The conference that doesn’t feel like a conference: Touch down in Nebraska, Big Omaha, 2012

by Sarah on May 16, 2012

**A quick update for everyone who voted on the last post: First, an overwhelming thank you of gratitude, because I don’t know what I did to deserve all of you, but you’re absolutely the greatest. I put together a survey in the question about my future projects and more than a hundred of you responded to my crisis about what to do next–I love you. Not only that–but almost all of you answered my optional question, and you all had insightful, thoughtful, and encouraging notes to share. You are what makes me believe in the future of humanity – YOU. You’re amazing. Also, it’s starting to become really clear what my next project should be, and also quite clear what book(s) I need to read next—you almost overwhelmingly picked two. (Answers on Friday!) 

BIG OMAHA: Maybe you had to be there.

Last weekend I attended Big Omaha for the first time, a last-minute attendee who managed to snag a wait-listed spot after all of the first tickets had sold out. Time and time my friends kept telling me, “You have to go to this conference,” and I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why. There are tech conferences all over the place. There are innovative and entrepreneurial minds all over the place in San Francisco. Why should I fly to Omaha? But when all my friends fly out of their way to go to a conference, to go to a city, and especially when it’s a city I’ve never been to before, my urban nerd and my curiosity get the best of me.

Alright, I said. I’ll go.

Cut to the chase: It was an excellent decision.

BIG OMAHA: “Where I feel normal.”

I live in San Francisco—a city I like to affectionately refer to as “College For Adults” because it’s a place where I feel normal, where you can get places without a car, where late-night nerd-fests are typical, where experiments in collaborative consumption and disruption are the norm; where serendipity in coffeeshops isn’t what happens in movies, it’s what happens in real life. Where skipping through the streets and doing handstands and working late hours isn’t just okay, it’s not given a second thought. Where pursuing your dreams and hanging out with people you love is something you do on a daily basis, not once in a life time.

And guess what? This happens in Omaha, too, and I’ll be the first to admit that maybe at first I wasn’t so sure what was happening in the middle of the country. But I knew Jeff Slobotski was rad. And the people going were rad. And I’ll be the first to admit that my hesitations were complete bullshit. And that maybe I was completely wrong.

How do you know if a conference is a good thing to attend? A conference isn’t about information, although you’ll get a lot of it.  A good conference is about people. It’s about energy. And it’s about community.

There was a point a while ago when I decided I was tired of feeling strange. I was tired of feeling like like I should hide the projects I’m doing because I was “doing too much.” I want to be surrounded by people who think like me, dream like me, who believe in the world not as it is—but AS IT COULD BE, and I want to dance and do handstands with them and support every endeavor they do and I do, because unless we all hide away and go to Atlantis, I think that these innovators, these people–YOU–are the key to changing the way the world works.

The world we live in is arbitrary, it’s filled with past stories and architectures and lifestyles that aren’t reality anymore. We live in the architectural bones of our forefathers, but the way we use the space has changed, and the way we move and talk and listen and react and build the future is also changing, in some of the most interesting ways that I’m only just beginning to imagine and describe. I am a storyteller of cities, of people, of humanity, and I see this: We’re living on the tip of a world where we’re working and sharing re-inventing what it means to even be a city—where it’s possible that cities are really the next start-up because the scale and rate at which we can build and invent them is unprecedented in our lifetime (I’ve worked on multiple whole-scale city-invention plans with my company, SWA Group that we are building in China right now), and somewhere in the midst of this beautiful land of airplanes and inventions and machinery, a group of 500 people all timed each of our airplanes to land in Omaha for two days and laugh, learn, share, and infect each other with the energy required to go out and conquer. To be. To imagine.

It’s utterly fucking ridiculous. All of us, in metal tubes, jetting across the sky, tickling clouds with iphone photo apps, cramming ourselves into crowded seats, building second worlds and then meeting up to lie across the floor and laugh about it. But we’re only just getting started…

THE OPENING.

As I always do with conferences, I tweet and curl up with my notebook and take copious notes and try to capture, catalog, and sift through the information at hand. Between Big Omaha and WDS (World Domination, for those unfamiliar), I think I’ve found my favorite two conferences to attend, and I’ll keep attending them as long as I can. Because it’s not about money. Or influence. Or power. Or giant, ass-kicking, audacious goals that take your breath away. Those things all happen when they need to and how they need to, and because they must.

Because it’s about the people. And that’s it. That’s what we have that technology doesn’t—will never have—no matter how many times people engineer a Like or a Poke or a Swipe or a Smile, no matter how much social engineering goes into discovering parallels to humanity. The capacity for compassion, empathy, trust and language might always dance beyond the realm of the digital: and in the tangible, touchable, hand-stand-able, lie-on-the-ground-because-we-can-able—is the space where the magic happens. And that’s why community builders, and connectors, and people who bring people together will always be the subtle influencers of our generation. It’s why we’ll always live in the here and now of conferences, no matter how many ways we can map our brains into the future and past for digital permanence or extend our connections into location-independent aggregations.

Think about it. What are any of your technologies, without an audience? What’s a leader, without a first follower?

It’s all about the people.

