Project 52: Week 26 (5/20/24)
“We live today not in the digital, not in the physical, but in the kind of minestrone that our mind makes of the two." —Paola Antonelli”

Project 52: Week 26 (5/20/24)

Our reflection, meditation, and invitation ...

“Designers and stakeholders can’t predict with certainty the context in which their products will exist a year or two in the future. We’d be better served by creating up-front structures that support continuous change and adaptation.”

Jorge Arango

“I always like to keep in mind Gall’s law, which states: A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a simple working system.”

Jorge Arango,

It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.” – Eckhart Tolle.

"You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your soul.” ?– Swami Vivekananda.

We are delighted to continue with a year-long offering as part of Career Services initiative. ~ Gerald Doyle


Career Accompaniment: Week 26

Welcome to thinking about a Vision board, vision box

As we work with our Tri Cosain participants, we often invite them to create a vision board or a vision box. What we mean by these ideas is a place to capture ideas, impressions, and stimuli for the development of

  • Crystallised inspiration
  • Life or career visions
  • Contributions to future Agile Plans
  • Ideas for experiments or prototypes
  • Invitations for Conversations of Inquiry
  • Potential invitations to our circle of collaborators or MasterMind groups

The idea of a board is built on the notion of a place where we can pin or tape up pictures, clippings, words, quotations, sticky notes, etc., that capture inspiring thoughts or ideas. The vision board or vision box can be either physical or digital. People who use this method often keep their vision boards prominently visible in a workspace or living space where they can regularly see them, add to them, take inspiration and ideas from them, or build on the material already there. ? Sometimes, having these stimuli in physical form has a more significant embodied impact, and having a physical board present in a work or living space can make it an active contributor to reinforcing our deepest commitments and expanding our thinking and insight.

At the same time, some people prefer managing their vision boards in a digital format so they can take them everywhere, view them on multiple devices, and so on. It’s a matter of individual taste. It can be easier to add a clipping or a sticky note to a physical board and, on the other hand, to add digital items, like web links, videos, or online quotations, to a digital version. For this reason, people who like to keep remembrances of music, performances, or video clips may find the digital format more appealing. Some people use both formats. We invite you to try what works best for you, experiment, learn, and grow with these techniques.

The idea of the vision box is similar. Still, the box (or other container) can be a place to collect physical objects that don’t naturally attach easily to a physical board or that don’t exist in a digital form. These objects can include symbols we make or find and gifts from friends, acquaintances, and loved ones. Sometimes, when out in nature, we find evocative objects like rocks, leaves, and feathers… that we want to keep. Sometimes, a piece of jewelry, a piece of craftwork like a carving or a small tapestry, or a tool, especially an artfully made one, seems essential to keep for future reflection and inspiration. Vision boxes can be great holding containers for this kind of inspirational material.

We find that vision boards and vision boxes can be great resources in periods when our inspirations or visions seem to be in formation, in periods of change, or at times when we feel “stuck.” With a bit of practice, it can become relatively easy to open ourselves to new sparks of inspiration and, when those sparks arrive, to capture something that evokes them for the future: a clipping, a quotation, a few words, an image, music, video, an evocative object. We invite our participants to use their boxes and boards to capture these stimuli, and to go back and review their contents periodically, to renew current visions or call forward new ones.

The elements of our boards or boxes may also be great stimuli for conversation and dialogue with our friends and collaborators and sometimes with members of our MasterMind groups if we have them. They can also suggest new experiments or prototypes we want to test out, commitments we might want to make in our evolving Agile Plans, and people we might want to speak to as part of Conversations of Inquiry.

For people of faith, the contents of vision boards and boxes can be objects of prayer, meditation, gratitude, reflection, and discernment. We may see the contents as part of our communication with our Deepest Truth or a Higher Power as we collect them and reflect on them.

As always, I'm ready to accompany you in creating, maintaining, and drawing inspiration from your vision boxes and vision boards, as with all other aspects of your Tri Cosain journeys of inspiration, learning, and career.

Monday, 20 May 2024

Gerald Doyle,

P.S. Click here to read Project 52: Week 25 (Welcome to Burnett & Evans: designing your dream job)


Additional wisdom from Jorge Arango

“much rides on the people responsible for managing the environment: ? The team must have a healthy attitude toward change. They should embrace change as natural and expectable and have the willingness to respond by altering the environment accordingly. ? The team must have awareness of what is happening within and without the environment. They can only respond appropriately to change if they can perceive it. ? It may be that the team sees what needs changing, but lacks the resources or political support to respond. Thus, the team must be empowered to respond to changes. ? The team must have a clear vision of the purpose and essential character of the whole and how people use it. Understanding the whole is important if the team is to respond without compromising the environment. ? The design of the environment must accommodate change gracefully. Some do this better than others; much depends on the environment’s structural configuration.”

Jorge Arango, Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places


And, an interview with Jorge Arango (and perhaps some hints and suggestions for adding to your vision box/board through note-taking)


  • Dive into the future of AI and design, Tiffany and Jorge Arango discuss the integration of AI in design and personal knowledge management. Jorge shares insights from his transition from architecture to UX design, emphasizing the role of information architecture. He talks about his book "Duly Noted," promoting the use of information architecture principles in personal knowledge management. Jorge also explores AI's potential to enhance personal and professional workflows, highlighting tools like Obsidian for note-taking. Furthermore, he addresses the skills designers need for the future, the impact of AI on design, and his experience as a digital nomad.


Tri Cosain materials are developed with my colleague and friend of 40+ years, Scott Downs.

Copyright Scott Downs and Gerald Doyle, 2023/24

Residing in Chicago, Gerald Doyle provides ministry placement research and consulting for Career Services at the Catholic Theological Union ( Herbert Quinde and Christina Zaker ), as well as career services and job search coaching to students, families, and community members at Wolcott College Preparatory High School ( Miriam Pike, Kelly Ramos) and through the The Tyree Institute.

He advises several tech companies, including Upkey ( Amir Badr ) and GetSet Learning ( Eva Prokop ); he has also joined TSI - Transforming Solutions, Inc. ( Dan Feely )in their Higher Education and Career Services practice.


Scott? Downs, a former investment banker, management consultant, and entrepreneur, now works as an Agile coach, seeking to call forward great leaders and great organizations based on great cultures. He is a consultant with Expleo Group and is an associate of the TrustTemenos Leadership Academy.

Scott and Gerald are co-founders of Tri Cosain, a practice that weaves inspiration, learning, and career for leadership in life and work. Gerald and Scott co-authored 9 Questions for Leadership in Life and Work, Conversations of Inquiry, and several other volumes in the Tri Cosain series. Their work embraces equity, inclusion, diversity, and well-being as foundations for personal leadership.

Gerald Doyle

Human Centered Design and Innovation: "You know, I believe it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous. Yes, much better. People forgive each other more readily and become more humble, ..." Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

5 个月

Fabian Reynoso-Ramirez Greetings; a Happy Monday to you. It’s been awhile; too long. Trust you and your family are well. Let’s catch up soon.

要查看或添加评论,请登录

社区洞察