Disappointing others? Or disappointing yourself?
Writing
How to eat better (how I try to stay healthy no matter how busy)
I got an interesting email from a friend currently going through an arduous graduate program. Almost as an afterthought, he said, I have a question for you: How do you eat? How do you stay healthy, especially when you’re only cooking for just yourself? How do you make time to eat well when you are so busy? It’s a great question, and something I never thought to write about on my blog. It’s a little off topic, but certainly a good question, so I’ll try to answer it. Planning food – and staying healthy – can be kind of a pain, especially when half the time my mind is telling me I’d rather be doing something else. I find keeping my energy up is really important, so I need to make sure I have lots of green stuff and protein in my life – but I don’t like thinking about what to eat or when to eat. I also hate spending ridiculous amounts of money to eat well. So here’s what I’ve learned.
How do you eat? Do you eat well? Do you feel good? Half of the battle in exercise and fitness is eating well. It’s also imperative for start-up entrepreneurs, people new to the working world, and anyone trying to do too many things. Eating well helps you work well. The themes that run through this – and a lot of what I do to stay healthy – are as follows: be efficient, set up systems, pay attention to what works (and repeat accordingly), and spend a little time planning ahead.
Breakfast.
- I have to eat within 30 minutes of getting up in the morning. Depending on if I work out or not, I need to eat either a small (150-200 calorie) carb breakfast (before swimming), or a larger (500-800 calorie) protein breakfast (after swimming or a normal day). If I don’t eat in the morning, I’m hosed for the rest of the day.
- I like to take a pack of eggs and hard boil them (and peel them first!) and keep them around as a source of protein. I also buy in bulk Zone bars and Luna bars and keep a box of each in my car. Usually I’ll eat one on my way to the pool or to the track. If I’m not hungry, I don’t eat before working out, as long as the workout is less than an hour. I also really like Odwalla’s superfood (green juice blend) and the Odwalla protein superfood smoothies. (Although you can make your own with Miracle Greens and Orange Juice as well).
- Other favorites for breakfast (I eat strangely in this department): Spinach. (Seriously, try it, and let me know how you feel – I feel amazing after eating spinach). Sometimes I stop in the store and grab a bag of spinach and a pepper and apple and eat them for breakfast. I also enjoy almonds, peanut butter, and cheese (not together – separately). Oh, cottage cheese or oatmeal is also good.
- The goal for me is to eat something that fills me up for a while so I don’t think about eating again so quickly. If I eat plain carbs at 6, I want to eat again at 8, 10, 11, and 12 – and most of my day is spent trying to figure out what to eat next. If I eat almonds, protein (from cottage cheese or oatmeal or eggs), I can usually last until 11 until I’m hungry again.
Lunch.
I could save more money by being better in this area, but I’ve settled for what works in reality: I rarely pack my lunch. I couldn’t name a day in the past several months that I actually got up early enough and made a sandwich and took it to work. It’s just not on my mind late at night before going to bed, and not something I think about at 5 in the morning when I often wake up. It’s also not a habit I’m particularly in need of changing – I don’t like doing it. With the exception of a cooking day on the weekend or one weeknight, I don’t cook that much at night and I’m awful at packing lunches. Here’s what I do instead:
- Buy premade, but healthy. Instead of trying to keep my fridge stocked (it always goes bad because I end up not making my lunch), I go to Trader Joes’ and pick up pre-made salads (delicious!) or pre-made sandwiches – about a week’s worth. The cost per lunch is usually around $3 or $4. The trade off is this: If I forget to buy lunches in advance, then the only lunch options by my work are in the $10 range and up. If I were to make my lunch, which I don’t, so it’s not really even a comparison, I would hypothetically save a bit more. However, the amount that I “would” save making a lunch is disproportionate to the amount that I spend if I forget my lunch on just one day, so the mid-range is actually the most effective long-term option in reality.
- Buy the goods but don’t make it yet. I also like to buy sandwich components – tomatoes, avocados, turkey meats, cheeses – and keep those in the fridge at my work. (If you don’t have a fridge nearby where you work or eat, buy a small one, or find a cooler – it expands the options of fresh food immensely). I also like buying vegetables and pre-cooked beans and grains as well – steamed lentils, beats, green beans, carrots and hummus, celery sticks, and apples are all yummy. I keep a variety of those in the fridge at all times.
