There are two important pieces of information that are floating around my head that are seemingly at odds with one another:
“Sooner or later, you will need to eat your vegetables”
and
“Eat your dessert first”
The first was a sentence told to me as I was giving notice to the principle of the firm where I was working at the time. I got along quite well in this firm, had a terrific relationship with senior management, and they were happy to have me working in the office. When I told them I was leaving, they weren’t mad but they weren’t happy either. I explained that I was bored and I needed to find other challenges. What I was told in response has stuck with me ever since and has proved to be a pivotal piece of advice throughout my career. I was told that the prevailing opinion around the office was that when I was interested in the task at hand, everybody wanted me on their team … but when I wasn’t interested in the task at hand, I didn’t bring much value to the process.
[ouch]
Nobody likes hearing something like that … I know I didn’t because it wasn’t how I saw myself. This sentence was followed by “Sooner or later, you will need to eat your vegetables.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand the message – I needed to change how I went about my business and bring the same level of dedication and focus to all the tasks I am assigned. It’s easy to dedicate yourself to the fun stuff but part of where your character is defined is how you deal with the stuff you don’t want to do. If people can tell the difference, it’s a problem – for you AND for them.
As the father of an almost 10-year-old child – my only child – there are parenting skills that I am discovering almost daily. I know that most children would much rather eat sugary stuff, hot dogs, and chicken nuggets … but as grown-ups, we know that this is not the sort of food that we want our children to be eating.
Your body is a temple …
You are what you eat …
Years ago, when trying to teach myself how to get my own daughter to see the value in eating healthy foods, I read an article on the eating habits of healthy people. To summarize, the article mentioned that using desserts or sugary stuff as an incentive to get our children to eat their vegetables is a very bad thing to do. It teaches children that desserts are a reward and that healthy food is something to push through and eat just so you can get to the good stuff. The article went on to say that people who tended to eat the food they liked first generally had more balanced diets and as a result, were less likely to overeat or develop eating disorders down the road.
So which is it? Eat your vegetables or your dessert first?
These analogies can be easily applied to all sorts of life experiences and in my case, I think they are very well suited to the practice of architecture – they’ve both played a substantial role in my own personal development. There’s the things you have to do (vegetables) and then there’s the things you want to do (dessert). For me, the vegetables were the technical aspects of the practice; the project management, client development, building envelop detailing, etc. These aren’t generally considered fun to the architectural graduate right out of school (or even 4 years out of school for that matter). We all want to eat the “dessert” – nothing but design all the time. Let the boring non-creative people deal with the practical aspects of the business, they aren’t creative and we all have a role to play here …
Right? Uhm … no.
Something interesting has happened as I developed my skill set and actually learned more about being an architect and the practice of architecture. I no longer see design as the best part of being an architect, just one aspect of what I do. The distinction between the vegetables and the dessert has all but disappeared for me and I now realize that you can’t be that good of a designer if you don’t know how to build it, and you’ll never get the chance to build it if you don’t run the office in a manner that works on developing clients and maintains, educates, and motivates their staff.
There is no difference between dessert or the vegetables and the sooner you realize it – regardless of what you do for a living – the better off you’ll be.
Bon Appétit,
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Hello Bob, I’ve been reading your blog for a long time and as an aspiring architect you’ve helped solidify my resolve and motivated me to push on with my life-long dream of becoming one. This is one of those posts that I think is simply amazing that keeps me coming back.
Keep on with the great work!
Bob, fantastic post, thanks!
The funny thing is, the older you get, the more you find vegetables tasty. Bit like beer, in a way. Maybe a bad analogy.
Cheers,
gt
As an intern architect who spends his nights and weekends helping his wife on the organic veggie farm I know a thing or two about carrots, but I didn’t know they connected so intimately with my experience in the office! Especially since a good carrot, like a good technical detail should be sweet enough to actually BE dessert. Although only one of them needs a good hard frost to really make it sweet…
Principal. Although it could have been the principal’s principle that was shared. A good lesson regardless and a wonderful post. [Just a QA/QC/spec writer nit-pick.]
I thought it was interesting that the principle of the firm shared that bit of information with you. Good for them.
I’m a bit confused and thus i’m in search for the vegetable company so to speak. Since the education i got, i’m more focused on technical and planning side of all this industry, not so much on the creative. Being here in Shanghai, i’m thrown into creative side, which is fine but i really lack my vegetables now. So it’s a bit of a chaos, so looking for a company that can hopefully do both is a goal of mine.
Being a vegetarian, this post a-peels to me…even as a graduate graphic designer, my work tended to concentrate on detail vs design…when I started drafting, I needed to know the detail of what I was drawing before I could wrap my head around it (wall sizes, etc)…starting points. As I’ve gained experience, I find myself thinking more design vs detail…we’ve grown…great analogies and lessons in your piece!
[rim shot]
Thanks John, my experience was quite similar in that I needed to know much more detail to solve a problem than I do know. These days, I’m able to mentally skip a bunch of steps that I would have to work through as a young person because technically I know how to fill in the gaps.
Great post.
It reminds me of how as I learned math and programming I’d want to gravitate towards doing the fun stuff and wanting to skip over the details of making a program robust or filling in the steps for a proof. Eventually this caught up with me and I realized I can’t do the fun stuff without having the skills to do the other work.
