by Allison Kooser | Jun 22, 2023 | +Good Newsletter, The Intro
In the corner of my living room, there is a cello.
You might assume it is my 13-year-old’s—a logical guess given how regularly we encourage middle schoolers to try their hand at band and orchestral instruments. (The elementary school recorder, on the other hand, remains a mystery to me. Truly, why??)
But no, the cello is not my teen’s school project—it is my 41-year-old husband’s current interest, inspired by a piece of advice from Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine.
On the occasion of his 68th birthday, Kelly compiled 68 bits of advice for his adult children and posted them on his blog. When he turned 69, he published 99 new lines of wisdom. And on his 70th birthday, he added 103 more. Now, his advice has been made even more widely available with the release of the full compilation (plus 150 more nuggets) in book form: Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier.
Our family loves these lists—and when I started thinking about what I wanted to share with our +good community this week, I found myself back on the Kevin Kelly train.
A few favorites from the original 68:
- Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
- The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
- Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
And from the 99:
- Being wise means having more questions than answers.
- Calm is contagious.
- If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep. (Can I get an amen?!)
- History teaches us that in 100 years from now some of the assumptions you believed will turn out to be wrong. A good question to ask yourself today is “What might I be wrong about?” (Reminds me of the wisdom of Adam Grant’s Think Again.)
And from the 103:
- Denying or deflecting a compliment is rude. Accept it with thanks, even if you believe it is not deserved.
- 90% of everything is crap. If you think you don’t like opera, romance novels, TikTok, country music, vegan food, NFTs, keep trying to see if you can find the 10% that is not crap.
- We tend to overestimate what we can do in a day, and underestimate what we can achieve in a decade. Miraculous things can be accomplished if you give it ten years. A long game will compound small gains to overcome even big mistakes.
- Take note if you find yourself wondering “Where is my good knife? Or, where is my good pen?” That means you have bad ones. Get rid of those.
As a business, tech, and innovation leader, Kelly also knows a thing or two about management and creativity—and so much of his advice aligns with core tenets of our work at Swell+Good:
- Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it. (As a fully remote and asynchronous team, we remind every new hire that the worst thing they can do is not speak up when something is unclear. Always always ask the question!)
- Art is in what you leave out. (The magic of design is in the white space.)
- Be governed not by the tyranny of the urgent but by the elevation of the important. (There is no such thing as a marketing work emergency.)
- Train employees well enough they could get another job, but treat them well enough so they never want to. (Start by treating your teammates like humans.)
- Your work will be endless, but your time is finite. You cannot limit the work so you must limit your time. Hours are the only thing you can manage. (Hellooo timeboxing.)
- Efficiency is highly overrated; Goofing off is highly underrated. Regularly scheduled sabbaths, sabbaticals, vacations, breaks, aimless walks and time off are essential for top performance of any kind. The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic. (This is the magic of team lunch.)
- You can be whatever you want, so be the person who ends meetings early. (Or better yet, cancel them entirely.)
And finally, the piece of advice that inspired the cello:
At a restaurant do you order what you know is great, or do you try something new? Do you make what you know will sell or try something new? Do you keep dating new folks or try to commit to someone you already met? The optimal balance for exploring new things vs exploiting them once found is: 1/3. Spend 1/3 of your time on exploring and 2/3 time on deepening. It is harder to devote time to exploring as you age because it seems unproductive, but aim for 1/3.
For my husband, this one bullet point on a list of 103 made him realize that the best (and easiest) time to try something new is right now. He didn’t want to lose his knack for exploring, but he felt it slipping as he got older—so he did the only logical thing. He fought back. He went to the music shop, rented a cello, and Googled teachers in our area. And guess what? You can do the same thing.
Maybe your new hobby isn’t cello lessons—but I imagine you have something you might like to try. I’ve decided I’m going to give vegetable gardening a go (once Austin isn’t four billion degrees), and I am all about sampling new restaurants.
What’s your “try something new”? And are you willing to actually go for it?
As I wrap this up, know that while Kelly’s lists are great (and I align with so much of what he says), they aren’t the be-all and end-all. They are starting points. As he says himself, “Advice like these are not laws. They are like hats. If one doesn’t fit, try another.”
by Allison Kooser | May 24, 2023 | +Good Newsletter, The Intro
Last week, I listened to a short podcast from Emily P. Freeman and was inspired. In it, she described her “reading rhythms”—the types of books she reads at various times of the day. For her, mornings are for spiritual books, afternoons are for personal and professional development, and evenings are for fiction and memoir.
First, I love this. I love that it sets you up for reading success, I love that it assumes you are reading multiple (different) things at once, and I love that it feels so true. (It totally resonates that reading a professional development book at night feels weird!)