Dinners + Meals.
Contrary to much of what this post seems to indicate, I do like cooking. I just don’t like doing it every day – in my mind, there’s no need to. So I like to set aside a few hours to open up cookbooks, try a few recipes, and play music. Sometimes I hop on the phone and call my parents while the food is simmering, or I read a book in the sunshine while something is brewing, baking, or cooking. I love these days. Cooking is much more fun when I get to do it slowly, or do it with friends, and I really enjoy doing it on the weekends (not so much during the week, though). When I do love to cook, here’s what I do:
- Cooking days. Sundays, when I’m home, are often cooking days. I’ll cook 4 or 5 different options for meals, each for 2 or 3 people. Nothing too complicated, but I use all the space on the stove and take a few hours to cook. I might make a chicken bake dish, a loaf of bread, a pasta dish, possibly a big heavy pot of soup, and two or three different vegetable ideas (brussel sprouts with bacon or vegetable stir fry being a current favorite). Inevitably I’ll make brownies and cookies, too. This effort of cooking – several main meals – fills up a whole bunch of tupperwares for dinners during the week and lunches that I take to work with me (correction on above, when I cook, I bring a bag full of 5 lunches with me to work on Monday mornings to last the week).
- Pre-made Food. Okay, Tuesdays and Wednesdays aren’t usually that exciting. I buy pre-made for dinner occasionally. There are a lot of quick meals that are nearly pre-made (frozen pizzas, etc). The two things to watch out for are the Saturated Fat content (read: any dough or breaded anything) and the salt (sodium) content. For example, those Trader Joes’ pizzas are dang good but pack a whopping 900mg of sodium in each of their mini-personal pizzas. This is Not Good For You. My favorite pre-made dinners are frozen burritos, potstickers, sushi, spring rolls, and casear salads.
- Potlucks and Friend Dinners. I love potlucks. While I don’t always enjoy cooking for one person, I LOVE cooking for lots of people. So I invite friends over to cook together – or I head over to someone else’s house for a potluck. Potluck dinners don’t need to be complicated – my friends will show up with a bottle of wine and some cheese – and I’ll throw some marinated chicken and rice on the stove and call it a night.
- Bonus: Places for Inspiration. Some of my friends’ food blogs are GREAT starts for inspiration. Genevieve writes a blog “Tastes and Tales” and Trucy keeps a log of great food around the city: Forrked.
- Eating out. This is inevitable. I do it a lot. I set a little system and try not to do it more than twice a week for both health – and money – reasons. Some great tips for eating out: Share. Don’t get appetizers. Watch or hold the chips and bread. Or – enjoy it and eat reasonably the rest of the week. :)
Snacks.
- Snacks. So Hi, – I eat a lot, by the way – I like to eat a variety of unusual snacks throughout the day. I don’t like having chips or anything bread-based as a snack, because I’ll snack my way through the entire bag in one sitting. I’ve learned this about myself, and so switched the stuff I have available. If I’m going to be “mindlessly eating” (great book, by the way), I’ll fill my space with things that I can munch on indefinitely. Here are some good ones:
- Apples. Carrots. Entire bag of spinach. Celery. Bag of dried plums. Bag of almonds, no salt, just plain roasted. Pistachios (although the salt balance in these can get to be too much – but the shells make it hard for me to eat too many of them). Mozzarella string cheese. As a treat, peanut butter or chocolate. I also keep a box of dried oatmeal that i can warm up in the microwave at any time – especially on cold days – plain oatmeal is yummy.
- CSA or farm delivery. A good way to keep on top of your vegetables and fruits is having a scheduled delivery box from a local CSA. In San Francisco, there are several options.
Last Thoughts.
Who knew I had so much to say about food?
- Eat Plain. I don’t mind eating simple foods. For lunch sometimes, I’ll eat just one thing. Like a big bowl of unsugared, unadultered oatmeal. I suppose people might find this boring, but I like it.
- Build Systems (or Habits). The key to most of these things … is that I really like systems, and I like not thinking about things and just doing them, most of the time. My habits – workouts and eating – are already built, so I don’t consciously think about whether or not I should or shouldn’t be doing something. Instead, I open my food cabinet at work and choose between options I’ve already decided in advance.