In the opening, Antonio Neves brought the house up by reminding everyone of a Big Omaha tradition: welcoming the speakers with a standing ovation. The energy of the crowd was palpable, tangible. “Something about Big Omaha feels a little bit special,” he said—“It feels like home.” He asked everyone to shake their shoulders out, which brought me to giggles early in the morning, just as the event was getting started, before the coffee had even kicked in.

THE SPEAKERS: Sitting around, having coffee—I mean, being on stage.

When speakers take the stage, it’s magical. We want to soak it in, hear from them, learn from the splendor of what they’ve done, write out to-do lists of the best of all their intentions and figure out a way to take their energy and translate it into success within our own projects.

Too often, however, we separate the speakers, elevating them both physically and mentally, to a place of superiority, thinking, “I can’t do that,”—or “I’m not capable,” demarcating the line between us and them. As Jonah Lehrer writes in his recent book “Imagine: How Creativity Works,” when we tell one another stories about creativity, we often “forget to mention those days when we wanted to quit, when we believed that our problems were impossible to solve,” when we were in the trenches, building, creating, worrying, struggling. And I think this was the heart of the magic of the speakers behind Big Omaha: the combination was a pulse of people raw enough to identify with, talented enough to aspire to become, young enough to identify with, quasi-famous enough to generate a small halo around, but still unknown enough to befriend and have drinks with at the end of the day.  The speakers–and audience–were a unique blend of inspiration and humility, of talent and energy, of faith and compassion.

Because when they shared their stories, we learned that if they can do it, maybe we can, too.

SERENDIPITY, WONDER AND SURPRISE.

A sense of wonder and surprise defined the event, and as the endlessly compassionate co-founder Jeff Slobotski wrote in his recap, “Big Omaha Was Magic.” In the final moments of the conference, it struck me that I had forgotten that I was at a conference—me, a slightly more introverted than extroverted person who craves wandering by my lonesome, and hates sitting in chairs, and hates crowds of people– and thought to myself, “Wow—I just realized I’m at a conference. This feels nothing like a conference.” Typically, when my iPhone loses its charge, so do I. And yet I was out, about, soaking in the presence and magic of the people around me, awash in the serendipity of connectivity and compassion.

I’m not sure I was ever asked what I do, thank GOD, and it also wasn’t ever a point of importance. We all do things. We all work towards bigger things, but that’s not the point. There’s no room for ego, for pretension, for hierarchy, for listing out accomplishments. No matter who was in the room, I felt like we were all in it together, each figuring out the next step in our own projects and problems, defining the parameters, learning, living. No one had it figured out. We were all do-ers, movers, shakers, and the difference between doing and talking is that doing requires a lot of tenacity, persistence, humility, ego, confidence, and an unwavering belief in the ability to move mountains with an accumulation of sequential steps.

As the conference was winding down, I posted my thought up on twitter as the conference was winding down; moments later, when Antonio took the stage to wrap-up the event, he read the tweet out loud:

“Big Omaha: The conference that feels nothing like a conference.” – Yes.

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BOOK GIVEAWAY: Too many books, and too many projects! (Plus I need your help)

by Sarah on May 14, 2012

Books are flying off the shelves and landing on my desk, and for the first time in a long time, I can’t read or write fast enough. I also have WAY too many projects on my plate, and I can’t do them all.

So, I think I need your help.  I have no idea where to start and I realized – a midst the stress and panic of not being able to do it all — why not ask all of you?  I’d love your help and feedback about what to read next, and also, what to do next.

In short: what should I focus my energy on?

In exchange for your help, I happen to have extra copies of three different books in this post — so I can give them away to you! If you want to win a free copy of either The $100 StartUp by Chris Guillebeau, The Work Revolution by Julie Clow, or Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins by Annette Simmons, I’ll be giving them away to three readers (More details below). 

First, the books!

Here’s a list of the books I have in front of me, many of which I’d like to review on this blog.

Ask the readers: Which book should I review first? 

  • The $100 Start Up — by Chris Guillebeau launched May 8th, and Chris is on his multi-city book tour at the moment–join us in San Francisco on May 29th! As Pam Slim wrote in her review, the book “delivers exactly what a new entrepreneur needs: road-tested, effective and exceptionally pragmatic advice for starting a new business on a shoestring.”
  • The Fire Starter Sessions — Danielle LaPorte’s recently released book based on her hit digital series–a brilliant mastermind that gets behind who you are to figure out where your power is.
  • Get Lucky – the precursor to their kickstarter campaign (tagline: “Go Luck Yourself”), Becker and Muller co-authored the book, “Get Lucky: How To Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business.” Can’t wait to read it.
  • Imagine: How Creativity Works – by Jonah Lehrer. One of my favorite authors, Lehrer looks at the psychology and strangeness of why we do what we do–and how to embrace our processes to get better at what we do. I’m so excited to read this book!
  • Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins – by Annette Simmons. From the description: “Story telling is a powerful communications tool that is becoming more and more recognized in the business community. These stories are not the usual speech openers or ice breakers, but stories that will influence others to trust the storyteller and shape decisions and actions that are important to both individuals and organizations.”
  • Overconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet – by William Davidow. What are the luxuries and pitfalls of the connected age? And, are smartphones and mobile internets making us smarter–or dumber?
  • The Work Revolution – by Julie Clow.  The premise: “The Work Revolution is about changing the way the world sees work. By making simple changes to improve our relationships with work and each other, we can systematically ignite a work revolution everywhere.”

