Dear Designer,
A few folks have been asking me what I’m doing during the holiday break.
The short answer is nothing.
Most of my days and weeks during the past year as creative director at Mangrove requires tremendous and alternating amounts of courtesy and cortisol. Couple this with school part-time and keeping myself healthy, and there has not been a lot of time for real rest.
So this holiday, I made relative non-activity not a goal itself but the prerequisite.
The longer answer is that I’m focusing on three things as preparation for the new year, which I expect will bring changes in my work, my professional life, and Dear Designer itself.
I’m no Oliver Burkeman or James Clear. However, for what it’s worth, here is what I typically do each December to usher in the calendar year.
Rest. I typically get up at 6:30 am. The past week, I have slept in until 8:30 or even 9:00. It’s late for me and it’s upsetting my circadian rhythm in the wrong direction. But my body needs deep rest and the only way I know how to do that is to lie in bed as long as possible without it feeling like I am bed rotting. After only a few days, I have noticed that my skin is ruddier, my eyesight is more finely attuned, and my bones do not ache. I often have problems sleeping. However, giving my one body the chance to lay down, unencumbered by alarms and alarmist news is a true gift. Sidenote: I can also feel my brain melting slightly. This partly explains the brevity of this issue.
Reset. I take about half a day to unsubscribe from as many email newsletters that I can. (Don’t get any big ideas.) As a newsletter nerd, I over-subscribe to newsletters over the course of the year, searching for that singular writer that speaks most to me, or that organization to which I most connect. Fully over-subscribed, the solution is to get back to Square Ten: keeping just 10% and let the rest go. I will also review my massive inbox and delete the previous year’s worth of breathless and incredibly important email updates and promotions. These emails no longer serve a purpose and sit on servers that need to be powered for eternity. Deleting them feels like doing some small good. Sidenote: if you use Gmail, here are two magical search operators — simply paste either one into your search box and up will surface all emails from that category that are older than a year. Select all, delete, breathe.
category:updates older_than:360dcategory:promotions older_than:360dReorg. Related, I will spend time sorting through hundreds of files, tasks, applications, and authorizations and proceed to reorganize, delete or defer. I split thousands of files across numerous secured local and cloud accounts, including my desktop, iCloud, and Google Drive, allowing me to find what I need relatively easily. I use Todoist to manage my multitude of tasks, both profane and promising, and I’ll reorganize and reschedule to straighten and simplify. I also plan on consolidating various Mac and online applications. I am always looking at note-taking tools and platforms to become a better organized human being but mostly, it’s just technological voyeurism. Sidenote: at some point, I’ll share the system I use to write, research and produce content.
Meanwhile, I want to wish you a very happy new year — one that is filled wonder, with days full of awe and peace and mild organization. And I hope you’ll keep Dear Designer, dear designer, in your inbox.
See you soon.
Yours,
