On trusting the process

I've been designing some 1 day online workshops lately and I've been having trouble with one particular workshop. It just wasn't clicking for me, and I couldn't "see" the design as I could with the others. I like to think about the workshops I'm designing for a little while and let my subconscious go to work until things fall into place - and usually, that works pretty well. For some reason though it just wasn't working for me this time. I spent some time noodling away at it but wasn't really making any progress.

This morning I was just fiddling around in FigJam and decided I'd rough out my design process. Put everything down, step by step, as I usually like to work. I tweaked it a little, revised things a little, and ended up with a simple, but pretty accurate, overview of how I design a workshop. By the time I'd finished this, my subconscious seemed to get the kick it needed and suddenly the workshop fell into place - I knew what it needed to be like, how it would flow, what the key experience would be.

It reminded me that it's always good to go back and remind yourself of the basics, think carefully about your process, and trust in the way you've learned to work. Just the simple act of sketching out my workflow shook loose the stubborn ideas and helped me reach a breakthrough.