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Welcome to season 3 of Design Lessons!

Season 3 is special because it is focused on you. It will give you the opportunity to focus on one specific area of your life that you would like to make just a little bit better.

Grab Your Project You 30 Day Planner and let’s get started.

Project You: Design a Life Made for You

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Hey Designers,

Right now you may be in that part of the year where everything feels just a little hard, so I thought we would use our design superpowers this season to make one area of our lives just a little bit better.

Each week in season 3, we will take a step forward in creating a better you. I don’t know about you, but this school year has been a little taxing. It’s taken me until now to get a rhythm going and to even begin to feel like myself. I think that we all may be a little bit exhausted, a little bit annoyed, a little bit out of

To help us get our mojo back and relieve the stress and tension that you might be feeling, season 3 is focusing on you. The theme of season 3 is Design Thinking for a Better You.

That’s not to say that you are not perfect just the way you are, but focusing on one area of your life that’s just for you will help start to feel in control, and will build up your resilience to life’s stressors.

The other day I had a phone call with a parent. Her son wasn’t doing so well in class and we were brainstorming ways to help him. I could feel her frustration and although I was encouraging that we could turn this around for her son, I left the conversation a little defeated. Naturally, I like all of my students to be successful. And I was wracking my brain on how I could help him. I had used all of my bag of strategies. And if I’m honest with myself, I was beating myself up for not being the perfect teacher. This year has been hard. I didn’t want to carry that defeated feeling so into the weekend where it would sit like a eager puppy wanting to be stroked. So I reflected on why I was feeling bad. I realized that I didn’t like that feeling like I couldn’t help him. Let’s face it. I like being perfect. And you and I both know there is no such thing as perfect. That is an unattainable idea. We are all works in progress.

So, I’m going to shout out people who have both reminded me that I need to live my life as an exercise of progress and not perfection, that would be Jen Laffin the founder of TeachWrite (you can meet her in ep. 40 of Design Lessons,) and the other is a phenomenal educational leader, Janice Case ,who is also my fitness coach and who has inspired me to become a fitness coach, but that’s a story for another day.

The irony is that I really believe in the idea of progress over perfection. It’s the core of what the design thinking process is all about. It’s about having empathy, defining an area of focus, brainstorming a diversity of ideas, choosing one to try out, and reflect and refine. It is truely about progress over perfection. It is about moving consistently and lovingly to a better you, one week at a time, one day at a time.

That’s what we are going to accomplish together in Project You!: Design a Life Made for You. Design Thinking for a Better Life. So this season of Design Lessons is dedicated to you. You are the center of this season, and together we are going to take specific steps inspired by the design thinking process to improve an area of your life.. Over the next few episodes together we will use the design thinking process to make a change or refine a practice.

Step One: Which we will do today is just commit. Commit to yourself. This week, you don’t need to decide on what area you are going to focus on. This week, just choose you.

I created a free Project You 30 day Action Planner for you to use to create and monitor your project. Go download that now at micheleschmidtmoore.com . I’ll link to it in the shownotes as well. This Action Planner is part design notebook and part project planner. It will be our companion through each episode in this season. It will help you to dream, organize and execute your plan.

This season, this year is all about progress over perfection. It is about designing a life that you are excited to wake up to each morning. It’s about focusing on you!

In our next episode, we will start designing. I’ll share with you some ways to figure out your specific focus for Project You. We will also learn about the first step in the design thinking process that going to help you to become more in tune and intentional about what is important to you.

Until Next Time Designers