Seriously? Why do we put up with unnecessary friction in our work and lives?
It’s a bit nuts.
It wastes our time,
our energy,
and affects our wellbeing.
We’ve stopped noticing. It’s habituated.
What’s habituated in your architectural practice?
Do you notice where the power lies and how it’s wielded in your practice?
Do you notice how much unnecessary time meetings take up?
Do you notice it’s the people that stay back late, do unpaid work or don’t question the culture that are offered the interesting projects?
Do you notice where good ideas or decisions go to die?
Do you notice someone in the practice with skills, knowledge or experience being underutilised?
Do you notice whose voice is heard and whose isn’t?
Do you notice who speaks up and who doesn’t?
Do you notice the bottlenecks?
Do you notice that when it comes to designing buildings you’ll end up with piles of options, but when it comes to designing architecture practices there’s rarely more than an idea or two thrown around?
Do you notice what’s being defended instead of rethought or redesigned?
We spend far too long defending “the way things are” and past decisions, instead of rethinking or redesigning a better way.
Tony Fadell said it well,
“Avoid habituation: Everyone gets used to things. Life is full of tiny and enormous inconveniences that you no longer notice because your brain has simply accepted them as unchangeable reality and filtered them out… But when you think like a designer, you stay awake to the many things in your work and life that can be better. You find opportunities to improve experiences that people long ago assumed would just always be terrible.”
Fadell, Tony. Build (p.262)
Make time and space for noticing. Being intentional.
Then,
What will you do to make it better?
Image by Alexander Krivitskiy
