Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Doing One's Best Work

Last week I visited my friend Red Burns who directs the NYU ITP. The ITP is a graduate program that is similar to the Media Lab's program, but different in that it leans more towards the artistic side of the equation. If you're looking for a uniquely creative graduate school experience in NY, then ITP fits your bill perfectly.

As usual, within the short span of a conversation with Red I heard something that mattered more than talking for ten hours with anyone else. She said, :

You can often see this effect in students here at the Media Lab. Because we have very few meetings and other structures to limit their creativity, they are free to be let alone and just do their work. The addition of constraints, artificial hurdles to clear, and so forth would make them focus on the perceived extraneous problems at hand -- versus the actual core mission of simply innovating.

Red's wisdom speaks for all types of organizations. The more BS and politics one needs to deal with, the less time they have to focus on their actual mission and meaning in life. One of the reasons I did my MBA was to have the ability to better manage much of the administrivia one acquires with age so that I could have more time to aim on the higher things ... versus just the here and now. Since the future is founded on the present, and the past of course, our ability to distribute levels of interest is critical to consider.

Perhaps a total blue-sky dreamer sits 100 FUTURE / 0 PRESENT / 0 PAST, whereas a completely pragmatic person might be 0 FUTURE / 100 PRESENT / 0 PAST, and an extremely conservative person may sit 0 FUTURE / 0 PRESENT / 100 PAST. If I were to reflect on my own leanings I would say I am a 50 FUTURE / 35 PRESENT / 15 PAST kind of person. I'm firmly grounded in the current tense, and reflective to a point that doesn't keep me too stuck in what happened before, yet I like to sit a majority portion of what I wish to achieve onto the question of what may come. Of course this fluctuates with the happenings of the day and rhythm of the year.

I think that Red's elegant compass for answering the question of "how to focus on your work" is really an important question in your own life, as well as the people that you manage. Red's wisdom has given me focus, so you could say that by just seeing Red, I'm doing better work already. Thank you Red Burns.