Notes

I wonder if we don't ask for feedback more frequently because we don't want the burden of addressing it, not because we're afraid to hear it. When we receive critical feedback, it is natural to feel pressure; pressure to make abrupt changes and find solutions immediately. Rarely does this work or lead to lasting change. Meaningful growth takes time, patience, and discipline.

One of our maxims at Barrel is "all feedback is information." When you look at feedback through this lens, it seems silly for us not to crave feedback daily if we're serious about our growth.

Whether positive or critical, feedback is information that we do not have access to on our own about our work, way of being, and performance. It helps us better understand ourselves and how we interact with the world around us. We can choose to resist it, but the fact is that the feedback, or the way others perceive us, is not reliant on whether or not we are willing to face it.

I like to think of feedback as fuel for new ideas about how I can be better. Even when it's regarding a positive trait or behavior, how can I do this more? What is it about this that I can bring to other areas of my performance?

When receiving feedback, listen closely and take notes. Maybe you disagree with the feedback and feel you need to speak up. Or, there's missing context, and you need to fill in the gaps. If you do either, the chances are that the feedback giver will shut down, and you will lose access to the precious information that they are offering you. That sounds likes a loss to me.

If we agree that feedback is nothing more than information, the best thing we can do is be curious when we receive it, hungry to understand. As you listen to the feedback, ask questions to gain more context. Try to put yourself in the feedback giver's shoes and understand their perspective fully. You said that you feel like you're unable to make your own decisions; do you feel like I trust you? If not, what about our relationship makes you feel that way?

Equipped with notes, take time to reflect. What are the few things you can do today, tomorrow, this week to show even 1% improvement in the key areas? Remember, meaningful change doesn't happen overnight. Sort through the details, prioritize, and keep on keeping on!

In my newsletter this week, I explored the benefits of inviting a reset to routine. Barrel CEO and fellow partner Peter Kang responded to the email with a response that I think captures it perfectly: "Love the reset mindset!! Turning curveball into a home run!" Watching Peter become a father two times over and manage to keep up with his routine has been inspiring to witness. A practice I aim to embody as a father someday.

There have certainly been curveballs with my recent relocation. Rather than force my old routine or dwell on the fact that I'm off track, I have come to welcome these curveballs with open arms and see what opportunities they present.

Since Monday, I've adopted a 9 am to 5 pm work schedule, fully embracing the new work hours options we rolled out this week to give the team more flexibility across time zones. This structural adjustment to my day has opened the doors for me to redesign my routine.

What I've loved the most so far is the quiet time in the morning to think and explore ideas, an activity I used to embark on toward the end of the day. There's clarity of mind in the morning that is hard to capture at the end of the workday.

I start my day by writing in my journal before checking my phone or engaging with the world. Then, I get ready, completing my Readwise Daily Review while brushing my teeth. Then, I head up to my office to read for 30 minutes.

Over the last couple of months, I stopped reading in the morning and transitioned to getting it done just before bed. While I enjoyed how reading provided a calming moment before sleep, I find that reading paired with the other morning rituals is powerful for generating ideas and easing into the day.

After reading, the goal is to write and think. If I'm lucky, I'll get my daily note completed. For the last two days, this has not been the case; instead, I ended up drafting two longer pieces that I'm eager to continue exploring. One of which will likely become next week's newsletter!

By 10 am (when I used to begin working), I feel a sense of accomplishment heading into the day. My vision for the future is for the morning to continue to be a sacred time for deep thinking and long-term planning.

“Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.” (Pablo Picasso)

When the day ends at 5 pm, I try to jump right into a workout and get the body moving. Someday I may try to exercise in the morning, but for now, I still find early evening workouts to be an effective way to release the body and mind from the events of the day and enter the evening with renewed energy.

What I find fascinating is that while these activities are all slight adjustments from my old routine, the change in timing has already proven to make a profound difference. In the past, there were many days where I felt trapped by my daily rituals. I'd stay up late to get my reading in or have to skip working out so I could make dinner. Now, by 6 pm, my goal is to have all my daily rituals completed, leaving ample time to do whatever I want until my head hits the pillow. This feeling is freeing, and the joy it brings is priceless.

"To some, routine can sound like where creativity and innovation go to die—the ultimate exercise in boredom. We even use the word as a synonym for pallid and bland, as in “It has just become routine for me.” And routines can indeed become this—the wrong routines. But the right routines can actually enhance innovation and creativity by giving us the equivalent of an energy rebate. Instead of spending our limited supply of discipline on making the same decisions again and again, embedding our decisions into our routine allows us to channel that discipline toward some other essential activity." (Greg McKeown, Essentialism)

Easier said than done.

