
Managing your emotional state is fundamental to great design - xj9
http://deep.design/design-like-an-astronaut/
======
steinsgate
What an amazing article! A few specific parts caught my attention:

"Human beings are good at turning whatever they’re dealing with at the moment
into the Most Important Thing of All time. When dealing with a relatively
minor client problem, our bodies can experience the same symptoms of stress
as, say, a refugee trying to escape from a war-torn country"

and

"After all, your immediate emotion isn’t always the same as how you’ll feel
after you have some time to think about it. However, it certainly has the
potential to mess things up before you come around to that longer-term
perspective."

I have felt this countless time, both as a client and a designer. As a client,
I often didn't give enough time for a designer to iterate (which designers
naturally do) and complained immediately, thus ruining the guy's peace of
mind. As a designer, my first impulse is to take criticism personally and to
get defensive. After I've let some time pass, I can usually understand where
the client is coming from, and then see the shortcomings of the earlier
design.

The author also made an interesting observation about how venting your
frustration might make you more frustrated. This somehow seems related to the
finding of psychologists that "you can't punch your way out of anger"[1]

[1] [https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-
motives/200909...](https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ulterior-
motives/200909/you-cant-punch-your-way-out-anger)

~~~
msohcw
It actually goes beyond just making you more frustrated. Venting, or
catharsis, makes you feel better in the short term, creating a positive
feedback loop in which you seek it out and engage in it more often, making you
more aggressive and worsening the situation.
([http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/08/11/catharsis/](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/08/11/catharsis/))

------
p4wnc6
Managing one's emotional state is a critical skill for _anything_ \-- making
marriages work, raising kids successfully, closing an important deal,
delivering a eulogy for someone you care about, and doing your job.

But, like all critical skills, it will vary from person to person and everyone
is at a different point along the path to mastering it -- some of us with
inherent personality/biochemical/social/physical differences or challenging
circumstances that make it harder to modulate emotional reactions.

If a person is good enough at lots of other areas, they can often compensate
for a lack of skill in modulating emotional state. Not always and not in every
circumstances, but yes, in lots of ways they can, just as those who are really
good at managing emotional state, but who perhaps lack another skill, like
technical competence, might be able to compensate for that particular lack of
skill too.

In this sense, I am not sure what good it does to draw attention specifically
to emotional state as a skill in question. I worry that doing so might create
further cases where people who face challenges with mental health or well-
being have that fact unfairly used against them.

I can only imagine if a bureaucracy began to codify "modulating emotional
state" as a "skill" and made you evaluate how your peers handle emotions in a
360 review or something. It's particularly troubling that the post decries
_negative_ emotions, and uses charged language like "wallowing in negative
emotions" to depict what is presumably someone who is "not managing" their
emotional state well. This screams unfair negative stigma to those who happen
to struggle with, say, depression, or have marginalized disorders like, say,
misophonia.

We shouldn't forget that complaining about unsatisfactory circumstances is one
of the best and healthiest things a human can do in order to get help they
might need to have their circumstances changed. We have to be careful that
this stuff is not codified into business double-speak for "shut up and stop
whining about things you don't like."

This whole post seems like a very dangerous road to go down to me.

~~~
pjc50
_I can only imagine if a bureaucracy began to codify "modulating emotional
state" as a "skill"_

