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design and life

IMG_4744

I’ve read several articles lately about designing happiness in life. I’m not a believer in the abject pursuit of happiness, feeling rather that happiness is a byproduct of a life lived well and right and within the definition of one’s own integrity. So it was all just a lot of fluff until last weekend when I attended the wedding of my two very close friends E and D, the god fathers of my children. D is an art director, so design is at the core of his work life. And like every designer I know, including myself, design does define him. He lives and breathes design, which is not to say he lives and breathes his work. But the way designers approach work is not a whole lot different from how we approach life: deliberately, with creativity and always with an eye to a bigger picture. E, on the other hand, is not a designer and lives his life by and for the relationships he creates. He travels extensively, meeting people everywhere and doing the unimaginable in this day and age…he keeps in touch by talking to them. On the phone. All of them. E has more adopted families than anyone I’ve ever known and a circle of loving friends that is a tribute to his goodness.

D designed the weekend around E’s love of relationship, and we all learned something and I daresay we all left Los Angeles better and happier for the experience. They threw all of the cards up in the air, de-constructed the typical wedding, and re-constructed it to fit who they are. Much like Ayse Birsel advocates in her classes at The School of Visual Arts in New York.

Most of us were not seated with the people we arrived with*. A little uncomfortable at first, but these are exactly the situations that D and E like to put themselves in, creating opportunity for new experiences and new relationships. And by the end of the weekend we were all sitting down, by choice, with people we’d never met. I sat next to E’s high school biology teacher from South Africa. Really. Do you even remember the name of your high school biology teacher? My husband sat next to three of E’s South African friends from university. By design, E makes space for happiness in his life by shaping it with travel and exposing himself to new people and circumstances. D designed the wedding around the people that both he and E have grown to love, at the same time building the weekend in such a way that we got to experience E’s way of living.

wedding balloon

So, my suggestion if there is an area of your life or work that doesn’t make you smile, throw those cards up in the air and redesign that piece of your world. If you need another set of eyes on your unhappiness, see what Sylvia ‘Pillow’ Neretti might be able to offer. Her idea of cardboard boxes and dividers as design/psych tools might help you move in the right direction. It’s all about disruption….remember that word?

Keep in touch,
Leslie

  • here’s the text of the note we each found at our table…’You might notice that some of you are not sitting next to the person you arrived with. This is intentional. D and E rarely spend time together when they attend parties. They socialize with others on their own and, on the way home, have a lot to talk about because they’ve had different experiences talking to different people.

‘During dinner, you are seated between two people we think you will find interesting. Strike up a conversation. You may find that you have more in common with them than you think! After dinner, you’re free to move next to your date or move to other tables.’

slow the f*^# down: ten tips +1

preparing a midday meal

preparing a midday meal

The race to nowhere is not just a phenomenon applicable to high school kids pulling their hair out (or worse) trying to get into the ‘right’ college so that they can get the ‘right’ job and live the ‘right’ life. It’s a phenomenon that exists everywhere and affects everyone. And where are we all racing to? The end of the line is truly the end of the line, so what is the rush? We are already where we need to be….smack dab in the middle of our lives. And a number of people in a number of countries are beginning to notice and slow the f*^# down.

Carl Honore gave a TED talk quite a few years ago on this very topic and much of what he discussed then is still quite relevant. He highlights the connection between our need for speed (speed dating, speed walking, speed dial, speed reading, even speed yoga) and eroding health, productivity and quality of life. This focus on speed also creates stresses that limit creativity, something that I find unbearable. He posits that with the advent of the Slow Food movement we are beginning as societies to see the benefits to slowing down. Slow food has given way to slow communities, slow sex, even slow money, a topic that came up at a food conference I attended recently and was a reference to crowd funding.

Arianna Huffington suggests that this need for speed is an addiction to ‘busy-ness’ with the goal being success based on money and power. She proposes a ‘third metric’ borne of a commencement speech she gave in 2013  at Smith College. The third metric is success based on quality of life, or thriving, rather than defining success as money and power. Guy Kawasaki created a list of ten tips from Arianna Huffington’s new book Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder that can help us to create a life where we care for our health, sleep enough, and do not live to work. I paraphrase (and expand) his tips here:

  1. Redefine success: base success on the joy you’ve brought to people’s lives and whether or not you’ve made the world a better place.
  2. Avoid burnout: working longer and harder does not reap more success.
  3. Nurture your well being: exercise, meditate, do music and art, spend time with friends and family.
  4. Sleep: getting enough sleep will improve every aspect of life.
  5. Take a digital break: turn off all your devices some of the time.
  6. Keep learning: learn from your relationships, read, attend events inside and outside of your business expertise.
  7. Listen to your inner voice: pay attention to your gut reactions…your intuition is based on cues that may not be conscious or obvious.
  8. Act like a child: enjoy life, do what is fun for you, see the world from a younger, clearer perspective.
  9. Find solitude: clear your head with meditation or non-thinking time to unleash your own creativity.
  10. Give back: share your unique talents to improve your corner of the world.