Next, I need some help figuring out my next project.

In figuring out what to do next, I often go on long walks to figure out which step is the right next step, and what sits well in my heart for me. Fortunately or unfortunately, all of the projects below seem intriguing, exciting, and worth chasing. The problem is I can’t chase them all at the same time. (Darn it!). I can only work on one or two side projects at time and stay sane enough with writing and work. Like it or not, I need sleep and rest to remain sane. So I thought I’d pull a quick “ask the audience” and ask for your help in this decision-making process.

Question 2: Which of the projects below sounds the most interesting to you? 

  • Do Something.  The presentation I did over the holidays has over 90,000 views. I’d like to make a physical book out of it, per a few requests. Would you be interested in a hard copy of the notebook as inspiration?
  • Beautiful Email. I have a collection of tagged emails that look at the art of introductions, blind (“cold”) emails, pen pal letters, short targets, and designing user responses. I’m thinking of curating them into a PDF template of communications via email.
  • Email Ninja: A ten-part email template with specific tips for how to get better at email and get what you want from other people!
  • Moving Through Water: Swimming Book. I’m about halfway done with a book about swimming, and I want to finish it this summer. Should I start with this project?
  • Get Writing: 30 Day Writing Prompts (for new bloggers): I have a collection of prompts and ideas for people who want to start their own blog. I’d like to turn this into a 30-day email series to help people start writing their own blogs, with cues, tips & to-dos for each day to get you from zero to blogging.
  • Manipulate the Monkey Brain: Book Proposal. I’m working on a book proposal that looks at the psychology behind how and why we do what we do — and how we can pattern disrupt our own selves to create better habits that break down the barriers to action, helping us re-think and re-wire our own minds.
  • Stories from Cities — Urban Patterns: This is a second book proposal that I’m working on with a colleague. It’s still in flux, but it would look at six major urban environments (cities) across American and tell case study stories of urbanism throughout the American landscape.
  • In and Out of Buildings: Photo Project. I’d like to develop a website that looks at the patterns and shapes of buildings and how people–and things–move in and out of them. This would be a joint project with a few other designers I know.
It’s fully possible that I will do ALL of the projects, above. As you can probably tell, though, I can’t possible do them all right now, as much as I’d like to. So please tell me what you think! Where do you think I should start?

Here’s how you can help: Help me out by voting here: it’s a very short survey asking what book I should review, what project I should do, and of course, which book you’d like to win.

Now, about winning those free books. Here’s how you do it:

  1. Answer the survey before Thursday, May 17th at Midnight Pacific Standard Time. Tell me what book you think I should review and which project I should start.
  2. Tell me which book you would most like to win (and leave a note in the comments about why!).
  3. I’ll pick 3 winners at random on Friday, May 18th and send your books your way.

Thank you!

 

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How to make a difference.

by Sarah on May 7, 2012

No one cares about your ideas. They care about what you do with those ideas.

Figure out how things work. Figure out why things are the way they are. Learn like crazy, and never stop.

Learn how and where you can make changes. If the structure isn’t working, ask yourself why: Is it the people? The assumptions? The processes? The philosophies? What can be changed? (Everything can be changed).

Look at all the things that you can change, and pick the one with the most impact. Where will your energy be most useful? Focus on repeatable, incremental change.

Do it. Do it consistently. Don’t give up when you hit roadblocks. Persevere.

Keep going.

Repeat.

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How can I be better?

by Sarah on May 3, 2012

How can I be better?

Nearly every day, this is a question I struggle with.

Today is impermanent, imperfect, temporary.

We can always be better. 

What will you focus on? How can you get better?

I write every week, almost every day, in an effort to become a better and better writer. Jack London, in his letter to an aspiring writer, cuts to the chase with some (brutal) feedback that many of us (as un-edited, free-publishing internet writers) need to hear.

Feedback is when information about the past influences your present and future actions. As Jenny Blake writes, Feedback is Career Currency: learn to love it.

In a recent review, I asked my bosses to give me the brutal truth: Feedback will sting for a few days, but worse yet is staying the same for the next forty years without improving your craft.

Take the feedback for the long term.

It’s hard to ask for it, but it’s unbelievably worth it.

How can you be better?

How can I be better?

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Icons in history: San Francisco’s Golden Gate

by Sarah on April 29, 2012

Editor’s Note: This weekend, the main entry drive to the Golden Gate Bridge closes down for three days, and traffic in my home city is expected to be horrendous. As is the case with many things we encounter on a regular basis, I realized how much I take this bridge for granted – both in my daily commute, and in my reveries of San Francisco and my identification of this world city. Sometimes it takes a little hiccup to appreciate what you’ve already got. Fascinated, I dug up some facts from the bridge’s history. 

