The Pi of Life

"The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." ~Marcel Proust

The year was coming to an end in 2017, and I was attending the funeral of a colleague. I recalled the brief moments I had with him. Most of them were around active collaboration and seeking new ways to help a squad succeed with their initiative using our expertises. He was an amicable and highly motivational worker, which in a way, introduced me to the world of agile. So when he left his family in a sudden manner, I was heartbroken. But as I heard his eulogy, it dawned upon me that he was more than the worker that I knew. His life unfolded before me as people testified about the many good things he has done; how his work and life measured up to the great person he was.

After that night, it got me thinking about my own life. As I laid in bed pondering about my own works and life for those past few years, 2 things happened. Firstly, I realised I didn’t really have a vision of my own life. The amazing things that I have done as a design innovator, were mostly used on initiatives, but rarely invested on myself. The second thing was that I wasn’t alone in this thinking. Jeff Bezos famously once came out with the Regret Minimisation framework, which describes about how you can project yourself into the future and look back so as to minimise regret. You could say Amazon was the next best thing that came for him once he made his decision. Clayton Christensen, who recently passed away in 2020, also took a similar approach. “Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.” For all of the works that he has done, such as disruptive innovation and jobs to be done, one can say that he has contributed vastly to the innovation community. Their thinking helped them achieve the most in their lives and have inspired me greatly.

Those two insights led me to think about how I can take action of my own life. Serendipitously, a series of activities led me to be able to craft out my path in 2018. Many of these techniques can be both applicable to the current work of design innovation, as well as in other domains. In a weird way, I started treating myself as the product worth redesigning. Turns out that I am not the only weird person because there are books that offers design innovation techniques to reorientate the lives of its readers. From my own reads, I can recommend Design the Life You Love: A Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Meaningful Future by Ayse Birsel, as well as Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.

I am, however, inclined to use the Pi Framework, which I have shared earlier in part 1 and part 2, to translate how I went about redesigning my life back in 2018.

Quick recap: There are 4 mindsets and 5 Phases to the Pi Framework. As it is inspired by the mathematical formula, pi (π), the concept occurs as cycles and is circular in nature. In this article, I will walk you through the 5 Phases on how you could use one method as a way to craft out the vision and design of your life.

Purpose Imagining

Taking a leaf out of Jeff Bezo’s Regret Minimisation framework, one can make the most out of pathing out the probable future of less regrets. Yet, the reverse can also be true. What if you are also able to look back into your past, pull out the essential things that you found joy, and take them forward into the probable future with great anticipation? Incidentally, it was a thought experiment that I tried at that point by immersing into the next phase.

Problem Immersing

What was I looking for? The answers weren’t clear. As I scanned through the decisions I made, I began searching for evidences that made significant impact in chartering my life journey. Contextual enquiry is one such method used in design thinking, where the users are interviewed and observed in their natural environment. For my case, the context was a recollection of the past memories and the associated events that took place in the environment, which required me to speak to family and close friends. Although the objective was to find moments of joy, recognising unpleasant experiences was part of the process. Through this exercise, I soon discovered a personal insight: one of my greatest joy has been to look at design with different lens. Whether it was with different industries, disciplines or capabilities, having a mixture of experiences with design as the main ingredient made my personal work and life meaningful.

Proposition Ideating

Borrowing Bill Burnett’s and Dave Evan’s method, once you have drawn insights, the next part is to chart your paths. Note that it is not one path, but “a few lives”, similar to the thinking of parallel universes. Brainstorming is a similar method that comes to mind, where we go for quantity but focused on the insights. What I did for myself was to draw out a mind map of my alternate lives. I recall putting post-its of various plausible paths I could take, evaluating the pros and cons of each path. Obviously some paths were very attractive, but the risk were higher. Others were laid out for me, but when family came into the picture, it became less favourable. Eventually, there would be a path worth exploring. What’s next would be to run a small experiment to see if it worked out.

Prototype Iterating

To test an idea is the best way to learn about its potential. I like to give myself mini challenges when it comes to life. Ever since being a design undergraduate, the best way of achieving this was to take part in design competitions. Whether it was to design items or experiences, design competitions were a way to accelerate lessons about yourself and to see what inspires you to the next level. Openideo, being a good place to look for interesting topic, was where I participated in one such design competition back in 2017. It was perhaps one of the reasons that led me to my current role at Singapore Airlines. That being said, doing a design competition isn’t a silver bullet. There was a lot of deliberating, especially whether the validation remains true after the adrenaline of a design competition settled. At some point, I decided to put it away, resuming back to my daily routines. But that nagging feeling, that moment of regret, or that possible joy, did not escape me. It was the moment that I knew that was where I was heading to. And I looked forward.

Product Implementing

Even when I became a Design Thinking Consultant at Singapore Airlines, the journey does not end. There would be the times to reflect and recalibrate on my personal vision, which will prompt further continuation of the Pi process. And just as good products extend new channels, engagements and sprout the creation of other products, so can the product me. From Design Thinking, the role expanded into the world of User Experience (UX), which might seem similar, but in reality is another dimension. The ability to swap across two modes requires adaptation and a growth mindset, yet the vision still remains the same: to look at design with different lens.

This is where I am today on 20/02/2020. I would not say that it has been perfect, and I continue to experience ups and downs, just like every one of you. Yet, if I count every hit and miss these past few years, I could feel that there are more satisfying moments. The words of Steve Jobs resonate with me.

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

There is a misconception to the thinking of work-life balance, because work and life should never be on a balance in the first place. My take on work and life is like the ingredients that is combined into this wonderful dish that can be served for others to enjoy. Another perspective is that life is like a hackathon: you strive to get the most with whatever limited time you have.

Let’s make the most out of life and savour every moment of it.

This article was written as a tribute to Clayton Christensen, a man of great faith and works, who gives the world more than theories.