Always! However you may feel about the StarWars craze, there are several advice anyone could use in their everyday life. And it feels about time to share the highlights of what has been going on lately.
Therefore, let’s look back on the last couple of weeks, it’s lessons and some Jedi learnings.
Freelancing has been a wonderful experience so far with all the challenges and opportunities there are. Work established a wave-like rhythm: easy times are great for reflecting, staying in touch, sharing and filling up the batteries while discovering more of Berlin. Then again, another wave of amazing work opportunities comes in, which will naturally decrease the amount of sharing for some time.
It’s been high tide for me lately, and it’s been awesome riding the waves.
PEACE INNOVATION LAB
Impact Hub, Berlin Peace Innovation Lab, Dreams InDeed International and Prof. Christian Seelos brought awareness to the topic of Social Entrepreneurship inside of Hard Places. In a spot-on presentation it became very clear that we face more trouble spots at a time than ever before in history. We all need to find new ways how to face our global situation. Therefore, the participants had the chance to discuss the question „What would you need to engage with this type of work in hard places?“ in eight groups, working with one graphic recorder in each one of them. In the end, each group presented their insights in the plenum.
Besides working on a topic that is extremely important, I loved the co-creation of the canvas with 7 other graphic recorders. It’s been a great opportunity to share insights, exchange thoughts around our field of profession and geek out on pens and utensils.
START UP WEEKEND BERN
StartUp-Weekends are known all over the world for bringing together people with ideas and skills to form effective teams and work on an idea over a weekend supervised by experts. In the end, each team pitches their developed idea, the three best teams win various prizes like mentoring sessions and so forth.
During StartUp Weekend Bern in Switzerland, I didn’t only had a great team to create the program of the event and the supporting worksheet material, but also had the pleasure to graphically record the main speakers‘ inputs and make the information extra available for the participants. It’s been a fun experience working in such a great team and most likely won’t be the last collaboration as graphic recorder with StartUp Weekends Switzerland.
TEACHING PROCESS VISUALIZATION
One of the very highlights of this year was coming back to KaosPilots Switzerland as a teacher, sharing parts of what I’ve learned. Teaching two different teams and having a somewhat outsider perspective on my own education was extremely interesting and it was very touching to see how much people have grown within a year. Of course, topics were different depending on the teams: Team 3 has been around for a year now, all of the students have successfully finished first projects with clients in their first year and are about to work with their first process clients. Team 4 has started this autumn at KaosPilots, the very diverse backgrounds was as palpable as their curiosity around having me as one of their first teachers.
During one day with the youngsters of team 4, we focussed on visual basics and „harvesting“ – how to capture information in a way that still makes sense after a couple of weeks, months or even years. This is especially important because of the bounty of different teachings during KaosPilot education. Team 3 already knows about star people and containers, so we could fully focus on how to create visuals that help their clients to go through whatever change processes they will design for them. It was equally challenging and fun, because time allowed to go more into depth here. What an incredible opportunity to mark the transition from student to teacher.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Last but not least, I’ve been working on several illustrations to visualize upcoming change and innovation processes as well as organizational development for corporate clients. It’s not the kind of work I can share on this blog unfortunately, yet it’s always a great joy to be part of the design process that happens before the actual process with the client. Thanks for your motivation, trust and collaboration, I’m looking a lot forward to projects with Daimler and Xing next year (just to brag a little).
ALWAYS IN MOTION, THE FUTURE IS
So in case you wonder „but Anna, where are the promised Jedi learnings?“ reading on, you must.
C3P0: “Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 720 to 1.” Han Solo: “Never tell me the odds!”
If you really want to do something, do it. Consider feedback from others, yet don’t allow anyone to diminish your dreams.
If you really want to do something, make a plan, create an overview, break down your monsters into doable tasks, don’t argue with yourself but get started and – most importantly – get stuff done, even if it’s not 100% perfect in the first place. You can always change something. If things don’t work out the way you planned, evaluate, get feedback, adapt, learn from what did and didn’t work.
And now repeat after me: „Done is better than perfect“!
„You can’t win, Darth. Strike me down, and I will become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.“ – Obi-Wan
Wether things go „wrong“ or „right“, all that is happening for you is information you can respond to. As cheesy as it sounds, every „failure“ can be a growth-opportunity if you allow it. Make sure you’ll have loving support from others and from yourself (!) during tough times, focus on where you want to be and what will get you there.
Your focus determines your reality.” – Qui-Gon Jinn
Something I found out to be very true. Especially working as freelancer being completely in charge of how I spend every hour of the day, having a very clear focus makes a huge difference. In the past three months I realized these things work best for me:
- creating a goal or vision board with all the things I want to accomplish in the next three to six months and all the stuff I’m REALLY excited about. Of course it always pays off to make a collage or draw a really cool one up for yourself and hang it close to your desk.
- iCal provides a good overview of how the month, week and day will look like and helps staying organized.
- being clear about my core desired feelings for the upcoming week helps to have a razor sharp focus. As well, it shifts the attention from doing to being, which is amazingly helpful to create more flow. If you don’t know „The Desire Map“ by Danielle LaPorte and wonder what I’m talking about here, read it now, it’s amazing!
- starting the day with a 20 min morning practice, some stretches, yoga, anything really that gets me going plus allowing myself a moment of stillness. Setting a clear intention for the day and aligning it with the core desired feelings gives an extra boost and has been a huge game changer for me.
And remember… the Force will be with you, always.
Wishing you lovely holidays and a happy new year.
All the best,
Anna
annafritsche.com 