What I didn’t expect was that when I could do all the in between steps that it actually made me more skilled in doing the fun stuff fluently and I had a much better experience than I could have because of it.
yes … it always seems to work that way doesn’t it? Too bad looking forward never looks the same as looking back.
Excellent post, but you left all of us new parents hanging… how did you get your daughter to eat her vegetables??
work in progress …
Best getting-kids-to-eat tips I ever heard come from my Irish great-grandmother: 1/When introducing solid foods to babies, always start with veggies. Give fruits only AFTER all veggies have been tried. 2/If introducing a new veggie to older children, treat it AS a dessert and serve it at the end of the meal [being sure to do a big yummy number on the new item]. 3/Serve roasted veggies as opposed to boiled, steamed etc. Most kids will eat most types of roasted veggies. Roasting brings out a whole new dimension to food. 4/Never give corn or cabbage to children under 12 [their digestive systems are too immature to “process” it]..
After graduation I found myself working on Miami-Dade County school renovations for what seemed like endless months. I asked to be shifted to design, and was told a story about the firm’s manager toiling for years on a psychiatric hospital before getting the chance to flex his design skills which led to many great commissions. Well, I left anyway, joined a high-profile design firm and had many “desserts” while learning the “vegetables” along the way. I sometimes wondered what would have happened had I stuck it out there, but the path I ended up taking has led me places I never thought I’d be upon graduation.
Sounds like a good fit. I had a job early on that was nothing but design and after a year I left. People thought I was crazy to do it but every day I designed things only to have them handed off to other people to detail and make sure they could be built – I hated it. I realized I was never going to be a good architect if I didn’t learn how things got built. I still have a long way to go but at least now, I know what questions to ask and which problems to solve.
Very well said, except, now I’m hungry. Hmmmm what to snack on…hmmm?
how about a code book sandwich? They are completely unsatisfying but extremely filling. (have some pep to handy…)
I didn’t notice [or appreciate it] when I was younger but I know now that I was incredibly fortunate to have had parents who drilled a “Get-It-Over-With” mentality into each of their 6 kids from the beginning. Deal with the unpleasant stuff first… and dessert will be all that much sweeter for it. To this day at work I usually do all the tasks I like the least first. Sometimes they take up less than an hour, sometimes most of the morning. But when I can’t [or don’t] do the “yucky stuff” first for some reason, I am NOT a happy camper. It still surprises me how much of a jump I get the minute I can cross the gruesome duties off that day’s list. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to say that I like or enjoy doing the tedious/boring/difficult stuff, but I can look at it and say “you make the sweet stuff” SO much more enjoyable.
That’s certainly one way to motivate yourself – I don’t typically get to prioritize my tasks in such a direct manner so making sure my attitude is in the right place is what I focus upon.
Perfect post – your insight put into succinct words how I feel about being an architect 16 years in. I’ve found the ‘vegetables’ actually do make you a stronger….and bring a level of professional satisfaction beyond the pretty picture. Thanks once again!
Thanks Stephanie – you aren’t that far behind me … we’re just getting started and to the really good part!
Hi Bob another great post! Thank you! You are right about technical aspects, but up to some degree. I have to do hardware schedule and it’s much worse than any vegetable.
Life is always about degrees. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of things I work on that drain my life force, but I make sure that my effort doesn’t reflect my interest level.
Bob – You have no idea how timely this article was for me to read this morning. Recent events in my personal life have put it into a complete turmoil today and although you were relating this to our jobs in architecture – it hit pretty close to home in my personal life too and has helped me breathe just a bit easier for the moment. Thank you for sharing your stories.
Thank you and your welcome! Hope you got through your day despite the turmoil 🙂
Veggie interesting post and all too relevant. My wife is the Veggie Nazi (she’ll never read this) in our family. We eat our vegetables…or else. As it relates to Architecture- I have met a lot of great designers but many fewer Architects for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
You’d better hope she won’t read this! I really don’t think you can be an architect without having some knowledge about construction – the two items can’t (mustn’t) be separated
Great insight Bob, and interesting analogy since I also happen to write a food blog 🙂 For those of us on the construction side of the street, it’s refreshing to hear!
Thanks Marcia – as it seems true with all things in life, attitude towards the task at hand plays a tremendous role. Sometimes it helps to know that it’s okay to eat your dessert first.
well I can honestly say I have never had a problem with vegetables. I have always like them and eat a lot of them. Fruit too.
now to your point on not putting equal effort to all tasks. Something I learned at a very early age in my career is that equal effort is not always the best approach. When I was given what I considered a cruddy task or assignment, I made sure that I attacked it with the upmost vigor, and did an exceedingly good job of it. I wanted to make sure that the task got off my plate as quickly as possible and did not come back to haunt me. The way I saw it was that that if I did an outstanding job of it, and made sure it was right, it did not come back. done and gone. I soon discovered that I was viewed as dependable and could be relied on to complete any type of assignment and discovered that I was getting better projects and more responsibility.
I ended up taking a “but this is what architects do” approach to my assignments. It might be a task I didn’t care for but I started thinking that if being an architect was what I wanted, these are the sorts of tasks I need to complete. And as you pointed out, as soon as I started doing them with the enthusiasm that I might approach a more interesting task, it wasn’t long before I got better assignments. Funny how that works.
Bob, I look forward to our lunch next week. some place with vegetables and pie might be in order. Need protein too though.