Design a Sublime Life

Living a long life is good.

Living a long life that you’ve designed without regrets is sublime.

“Just like people have basic physical needs, like to sleep and eat and drink, they have basic psychological needs,” says Alan Rozanski, a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has studied the relationship between life purpose and physical health.

“The need for meaning and purpose is №1,” Rozanski adds. “It’s the deepest driver of well-being there is.”

The best way to Design a sublime life is with Intention.

How Intentionality is used in Design

Intention: a thing intended; an aim or plan. Design: purpose, planning, or intention that exists or is thought to exist behind an action, fact, or material object. If we are looking at definition alone, the 2 words provide a bit of an oxymoron. To design means to act with intention, and to be intentional means to execute a design. Is it ironic then, that we execute so many designs without intention?

Intentional design is a commitment to a process, not a one-time thing.

When designing there exists a choice to do so intentionally or intuitively. The intuitive approach uses one’s instincts to feel the needs of the design. Intuitive Designers piece together the layout, information architecture, and visual style based on what feels right. It tends to be a trial-and-error process.

Intentional design, on the other hand, is the use of requirements and constraints to purposefully make decisions to create the most effective design possible. The intentional designer considers what elements should or should not be used, why, and in what manner they should be portrayed.

There is a difference between knowing theory and deciding how and when to use it.

As we become experienced and familiar with something we develop subconscious behaviors. Things that once required our full attention become automatic. I think about design principles less now than I did when I first started my career.

My strategy on how to Design with Intention.

Define Question everything; the brief, the audience, the Goal itself. Good how based questions will initiate deeper discussions, leading to better answers. They will help us describe and visualize our intention and identify possible roadblocks and challenges.

Simplify Since we have defined our goal, we now need to deconstruct it into small measurable goals. This will minimize the pressure while helping to understand the project clearly.

Minimize Remove the unnecessary, reshuffle, and reassemble. Work one problem at the time. Pick the quick wins and work those first. The rest will unravel with the project.

Focus Design decisions should always point back to people and the intended benefit.

Learn It’s good to realize that we are not the first or the last designers to be facing a specific problem or challenge. We can always learn from other designers. Don’t rush to reinvent the wheel. Refine, improve and adjust the wheel to your particular vehicle.

Get inspired Be open. Great ideas and solutions can come from anywhere or anyone. We need to critically observe and evaluate. It’s helpful to talk about our projects, be open to suggestions, and let our ideas get challenged.

Evaluate Step back to see the full picture. Are we still on the right path? Is our plan aligned with our intention? Is it people-centric? Is there anything unnecessary? Are we proud of what is forming? Are we, maybe creating more problems? Re-evaluate and repeat.

Conclusion As in life, we might have the best intentions but if we don’t take the right actions no one will ever know. Design an action plan and following it, is the best way to keep in touch with our intentions and create successful designs.

These actions are designed to be just that — actions when applied to your life, that remind me to design my own choices. I don’t have to feel bad about missing out or that life is just a series of events that happen to me. I have a tool that creates solutions.

A new Design Challenge.

I’d like to invite you to reframe the fear of missing out to being intentionally kind to yourself. The same strategies of Design: Define, Simplify, Minimize, Focus, Learn, Get Inspired then Evaluate will help maintain your focus on this new intention.

Here’s a problem and Designed Solution

Maintaining focus and simplifying in our social media-centric world requires designing a plan. Modern technology and social media provide an easy way to compare ourselves to others. To see how wonderful other lives are then realize mine is not that wonderful. Why don’t I have a six-pack of abs?

The comparisons can cause me to think: I have to change, I have to quickly restyle myself to experience the best life. I guess that’s why the marketing and consumer industries thrive. They need to feel as if we belong is very real.

That’s why kindness is key. Intentionally designing a plan to withdraw from the demand to compare and consume helps me develop as a person. It opens up my world for engaging in the real world. It aids in deeper relationships with people.

Real relationships are more joyful than the doubt of am I doing enough, am I living enough to experience joy.

It takes practice and focus to willingly miss out on all the possibilities that we’re constantly bombarded with. We can, however, design a way out. We can intentionally design a way to add kindness and joy to our own life without regret.

We need to design strategies and environments that will make it easier for us to miss out and focus on what is important. It’s not enough to develop willpower individually, ultimately, we all fall for temptations. Oscar Wilde said that he could resist, everything except temptations and there’s truth to that. We can only resist if we’re not tempted.

Lets set our intentions and design strategies and environments (homes, workplaces, and schools) minimizing temptation. We can set our intentions and avoid this fear of missing out without regrets. A sublime life is intentionally designed.