A Day In The Life
Here’s a sneak peak into my coaching program.
This week I’m switching things up a bit. I’m giving you a sneak peak into my coaching program.
I coach high-achieving female professionals on how to overcome burnout, manage stress, and foster resilience. I help you prioritize your wellbeing so that you can thrive personally and professionally.
One of the tools I use in my coaching program is design thinking. (If you’re unfamiliar with design, here’s an earlier blog post explaining what design is.)
Design thinking is a way to approach really messy problems.
Messy problems are tough to solve. (Otherwise they wouldn’t be a problem, right?) They’re tricky because there’s usually no one right answer to them.
Design helps you navigate through these problems by leveraging creativity. Flexing your creativity muscle allows you to be more curious and open-minded when faced with complexity.
And when you approach a problem with an open mind, guess what happens? You’re open to more possibilities - i.e. solutions.
Explaining design doesn’t do it justice. Sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty and dig right in.
That’s what we’re going to do here.
I’m going to show you an example of a design exercise I like to do with my clients. The exercise (courtesy of Stanford’s d.school) is called A Day in the Life.
I typically do this exercise during step seven of my program. (There are nine steps in total, in case you were wondering.) That’s when I help clients simplify their schedule so they can stress less and live more.
The gist of the exercise is to map out the highs and lows of your day.
Ready? Here we go:
Step 1: Grab a sheet of paper and something to write with. (A Sharpie is nice since it makes your drawing stand out.)
Step 2: Position the paper horizontally. (For my non-analogs out there, I’m referring to landscape mode.)
Step 3: On the left side of the paper, draw a straight line going up and down. At the top of the line put a plus (+) sign, and at the bottom of the line put a negative (-) sign.
This line represents your emotions (i.e. the highs and lows of your day).
Step 4: Draw another straight line, this time going across the paper. On the left end put “Start” and on the right end put “End”.
This line represents time (i.e. the start and end of your day).
Step 5: Think about all the things you did yesterday. Did they make you feel good? Did they make you feel not-so-good? Go ahead and plot them on the graph. Include some blurbs to describe what you did and how they made you feel. Give yourself 3 minutes for this step.
(You may be wondering, “How the hell am I supposed to do this in 3 minutes?!” Part of the beauty of design is its bias towards action. Sometimes you have to put pencil to paper and just do the damn thing.)
Step 6: Take a moment to reflect on the day. What was the high of your day, and why? What was the low of your day, and why?
Design exercises may seem cute and simple, but don’t let that fool you. They are chock-full of gems.
How did you feel doing the exercise? Did you feel…
...uncomfortable? Awesome. Get cozy with unease because messy problems are anything but easy.
...rushed? Good. Your drawing doesn’t have to be perfect. Nothing is ever 100% perfect.
...unprepared? Sure. That’s because you’re learning by doing. It’s the best teacher.
As you go through your week, think of ways you can be more curious. Will you listen more than you speak at your next meeting? Will you take a different route to the grocery store? Will you ask “Why?” more often?
Now go hit the drawing board.
