be ready to receive that. Yeah, that's a great way
Speaker 1: of thinking about it. And I think that's the challenge
Speaker 1: I have is I haven't quite figured out where is
Speaker 1: the right point to show my work, where there's enough
Speaker 1: there to show but not so much that I've moved
Speaker 1: in to get in attached. I'm still learning that. It's
Speaker 1: a definite ill. I ordered another copy of the book
Speaker 1: because the exercises are so great and I want to
Speaker 1: get to them in a second. But there's just a
Speaker 1: couple other things that I wanted to hit before we
Speaker 1: get there, And one is I don't think this is
Speaker 1: a new statement. People are hearing this more and more,
Speaker 1: but I don't think we can say it enough. Which
Speaker 1: is knowing how to learn is the fundamental ability we
Speaker 1: need to cultivate in order to thrive in the twenty
Speaker 1: one century. So how does design help us learn better? Well,
Speaker 1: I think it really starts with that beginner's mind that
Speaker 1: you described right. It is going into a space where
Speaker 1: you want to be an expert, you want to come
Speaker 1: out with something innovative, but you're really starting with a
Speaker 1: learning posture. And that's quite hard to do, as as
Speaker 1: we've talked about, for reasons of ego, for reasons of
Speaker 1: you know, wanting to be accepted within your team. But
Speaker 1: it is critically important because if you don't have that
Speaker 1: openness and that learning posture, you are very likely to
Speaker 1: just replicate something else that's out there to kind of
Speaker 1: see things in the same way that they've been seen.
Speaker 1: It's challenging and ootional practice, but that is that core underpinning.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that design is so helpful
Speaker 1: for is that despite the fact that you're saying at
Speaker 1: the outset, I don't know the answer, you have a way,
Speaker 1: you have a process, you have a set of practices
Speaker 1: to start to get closer and closer to that answer.
Speaker 1: And so I think the binary framing is like, well,
Speaker 1: either you know because you're the expert, or you don't know.
Speaker 1: And what design says is like, well, together we can
Speaker 1: uncover that knowledge. We can build something new, we can
Speaker 1: learn alongside each other and find a new way to
Speaker 1: do that thing that we're all hopeful for. So that
Speaker 1: idea of a collaborative process or an individual process where
Speaker 1: you can know what to do when you don't know
Speaker 1: the answer, right, And for us a lot of times
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you go observe the situation, right like
Speaker 1: our students did with that in that hospital. You learn
Speaker 1: as much about the context, but then you treat that
Speaker 1: as information but not truth, right, because you want to
Speaker 1: be able to uncover maybe what about that is, you know,
Speaker 1: assumptions and conventional wisdom versus the constraints that you're going
Speaker 1: to accept, and through those processes connecting with people, learning
Speaker 1: about the context. You start to make your way towards
Speaker 1: the moment when you're going to say, Okay, now I
Speaker 1: know enough about this, and I'm going to frame that
Speaker 1: problem that I want to solve. Now I understand that
Speaker 1: with substitute teaching, it's about retention, not just about recruitment. Okay,
Speaker 1: That's where I'm going to focus. And that clarity, then
Speaker 1: is what where you jump off into coming up with
Speaker 1: the ideas, testing them out and getting feedback early, and
Speaker 1: then continuing to refine them. And something about having the
Speaker 1: knowledge of that process and those practices is what then
Speaker 1: can give you the confidence to say I don't know
Speaker 1: the answer. We're starting out without knowing, right, and that's
Speaker 1: what you need as a team to be able to
Speaker 1: navigate those foggy, uncertain problems. You say somewhere that the
Speaker 1: journey from not knowing to knowing is every design project
Speaker 1: in a nutshell. That's right. We're starting over here, we
Speaker 1: don't know, and we eventually do, and there's a process
Speaker 1: by which we get there. Yeah, And I have to say,
Speaker 1: one of my colleagues, Laticia Britos Cavaliero, said, you know
Speaker 1: you're never going to get to knowing at the end,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yeah, you're totally right. It's a
Speaker 1: going to get You're going to know more right at
Speaker 1: some juncture, you've got to design something that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And actually, one of the questions I get asked the
Speaker 1: most is, well, you know you're talking about design. Is
Speaker 1: this iterative process where you come up with an idea
Speaker 1: and then you test it, and then you improve it,
Speaker 1: and then you go back and you test it again,
Speaker 1: then you prove it. How do you know when you're done?
