i'm not sure what city i'll wake up in on friday

Of all the posts I've written, the one that I've gotten the most emails, most comments, and most feedback on is the post about business travel. It's interesting - I'm not a professional business traveler. I'm not a consultant (I'm not sure if those two are synonyms, but I do remember when I was little and someone asked me what my dad did, I told people he was a professional traveler).

Actually, my travel schedule - both business and personal - is the opposite of a consultant's. It's really erratic and pretty unpredictable. In the years since college, I've started traveling (usually alone, sometimes with friends or coworkers) at least once a month. It's Wednesday, and I'm still not sure what city I'll be in at the end of the week.

I think - think - that this is El Paso, Texas.

I think you can tell a lot about a person's professional personality by the way they handle two things: email and travel. In terms of email, I'm a nazi. Almost nothing stays in my inbox for more than 48 hours - it gets read, sorted, forwarded, or otherwise dealt with. It's a habit I developed in college, and I've found that it's one of the most effective ways (for me) to get things dealt with.

Travel is a bit more complicated. I think if you travel often, the goal is less to maximize your time and more to make your life feel normal. I have a friend who dealt with a year of constantly being on the road at the age of 18 by playing putt-putt in every city he visited. My boss finds a bar in every airport he goes through. And I take pictures of my feet and read entertaining posts from Penelope's blog about life-disguised-as-work-advice (which is true even for travel - people are more lost, both literally and figuratively, when their travel plans are their own doing).

I'm pretty sure this is why hotel loyalty programs were invented. Staying at the same hotel, or the same type of hotel, gives us a sense of normalcy. A sense of our stay not being so transient. When Kimpton calls me to greet me by name and give me information on a city two days before I arrive, I feel like someone knows my story and remembers that I was there.

If you look at my DISC profile, most of you could probably guess that I'm a classic "I". I'm also a high "C". Meaning, I prefer knowing to not knowing, and (some sort of) structure to waking up in a different city every week. I have to continually find ways to keep myself grounded when I don't know where I'm going to be.

It's hard to handle frequent, unpredictable travel with grace (one of the best ways to learn about someone is to travel with them to a place that neither of you have been before). Everyone has their own way of dealing - whether or not they check bags (I always do, even though I make sure it's small enough to be a carry-on), what airlines and hotels they choose, which airports to connect through. But the more telling aspect of our personalities is how we deal with our bags being misplaced, or an incorrect hotel reservation, or what we do with our spare time in an unfamiliar place. It's not an easy balance when you're jet-lagged, drowning in email, and in a city far off the map that you've never seen before.

the little things on my mind

It's Sunday night and I'm spent.

It's the kind of weekend that's spent working on the little things. So often we wait for the big things that will define us - a degree, a particular job title, a promotion or a product launch. But life isn't lived in the big things.

I got an email earlier this evening from a friend of mine (and I hope you don't mind that I quoted this):

"[...] i'm glad that you post. particularly with the material that you do because if you tried to share this information on an individual basis, i might never have heard you "talk" about all the things and topics that you blog about. in fact, your blog actually helped me refine my "public health" eye to include a design element. plus your references to various books and articles inspired me to read them too and find ways for them to relate to my work and passions. [...] 

so basically, thank you for blogging. i know it's hard but i'm glad that you do.

It's a small thing, and I get a fair amount of emails about the blog, but it made a difference. In a world of big things, a small thing like a thank you can change everything.

Lehrer writes,

"This is life as it's lived - our epiphanies inseparable from our chores, our poetry intermingled with the prose of ordinary existence."

If we live intentionally, we design our lives to take care of the poetry. But in doing so, we sometimes forget to appreciate the beauty of the prose.

So tonight, some snapshots of life's ordinary moments as they're lived - small celebrations among the chores.

I laugh at this at least once a day. The line about dry cereal? So true.

A small tradition that's still going strong. Better Than Ezra at Center Stage.

Sawra making friends on our weekly pilgrimage to the Piedmont Dog Park.

A little part that's a big part of my life right now.

A little space in a cab with seven others.

The simple joy of using fat Sharpies vs. skinny Sharpies. You know you know what I'm talking about.

Sometimes the little things are actually really big things - wearing the insanely huge ACC championship ring, looking far less cool than the owner.

I was babysitting the little cousins on Friday night, and we happened to be watching Cartoon Network. I wondered aloud why in the world they show human tetris on Cartoon Network, of all channels, when my 8-year-old cousin piped in, "People like to watch other people get smushed by foam walls and pushed into pools of water!"

Yes, sometimes, it's the little things in life.

what's in your bag?

I find the "What's In Your Bag?" phenomenon a weird voyeuristic sociology experiment. It's interesting to see what people find so important that they carry it around day after day.

As I've gotten older, I've learned to be more mindful about what I carry. To pay more attention to the baggage I bear and how it changes the way I approach the world. I try to make sure that the contents of my bag reflect the kind of life that I am trying to lead - no more, and no less.

One of the reasons that I adore my iPhone is because when I first got it, it replaced my iPod, camera, GPS, calculator, and Blackberry, all of which would be crushed in the bottom of my bag with binders and pens and the old TI-83 that any good engineering student carries. It's a good example of how clever design can replace a hundred other things that we are liberated from lugging around with us.

