I work very intensely. When I was in grad school I thought I was working super hard. When I was not working on my research, I was either running, painting or doing taekwondo. And I always had this feeling of guilt that I wasn’t working on my research.
Then I started Iridescent and working hard took on a whole different meaning. 14-hour days, 7-day weeks, 12 months a year. There is no distinction between “work” or “play”anymore, because I love it all! In grad school, I was a big advocate of “balance” and having hobbies, but it was because I didn’t know what it was like to work at something that fulfills ALL your interests. Now I live and breathe for my nonprofit. I constantly think about how to improve Iridescent, grow, expand, try new things, make it powerful. I even dream about it at night and sometimes get cool crazy ideas that I try when I wake up! I process everything I read or hear with the lens of “how can I use this information to improve Iridescent”. For example, I was reading Obama’s “Dreams from my father” and was impressed by his account of working with churches. I have been thinking about working with churches for a while, but maybe now is the time. It can be part of our cool Urban School Needs project (more on that later) through which we can quickly map and find nearby churches to our target schools.
I don’t know of any other job that incorporates analytical thinking, learning about the coolest research in science and technology, being artistic and creative, managing people, teams, being an entrepreneur, making an immediate impact and LEARNING new things constantly.
I am amazed at how much you can learn from books -if you can test it fast enough to cement the learning. In November I started teaching myself about advertising and writing copy.
Now I can only think in copy – intriguing, short sentences that educate and interest 🙂
This month I am learning all about social media marketing. Next month I think I am going to learn about information visualization, maybe get ideas from Density Design Lab’s works .
Life is awesome!