Category: Professional Development

What The Middle Looks Like (and Happy Saint Patty’s!)

Posted on by Sarah K Peck


I’ve been running pretty thin lately – it’s an exciting Spring, with several new projects under foot. I’m really excited to finally take some time to share some great news with you.  At the same time, it’s been a challenge to make it all happen – and I’m at work, late nights galore, trying to figure out a way to get it all done and maintain the “Sarah sanity” that I so desperately crave.

Happiness and a quick celebration!

For those of you who don’t know, I’ll talk briefly about some exciting news:

1. New Job! I started a new position on March 1st. I’ll be coordinating the communications strategy + marketing at the international landscape architecture firm that I work at.  (Whew! That’s a mouthful.) So what do I do? I write, design, and build. I combine business + strategy insights to deliver powerful messages about the meaning and need for landscape architecture and spatial design throughout the world. In the broadest sense, I tell stories about the world we live in – and I love it.

Many of you know that here on this blog, I write about about strategies for work success, staying sane, creating the type of work you want to do, entrepreneurship, and life. I’m very happy to be able to transition to a new position where writing, storytelling, web design, and board layout design are the focus of my job. (As for sanity and balance, sometimes I feel like a terrible example of that – but more on that, below).

Wahoo! Time to do some handstands! :)

2. Also: A REALLY exciting project! One of the projects I’m working on – that I started in early 2010  – is the building of a new website for a hot topic in the architecture world, landscape urbanism. The website is taking shape, and there has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the work we’ve done so far.  (If you want to check out the website, take a look at this page). This is my HUGE project that’s finally becoming real.

After work closes – and the new job has started up at high speed! – I’m up late to work on this project: I’m writing, emailing the team, interviewing new writers, talking to contributors, and poring over the web design with a red pen and making changes to the layout and back end before the launch in 2 months (holy shit! so soon!) – but I’m so excited that this project I’ve dreamed about for (now 2 years!) is finally on it’s way to fruition. It will launch in phases this summer.

I am unbelievably thankful and happy to have such great opportunities in front of me so quickly.

Each project is a hundred different, layered lessons in project management, communication, coordination, execution, design layout, user interface, editing, and ultimately, shipping great ideas and products.

The work effort as of late, however, has been immense. I say this not to complain – I can hardly complain about being busy! – but as a means to talk about how difficult it can be to persevere during the really hard moments.

It’s not always easy.

In fact, it’s hardly ever easy. These past few weeks have been exceptionally rough, as I test my limits and mental capacities, my organization skills, my ability to press on, my systems of time management.

I’ll be honest, it gets really hard.

Notes on Loneliness and Sometimes Wanting to Cry

There are nights, like this week, that I get home from work very late, and I open up one of the three (do I admit this?) computers I have at home (multi-browser and computer testing for macs and pcs, they are all OLD!). I’m up late, writing, and I close a browser, pace the house, try to sleep, and then I come back to the little office closet in our apartment and I start writing again, this time polishing up something else new, trying to figure out how I’m going to execute all of the tasks over the next few months.

My brain is a series of multi-layered Excel sheets.

I dream in G-Queues.

My email inbox overflows with hundreds of ‘urgent’ tasks that seem to each yell at me to work more, to work better, to work faster.

I wake up in the middle of the night, teeth grinding, trying to figure out how to get it all done.

Tonight, I sit behind the computer, terrified that I won’t make my next deadline, exhausted from the effort, again skipping an event I’d love to attend and missing my friends.

In the dark moments, in the despair, I sit, unshowered, my back hurting, and I want to cry. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. I also don’t know if what I imagine will work. I can’t tell yet if any of these projects will be successful.

And I’m really, really tired.

There’s no guarantee that it will all work out. I can try it all and work my hardest and these projects could be ephemeral efforts, lasting less than a few seconds in any memory.

And that’s okay.

At least I hope that it’s okay. That’s what I tell myself.

In these moments, in these wander-through-the-city-I-can’t-sleep-moments, I do wish there was someone could tell me that it’s all gonna be okay. When I was younger, my mom would run her fingers through my hair and she was the one who would tell me would all be okay.

And now we’re twenty, thirty-something, and our parents aren’t there to tell us what’s exactly what’s right and wrong and when to work harder and when to chalk it up to a learning experience.

You just press on, do your best, and figure it out as you go.