The Bridge That Couldn’t Be Built

Imagine a world without the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s hard to do, right? San Francisco–as the world knows it today–is represented by the iconic towers spanning the opening between the mountains; the golden arches a symbolic gesture to the Pacific and West as much as an iron protection of the city and the bay area communities.

Yet many of us forget that less than a hundred years ago, the bridge didn’t exist. It wasn’t there. Absent the orange-colored columns and cables, chilly fog and wind whipped through the narrow channel. Water rushed in and out through the narrow channel’s depths of more than 365’, reaching rapid speeds that could sweep swimmers out to sea, crush boats, and perpetually make navigation in and out of the cove terrible. Marin county was far away from San Francisco, something to look at or take a Ferry over to, but it was not easily accessible otherwise.

Often referred to as the “bridge they said that could not be built,” the 1-mile channel of water with its foggy weather, strong ocean currents, and 60-mph winds posed visibility, structural, and erosion challenges for the cities architects and engineers.  The Golden Gate channel gets its name from Captain John Charles Fremont (1846), who referenced the Byzantium myth of the Golden Horn and it’s description of the great harbor entrance to Constantinople.

During one of the most downtrodden times in our nation’s history, construction on the Golden Gate started January 5, 1933.

The bridge officially opened for traffic on May 28, 1937, with a 50 cent toll each way. President Roosevelt announced it to the world via telegraph, and 200,000 people celebrated the opening by walking across it. Today, visitors can walk, drive, or bike across the bridge—something not possible on many bridges. Not far away, a second bridge also opened just six months earlier—the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge. In one year, during the aftermath of some of the most arduous times in our countries’ history, San Francisco changed the connectivity and transportation options of the Bay Area by building two new bridges.

Financed through bonds and paid for exclusively through bridge tolls alone, the construction bonds were retired in 1971, 34 years after the bridge was built. Completed in 1937, in just over four years, the bridge cost $35 million to build. (In comparison: the Empire State Building cost just under $25 million to build, completed in under one year in 1930).

The total weight of the bridge, including anchorages and approaches, is 900,000 tons. The towers stand at 746’ above the water, approximately the height of a 50-story building.  The bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world for 27 years.  The length of the wire in the two cables is 80,000 miles (if one wire, this would be enough to circle the earth at the equator three times). The center span can sway more than 27 feet in either direction, and drops up to ten feet under extreme loads and temperatures. The clearance below the bridge is 220’, tall enough for large ships.

Making the Bridge Happen: Long-term Collective Investments

During the construction of the bridge, as many as 1,300 men were part of the workforce. Most of us today probably don’t know the names of a single person who helped put together, piece by piece, the bridge components that most San Franciscans use on a near-daily basis. The work of those men influences our cities, our identity, our culture. As a resident of the city, the bridge is part of me; I am grateful for the work of the men of years’ past.

On Friday, after writing most of this post, I learned that Jack Balestreri, believed to be the last known builder of the Golden Gate bridge,  died. The San Francisco Chronicle tells the story of Balestreri’s three years of work on the bridge and his later years as a toll collector and toll captain. From the article: “It amazes me to think of the things they did with what they had to work with.” 

It makes me think, too.

What’s worth doing? What am I working on, tirelessly, without need for recognition or approval, because whats more important is the whole, and not the sum of its parts? What 3-year job as a concrete builder, a rivet-driver, a team of men, will I be a part of? In a world of instant gratification, in a world where we can publish blogs and instagram photos in seconds, what’s really worth doing? Will my accumulation of photographs add up to anything more than a series of ticks in a stream of endless information?

What are you building, slowly, over time? What are you investing your time and energy in that might be invisible or unseen?

What’s your Golden Gate Bridge?

The Chief Engineer I, Joseph Strauss, is quoted as saying “When you build a bridge, you build something for all time.” It’s orange hue, officially called “International Orange,” was chosen by architect Irving Morrow as a contrast to the cool grays, blues, and greens of the water, sky and mountains. Strauss revised the original plans for the bridge (slated to tear down Fort Point) to create an arch in the anchorage so as not to destroy the “perfect model of the mason’s art,” at Fort Point.

Strauss died at age 68, the year after the bridge was completed. He did not live to see the bridge today, its iconic servitude to the cities it connects.

More importantly, the bridge was a concerted effort by thousands of people–visionaries, engineers, city officials, workers, specialists, and even high-schoolers looking to pick up some work during the depressed economy. The lasting icon is the bridge itself and the collective energy, not the names of the individuals that helped create it. We will forget almost every name in history, but we will use the best of everything they leave behind.

What will you spend your life doing?

What can you offer the world today, and beyond today?

When you leave, what will you leave behind?

What will your legacy be?

Would you be willing to work on one thing for the rest of your life, and only that, without any recognition? How can the world be different than it is now–because of you being here, doing what you’re doing?

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The importance of story

by Sarah on April 26, 2012

There are thousands of bad presentations. What makes a good presentation?

Nancy Duarte looks at the importance of stories and narratives in our collective history, and how the use of storytelling can captivate audiences.

In it’s most simple structure, a story contains a likable hero, who encounters a roadblock, and overcomes the adversity to achieve a goal.

