Ted Audio Collective.

Audio Collective.

This is Design Matters with Debbie Millman from Design Observer.com.

On this program, Debbie Millman talks with Stephen Sogmeister,

one of today's most influential graphic designers

about the film he's making on happiness, and about his practice of taking time off every

seven years.

I learned in the first sabbatical

that it may be the best strategy that I ever came up with

to make sure that what I do remains a calling

and doesn't deteriorate into a job or into career.

Here's Debbie Milman, first with a little story.

Three things happened when I turned 30. I got divorced, I quit my job, and I moved out of the

studio apartment I had shared with my husband. Luckily, I also found a good therapist and consequently spent the next year frequenting her office,

freelancing, and then moving yet again, after the wretched discovery that my new apartment

was hopelessly infested with flees.

After several failed attempts to remove them,

my exterminator convinced me that the only way to rid my new home

of the most insidious insect known to man was to burn the entire

100-year-old building down to the ground. I decided a more prudent path would be to move. The day I left was a dark one. I was cranky and hung

over and bitter that my life seemed so unwieldy and unsatisfying. As I passed a hairbrush through the bird's nest

on top of my head, I realized that at that very moment

...