What Do You Want In 2018

The year end is a great time to look back at the past year and make plans for the next. Most of us make new year's resolutions but I find them hard. They often repeat what we haven't been able to do in the past and re-serve it for next year, as if the resolve we lacked last year will magically materialize in the new year. To me what we often lack is not the resolve, but the creative thinking necessary to imagine a future we would want to bring to life.

So this year, instead of a new year's resolution, do a creative exercise to craft a manifesto for your work in 2018. The exercise is called a 6-Sided Box and was taught to me by Jim Long, the former director of research at Herman Miller. We use it as part of my studio's Design the Work You Loveprogram.

6-Sided Box:

Ground rules: Give yourself about 25 minutes. Speed is part of the game in that it helps you go with your gut feeling and leaves less room for unnecessary self-judgment. 

Deconstruct:

Deconstruct your work life in 2017 across the following 6 columns (see diagram).

1. Emotion: What was your emotion this morning? How about when you think back to 2017. The good and the bad. List them in one column. Remember, when it comes to work, emotions often run in opposite pairs, love/hate, having a sense of purpose/feeling lost.  

2. Information: What can you quantify about your work in 2017? Your salary, number of people you worked with, number of projects you worked on. List tangible information in this column.

3. Constraints: What were your constraints at work, the negatives that held you back? Some of these may have been your own constraints, like procrastinating and leaving things to the last minute, and others may have been things that are out of your own control, such as decreased project budgets. 

4. Opportunities: What were your opportunities, the positives? Things that were in your favor, that excited you and can helped you to grow, give, share more. Often constraints can actually be opportunities (having a small team can be limiting, but is also easier to manage)--take a look at your constraints and see if any can be transformed and added to the opportunity list.

5. Out-of-the-box opportunities: What are the big goals that you only admit to yourself? These could be big shifts, dreams and changes. If opportunities are "evolutions" these are the "revolutions". List them without restraint since this list is for your eyes only.

6. Choice: What would you choose? We cannot always choose what we want, but it is important to know that we always have choices. You can choose to walk away. You can choose to do something you love for less money or the reverse. List your choices for 2018, the things that really matter to you. 

Dot Vote:

Take a moment to reflect--do you see some patterns, are there hidden opportunities, what would it take to bring your out-of-the box opportunity to life and what choices really matter to you. 

Now do your own dot-voting. What is the one thing that rises to the top in each column? Go with your gut. Mark your choices with a big star or circle it. These are your 6 ingredients with which you will write a manifesto for 2018. 

Reconstruct:

Take your 6 ingredients and add them together to write 1 paragraph. Your paragraph will contain your top emotion + information + constraint + opportunity + out-of-the-box opportunity + choice. You can make it into a manifesto by choosing action words like, I will. Or you can turn it into prose (see diagram). 

Now that you have your manifesto or story of intentions for 2018, who are your partners? The people that will help you to bring this to life? They can be your family, a mentor or an accountability partner. Imagine how you can collaborate together to prototype your vision for 2018.

We have used this tool with our clients, from LuluLemon to Philips to Colgate Palmolive, to help them think differently about their work with great success. It is efficient, methodical and leads you to a new, constructive POV to help you imagine tomorrow based on what you know today.

Wishing you a happy and creative 2018.

This article first appeared on Inc.com on December 29, 2017

What To Do When You Are Visiting New York City During Holidays

With more than 61 million visitors expected to visit New York this year, this holiday season might be the most crowded you've ever seen in the city.  If you are one of the millions visiting the city on vacation, rather than as a business traveler, here are 10 hacks that will give you an "in" to the greatest city in the world:

1. Plan a curated trip: 

Journy is an online travel service for planning tailor-made travel. You start by answering a short survey of AI-backed questions, followed by a one-on-one conversation and, voila, Journy will curate and book the perfect itinerary for your travel style.

2. Walk the city free of luggage:

Here is a nifty new service to enjoying New York -- minus your luggage or shopping bags. Knock Knock City has 40+ local shops where you can securely and instantly store your bags and luggage for only a $1/hour. Perfect if you're staying at an Airbnb where there is no concierge to hold your bags before check-in and after check-out or if you just want to be bag free at the end of a shopping spree.

3. Work in style:

If your travel includes some business hours, you can use Breather to instantly book a meeting room (without a monthly membership), or get day passes from Croissant to make any co-working space your workspace for the day. 

4. Book last minute:

For last minute planners, Hotel Tonight has your back. They offer same-day deals at hotels that are rated based on customer experience-- Hip, Solid, Luxe, Basic, Charming or Highroller.

