Paper: Creating A Personal Blueprint

Designing for Life

Good design habits set good patterns for life, with problem-solving strategies that get you in shape – nimble and ready to tackle all sorts of complicated dilemmas by breaking them down into their constituent parts and putting them into an objective frame. My first book, Joan Kohn’s It’s Your Kitchen, downloadable for free on this web site, is a primer on the creative process that lays out the step-by-step process for designing a kitchen, but its application to any type of decision-making is universal. I look forward to amplifying this idea in upcoming articles and podcasts by looking at it from many angles, sharing stories, and even suggesting a game or two. Referencing the book may spark your imagination, too.

Start like a Pro: Create a Design Brief

The first question every top architect or designer asks every client is: What do you want? Whatever the scale of the project – from building a city to remodeling a cousin's basement – professionals know that the more respectful they are of their client's tastes, unique functional needs, and everything that truly makes them comfortable, the more successful their work together will be. Likewise, when it comes to the most important interior design project of all – designing the life in which you live – the first question must be the same: What do I want?

You ask, you answer. As your own chief architect, designer and project manager, you alone hold authority.

A formal architectural Design Brief summarizes objectives and sets parameters for the work ahead. It sets timetables and budgets, putting the entire team on the same page. Creating a DB for yourself clearly makes the same good sense. Tool #1 is a journal or a simple stack of note cards for identifying key intentions and setting targets. Here, you are not brainstorming with a team of designers and architects. It’s just you. The drafting is all in your penmanship.  The resulting Design Brief – a commitment to yourself – becomes the point of departure for transformation; a contract that you alone can sign and carry out.  You don’t need permission from others. Free yourself from external expectations. This is your show.

Note: The inevitable trembling we feel when approaching life-changes may seem a lot like fear, but it’s actually an invaluable secret weapon: a tankful of super-high-octane energy that insures positive acceleration and fuels our courage to be bold!

Tool #2: Your Hand Mirror

In addition to your journal, an even more consequential design tool is a hand mirror. Use it – metaphorically or otherwise – to look yourself straight in the eye as you address the questions in that follow. Your mirror is your best friend; and by consulting it you are bound to come up with additional questions-to-self that promise to be significantly more probing… and all the more essential.

Now, Question Everything

Great designs – every skyscraper, dream house, dream wedding, dream job and perfect retirement – begin with a driving need to overcome an obstacle, to effect change. Reaching beyond into the life where you feel most fully alive means challenging at least some of the basic assumptions you've habitually accepted – up until today! – and having the grit to face challenging questions. Here's a start:

1.    What do I want now?

2.    What am I willing to risk to get it?

3.    How hard am I willing to work, and can I handle setbacks?

4.    What are the current circumstances that make change imperative? Is something bothering me?

5.    Do I dare, and what will happen if I don’t?

Promise yourself just seven minutes a day for 21 days — all you’ll need in order to develop the habit of a meaningful internal dialogue.  Set aside a routine few minutes of quietude for early morning journaling or a meditation. Use your coffee break or the bus ride home.  Uncovering the seeds of your passion will unleash new vitality and spur on your curiosity. Listen to the answers inside. They may speak-out loud and clear, purr like a cat, or annoy and confuse you like a dripping faucet; but, trust yourself to find them. They are waiting to speak. 

The Visualization Gym: Work It Out

Your pursuit of new and improved is likely to begin with a vision quest. Entertaining the full spectrum of your potential, musing about dormant ambitions and budding aspirations should be as pleasurable as watching your favorite movie, skiing the Alps, or sipping champagne. Generate fresh theories. Conjure without fear. Hold nothing back. Surprise yourself.  Dream extreme... for now. There will be lots of opportunities ahead for anchoring your dream – no kite can fly without a string – but for now: full-force fantastical!

As a life-design tool, the role of your unique inventiveness, with all its peculiarities, cannot be overstated. The excitement it creates will sustain you through disappointment and fatigue, igniting explosive, regenerative energy. Life happens when you make it happen. Attend to your inner voice; it is there to inspire you. 

The more specifically, colorfully, and dimensionally you render your imaginings, the more actively they will motivate you.  Diagram with exactitude, using your every sense and sensibility.  Be rigorous as you forge into the future; you are your own Leonardo da Vinci. These visualizations demand your most masterful, fine-pointed attention to detail; they are your studies of yourself. Take your time. Go deep.

Not a da Vinci? Experienced home remodelers have a trick you can borrow: they move-in early. Long before blueprints are printed or a hammer hits the first nail, remodelers take a “virtual” walk-through as they investigate every new corner, nook and cranny, checking traffic flow, storage space, electrical outlets, ceiling heights… you name it! An artist building a studio imagines the natural light pouring into the space before placing windows or settling on a supplemental lighting plan. Chefs imagine the feel, and test the functionality, of every countertop material; they count the exact number of steps from sink, to stove, to refrigerator, and back. They ask if there is sufficient cold storage and dry storage. Proper planning means rigorous advance work.

Do as they do. Explore it all: what it feels like to live the life you dream of, with all its sights, sounds, textures, tastes and emotions.  In what neighborhood, city, state, and country are you living?   House, apartment, houseboat or a cabin in the woods? In your mind’s eye, picture the coziest place for watching TV.  What sort of workspace does your new lifestyle require? What color are your shoes? Do you often need an umbrella or heavy boots? Do you live alone or with others? Which friends do you speak to most often?  Do you have enough time out-of-doors?  Are you sleeping well?  Still enjoying your work?  What do you first think about when you wake up each morning?  Who makes you laugh? When do you dance?  What’s next?

Envisioning yourself at ease in a place of shelter, somewhere that feels like home – anywhere you truly belong – can provide significant markers.  Look around, scanning for clues as to what makes you thrive: what books are on the shelves, what pictures on the walls? Newspapers on the front steps, food in the pantry? Examine the clothes in the closets, and whatever else you store there. How about technology? How many chairs do you need around the kitchen table?   Each detail is a reflection of your soul.  Clear identification of these new patterns will stimulate your energies and continuously reignite them as you design the life you live.

Such exercises, driven from within, build confident self-understanding.   A perfect place to begin your explorations…