Speaker 1: And of course the real answer is you never actually
Speaker 1: know right. You might have some constraint, you might have
Speaker 1: some deadline that you need to hit, and so you say, well,
Speaker 1: this is where our stopping point is. But if you
Speaker 1: think about even that thing that you release as just
Speaker 1: a later stage prototype, you're going to keep learning about
Speaker 1: it once you send it out into the world, And
Speaker 1: in some ways, actually it's your responsibility to keep learning
Speaker 1: about it. Is it actually hitting the mark? Is it
Speaker 1: serving people the way that I thought it would. Is
Speaker 1: it creating some kind of weird, unintended consequence that I
Speaker 1: didn't mean? Right? So that question about like when are
Speaker 1: you done? When is it perfect? Again? Like it's a
Speaker 1: journey even after you have released something into the world. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: constraint is usually what causes done in my life. It's
Speaker 1: just like, well, okay has to be Yeah, And those
Speaker 1: deadlines can be so helpful to write because they can
Speaker 1: kind of force you to stop being the perfectionist and
Speaker 1: seeking that sort of ultimate validation or that final piece
Speaker 1: of information and just actually get something out in the
Speaker 1: world that then you can continue to learn from. Right,
Speaker 1: And constraint is often just a helpful tool in general
Speaker 1: and in design. You know, some constraints can be very helpful.
Speaker 1: So another thing you said, this speaks a little bit
Speaker 1: to what we've we've talked about, but I love this line.
Speaker 1: A tool or a practice by itself is just a
Speaker 1: way to start. It can eventually be overused, misused, or forgotten.
Speaker 1: Say a little bit more about that. So I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've seen really happen as
Speaker 1: design has become more popular and stretched and used in
Speaker 1: all different places is that, you know, people want that
Speaker 1: roadmap that's sort of like, well, what's that process that
Speaker 1: I'm just going to use over and over because you know,
Speaker 1: I've used it over here in this challenge and now
Speaker 1: I want to tackle it over here and that challenge,
Speaker 1: and often the tendency is like, well, let me just
Speaker 1: repeat the exact same steps that I did before, But
Speaker 1: that doesn't work right because those steps are based on
Speaker 1: some more fundamental idea. So you might have figured out, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know how to create a really open ended interview,
Speaker 1: and I'm great at interviewing, and I can come up
Speaker 1: with all kinds of really interesting insights along with the
Speaker 1: person that I'm interviewing, and that's how I'm getting all
Speaker 1: the new knowledge and ideas about, you know, what we
Speaker 1: might design. But actually, in some cases, what you really
Speaker 1: need to do is both interview, but you also need
Speaker 1: to do an immersion and you also need to understand
Speaker 1: the whole system, and maybe you also need to really
Speaker 1: collaborate in a different way with folks who have been
Speaker 1: experiencing those same problems for many years. And so you
Speaker 1: need to be able to think about, well, what's the
Speaker 1: underlying goal of such and such a tool, like the
Speaker 1: goal of getting new insights understanding from you know, other
Speaker 1: people's perspective, same goal, but the actual tools or the
Speaker 1: practices might need to vary. And so that's actually one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that in this particular book, I don't
Speaker 1: offer sort of a like step by step process, right,
Speaker 1: but I try to help people see, well, the fundamental
Speaker 1: idea behind this whole set of practices is about tuning
Speaker 1: up your collaboration or about how you learn from other
Speaker 1: people and the context that they're in. And you may
Speaker 1: need to vary the particular tool that you're using in
Speaker 1: any given case and even the sequence in which you're
Speaker 1: approaching your design challenge. And that's where start to get
Speaker 1: to this level of fluency of being able to transfer,
Speaker 1: you know, how you're working creatively from one place to another,
Speaker 1: from one part of your life to another. And you know,
Speaker 1: I had this hope that like nobody uses the particular
Speaker 1: activities that are in this book exactly as they've been written, right,
Speaker 1: like people should, and I hope they do adapt them
Speaker 1: and think about the ways in which they need to
Speaker 1: be stretched or you know, iterated to really work in
Speaker 1: their own context. That's a win. Yeah, it's so interesting.
Speaker 1: The same holds true and sort of the coaching and
Speaker 1: personal development and contemplative practice world is that things change.
Speaker 1: You know, we find a tool that works for us
Speaker 1: for a little while, and then it doesn't anymore, which
Speaker 1: can be incredibly frustrating and we just keep doing it.
