reprogram

I trained on the professional track for ballet. When I learned that the intensity of my training was risking my life, I lost a soul-feeding form of expression.

I set out to develop Pulse, a wearable designed to solve the need I had defined. Six years later, with the sudden loss of my dad to the same condition, I dove into Pulse with a new lens. But building a solution to a clearly-defined problem was not equivalent to expressing my emotions on the experience of loss.

This got me thinking: At what point is a solution-oriented mindset no longer the best approach?

In entrepreneurial culture, the line between work & life is blurred; our approach to work becomes our approach to life. When presented with a user need, our instinctual response is to follow the frameworks for problem-solving. So when faced with personal challenges, we do the same. But realistically, not every problem can be solved with those frameworks. Sometimes, the endless pursuit of finding a solution is a means to avoid sitting in the experience and letting ourselves process it.

This perspective feels foreign in tech/entrepreneurship culture but embraced in arts culture. While designers, engineers, and entrepreneurs respond to a challenge by understanding the business parameters & technological constraints to ideate the perfect solution, artists first express how the challenge impacts them, and the result doesn’t need to be perfect to share with the world. If entrepreneurs don’t understand their own emotions first, how could they possibly develop emotionally-resonant & empathetic solutions for others?