Because that’s what it looks like.

Making things happen takes energy, toil, and it tests your patience and endurance. Even if you fail a hundred times before you get there, you will get there.  I’m in The Middle somewhere, and I don’t know what the end looks like.

But I know what The Middle looks like.

It’s not the fuzzy good feeling of the beginning, when you’re still high on the adrenaline of starting. And it’s not the calm of the finish, when you’re done and you’ve done the best you can do and you’re proud of your efforts.  The Middle is the struggle, when most people give up, when the test between the do-ers and the quitters really takes shape. The Middle is the part, in marathon training, when you have to get up and run again even though your whole body is exhausted and you want to just sleep or stop.

The Middle is the space where your demons come in and question why you’re even doing it, anyways. And sometimes it’s lonely nights, late nights, cereal dinner in hand, falling asleep on my bed so late in the night that the San Francisco skyline has turned pink from the fog’s misty glow. Sometimes it’s a presentation due in 6 hours and only you to figure it out.

Sometimes, my Friday nights are filled simply with books. I sit in my reading chair and I study one of the 12 books my new boss has put on my desk, on advertising, management, business, positioning, branding. I’m scrambling to figure out what I’m doing while implementing new processes and the pace of change is sometimes maddening. It’s like an MBA in the making – and I love it – but learning and doing all at once feels something like balancing two intense full time jobs.

The Middle is hard.  There’s no way out but through.

I have the blessing of having been through this before, something inside me that knows that The Middle is the hard part and is able to trust in the process.  My experience tells me that I won’t be in this hustle forever. The cyclical nature of production will yield a few moments of respite, hopefully soon, hopefully sometime midsummer, post launch.

And for my own sanity’s sake, I have to carve out moments of escape, rest, and a break – in order to do my best work.

But tonight, it’s the grind. Because that’s what The Middle looks like.

So, reader, have a beer for me tonight. And enjoy your wonderful St. Patty’s day. I’m somewhere in The Middle, working.

Motivation: surprising truths about what motivates us

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

What motivates us? Why do we do what we do? Do you do what you do for money, fame, notoriety, or general good will? (As a blogger and a landscape architect, I can tell you that neither of the things I do are for the big buckaroos. So why do I do what I do? And what motivates us to work hard – or other times, not at all?)

RSA, an organization for arts and “21st century enlightenment,” puts together fabulous videos and graphics about motivation, education, arts, and teaching – among other topics.  Below is a link to their well-animated video about what movitates us and why we do what we do.   Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the three most important factors that drive worker productivity and success, not necessarily monetary incentives or higher pay (sorry, but bonuses just don’t cut it!). Based on research done by MIT and other economics and motivation schemes, this video tells a story about why we do what we do – and what to do to motivate people (and employees).

Here’s what they found, in a nutshell:  “Once tasks go beyond rudimentary cognitive skill … larger rewards lead to poorer performance.” In contrast to what fundamental economics principals will tell us (higher rewards = better performance), this finding is somewhat strange. They tested it in multiple countries with different relative incomes (such as rural India versus the United States), and consistently found that higher incentives led to poorer performance. Thus, it’s not how much you get paid for the tasks you do — but whether or not the tasks involve appropriate levels of autonomy, mastery, and purpose.  For tasks that are complicated, innovative, and require conceptually-based critical thinking skills, people’s performance is consistently better when they can work on what they want, how they want, whenever they want.

Google offers their employees 20% time to work on their own research projects of their choosing. Supposedly this is how gmail and other applications have been developed – by allowing the employees time to use creatively in their own way. Tell me what you think. Do you get free time at your work? Do you have autonomy? Do you work in an environment that allows you to create – and address – your own challenges, ideas, and inventions?

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Four Ways To Tap Into Your Own Creativity And Inspiration

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

Creativity, innovation, and brilliance: why do some people have it and other people don’t? Creativity and innovation are the source of new business ideas, excellence in entrepreneurship, and talented individual success stories.  It would be nice to assume that creative people are “just talented,” and fall back on the assumption that “you either have it or you don’t.”

The truth is, the most creative people understand what it takes to be creative – diligence, persistence, hard work and perhaps a bit of a struggle – and tap into various sources of inspiration and known methods for productivity.