Second, it clicked with another experiment I’ve been playing with over the past few weeks. Inspired by author and podcaster Laura Tremaine, I’ve been testing a 20-minute reading timer to give myself a way to consume more nonfiction.
You see, I am a big-time reader. Our house is (basically) a library, with floor-to-ceiling built-ins filling three rooms. I have a stack of books I want to read that’s a mile high—but I only have so many hours in the day.
Like Emily, I love reading fiction at night, so that tends to be what I prioritize. For whatever reason, I don’t have trouble making time to plow through romance novels or the latest best-seller.
But I also want to read nonfiction. I know that business and psychology and productivity and creativity books have been hugely helpful for me in the past, but I have trouble prioritizing them within the very real limits of my daily schedule.
I also know that I am better at my job when I make time to grow. I have to invest in inputs if I want to continue producing high-quality outputs. If I want to benefit from the riches of being a lifelong learner, I have to prioritize, well, learning!
Enter: Laura’s 20-minute timer experiment.
Every day, I pick up a nonfiction book and set a 20-minute timer on my phone. I put everything else away (my computer, and even the phone itself!) and read. And then my phone buzzes and I go back to work.
I set out to do this first thing in the morning (and that is still my aspiration), but life sometimes gets in the way. No worries. I can use some of my lunch break, or even an afternoon chunk of my timeboxing.
I’m primarily choosing books that fall into Emily’s “personal and professional development” category—books that will spark thoughts on how to be a better marketer, a better manager, or a better human. And after two weeks, I can safely say that I am learning a lot—and loving this practice.
If you want to test your own 20-minute timer, I asked the S+G team for a few recommendations of nonfiction books that have changed the way they think about life or work. A few ideas:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear, the seminal classic on how to get things done (recommended by Lindsey)
- Range by David Epstein, the book that gave me words around why one of my favorite qualities in people (and employees) is curiosity (recommended by me)
- It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the book that guided us to develop our unique (and uniquely non-crazy) culture at Swell+Good (recommended by Ian)
- Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, our go-to guide to creativity (recommended by Lindsey and me!)
Next on my list are The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler and The Creative Act by Rick Rubin—and I can’t wait to let you know what I learn!
by Allison Kooser | May 18, 2023 | +Good Newsletter, The Intro
When I was in college, I loved working in the Student Union. On paper, it was not a great place to study—loud, bustling, full of interruptions. But I loved it. On any given afternoon, you could find me with my stack of books, a notebook (I preferred—and still prefer—to take notes by hand), and a big plastic cup of Diet Coke.
Business school, with its approximately one million group projects, was spent holed up in study rooms; crowding around a table with three other classmates as we pored over case studies, parsed out Excel files, and built PowerPoint slides.
In the early days of my career, I worked from a cubicle that I decorated with photos and quotes. When the cramped little corner got to be too much, I would spread out on a big table in the middle of the marketing area (which I’m sure was not at all distracting to my colleagues…).
When I pivoted to full-time remote work in 2016, I learned to make my own spaces: coffee shops, coworking desks, and my dining room table all turned into offices. To this day, if you give me a city and five minutes, I can find you a cafe where you can hunker down and work.
And now, I spend most of my time in my home office with the big blue bookcase, rainbow-woven rug, and windows overlooking my mini-forest.
All of which is to say: where we work matters.
I recently read a Harvard Business Review article that talked about how our physical surroundings shape our work—and coming out of the pandemic, when office life looks way more flexible than ever before, this type of research feels particularly relevant. Many of us now get to choose where we work.
And if I have a tip for you today it’s this: why not change it up?
Because as much as I love my home office (and I do, because I’ve created it to hit all of my sensory needs—candle, ergonomic keyboard, a specific spot for my coffee, etc.), there is magic in going somewhere else.
The Harvard research agrees.
First, it says, “Engage in placemaking to shape your place to better reflect who you are and who you want to be.” (I’m looking at you, Trader Joe’s Peony Blossom candle.)
But then, it continues, “If you’re stuck on a problem or feeling lethargic and uninspired, it may be a signal that you need to work in a different place for a few hours a day. Research suggests that subtle shifts in environment such as ceiling height or natural elements can often stimulate a different type of thinking and influence your well-being. Sometimes we need more than one place to address the needs of the multiple hats we wear at work.”
Which is why you can find me at my favorite coffee shop at least once a week.
When I need to shake out the cobwebs, or find some new inspiration, or finish a very specific deliverable, I change locations. I physically get up and go. And it always helps.
For me, a change in scenery is particularly useful when I have a set of tasks I think I can complete in their entirety in 2-3 hours. I head to the coffee shop, spread out at my favorite big table, and do not leave until my list is done. It is incredibly motivating and one of my best productivity hacks. I’m not only time-boxing, I’m place-boxing, too.
