Day 7 Mistakes used to terrify me — until I started treating my life like a design project

I am currently studying product design at uni and I love it. Even more than making things, I enjoy thinking about it. How do we use it, why does it work or not? Why do I like this one and not that one when both are functional?

I first came across the mentality of design thinking on YouTube. A couple I was watching was building a shipping container home. They would plan, strategise, build, use whatever they made and then the guy would go back and make changes. He reevaluated the design based on what it was actually like to use the environment. It was a process of continuous tinkering.

This attitude towards life shocked me. In my eyes mistakes were something bad, a sign of failure, of my own shortcomings. If anything I did was not perfect, I just hadn’t thought about it hard enough beforehand. Seeing this different approach to failure in practice, I realised how beneficial it could be and I started applying it to my own life.

It is really simple but I wish we were taught this at school: After many of the situations I go through, I reflect like a designer. I ask myself what worked well, what did not work and why I think that is. When I feel like I would like to change my approach, I conduct it like an experiment. I come up with a new strategy that I will test the next time I am in a similar situation. That way I have more data to adjust my course in the third round and so on.

For example, a few weeks ago I went to a restaurant with my partner, it was a walk down some noisy and crowded streets to get there, then the area was also loud and the restaurant itself was overstimulating in every way. I was too stressed to even really think clearly about what I wanted to eat. The evening did not go well from there and I barely made it home. I felt completely drained.

In the past I would have shamed myself for not being able to cope in that restaurant, I would have made up a story in my mind about how everyone else is fine and I am weak. Nothing would have changed and I would have found myself in a similar situation over and over again.

This time I admitted that my brain will not change. I can not handle restaurants like this — especially when I already arrive overwhelmed. Now I will do everything in my power not to put myself through that unnecessarily. I can still go to restaurants but I will choose a more quiet place with decent sound proofing, lighting and less messy interiors. I accept that certain environments are debilitating to me.

I get to be on my own team, and so do you. Once we take the shame out of experimentation we get to become much better at learning and finding our way in life.

I hope you are well wherever you are

Celine