Expand your vision and start thinking about the future now
Born in São Miguel Island in the Azores, Manuel Lima lived in Lisbon, Copenhagen, New York and London. His background is in design, but life took him to dive into cognitive science and human behaviour. He's a father, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and the author of three brilliant books (The Book of Circles, The Book of Trees, and Visual Complexity). Manuel Lima believes in determination, talent and optimism, and not only for designers.
In the first chapter of your new book, you say, 'I'm asked in interviews for the kind of trait I'm looking for in a specific designer role. My answer, almost always, is adaptability. Adaptable people are problem-solvers at heart.' Do you think it only applies to designers? Can we talk about the need to be adaptable as a new way of being for everyone?
Yes, absolutely. Especially for future generations. Let me be clear, I think that the pace of life is changing so quickly for pretty much everyone, but I certainly feel some industries and areas are changing faster. The other day I was reading a passage from "21 Lessons for the 21st Century" by Yuval Noah Harari. He mentioned that while our parents' generation had the idea that their child would have a job for life, our generation completely broke this myth. We've already had so many jobs, and we are still in our 40s or almost 40s and maybe still looking for it. Our kids' generation will change the idea that a career is for life and they will change it for good; they'll have to question education altogether because spending five years studying something that you might only use for a few years might not be worth it, instead short cycles of education that will allow you to change and adapt more quickly could be interesting. I think the change has already started, though. It needs to become a new mindset.
Talking about mindset and ideas: in chapter 3, you mentioned Jean-Michel Basquiat and his belief that ideas, however potent and disruptive, must merge and contaminate others. Does it work for human beings as well? Do we need to contaminate each other to thrive?
There are actually a lot of parallels between them. This is something that I studied back in the day when I was reading about the diffusion of innovation and the diffusion of information. Having the best idea you could have it's meaningless if you forget how important it is for you - and the idea - to have the right social skills to present it out there. An over-attachment to an idea and sometimes confusing that an idea is an extension of ourselves is absolutely reductive and self-limiting. It blocks the possibility of improving, growing, and prospering. For a concept but also for a person. As soon as we understand that one thing is an idea and then we as a person, that could lead to fewer therapy sessions!
In chapter 2, you describe our society as increasingly competitive and individualistic, especially for designers but for everyone in general. If our inner narcissism and need to be excellent and accomplished are pushed to their best, how can we dare to put ourselves out in uncertainty? Where does the comfort zone stand?
That's a good point and a great question. All of us have an aversion to risk: it's human nature. We, as humans, don't want to take chances because, in real life, taking a chance, sticking your neck out, could mean death. From an evolutionary standpoint, we are much better off conserving energy and not getting outside our comfort zone. But. To me, life begins when I feel like I'm too comfortable, either intellectually or because I'm doing the same thing that I know too well. This is when I know it's time to change because otherwise, I don't evolve, grow, or mature as an individual or a professional. I think designers are even more prone to that because of their perfectionist nature, and perfectionists have a great aversion to risk because they don't control it. We are asked to be always ready and always with something disruptive in mind or something new. I think those are really mental traps that can hold you down from achieving more incredible things.
Let's talk about two of the biggest myths you try to reject in this book: digital will save us and be grounded in the present.
I say digital will save us as a YouTube myth worth deconstructing because everything within the digital realm feels more benign and better for society and the environment, but it's incorrect. Let's say as an example: these days, digital designers have a much bigger responsibility than non-digital designers because they are creating apps that are used by millions of people around the world, and they are really playing with people's brains in a way that's quite scary, but from an environmental standpoint we think "wow". The so-called Cloud is another excellent example: it sounds like something fluffy and armless, but we tend to forget that the Cloud actually it's several server farms that are immensely expensive to run, they take a substantial amount of energy to stay cool, and they are physical, they exist in the real world. These things are never discussed in the open, and I think it works for digital designers to become more and more detached from their responsibility in the world. And that's why in the same chapter, I work around the expression 'be grounded in the present', they are related. It feels like a mantra, as something that's not necessarily positive. Let me explain: so many aspects of being grounded in the present are positive. You have to be present, keep an open mind, and think about where you are in this particular moment: that's beautiful, and it actually works, but I think it can become dangerous. I mentioned a study in the book in which they wired up people's brains and then asked them to think about strangers: the area of the brain they were studying is the one where empathy and caring sit; it activates because you have empathy for someone. When it comes to strangers, it doesn't activate at all, but the most alarming fact was when asked about themselves in the future, it happened the same thing as if that person, them in the future, was a stranger. This explains why many people don't care about retirement savings.
I think we all share this bias of being too grounded in the present, the future is far, and it's really paradoxical because, as far as we know, we are the only species on Earth that can actually predict the future and that sense of foresight is incredible, but also terrifying. We are too grounded in the present; we care only about the immediate rewards, either money or pleasure.
Shall we all work and act as a system and network to survive then?
We don't need to all think alike and change our vision to make one, if we have this notion of the elongated future, we start thinking as a system. There's an interesting publication about the concept of time and how the perception of time differs between people in different cultures, and there is an association with religion. Let's take the idea of the cathedral effect. Medieval cathedrals were projects that sometimes lasted centuries. Please think of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. For many generations, they only saw this building being constructed, but they never saw the final result, which was normal. I think this notion is the key: some of the solutions we want to have for our environment are really long-term investments; we need to make another strong bet like we are building a new Sagrada Familia: it takes a long time, perhaps even multiple generations, for it to happen and to be effective, so we have to elongate that notion of the success. In this sense, it makes sense to think as a network, meaning thinking as a whole while not being a single person. Everything you do, as a person and as a designer, will not just impact the local community, but it has repercussions much larger than one might think: we have to expand our vision and thinking in systems, thinking like a network is a great starting point for sure.
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