Using the Design Process to Get Unstuck

Are there areas in your life where you feel stuck? This is a deeply intrusive, vulnerable question, while coming from a place of curiosity. I embrace being curious & inquisitive, both as a coach and as a designer. More often than not, people answer with an embarrassed look / averted eyes or a pithy quip: “Is there any area of my life where I’m not stuck?”

So, where are you stuck right now? We are all humans and as an essence of our humanity can tend to have many shared commonalities. We are often stuck:

losing that last 10 pounds
between voting for a unelectable progressive and a middle-of-the-road, boring moderate
mitigating losses in my event business due to coronavirus cancellations
in my current relationship
wanting more in my job and feeling unrecognized
playing mediator between my product manager and engineering lead
longing to do more at work to be successful AND also spend time with my loved ones

Are any of these familiar? Being stuck is heavy, low, uncreative energy. We are unable to see the path forward as we are dragged down by honey and mud.

Here’s where the design process comes in!

Exploring Divergence

At its most basic form, the design process is divergence and convergence. Divergence is generating a large number of ideas. Some call it ideation or brainstorming. The specific ideas themselves don’t really matter. It’s the volume of them that matters. There is a magic in going through the process of generating more and more. Divergence is challenging the team to come up with 10 variations of the drawing, 30 different directions we could go in, or 100 new ideas for the roadmap. Most of the ideas will be messy and bad… and that’s OK. The value is in the volume—the quantity not the quality. Letting go of the pressure of “good ideas” opens up a new creativity where more ridiculous and outrageous concepts can come to life.

If we know how to do this in the work context, in generating ideas in a brainstorm, this creativity can be transferred to a life context. Rather than generating new product or business ideas, strive to generate as many new perspectives as possible on the topic where you’re stuck.

Let’s say that I feel stuck playing mediator between my product manager and engineering lead. If I’m working with someone else, my manager or a coach, I might be able to jump in a room and brainstorm solutions together. It helps to have the joint energy of a group or another person. If I’m alone, I use a technique called mind-mapping where you capture the topic in the center of the page and then free-associate what comes to mind when you think of the topic. The topics continue to branch with more free-association around the new ideas.

Mind map I sketched in 5 mins around the topic of Mediator

I spent less than 5 minutes capturing a mind-map around the topic of Mediator. I started from the top right coming with a perspective of being Stuck. Quickly starting to generate new ideas, so many things starting opening up though this process of creative divergence— gratitude for having a central seat at the table, questioning if there needs to be a villain, exploring the possibility of co-creation.

Coming to Convergence

Convergence tends to be easier for people working in tech. It draws upon the skills of problem-solving, decision-making and getting sh!t done. Once you have a giant list of explored items, we tend to want to move towards selecting some to narrow down and act upon. We can establish more formal criteria, perhaps based on our values or what we’d like to do long-term or what matters most (e.g. the relationships within the team). That’s what the product manager in me would do. Or we can simply make a list asking ourselves the question:

What do I want to say Yes to? What do I want to say No to?

We tend to be drawn towards actions. An action might include going to coffee with both people to build trust in a neutral setting. Yes, you should capture the actions that open up after the divergence. Additionally, in the example below, I call out perspectives & attitudes we can choose to say yes or no to when looking at this stuckness of playing mediator.

Simple 2 column list of items to say YES and No to

Examples from above include saying yes to the perspective of Celebrating being in the room where it happens, and no to the perspective of being Afraid to be in a central role.

Bottom-Line

Divergence & convergence is the key to getting unstuck.

Next time you feel stuck in an area of your life, apply the design process of divergence and convergence to generate many new perspectives on the topic. It’s playful. It’s fun. It’s messy. The creativity in generating possibilities from your current situation naturally drives movement/motion/dynamism which fuels our natural sense of problem-solving.

Come play with me and try it!