Behind every success story – from Steve Jobs of Apple and Bill Gates of Microsoft, to Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook– there is an individual or a team working hard and following these three tenants of productivity: they understand sources of inspiration; they know how to create moments where creativity can flourish, and they certainly understand that behind every creative idea is unwavering determination, productivity, and a whole lot of hard work.

Look around: there’s inspiration hidden in the people you surround yourself with.

My number one source of inspiration? The people and the networks around you. If you want to be inspired, just watch interesting people, follow talented businesses, engage in new activities, and commit yourself to learning something new.

Become a student of what you want to learn. People are inherently fascinating. Bruce Desilva, a novelist who teaches part-time at Columbia University, describes people as “endlessly interesting.” When asked what inspires him, he replied:

“People do. Human beings are endlessly interesting if you just learn to pay attention.”

In business, most successful ventures start with simple ideas about how to improve upon something that already exists. Red Box and Netflixtook movie rentals to the next level by changing the way that movies were delivered to the customer – offering an additional layer of convenience. The idea of renting movies was not new; how they were made available was changed in a way pleasing to more people.

Paypal and Ebay took the sales and exchange of goods and items to a new front by opening up a virtual marketplace and reconfiguring how we exchange money.  Facebook and other social networking sites reconfigured how we think about networking – replacing excel networking spreadsheets with a system that manages our networks and allows   “friends” to update and exchange their personal information with us – for free.

Pete’s Coffee and Starbucks Coffee are profiting wildly from the sale of a cup of joe mixed with varying amounts of sugar – not a new invention. Want to make a few dollars? Bottle some water or brew some coffee. Hundreds of companies are doing it. The premise is the same: people and businesses are inspired by the world around them. Each of these ideas began with several concepts that weren’t “new.”  Most complaints are actually opportunities to make something new and better by fixing or improving upon something that’s existing.

Cultivate Great Moments for Inspiration.

How do you get that “ah-hah!” moment? In each human mind, we revisit our understanding of the world as it exists from time to time. The mind is the most creative during sustained, semi-focused activity. Here are a few moments that creative people use for cultivating great thinking:

  • Drifting off to sleep: the mind, as it settles and unwinds, often is the most creative during this “unplanned thought time.”  Many artists and writers keep notebooks by their bedsides to capture these moments.
  • Meditation. Practicing putting the mind into a relaxed, free-flowing state has been shown to induce more creative thinking.
  • Exercise. Many marathon runners and elite athletes describe exercise as a “sense of focus beyond everyday thinking.”
  • Walking. Some of the greatest philosophers were known to have many of their conversations while walking.

On a more personal level, here are a few more things that help me to be creative:

Driving. If it’s not in traffic, I find that driving, out on the open road, particularly scenic drives or roads that are familiar to me — can really be a place to let my mind wander. I’ve taken to carrying a tape recorder in my car, to “write down” the thoughts as they float in and out of my brain.

Swimming and running help me think by reducing the amount of ambient noise and clutter surrounding me (can’t carry an iphone in the water just yet!), and letting me get into a different rhythm of thinking that’s more in tune to the strokes of swimming or the pounding pavement of running.  Sometimes I carry my “dumb phone” with me while I’m running, so I can stop and send a short text message to myself if I figure out a new idea on the way.

Sitting outside or walking through quite, green spaces. Being in a garden or an outdoor setting is lovely. It helps me think. Finding the parks and spaces to think – in your city, rural area, or suburban area – and changing it up from time to time – can really help kick-start your brainwaves.

Watch Out For Places and Spaces That REDUCE Inspiration

Just as there are activities that are conducive to creative thinking, there are also sustained activities that are not advantageous to free-form, imaginative thinking. Activities that are over-stimulating or entertaining by their nature (watching television, spending time in front of a computer) can, depending on how and how often they are used, reduce the creative impulses.

Unfortunately, I don’t always think in the same free-flowing way when i sit behind a computer. (The irony is, that i’ll sit behind the laptop screen, wordpress framework in hand, trying to come up with a post, and these are usually the worst posts. )

Furthermore, interesting research by Modupe Akinola, a professor at Columbia Business School and Joe Forgas of the University of New South Wales, Australia, suggest that our dispositions and our emotional framework can influence our creative impulses. In “The Dark Side of Creativity,” Akinola finds that being somewhat melancholy can actually improve your creativity. The research suggests that a sad mood can make people better at judging, accuracy, and observing the world around them.

