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copyright: mastermind maps
A few weeks ago we wrote about the concept of “pulsing and resting,” throughout the work day; actually taking breaks from work in order to get more done (and do better work!). One of our readers introduced us to the Pomodoro Technique, (names after a tomato-shaped timer) which is based on this very idea and provides a specific method:
- Choose a task to be accomplished
- Set a timer for 25 minutes
- Work on the task until the timer rings
- Take a short break (5 minutes is OK)
- Every 4 cycles take a longer break
We decided to try it out, and it so far it has been a wonderfully useful technique. We’ve found that the 25-minute work cycles allow us to package together work in a way that makes sense, so we aren’t cramming a big bunch of unrelated tasks together. The result: we’re calmer, and feel more organized. Getting up and getting away from our desks is also extremely refreshing, and allows our heads to cool out throughout the day.
It’s so simple that it’s definitely worth a try.
read more…
01.24.12 |
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in copy this!, paths + processes, principles, rules for living, strategies, working |
photo: Jacque Burke
Our friend Jacque Burke is the Communications Director for The Dutch and Locanda Verde, lynchpins of chef Andrew Carmellini‘s growing restaurant empire. She sent us a photo of this astonishing to-do list with some thoughtful commentary, and inadvertently became a guest blogger:
“I had some work waiting for me at Locanda Verde, and when I went into our chefs offices there, I was stopped dead by this to-do list sitting on the desk.”What chaos!” I thought. Just looking at it made my mind go blank. I need symmetry in my to-do lists: columns with an underlined header for each one, that these days is either a person who needs tending (AC, Luke, Josh, Patrick, JACQUE) or one of our ongoing projects (Locanda Verde, the cafe inside The Dutch Miami, MSG…) I keep them in one of these journals that I carry around with me.
Once I got over the insta-vertigo from this list, it struck me just how interesting looking it was – with the random acts of color in certain spots – and how graphic. Was this really a hapless creation? Or perhaps it is the perfect picture of that frenzied life we all lead (and by lead, I think I really mean ‘chase after beet-faced and breathless.’) Everyone’s to do list looks different, but maybe this is how everyone’s to do list feels. read more…
12.05.11 |
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in kitchen, paths + processes, people, working |
Tara Mann
We found this great looking d-i-y mousepad on our friend Tara Mann’s Tumblr. We love Tara’s description of her eureka moment:
My friend Phillip recently had cork flooring put in his kitchen, and as I was shoving a cheese covered baguette down my throat, staring at the floor, I thought about how nice that material would look as a mousepad.
So I asked Phil if he had any extra cork, and he had quite a bit laying dormant in a closet. Anyways, I measured and cut the cork in squares of various sizes. They look great on desks and work really well! read more…
06.27.11 |
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in cheap + great, copy this!, d-i-y, inside, solutions, working |
Allison Michael Orenstein
Marc Chagall‘s grand daughter Bella Meyer got a Doctorate in medieval art history from the Sorbonne and has held a variety of jobs – designing props for the theater, working as a puppeteer – before stumbling on her true calling: floral design. After friends asked her to design a blossom-laden chuppah for their wedding, Meyer, who had always drawn and painted, realized that flowers are her medium…”in their variety and richness, they’re natural art supplies.”
In 2003, she started Fleurs Bella as a floral design company; two years ago, it morphed into a bricks-and-morter shop near New York City’s Union Square. Heres an bit of her compelling story recently published on Tablet:
“Cut flowers,” she says, “have no other purpose aside from being given.” She always keeps a stash just outside the shop, with a sign that says “take one please.” About once a month, she ventures out onto the streets with what she calls “flower graffiti,” tucking small bouquets into alleyways or subway stations. Occasionally she’ll thrust her flowers at random strangers. Not everyone is thrilled. She recalls one man who yelled at her: “I don’t want to be happy!”
