Month: October 2007

Life

On Happiness: The people we "know"

Christa Avampato

I was scrolling through one of the blogs I check for work and came across an article about our on-line lives. Everyone is writing about this phenomenon these days – how we have re-invented ourselves through personal pages like Facebook or in virtual worlds like Second Life. I’m kind of tired of hearing about it in all honesty. I like my Facebook page because it helps long-lost friends find me and keeps me from creating long-lost friends in the first place. I’m not home in front of my computer pining away for my “avatar persona.”

I must have been feeling particularly less “know-it-all”-ey than usual because I kept reading the blog entry and stopped to consider its sentiment when the author said how much he appreciated these on-line personal tools because it allowed him to curate his life, the way museum designers curate the lives of famous, and sometimes not-so-famous, artists. I loved that idea. These sharing-tools allow you to create an on-line, multi-dimensional gallery celebrating you. I was feeling better already and kept reading.

The author of the entry then goes on to talk about how “being acquainted with” someone now has a completely different meaning as a result of these sharing platforms. My boss continually uses the line “Do you know (insert name of famous published innovator)?” I always thought this was a little odd – clearly Bob thinks I am a bigger fish than I actually am if he thinks I would know these people. Now I realize what he was saying is “are you acquainted with….”, meaning do you know what their interests and areas of research are? Have you read their books? Do you have a sense of who he or she is without ever meeting?

As a result of my job, I spend a lot of time on-line watching presentations from people like Chris Andersen and Malcolm Gladwell. Thanks to technology and the increasing desire to share insights with a wide audience, many presentations at conferences are not offered up for free after, and sometimes during, the events. Technology has allowed me to know Malcolm, without ever having met him.

This got me to wondering who knows me without ever meeting me. Who is acquainted with me because they read this blog or my facebook page or the other writing I do for some very small publications? What does it mean to know someone today? Or has there been a shift of the paradigm – is the goal now not to know someone, but to merely have an idea of how they think, what they think about, and what interests them? Is that enough?

When I think about curating a life and sharing it with others, the real art is in the edit, just like in writing. Knowing what to overlook and leave out is as valuable as the contents that remain because it gives those remaining a larger stage and greater emphasis. What remains is truly what our lives are about, the rest is just noise. It’s the cutting through that counts so that what’s left hangs together in a picture we can be proud of.

I also like this idea of curating life because it allows me to see where the holes are. For example if I step back from my life and look at what I’ve pasted up on this blog, and bucket the contents, I can immediately see what’s lacking. I’m not writing about volunteering in my community. If this blog truly reflects me, and the best of the insights I gain everyday, then I’m either not volunteering or the volunteer experiences I’m having are not fulfilling. This observation of my “museum of me” helps me start to consider whether volunteering is as important to me as it used to be, and if it is, it will encourage me to actively change my behavior to create fulfilling experiences in that realm.

This is the real benefit of these sharing technologies – to inspire us to action in “real life”. If we use them as a tool for self-reflection, to learn about ourselves the same way that we use them to learn about others, then they help us to step out into the world and build the collection of experiences and relationships that can truly lead us to happiness. These technologies allow us to step back and consider what it is we’re building with each passing day. As a result our lives on-line will have the added benefit of creating a richer lives out in the world.

business, choices

Monday’s new way of thinking – Barry Schwartz

Christa Avampato

I have been toying with the idea of putting themes to certain days I blog in an attempt to make sense of all these blog postings I create. I examine other blogs very closely everyday to see what they’re writing about, how they categorize their posts, etc. I’ve noticed that the ones I enjoy the most are the ones where I know what to expect. There’s a lot of this general on-line diary stuff happening in the blogosphere, though I get bored with that pretty quickly. I’d like to be more relevant than that.

I started to consider things I am most passionate about:
The creation and maintenance of happiness
Thought-provoking quotes
Green and sustainability, the environment
Innovation
Design

Books
Relationships, etc.

If you google any on of these + blogs, hundreds will pop up. Thousands. I was worried that I may have nothing to contribute to these conversations. What do I have that would be unique or interesting or different? In a conversation via email with my friend, Dan, I realized what I could add, as well as one with my boss about a related topic, I stumbled on it. Action. I can add suggested to action to these conversations, and action, how we play out in our lives the information we take in, is always unique. It has to be because my life, examined holistically, is distinct from anyone else’s.