This is one of my favorite presentations and part of my recent research into storytelling, designing presentations, communication, and public speaking.

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What you don’t see

by Sarah on April 23, 2012

What you see is not all there is

It’s late on a Saturday night, and I feel a slight pull to go out, to put down my notebooks, to wander outside and do the “going out” thing I sometimes like to do. I feel the tug, the urge to walk down to the local bars, to surround myself with crowds of other people, drinking, dancing, playing.

It’s what everyone else is doing, I think to myself. You don’t have to be writing or working right now. It’s not normal. I shake my head at that thought for a second, struggling with this idea of  ”normal.”

What’s normal? What’s typical? How often does it change?

The funny thing is, even when I go out at night, put the dress on, find myself shaking, talking, bars crawling, people laughing, music pounding, dancing, heavy music reverberating… I still wonder. Is this it? Is this what there is? Is the extent of what’s possible? Are my only two options staying in, or going out? Is there something I’m missing, something else I’m not seeing?

The visual is limited, deceptive, yet it strangely beckons me. Everyone is doing this, I think. When I’m out, all I see are all the other people going out; I see the action and the activity. What I don’t see, however, is everything else.

What I don’t see right in front of me are the people at home, preparing for bed, watching movies, slowly unraveling from their days. People surrounding the dinner table, laughing; casual conversations. People at home, working late, start-ups, built over time; writers, pouring over books. Philosophers, musing over ideas. Yogis stretching in and out of another day of activity. Writers spending time behind the books, dreaming. Hustlers working four different jobs, filling their late Saturday nights with the tips from behind a counter, building a freedom fund to travel the world.

People, doing.

As I watch and wander, wondering about what it is that people do, I see the fallacy of vision, the limitations of judging the world merely by what we see: what we see is not all that there is.

Perception is not reality, although it readily distorts it.

What we know and understand to be true comes from our past experiences and from what we’re able to observe about what others do. We clue into Facebook for this reason: to see and be seen, to hear and be heard, to keep tabs on the people around us, to see what they’re doing. But this reality-distortion field, if you will, is based on the collective assumption that we’re each reporting our lives accurately. And we’re not. We can’t possibly be. The act of editing, processing, and determining what to share filters our collective report into the most interesting, unique, or share-worthy status. I’m going to guess that collectively, Facebook posts are more heavily skewed towards the extrovert, towards the person inclined to share, and towards the posts related to exploration, adventure, vacation, food, and friends. In short, everything I want to be doing. That is, Facebook is inherently biased. The system of “liking” creates a slow but consistent classical conditioning that primes each of us to post content that generates feedback, or to be, well, interesting.

The number of pictures I take of myself working, behind a desk, hiding behind my pajamas and thick writer’s glasses? Disproportionately smaller than the amount of time I spend behind my pens, paper and books.

Just like on Saturday night, or any night, or on the collective digital over-share of online social media, there’s a whole world of more, of things we don’t hear about and don’t see. The invisible.

Just because you see something happening one way doesn’t mean you, too, are obligated to do it. Call it the face of peer pressure, but you don’t need to do something–have sex, build a start-up, be successful by thirty–because everyone on television or in your local sphere appears to be doing so. You don’t need to dress fancy, or be extroverted, or drink extensively. You’re allowed to be different. To follow your bliss. To do what matters to you. And just because you don’t see something happening doesn’t mean there aren’t alternatives to what you’ve already seen.

The older I get, the more I learn to unpack and listen to the quiet power of my inner voice coaching me, telling me what to do, guiding me away from the pull of the collective, the pull of “normal.”

What is normal? Who defines it? Isn’t normal an idea defined by the average of what everyone else is doing? I’m not certain that I want to be average, or better yet, do what everyone else is doing.

Some evenings I get home and the bones in my body ache to move, my muscles tell me that despite the cultural normalcy that declares our collective culture sit still behind desks and overeat massive quantities of bread and potatoes, I have to firmly disagree, eating handfuls of lettuce and kale and lose myself in the fluidity of space. I spent years trying to quash this compulsion to move, and I’m tired of it. I can’t. I’m embarrassed only that it took me so long to recover my “essential self,“ and be okay with dancing and wandering in streets to the tune of my body, as opposed to the tune of a giant cacophony of internalized social expectations. And so, I put on my tired and worn-thin running clothes and start out on the streets of San Francisco to wander a city in my feet, in my body, lost in my mind, lost in ideas. My words and thoughts tumble over the pavement, reverberating between the building spaces, dancing in the open spaces of our city systems, playing within the loose rule-sets that guide them, challenging each other, challenging me.

Other times, my body craves the warm solitude of being amidst of a crowd of quiet people, a coffee shop reverie with late night candles and the option to be alone, by myself.

And then, still again, some times I find myself craving a great shake-off, a dance, an agglomeration of people and bodies and warm dancing, the crowded room of bodies stinging with sweat, salt appearing on my skin through sweat and exertion, hips shaking in rhythm to the beat of dance music, throbbing, laughing, shaking off the cacophony of thought just to be. And then, I go out. I engage. I dance.

What do you need to do to be you?

