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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.’

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

18 habits of messy minded people

creativity takes courage

‘Imaginative people have messier minds,’ Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at NYU told Huff Post.  I believe this might be my favorite quote of all time.  And if you know me well, you can expect to be bored with variations on this theme for the next several days.  But it is an apt description.  Creative people can be very interesting and fun to be around, but also moody and judgmental.  And according to Kaufman they also share some common habits.  I’m definitely messy minded.

18 habits of creative people

  1. They daydream:  daydreaming and creativity involve the same mind processes.
  2. They observe everything.
  3. They work the hours that work for them:  work when creativity peaks.
  4. They take time for solitude:  the inner creative voice speaks when the world is quiet.
  5. They turn life’s obstacles around:  sad stories make good songs, tragic lives make good books
  6. They seek out new experiences.
  7. They fail up:  fail well and fail often.  Resilience is key to creativity.
  8. They ask big questions:  live the examined life, maintain curiosity.
  9. They people watch.
  10. They take risks:  don’t be afraid to express an idea that may later fail.
  11. They view all of life as an opportunity for self expression:  don’t follow the dress code.
  12. They follow their true passions:  motivation follows internal desires.
  13. They get out of their own heads:  seek the view from another perspective.
  14. They lose track of time:  they achieve ‘flow’.
  15. They surround themselves with beauty.
  16. They connect the dots:  they are problem solvers.
  17. They constantly shake things up:  diversify experiences.
  18. They make time for mindfulness:  meditate.

And do you know what’s really interesting?…..there are quite a few correlations to the habits of happy people.  But I already knew that creativity makes me happy.  Have a messy Tuesday!

Keep in touch,
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!