- I don’t like being hungry, so I keep food all over the place. In my car, in my exercise bag, in my purse, in my desk drawers. It’s always hidden, and it’s usually “boring” food (I don’t keep candy in there – well – I can’t. If it’s there, I eat it). Celery and peanut butter, almonds, carrots and hummus, or some dried fruit.
- Drink Water. Half the time, being hungry is really being thirsty. I’ve been trained to drink 8 or more glasses of water per day.
Thanks for the question! Hope that helps. Now, off to eat a bunch of almonds and drink some water … Got any tricks, tips or ideas that you want to share? Any ways that I could improve health-wise? I’d love to hear it!
20 lessons from starting a project, part two: launch week.
I’m breathing again, having just launched our website project this past week. Everything was set to go live early in the week – launch campaign emails, final website tweaks, coordination with the team, announcements to be sent, facebook posts, advance tweets. I woke up on Wednesday morning grinning from ear to ear – the first email blast sent out while I was sleeping, but (who am I kidding) – I was too excited to launch this project to sleep in. I woke up at 4:55 AM. (I didn’t get out of bed that early, but I was definitely up and ready.) Sometimes I get too excited to sleep.
About the project: If you want to know more about it – it’s for designers and non-designers who love cities and landscapes – I’ll let you wander over the website at your own leisure. Over the past year, we’ve been building a resource to better understand how landscape architecture and cities intersect – and the result is a published quarterly journal and image resource for information about landscape urbanism.
On this blog, however, I write about doing things. About the process. About the ups and downs – what it’s like to figure stuff out, to work through the hard bits, to learn. This blog is a collection of thoughts – notes on the process, if you will. So here’s where you get the behind-the-scenes picture.
Part 2: Launch Day.
I’ll start with three vivid stories from the past year. This- this- is what it looks like. For better or for worse, these are some of the memories of making this project happen:
Snapshot 1: I’m sitting outside of my apartment, after several failed attempts to get in. I’ve locked myself and my keys and my phone on the wrong sides of the door, respectively, and I’m now stuck outside an apartment, late at night, wishing desperately that I were inside, in bed, sleeping. I’m not. It’s cold, I’m exhausted, and I’m slowly gaining more compassion and sympathy for the homeless people in the streets of San Francisco. And, I have to pee. No matter. 2 hours, no computer, no jacket and a homeless and cold Sarah finds a locksmith to let her into her own apartment, $200 later. Deadlines are deadlines, and I’m working, tired, behind the computer, alone. This is glamorous and exciting …
Snapshot 2: I’ve taken three sacred holidays from work, a vacation, and I’m in New York City, meandering through Prospect Park and talking with three editors about our vision for the website and our bigger visions about everything landscape urbanism, architecture – even forestry and dance. I am reminded that parks are for people, and that parks and cities last longer than people. I’m not really sure how long a website lasts, or even an idea … but physical spaces, they are the foundation of future generations. I remember why I’m involved in this. People. Places. Doing things that matter.
Snapshot 3: I’m drinking tequila and lime, laughing with new friends, grinning from ear to ear because somehow, remarkably, miraculously, we did it. A vision turned reality. A sense of satisfaction so deep that my bones and soul feel unstoppable. I’m waiting in line at a bar in this city and a complete stranger turns to me and says, “Excuse me, but can I just ask you a question?” I nod, gleefully. He goes on, “Can you just tell me – why are you so happy?”
It’s almost ridiculous. And I can’t stop laughing – because we got here. We did it.
Making things happen is beyond satisfying. It’s beautiful, it’s inspiring, and it’s down-to-the-knees energizing, because it shows you what you can do if you put a little grease to the wheel.
The Entre/Intra-Preneur’s Journey: 20 Lessons to Take With You
An entrepreneur is someone who does something. Someone who builds something that hasn’t been built before. A person or business who makes things happen. In a corporate job, a solo journey, or somewhere in between, entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs challenge the status quo. I’ve been fortunate this past year to have several projects at hand to focus on – and while I’ll be analyzing and critiquing this project for a quite a while, here’s a bit more of an inside peak at what I’ve learned and gathered along the way: the lessons from this project, part 2. (For the first post, check out part one).