Some people work late in the evenings to finish classes, to gain expertise, to chart a new path in a direction tangential to their primary occupation. I remember stories from one of my relatives about the evenings spent getting her teaching credential post-work, and how difficult, yet rewarding, it was to spend the time for a year to make a new opportunity for herself.

It’s true in the social space, too. Our “Facebook world” is designed to share the accomplishments, the awards, and in aggregate you can feel overwhelmed by the sea of information. Sometimes it seems like everyone else is going on magnificent vacations, having babies, getting married, or winning a Pulitzer prize.

What you don’t see, however, in the compression of space that the internet proffers, are the years and years behind each of those plans, the sacrifices made in exchange for the work put forward. The money spent on the time off. The years spent writing the books. The hours spend alone behind a guitar, learning, string by string and cord by cord, how to map the sequence of rhythms and sounds into your fingers until your body knew it so well your mind forgot the need to think about it and it just became a part of who you were.

In an online conversation with a friend about the difference between achievement and doing, he said,

“In general, I’ve found that our minds are trained extremely well by schools, parents and society such that we can develop a mental concept of excellence faster than we can embody it. I can totally see myself in my head acting a scene at Academy-Award winning levels but to actually bring that into my body will take a lifetime of work and improvement. So there is this perpetual gap between what we think is excellent and what we can actually communicate. With not just acting, most other things too. I fear with the Internet and social networking, we will only get further and further away from actually embodying and experiencing and more into discussing, abstracting and conceptualizing.”

Doing takes time, effort, repetition, quiet exertion, solitude, and sometimes, invisibility. The space to practice. The space to dream, explore, be, and do. 

It takes years, years, years, and practice, practice, practice to get to the place where you’re doing something in the way that you are shaped and primed to do.

What are you doing that no one else sees?

What other options are there? You don’t have to do what everyone else is doing. The world needs you to be weird. Or better yet, to be you.  

Not what you think you ought to be. 

Just… you.

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Invisible systems.

by Sarah on April 16, 2012

I’m staring at the giant salad box in front of me on the airplane, munching down on another pile of cheese and ham, trying to figure out if I’m even hungry. There’s still piles of salad left, and I’m cramped in between the person next to me and the window, navigating my book and my salad in my small allotment of plane space.

I stopped for a second, looking at the box. It was another example of the problem I kept seeing over and over again: 

Invisible systems that control your behavior.

Here’s the thing: you don’t have to eat what’s on the plate. You don’t have to eat any or all of it. But once it’s in front of you, your mind switches to auto-pilot and, for most of us, we consume everything in front of us until it’s gone. The salads I buy from the store come in a box with a fixed amount of ingredients. The size is set: “box” size. It’s the average size and portion determined by someone else to be suitable for every individual, everywhere. The best optimal price point for the business to create a product and move that product off the shelves.

Guess what? You don’t have to eat all the salad in the box.

It’s something small, inconsequential, but it’s huge. Your behavior is being guided by what Ramit Sethi calls an invisible script; the parameters are set forth, and then you operate within them.

Although my mother would kill me for telling you this, you don’t have to finish what’s on your plate, you don’t have to eat the whole hamburger, and you can eat three, ten, or seventy French fries if that’s what you want and how hungry you are. I’ve done all of the above. Sometimes I order an entire order of fries just to eat three of them and throw the rest of them away. I only wanted three–then the salt was too much.

But this post isn’t really about food. So much of what we do is dictated by the invisible systems all around us:

Finish what’s on your plate.
Eat everything in the bag.
Work only during certain hours.
Sleep only during certain hours, only for 8 hours. Less if you want to fit in. Brag about how little sleep you get.
Running involves hard work, sweating, and discomfort.
Work takes a set amount of time.
“They” won’t let me.
Corporate is evil.
I need to quit my job to be happy.
Once I’m an adult, I won’t skip, laugh, jump or play anymore.

Wait, what? 

What systems and thoughts guide your behavior? Are they true? What are the invisible systems that guide your actions? Mindless Eating is a brilliant book that looks at eating with relation to our habits and external cues. While the topic is about food, the subject unravels far more than what we put in our mouths: it’s about the psychology of why we consistently overeat, and what cues (from the size of a plate, to an experiment with a never-ending bowl of soup that caused subjects to eat FOUR TIMES as much as they would have if the bowl emptied normally) confuse and guide us so that we don’t actually have to think about what we’re doing.

When you become aware of these cues, these systems at play, you realize: you don’t have to do what they suggest.

And it’s not about willpower or fighting against yourself. It’s setting up the system in advance–and understand what actually affects your behavior–so that you can encourage the behaviors that you want. Don’t want to eat as much food? The best change you can make is to buy smaller plates. 

It takes a lot of listening, fine-tuning, and habit disruption, but you can condition yourself to see the invisible systems. To challenge what they are asking you to do.

What are the invisible systems that guide your behavior? Do you have to do what they suggest?

Better yet: can you change them?

 

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What’s your story?

by Sarah on April 9, 2012

You. 

On the cover of a magazine.

Big, bold, splashy words. You’re wearing something sharp. Five years down the road from now, you’re doing an exclusive interview, and someone is telling your story to a captive audience.