I’d like to add number 11 to this list. Bring the midday meal back to your life. My husband enjoys a midday meal once a week with a friend. They take turns bringing food to the office to prepare and enjoy together, away from their desks. Peter Miller just released Lunch at the Shop: The Art and Practice of the Midday Meal. He and his staff make and share lunch each day, setting deliberate time aside from the busy-ness, the computer and the clock. Number 11 is a nice concrete start to the lesser defined 1 through 10. And it’s nearly 1 o’clock as I finish this post, so I’m off to my midday meal!

Keep in touch,
Leslie

 

vacation in color

palette-sunset

our last Hanalei 2013 sunset

It’s April and school is still in, I’m a little frustrated with a project I’m working on, the weather is unreliable….time for a vacation. But time or not, there is no vacation in my near future, so I’m creating palette vacations today. See if these take you where they took me….back to Hanalei ten months ago. Happy sigh.

palette-path

the pathway alongside the taro fields behind yoga hanalei

hideaways....our favorite snorkeling beach

hideaways….our favorite snorkeling beach

Have a great weekend….find me at Picnic in the Presidio this Sunday!
Leslie

8 beautiful questions…

 

passion

A beautiful question is an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.

~Warren Berger from his book A More Beautiful Question

Warren Berger also writes for Fast Company and created a list of 8 questions we can ask ourselves to help us to move our lives in the direction of our most authentic passions. Here are the questions…are you creating the life you are meant to live?

1.  What is your tennis ball? What pulls you and draws you (like a tennis ball chased by a dog)? Where do you gravitate most naturally?

2.  What are you doing when you feel most beautiful? Where and when do you feel most alive?

3.  What is something you believe that nearly everyone disagrees with? What is uniquely and originally your idea?

4.  What are your superpowers? Berger suggests determining your own unique strengths and suggests a brief film to help you figure it out. The Science of Character…8 minutes to your best future.

5.  What did you enjoy doing at age 10? Gretchen Rubin, who writes on happiness, says that the key may be in what you loved doing before people began telling you what you should do.

6.  What are you willing to try now? Get out of your head and act. Trial and error will show you your path.

7.  Looking back on your career 20 or 30 years from now, what do you want to say you’ve accomplished? Similar to a write-your-own-obit exercise, what do you want to be remembered for?

8.  What is your sentence? You should be able to synthesize yourself in one sentence….a whole paragraph represents a loss of focus. If your sentence contains a goal not yet achieved, then it’s time to figure out how to live up to your sentence.

I hope this gets your juices flowing. It does mine….this definitely gets its own notebook.

Have a great week!
Leslie

 

 

happiness creates success

happiness

This morning I needed a happiness shot.  Not for any particular reason, but I just did and I got it from Shawn Achor, a psychologist and the founder and CEO of Good Think, Inc. He gave a TED talk a few years ago that reflects the way that I parent, which is great, but in the moment I sometimes forget that it should direct the way that I live as well.

As a society we tend to believe happiness will result from the completion or acquisition of something. We will be happy when we are successful. I’ve spent my parenting career telling my children that a new phone or toy or dress or friend won’t make them happy. They will be happy when they choose to be happy with the toy or dress or friend or phone that they already possess. So why, then, do we think that we will be happier if we, as adults, are more productive or successful in our jobs? In fact, it’s just the opposite.  We will be more successful at our jobs when we look at life through a lens that allows us to be happy.

According to Mr. Achor, if you can be happy in the present, you will be more successful at work.  He says the ‘happiness advantage’ provides:

  • more success securing a job
  • ability to keep a job
  • superior productivity
  • more resiliency
  • less burnout
  • less turnover
  • greater sales

If you want to train your brain to be positive you should do the following five things for 21 days straight. Randy Scott Hyde experimented with the five for 30 days.  They worked for him (and he draws some pretty awesome stick figures along the way).  I’m starting today….why not do something momentous on April Fools Day?  Seems like the perfect time to me.