- People want you to succeed.Just when it gets tough, people step in and do the most wonderful things. Embrace your peers – people want to help. People want you to do well.
- People admire hard work. Hard work is admirable. Hard work is gutsy. Hard work is courageous. When you work hard, people will help you out.
- There is an art to getting things done. I could not, simply could not, do everything on my list. Some days I had a short list of 10 big things I wanted to do, and by 12 PM at night, after more than a few 16-hour stretches, I had to put the pens and paper down and fall asleep. Glasses on face, lights still on, dinner plate uncleared – nothing spectacular or particularly beautiful. At the end of the day, despite how tired I was, I couldn’t let myself get bogged down by the disappointment of not finishing, of only getting 3-4 things done. Little by little, we carved away at the ambitious piles of work and made a dent.
- Each day, show up. Do something each day, even if it’s for a short time.
- Feeling stupid is part of the process. Feeling stupid on a regular basis is normal. At least, for me it is. The more I don’t know, the more dumb I feel, the more I can learn. I’ve spent an entire year feeling completely out of sorts and overwhelmed by everything. I’m hoping that (a) I’m not stupid or (b) I’m getting a heck of a lot smarter. Both are still to be determined.
- Learn as quickly as you can. Ask a lot of questions. The quicker you admit what you don’t know, the quicker you’ll learn. Pride has no place in growth.
- Become comfortable with uncertainty. Really comfortable.
- Frustrations can be high. Become comfortable with frustration. Learn tricks and techniques for staying level-headed even if your emotions run rampant. At times, I had to fight back angry tears because of things that didn’t go as expected – nights when a week’s worth of work was erased and we had to start over from scratch. Short of hitting my head against the bathroom wall, all those yoga exercises started to sink in, and I thought to myself (on many occasions): “Breathe. This too, is just a moment of discomfort. This too, is ephemeral.” Breathing helps.
- Plan for slow days. They happen. Don’t plan to work every day – it’s not possible.
- If you’re stuck, start smaller. Sometimes the projects and sub-projects seemed too big to tackle. Breaking it down in to smaller chunks is extremely helpful.
- Pivot. Iterate. Change. Ask, “is this working”? Test early and test often.
- No one else knows what’s in your mind. Telling people what you want is a really hard thing. Work on it. Ask for feedback. Strive for clarity.
- Disappointment is inevitable. Disappoinment occurs when your expectations don’t match the oucomes. Be sure to compare your outcome to your original state and be proud of what you’ve achieved, no matter what.
- Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I over-promised on many occasions and learned this lesson (as usual) the hard way. I had to stop saying “Yes!” and “Sure!” to things I wanted to do, because I was promising away all the time in my day, and then some. I learned how to politely decline, and how to strategize to be more effective.
- It’s okay to leave things unfinished. Focus on getting the best parts or most important things done first.
- The middle is the hardest. For me, the dip in May was really tough to get through. I sent a letter to my peers and nearly quit my project, packing it up and putting it on the shelves. I often wondered, “is this worth it? Is any of it worth it?” Doubts are always there.
- Form habits. Don’t rely on last-minute decisions. Having a rock-solid vision plan to get you through can be golden. Habits can be my savior. Some days, my ‘dumb days,’ when my brain couldn’t think through strategy, I’d switch to my to-do lists, start with the easy wins, and finish as many tasks as I could before 11am. Then, I’d take a break for the rest of the day, having conquered many small things. This habit – of doing something, even the smallest of things – always surprises me with what it adds up to.
- Surround yourself with good people. They are a tremendous source inspiration.
- It is an incredible amount of work. Don’t underestimate how much work big dreams can take. Be sure you want this as your dream before you start.
- It is worth it.
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The lessons you need most, learning the hard way, and big dreams: part 1
I’ll be honest,
My face hurts.
It might be from the lack of sleep, or the fact that my face is currently crushed against a table in a coffeeshop, where I’ve inadvertendly placed my head down for a quick snooze, and now I’m covered in drool and blinking rapidly trying to regain a sense of where I am – but no matter.
Actually, now that I shake it, my head hurts, too.
I went to the dentist yesterday and afterwards they gave me 4 advil – I asked for 2 extra – pounding headache, be gone.
