Taking courses such as SIY and CCT was a great start. But I still didn’t know how to integrate learnings from those courses into my life. My job or workplace culture didn’t seem like a nurturing environment for mindfulness, emotional intelligence or compassion; so should I look for a new job, or create a new life? I struggled with this question. It was the design thinking, which saved me from being stuck with this question.
Design thinking is a very commonly used term in the tech industry. It’s a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype , test, and re-iterate the process to improve. I was well aware of this process at work, but haven’t thought about applying it to my own personal problems/life, until I learned about the Designing Your Life (“DYL”) workshop at Stanford d.school. So I jumped right into this 2-day workshop.
My Odyssey Plans
One of the most valuable lessons I learned from DYL was “Odyssey Planning”. It was about ideating three different scenarios how my life could go depending on different assumptions (resources, likability, confidence level, coherence). It was so challenging at first to imagine my life beyond the assumptions I was familiar with. Yet it was so liberating at the same time, once I could free myself from that view and see that there were many possibilities for my life.
Looking back, My Odyssey Plan #3 from the workshop in 2017 basically became the blueprint for my life now in 2023. Of course, nothing happened exactly in the way I envisioned as it went through many iterations; however, it’s in the same direction of that plan. It really feels like I am a designer for my own life with this framework!