  1. write 3 gratitudes
  2. journal about 1 positive experience from the day
  3. exercise
  4. meditate
  5. do something nice for someone else

Want to join me?
Leslie

here’s the video….worth the 12 minutes, I promise!

motivation: more than money

apparently cute is motivating...go figure!

apparently cute is motivating…go figure!

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist (now that is a new one for me), studied what motivates people at work.  What he found is that in our ‘knowledge economy’, vs the economy born of the industrial revolution, workers are more productive and willing to work harder if they are able to see a project all the way through, rather than just screwing the same nut onto the same bolt over and over again on an assembly line. No longer is a paycheck enough to satisfy most workers.  Meaning, creativity and ownership are also part of the mix that motivates ‘knowledge’ workers. This takes me back to when I graduated from college.  I spent the first 10 years of my career in small architectural offices for the explicit reason that I would have the opportunity to work all phases of my projects just because teams, and often projects, were smaller. And each of the team member’s contributions were larger. Whereas I had a friend who went straight to one of the very large architectural firms and spent a year developing bathroom fixture schedules for a very large building project.  She only lasted that first year before moving to a smaller firm.

If you are hiring employees, or are seeking a job, here are some things to keep in mind. A workplace where you can be happy and productive requires a cultural shift away from the motivation=money paradigm.  There is more than just money required to create a positive work environment and therefore happy employees.

  1. Seeing the fruits of our labor can make us more productive.
  2. The less appreciated we feel, the more money we want.
  3. The more difficult a project is to create, the prouder we feel of it.
  4. Knowing that our work helps others contributes to our unconscious motivation.
  5. The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules.
  6. Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance.
  7. Images that trigger positive emotions may help us focus.

So, apparently the ‘blame and shame’ management style that seems awfully prevalent out there isn’t very productive. Take a note, bosses! And watch the video. Your employees may stay around longer.

Happy nearly Friday,
Leslie

design: happy?

I recently posted about good design and what I’m willing to pay for it.  It matters.  But does it make people happy? And what about the happiness of the designers who create the design?  Are they happy?

Happy Clients

A couple of nights ago a residential client of mine invited me to a small gathering at her house.  We recently completed a remodel of her somewhat drab, poorly lit, dysfunctional kitchen.  There were several compliments on the look of the kitchen, but there was one guest, Stuart we’ll call him (because that’s his name), who had apparently been asking for me since his arrival.  Stuart told me how much he liked how the kitchen looked, but what really made me feel like the project was a success was when he went on about how it made him feel.  He was so excited about how the space felt to him:  open and airy and comfortable.  And in his opinion, it worked just perfectly (although all he was doing in it was drinking wine and noshing).

When I approach a new design project I always begin with a questionnaire or a long conversation where I ask a lot of questions.  One of the questions is always ‘what mood are you trying to create?’  Of course I want my design work to look good.  But my first order of business is making it work.  Does it provide the service that is needed, and  equally important, does it feel the way the client would like it to feel.  So far, I haven’t yet had a client tell me that the mood they were after was sadness.

Happy Designers

If I’ve created a project that makes people some version of happy (because that is usually what they are after….I haven’t yet done a mortuary), then I will be happy as well.  But there are other components of designer happiness. Stefan Sagmeister talks a lot about happiness and design.  He is a designer (with a very wide list of talents) who has created a few TED talks.  One is below, and this one particularly speaks to me.  It’s shorter and a bit sweeter than the typical TED talk, so listen while you have a cup of coffee.  Or two.  He mentions a couple of awesome New York City visual projects in his talk that make him happy.  Both are a bit surprising, which is part of what creates the joy.  Links follow the video.

photo courtesy thebubbleproject.com

photo courtesy thebubbleproject.com

The Bubble Project

Subway signage pranks

Keep in touch,
Leslie

ps…..I’m photo-ing the kitchen remodel this month.  Pictures coming!

happy, successful and maybe even wealthy

pharrell-happy-music-video-0

I think that most of us want to be happy and successful (whatever our version of success is), and some of us aspire to wealth as well.  So the lists I’ve posted over the last few days share the wisdom (hopefully) of others’ research into the habits we need to develop to get there.  The lists include 21 habits to be happy, 10 habits to be rich and 7 habits to be successful.  There are only two habits that all three lists share:

·         exercise regularly
·         help others

Successful and wealthy people have an additional habit they share:

·         keep learning

And happy and successful people share a few more:

·         eat well
·         sleep well
·         listen well and maintain personal connections
·         find a spiritual connection

Do you maintain any of these habits?  Or maybe all of them?  I’m putting these 7 on the top of my priority list and aiming to include a few more from the happy and successful lists.  Happy people also need to listen to happy music…so be happy with Pharrell’s jam!  Now I’m off to yoga….happy Monday!