Speaker 1: Or this tool works for this person but not this person,
Speaker 1: you know. Or I tried this thing once before three
Speaker 1: years ago, it didn't work for me, but now for
Speaker 1: some reason, I'm open to it and it works. So
Speaker 1: it is this experimentation of you know that a tool
Speaker 1: is just a way to start I think that's a
Speaker 1: great way of saying it. That's right. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like you get that feedback to the tool itself, right,
Speaker 1: and that's a part of that journey. So we we
Speaker 1: somebody talk about that as like designing your design work,
Speaker 1: which is kind of like meta but thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: not only am I gonna design the service or the
Speaker 1: product or the experience at the other end, but I'm
Speaker 1: even thinking about what's the right process, what are the
Speaker 1: right set of tools? How do I adapt those tools
Speaker 1: for this particular challenge that I'm working on. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of an advanced skill, right, So I do offer
Speaker 1: one of those examples towards the end of the book
Speaker 1: around how do you frame and scope a challenge? We
Speaker 1: were talking about constraints and one of the things you
Speaker 1: need to learn is like bringing in constraints. Right. It's
Speaker 1: actually it's kind of antithetical to working creatively to just
Speaker 1: be like we could do absolutely anything, right. Well know,
Speaker 1: you kind of need to know like who am I
Speaker 1: designing for? What's the context? Is this meant to be
Speaker 1: a short term fix or a long term solution? And
Speaker 1: all of those are going to give you the constraints
Speaker 1: that then help you be more creative. That's kind of
Speaker 1: an advanced skill, right, That's when you're starting to get
Speaker 1: into that you're designing your own design work area. But
Speaker 1: that's where you're thinking like a toolmaker, not just a
Speaker 1: tool user, right, And that's again where you start to
Speaker 1: get that fluency in that mastery of the process. Let's
Speaker 1: move into some of the exercises. You have quite an
Speaker 1: index of things in here. You know, there's I don't know,
Speaker 1: I didn't count, but let's say twenty different broad topics
Speaker 1: that index the exercises, and so what exercise might show
Speaker 1: up under multiple different topics. But let's start with the
Speaker 1: first one, which is see things in a new way.
Speaker 1: Because I am a big believer in this, and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna in our Spiritual Habits program that I'll teach this
Speaker 1: weekend Our topic is called no Ordinary Moments, and it's
Speaker 1: about how do I see more of what's actually in
Speaker 1: front of me? So will you pick an exercise from
Speaker 1: that section that you particularly like and describe it to us? Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm happy to There are so many powerful ones in
Speaker 1: seeing things in a new way. And you know, we
Speaker 1: talk about often great designers kind of see things that
Speaker 1: are invisible, right like everyone else is like looking past
Speaker 1: this thing, and then someone like Jill for examples, like
Speaker 1: whoa substitute teaching that's an area for creative work, right
Speaker 1: that that's kind of had been overlooked. And I would say,
Speaker 1: like the benefits of being able to see things in
Speaker 1: a new way are both that it can help you
Speaker 1: frame those those non obvious challenges and those those opportunities
Speaker 1: to make a difference that others are overlooking. And it
Speaker 1: also is a good feeling in your brain right like
Speaker 1: it actually makes you feel more expansive, even if you're
Speaker 1: you know, kind of like as we all have been
Speaker 1: stuck in your house or or kind of having a
Speaker 1: much more limited set of exposures. One that I just
Speaker 1: really love is called shadowing, and shadowing is the practice
Speaker 1: of where you set out to see and to experience
Speaker 1: an environment that you are very familiar with already, but
Speaker 1: you're really trying to see it through someone else's experience
Speaker 1: and eyes. So we do this activity a lot actually
Speaker 1: with educators who are you know, the experts in schools right,
Speaker 1: like literally unfiguratively, and we'll have them shadow a student
Speaker 1: for a whole day. And that means you meet the
Speaker 1: student at the bus stop in the morning, you go
Speaker 1: to after school, you go to study hall, like every
Speaker 1: part of the day you are traveling with them and
Speaker 1: doing what they're doing. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: you know, we often here is sort of like that
Speaker 1: kind of top level reaction is like, well, it's really
Speaker 1: uncomfortable to sit all day, Like just this realization of like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're physically having our students do this thing that I
Speaker 1: would find uncomfortable, right and and actually is maybe, um,
Speaker 1: you know, suppressing their own ability to to learn. So
Speaker 1: I've heard that insight come out. We've also had insights,
Speaker 1: you know, from a realization of like, oh, the student
Speaker 1: doesn't see themselves reflected in this school, right, we haven't
Speaker 1: assigned a way for them to actually feel real sense
Speaker 1: of belonging. And you know that led in one case
Speaker 1: for a teacher, or to have the idea to do
Speaker 1: like a student gallery of work in her school. So
Speaker 1: all kinds of creative ideas can come out, but it
Speaker 1: starts with having that empathy for the experience that someone
Speaker 1: else is having. Even if you've been in the same
Speaker 1: place for twenty years you think you know everything, taking
Speaker 1: a different point of view can make you realize like, oh,
Speaker 1: there are so many opportunities here for design and improvement,
Speaker 1: even in this situation that I'm so familiar with. Are
Speaker 1: there any pointers in that exercise about how to shadow
Speaker 1: effectively or take someone else's perspective effectively? Because it's one
Speaker 1: thing to just follow somebody around, right, Okay, I walk
Speaker 1: where you walk, I sit where you sit, and you're
Speaker 1: gonna get some insight from that. But as you mentioned,
Speaker 1: I think the deeper stuff comes from actually sort of
Speaker 1: seen through their eyes. Yeah. So there are a couple
Speaker 1: of practical piece of advice in that activity. So one
Speaker 1: is like thinking carefully about who you want to shadow.
