͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

Out of Office is a home for inspired living.
A creative platform for people who want to feel more inspired and connected, offering tools, artist-led experiences and programming that help you see your world — and yourself — with fresh eyes.

To unlock our creative practice series with weekly prompts and community accountability, upgrade your subscription.

Upgrade subscription

How Exploration Might Be the Most Underrated Creative Practice

Creative Practice #6: Why experimenting beyond one niche can be freeing, expand your creativity, and help you get unstuck.

Alice Katter

Mar 27

READ IN APP

What I’ve come to notice in my own life is how deeply a feeling of aliveness is tied to experimentation and expansion: to stepping beyond the familiar and letting the world shape you in new ways.

One of the things society tells us is “choose one thing”, go more niche, become an expert in one thing. And there are, for sure, people or times in our lives, where this is fully valid.

But recently, I came across these fun videos on Instagram (see here or here), which really resonated and made me feel light. They’re all about “trying everything.”

We as humans are multi-layered beings. No one is just one-dimentional. We all have so many facets, and by allowing ourselves to experiment and try on different hats, we can widen our craft, our aperture about what really lights us up, and it’s just really fun and light. Doesn’t actually need to have any “goal” or purpose.

And those are the moments where you connect more closely with what’s around you, where you witness how others live and create, where you don’t just think about living differently… but begin to practice it.

So this week, I encourage you to explore everything you feel curious about!

Trying Everything = invitation + action

When I say “try everything,” I don’t mean turning your life upside down or forcing things that you don’t want to try.

I mostly mean: Be curious about what might spark your joy or interest and be open to trying it out. So…

take the workshop you keep thinking about
try a new creative medium
start learning something random
visit that exhibition your friend recently told you about
go to the event even if it doesn’t “fit your niche”

And then, actually do it.
Because so often, the things we’re curious about stay just that: ideas we circle, but never step into them. Because life happens, you’re “busy”, or simply, don’t know where to start and maybe don’t have the energy to look for smth.

But with Out of Office, we want to help you step off the autopilot, and see your world — and yourself — with fresh eyes.

Our newly launched Artist Studio Visits & Sessions were created from this place. To find inspiration for your everyday life — not in theory, but in practice.

Through artist-led sessions, studio visits, and stories, I hope you find that small spark that nudges you to try something new, to immerse yourself in a living practice, to experience local culture more intimately.

For this week’s Creative Practice, we have a simple, but magical quest for you: Try (at least) one thing.

Not to improve yourself or to optimize your path, but solely to see what happens. And notice how it feels to step out of the narrow lane for a moment.

Check out our upcoming artist studio sessions here, from jewelry to woodworking and indigo dyeing (currently mostly in Barcelona, but soon expanding to different places across Europe — so make sure to check back for your next trip!)

Let us know how it goes,

Alice and the OOO team.

🌿 P.S. We just announced our Italy Creative Residency, Sept 19-23. Check it out and apply now until May 1st for a week of craft, reimagination of work & life, inspiring conversations, long table dinners, and more!

Alice Katter is the Founder of out of office network. Originally from Austria, Alice is a global citizen, having worked and lived in Vienna, London, and NYC. In between, she has spent months investigating life in Mexico, California, Italy, Barcelona, to name a few. She has a background in psychology, brand, and marketing and over the past years has been focusing on workplace connection, community and culture design for creative networks and companies such as Dropbox, Adobe and kyu collective. She believes in the power of fostering a culture that is not only driven but also leaves room for exploration, play, and living life to its fullest. These beliefs led her to launch Out of Office Network in 2019, and publish her book “Reimagining our Nature of Work” in 2023.

Become a paid subscriber