Tag: Tuesday Takeaway

Thirty-four percent of millennials work every single day of their vacations. Yup, that’s one out of every three people, and what’s just as awful is that they return to work feeling even less productive than before they left,  according to a June 2015 study by Alamo Rent A Car. It makes sense, in a warped way: We get emails to our cell phones, and there’s this crippling feeling like nothing can wait.

If I just answer this email really fast, it will be one less headache to deal with when I get back, we reason.

If I don’t finish this project, my boss will never consider me for a promotion, we agonize.

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If you’re interested in running any kind of blog, you have to check out Pinch of Yum and Food Blogger Pro. Though the sites are very food-focused, the business/marketing/life-leveling-up lessons the sites share can apply well beyond people who like to Instagram (and write about) their lunch. (Guilty, as you all know.)

We’re still working on that whole “successful blog” thing, but these takeaways from Lindsay and Bjork Ostrom (the couple behind the sites) have helped us to start ramping things up:

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Just because you’re creative doesn’t mean you can’t think strategically. That’s something Katy Perry proves with every hit single, every sold-out tour, and every buzzed-about fragrance launch.

In her recent cover story on Forbes, the “California Gurls” singer discussed how she views herself as an entrepreneur, explaining how she doesn’t just write about whatever’s on her mind, hoping it will resonate. She also thinks about what’s on other people’s minds, taking the temperature of her potential audience before putting pen to paper.

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If you’ve ever seen MasterChef judge and Milk Bar founder Christina Tosi’s colorful layer cakes, scrolled her Instagram or skimmed her cookbooks, you know that there’s an element of fun in everything she does. It’s an indelible part of her character, and of the #MilkBarLife she ‘grams about.

When I interviewed her for Delish, I loved learning about her collection of headscarves, her pickup trucks and how she spends her downtime goofing off with Gordon Ramsay (yup, that Gordon Ramsay), but one moment in the interview really stood out: When Tosi talked about planning in a little ‘fun’ in your life.

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At the risk of sounding all “Celebrities, they’re just like us!”-ish, while reading singer Joy Williams’ interview in the latest issue of Relevant magazine, a term she used stopped me mid-sentence, because it felt all too relatable: future-tripping.

It’s obsessing over what your life would be like if you made this choice instead of that one, or if catastrophe X didn’t happen to you. Admittedly, this idea fascinates me — I love following the “Butterfly Effect” train of thought and imagining all of the different lives I could be leading, given one small change along my path. I know it’s not necessarily productive, but it is pretty interesting to do. So what’s Williams’ issue with it? It’s not long before the “what if…” game becomes more of a “why me?!” scenario, and you can go from daydreaming about the Life You Could Have Led to obsessing over the Life You Wish You Had.

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When you ask someone how they’re doing — and they actually take a second to reply with more than the perfunctory, “well” or “fine” — two responses are all too common: “I’m so busy” and “I just don’t have enough time.”

The latter is usually followed up by a quick mention of the thing they’d like to be doing, or what they feel they should be doing, but never get around to accomplishing. Jack Groppel, Ph.D. and cofounder of the Johnson & Johnson Human Performance Institute, told Shape that many people use comments like these to “mentally dismiss troubling truths” about themselves, essentially acknowledging the shortcoming without ever doing anything about it.

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Since high school, I’ve been a writer. I can even pinpoint the moment I started thinking of myself that way — I overheard a teacher compliment me while talking to another student. I realized she didn’t know I was listening, so she didn’t have to say it just to be nice, and suddenly, all my years of being awkward and feeling out of place shook away (at least for a split second). In that moment, I felt like I had figured out my thing — I was meant to be a writer! Somehow! And I’d find a way to get paid for it, surely!

Golly gee, I was naive. But enthusiastic. And while I’ve found a way to pay my bills while writing (and, admittedly, doing what I loved), I realized shortly after graduating college just what a curse it can be to define yourself too narrowly. When writing wasn’t working out — or any time I hit a rough patch, really, and my work wasn’t resonating with people or even being read — I felt like a failure. And a fraud. A failing, flailing fraud, who just sucked at life. Because I saw myself as just one thing, and if I didn’t hit the minimum expectations for being that one thing, then I wasn’t good enough. Cue the shame spiral.

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When you think of books you can devour in one flight, thrillers and other edge-of-your-seat pageturners immediately come to mind. Not necessarily research-driven nonfiction.

But when I started reading Jonah Berger’s Contagious two years ago on a flight to Tennessee, I couldn’t put it down. Even when we reached our destination. It’s that compelling.

The book explores why things catch on, breaking them down into six key STEPPS — or components — that can help take an idea from thought, to reality, to raging success:

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Have you ever wanted to tackle a major project, only to find yourself suddenly checking your favorite blogs, responding to half a dozen emails, even taking an old toothbrush to the dingy grout on your bathroom tile, because those things suddenly seem so urgent?

You’re not alone.

I’ve felt that way countless times, and often, after losing an hour or two mindlessly searching the web or being productive about things that really don’t matter right this second, I wonder why I’m being my own worst enemy. I’ve written it off as a lack of discipline, which is largely true, but a passage in Emily Freeman’s A Million Little Ways helped me get to the root of my foot dragging: I’m afraid to face my daily allotment of failure.

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I think the reason I got into journalism is just because I love hearing people’s stories. I love getting a look at other people’s perspectives: What motivates them, what moves them, what totally freaks them out. The bummer, to me, is the huge swaths of interviews that never make the final story. They’re interesting, but ultimately, extraneous, and so no one but me ever hears them.

Not anymore.

From time to time, I’ll post an interesting insight or tidbit here, just because I think it needs to be shared with the world, like this insight from Katherine Sabbath, an Australian high school teacher-turned-baker who’s taking Instagram by storm with her delightfully whimsical, unexpected cakes. (You can see that story — and the droolworthy photos — on Delish.com.)

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