Our creative challenges need diligence, persistence, and focus. Sometimes struggling through an idea — and working consistently on a hard problem, absent from distractions, despite being tired or frustrated — can be when we find the best insights.

Finally: Putting the work behind the inspiration.

Not every moment of brilliance comes during a casual stroll on a beautiful sunny day without any effort. Creative people don’t sit lazily by a lake, waiting for the next great idea. Most great inventors and thinkers toil away at their ideas, producing new iterations daily, until they figure out something that works. Perhaps hard work facilitates a sense of angst or anguish – stimulating further creativity through some emotional strain, as suggested by the research of Akinola and Forgas.

Even the most creative people forget about the anguish of the process – how difficult it can be to create – after they’ve arrived at a solution or design that works. When the inspiration doesn’t come — and sometimes we have to create even when we’re not in the thick of inspiration — get outside, talk to other people, throw ideas around, read, look, question, and wonder.

And above all, iterate.  Iterate, iterate, iterate.

People that are productive, putting their ideas to work, find successful ideas over time – through careful consideration, reflection, and hard work. Robert Sutton describes it well: “The truth is, creativity isn’t about wild talent as much as it is about productivity. To find a few ideas that work, you need to try a lot that don’t. It’s a pure numbers game.”

Towards legacies: what do you want your future to be?

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

This post was part of a blog series on Brazen Careerist being sponsored by Entrustet in 2010. They asked Brazen members to answer the following question: What do you want your legacy to be? Here’s my response…

Image from AFM

What is a legacy?

Every day in college, I got in the pool. We swam laps back and forth across a 25-yard, under-heated, under-ventilated pool. Our coach, a looming, 6’-7” Italian man with athletic sneakers that made my hands look tiny, would cross his arms, stare down at us in the water and dare us to dream about our athletic legacy.

“What will YOUR legacy be?” he would ask, pacing up and down the side of the pool. “What are your biggest dreams, your aspirations, your hopes, your ambitions? When you leave college, what will be left of your talent? More importantly: how do you want to be remembered?”

This question of legacy drives us to define ourselves, define our goals, and think about our daily activities beyond the task-list of the day or the errands of the week. What do our cumulative activities add up to? Are we driven by money, by respect, by a desire to help or change the world, by a passion for what we do? In short, why do we do the things that we do?

And after we’re done doing them, what will our accomplishments add up to?

In the pool, I would touch the wall, stop for a quick gasp of air, check the clock and push off again, driving myself to swim faster, to do better, to reach farther. Some days, I would fail miserably, and my body would cramp up, check out, and stop performing in the ways that I wanted to. Other days, my mind would wrestle with the workout and push myself beyond what I was capable of. My coach, ever the inspiration, would bend down to the pool’s end, grab my shoulders and look me in the eye, and remind me to reach further than I was currently dreaming. “Stop dreaming small,” he would remind me, “And start dreaming big. Now.”

Not many people ask this of themselves on a daily basis: “who is the best YOU that you can be? Are you sure? Can you be even better than you dream of?”

Yesterday’s legacies.

In a blink, college was over, and those four years of intense training and shivering in the cold pool was done. My ten-workout weeks are done, and I’m beyond the pool now, and my legacy is what it is: I was a swimmer. It was a phenomenal experience. I was lucky to have this training, mentally and physically, towards reaching for challenges and defining yourself as a competitor, as a person, as an athlete, and as a teammate. The shadow of my name will be left in a few record books, perhaps for a few years, until a faster swimmer comes along and replaces my names in those books. I’ll tell the stories a few times – here, to my future children, to people I meet, to peer swimmers. But that was yesterday’s legacy.

Here’s the thing. You already have at least one legacy: your legacy is the print that you’ve already left behind, in the people you’ve met, the work you’ve done, the words you’ve spoken. Perhaps your current legacy is still in its infancy, or you are still hard at work in the beginning of a project that won’t make it big for several years. But regardless of where you are, your legacy is being made, right now. If all your work were to stop today, what would your legacy be?

You are what you do. Take a look around: do you like the waves you’re making on the world? People ask this question about legacies, because it helps us evaluate what we do and frame goals for the future.

What are tomorrow’s ambitions? What are your dreams? (Image from here)

Today’s legacies.

Today, my legacy starts again, in a different way. I’m more than just a swimmer or a runner (although many of my posts talk about athletics, running, swimming and triathlons as a metaphor for other life lessons).