Speaker 1: So if you are someone who had a really easy
Speaker 1: time in math class when you were a kid, like
Speaker 1: think about shadowing a student who's really struggling, right, who
Speaker 1: has a very different academic profile than you did. Think
Speaker 1: about studying somebody not of your own gender or race,
Speaker 1: and actually making sure that you're of course that you've
Speaker 1: asked that students permission, that they know why you're there,
Speaker 1: what you're doing, but be candid about saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: I had a really different experience when I was a student,
Speaker 1: and I want to really find out what you're going through.
Speaker 1: And that sort of selection of choosing to try to
Speaker 1: learn from somebody who's experience is unlikely to be similar
Speaker 1: to your own. That's one of those pieces of advice.
Speaker 1: And then another is making sure that you have saved
Speaker 1: some time for reflection, right like actually making sure you're
Speaker 1: documenting and capturing throughout the day, and then that you're
Speaker 1: going back and you're actually saying like, what did I see?
Speaker 1: What did I learn? What actually has stayed with me?
Speaker 1: And that's another one of those pieces that you know,
Speaker 1: we're all busy, we're all, you know, trying to do
Speaker 1: a million things, but reflecting back on an experience that
Speaker 1: you've had can unlock so much more insight than just
Speaker 1: the ideas and the reactions that you were having in
Speaker 1: the moment that last piece showed up to me and
Speaker 1: a lot of the exercises, which was you've got to
Speaker 1: do the exercise. But then there's also that sort of
Speaker 1: reflecting upon what's happened piece, And I agree with you
Speaker 1: that I think that is one of the fundamental things
Speaker 1: that we miss in getting more out of things. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could even just take this podcast as an example,
Speaker 1: like people are going to listen to the podcast, They're
Speaker 1: going to be done with it, and that's going to
Speaker 1: be that right. It was entertaining. They might have gotten
Speaker 1: an idea too, but fifteen minutes of reflection about what
Speaker 1: did I hear that matters to me that might change
Speaker 1: my life would amplify it from being sort of valuable
Speaker 1: to hugely valuable. Well, I mean, you know I'm over
Speaker 1: speaking the value their perfectly. Well, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: what happens when you take the time for reflection is
Speaker 1: that then you as the individual, get to do some
Speaker 1: of the sense making, right. You figure out like how
Speaker 1: do you actually really kind of co constructed the meaning
Speaker 1: for yourself and not just sort of passively absorb what
Speaker 1: someone else might have thought was was valuable. I mean,
Speaker 1: part of it's just like the reiteration and remembering and
Speaker 1: recalling what you've heard or what you've learned. But then
Speaker 1: there's a piece where you're reinterpreting your synthesizing, you're adding
Speaker 1: new layers of meaning. And I think that's what you're
Speaker 1: connecting with other parts of your life, and I think
Speaker 1: that's the piece that is so valuable. It's funny, like
Speaker 1: you put me in a very generative space now where
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about, Like, I don't think i've ever heard
Speaker 1: a podcast where at the end of the episode there
Speaker 1: was like a guided reflection, you know, at fifteen minutes
Speaker 1: of like the host saying like, Okay, think about what
Speaker 1: did you hear that stayed with you? You know, what
Speaker 1: stood out? What did you really like? What did you
Speaker 1: you know? I could imagine that could be an interesting
Speaker 1: experiment to try to see if it would make things
Speaker 1: more valuable or what that would offer to people. You
Speaker 1: just opened something in my brain because we've been working
Speaker 1: on the idea of giving like worksheets out with interviews,
Speaker 1: which would be part of that. But what you just said,
Speaker 1: which is a guided review, is something I hadn't even contemplated,
Speaker 1: which is a brilliant idea. Well, and we need to
Speaker 1: try a couple of those things again in low resolution
Speaker 1: and get some feedback about it. But I think, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've learned actually from that
Speaker 1: same colleague I mentioned before, Leticia who is working on
Speaker 1: her own book about reflection, which is like, when you
Speaker 1: have a structured approach to reflection, you can get even
Speaker 1: more out of it. So lots of folks have a
Speaker 1: wonderful like journaling practice, you kind of you know, writing
Speaker 1: your your thoughts at the end of the day or
Speaker 1: maybe in the morning, but having a structured way to
Speaker 1: think about what you've been experiencing and what you've been
Speaker 1: taking from it and what that suggests for what you
Speaker 1: might do differently in the future, that can be even
Speaker 1: more powerful. So she has an assignment in this book
Speaker 1: called what So, What Now What, which is one of
Speaker 1: those simple tools that you can use as a starting
Speaker 1: point where you think about what did I just experience
Speaker 1: and you try to really describe it in rich detail.