… Shit, I’m getting distracted again.
Focus.
No one told me that start-up life as an intrapreneur and entrepreneur would be this glamorous, this fun. So exciting. Nevermind the pictures and dreams in your mind about making it rich and doing what you’ve always dreamed of doing – I’m sitting in a coffeeshop, sleeping in the middle of the day, boss only to myself — (and lest that sound enticing, let me tell you that being the boss of yourself is hard, taxing, challenging, and at times, disturbing) — try this on for size:
Go home Sarah, you’re working too hard.
You need to finish this project.
But you’re tired.
No one else is doing it.
True – that’s a good point.
In fact, we should make a map of all of these projects.
Sigh. Okay, yes, “we” should … I’ll get on it.
In the same vein, really – everyone’s my boss, I’m working for hundreds of people, the people that are my clients, the job that I am intra-preneuring at and being challenged on a daily basis, the team that didn’t exist yet, except now it does, because we’ve created something new that didn’t exist before. I’m working harder than I ever have, and probably disturbing the nice folks next to me enjoying their leisurely breakfast because, well, I’m snoring. And drooling. Damn it, I’ve dropped crumbs in my keyboard again. Nice work, Sarah.
“The things worth doing are things that neither you or anyone else have done before. That’s why it’s terrifying. That’s the beauty in uncertainty.” – Jonathan Fields.
All summer, my friends and advisors have been warning me to take it easy, to do fewer things, to uncheck a few boxes and slow down. I’ve got a hundred projects up in the air, and despite knowing – knowing – that I can’t keep up this pace, I still have the hardest time saying no to things that are in front of me. I couldn’t say no.
But then I had to.
I’m starting a big project – a big, crazy, dream-like project that is at the intersection of my professional interests (landscape architecture and city planning), my business and communication drives (building a website, being a writer, and heading up the communications team at my job), and my desire to form great teams and publish (oh yeah, by the way, I’m founding the organization and publication – um, wait. what?).
Ambitious? Yes. More ambitious than I even realized? Certainly. Probably – no, wait – Definitely.
This past month has been – how shall we say it – insane. Working a full-time job and a full-time start-up, while doing a few side projects and occasionally jumping into the Bay – well, it can be hard, although the word “hard” has lost most meaning to me, as I stare stupidly at white walls and try to recalibrate parts of my brain late in the evening. I never use to be a whiskey drinker, and then, now, well baby let me tell you (only sort of kidding). Part of me cringes to write this and share this, because I aspire to the “polished” version of me, the one who thinks she knows what she’s doing – you know, where we all believe that the world is a happy shiny place. I’m not one to shy away from hard work, because I think most of the things worth doing require a little to a lot of elbow grease.
I think most people can and should work harder, actually – because what’s wrong with hard work? – but this feels different.
I’m tired. I’m maxing out. I’m freaking out.
You know, the usual.
And I’ve been absent from this blog – my writing space, my thinking space – a little bit too much.
Trying to do Less.
I wrote an ebook, called Lessons from Less, and even though I sent it out to my friends and peer bloggers, got reviews and feedback, and edited it – I can’t seem to even put it up on this blog, because it turns out the one who needs the advice the most is still me. It was hanging over my head like a hundred other things, taunting me with finishing it, wanting my attention, and I finally had to say:
Look here, project. I’m putting you on the shelves. I’m going to publish you next. Not simultaneously with this project. Next.
And it seems I need to learn this lesson again and again. Some lessons we learn, we must re-learn. They are life lessons we’re bound to dance with for the rest of our lives; they aren’t something that we check off once and say, well, why, yes – I did that. They sit and wrangle with us, teaching us time and time again to learn and re-learn what we haven’t quite got yet.
I’m still learning. I can’t do everything all at once. Not at the same time. There’s a lesson there – and believe me, I’m learning it. I will certainly be releasing the e-book at a later date. It just is not the right time. I just can’t push “send” on something that’s tertiary, peripheral, and not my focus. I can’t send work that’s 90% and not be 100% behind it.
And you know how that feels? Simultaneously awful and wonderful.
Awful, because I had to say no to things that I really still want to do. Three weeks ago, I cancelled my biggest swim of the season, a trans-bay swim I’ve been training to do all summer, a solo 10-mile journey across the San Francisco Bay, because I can’t do it all at once.