This tends to be run through a gendered filter and then labelled
"professionalism".

~~~
p4wnc6
Well, "professionalism" is pretty much the black-hole escape valve of HR. It
has to do with your hair style, your political beliefs, your religious
beliefs, how much (or how little) you drink alcohol, where you choose to live,
whether or not you are married, whether or not you have children, how much
maternity/paternity leave you request, what types of clothes you wear, how
much (or how little) you make jokes, what type of car you drive, and on very
rare occasion, how you conduct yourself and treat colleagues while working.

Basically, any time the HR apparatus wants to disapprove of you, it will
simply invent a reason to do so, and then turn around and say that the
invented reason is a part of "professionalism" or "being a team player".

In fact, in a Moral Mazes sense, this is precisely why there is an HR
apparatus in the first place -- exactly to manufacture plausible and legally
defensible excuses for defending arbitrary (and often illegal and irrational)
whims of executives.

------
ThomPete
I understand where the author is going with this, but I would like to offer a
different way of looking at it.

At it's core he correctly identifies being "too involved" as part of the issue
because this makes you emotionally attached to a project and clouds your
judgement.

But thats not really the core of the problem – at least not in my experience
having run agency myself and I don't think the essay have any useful
conclusions. Saying we should not be emotional is easy to say when it's your
company.

The real issue is if designers (novice or experienced) feel like their design
abilities are being questioned (and so their position threatened). And so the
real trick is to make sure there is a clear understanding of what direction
the critique is aimed.

If there is any confusion you ned up with designers who take critique of the
discussed solution with a critique of them as designers. And so I have always
tried to make two things clear to the designers I had.

1) They are there because they are good enough. And so whatever discussion we
are having is not about them but about what they produced.

2) The point of critique is always to improve the result never to discuss any
individuals design abilities.

Chances are if you survived the first 3 month of your employment you are there
because you are good enough.

Getting people to a position where they feel they can trust their own
intuition without judgement of them as people is what removes adrenaline. Sure
you might get into a heated debate about something (and thus adrenaline will
flow) but you aren't debating each other you are debating the project at hand.

Of course this require quite a lot of work up front and a level of honesty in
an organization that sometimes simply arent possible.

But if you want to make your designers think more like astronauts you better
make sure that you built a proper spaceship for them to travel in.

~~~
TrevorJ
I think all ranges of emotional involvement are highly useful in evaluating
your own work, but knowing when to act on them, and when to shut up and
reevaluate your gut reaction a few minutes, hours or days later is the real
trick.

------
Htsthbjig
I had an accident (bad landing parachuting) and thought I was going to die.

Friends took me to the hospital and watching doctors not emotionally care
about me was a tremendous relief.

I expected doctors's face to show how serious the injury was. Luckily I was
wrong. These people are trained like astronauts and everyday they see young
people die from car or motorcycle accidents. I went near death but completely
recovered.

~~~
1_player
That reminds me: When young kids hurts themselves, the first thing they do is
look at the nearest person: if you start worrying, they cry; if you're calm or
laughing, they just shrug it off and carry on.

------
keithpeter
[https://hbr.org/2013/11/emotional-agility](https://hbr.org/2013/11/emotional-
agility)

I found this reference quoted in the OA interesting, but the Harvard Business
Review Web page certainly is noisy especially in contrast to the OA's
relatively calm presentation.

Quote from OA

 _" Having been in an executive role for nearly 13 years now, I’ve learned the
hard way (many times…) how dangerous it can be to “leak” your immediate
emotions."_

I think this is fairly standard practice for most senior managers. I'm
actually impressed with the ability some of the managers I work with/to can
actually 'frame shift' into the concerns of others without appearing
dismissive.

~~~
tamana
_The Godfather_ movie has a major plot turn on a character's careless open
honesty in a business meeting, which other characters exploited ruthlessly.

------
noir_lord
As someone currently dealing with a stressful client I'm going to re-read this
every morning this week and see if it helps, it sounds like an interesting
approach.

I've also been called unemotional in the past but that's because I keep my
work face on and if I'm really stressed/angry go for a bike ride when I get in
on a night until I'm not.

------
gchokov
Interesting!!! I am walking right now in Downtown Ho Chi Min, Vietnam, and
I've seen training courses for kids for "Managing emotions, creativity and
mood". For kids, aged 6-10years old. Quite interesting ...

------
stoddler
This book might be worth checking out [http://www.amazon.com/The-Right-Stuff-
Tom-Wolfe/dp/031242756...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Right-Stuff-Tom-
Wolfe/dp/0312427565)

------
callesgg
People* often think everybody thinks in the same way, as the way we ourself
think is the only way we know.

I am for one not even sure what emotions actually are, more than something
that forces my brain to think down a certain path.

*(myself included)