Speaker 1: What was I smelling at the time, what was I feeling,
Speaker 1: what was I hearing? What happened? And then so what
Speaker 1: what does that mean? What does that mean to me?
Speaker 1: What did I go through? What emotions did that trigger?
Speaker 1: And then now what what does that make me think
Speaker 1: about what I might want to do in the future,
Speaker 1: And it would be interesting. I'll be curious maybe some
Speaker 1: of the listeners here would try that, you know, at
Speaker 1: the end of this conversation what so what, now what,
Speaker 1: dropped down a few ideas in each of those categories.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd be very curious to hear kind of
Speaker 1: how people would respond to that. Yeah, there's a listener challenge,
Speaker 1: and you can just send them to me when you're done,
Speaker 1: and I would love to know, and I can pass
Speaker 1: them on to Sarah if we get some so, what,
Speaker 1: so what and now what? Yeah, that's great. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: pick and exercise. I want to talk about one that
Speaker 1: may have shown up in this section, but it's about
Speaker 1: turning off your inner cret which is a certainly critical
Speaker 1: for creative work and just a good thing to do
Speaker 1: broadly speaking. I think it's called blind contour drawing. That's
Speaker 1: such a favorite that actually it's the very first one
Speaker 1: in the book. It's a practice that some folks might
Speaker 1: even be familiar with, Like if you ever took an
Speaker 1: art class, you might have done that. And blind contour
Speaker 1: portraits are a portrait that you draw of someone else,
Speaker 1: usually under some time pressure. So we'll usually do like
Speaker 1: a sixty minute, you know, portrait. You're looking at someone
Speaker 1: else intently, and the rule is that you cannot look
Speaker 1: down at your paper and you can't lift your pen
Speaker 1: from the paper. That's the contour part of blind contour drawing.
Speaker 1: And the idea is that when you're first starting out
Speaker 1: and you try that, you will not draw an accurate
Speaker 1: representation of somebody else's face right like, and then you're
Speaker 1: gonna look down and you might be embarrassed or you
Speaker 1: might like have that temptation to look down right during
Speaker 1: the middle that often happens to people. And what's going
Speaker 1: on there is that you're fighting the urge to do
Speaker 1: it right, to do it well, to meet some kind
Speaker 1: of invisible standard that you have for yourself about what
Speaker 1: good drawing looks like. And so the whole point of
Speaker 1: that is not to draw a good picture of someone else.