However, if you can describe the steps and imagine the outcome, how hard can it be? Are you passionate enough to take the first step? Courageous enough to see where it leads us?

If the answer is no, who cares how easy it is to say? It must not be worthwhile pursuing.

I have this theory that many of the perceived challenges of remote work are gaps that have always existed but have become illuminated now that we can't run over to a coworker's desk in the middle of the day.

Last week, we hosted our quarterly town hall and monthly team meeting. For these team-wide meetings, we enjoy experimenting with new formats regularly. Our focus is on hosting meetings that feel more like a team-wide dialogue than a formal presentation.

Back in the office days, we didn't talk about team meeting engagement nearly as much as we do as a remote-first company. Now, we're hard on ourselves when less than a few people participate. We use this as fuel by asking for feedback and identifying areas to improve the next time around.

From that perspective, I think our team-wide meetings have only gotten better since going remote. We used to rely on non-verbals and laughter to gauge engagement. These days, with Zoom and the need for muting, this can be a challenge.

This constraint has forced us to think more deeply about our time together. Here are a few changes from the last several months:

• Roll out straightforward updates via email memo (introducing a new role, work hours updates, etc.)
• Email team ahead of meeting to let them know what we're covering and give them time to think/prepare when necessary
• Feedback forms, especially when experimenting with new workshops

My brother, Nick, had a friend growing up who could never hang out when he had one “big” event going on that day, a family dinner, going to the DMV, decorating the Christmas tree, etc. It frustrated Nick. He wondered what happened to the other 13 or so hours of the day.

I find myself guilty of this mindset now and then, despite knowing how silly it is. When there is something "big" I need to get done, my instinct can be to clear the day to make room for it. Otherwise, I worry that I will not have the time to reach completion.

The truth, though, is that I do this when I have no plan. I want to clear my day because I cannot see the path to completion. Without that clarity, I let the one  "big" task takes precedence over everything else.

In these moments, I remind myself to pause, thinking through how to spend my time. Then, getting clear on what completion looks like at every stage of the process. Rather than losing a whole day to write my newsletter, I focus on when I want to have a concept, first draft, and final edit. This simple step puts my mind at ease and frees up space to focus on other important areas of life.

I wonder if Nick's friend was a poor planner or just needed clarity on a few details for his "big" event to make better use of his day.

Inspired by The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz, I've enjoyed thinking about this question lately: If all of your problems disappeared tomorrow, what would you want?‍

When your problems frame your vision, you create imaginary barriers around your future.

What do you really want?

We've all met someone who "thought of that" invention before it hit the market and became wildly successful. I'm not that person, but I do have a story.

When I was in first, maybe second grade, I was crazy about skateboarding. So much so that my sixth-grade assessment topic was "the history of skateboarding." I can still remember the poster board of painted red bricks. Anyway, I digress. I wanted to keep skating while at school, and I couldn't, so I decided to create a mini version of my skateboard.

I cut index cards into the shape of a skateboard, filled the bottom layer with glue, and folded up the sides so my fingers could stay attached. Then, I waited for the glue to dry and become firm before adding artwork to the bottom. The final touch was wrapping the entire thing in tape, my version of waterproofing.

These glue-filled boards were all the rage among my friends. I started making them for kids on the playground, custom artwork included. I can't remember if I charged them or not, but I want to say that a "skateboard" was 25 cents.

In 2008, Tech Deck hit the scene, and I was out of business. If you ask my Dad today, he'll tell you that he still gets sick thinking about this.

If you can't beat them, join them. I joined the Tech Deck movement and pivoted my "business." If you're not familiar with Tech Deck, their skateboards are identical, miniature copies of real skateboards, wheels, trucks, hardware, and all. I'll admit, I still find them super cool.

Tech Deck boards were so realistic, I dreamed of having a mini version of my skateboard. Turns out, so did all the other kids, but naturally, Tech Deck didn't have every skateboard you could buy in real life (especially the more budget-friendly boards I owned).

Fairly new to the power of the internet, I logged on to CCS.com, learned how to resize the image of my board (in MS Paint?), and printed it. With some glue stick action and fancy scissor work, I had a personalized Tech Deck. After I had a few boards under my belt, I began offering this service to my fellow skateboard enthusiasts.

