Month(ish) notes #3 — holiday, joy vs happiness, leadership qualities
1st August — 31st August
I have been off work for over a week during this time — a strange combination of being on holiday and coming back to a fever.
Being ill aside, I have gotten into the habit of booking an extra day off once I’m back from a holiday: taking time to settle back in, emotionally and physically, before jumping back to work. Have really enjoyed this approach as it helps me ease back into my environment and my routines. Hopefully it’s something I could afford to keep doing.
What’s been happening
There have been a couple of overlapping pieces of work which has meant that clarity over the scope of my project has been less clear. We spent a bit of time untangling interlinked pieces of work which continues onto this week with a workshop with senior colleagues. As I can’t say too much about the work, some other happenings include:
Supporting recruitment. I have been helping out Marine Scotland in their recruitment for a senior policy officer, focusing on strategic research on offshore renewables. I find it so inspiring and insightful to hear about the work in other parts of government and meet wonderful candidates from outside the UCD profession. On this occasion, learning about environmental and socio-economic impacts from offshore energy — it has been a welcome step out of my current area of work and a learning experience.
Side-hussling on work around designing for the planet. We have been taking the very first draft of a ‘guide’ for UCD practitioners to test with colleagues who work within other areas such as policy, transport, learning and development. This has been a side-hussle work for a couple of us within the service design community. Grateful for working alongside great service designers like Anna, Ola, and Sarah.
I am reminding myself of lessons from another Design+Climate community led by Ness and Lucy:
So much of mobilising designers around the climate crisis is about communication and community management… Managing a community is a real job and it’s certainly not a side project to be held next to a full-time role.
Even though I’m working at a different scale to Ness and Lucy and internally, I’m finding similar overlap in terms of learnings. We heavily rely on volunteering time and enthusiasm which is neither sustainable nor scalable. Within this year, one way around this for me has been to include the work within my learning and development objectives plan. This has given me some personal power to put time aside to do the work and make progress however it does need a community behind it.
Joining a union. This feels quite timely. There could be a lot of complexities about work but unions are a great place to make sure folks get support for things like pay negotiations, legal advice and services, and equality. Why not check them out?
Things I’m thinking / learning about
Joyful moments. With it being summer, the Fringe and a holiday I’ve had a much busier social calendar. I have finished reading Brene Brown’s Atlas of the Heart — a great guide to finding the right language when describing emotions. One emotion really stayed with me as I read through it — Joy. Two things in particular that I’ve been learning:
- Happiness and joy are two separate things. Happiness is a long-lasting emotion, often we feel in control and it’s our own achievement. Joy on the other hand comes suddenly, and it’s short with very high intensity. It’s about connection with others, nature or art that gives you pleasure and appreciation. There have been a lot of moments of joy this month for me as part of the Edinburgh fringe season, I have seen a few absolutely mesmerising and awe inspiring shows, one of them was Samsara. It’s a spellbinding piece of two dancers, UK/Indian dancer Aakash Odedra and Chinese dancer Hu Shenyuan, who draw on the dance traditions of their respective countries.
- Joy and gratitude are linked. The best thing to do to allow yourself to experience joy is to practice gratitude, or appreciation, in the moment. A reason why I’m keeping the last section of these month-ish notes, noting down things I’m grateful for.
Leadership qualities. I’ve been having conversations with different folks about what values people bring to leadership roles. There are variations of the saying ‘people join a team because of the cause, and stay because of good leadership and vision’. I have been thinking about what makes people stay, grow and stay inspired. This is a great twitter thread filled with many more values and qualities.
What’s next
- I’m starting to explore practical things we could do in terms of growing designers. What could apprenticeships, internships and graduate schemes for service design look like for our teams?
- Getting clarity on project work and alignment to other areas.
- Pitching alternative ways to operate as a service design team.
Grateful for
- Lucy’s wonderful writing on two projects 1) restoring chalk grasslands in West Sussex and 2) balancing environmental goals with the economic needs of local communities
- Chayn starting a new blog series on trauma informed design ❤
- Candi launching a UX Equity Fund — connecting people from systematically and historically marginalised communities with learning materials on content, UX and design.
- Officially at the end of the process of buying our first home! Looking forward to moving at the end of October.
