Origin Story
Designing the Expand System was an incredibly personal & meaningful project. Yet at the same time it fills a major need for countless other artists and neurodivergent people just like me.
For my entire life, I banged my head against the wall “what is wrong with me? Why can’t I get my shit together?” I simply could not stick with an exercise routine, reduce the foggy brain feeling or lower my overwhelm, until I started using a productivity planner. It changed my life! I started running, took care of my health, and became sober.
However, overtime I wanted more, an even better tool. The standard productivity planner had limitations. The planner I was using was ‘one day at a time view’ so I couldn’t see how all the puzzle pieces of my week fit together. Conversely, when I used ‘week view’ planners, I quickly became overwhelmed looking at all the meetings, appointments and tasks for the whole week.
I realized I needed both- week view and day view together in one! But how could this possibly be achieved? I reached for a roll of brown packaging paper, it had perforated lines every 5 inches. I wrote ‘Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday’, etc. at the top of each sheet. Immediately, I was able to fold the length up along the perforated lines to see one day at a time or unfold to see the whole week. Boom!!! The Expand System was born.
Over the year of development for this project, I realized nothing was wrong with me all those years, I had just been using bad, rigid tools. My dream is to give this gift to other people struggling just like I was.