I look back on these memories fondly. I don't think what if? I think about how they were early signs of my love for invention, design, and entrepreneurship.

All said, it is a good reminder that ideas are nothing without action, no matter how big or small. Everyone has ideas. Few of us are passionate enough to go after them with the belief and perseverance to make them a reality. On a second-grade scale, I'd like to think I did. For my seven-year-old self, that was a success.

A couple of years before, my startup did fail, though. I decided to open a bank (I don't know why), photocopying dollar bills onto neon green paper. When my Pop-Pop got wind of it, he shut down the whole operation, sternly filling me in on the illegal nature of what I was doing. That's a story for next time.

"If the quiet moments are the best moments, and if so many wise, virtuous people have sung their praises, why are they so rare? Well, the answer is that while we may naturally possess stillness, accessing it is not easy." (Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key)

We love to be productive.

"Being productive is about occupying your time—filling your schedule to the brim and getting as much done as you can. Being effective is about finding more of your time unoccupied and open for other things besides work. Time for leisure, time for family and friends. Or time for doing absolutely nothing." (Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work)

Are we afraid to be effective? To have nothing to check off our to-do list? To discover the power in sitting alone with our thoughts?

"While the magnitude and urgency of our struggle is modern, it is rooted in a timeless problem. Indeed, history shows that the ability to cultivate quiet and quell the turmoil inside us, to slow the mind down, to understand our emotions, and to conquer our bodies has always been extremely difficult. “All of humanity’s problems,” Blaise Pascal said in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”" (Ryan Holiday, Stillness Is the Key)

My Pop-Pop once told my brothers and me that he couldn’t see the difference between the colors of the traffic lights while driving. At a few decibels higher than necessary, he shared his approach with passion, “I know the top is the red one, the middle is yellow, and the bottom one is green. What else do I need to know!?”

I was old enough to be a bit alarmed, but the only driving he did was back and forth to his job at Wendy’s, so we let it go. We didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway; we knew there was no way he'd give up driving.

That night, I remember thinking about how I never paid much attention to the order of lights on a traffic light. Now, when I get stuck at a red light, I often think of Pops.

Maybe it's a stretch, but when I think about Pops's seemingly hazardous approach to driving now, I see it more like a parable on life. We all make our way through the world differently. My path may not be the one for you and yours for me, but who are we to judge? If we trade that judgment for curiosity, we may just learn a thing or two.

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I wasn't sure why I returned to this story last night, but it came to mind after designing the artwork for yesterday's note on going after what you want, an abstracted greenlight. I love these unconscious links in thought.

People like to say some variation of, "do it now because you never know if you'll get the chance again," but I don't know...that seems like a pretty gloomy outlook on life. I prefer to take a more positive spin.

If there is something you want now, make it happen. Not because you won't have the chance, but because life happens, things change.

• You still want those funky shoes you never bought at 25, but at 35, maybe it's not the best look.
• You still daydream of walking the Brooklyn Bridge on a warm Spring day. It never seemed urgent when you lived in NYC, and now, 12 years later, you're living back home in Sweden, and it isn't so convenient.
• Every time you see a Vespa, you imagine yourself zipping around town to pick up groceries and visit friends. Now, you live in a quiet suburban neighborhood. You could get the Vespa, but it wouldn't be the same.

Whether you're seeking the feeling of wearing funky shoes or your hair flowing in the wind doesn't matter. Either way, you'll always wonder what it would have felt like to make that choice.

Sometimes, it won't be what you expect, but living without the weight of wonder and regret is priceless. Other times, it will exceed your expectations. In either case, it may even inadvertently lead to somewhere new. There are few examples of this in my life that immediately come to mind.

Wanted to make a new friend: If I hadn't mustered up the courage to talk to the kid at the bus stop wearing the same shoes as me in fourth grade, I wouldn't have met Kyle. We've been best friends ever since. By the way, we were born nine days apart. Weird.

Wanted to try teaching: If I hadn't decided to inquire about starting a Teaching Assistant program within the Graphic and Interactive Design program in college, I wouldn't have met my wife, Dana, in my first class. I loved teaching. I feel lucky to know that and that somehow it will fit into my future.

Wanted to experience a new city: If I hadn't chosen to move to NYC, I wouldn't have landed at Barrel. I'd probably still be wondering what it would be like to live here, but at this point, less interested in the pace. Oh, and the job that got me to the city? Not what I expected, but hey, it got me here.