Speaker 1: It's to locate that inner critic. It's to hear what
Speaker 1: is that voice in your head telling you that is
Speaker 1: so sure that you need to do something right the
Speaker 1: first time that it's going to interrupt that process of
Speaker 1: just creating something. So it's a very helpful exercise to
Speaker 1: go through just to be like, oh, what is the
Speaker 1: version of that voice in my head say? And people's
Speaker 1: inner critics sound all all different. That was actually something
Speaker 1: I personally wrestled with as I was writing this book,
Speaker 1: like I heard that critic, you know, over and over,
Speaker 1: and now I know what she really cares about, and
Speaker 1: I can kind of say like, Okay, not right now,
Speaker 1: I'll take care of you later. But the point is
Speaker 1: that it's really critical when you're starting to produce creative
Speaker 1: work that you can be in a period of time
Speaker 1: when you're just generating, you're just creating, and then you
Speaker 1: can be in a period of time where you're criticizing
Speaker 1: and you're judging and you're selecting, and often our tendency
Speaker 1: is to do those things simultaneously. And that's where you
Speaker 1: get like everyone's been in a bad brainstorm, right, And
Speaker 1: a lot of what's happening a bad brainstorm is someone
Speaker 1: saying like, well, I have this idea and someone else
Speaker 1: is like that won't work, right, and then nobody else
Speaker 1: is going to offer a great idea because the judgment
Speaker 1: is very present, right, And if you can suspend that
Speaker 1: judgment just for twenty minutes or thirty minutes and say
Speaker 1: we are going to be really critical. We're only going
Speaker 1: to pick the right ideas, but we're going to wait
Speaker 1: until we've finished being generative to do that. You're going
Speaker 1: to get so many more ideas out on the table too,
Speaker 1: then choose from. And that same thing as going on
Speaker 1: internally when you're doing the blind contour portrait just on
Speaker 1: your own, your internal critic is self censoring your ability
Speaker 1: to just be in a production mode. So that is
Speaker 1: the purpose. That underlying goal of that activity is that
Speaker 1: it helps you locate your inner critic over time if
Speaker 1: you do that again, and the reason we talk about
Speaker 1: as a book end is in one of our classes
Speaker 1: called Creative Jim, that's both the very first and the
Speaker 1: very last exercise that students do. And what they've learned
Speaker 1: in the intervening time is how to stop that self
Speaker 1: censoring right or at least mitigate it, and know how
Speaker 1: to quiet that inner critic long enough to dwell in
Speaker 1: that space of just pure generation. It is really important
Speaker 1: to go back and then be judgmental and be critical
Speaker 1: and say like, is this the right idea? Would this
Speaker 1: really help? How do we make it better? But that
Speaker 1: ability to separate those two modes is so so important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that idea of it being a way to
Speaker 1: learn to isolate the inner critic here it and sort
Speaker 1: of put it on hold. Now I know whether I
Speaker 1: look at the piece of paper, whether I don't look
Speaker 1: at the piece of paper. My drawing skills are broadly speaking, abysmal.
Speaker 1: But the exercise of it, I think is so interesting
Speaker 1: because it is so hard to do. If there's anything
Speaker 1: that I feel like age has given me, I'm a
Speaker 1: whole lot more comfortable with just not being it at
Speaker 1: things that I used to be. I am way more
Speaker 1: comfortable with like, yeah, I am terrible at that, and
Speaker 1: that being okay and realizing like that says nothing about
Speaker 1: me or my value just means I'm not good at
Speaker 1: that thing, or I'm not good at that thing yet.
Speaker 1: And that's been a real liberating gift as I've gotten older.
Speaker 1: What has provoked that shift, do you think, or how
Speaker 1: did you get to that place? Well, it's interesting, I
Speaker 1: often say I can't tell, like what changes in me
Speaker 1: or the result of decades of quote unquote working on
Speaker 1: myself for spiritual practice or all the things I've done,
Speaker 1: and how much of it just comes as I get older.
Speaker 1: I think age certainly gives us the opportunity to become
Speaker 1: more wise. Time just helps. We know not everybody who
Speaker 1: gets old gets wise, but you know it certainly gives
Speaker 1: you the time. I think for me, it has been
Speaker 1: broadly speaking, a lessening of ego and feeling like less
Speaker 1: concerned about the picture of me that I'm presenting to
Speaker 1: the world. As I've become less concerned with that, it's
Speaker 1: just become easier to be like, well, yeah, I want
Speaker 1: roller skating. A couple of months ago, I am so
Speaker 1: bad at it. I am all bundled up with kneepads,
Speaker 1: elbow pads. And now they have these things. I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've been roller skating in years. They basically
Speaker 1: have taken like they create them out of PVC. They
Speaker 1: basically look like a walker on wheels, so they are
Speaker 1: for people who really can't roller skate. So I'm toddling
Speaker 1: around on that thing. I am so glad someone took
Speaker 1: a video and it never made it to the light
Speaker 1: of the day because I look so ridiculous. But I
Speaker 1: just was more comfortable doing that. So I think it's
Speaker 1: a lessening of ego primarily, and how to do that
Speaker 1: is a whole other thing, but I do think a
Speaker 1: lot of it has been spiritual practices that question more
Speaker 1: deeply who I am at my core. I think that's