Flower graffiti! Such a wonderful idea: a guerilla florist. Downtown Express called her a “flower vigilante” for her unique strategy: read more…
06.07.11 |
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in art, materials, paths + processes, people, services, sightings, working |
Maria Robledo
The other day we got an email from our friend A.S.C. Rower, President of the Calder Foundation (we know him as Sandy). It’s subject line read: “More Noise Please!” The title of a poem by the late Steven J. Bernstein, a mutual friend, was the go-ahead for ‘the improvised life’ to feature posts about Rower’s grandfather, Alexander Calder, an idea that’s been in the works for a while. Calder, one of the 20th century’s greatest artists, known for his monumental and kinetic sculptures and mobiles, was possibly one of the world’s most inspired and relentless improvisers. When Sandy heard of ‘the improvised life’s mission, he thought it would be a fine fit.
We thought we’d start our ongoing Calder theme by featuring some pictures of the Calder Foundation space, excerpted from the current World of Interiors. They were made by another close friend and frequent contributor, Maria Robledo (who photographed all of Sally’s books, including The Improvisational Cook). The space, in New York’s Chelsea, houses a vast archive of Calder’s life and work including the ongoing catalogue raisonné, and supports the Foundation’s mission to deepen understanding of Calder’s work and scholarly work; it is not yet open to the public. (Note: The images published here are scans of the magazine and hence don’t have the luminosity of Robledo’s originals.)
We got A LOT of inspiration from the article and our recent visit to the foundation which affirmed our central operating principle: that an improvisational environment begets an improvisational mindset… read more…
05.03.11 |
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in art, cool spaces, elements, family + friends, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, people, walls + windows, working |
Robert Blinn of Core 77 posted an extensive and very interesting review of Living with Complexity
by Donald Norman. He describes looking at a picture of Al Gore’s messy office, and issuing big judgements about a man who campaigns against our messing up of the environment, while not keeping his own space together. Messy spaces are widely considered the sign of a disorganized and un-together person. Not for Norman:
In Norman’s view, Gore’s desk is the cluttered extension of an organized mind. Indeed, Norman interviewed many seemingly organized owners of messy workspaces and heard them repeatedly request, “Please don’t clean my desk.” The apparent disorder of the office was being carefully tracked in their minds. Norman explains that all of our desire for “simplicity” is a false hope because life is complex. Complexity, however, does not need to be confusing.
We find complexity amazingly interesting AND confusing; since starting ‘the improvised life’, we’ve have had to totally GET with our messy workspace, and it’s vast piles of ideas that we’ve found and can’t keep up with filing. We’re kind of obsessed with “messy” spaces of creative people, who clearly have their own unique mental filing systems. We find that so many people think they are somehow flawed for having an in-flux workspace, we love to post examples to antidote the notion. Here’s another favorite. read more…
02.28.11 |
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in inside, inspiration books + zines, paths + processes, rules for living, why not?, working |
Tara Mann alerted us to Mashable’s slide show of unusual offices. We especially like this impromtu cardboard office designed by Paul Coudamy, who cleverly used corrugated cardboard as walls and shelves (more photos follow). Of course we instantly started hunting down that really thick cardboard that’s so perfect for making furniture like this chaise… read more…
11.03.10 |
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in cheap + great, cool spaces, copy this!, furniture, inside, materials, resources, resources blogs + sites, walls + windows, working |
Sally Schneider
Blogging is hard on us – not psychically – we love researching and discovery and sharing – but physically: our backs suffer from hours of sitting and we’re getting a little plump (many days, we’re hard-pressed to tear ourselves away to work out; before we know it, the day is GONE). Plus, we’ve been reading about how bad sitting for long periods is. Yeah, we know about getting up to stretch every hour, and doing tai chi, and …all the helpful things that we’re trying to get disciplined enough to do…
What we really wish is that there was a way to work while we work out: actually write and edit photos for our posts, not just read or listen to music. We decided to try out our fantasy of rigging a treadmill with a laptop, to make a treadmill desk. The idea is you walk slowly as you work, and over time, you cover a lot of ground, burn calories and moving your body really helps it. Why not? we thought.