In going through this process, I was reminded again of a talk that Barry Schwartz, the author of a book entitled The Paradox of Choice, gives at innovation conferences. He brings to light that all this choice we have in our society has increased our stress levels and made us less happy. He gives a multitude of examples, and at the end leaves us with the exact same sentiment he started with – more choices may intuitively lead us to believe that we can increase our happiness, though in actuality, it leaves us paralyzed.

I recently sent the link to Barry’s talk to my friend, Dan, who then wrote an email to me with the sentiment, “So what?” (said much nicer than that of course.) While it is good food for thought, what the heck do we DO about it? And that’s where I realized that writer give context to what’s happening around us. That’s my responsibility as a writer, and I have something to add here.

The “so what?” is that if the world is going to offer us limitless choices, then it is up to us to place our own boundaries in order to create happiness, satisfaction, and a sense of purpose. While I have known this for some time, it has taken me up until this moment to put the sentiment into action.

As an example, whenever someone asks me some question like, “If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?” I freeze completely. There’s so much I want to do with it that I don’t know where to start. Buy a house? Start a business? Pay off my school loans? Donate to charity? And if I donate to a charity, which one? And if I buy a house, where? If I start a business, what field would it be in? So much choice it makes my head hurt. And then I start to think, “a million dollars is not enough, I need at least 5 million!” And the ridiculousness goes on and on.


I take a deep breathe and give myself a small haven to say, “Christa, you make X amount of dollars in salary, and you have to prioritize what you want to do.” And I begin to calm down and consider what’s really important to me. Small goals, earned one day at a time through careful planning. Making less money than a million dollars actually eases my anxiety. The constraint, in this instance, at this point in my life, ironically helps. (And this is only because I do have enough money to pay my bills and have a bit of fun, too. If I couldn’t make ends meet, then of course the constraint is too confining and I have to look at ways to incraese my earnings. This is exactly one of the big reasons I went to business school.)

This also happened to me when I was trying to decide what to do with my career after business school. I was a mess when given the line, “The world is your oyster.” In actuality, it’s not, and I am so grateful for that. I will never become a surgeon, a lawyer, or an astronaut. I am too selfish with my free time to be in banking or management consulting.

I really wanted to be in retail. I wanted to live in New York. I wanted a boss who was supportive of my growth and development. A turn-around would be preferable. And if my job was in the vein of creativity and innovation that would make my day. I got exactly what I asked for in my current job – it fits all of these criteria, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

Several years ago, I was beginning to feel overwhelmed that I couldn’t keep up with all my friends from every period of my life. I felt like a bad friend, a bad person. And then a co-worker of mine at the time, much older, said to me that that’s okay. People will cycle in and out of your life. Some you will always keep close, others are close now because you live in the same city or have the same job, and some will appear just exactly when you need them, or vice versa. Some will fall away all together. And this pattern has proven true. There are just so many hours in a day and choosing to whom to allocate those hours is critical to our happiness. The great thing about technology, like email, these personal blogs, Facebook, is that keeping in touch and staying close is made much easier, and in many ways richer.

In terms of my blog, there are a lot of things I could write about because I’m interested in many different topics. So each day of the week, I’ll post a piece on a specific interest of mine. (And maybe other random ones will sneak in as well if I’m feeling especially prolific!) You’ll know what to expect, I’ll have more of a context to write within, and hopefully this blog will become more useful.

From the title of this post, you’ll see that Mondays will be about innovation and trend, in other words “a new way of thinking”. I am very lucky in that I am learning so much at my current job and it’s proving so beneficial to me that I want to share it in the hope that it inspires people the way all of this knowledge inspires me. Today in particular focuses on Barry Schwartz, an innovation and trend expert. You can see his video from the TED conference at http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/93


So while there are a dizzying amount of choices out there no matter what concept we talk about, not all of the choices pertain to you. Carve out your priorities, what really matters to you, and then evaluate options based on those priorities. You’ll be amazed by the number of choices you will have to set aside for the sake of better options, and that limiting will increase your satisfaction with the end result.
Life

Where have all the honey bees gone?

Christa Avampato

I am a self-professed news junkie. I am one of those people that psychologists worry about – the ones who remain glued to their seats watching hour after hour of CNN or MSNBC, unable to tear themselves away from the screen depicting all of the misery and violence happening around the world. Some people may think this obsession, like most obsessions is unhealthy. I like to think of myself as abnormally aware of what’s happening in the world.

