“I want to learn how to break the barriers of just getting started, observe and grow from this initial process of ideating on creating my own business and brand”.
In Part 1 of this My Design Sprint , I shared with you my story of wanting to bring a personal idea into life and how I chose to apply Design Sprinting for it.
As I am obsessed about learning and growth, I thought that the journey would be a worthwhile one to surrender to and trust. Some people may say that Surrender and Trust are your best friends, in finding the balance of doing vs. being. As I take aligned action, I know I need to move more with agility to allow things to flow.
As you may have gathered, whilst I chose to apply knowledge from my professional background and corporate experience, I have also chosen to bring these perspectives and merged them with a very different world. A world that is not just about Doing and producing outcomes, but also about Being and connecting with heartfelt deep need and the ‘soul’s purpose’.
As I am taking one step at the time in the direction that matters, I am observing and learning about the way of being that is needed to allow the energy of creation to truly flow.
The process
As mentioned in previous post, a design sprint is there to get you focused and test your ideas out as early as possible.
Typically it goes like this:
1. Understand 2. Diverge 3. Converge 4. Prototype 5. Test/Validate 6. Learn & Adapt
The notion of this approach and its benefits is what I wanted to embrace in this process.
The personal layer I added to the cake, was to start a few conscious morning habits as part of this process and observe any changes occurring with awareness.
The design sprint journey was approached together with my own version of a conscious change and observation process.
I experimented with beneficial morning habits that would bring clarity and confidence combined with more focus and flexibility.
This included the following activities every morning:
– Meditation: A 15 minute Vipassana meditation, which focuses on being still, observing and scanning the body mindfully. The ability to ‘see things as they really are’ and being the objective observer is crucial to face any obstacles.
– Future Self journaling: a journaling technique founded by the Holistic Psychologist to condition the mind and focus on embodying “your future self”. This takes me personally just a couple of minutes.
– Morning pages journaling: Julia Cameron’s famous morning pages, where you in a free flow of consciousness allow yourself to write down whatever comes to your mind on a piece paper (or a reMarkable 2, if you want to skip the paper but still have the benefits of hand writing). This could take anything between 10-20 minutes.
– Yoga: doing a 10-30 minute Yoga with Adriene series or my own sequence to move physically and move energy. Each day I checked in with myself to see what mode and duration that resonated the most.
I started doing all these activities together about a week before the design sprint week, and have retained those even after that week. Some activities, like meditation, I was already doing quite regularly for some time whilst the rest was new.
The purpose with it all? To unleash creativity and tap into the best possible “flow” mode, reducing self-doubt and maintain openness and clarity on the journey. It may sound super serious to some! But basically as you may have gathered, I am curious and a little obsessed about growth, so I want experiment with ways to allow myself to experience the journey and learning more consciously.
My day-to-day insights
Alright, so I surrendered to the process and had trust in the way forward.
It was now time to start creating, and hopefully even flowing! You can below get a snapshot of my free flowing day-to-day insights.
Day 1: Excitement was high to kick off the day. My new found habits luckily helped me get grounded before starting. consumption vs creation cycles/sparks. More creation and achievements due to a clear objective and tangible deliverable for the day.
Day 2: lots of brainstorming and consumption, less creation – abstract not as well defined deliverable and objective. What was the so what and outcome to achieve? What type of framework? I followed TBMJ advice blindly without thinking of needs, focus and my perspective (reminds my of being a less senior consultant and taking on tasks without challenging them or understanding the WHY well enough)
Find inspo and purchase 4 different eBooks in the topic I want to deep dive into
Day 3: feeling like I need to step away from it all – do more health/fitness/self-care related activities and reading books to take in (really enjoy the reading process and gain inspo again). (stay home)
Day 4: try to be productive in a different, home environment with more distractions. Decide to look at the literature I just bought and “WBS” it – best way to gain macro insights —> look at the insights from the content/outline (you’ll not just learn about the main insights of book (hopefully) but also the way the Author thinks and divides their “Knowledge Society” (refer to my blog on “Knowledge Society”)
When I did not feel it anymore – finish for the day. Allowed myself to have a less productive, do-nothing day rest of day (healthy! Dopamin fast). Also: started day slightly different, with walk before meditation & morning pages/FSJ (good to mix things up)
Day 5: I am off coffee and other stimulants. Today I went for meds first, had brekky and lastly a yerba mate while doing morning pages – wow such flow, insights and system thinking – connecting things in my own unique way (but I need to ACT upon it, otherwise those unique insights/ideas wont come to fruition. Allowed myself to approach consumption more freeflowing – gain some great insights and conclusions from unexpected place. My brain started connecting things in an incredible way
Next up
You’ve now taken part of my day-to-day insights on the design sprint journey as well as my personal approach and flavour to it.
Read part 3 to take part of some macro perspectives, where I take an ever bigger step back to reflect on the journey and the learning of the design sprint week and the supportive practices around it. Mixing insights from professional as well as personal experiences.