We took a plywood board to the gym, placed it across the rails of a treadmill and set our laptop on it. Then we started walking, really slowly at first, while we got acclimated enough to actually open a document and write. It was pretty relaxing, felt good to be moving and standing rather than sitting…though not something we the management of our gym would let us do on a regular basis. But IF you had your own treadmill in your space, it would be a viable alternative…
We’ve discovered that other people have had the same idea. read more…
10.26.10 |
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in copy this!, inside, resources, solutions, tools, why not?, working |
Ever since we blogged a whiteboard-painted wall for tracking ideas and next steps, we’ve been coming across examples of graphed ideas. This is J.K. Rowlings plot spreadsheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It knocked us out for how utterly straightforward and unfussy it is; written in ball-point pen on lined notebook paper. And look what it became!
It reminded us how useful/essential it is to graph our ideas, and make visual representations of getting from one place to another – where we are to where we want to go – and the steps in-between, with room to shift it as things evolve and change.
The form is whatever works for you. We find that our paper maps get buried. With so many things going on, they really need to be on a wall for us to keep our goals in mind. We’re going to build that into our new office.
Design consultants IDEO famously use Post-It notes to track ideas in their brainstorming sessions. The notes can be moved around as the idea evolves. read more…
10.21.10 |
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in inside, paths + processes, tools, walls + windows, working |
Dirk Dobke/From Dieter Roth Estate via Hauser & Wirth Gallery
We originally planned to post this image of artist Dieter Roth’s studio with little comment just because we find it illuminating to see how creative people work, what their spaces look like. Then we stumbled on the story behind this image clipped from the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago, in a piece about an exhibition of Roth’s Work Tables & Tischmatten at Hauser & Wirth Gallery in Manhattan. Tischmatten are large gray sheets of cardboard that Roth used to cover his work surfaces. From the Times:
…”[they] soaked up the life of the studio, some of it deliberate (say, a drawing), some of it accidental (the ring left by a cup of coffee or a glass of water), until they were retired from duty and hung on the wall.”
The introduction to the show on Hauser & Wirth’s website reveals them to be more than diaries of Roth’s process:
“As a young concrete artist in the 1950s and 1960s, Roth produced what was then in fashion: organized, controlled works that others would like. ‘In my shame about my smears – which no one wanted to see and no one actually looked at – I started to make constructions,’ he later recalled. ‘Today I leave such crap the way it is. When I have the courage.’
…this body of work…poignantly describes the complex ways in which the artist’s ‘courage’ took form.” read more…
10.18.10 |
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in art, cool spaces, paths + processes, people, signs, working |
Rogier Jaarsma
When we pass cast-off wooded shipping pallets on the street, we find ourselves imagining ideas we’ve collected in our “pallets” file, and trying them out in our minds. We are especially inspired by the visionary open offices Dutch firm Most Architecture designed as a temporary space for the company Brandbase. The client asked that the space be furished with recyclable materials, so the designers thought of shipping pallets, configuring them in ways that invited people to sit, stand or lie on them.
In addition to some cool desks, Most designed a conference table…
…(that with its glass top, it would make a fine, odd dining table) read more…
10.03.10 |
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in cool spaces, furniture, hard, inside, materials, resources, working |
Andrea Zittel
While we were writing about Andrea Zittel the other night, we stumbled on a post from her blog called “Still Working on the Kitchen Table“.
The photo shows one of her half-done billboard paintings on the kitchen table, in a living space that is clearly in action, work and living woven together. Even though Zittel could try discipline herself to work in her studio – a shipping container fifty feet from the house – she doesn’t. She works where it feels best, and things happens organically…
“When I was twenty and studying art in undergrad, I house sat for my parents one summer and built my entire senior show in their kitchen. I remember the feeling or horror one day when cutting out a shape with the jigsaw and accidentally making a slice into the tabletop that my mother had hand stained when I was an infant. Three decades later and I’m still making most of my work in the kitchen…”
We wonder how many BIG THINGS in the world were figured out at the kitchen table?
(In the background, you can also see the cardboard shelving we were so taken with…stuff beginning to be stored in it.)
Related post: Andrea Zittel: Investigative Living
07.20.10 |
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in eating, furniture, inside, inspiration blogs + sites, kitchen, paths + processes, people, projects + play, working |
