branding: the aesthetic manifestation of systems thinking

back in the middle of may, i visited one of my favorite places in the world, stitchdown farm. my new friends, andrew and rita plotsky hosted a lamb roast and it was amazing. andrew and rita have a lot of social gravity and when they put their energy into it, they pull lots of super interesting people from all over the country to the space they create. i can always look forward to good conversations there.

this time, andrew and i had a good conversations about how we’re both viewing our branding work. i described my work in a way that i hadn’t before and now i’m just writing it down.

to date, i think the story of my life has been systems thinking. all of my major life phases or decisions are marked by something systems related. first love at work (a christian mission camp i used attend and work at), then the food system, then cities. now branding.

1. the decision to take time off from school was driven by my understanding of ‘love at work’s impact on the city of gretna, florida.
2. my return to college was prompted by my understanding of the potential of the food system to save humanity on the planet.
3. my focus on urban planning was driven by thinking of cities as systems.

and now, i’m incredibly interested in branding. i think branding is the aesthetic manifestation of systems thinking. my other systems loves have not gone away. they’re now being rolled up into this new system.

we also talked about each of our brand holy grail’s. ours were sort of similar: branding a town/downtown. there is something exciting about shaping how current residents experience a town. it’s also exciting to think about how visitors and future residents will experience that same place. the most interesting question of all, though, is how to balance those two experiences.

anyway, branding as the aesthetic manifestation of systems thinking makes a lot of sense to me. i wonder if anyone else feels this way. hrm.

on telling and retelling our own personal stories

the other day i read a quote about telling and retelling our own stories by audre lorde, angela davis, or bell hooks (does that make me sound like an asshole?). it really got me going. the essence of the quote was that it’s important to recognize the power of telling and retelling your story. we can’t always control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it. and furthermore, the power of narrative gives us the ability to shape how those two things combine and inform those around us about who we are. i mostly think about this on an individual level but it has implications for collectives as well.

in a class i co-taught with my friend, nse umoh, we lead an activity where people paired up and told each other their life story. one thing i always remember from this activity is how the 2nd storyteller chooses relevant details based on the 1st story. some would see this as disengenuine, but i think it lines up with the quote quite well.

another thought on this subject is how our stories change based on our time perspective of it. the older i get and the more i learn about the world and myself, how i describe my history evolves. how i divide my life into time spans changes as well as how i talk about what was important. two great quotes to mind in this regard:

1. something about how we can only see history by looking backwards.
   
2. the road you’ve traveled only seems clear and well-defined in hindsight.

the power to claim and reclaim our story can never be taken away from us and i think this is one of our greatest strengths. i am just beginning to understand this power for myself and i’m starting to see how it applies to others as well.

hm!

harnessing your emotions: stress

i used to want a stress free lifestyle. i used to think that stress was an indicator of something broken in my personal system. over the last year, i’ve changed my mind.

from an evolutionary perspective, our emotional responses (probably) are linked to survival. fear kept us safe. stress keeps us focused. happiness reinforces beneficial behavior. (inspiration: several episodes of design matters and onbeing; can’t totally remember which ones anymore).

and even though the world (well, for some of us) is less imminently dangerous than it used to be, our emotional responses still exist. some would say this an evolutionary lag. our bodies aren’t able to keep up with the rate at which we are changing our surroundings.

either way, these responses aren’t going away. and i’ve been inspired by audre lorde to use these emotional responses as engines for action (“The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Anger”).

real world application: my friend ross and i were both stressed a few weeks ago so we did a little intellectual digging. why were we stressed? what were the sources of it? 

some of the stress was preventable; it followed from mistakes. ok so given that… how could we use the stress as a motivator for action? the stress response, in relation to a mistake, could be a trigger for learning. in order to not be stressed in the future, i shouldn’t make that mistake again.

other stress is not preventable; a crazy situation at work came up and you have to respond to it. how could stress be an engine for action? unclear, actually…

but either way, acknowledging the stress, dissecting it a little, and using it (when possible) as an advantage seemed helpful. it definitely felt more productive than drowning in it or being paralyzed by it.

"the world in which doing what you love is a privilege is a world we have failed to design well."

the longer i live and the more i see, the stronger become my convictions about how the world should work. that said i wrestle, on a daily basis two specific ideas (i think it’s a coming of age thing). first is the idea of “doing what you love.” second is the idea of “making a living.” and then, the combo struggle is the intersection: should you be able to “make a living” “doing what you love?" 

this gets complicated for all sorts of reasons. in western (post-)industrial societies, we have an outdated definition of work, a major component of which is the 40 hour work week. industrialization divided work/labor into repeatable, assembly line-type tasks to maximize efficiency. however, we are evolving past that understanding of work. an increasing amount of people want meaning from their work. this typically means becoming more like craftspeople and less like cogs in machines.

unfortunately, our economic infrastructure doesn’t support our trajectory. so the plot is thickening. is it ok to do something you hate (because the world needs it to be done) in order to support yourself to do what you love on the side? or maybe complete integration of love and work is the goal? what does it even mean to “make” a living? shouldn’t we all just be able to live without having to “make” it? and if “make” really just means “earn,” isn’t it sort of fucked up that we have to “earn” the to live? 

i’m really unclear about this and i realize there probably isn’t a one-size fits all solution. two things i do believe strongly, though:

1. this problem we’re facing now between work, meaning, and living is a design problem. and it’s solvable.
2. society operates at a net loss when people are unable to find, develop, and bring their passion into the world. because competitive advantage.

i know i’m not the first to think about this but like… let’s get solving. 

on saying no

i was a pretty stressed out dude in grad school. i tried to do all things social and academic. all while was working 2-3 jobs to pay my bills and take on as little in loans as i could.

my dear friend, joel, used to see me be stressed out and one day he quoted this to me. “for every yes, you should be saying 100 no’s.“ i think he called it the monk’s rule of thumb or something. whatever it was called, since then, i have been growing in my ability to say no. at times, it becomes like an obsession.

i’ve done lots of reading about saying no and why (see links and quotes at the bottom of this post). lately, though, i’ve been thinking two things about saying no:

saying no is a productivity tool.

i don’t particularly like warren buffet, but this quote (attributed to him) is great: "The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.” and just like in this article, the beautiful thing about saying no is that it allows focus. some tasks, like dishes, require little focus (though i imagine st. augustine or thich nhat hanh might argue with that assertion). but other tasks, typically production or creative-type tasks really do require focus. and it’s impossible to be focused (and get into flow) if you have too many things to do. even if you’re not doing everything at once, your brain still has to deal with the fact that you have lots to do. this is detrimental to focus and without focus, productivity gets crushed.

saying no is like a muscle.

in an increasingly “connected” (hyperconnected) world, the number of things to do, watch and read are seemingly infinite. saying no, just like any other habit, is difficult to start. it’s even more difficult because it’s socially uncomfortable. but just like other habits, with practice it gets easier. once you learn how to do it (and the different ways in which it can be done), it gets easier and easier to say no and protect your time (and your mind)…

i have so much more to say about this… but for now, i’ll just leave these resources here.

• “you say no so that you can say yes. prune and survive.” — courtney martin
• my friend, maureen, upgraded courtney’s quote and said “You say no so that you can say yes. Prune and thrive.” brill.
• article: creative people say no
• article: 21 ways to give good “no”
• article: 5 ways to say no effectively
• zenhabits blog post: say no so you can say yes
• nyt article: saying no so you can say yes
• blog post: No more yes. It’s either HELL YEAH! or no.
• onbeing article: five ways to say no gracefully