I just …. can’t.
Saying that makes me feel miserable, to be honest.
It’s mind-wrenching, numbing, impossible feeling, and part of me feels like I’m letting myself down. There’s nothing quite as deflating as pulling the plug after working so hard. And swimming … swimming is my sanity, my blessing, my space away from life, to sit and be. And yet I had to call it. And say, you know … not right now. Just not right now. I spent a long morning running aimlessly and ended up down by the bay, watching the water quietly in the early morning, wondering if I was making the right decision, wistful and worried.
Awful, because I’ve now written almost two books, one e-book about lessons I’ve learned, and one book on swimming. I have aims to publish, and I’ve called it quits on each of them. Something’s not right. I can feel it. Not now. And I’ve got to listen to this instinct of mine, despite the angst of having spent so much time working on each of these projects. And saying no to my ambition, listening to my quiet feeling in my gut – it still feels really unsettling.
But what is it that they say in business, in finance? Don’t throw money after sunk costs. In life, it’s the same lesson. Just because you’ve already spent energy on it doesn’t mean you should continue to spend energy on it. And the same with projects, it is with our minds and brains. Free up that brain space. Stop worrying about things that can’t be fixed. Let your mind be free, as they say. Let go.
And then, even though I feel awful – even though this is a bittersweet struggle, a chess play I’ll debate for a bit and reflect, wondering how and what I could have done better – at the same time, I feel wonderful.
Wonderful, because I feel like I can breathe again, slowly, even though insanity is still mounting like a dense fog and I’m threatened to be engulfed in it again. But focused, like I can now focus my energy on two things: my one job, my one project, and then go home and face-plant on the bed every night and get up and do it all over again.
Exciting, isn’t it? Let me tease and entice you with the ways of entrepreneurship next …
With that said, however, I’m taking a short break here, writing only once per week (more if I can! but I had to insert some sanity parameters into my life recently) and building up some momentum to launch my big project, my crazy thing that I’ve been working on, which started out just by dabbling on the side, which is finally, I-still-can’t-believe-it, nearly ready to go live and I’m in the sidelines, biting my nails and tearing out my hair and then walking out in public, smiling, hiding that fear behind my eyes because frankly,
Frankly, for the record, I have no idea what the heck I’m doing, either. And I’m really glad you’re here with me.
Lessons from the side-hustle-turned-dream-project, part 1:
In the spirit of learning, here are a few tips and notes I’ve jotted down in my notebooks as I’ve gone through this part of the process. It’s unfinished, uncut, more’s coming, but here’s what I got for you:
- Not everyone will understand your dreams.
- You have chosen a different path than many of your friends.
- Put your health first.
- If you try to do it all alone, you’re an idiot.
- Find good mentors.
- Ask questions.
- Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know. Sometimes, that’s everything.
- Set constraints and parameters.
- Have a solid vision plan. A rock-solid vision plan. You’ll need it in the thick of things.
- Surround yourself with great people.
- Generosity and kindness are always good.
- Tact and grace are never inappropriate. Grace under pressure is learned only under pressure.
- Choose. Make choices. Cut ruthlessly. Do only the most important thing.
- Get sleep whenever possible, and it’s not always possible. Take care of yourself first, as much as possible.
- Balance flies out the window, and then sometimes comes back in short stints.
Launching a Project – and a short hiatus.
I’m going to be launching my big research project – a year-long endeavor to study the ins and outs of cities and our urban spaces, particularly the green spaces and the invisible systems that make cities work – and I’m going to post less frequently on this blog for the next month or so: I won’t promise frequent updates, or a return date (although it will definitely be before the end of September). This is me, trying to take it …. easy?
The project has been more work than I ever dreamed and more fun that I ever could have imagined. The people I work with are incredible. Adjectives fall short. There is brilliance in their capabilities, and I am thrilled, honored, and lucky that they come together to work together with me. Somehow in the span of a year, we’ve assembled over a dozen universities, thirteen people on our team, five editors, and over 40 people featured — we are launching an online journal. There will be six issues of the journal this year, each exploring the ideas of cities, urbanism, landscape architecture, and design.
