Staying Sane in Service Design
Four hours into the bike ride my head starts to slot itself back together. Thoughts become clearer and everything begins to make sense again.
The day before my head felt cloudy, I was exhausted, frustrated and grumpy. Subconsciously I was searching for space.
The week before I was in facilitation mode, talking to teams and bringing people together. I was there to help them solve problems; a guide through a collaborative process. It felt rewarding and emotional.
We don’t talk enough about headspace and peaks and troughs in service design, but we should. So I am.
As creatives we absorb everything, trying to make sense of the world. We look, we make connections, we use tools and processes to join the dots and make things better.
We don’t learn by doing. We learn by processing what we’ve done.
It’s only recently, partly by listening to the Invisibilia podcast that I’ve realised how exhausting reading emotions, figuring people out and generating ideas actually is.
Empathy is taxing. Taking on other people’s emotions and thoughts leaves your mind running on empty. We don’t allocate time to process and sort. At the peak of project activity we become entangled with everything and everyone.
One night after a workshop I fell asleep dribbling on myself at 8pm. I lost the following day to procrastination and jumbled thoughts. At the time I was annoyed and embarrassed, the weak link on my team.
It’s only now I realise I was suffering through a ‘workshop hangover’. I’m not rubbish at my job. My mind was just putting thoughts together and clearing space for the next phase.
Service design demands collaboration and focus. But it also demands reflection and downtime. Without the downtime we wouldn’t learn how take what we’ve done and apply it to the next project.
We can’t always be switched on and there’s a lot of value to be had in switching off. How and when you switch off differs for everyone and it doesn’t just happen at the end of a project. Our projects have many highs and lows, periods of intense activity and moments when we need to slow down and think.
Acknowledging these points and making them work isn’t always straight forward when we’re all so busy.
Here are some things to bear in mind next time you’re beating yourself up for staring at the wall.
You’ve probably processed a lot of information and need time to reflect.
Your mind definitely needs space to put things in order.
You’ve spent a lot of time understanding other people’s situations and now you should probably focus on you for a bit.
You need to untangle yourself from other people’s emotions.
There are peaks and troughs and they come at different times, don’t feel bad for slowing down, it’s just time to lean on your team.
And yes, it’s easy to write this stuff in the garden on a sunny Sunday. The challenge, with all of our work is to follow that same advice when we’re in the thick of it.