60 Minutes and CBS Sunday Morning are two of my favorite shows. It’s my dream to be one of the people that hunts around for obscure oddities in the world, reporting back to the rest of the world on how these seemingly unimportant events really have impact on our lives. For now, I’m just on the sidelines of my couch, feeding my inner nerd.

Tonight was no exception. Having my date cancel at the last minute, disappointing though sadly not surprising given his career choice that forces him to work insane hours, I was happily in my home watching 60 minutes over a bowl of comfort food.

Do you ever wonder exactly where your food comes from and all of the steps that went into getting it to your plate? Bees. That’s the answer in almost every case. 60 Minutes is reporting about the decimation of the honey bee population in America, and now I am as worried about that as I am about melting polar ice caps and the little penguins in South Africa who have had their population cut to 1/8 its size in 10 years. (This penguin story was reported early on the evening news with Lester Holt.)

Part of being an environmentalist is that you are a nervous wreck over the state of our planet. If you think about it too much, you truly could become paralyzed by the enormity of the problem. It turns out that there is a step-child industry of bee keepers who rent out their beehives all across the country. 40,000 bees to a hive. And they are the sole reason we even have fruits and vegetable in this country. It takes 30 trips by bees to a single flower per season to make a pumpkin grow. 30 per pumpkin! The unemployment rate of bees is a negative number. Probably a negative triple digit number.

60 Minutes interviewed a honey bee farmer who’s family has been in this business for 50 years. He’s been visiting his hives around the country and many of them have deserted their hives. Gone. Destroyed. There’s honey inside the hives, and even other bees not associated with the hive won’t come anywhere near it. The eggs and larve have been abandoned, a practice very atypical of honey bees. And there are no dead bees anywhere in sight. A scientist who studies honey bees says that the environment is contaminating the hives, driving the bees out. Normally honey bees can find their way back to their uniquely-scented hive within a two mile radius. They aren’t getting lost – they are running away.

This poor honey bee farmer has lost 80% of his bee population, and has spent $100’s of $1000’s of dollars replacing the bees. And he is not alone – honey bee farmers all over the country are experiencing the same problem. No one knows what’s going on and no one knows what to do.

So while we may be celebrating the mild weather we’ve had all fall, I am very worried. Our planet is going through an unnaturally frightening time. In a very real sense, if these bees go, our produce will be sky-high in cost, if not non-existent. So while we may think that the smallest creatures are unimportant when compared to us all-important humans, we need to be more thoughtful about our inter-dependency. In reality, we need the bees much more than they need us.

Life

Innovation unleashed

Christa Avampato

There is a tendency in life, though particularly in business, to covet ideas, research, and innovations. R&D of any kind, personal or professional, is often kept under lock and key for fear someone may steal our brilliance. It’s hard to make a counter argument, or at least it has been in the past. We are a people obsessed with patents and lawsuits.
However, there is a movement afoot, and there has been for a number of years, to make it passe to covet intellectual property. This movement takes the mantra that “information wants to be free.” And the mantra is spreading. Put the New York Times on-line for everyone to see all of the content free, make wireless available for all, everywhere. And if you are working on an innovative concept, share it and you will be amazed by how much your concept will improve as a result of outside input. And your concept, will inspire the creativity of others.
My boss is bolted into the innovation and design worlds, having spent most of his life fiddling around with ideas, concepts, and cool “stuff”. He has attended and spoken at innovation conferences with some of the greatest minds of our times, some you know and some you’ve never heard of. Their insights are too good to keep to myself and sadly aren’t covered well by mainstream media. So I’m doing my part to spread the world.
Have a look at the following sites and the podcasts of speakers, and you’ll have a tough time not be innovative, regardless of your field:
Life

Are you incoming or post-peak?

Christa Avampato

There are a lot of ways to consider our careers, relationships, our financial situations. Because I work in the innovation and trend field, we are obsessed with the trend curve to study products and changes in the marketplace. Recently, my boss opened my eyes to using it to evaluate other ideas and states of being. You can place your career on the trend curve, and if you’re post-peak, you better start thinking about how to re-invent yourself. The same can be said for your love life, for your finances, for where you make your home. And consider life in general – Am I jazzed about a new project I have going, be it professional, volunteer work, or a hobby? If all my projects are down-trending, it is time to start thinking about something new to get going.

