What helps YOU experience “flow”? When do you feel challenged to the just-right degree?
For me, that flow comes from the construction of health and its creative design (and co-design):
- Design for the sequencing and choreography of a yoga class or strength & conditioning session for a friend and me to try
- Design of fun play dates for my son and his friends (and sometimes me too!)
- Design of university class curriculum and assessments to challenge others to the “just-right degree” and support their learning
- Design of work and jobs in distributed (and hybrid, and agile, and activity-based) models, discovering places and spaces and ways of working that bring joy
- Design of systems in which everyone feels like they understand the lay of the land and want to participate
- Design of presentations to convey and facilitate new ideas
- Design of academic research reports or client consulting project reports
- Design (and re-design, and ongoing iterative design) of our interactive website about good work design
- Design of a book concept and its contents to help others learn about work, system, or product design from new perspectives.
Design elevates me and irritates me. It keeps me restless, pacing, sometimes tossing and turning, then joyful from the sense-making and flow that comes, all in the spirit of creativity and innovation. It can be clumsy. I stumble, I often do not get it right.
Sometimes, I am flat on the floor after expending mental or active physical energy, but that’s okay. It makes me whole. I try, and try again, and will keep on trying, learning from others (thank you), and reaching higher.
Dr Sara Pazell