Why? because where we live – our environmental context – is important to who we are. To me, we are two things: we are what we think, and we are what we surround ourselves with. Once you step outside of your brain, if that’s even possible – looking at the environments that shape our behavior is fascinating. Cities are possibly the most interesting manifestations of being human – they represent how we design systems, how we work together, they hold history in their building walls, and they change daily, yearly, and live beyond any single human life.
A city is analogous to a human body – each with metabolisms and invisible systems and throbbing, vibrant heartbeats. Cities would not exist without people.
And so, in my day job, the one that lets me explore what landscape architecture is and what urban planning is – I’ve taken it upon myself to launch a journal, and issue one is published on September 14th. This Fall, we will be going to the Urban Land Conference, the American Society of Landscape Architects Conference, Green Build, and Blog World, to name a few.
Wish me luck.
If you want to watch what’s happening, check out: www.landscapeurbanism.com, the facebook page, or the twitter page.
To figuring things out, how to start, and how to grow.
XOXO
Sarah
Feedback is O.K.
One of the most important things we get from this world is feedback. Information about how we’re doing. What people like, and don’t like. How to make things better.
As a kid, falling on the ground, scratching your knee – that’s feedback. “Ouch! The world hurts!” you think. Or, “Hmmmm … concrete is hard. Skin is soft. Concrete and skin don’t quite match up nicely all the time.” And you change your behavior accordingly.
Feedback is brilliant. Feedback is crucial. It’s the map between our thinking and the world, telling us clues about what’s going on beyond our minds.
What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
What’s the Urgency? [Post-It]
What’s the urgency in what you are doing? Who’s putting pressure on you to get everything done right now? What can wait?
Too often, we chase dreams and deadlines and ideas in a rush-rush-rush world, bombarded by things with seeming urgency. Some things can wait. In fact, most things can wait – something I’m learning more and more as I fill my plate too full on a regular basis. This week, I stopped and posted this up on my wall: What can wait? And, Does it all have to happen right now?
Inspired by #Trust30’s Post-It prompt by Jenny Blake, I’ve put together a series of a dozen or so challenges and questions that I ask myself and post up in my office and my home workspace. To see the rest in the series, check out the Post-It category.
Business Is Not A Dirty Word: And 15 Other Important Definitions
The words “business,” “sales,” and “marketing” sometimes get a bad reputation. All of a sudden it seems off-putting if you look for sales or you talk about strategy. Sometimes I just say the word “strategy” and people’s eyes glaze over – like it’s boring. The common response goes something like this:
Blogging should be about your love of writing, and nothing else. Oh well, geeez, Marketing means trying to get someone to do something they don’t want to do – I don’t want to do that! Or, I don’t want to try to sell anything, I just want to do what I love and support myself. It will work out, somehow.
This is naive. I think each of these words are not only useful – they are incredibly important. Here’s a quick list of the terms as I understand them (no business school here) – in simple language. Business terms re-defined for the rest of us to use and understand. Although I will throw in a few books here and there that I found useful – for your reference.
Business: Making something that other people want. AND ideally exchanging that something (time, value, stuff, information) for something else of value (often time or money). A business is just an exchange of goods.
Marketing: Telling your story to the people who want to hear it.
Psychology: How your mind works.
As in, I want to understand the psychology behind why people spend money on things they don’t want, and why we make bad decisions in predictable fashions.
Further reading: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, The Art of Choosing.
Corporation: An entity that we love to hate. Wait, Really? It’s just a group of people with a structure. Some Many of them are really great. People make companies, after all.
A corporation is a group of people that have common visions, goals and behaviors. It’s an organization or structure of a business. We consider ‘corporate’ a dirty word because it represents something that doesn’t fit with our own personal visions — the time, the goals, the structure, the way it works, it’s focus on profitability over people — and so it’s our responsibility to change the corporation we dislike, or leave and start a better one.
Entrepreneur: Someone who builds new things that didn’t exist before. A person who builds thing that need to be built.
Entrepreneur is just a fancy word for people who make stuff and do things. 8-year olds who sell neighborhood services from a wagon are entrepreneurs. Moms who host start-up knitting programs or online services are entrepreneurs. Bloggers who sell e-books (oh yeah!) are entrepreneurs.
