Dec 31st 2021 - How’d that happen?
My plan was to write something each month of this year about our experience of the ever-changing landscape of work life but, as time has gone by, it has been increasingly difficult to take a moment to ‘look up’. It is fair to say that, contrary to the barren landscape of 2020 (for office design requests), 2021 has been a torrent! Clients old and new have been tackling unique and varied challenges in regard to what they now need from their workspaces. For us, this has meant that alongside a seriously exciting flow of projects we’ve been recruiting and simultaneously searching for the perfect new studio (*spoiler… it’s not yet been found).
A former colleague, Ike Obanye always used to say ‘Busy doesn’t have meaning, it sounds tiring. Better to be active’. His words have run through my head repeatedly in the last months of this frenetic year. 2021 at trifle* has been consistently ‘active’.
Never in my life have I witnessed so many exhausted people trying not to run themselves into the ground by the end of the year. Pandemic fatigue is well documented and whilst our own experience does not compare to the likes of NHS and other worn out key workers, it has still been very real for our team.
We have never been *just* designers - we have always prided ourselves on being insight hunters, researchers, thinkers and innovators of human centric design. We are creators of spaces that show that they care and this piece of our company DNA was suddenly not just useful but critical during ‘21. We are trying to answer some very big questions in our design work right now. There is an entirely new way of working that design needs to facilitate and future proof and (*2nd spoiler alert) we do not yet have all the answers. What we do know is that this is a responsibility we take seriously.
In our enthusiasm for trying to solve the great design challenges of the moment and manage our own growth, we’d become used to working in what I call ‘hyper mode’. So by mid November we urgently needed recharging. We were not making space either mentally or physically as a business to think. We had been working from the beautiful but busy coworking spaces of Soho Works for half of the year but it couldn’t compare to having our own space. Believe me, the irony of us preaching the importance of space whilst having neglected our own is not lost on me!
This mode of working under stress can be useful, stress can be positive for focus and productivity.
‘According to what is known as “The Yerkes-Dodson law,” performance increases with physiological or mental arousal (stress) but only up to a point. When the level of stress becomes too high, performance decreases.” Francessco Dino wrote in the Harvard Business Review several years ago. However, as Glennon Doyle recently commented on her Instagram feed, that level of ‘busy’ can be addictive. We lose the practice of stillness. That is why this ‘betwixtmas’ period can be uncomfortable for many of us.
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
Indeed, we delivered more deadlines and pieces of work in the last six months of this year than anytime before in our history. We were deep in output whilst not able to spend enough time physically together that we had lost sight of the importance of the collective strength of the team, of our culture. Deadlines were met but we were all feeling the pressure of a pace that was unrelenting. Intrinsic to the work we do for our clients, the spaces we design and how we operate is the belief that a successful business ecosystem has the well-being of people at its heart and core.
So, we did a few things to address this. We committed to a temporary but Trifle-only studio that we will move into on January 4th (whoop!) but we also remembered the smaller things that are important to us, that we used to do instinctively. One day at the end of November we closed our laptops at 3.30pm and took the team to the Wellcome Collection to experience their wonderful exploration of wellbeing and happiness ‘Joy & Tranquility’. The highlight for us all was Chrystel Lebas’s sublime multisensory tribute to forests and how they affect our health. Then in mid-December, we ‘closed shop’ and took the team to Birch Community just outside of London for a two day ‘festive retreat’ (complete with multiple lateral flow tests). We took the time to reflect on this past year, our learnings and what we want to achieve in the coming year - both as individuals and a team. It allowed us much needed time to recalibrate, be well fed, refreshed and inspired for what looks to be an ‘active’ 2022. To find, as Glennon Doyle says ‘ a bit of peace on the other side of stopping’.
The scale of change that the impact of WFH or WFM (working from mobile) will have on space is still being understood. We have clients who still have not been back to the office. For every client that impact will be different and it continues to be a new and evolving challenge for all. It is a time for exploring, experimenting, collaborating and knowledge sharing. The story of the workplace revolution is still unfolding but it’s an incredibly exciting one that we are so happy to be part of. Working from home (to some extent) is here to stay for most of us and it is a key part to our working way of life now. While the spaces where we gather need to be and mean so much more than ever before.
Hopefully, 2022 will allow much more opportunity for being together and building collective insight, ideas and creating shared resilience… in our new space and yours.
Plus, my cats are driving me nuts with their newfound dependency issues.
See you next year
Emma x
The Trifle studio reopened 4th January in our new (albeit temporary) space in Old Street where we can finally be together, unless COVID stops us in our tracks of course. Come and have a cuppa as soon as you feel safe to do so and in the meantime feel free to call, let’s only Zoom if we really must!
Author: Emma Morley, Founder and Director
Emma founded Trifle* in 2010 after a career in marketing, event design and production. Frustrated by the fact that only advertising agencies had inspiring spaces she had a desire to make good design the norm for all office workers. Emma has worked across well over 150 interior projects during her career at the helm of Trifle*, she remains passionate about making amazing spaces but also making the industry more accessible, more human and more diverse.