Seasonal Changes
Finding space and time to sloooooow down
It’s that time of year. The change of weather, the colds the kids bring back from school…The Bay Area doesn’t have as extreme seasonal changes as other places — the temperature is almost always 60 to 75 degrees, and you almost always get one last unseasonably warm heat wave in October or November — but the seasons show up in different ways.
We moved our outdoor sofa cushions in for the season, as we enter the rainy season. In-progress jigsaw puzzles, which we have absolutely no interest in making the other 3/4 of the year, have a permanent spot in the living room.
The dutch oven, which has spent the last few months looking pretty on our stovetop, is pleased to be more than an aesthetic kitchen accessory, and the smell of the beef bourguignon that Naveed is making fills the house.
The very large gingko tree in the backyard starts to drop its stinky berries, kicking off a multi-week campaign of clearing odiferous fruit and trying to see if any elderly Asians in Berkeley (seemingly the only people who have the interest, motivation, time, and know-how to process the gingko fruit) want to come by and pick up 20 pounds of gingko berries before we throw them in the city’s compost bin.
Soon, all the berries will have fallen, and all the gingko leaves will turn a vibrant and uniform yellow, a beautiful sight that almost makes this whole stinky berry situation worthwhile.
In the midst of these seasonal changes, I need to constantly remind myself that this time of year is the time to slow down. I want to feel spacious and spend hours making stew, and I want to write my biweekly post, to get to the craft projects I’ve put off, to draft something I promised my friend.
Maybe this is just the transition period, like those first few days of vacation where you want to slow down but your mind and body are still holding onto a different pace of doing things. When you finally have the space to slow down, but because that space is so rare, the pressure to use it effectively makes it not feel so spacious after all.
I’ve also started to notice how infrequently I have truly spacious time, time where I don’t have to wrap up some activity to move onto the next one. Work days are structured with meetings, and at the end of the day, school pickups. Weekends often involve social plans with set meetup times. Even fun activities, like the Glowfari lantern festival at the zoo we bought tickets for, has a timed entry.
No wonder so many people, especially parents, stay up late. For many, it could be their only consistent period with no set end time.
November and December holidays and breaks come with a lot of disruptions to our regular routines, and it’s easy to relish the break from work but then pack that space full of other obligations.
Next week is Thanksgiving, a week that includes my own birthday and Jackson’s, Thanksgiving itself, and now our wedding anniversary. I took the week off from work, and the kids will be home all week from school as well. With all that in mind, I’ll also be thinking about how I can make some spacious, uncapped time to work on a puzzle, read a good book, hang out with a friend, or make something delicious. I hope you find time to do the same.
My writing, on Every!
I’m also really excited to share that my first post with Every went live earlier this week. I worked with Every’s editor-in-chief Kate Lee at Medium, where she led content, years ago. I’ve been impressed with the consistent quality and curation of posts published by Every and am honored to include one of my own in the mix!
In the post, I write about how by reducing the unnecessary chaos in startups, you actually have more bandwidth and motivation to tackle necessary chaos that all startups face.
Here’s a preview:
Startups are inherently chaotic. There are a lot of unknowns, and teams need to navigate uncertainty as startups grow. New data might require you to re-order your roadmap, or you may fail several times as you experiment to find product-market fit. Sometimes, you’ll need to pivot your product to respond to a change in the market. In more extreme cases, you’ll need to pivot your entire company strategy.
Some of this chaos is good. It leaves room for creativity, gives team members more agency, and keeps your organization flexible. I call this necessary chaos.
What doesn’t work is unnecessary chaos, borne by a lack of planning. Unnecessary chaos eats into any bandwidth for necessary chaos, which is the lifeblood of startups.
To be clear, no startup is completely without unnecessary chaos, and the gray area between unnecessary and necessary chaos is wide. However, in my experience as a vice president of engineering at several early-stage startups, I know firsthand the importance of not giving in completely to unnecessary chaos.
In this piece, I lay out methods for startups to identify unnecessary chaos, learn how to manage and reduce it, and make room to take on necessary chaos.
I’m feeling more and more interest to explore how my writing will evolve this next year. That might look like increased Tech and Tea posts (and a more distinct paid/free strategy), different types of posts, narrowing in on specific topics, or writing more elsewhere (like Every).
If there are topics I touch on that you’d particularly love for me to write more about, I’d love to know! Leave a comment or send me an email (jean@jeanhsu.com).
Love the article on chaos! (And the URL, because it has no punctuation, gives the title a totally different, but delightful, parse: - "Does your startup feel chaotic good?")