How do you choose between two options to make your service more sustainable? Sometimes these decisions feel like a vanilla or chocolate decision. A moment where you have to decide between two lovely things, but you can’t have both.

A great tip from sustainability nerd Haley Andersen is to look for what benefits the most the humans we will serve. 

If the change we put in place has both an impact on the world and humans, it can be very motivating. As the humans who’ll have a lovely experience from it, will often show it and that will boost your motivation (1).

Action question

What’s a decision that you have waited to take because you weren’t sure which option to take? How could the idea of focusing on the co-benefit for the humans you serve help you?

Footnotes

(1) Sadly we haven’t found a way yet for trees to smile back at us or say: “Thanks that you made that decision mate!”.

The inspiration

We discussed this principle with Service Design and sustainability nerd Haley Anderson. Watch that part of the interview here.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.