by Herman Manson (@marklives) Have you ever thought about how you think? I figured Ayse Birsel has and that makes her interesting. Her book, Design the Life You Love: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future, comes from her taking a moment to think about her own design-driven thought process. Which lead to her designing a guide to design thinking. Birsel was a speaker at the recently held Design Indaba. So you don’t have to make these things up.
Remarkable story
If you are not big on self-help books, that’s OK. Ravi Naidoo didn’t bring Birsel to South Africa to sell her book. He flew her in as a speaker because her remarkable story is one many designers may easily relate to and it’s so very relevant to South African today — there is a moral in the lovely madness — which is like a thing with Design Indaba (a lovely thing, but a thing, nonetheless).
The story goes that, during the 2008 recession Birsel’s design business did what many SA businesses are doing just about now. It kinda tanked: clients went in-house; making money from design became harder and harder. All the ad people in the audience were nodding their heads. Maybe you should have completed that law degree after all (who are we kidding, but whatever)?
But then a friend said something rather wonderful to Birsel that would help turn things around. She talked about how she loved how Birsel thought about things, how she saw the world, and so Birsel wondered, “How do I think?” So she drew it (obviously). The book features handdrawn art and type.
Four steps
Her process involves four steps:
- Deconstruction (taking the whole apart)
- Forming a new point of view
- Reconstruction (putting it back together) and
- Expression (giving it form).
Life is your biggest project, says Birsel. Who are you and can you design a life you will love? Go think on that. Modern society no longer offers us road maps (school, varsity, marriage, 2.5 kids, retirement, RIP). Therein lies the challenge (draw your own map) and the opportunity (ditto).
It sounds simple, in an American-daytime-talk-show kind of way. But it is profound. If you could draw a vision map of your life now, and the life you would love to live, how would they differ, and how do you get them to match up? Most of us never get to the drawing bit — never mind actually working towards that drawn on the map to loving life.
The most powerful
Sometimes the simple talks are the most powerful. It’s obvious stuff we conveniently forget as it gets in the way of our current, urgent reality. It’s hard because it’s simple, and nobody makes time for simple things anymore.
Get designing, folks.
Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com.
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