I am a writer. I am a designer. I want to be an inspirational speaker and motivator. I think about complex problems and processes and apply design thinking to real-world problems.  And more than anything, I want to be a teacher or a public speaker – because I love explaining things to people.

I am fortunate to have great bosses and mentors who challenge me to define myself, to define my goals, and to discover what I’m meant to contribute in this world.  I work full time as a designer in a great office in Sausalito, California. I love design – but it’s not enough. And for some reason, this is transparent to my mentor.

In my annual review a year ago – we debated the direction of my future. There wasn’t any holding back: “Well Sarah,” my boss asked, a man with more years’ of experience than my current age: “Do you want to be a landscape architect?” I stammered for a minute, not sure what to say. He continued: “we are an office of landscape architects, so in order to do well – don’t you think you ought to want to be a landscape architect?

The scariest part for me, was answering honestly: I still don’t know. After a three-year masters program and several years in the field, I couldn’t say decisively. I’m not sure I can convey how terrifying it is to stammer out – to the people who’ve hired you – that you’re still not sure that this is what you want to do.

But I said this, to my boss: I’m not convinced that I want to be a landscape architect for the rest of my life. I will be embedded in this field – because I love design, I love figuring out problems, and cities and urban spaces fascinate me – but I’m not sure that I will continue down the ‘prototypical path’ of a landscape architect.

It was terrifying to admit that I haven’t figured it out, that I don’t know what I will do, that I’m not fixed on one legacy. And sometimes it’s really hard to understand what to do next if I’m not sure where I’m headed.

Today, your legacy is a combination of the dreams, aspirations, and goals you have about your future. Not all of it will go according to plan. And for many of us – those of us in our 20s and 30s and young in the field – we’re still figuring out how to carve our path, what the best use of our talents is, and what we are passionate about.  A lot of it is trial and error, experience, and making mistakes along the way.

The point of this story is that it’s okay not to know what your legacy will be – it takes time to figure it out. Each year, you’ll whittle down more as you grow, learn, change, and understand yourself.

My boss was positive in his feedback. As a young employee, he encouraged me to look closely at what I like doing and why I like doing it. “You are curious to me,’ he said, “because I’m not sure I fully understand your point of view as a designer yet.” I laughed – because I was thinking the same thing. “Me too!” I replied “I am still figuring it out – and I think that’s okay.” Being honest about my learning process was huge.

What are your dreams? What makes you dance?

Multiple legacies: making waves

A legacy is something you leave behind; something you’ve contributed or given in some way. You will, undoubtedly, make multiple contributions throughout your lifetime. Each of us will have a lasting impression on our families and our close peers; you will contribute to your professional network, and for others, your contributions will reach out towards the greater world. Some contributions will be physical, built works, or products, and others will be less tangible – perhaps academic prowess, analytical theories, or words and messages of inspiration.

We probably won’t connect the dots of our legacies until after we’ve traveled through the projects and paths still ahead of us. Each experience, exploration, and adventure will contribute to the people we become and the thoughts and ideas we leave behind. In everything that you do, there will be ripples of your legacy, touching others. You may have multiple legacies.

Tomorrow’s legacy: future ambitions

A year later, I had another review. This time, I could elucidate a little bit more of what my goals are in my career(s): I want to work 25% in design, 25% writing, 25% researching and reading, and 25% teaching and presenting. This isn’t a tangible goal about a product or place that I want to be in the future. This is a process that I’d like to use towards building my legacy. This is the methodology and means towards some unforeseeable ends. I can’t map it out all in front of me right now – because if I knew in advance everything I’d be doing, well – that would be boring.

And I’m not sure I can do it all at once, I continued. But I hope to have at least 40 years, give or take, depending on where and how much I work. And so, for now, I’m focused on writing and design. Because I love both – and I love learning about both. But I can’t wait to be teaching, giving presentations, and sharing information with the world.

I want to be an inspiration to others. I want to challenge myself to be the best person I can be. I want to write – about what I’ve learned, so that other people can benefit. I want to teach and share information. I want to be a positive impact on the lives of people around me. I want to solve complex problems and design solutions to make the physical world a better place. I want to be amazing.

And yes, I want to have a legacy.

I’m just not sure quite what it is yet.

And that’s okay.

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