5. Shop for books:

To find favorite local bookstores of New Yorkers, go to Indie Bookstore Locator. Mine is Kinokinuya, the Japanese bookstore across from Bryant Park on 6th Avenue. With branches in New York and Tokyo, it has the best mix of fiction, non-fiction and art books in English, with a whole floor of Japanese mangas, and another floor of Japanese gift items. Without forgetting Strand Book Store, New York's landmark with its "18 miles of books."

6. Explore side streets:

Manhattan Sideways lets you explore the hidden gems of the side streets--like Bola's International Boutique for African clothing and fabrics in Harlem; Love Thy Beast for all things dog-related on 5th Street; Turks and Frogs said to be Manhattan's first wine bar on West 11th Street.

7. Eat with locals:

Eatwith connects foodies with local chefs who will invite you over for a meal they cook. Discover the underground food scene and connect with like-minded New Yorkers and in-the-know travelers.

For all other meals, make sure you make reservations on Resy. Alternatively you can wait in line at Danny Meyer's fast food joints, Shake Shack, for a great burger and milkshake, no reservations required. Read Meyer's Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business for the back story on Shake Shack, as well as other fascinating stories about the New York restaurateur.

8. View public art:

As you walk the streets of New York, use CultureNow, an app for public art found throughout the city beyond the museum walls--for your Instagram-able moments.

9. Shop sample sales:

Part of the advantage of being in New York is getting fabulous fashion at sample sale prices. ShopDrop has a comprehensive list of designer sample sales in New York City with exact dates and addresses. 

10. Ace the NYC meeting place:

The Ace Hotel's lobby is my go-to meeting place, with a great vibe and conveniently located in midtown. You can people watch while you wait for your friends or charge your phone. The lobby is a hub to multiple restaurants and stores, either in the hotel or next door--Stumptown Coffee Roasters is dangerously good, try The Breslin for breakfast and John Dory Oyster Bar for drinks and its sea food menu, Project No. 8 is for gifts to take home, Yeohlee next door is one of the chicest boutiques in town, Le Labo has the best perfumes. Note that you're right next to the New York Flower District, where the flowers for all the beautiful arrangements all over New York's hotels and restaurants, even films and photo shoots, originate. 

11. (Bonus for New Yorkers) Make money while out of town:

If you're a New Yorker leaving the city for the holidays, check out Metrobutler. They can list it on Airbnb for you and take care of all the logistics and cleaning, so you can make money while you're away. 

This article first appeared on Inc.com on December 22, 2017

What Does Leaders And Designers Have In Common

I come from a family of lawyers. From a young age It was expected that my brother and I would also go into law. We broke with tradition, not without resistance from our elders.  He became a journalist and I became a designer. I didn't realize then that I was also making a choice that would morally position me on the spectrum of optimism versus pessimism. Lawyers are trained to imagine the worst. I chose, by profession, to be an optimist.

Optimism is one of the core strengths of designers. We inherently believe that no matter how hard the problem, we will come up with a better solution and this optimism drives our energy and our passion. How else can you imagine, advocate and be a change agent for a better future?

Some of world's most daring leaders who strive to change the world practice this one trait daily. They're optimists.

For World Bank president Dr. Jim Kim, optimism is "a moral choice".

For John Bielenberg, Founder, Future Partners, a wrong thinking company, "Optimism is the thing that drives you forward."

For Silicon Valley's Singularity University president Rob Nail, the need to create a positive version of the future is a matter of survival because if the only thing we can imagine is dystopia, we will get dystopia.

"The future scares us because we don't know where it is taking us and the only visions for the future that we have from media or Hollywood are dystopian, terminator, zombie apocalypse scenarios...I believe in an abundant future -- one where everyone has equal access to extraordinary education, healthcare, food, clean water, and shelter and can pursue their own path to happiness from there -- whether it is to become a billionaire or a musician or a priest or an astronaut." Rob Nail

For Bill and Melinda Gates optimism is something they have modeled after Warren Buffett's infectious positivity. In contrast to most people who believe that Buffett's success drives his optimism, they believe that in fact his optimism drives his success. 

"Because optimism isn't a belief that things will automatically get better; it's a conviction that we can make things better." Bill and Melinda Gates

If you're not a natural born optimist here are some things that come from design to practice your optimism:

Turn constraints into opportunities.

If it wasn't for the constraint of making a shoe without any waste, Nike designers would've never imagined theFlyKnit shoe, a shoe that is knitted. 

