Busyness is bad for you. Over-consumption is toxic. No amount of activity can replace precious moments of prayer and meditation that provide the spiritual oxygen for your soul. You’ve probably heard the design mantra “less is more”; well this is most true when talking about lifestyle and spirituality. In his book Afluenza Oliver James describes how the English speaking world suffers from an “obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses – that has resulted in huge increases in depression and anxiety among millions”.
Welcome to the next installment of my ‘Life design’ blog. To move forward in achieving my goal of seeding ideas and debate that will allow us to explore what it means to live well and do life design, I’d like to outlay a framework for thinking about life design.
Design thinking refers to a certain way of coming up with solutions to problems. Read about it at wikipedia and watch this video:
One of the keys to good design is understanding the problem deeply, trying to view it from different perspectives and angles. Rather than deducing the ‘right’ answer, possible solutions are explored; design is often referred to as a ‘game’ and designers play with ideas. They come up with multiple solutions and see what works. It is in this spirit that I approach this blog – and invite you to as well.
In loosely following the 7 steps of design thinking (define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement and learn), I’d like to suggest a design problem and then explore ways of solving it – the more left-field the better! This is where the fun starts – how do you prototype life design ideas? Live them! See what works and what doesn’t, feed it back to us and adjust accordingly. As a community we can develop new and exciting ways of integrating spirituality into our everyday lives that make a huge and tangible difference to the quality of our lives and relationships.
There are no ‘right’ solutions so lets generate as many ideas and examples of implementation as possible – but the way that you choose to design something into your lifestyle may look very different to mine. As designers we each have our unique styles.
In my next entry I’d like to start with something fundamental to 21st century life – time. No one seems to have enough. People are working longer and longer hours. Terms like ‘time-starved’ are being coined to describe the busy and rushed people around us – how should a 21st century pilgrim think about time? What does a deep, meaningful use of time look like? Stay tuned…
Design has enjoyed a significant rise to prominence in the last few years – both as a concept and a profession. People want well-designed objects that are enjoyable and intuitive to use. Architecturally-designed houses that make great use of space and facilitate quality lifestyles are growing in demand. These qualities are even becoming fundamental to software and websites! People are rediscovering that our objects and spaces actually help to shape us spiritually – and vice-versa.
While this is all good – I can’t help but notice the contrast between the quality of design that people demand from their objects/houses/cars/clothes/kitchen appliances while at the same time living lives that are so poorly designed that they don’t even satisfy basic needs for happiness or spiritual growth.
As both a designer and a pilgrim, I would love to see a ‘life design’ movement emerge where the design process becomes a metaphor for us really thinking about what it is to live well – and then DESIGNING AND LIVING a life that makes it possible. Although the fundamental things that we need to achieve are the same, my life design may look very different to yours. Each designer has their own style and brings their own unique perspective.
I’m hoping that this entry will seed some ideas and debate that will allow us to explore what it means to live well and what it is to do life design. As this blog is about ‘integrating spirituality into everyday life’, I would love to take this entry to the next level and really flesh out some tangible ideas for what life design might look like.
In the meantime take a look at Len Sweet’s paradigm-shifting book SoulSalsa which he describes as a “lifeware design package”.