The trend curve gives us a way to measure how life’s going, and its greatest value is in giving us questions to ask ourselves to evaluate the current state of what we’re trying to chart. I’ve been looking for a tool like this to think about the state of this very abstract idea of progress in life. It grounds the conversation for us, helps us make the choices more palpable, and gives us a historical context for consideration.
The piece it’s missing in the reinvention arrow, the one that connects “post-peak” with “incoming”. The curve makes it look as if there everything we are trying to chart will ultimately fade away into oblivion. This is not true so long as what we’re charting can be remade, refreshed, or repurposed. Arguably, everything we are trying to chart has taken the roller-coaster ride of the trend curve many times before. Everything we have has already been.
Life

Coffee remade

Christa Avampato

You’ve got hand it to Starbucks. Regardless of what anyone may think about the political corporate machine that made it okay to charge $2.50 for a cup of black coffee, they’re incredible innovators.

I was waiting for my friend, Monika, so we could take a walk in the Central Park today (the weather has finally turned to autumn in NYC) and stopped into the Starbucks on the corner to grab a hot apply cider. Upon entering I saw a sign that intrigued me: “Embrace insomnia.” This is what I’ve been saying all along to my fellow insomniacs! And to help you out, Starbucks has created a safe haven for us by being open 24 hours. Incredible. Genius.

In their recruiting efforts, Starbucks has placed posters of real baristas in windows who describe why they love working for Starbucks so much. If you’ve got a captive audience waiting in line, why not try to convince them to lend their expertise on the other side of the counter? Logical, yet innovative.

Starbucks has become known for their groovy tunes, and in partnership with itunes, they now help promote music in their shops by having baristas pick a song of the day, and making it possible to always know who’s singing the song that’s currently playing, and download it direct from itunes with the click of a button. Oh, and in cooperation with T-mobile, wireless Internet is free. Brilliant integration and partnership.

I’m waiting in line to get my cider, and the book The Kite Runner catches my eye. Attractively displayed, Starbucks is promoting the book and the movie. This is alongside their terrific gift assortment as well as the exclusive new release of Joni Mitchell’s album.

Now that I’ve just spent close to $3 for a cup of heated up apply cider, I head over to what I’ll call the accouterments bar to put some extra cinnamon in it and I have an array of well-designed literature in front of me: social responsibility pamphlet, t Mobile hotspot, Starbucks retail careers, and comment cards (mail it in without even having to put a stamp on it). Now I not only enjoy my beverage, I feel fantastic, even self-righteous, about having purchased it.

Why would you ever leave – hot drinks, food, books, music, a comfortable seat, a job, and a celebration of an illness that has kept me awake for most of my adult life. This is exactly the point….the longer you’re here, the more you’ll spend. Starbucks has laid waste to the idea that your core business is your only business. Arguably, they’ve switched the paradigm of retail. I’m not visiting for the product – I’m there for the atmosphere that only they can create for me. Talk about competitive advantage! I wonder how they’d feel about me setting up a cot in the corner.
Life

Super(wo)man lives!

Christa Avampato

I had dinner last night with a friend of mine who introduced me to something new you can do in a cab: a quick change. She said to me “I did a superman in a cab today.” I thought that meant she tripped and fell face first into the cab. Nope, it means changing your clothing while cabbing to your destination. I had never heard of such a thing.

You have to love NYC for these random acts of craziness. Would you ever, in any other city, consider undressing in front of a complete stranger in a moving vehicle? I personally think this is a fantastic idea to keep in your back pocket for the next time you need a good dare for someone.

My friend reasoned that it was dark and rainy, the driver was engrossed in his phone conversation (scary, I know), and she needed to get out of her suit and into something more comfortable quickly. You may be saying to yourself, “why didn’t she just go to a Starbucks restroom to change – they’re are plenty of those around.” Now what fun would that be? Just goes to show you that NYC adds some flair to even the most mundane activities.

Life

You find it when you’re not looking…

Christa Avampato

a parking space in New York that is. I am amazed by how many times I can drive around for 20 minutes looking for a space, find one, literally one, that is 12 blocks from my apartment, and as I approach my building free spots multiply before my eyes. It’s really incredible, and unexplainable.

