Rituals to be a better adult

In the past work at Ritual Design Lab and with the d.school classes on creating rituals, I’ve had fun creating new rituals around productivity, commuting, and food.

It’s a delight to craft ways to make mundane experiences into magical ones, and to design better habits through illogical, humorous little rituals.

Now I’ve started to play around with how to bring the power of rituals to the questions that are most interesting to me: how to get people (and myself) to engage with complex topics. Like, how to actually spend the time to read health insurance policies, data usage terms and conditions, or all the possible penalties and fines that come with a new credit card.

Here is my initial design for that use case: how to ritualize your new credit card experience.

A ritual designed for actually reading and mastering the terms and conditions of a new credit card.

Set the scene with coffee, music, highlighters, and a framed portrait of Elizabeth Warren, and nudge yourself into actually reading all that paperwork that the company doesn’t want you to read.

Mark down what you should beware of — interest rates, penalties, deadlines, rewards — and make your own personal shortlist of what to know.

As you get through paragraphs and pages, mark them off to get a shot of satisfaction.

At the end, if you make it all the way through — celebrate with a reward chocolate and the joy of being an adult.