21 habits of happy people

Meet Rita....that is one happy walk!

Meet Rita….that is one happy walk!

George Carlin says that trying to be happy by accumulating things is like trying to conquer hunger by taping sandwiches all over your body.  Love that quote.  Of course it’s full of truth that I sometimes neglect when walking by the shoe department.

There is an actual psychology of happiness and doctors who have been studying it for years.  Dr. Marty Seligman is the founder of ‘positive psychology’ and the director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Seligman finds that there are three types of happy lives:  the pleasant life, the life of engagement, and the meaningful life.  The pleasant life is one filled with the pursuit of pleasure and is the least fulfilling.  HuffPost put together the following list to aid us in living a life of engagement and meaning.  It’s a long list, but I figure if we take these things one at a time and see how they feel it’s doable.

  1. Surround yourself with happy people.
  2. Cultivate a happy thought and smile about it.
  3. Develop resilience.  Get up when you fall down.
  4. Try to be happy.
  5. Be mindful of the good.
  6. Appreciate simple pleasures.
  7. Devote some time to giving to others.
  8. Let yourself lose track of time.
  9. Nix the small talk in favor of deeper conversation whenever you can.
  10. Spend money on other people.
  11. Make a point to listen, really listen.
  12. Maintain in person connections.
  13. Look on the bright side.  Find the silver lining.
  14. Listen to uplifting music.
  15. Unplug.
  16. Find a spiritual connection, a place within something bigger.
  17. Make exercise a priority.
  18. Go outside.
  19. Sleep well and regularly.
  20. Laugh out loud.
  21. Walk with your head up and your arms swinging.

Tomorrow I’ll find some info on habits of smart people.  Then we can compare and contrast and see if rich, smart and happy have much in common.  Have a happy Wednesday!

10 habits of rich people

summer attire: me, my sis and my aunt in 1963

summer attire: me, my sis and my aunt in 1963

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this.  Actually I am….I feel kind of creepy.  My parents were both depression era babies so I grew up in a home that was very thrifty, where happiness was based on things that had nothing to do with the things that money can buy.  Although we were comfortable, when we traveled we stayed at Motel 6 (when it really cost $6) or at a relative’s home, and a big night out to dinner was at Denny’s.  And I occasionally got a stern “not this time Les” when I tried to order the prawns.  Being rich was never something that I aspired to.  If anything both  the thought of aspiring to wealth and having wealth make me feel uncomfortable.  In our house we buy what we need, give what we can, try to teach our children that stuff doesn’t make people happy and generally focus on other things that we truly value.  

But some people do aspire to wealth.  And Tom Corley has written a whole book about it.  He has a list of 10 things that rich people do (and  poor people don’t).  Although he freely admits that this is a work in progress, his methods have been heavily questioned, and in my opinion rightfully so.  But I’m not posting this because I agree or disagree.  It’s just a list.  Tomorrow  I’m going to find and post habits of happy people.  The next day I’m going to see what I can find about habits of successful people. Then we can compare and contrast and see if we all think that wealth, happiness  and success have anything to do with one another.

Before we start, do you want to be rich?  If you were rich would you be happy?  And what do you think success is?

1. 70% of wealthy eat less than 300 junk food calories per day. 97% of poor people eat more than 300 junk food calories per day. 23% of wealthy gamble. 52% of poor people gamble.

2. 80% of wealthy are focused on accomplishing some single goal. Only 12% of the poor do this.

3. 76% of wealthy exercise aerobically 4 days a week. 23% of poor do this.

4. 63% of wealthy listen to audio books during commute to work vs. 5% for poor people.

5. 81% of wealthy maintain a to-do list vs. 19% for poor.

6. 63% of wealthy parents make their children read 2 or more non-fiction books a month vs. 3% for poor.

7. 70% of wealthy parents make their children volunteer 10 hours or more a month vs. 3% for poor.

8. 80% of wealthy make Happy Birthday calls vs. 11% of poor

9. 67% of wealthy write down their goals vs. 17% for poor

10. 88% of wealthy read 30 minutes or more each day for education or career reasons vs 2% for poor.