The Biggest Design Mistake

“What’s the biggest design mistake people make in their space?” I get asked this question All. The. Time.

Answer: Ignoring the trivial things. Leaving the snowy footprints in the foyer, the pile of un-folded laundry, the stack of junk mail, and assuming they don’t matter.

Spoiler: they’re NEVER trivial.

Once I visited a friend who had just moved to New York City. She had plugged a TV into an outlet that was slightly too far away, and the cord was stretched out at prime trip-hazard level, awaiting a gruesome accident. I winced every time I looked.

“Let me get you an extension cord. Please,” I offered.

“No, don’t bother. It’s only been like that for a couple of weeks,” she said.

My friend had broken an engagement and made a career change in order to move to New York, and had recently quit her job without a safety net. She was handling her habitat in ways that made no sense, unless you factored in her stress levels.

Has this ever happened to you? The more you have on your plate, the more you procrastinate. Simple tasks become impossible. You spend two hours scrolling instead of emptying the dishwasher. The music algorithm kicks up the theme to “Young and the Restless,” so of course you must pause to watch videos of Nadia Comaneci winning the 76 Olympics. When you look up at nightfall you have an Instagram hangover, your space is in chaos and your self-esteem is in tatters.

Don’t blame your will power. You’re not lazy. This is normal.

Stress and anxiety take up an enormous level of mental bandwidth. Procrastination and distraction is your brain’s way of avoiding pain and conserving energy. Most of your brain’s energy is crunching on the unanswerable problem of “AAAAA WHAT HAVE I DONE WE ARE DOOMED,” like a network doing Bitcoin calculations. There’s none left over for laying extension cords.

Fortunately, there’s a way out. When I and my clients find ourselves stuck, we use two practices: framing and holding space.

Framing means getting distance on the issue by drawing a line around it. Literally: we take photos, load them into an album and discuss your space at a remove.

Holding space means allowing the negative feelings and judgments that your brain is avoiding to surface in your body, without resisting them. Surprisingly, when you do this without talking down to yourself (“I’m lazy and stupid” is NOT ALLOWED) they shift remarkably quickly.

Almost always, this gives us the energy to tackle a clutter pile, un-tangle some cords, and adapt a layout for ease of use. In short order, the number of stressors that our brains are battling comes down, and we have the energy to keep going.

Want more tips for hacking the feedback loops that keep you stuck? The Eccentric Genius Habitat Intervention: Interior Design for Highly Sensitive People offers you a road map to adapting your space to your genius without anxiety, overwhelm, or going over budget.