Why wonder when you can find out now?

In our pursuit of efficiency, we look for every opportunity to remove the manual part of the process. The more we automate, the more we standardize, the faster we can create. But at what point does our race toward efficiency go too far?

Whether we're redesigning a client's website or launching a marketing campaign, the objective of efficiency during the creative process is about more than speed. Building efficiency creates more space to be creative. By reducing repetitive work, we gain time to focus on thinking big.

We can:

• Create base templates for brainstorm sessions to spend more time brainstorming
• Design a core set of UI elements for wireframes to spend more time imagining the best user experience
• Automate platform setup & configuration to spend more time building and refining the website

When we become obsessed with efficiency, focusing solely on speed, we risk losing our creative firepower. We go beyond the repetitive work and start standardize what made projects special: our ideas. We remove the brainstorm session, and instead, every project begins with a set of boilerplate concepts based on the client.

We slowly become less connected to our work as it becomes formulaic. We start wondering if we're even needed at all.

When you're looking for opportunities to be more efficient, look for the mindless work that happens every time, not the work that requires creativity and thought, even if sometimes that's what takes the longest.

Why do we crave recognition?

Why do we want our work to be acknowledged?

For me, these are signs of progress when I'm doing work that impacts others. I feel good when I achieve a goal, but I often don't feel a true sense of accomplishment until relevant parties notice the step forward.

"Love that document you put together! Super helpful for future projects."

"Great workshop! I enjoyed the new format. Thanks for running that!"

While there is often an audience for the work I do, expecting behavior from them is no way to build momentum because, for one, what if it never comes? Do you stop and give up?

The more that I explore the source of this mindset, I notice there's more to the story: getting clear on what I set out to do in the first place. I seek recognition or acknowledgment when I am not clear with myself on what I wanted to create.

For example, it's not about completing the deck; it's about the team having the autonomy to repeat a process without guidance or clients getting more hands-on during a design presentation.

Recognition is different than feedback. While being recognized may feel good and lift our spirits, it's temporary and rarely actionable enough to move an idea forward. To create results, what we want is information. Information we can get when we ask for specific feedback.

Vision: The team has the autonomy to repeat the process without guidance.

• Recognition: "Love that document you put together! Super helpful for future projects."
• Feedback: "Appreciate that your document gives us a reference point for future projects, but I do worry that people won't reference it because of the length. Any thoughts on how we could make it more digestible?"

Vision: The client can engage and give more real-time feedback during the design process.

• Recognition: "Great workshop! I enjoyed the new format. Thanks for running that!"
• Feedback: "Great workshop! The new format was fun. I enjoyed seeing so much engagement from the client during the brainstorm compared to the intro section. I wonder how we can make that part more exciting?"

Once we get clear on what we want to create, feedback can anchor us to the results. From there, we may decide we can move on to discover a new vision or decide there's more work to be done. Either way, we can breathe knowing that we're in control of getting what we need to make our vision a reality.

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Related: "Shaping 'The Path of Least Resistance' to Create the Life You Want"

We love to tell everyone about the singer/songwriter who can't sell out a show but whose records we play on repeat.

We love to tell everyone about the family-owned restaurant that is always empty on a Saturday night but has the most incredible homemade pasta.

We love to tell everyone until everyone knows.

That band? They're sell-outs. Have you heard of this new artist?

That restaurant? The pasta is not the same. Have you tried this new restaurant?

On to the next best-kept secret...

If something feels off, "flagging it" is hardly enough. Flags without suggestions simply create a mark; they don't heal.

If something goes wrong, "I flagged it" gets us nowhere; it turns our heads backward when we should be looking forward.

To most, "I flagged it" sounds like "I told someone there was an issue, but they did nothing. It's not my fault." We waste time and energy pointing fingers.

Sure, maybe someone is accountable, but if we’re a team and we made decisions together, chances are we all played our part in the outcome.

Flag it, and find a way.

I once attended a design conference where a surprising number of the notable designers giving talks mentioned how terrible their experience following a management track was and why designers should steer clear of it.

Okay, I agree that management isn't the right fit for everyone. But, there I was, a designer with a passion for management and so far, loving it.

I sat among the crowd of wide-eyed conference-goers and wondered, what happens if everyone takes their advice? Who will coach, support, and mentor the next generation of designers?

I returned to New York with an intensified desire to continue on my path and share lessons learned along the way, with the hope that those with a passion for creative management may benefit, or simply, stay inspired to keep going.