Designing Around Fear:
Experimenting with Radical Honesty
By Sue Pendleton, Founder
Over the past few months, I’ve been spending a lot of time studying how creative minds operate. It started as research for ENSOhello. I wanted to better understand the psychological roadblocks artists face when it comes to things like technology, marketing, and putting their work out into the world.
But somewhere along the way, the research started turning a mirror back on me.
ENSOhello is about to enter a new phase of development. The kind of phase where the work shifts into uncomfortable territory for me: outreach, networking, fundraising, and sales. Far outside my natural comfort zone.
I was dreading it.
A Curious Question
Because I’d been studying creative minds so closely, I paused when I felt that dread. Instead of pushing it aside, I found myself asking a different question. What exactly am I afraid of? If I am going to spend all this time understanding how creative people respond to friction and anxiety, maybe I should look closely at my own.
So I decided to run a small experiment. Radical honesty. I sat down and wrote out every fear I had about this next phase. Not the polished fears. The real ones. Logical. Illogical. Rational. Irrational. Everything.
The Surprisingly Mundane Fears
To be honest, the fears weren’t grand or dramatic. They weren’t even particularly impressive. They were oddly… mundane. Things like:
Driving somewhere unfamiliar.
Social anxiety.
Not knowing where to park.
Transitions between places, tasks, and conversations.
These are the kinds of fears that feel almost embarrassing to admit. It’s much easier to say we’re worried about not being “good enough.” But the truth is, the small logistical uncertainties of stepping into unfamiliar environments can be far more destabilizing than the big existential questions.
A Memory From Early in My Career
As I was writing all of this down, I remembered something that happened early in my career.
I was working at Good Morning America and attending our regular morning meeting. Our director at the time, Don Roy King, was preparing to leave for a new job at CBS. If you don’t recognize the name, Don Roy King is a legendary television director. He spent decades directing Saturday Night Live and is widely regarded as one of the best in the business. As a young producer in my twenties, I was in awe of him. And honestly, a little intimidated.
During the meeting, someone asked him how he felt about the move. He said he was excited. But then he added something I’ve never forgotten. He said he was nervous about where the bathrooms were. The room laughed, but his comment stuck with me for decades. Because it was so real. Here was someone at the top of his profession, admitting that the thing making him uneasy wasn’t the creative challenge of a new job.
It was the simple act of navigating a new place.
The Hidden Nature of Fear
That moment has replayed in my mind many times over the years. Every time I’ve started a new job. Every time I’ve walked into an unfamiliar building. Every time I’ve wondered where to park or where to go.
And yet, we rarely talk about these kinds of fears. They sound too small. Too trivial. Too strange to say out loud. But when you begin to look closely, they’re incredibly common.
Using Fear as Design Input
Once I had my list of fears in front of me, something interesting happened. Instead of seeing them as obstacles, I started treating them like design input.
If driving somewhere unfamiliar creates friction, how could I structure my week to minimize that stress?
If transitions drain my energy, how could I give myself more space between them?
If certain environments feel overwhelming, how could I balance them with work that plays to my strengths?
In other words, instead of trying to eliminate fear or ignore it and just “muscle through”, I started asking how I could design around it.
Redesigning the Week
This led to a simple but powerful shift.
Instead of trying to push past my fears, I started looking at them as clues and designed my week accordingly.
Knowing that transitions can be disruptive to my creative flow, I plan for fewer transitions within a single day. I also realized that some of the things that felt most intimidating—driving to unfamiliar places, walking into new spaces, navigating the unknown—would be easier if they were balanced with something grounding.
So Thursdays have become what I call my Exploration and Community Day. A day dedicated to visiting art spaces, meeting with organizations, and leading workshops. But it’s also paired with something I genuinely look forward to: a standing “date day” with my husband, Will.
That small change turns what might feel like a stressful day into something meaningful and energizing.
And because I know my mind needs time to process experiences and look for patterns, I’ve made reflection an essential part of the week instead of something I try to squeeze in when there’s time.
Here’s what my redesigned week looks like. It accomplishes everything I need for Phase 2, but it’s structured in a way that allows me to work at my best while reducing friction. Avoidance thrives in friction. Reduce the friction, and forward movement becomes possible again.
Monday – Studio Day
Content creation, strategy, planning, preparation, and Zoom meetings.
Tuesday – Outreach Day
Researching and connecting with artists and arts organizations, setting up meetings, and following up with new relationships.
Wednesday – Studio Day
Content creation, analysis, brainstorming, and strategic thinking.
Thursday – Exploration & Community Day
Visiting galleries and art spaces, meeting with organizations, leading workshops—and ending the day with a standing date with Will.
Friday – Reflection & Strategy Day
Processing what I’ve learned during the week, logging insights, looking for patterns, and preparing for the week ahead.
A Different Kind of Leadership
There’s a common narrative in entrepreneurship that when fear appears, the answer is to power through it.
But I’m starting to suspect there’s a better approach. Fear often contains useful information. It reveals where friction exists. Where the environment might need adjusting. Where the system itself might need redesigning. Ignoring fear forces us to push harder.
Listening to it allows us to work smarter.
The Real Lesson
For me, the lesson has been surprisingly simple. Radical honesty changes everything.
When we’re willing to name the fears out loud — even the small, strange, logistical ones — they stop quietly controlling the story. They become something we can work with. Something we can design around.
That’s what surprised me most about this experiment. The fears themselves weren’t nearly as powerful as the avoidance they created. And avoidance, left unchecked, quietly brings progress to a halt.
But once the fears were visible, I could begin to adjust the structure of my week. Reduce friction. Create space where I needed it.
And suddenly, the next phase of ENSOhello didn’t feel overwhelming anymore. It felt… doable. Even exciting.
Closing Thought
I’ve thought a lot about Don Roy King’s comment over the years. A legendary director preparing for a huge new job — and the thing he admitted he was nervous about was finding the bathrooms.
At the time, it made the room laugh. But what it really did was something far more powerful. It made the fear normal. And sometimes that’s all we need.
Because once the fear is visible, we can start designing a path forward.