Speaker 1: really beautiful, and I wish for more of our students
Speaker 1: to have that ability to suspend that ego. I think
Speaker 1: if you're a kid and you've gone through school and
Speaker 1: you're constantly being tested and you're constantly being measured, it's
Speaker 1: actually quite hard to break that habit of feeling like
Speaker 1: you always have to be right in a very structured,
Speaker 1: sort of clear way. So I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the work that we wind up doing with young adults
Speaker 1: as they're in college, as they're in graduate schools, like
Speaker 1: we're trying to undo some of that right and it
Speaker 1: is it's like a lifelong journey towards being able to
Speaker 1: be like, huh, I don't know, right, I don't know,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna and I'm gonna kind of like flail
Speaker 1: around and look a little silly as I'm trying something
Speaker 1: new and and not letting that sort of too deeply
Speaker 1: wound your sense of self worth or even in the
Speaker 1: example that you gave before, of showing that more finished
Speaker 1: piece of work to someone and then being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well now it's too baked, right, Like my ego is
Speaker 1: invested in this thing. I think that's a really beautiful
Speaker 1: thing to aim for, and it's really important in creative
Speaker 1: work to be able to have that vulnerability to both
Speaker 1: try new things. That gets right back to that learning mindset, right,
Speaker 1: It's like, well, I'm going to go immerse in this
Speaker 1: environment that I'm not expert and I don't really know
Speaker 1: much about it, and then having those tools like that
Speaker 1: low resolution prototyping to basically try out your ideas when
Speaker 1: you know they're not good yet. I think some of it, too,
Speaker 1: is an orientation of what we value. So if we
Speaker 1: value beginner's mind, if we value being good at not knowing,
Speaker 1: like if we go that's what I want, Or we
Speaker 1: value being willing to try new things, that's what we value,
Speaker 1: that's what we think is important. If we start to
Speaker 1: prioritize those as the things that we think make us good,
Speaker 1: then I think it's easier to do that than if
Speaker 1: what we value is being seen as being competent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. And one of my absolutely favorite
Speaker 1: quotes comes from a philosopher named Eric Hoffer who wrote,
Speaker 1: you know, we need a learning not a learned people.
Speaker 1: The learned usually inherit an earth that you know is
Speaker 1: like changing so fast that their knowledge is no longer relevant.
Speaker 1: That's a paraphrase, poor paraphrase at that, but that idea.
Speaker 1: You know, in times of great change, we have to
Speaker 1: have that learning mindset, right. We can't just rest on
Speaker 1: the kind of expertise that we've already accrued because the
Speaker 1: world just keeps changing. So how about a practice from
Speaker 1: slow down and focus about cultivating patients and spaciousness so
Speaker 1: you can do your best work. Well. The ultimate one
Speaker 1: in here that I'll talk about in a second is
Speaker 1: called tether, which is a very challenging one. I want
Speaker 1: to get to that, but let's do a quick warm
Speaker 1: up to that. So we talked about a little bit
Speaker 1: about reflection. We have many, many types of reflective exercises,
Speaker 1: and one of my absolute favorites is called I Like
Speaker 1: I Wish, And this is about taking the time at
Speaker 1: the end of either a learning experience or a project,
Speaker 1: or you know, a particular milestone that you've hit, and
Speaker 1: really just sitting down with everyone else who's experienced that
Speaker 1: and thinking about what did you like and what did
Speaker 1: you not like so much? And the way that we
Speaker 1: phrase that in terms of everyone starts, you know, their
Speaker 1: comments with either I like or I wish. It helps
Speaker 1: us like acknowledge that not everything is perfect right, but
Speaker 1: you're still framing it in a way where you're expecting
Speaker 1: that improvement is possible, and and that's the I wish part, right.
Speaker 1: So it's a productive way of framing critique. And in
Speaker 1: that practice, you're opening that space to be reflective, to
Speaker 1: be critical, to think about how things might improve, and
Speaker 1: also to celebrate what has gone well. And it's a
Speaker 1: really wonderful kind of protocol for groups making sense of
Speaker 1: an experience that they've just had. You could do it
Speaker 1: at the end of like Thanksgiving dinner if you wanted to,
Speaker 1: or you know, a family vacation that had challenging moments
Speaker 1: and that had really good moments. But we use it
Speaker 1: a ton in design projects as well. But let me
Speaker 1: talk about tether because tether is probably for some it
Speaker 1: might be the most intimidating exercise in the book. So
Speaker 1: Tether comes from my colleague Chrissa Carter, and she has
Speaker 1: students sit rooted in one place for three hours and
Speaker 1: observe everything around them, And the practice involves making sure
Speaker 1: that you're documenting, you're writing, you're really recording what you're
Speaker 1: observing and what you're noticing for that full time. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting is that, you know, we do not spend
Speaker 1: that type of dedicated, long periods of time immersed in
Speaker 1: a in a situation very often. And a lot of
Speaker 1: that same stuff that you might even have come up
Speaker 1: in blind contour portrait comes up where you're just like,
Speaker 1: am I doing it right? What's going on? What you know?
