A lot of what we do as service creators is office work. We plan, reflect, contact people, organize things. We run meetings and sometimes even fancy workshops. All of this mostly indoors. What happens? We stay in our little bubble. Like a goldfish thinking their aquarium is the ocean.

But once we step out of our offices, the world opens up. We see people doing stuff differently. It's strange to me how just going out for a walk, in the streets or nature, changes how I see a challenge. It brings calm. I'm less like hamster on a wheel, running endlessly.

Being outside changes how we think. It reveals things we didn't see before. It makes us calmer, more relaxed. In fact, I’m recording the notes for this principle while walking along the Rhine river in Basel. The sun shines through the trees, flowers bloom after winter, people are walking, birds are singing. The city is busy but I’m calm, writing outside.

Even research backs this up: being in nature makes us more creative and less stressed (1).

Action Question

How can you include time outside, time walking, time in nature within your work routines?

Footnotes

See for that for example the paper "The impact of nature on creativity – A study among Danish creative professionals" by Trine Plambech a, Cecil C. Konijnendijk van den Bosch. that shows that nature helps with creativity by helping us better direct our attention, and has a restorative quality that is important for creative professionals.

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.

How I wrote this

This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.