Further reading: Rework, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, Change by Design, by Tim Brown. The Big Moo, by Seth Godin. The Art of NonConformity by Chris Guillebeau.
Intra-preneurs: (one of my favorite terms!) People who change things within the existing systems. People with existing jobs and systems that learn the rules to break them.
Someone who creates a new job at a company that exists is an intra-preneur. I consider myself and intra-preneur and an entre-preneur: I make new things, I do new things, and I have a ‘typical’ 9-5 job that I constantly challenge, change, and try new things with. Last year we created a new position here within the company. Voila. Intrepreneurship.
Further reading: The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. Do More Great Work by Michael Bungay Stanier. Mastery by George Leonard. Linchpin by Seth Godin.
Goal: A tangible, check-able thing that you want to do.
Goals are great because you can look back at what you’ve done over time, and figure out whether or not you got there.
Plan: ideas about how you’re going to get there (loosely, because you haven’t done it yet).
Further reading: Getting Things Done by David Allen, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Steven R. Covey.
Strategy: a plan of attack. A strategy is a means to an end. It’s how you think you’re going to get ‘there,’ wherever ‘there’ is.
Alternatively, I sometimes define strategy as: Knowing what NOT to do.
Business Plan: what you want to do and how you’re going to do it.
Uncertainty: The feeling that you’re about to do something cool.
Further reading: Uncertainty, by Jonathan Fields.
Deadline: A measure and tool for accountability. An short-term anxiety inducer for (on the whole) long-term stress-reduction. See also, “Discipline.”
ROI – Return on Investment. Aka, getting paid for your hard work. Or all that dang time you spent learning.
Communications. Telling your idea or story in a way that makes sense to the audience/observer.
This is important. Telling your story in a way that makes sense to the recipient, not to you. It doesn’t matter if you understand it. It matters if they understand it.
A little more complex: Telling the story of your idea in a way that achieves your goals and objectives. Communications isn’t an end – it’s a means to an end. Perhaps you want to promote a positive, happy culture – so you create an internal newsletter to highlight the achievements of your team members. This is an internal communications tool used with an objective.
Brand: The idea you want in people’s heads when they think about your business. (Or, alteratively, the idea that is in people’s heads when they think about your business. This idea can come in all shapes, colors, visuals, or words. Sometimes it’s a catch phrase or jingle; other times it’s an image or a logo; other times its a feeling. More often than not, it’s a bit of all of these elements.
Creativity (or Imagination): Courage to believe in something that doesn’t yet exist, and using your ideas, tools, visuals and media channels to tell the story of this idea in a way that matters, to the people who can do something about it.
You get back what you give.
In this world, you get back what you give.A few nights ago, a grumpy man at the donut shop (don’t ask me why I was at the donut shop again – long week, I say) – scowled as he walked in.
Gimme three donuts! He barked at the lady behind the counter.
She frowned, and got the donuts, not saying a word. Another man, sitting on the counter on a red stool near the cash register, remarked to the man ordering the donuts: Well she’s not a very happy camper, now is she?
The grump grunted and replied, Nope! She never is. He snatched his donuts and walked out of the store, past the line up of late-night folks crammed into the hole-in-the-wall shop to get some sugar fixings.
The next lady in the line stepped up and said, softly, Hi, How are you? The wrinkled face of the Chinese woman behind the counter relaxed and smiled. Good, good, she bubbled, bopping around the trays and the donuts. Her eyes crinkled a bit between her brows, mashing her nose in a bit. What can I get you?
I am standing in this line, the third person next, waiting for a donut. I watch these interactions, and I can’t help but think – we are mirrors of each other. People reflect back what we put out to the world. Often, the grump in them is really just the grump in us.
What are you putting out there?
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This post was inspired by a midnight run to a donut shop down on Polk Street in beautiful San Francisco, CA. I love it. You do have all the power in the world – the power over your mind, and essentially, how you frame and see the world. What do you see? And what do you put out there?
What do you put between you and your work?
What do you put between you and your work? This was my day today:
What’s really most important?
I’m no saint. Sometimes I feel like I get to the end of a day, and I’ve only made it halfway through the stuff I didn’t even intend to do. How do you clear your head and your space to allow for great work to happen? And what do you put in your way, instead of focusing on your good work?