Just a few questions for you, in this daydream:

First, what magazine would it be?

Second, what would the headline say about you or your project?

And, more importantly, what would the article be about?

In the last trip I took to Costa Rica with a group of women entrepreneurs, Allie Siarto led a series of small-group discussions by posing a question and asking us each to explore the answers.

An entrepreneur who co-founded LoudPixel and works as a photographer on weekends, Allie is one of my peer heroes, someone who I can look to as a model for creating and changing the way work is done and how we think about inventing your career. In asking this question, she asked us to consider what our future story looked like.

What’s your story?

This question looks at three important components of your story. This exercise tells you a lot about your project, career and personal vision.

First, it tells you who your audience is and what the size of your target market is. If you’re looking to be on the cover of a niche specialty magazine, your target market is much smaller than a mainstream publication such as Time or The New Yorker. That’s fine. It’s your community or market, and it’s not going to be the same for everyone. Inc Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, and Fast Company are some of my favorites–and yet these are still specialized, target groups that not everyone is interested in.

Second, it tells you what arena you want to play in; who your peers are, and what sort of work you’d be doing. In one of the magazines I regularly read, Landscape Architecture Magazine gives me a good idea of who my peer group is. Flipping to the table of contents, checking out the authors, and taking a look at the credits (from editors to the national group), tells me the people I’m looking to learn from, compete against, work with, and share professional accreditation and acknowledgement with.

And third, this exercise prompts you to paint the story of yourselves after success. Akin to creating a vision map for where you want to go, you get to create your story backwards by understanding what your future success looks like.

Take a minute to dream…

What would your headline be? What would they say about you? Put your dreamer’s hat on, and picture yourself in five  years’ time. The projects you are working on currently, invisibly, are noticed. You’ve put them in the world, you’ve constructed something long-term that has added up to something. Maybe your recipes are featured on a local cooking magazine. Or your crochet projects are a photographic spread in a crafts magazine. Or your teaching is covered in the regional papers.

Maybe you’re a hero, and you’ve saved someone’s life on the street, rescuing them from the dangers on an oncoming car, and you get 15 minutes showcasing your brilliance.

What would they say about you?

What do you want to be known for?

Write your story in advance. Picture yourself in 5 or 10 years’ time, and write the article. I’m doing it now; I’ve actually just finished a 5000-word outline and draft of a feature article that I’d love to have put on the cover of one of my favorite magazines.

What would the story be about?

How would the story change the lives of other people? What would you have done that makes a difference?

The act of visualizing this storyline is one powerful exercise. Knowing what you want to achieve, and what’s important to you, and what excites you can give you cause to work hard during the days beforehand. It helps you prioritize what you do and don’t do. It gives you a way to layer each piece of your life together towards a goal.

If you’re daring enough, write the article. Don’t be intimidated about the awkwardness of writing about yourself, or the weirdness of it–get over that. Take a piece of paper, cast off the shadows of doubt, and indulge in your fantasy for a few minutes. Write the best version of yourself, tell the story of what beautiful things you’ve done, and really be proud of yourself for the accomplishments that you’ve achieved.

Taking the time to dream is powerful. Taking the time to carve out your thoughts about who you are and what you want to become is one of the first tools you can engage in on the way to getting there.

What’s your headline?

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April Miscellaneous: Updates, Link Love and Thoughts on Burning the Midnight Oil

by Sarah on April 5, 2012

Updates: I’m bursting at the seems with about a hundred posts I want to write, and they are all currently buried in my notebooks, brain, and on half-finished word documents on my laptop. I just took a peek at the unpublished drafts in my queue (110) and the number of essays I’ve hit “publish” on (173) and I realized that I have a lot I need to hurry up and ship– to not be afraid of doing, as Seth Godin says. For the moment, though, I’m caught in the spin-cycle of travel (see below!) and I don’t have the time to sit down and write as much as I want to, since it’s been back-to-back weekends of traveling and engagements. Before my next scheduled post goes up, here are a few updates and miscellaneous notes from the last of March and early April. And before I get even further, Happy Spring! 

Welcome to all the new faces!

It’s been a busy few weeks with this website, and I want to say thank you (and hello!) to all the new faces who have stopped by or who have crossed paths with me lately. If you haven’t yet, send me a message or a tweet to say hello. So many of you have emailed and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude at the thoughts and conversations happening offline. You are all brave, marvelous, and stunning people: I hope you all know that. I am so inspired by the stories I get to read, by what you share and by how much each of you are doing to make things happen. When I get tired, stressed out or worn out like the best of them, I get to read your stories happening around the web and world, and I get re-energized.