Just do it. 

For a great and very moving example of following your convictions without falling into the pessimism trap, watch Bending the Arc (available in its entirety on YouTube), the story of Dr. Kim, Ophelia Dahl and Paul Farmer, and Partners in Health, fighting TB, Aids and Ebola in the world's poorest communities. As Dr. Kim says, they didn't know if they would succeed but they kept on going.

Practice wrong thinking.

Know that great ideas often come from the worst places. Mickey McManus, author of Trillions and Autodesk fellow, made his intern the boss; Tiffany Shlain, founder of the Webby Awards and the co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts, banned technology from her life once a week; artist William Kentridge made Rome's grime from pollution into art. 

Whether your goal is to eradicate poverty from the world, like Dr. Kim at the World Bank, or to imagine the future of humankind like Rob Nail at Singularity University, or if you want to model Buffet and Gates' financial success, I advocate that you practice thinking positively.

So instead of thinking of all the things that can go wrong, imagine the choices you can make for it to all go right. Because what you can imagine is what you can make happen.

This post was in part inspired by Dr. Kim and Rob Nail's stories that were full of optimism in the face of some of world's greatest problems, during Marshall Goldsmith's 100 Coaches event in Washington DC where I am a cohort. 

This article first appeared on Inc.com on December 9, 2017

How To Inspire Creativity

One of the downsides to travel is that it interrupts my seemingly simple but effective daily creative habit--getting up early, making a cup of tea with a side of cookies and sitting down at my desk or kitchen table with my sketchbook and sketching while my unconscious and judgmental side is still asleep. Jet-lag, client meetings, dinners in new locales kick in and the creativity routines are upended. 

The good news is there are some new creative tools designed for travel. They're small enough to slip into an overnight bag and fun enough to engage with even when your brain is clouded by lack of sleep.

Here is a round-up of some of these fun, handy tools to inspire creativity on the go--

Design Kit Travel Pack

IDEO.org, the nonprofit arm of IDEO, has just started a Kickstarter campaign for the Design Kit Travel Pack. The campaign raised $40,000 in 24 hours for "a brand new set of bite-sized design exercises to help anyone solve big challenges."

What is exciting about this cool mobile creativity kit is that you can use it individually as well as with users and clients all over the world, to build empathy, expand and stretch your thinking, and to accelerate collaboration among teams. You can contribute to the campaign for another 3 weeks.

Unstuck Tip Cards

Who doesn't get stuck? Time is short, you need to get a head start with great ideas and yet you are stuck, or worse, procrastinating. One of my favorite books, Unstuck by Stone Yamashita founder Keith Yamashita and Sandra Spataro is a great idea starter. Unstuck Tip Cards are a travel size companion to the book and my favorite deck is the Stop Your Procrastination Tip Cards. 

The deck contains 30 cards and here is #10: Outsmart your to-do list. The advice on this card is to list only the things you're trying to avoid, and to leave out the things you know you will get to that day. It's a great way to move the hard stuff out of your mind and on to paper, and to treat them as any other to do. 

Keri Smith's The Line

The Line looks like a little notepad (5X8") and it is by one of my favorite creative people, Keri Smith, author of the best selling, Wreck This Journal. 

The Line starts with a simple command, "find a pencil" and guides your pencil through the pages with clever and fun prompts.  It invites you to follow your instinct and to keep the line moving playfully and meditatively from one page to the next. It is a beautiful little "guide to clearing negative chatter in your head".

Here is instructions from one of its pages: "THE LINE WILL NOW BECOME A FORM OF MEDITATION. DRAW A SLOW, REPETITIVE PATTERN COVERING THIS ENTIRE PAGE."

I am taking it on my upcoming New York- Istanbul flight.

Moleskine Notebooks

Moleskine are those notebooks you can find anywhere, from airports to bookstores. They come in all sizes, with lines, grids or blank. The distinguishing mark is their elastic band, which I always think as the band that keeps my ideas together nice and snug. 

Called tools for creative nomads, these notebooks are my constant travel companion. I don't leave home without them and when occasionally I do, I feel lost. Versatile, they can hold your notes, sketches, lists. They're precious in that they're well-made, but not so precious that you can't use them or make a mess in them. Different from the other tools listed above, it is a blank page ready to receive your new ideas. 

If you haven't seen them, Moleskine has a special accordion version called the Japanese Album which opens up to a long beautiful white expanse of paper and then is folded back into a small notebook size. Something to try in the new year.

This article first appeared on Inc.com on December 1, 2017