So, here's my "What's In Your Bag?" post - feel free to psychoanalyze.

What's in my bag.

From top left, moving in horizontal rows: Macbook Air + Incipio case, pink Play-Doh, water bottle, gold Club Monaco pouch to hold various cords & cables [laptop charger, camera transfer cable, camera charger, headphones, etc.], 4 x 4 gridded notepad and LePen pen, Kate Spade sunglasses + case, hairbrush, black eyeliner, chapstick, Neutrogena compact, wallet [4 credit / debit cards, $21.17 in cash, Starbucks card, High Museum membership card, health insurance cards, ID], dog bag, business card case, keys, camera + case, iPhone.

Now that you know what's in mine, what's in your bag?

what do you give that doesn't cost a thing?

Last month, just after visiting IDEO in Palo Alto, I asked, what is your relationship with money? More important though, is IDEO's question on their facebook group Big Conversations & Small Talk: "What do you give that doesn't cost a thing?"

It makes for good reflection just after the holidays. We give a lot of gifts. We give time. We give experiences & memories. We give hope. We give dreams.

Honesty.

Courage.

Momentum.

Things that don't cost anything.

question your assumptions

During my sophomore year of college I took a class in engineering thermodynamics. It was the kind of class that makes young engineers change majors, where the professor told us on the first day that 60% of us would fail the first test (we did). 

About that time in my life, I received a card in the mail from a mentor of mine. I'm a big fan of Quotable Cards (I'm a big fan of good quotes), and this particular card is still sitting on my nightstand.

Part of becoming an engineer is learning to make good assumptions. But part of being a great engineer is learning to question those assumptions.

It's this part that's lost in lots of designers.

In order to start the design process, you have to make assumptions. To solve a complex system, you have to engineer with information you don't have yet. The design process dictates that you generate design inputs - that is, physical specifications, dimensions, materials... what the product will look like - before you can even create a prototype. And professional engineers do a great job of checking to see that their product meets those design inputs. That's design validation.

But what about verification? What about verifying that my product does not what I wanted it to do, but what my doctor wanted it to do? what my patient wanted it to do? That's design verification. And that's where it becomes important to question your assumptions.

In the past two years I've learned a lot about myself as a designer. I've brought three products to market, taken a course in SolidWorks, and spent significant time in the hospital with clinicians and patients. I've been to a manufacturing plant in Mexico and created a new process for adhesive coating in New Hampshire. I've found that in my career what I'm best at is asking questions, and questioning assumptions. I spend my time in the top half of that graph - on asking why we're doing what we're doing, and how a product behaves with a patient.

I think we can all benefit from questioning our assumptions. Making an assumption is answering the question of how to do something. Questioning assumptions is about asking why we're doing it in the first place. It's about being mindful of decisions, of interactions, of relationships. So go ahead and jump into a problem headfirst. Make some assumptions. Move forward. And then come back and ask yourself why. Look at the assumptions you made, and question whether or not they were the correct ones. Give someone else a chance to surprise you. Give yourself a chance to surprise you.

mindfulness comes from exploring your white space

I am terrible at yoga. Not so much the poses - I’m bad at coordinated breathing. I’m bad at sitting still. And most of all, I’m bad at not thinking about how bad I am at coordinated breathing and sitting still (maybe I'm not white enough?).

(personal image, please do not reproduce without permission)

I’ve always been a restless person (unless there was food involved… see childhood photo, in which my parents bribed me with food to stand still and look at the camera). My DISC profile shows that I’m a strong I and a moderate C, making me an anal-retentive people person who has trouble sitting still. Every week in class, I struggle with my inability to be mindful in downward dog.

Ironically, I find that peace and clarity in busy places. I love busy coffee shops and nice days at the park. I’m at my most creative and aware when I’m around other people, when I’m engaged in conversation, when I’m replying to blog comments and having four gchat conversations. To me, yoga class is full of mental chatter, but real conversations bring clarity. Real conversations inspire me to create, to fill the white space within myself. And the most interesting places are the empty spaces – they are what changes. But real conversations are hard work - you have to be willing to open up and explore your own thoughts, and listen to those of someone else. You have to think about contributing meaningful content, about asking good questions, and sometimes, about admitting you're wrong.

I’d rather drag myself to yoga week in and week out, hoping that one day I’ll find the self-awareness and mindfulness that my instructors talk about. And every week, I find myself thinking too hard about timing the rhythm of my breath with my ustrasana, or find myself trying to mentally correct the instructor’s Sanskrit pronunciation. What I really need to be doing to recharge is to spend my Sunday morning at Octane, reading a book and writing an article and having a conversation on the nuances of apologizing for drunken behavior in ancient Chinese culture (tip: Allen). And I know it. I’m just not at peace with that yet. Because it's easier to go to yoga and listen to someone else tell me how to find my inner being.

We all do that - we know, on some level, who we are. People have always been fascinated with finding out more about themselves, be it through art, meditation, or personality profiles. But the more important thing for us to explore is not quite who we are - it's finding and shaping who we can become. It's our white space. And by pursuing endeavors that bring out that white space, we become more mindful. And finding that white space is hard work.