I’ve also found this statement to be true recently for bicycle riders. I know that they are being better environmentalists than I by riding a bike instead of an SUV. I get that. I’m jealous of then. I’d love to pitch my car. However, why do they think riding a bike exempts them from every traffic law we have? They go the wrong direction, cut you off, run red lights, disobey stop signs, and the list goes on. I just don’t get it…how do they justify that behavior and then get angry at motorists? I’m longing for the day when those police officers that lurk around my neighbordhood give a ticket to a bicyclist or a cab who thinks they’re above the traffic laws.

Life

Cereal’s like the future

Christa Avampato

I feel alone and overwhelmed by the enormousness of this indefinite time frame known as “the future”. Even if I am perfectly happy, thinking about the future can turn me into a whirling dervish. This is why I do yoga, to calm my mind. This is why I stay as busy as possible, to keep myself in control. If I have a task at hand, then I can put my energy into that task. My mind is developing remarkable work-arounds to my distraction efforts. I’ll all of a sudden be walking down the street, finishing doing something or thinking about something, and next in the cue is always, always thinking about the future. “Hi self, Glad you took care of buying milk at the corner store. Now back to the matter at hand: the future.” “Good thing you worked out what you are going to say to Sleepy’s when you have to call them again to straighten out your bill. Time to think about the future, again.” And so it goes.

The funny thing about the future is that no matter how well you have it figured out, it just keeps coming. No such thing as a future tourniquet. If the future is coming, and it always is, then I’m worrying.

When I think about people from history that have exhibited calm, even in the face of great adversity, I think of the Dalai Lama, of Ghandi, and of Abraham Lincoln. It’s no wonder then that Mr. Lincoln would have said, “”The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.” So even if I am worried about 5 years down the line, next year, or next week, I only have to deal with it one small piece, a day, at a time.

The task of the future is too heavy, too much to bear today. Of course it is – I am one person, in one moment of time. I started to think about all the things I’ll do repetitively for the rest of my life and what it would be like to do them all in one moment. Let’s take how many bowls of cereal I’m going to eat between now and the day I die. I am hoping to live to be an ancient woman – my palm reader, Miss Susan, says this is highly likely. Let’s assume she is correct on that count. I also love cereal. I mean, really love cereal. If I could find a way to justify eating it for every meal, I would. So if I live 60 more years, that’s roughly 3000 weeks. If I eat about 4 bowls of cereal a week, that’s 12,000 bowls. Well, if ate all of those bowls RIGHT NOW, I’d probably die, or be very, very ill. Anything taken in such massive amounts is not good for us, and thinking about the future is no exception.

What Mr. Lincoln was saying is what we hear dietitians saying all of the time: the key is moderation. Take the future in tiny pieces, a bit at a time. Spoonful by delicious spoonful.

The above picture can be found at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/np/fnrb/cereal1004.jpg

Life

A place to call happy

Christa Avampato

The idea of happy-nomics is still lurking around in my mind. I consider it constantly. This week I looked back at my career kaleidoscope that I created from my friend Susan’s book, the Right Job Right Now. (It’s listed on my blog in “my favorite books” section). And I realized that everything I had been looking for in a job, I found in my current position, and then some. Today I received an email from a woman at company that had interested me while I was still at Darden. Just now, the perfect position at the company had opened up and she wanted to know if I would be interested. I politely declined and offered to send the posting to friends who may know of someone interested. I have never in my life declined an interview. Never. I had arrived at happiness.

So just when I have it all figured out, and I smiling very proud of myself of how well I’d chosen my current job, how wise I had become since my last full-time job, I read a quote by Sydney H. Harris. “Happiness is a direction, not a place.” So while yes I am moving along the path of happiness, I will not actually ever get to some place called “Happy Land”. I may be skipping down Happy Lane right now, though if there anything in this world that is certain, it is change. This was a far deeper discovery than I ever thought I’d find in 7 small words.

Though in some ways, this also takes the pressure off. I am always hoping to arrive at Happy Land, Inner Peace Land, Satisfaction Land. It’s true in my relationships, in my career, even in my search for a home. Isn’t it easier to discover a general direction rather than a specific place. The best we can hope for is to be on the road of happiness and where it’s going is any one’s guess. It could be going to many different places. There’s no such thing as “I’ve arrived.” What we should be thrilled to find is “I’m going the right way for me, right now.”