In fact, I might be due for a coffee shop visit this afternoon…
As you think about place for yourself, here are my two questions for you:
- What can you do to make your “typical” workplace feel more like “you”?
- Where could you go to change it up?
by Allison Kooser | May 3, 2023 | +Good Newsletter, The Intro
As I prepared to get married last year, one of the best things my husband and I did was take time to consider our family values. Some of them are silly (“Snacks are a family value,” as my 13-year-old says) and some of them are serious (curiosity, learning, prioritizing people)—but all of them have one thing in common: they define how we live our day-to-day lives.
We can make quick (and simple) decisions because we’ve already decided.
A friend needs a last-minute babysitter? Easy yes. (Because we have values to “say yes when possible” and “show up for people.”)
Want to buy a book on a random topic? Sure. (Because we believe in “lifelong learning.”)
Someone is frustrated, overwhelmed, or upset? Feed them and let them take a nap. (I told you snacks were a family value!)
Now what does all of this have to do with you and your work?
Simple.
In the same way my family’s values shape our daily decisions and schedule, your organization’s values shape your work decisions and schedule.
- If your organization values deep work, then start canceling meetings.
- If you value collaboration, schedule quarterly brainstorming offsites.
- If you value autonomy, then get out of the way of your staff!
What’s more, your personal professional values should govern the way you work, each and every day.
- Value uninterrupted time with your kids? Block your calendar in the evenings.
- Value peaceful mornings? Charge your phone somewhere other than your bedroom.
- Value creativity? Schedule time to create, explore, and discover.
You are the boss of your time, and you are the boss of your modus operandi.
But here’s the trick—in order to live by your values, you first have to define what those values are. And this can be way easier said than done.
So here are my challenges for you this week:
- Make a list of things you value personally. (Lifelong learning, exercise, family dinners, uninterrupted reading time…whatever!)
- Look at your calendar or task list. Are those things reflected in your actual time? (Your days make up your life, so make sure you are making space for the things that really matter to you!)
- Now get with the coworkers with whom you work most frequently. What do you collectively value that you want to shape the culture of your team? (Flow state, brainstorming, silence, team lunch…)
- How can you build those values into your systems, structures, and schedules?
Your time is your most valuable asset, so spend it on the things that you actually value—personally, professionally, as a team, or as a family.
We’d love to hear what values are emerging for you. Let us know in the comments!
by Allison Kooser | Apr 27, 2023 | +Good Newsletter, The Intro
I’m big on work philosophies. Guiding principles. Little phrases I can repeat to myself on a weekly (ok, daily) basis to remind myself what’s true. And while my list changes fairly often, there are a few that always seem to make the cut:
For those unfamiliar, “eating the frog” was introduced by Brian Tracy in his book, Eat That Frog!—and the premise is simple: You find a big, hairy, must-do task (hello, frog) and do it first. Basically, eating a frog will always be tough—so you might as well get it out of the way.
The idea echoes countless other thinkers who have all boiled down their productivity advice to basically this: When you have something you need to do, just sit down and do it.
It’s Anne Lamott’s famous “butt in chair.”
It’s Jerry Seinfeld’s “Seinfeld Strategy.”
It’s Hemingway (or Khaled Hosseini or Haruki Murakami) writing every morning.
It’s simply doing the thing.
It’s brilliant.
And so hard.
It also happens to be exactly how this newsletter gets produced each week. When we decided to bring back +good about a month ago, we made a commitment to return to weekly sends. So with James Clear’s Atomic Habits advice spinning in my head (Clear is another advocate of daily writing, btw), I built crafting an intro into my week. And here’s how it goes…
The deadline approaches, and I need to write. So I do. Inspired or not, I put pen to paper (ok, fingers to keyboard) and I ruminate on whatever it is our team is pondering that week.
Sometimes, I end up with something profound. Often, I end up with something okay. But do you know what I always end up with? Something.
Like one of my favorite fiction authors, Jodi Picoult, once said:
Writer’s block is having too much time on your hands. If you have a limited amount of time to write, you just sit down and do it. You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.
You can’t edit a blank page—you need to start somewhere. So start. Do the thing.
Whatever your “thing” is.
Maybe it’s a report. Or a spreadsheet. Or setting up that doctor’s appointment. (Side note: If you are a millennial and have not read Anne Helen Petersen’s incredible piece on Millennial Burnout, add it to your list. It explains so much of why even the most insignificant task—like calling the doctor’s office—can feel insurmountable.) Maybe you need to write an essay, just like I do.
Find the thing that’s been on your list for way too long (and taking up way too much mental real estate), and just do it.
Ready. Set. Go.
