February 26, 2021

Design everything you do

fork and knife in paper cover with inscription
Reading Time: < 1 minute

While I would never be considered a designer, I’m always looking for ways to improve how I think about the world around me.

I found a great example in an old blog post I was reading (the post is not available, but you can see it using archive.org here) where this concept came up: Design everything you do

Specifically, they offered the following advice:

During my first internship out of college, Stella Lai gave me this tip and it has been the best professional advice I ever received. Try to practice this tip as literally as possible. The obvious areas are how you dress and how your house/apartment/room is organized. I would suggest not stopping there. Your emails should be written/composed clearly and beautifully. Your conversations with individuals should be designed through how you listen, how you maintain eye contact, how you respond (both spoken and unspoken). Everything you do should have a reason, no matter how small. Design requires constant practice, this is a great way to keep growing. 

The act of continually working on design will help your own approach, but it’ll also help you notice patterns in other places. Observation of the world around you is always wise, and I thought this was a great little tip.

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