Seen and Heard: Recent Posts

In the writing world, there’s been quite a few posts going around that I’m delighted to be a part of (and I’ve got some more in the works, coming out soon, so stay tuned!) If you missed it, here are some of the latest:

  • Chris Guillebeau and I chat about how to figure out whether you’re happy in your job — and what to do about it if you’re not. In the interview, Chris and I discuss how change can happen if you’re unhappy. My answer? We need to take responsibility for our own happiness. It’s no one else’s job or responsibility to help you feel satisfied, happy, or inspired:  it’s yours. Read the full interview here. (Don’t believe me? See the recent post on The Atlantic about how changing your personality can make you happier).
  • Lifehacker liked the post and the cheat-sheet so much that Melanie Pinola picked it up and shared it, making my twitter and internet stream go quite crazy for a few days. (Whoo! Exciting! I’m famous in the internet world!) The fame has worn off, but I definitely saved the re-tweet from The 99 Percent in my keeper file. Yes, I do stuff like that.
  • A huge thank-you to Get Rich Slowly and my friend J.D. for sparking the conversation about pursuing your passion. With thoughtful commentary by Marie Forleo, Knot Theory, and others about finding the right balance of work you love, or a life you love (or both), there’s good arguments to be had for why several options might work–there isn’t a “right” way to getting to your dreams.

March & April Presentations

In the speaking arena, I’ve been involved in several presentations lately and I’m thrilled with the outcome (and amazed, again, by the amount of energy it takes to prepare and conduct these events. A huge round of applause for the teams that put each of these events together). After I unpack a bunch of this work, I hope to put together some guidelines for what I’ve learned so far. More to come.

  • At UC Berkeley, I moderated a panel on Landscapes of Uncertainty in conjunction with the new Ground Up Journal being launched this May. Check out the image from the presentation (above!). I was fortunate to be on stage with Ila Berman, the Director of Architecture at CCA, Douglas Burnham, Principal of envelope A+D, Scott Cataffa, Principal at CMG, and Sha Hwang, Design Technologist at Movity-Trulia. Our conversations meandered through the uncertain terrains of technology, landscape, economics, and professional practice. (My notebooks are filling up faster than I can empty them out into the blog-o-sphere!)
  • Two days later, I went to the University of Pennsylvania to talk about the work that I do with SWA Group and saw a lot of familiar faces at my Alma Mater. It reminded me how much changes, so quickly, in the space after being a student to becoming an alumni and an employer. It seems that not so long ago I was just on the other side of the table, handing my resume and portfolio over to be perused by prospective employers.

And there’s more coming up:

Sheesh, I’ll stop talking about me:

There are other things in the web besides what I’m doing! Here are some of my favorite posts and events I’ve seen lately:

  • GetAround’s curation of the top ten TED Talks to give you the power to change the world. I just re-watched Simon Sinek’s and Seth Godin’s and was re-energized by the power of ideas and the power of figuring out your WHY. One day’s homework? Watch these two TED Talks.
  • Gutsy? Paul Graham’s blog post “Frightengly Ambitious StartUp Ideas,“ is a free list of ideas that (“just”) need to be implemented. If you have the guts, the time, the ambition, and the belief in a way to figure out these problems, go get ‘em. The world needs you.
  • Brene Brown on the Power of Vulnerability. You don’t have to be rock solid all the time. (Cue forthcoming post: “Things That Make Me Cry.”)
  • Your Clothes? Maybe they actually are important: they affect your self-perception. Turns out image does matter — at least in that it influences our confidence and how we feel. Maybe it’s time to go shopping after all?
  • Your Brain On Fiction: Turns out, story time is important after all because it re-wires and changes our brain. Maybe next the science will tell us that recess is important, too, and naptime is essential for creativity. (I don’t know about you, but I’m going to read stories, play on swings and take sunny naps and long runs whenever I can during the day and not wait for someone else to tell me it’s good for me. I believe in trusting the soul and the body. Our bodies are pretty smart, if we’ll let them be.)
  • And lastly, the story of someone who emails back. (And this is why I try, even as I’m sitting behind my computer eating late-night dinner and I should probably be sleeping–to always send at least a reply back. I can’t always do a full conversation, but sometimes it means something to realize that on the other side of the internet, there’s a person, and we get it. We’ve been there. It’ll be okay).

Health, Sanity and Balance

I’m not sure I believe in the old axiom of “work-life balance,” but I’ll definitely be the first to admit that my schedule lately has been a little… askew. I’m excited and grateful for these opportunities, and also wary of burning the midnight oil too often. Cue a good question: why don’t I take a break from this blog? The answer, to me, is simple: Because I can’t not. My notebooks are full to the brim, and the more things I do, the more I learn, the more ideas I have, the more I want to write.

In a recent rant I enjoyed, John Carlton summed it up well:

“I am reminded of the constant possibility for adventure and plot changes in our lives.

I’m appalled when I meet folks who are bored with life. Are you fucking kidding me? Bored? We’re a race of brainy, built-to-endure loonies on a spinning orb in the middle of a vast universe…

… with absolutely nothing or no one holding the power to control what you do next. Sure, there are laws, steel bars, fences and scowling mates (plus your own sense of decency and fear) abounding everywhere…”

I laughed out loud at this. YES. If you’re bored, go do something: there’s too much going on to sit behind your screen and spend any more time thinking when you could be DOING.

Above all, I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and wonder. As Jill says, happiness is an attitude, a framework we can develop — but even people with a positive outlook sometimes have bad days. :) On those grumpy days, you can bet I’ll be curled up in my bed, pillow over head, hiding and recovering. I’m fairly certain that will be happening very soon for this blogger.

With love, wonder and gratitude.

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