Speaker 1: Am I right? But you you have long enough period
Speaker 1: of time to kind of dispense with that. So the
Speaker 1: first thing you might notice is like you might notice
Speaker 1: all the superficial kind of surface details. And maybe you're
Speaker 1: in a museum, or maybe you're in a mall, maybe
Speaker 1: you're sitting in your town square, and then you might
Speaker 1: notice things that are like what's been left behind by
Speaker 1: people right height, So like you might notice like the
Speaker 1: impressions of footsteps. You might notice trash, you might notice
Speaker 1: things that happened before but left to mark. Then maybe
Speaker 1: you're going to think about like the ways in which
Speaker 1: the shadows and the light are playing, and you might
Speaker 1: have some like realizations about something environmental or contextual. The
Speaker 1: longer you do this, the kind of deeper you go
Speaker 1: into thinking about both the specifics of the interactions and
Speaker 1: the context that you're in, but also about that much
Speaker 1: broader context. And you're just giving your brain that space
Speaker 1: to ruminate and to play and to expand and to
Speaker 1: notice things on a deeper level than you might normally notice.
Speaker 1: So that's a it's a real challenge. You don't use
Speaker 1: your phone, you kind of you know, you're not listening
Speaker 1: to music. You're really focused on being present in that
Speaker 1: space that you're in. But the reason that that's an
Speaker 1: important skill in design is because we are trying to
Speaker 1: help people notice the things that aren't obvious and to
Speaker 1: know what your brain feels like when you're getting into
Speaker 1: the zone where you're noticing really powerful insights that maybe
Speaker 1: have have gone unnoticed. We need practice to do that,
Speaker 1: and that's what tether is all about. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: difficult exercise that it's a lot like meditation or certain
Speaker 1: types of meditation. Your anchor is broader, it's the space.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure that a big part of that work
Speaker 1: is your mind's wandered off and you're thinking about you
Speaker 1: know what you're doing next Tuesday and sort of coming back,
Speaker 1: all right, let me look, let me look again, let
Speaker 1: me look again. I think that's exactly right. Has some
Speaker 1: very similar qualities of just gently redirecting your focus to
Speaker 1: the task at hand. And you know, it's so interesting.
Speaker 1: It's like we have so many ways to observe the world,
Speaker 1: but like just often use our eyes. And sometimes in
Speaker 1: this exercise people be like, now I'm just going to
Speaker 1: record all the sounds or all the smells, and you realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm getting so much information all the time about the world,
Speaker 1: and I'm filtering out most of it. It can provoke
Speaker 1: just all of these really interesting insights about how you
Speaker 1: relate to the world around you and what you're missing
Speaker 1: and what you have the opportunity to see and to
Speaker 1: notice if you take that time and that create that spaciousness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I think that's a great exercise of
Speaker 1: just being somewhere and allowing it to unfold over time,
Speaker 1: which you're right, we just don't give ourselves time to do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think you know a lot of people when
Speaker 1: I talk about this particular assignment, are like, I don't
Speaker 1: have three hours to do anything like, there's no way. Okay, fine,
Speaker 1: start with half an hour, right like, think about at
Speaker 1: it as like it's just a tool, It's just a
Speaker 1: way to get started. Think about the right version of
Speaker 1: it for you. But push maybe, Oh you think you
Speaker 1: can only do thirty, try forty, right like, Actually try
Speaker 1: to create a little bit of a stretch in there,
Speaker 1: and you'll surprise yourself in terms of what you come
Speaker 1: up with. Yeah, well, Sarah, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on. I really loved the book. I think you've
Speaker 1: done such a great job of cultivating so many exercises
Speaker 1: from so many different people. I was really impressed by
Speaker 1: just how many people's ideas are caught in this book
Speaker 1: and how well you've organized them. And I've really enjoyed
Speaker 1: this conversation also, I have as well. Thanks so much
Speaker 1: for having me, and I hope your listeners try our
Speaker 1: little challenge and see what happens when they take a
Speaker 1: few moments to reflect on this conversation. I've really enjoyed it.
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