Taking that leap of faith to return to the classroom after a long hiatus of 22 years has allowed me to expand my worldview and get in touch with modern-day design thinking. With increased scrutiny of environmental issues plaguing the world, ‘sustainability’ in design has been a consistently hot topic in recent years. Projects for my Master’s in Design Management delved into cities famous for their sustainable practices – such as Okinawa where they encourage a circular economy engaging villagers, using their strength of an aging population with the reputation of having centurions to support trade and tourism at the same time. This showed and allowed me to explore the fine balance between sustainability and practicality of designs, which I foresee to be vital in the work that I do currently at Seatwarehaus Pte Ltd. Customised sofas of the future have to be durable and long-lasting, but more importantly, not to overlook human-centricity. Learning new skill sets is a life-long hobby, I do not see work as work anymore. As such, I hope to be able to apply such design thinking to polish my works for the long term.