One of 2020’s few blessings: creative well-being
As this crazy year is finally coming to an end, it’s time to reflect, check-off the goals I’ve hit (or procrastinated) and plan for next year.
With the pandemic starring most of the year, it feels like a lot has happened but at the same time like I haven’t done much (at least in my personal life).
It has, however, fundamentally shifted our ways of working, interactions with people and concept of home vs workspace.
If there was one (if any) positive side effect, it’s the awareness for well-being. It sucks that it’s taken us a pandemic to fully acknowledge this, but I’m glad that this is a practice to stay.
The rise of well-being
Since wfh (work from home) started, the government and workplaces have been promoting self-care and social media has been filled with positive messaging.
During the first 2 months of wfh, my team would do a round-the-virtual-table “How are you feeling on a scale of 1 to 10?” (10 feeling top of the world and 1 feeling really sh*t).
Every now and then, we would share the routines we’ve developed to keep ourselves sane. Nearly 8 months into the pandemic, we are still checking in with each other and acknowledging our feelings on a weekly basis.
During this time, I’ve also had the chance to connect with friends around the world via video calls and hit games like Animal Crossing and more recently, Among Us. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so distant from my friends living in other parts of the world.
Businesses are also adapting to new ways of working. Tech platforms are rolling out features continuously to facilitate these digital connections from Netflix’s watch party to Google Meet’s ‘Raise hand’ feature.
Meanwhile at home, new hobbies and habits are being developed — occasional cooks turned gourmet chefs, social drinkers turned border-line alcoholics, homebodys turned pet and/or plant parents.
With such high access to information and resources, staying at home suddenly didn’t seem so bad; there was actually a lot to do and learn.
How I’ve kept my sanity as a designer
In the old normal, I’ve always been good at keeping myself entertained and am constantly learning. I challenged myself to hackathons and was actively involved with the design community, organizing design-focused events and conferences.
But since wfh, there’s been a lot of less external stimuli and interactions.
This is probably how I’ll summarize my design well-being in 2020.
On some weeks, I would feel restless and demotivated, and other weeks, I would feel quite productive. Overtime, I’ve learnt to accept and be comfortable with it. Much like the design process, you get stuck sometimes.
This led me to think a lot about another dimension of well-being, particular to designers and creatives — our creative well-being.
I’m calling it ‘creative’ because as designers, we are creative thinkers at our core. We are constantly ideating, working creatively within constraints and helping our team mates develop design confidence. All of these activities require us to flex our creative muscles.
So how are designers keeping up their sanity and creative juices, especially during a period of limited external stimuli and interactions with like-minded people?
Creative well-being
If you google “designer well-being”, you’ll find a handful of ‘how to design for well-being’ rather than well-being for designers and creatives.
But what about the things that help and inspire designers to create those thoughtful UX and beautiful pixels we experience?
I started to explore this concept of ‘creative well-being’ by asking myself and fellow designers: “Where does inspiration come from?”.
External stimuli
These are all the things we learn when we read books, articles or attend meetups and conferences. These external content keeps us stimulated and is a silent but humble reminder that there are always many things and perspectives to learn about in design.
Sometimes even checking that email digest from a design publication can have an accumulated effect on my understanding of design and how the field is evolving.
A year ago, I started following the Microcopy & UX Writing facebook group where people regularly share examples of good and bad copywriting. This exposure has made me think more thoughtfully about words and how I can bring more personality and humor in my own copy.
Boredom
Sometimes, the best ideas are the ones that come to you when you’re doing absolutely nothing.
Daily routines like commuting mindlessly on the train or washing dishes are the perfect conditions for boredom. Routine brews boredom, and boredom breeds creativity.
When we’re bored, ours minds wander. The more we wander, the more connections we make and the more light bulb moments we get.
Connecting with like-minded people
This is a natural human behaviour. No matter how introverted or extroverted you are, humans are wired to connect.
For me, this is typically through meetups, conferences or communities I’m interested in.
Connecting with people who also geek out on design brings me to my happy place. Being able to hear other people’s stories and the things that they’re working on gives me comfort but also unlocks new inspiration.
That’s how I started listening to design podcasts, found out about LEGO serious play, learned to appreciate the stories behind illustrations and also, interestingly, secret iPhone hacks.
If I was just in my own bubble, I might not have come across these things.
Passion projects and side routines
Sometimes, doing something totally different can be very refreshing.
In the book ‘Steal like an Artist’, the author Austin Kleon refers to this as the practice of ‘productive procrastination’.
This really resonates with me.
Depending on my headspace, I bounce between several no-pressure-to-launch side projects. Some days, I would write posts like this and on other days, if I’m in the right headspace, I would work on my aspirational podcast.
At the end of a long day, these side projects allow me to reflect and it’s my way of therapy in a creative form. Writing allows me to reflect on things I’ve learnt and my podcast project is my reflection on other people’s stories.
Designing my creative well-being
Wfh hasn’t allowed me to seek those inspirations as easily, so I set myself on a loose schedule to actively seek them.
Roughly once a month, I would tune into a Creative Mornings talk, ideally live if I can catch the right times. On some mornings, I would go on walks to seek boredom. As restrictions loosen up, I would go into office once a week to have those commute times, sometimes tuning in to a podcast and other times just listening to music.
I also started checking in with designer friends around the world. At work, I would set up 1:1s with fellow designers just to chat about design and little practices we are doing to stay inspired and creatively sane.
Design tapas
Creative well-being very much deserves its own spotlight.
To me, creative well-being is staying open to new ideas and knowing that whatever has inspired your designs can make a positive impact — bridging connections, touching people’s hearts and making people smile because of a beautiful experience, digital or physical.
With that realization, I’ve recently created a little space to explore and document the things that contribute to my own creative well-being.
These are meant to be little snippets of bite-sized and shareable inspiration to feed our creative minds.
In the world of product design, it’s looking beyond visual components for inspiration. It’s looking to heartwarming human experiences, copy that makes me giggle and micro interactions that convey emotions.
What inspires you? Let’s hear it :)
