This morning I found myself reading the box containing my tea bags (many questions here)… the colours and design caught my eye, I started thinking about the thought process the designer went through to get to this end result, their life and what they were doing right now. As you can imagine this wasn’t something that I ever considered before, I’m one of those individuals that love to see the time lapsed ads showing branded designs evolving over time and smiling to myself as I recall my mother purchasing them when I was younger.
However, this experience triggered thoughts and possibilities to different questions circling in my head. Now Keri Smith wrote a rather fabulous little book called How to be an Explorer of the World, a book that was recommend by my coach at the time, the aim of the book is to encourage readers to observe and document the world around them to see it like you have never seen it before. This process was the catalyst to my love of Design Thinking…anyway I digress. If you are intrigued check it out, now is the ideal opportunity to investigate the world around you (not rushing about here and there) and see it in a way you haven’t before.
The big burning question that this tea bag box reading episode drove was What have I been missing?
Quality time with my family for sure, what about listening and paying attention to life? How has my design (me) evolved over time? Am I the what I imagined?
One thing this terrible indiscriminate virus has given many of us is reflection time. The opportunity to be self-fish and ask: who am I, what do I want, what am I doing, what do I need, and how am I going to do X?
In this time of crisis, life is asking big questions of humanity and perhaps you are asking questions of yourself. Two questions that my tea bag box had surfaced for me are:
- As we rush to return back to normal, we need to consider which parts we want back
- As governments figure out the transition plan for society, what are our individual transition plans – what do you and I need/want to do differently, what are the processes/things are we not reinstating and what do we need to learn to enable us to do xyz?
The starting point is knowing what you want to let go of…Take the time to take charge of your life, and craft the future career you want!