Are You the Designer or the Designed?

[The designed — the default state | The designer — the intentional state]

Everything you consume was first created.

Until 2010, you didn't have the Instagram app, and life was just fine without it. Then it was designed and created, and now you can't eat or sleep without it.

When you first logged in, you didn't say, "You know what? I'm going to spend my years scrolling day and night." But here we are.

You know why?

Because the apps keep designing their way into our lives, and we let them. Since 2010, they have quietly become the architects of how we spend our time.

All because we never stopped to think. But we can now. What if we stopped being designed and started designing instead? When they design, they design to solve problems that help them, but packaged in a way that makes us believe all that effort is for us.

But the bad news is also the good news here.

When you let others design your experience, you train yourself to be passive. You practice helplessness until it becomes automatic. Your default response becomes "this is just how things are."

But here's the good news we talked about earlier: We can become the designers of our experience of life, and all without needing a giant team of engineers.

We think we need permission to redesign our lives. But the companies designing our attention didn't wait for permission. They just started designing.

The apps succeeded because they removed every obstacle between you and the next hit of dopamine. Your phone buzzes, you pick it up without thinking. You open Instagram to check one thing and emerge 30 minutes later wondering where the time went. They made consumption effortless because effortless consumption is profitable. for them, not us.

Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it's currently getting. And our results currently? Living in a constant state of guilt and yet saying, "I can't help myself, I can't stop." The truth is, whoever Designs the system wins.

All we have to do is stop doing things randomly and start doing them Designly*.

So, you can keep letting them design your days, or you can start designing them yourself. But you can't do both.

Best,
thewordsandwalls.com

*(Designly — a made up word by yours truly. More to come, soonly.)