The fundamental unit of urban life

Hey everyone,

I've been a subscriber on ​Robin Sloan's email list​ for a while. He's the author of '​Moonbound​,' '​Sourdough​,' and '​Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore​.' I noticed in his last email he had a ​nice little ode​ about the value of local restaurants—and local small business, in general.

As Robin writes:

It is physical establishments—storefronts and markets, cafes and restaurants—that makes cities worth inhabiting. Even the places you don't frequent provide tremendous value to you, because they draw other people out, populating the sidewalks. They generate urban life in its fundamental unit, which is: the bustle.

I love that! Jane Jacobs, author of '​The Death and Life of Great American Cities​,' said, "By its nature, the metropolis provides what otherwise could be given only by traveling; namely, the strange." I love strange. I fear the WALL-E-like days with drone-delivered Amazon packages dropping over everybody's tall hedges and gated drives while Main Street is all boarded up.

The whole piece reminds me of a word Roger Martin taught us—or taught me, at least!—back in ​Chapter 68​ of 3 Books which is "​multi-homing​." Simply remembering that, as consumers, we have the power to resist the "single home" desires of most companies—just use Uber for rides! just use Meta for social! just use Netflix for TV!—and spread our dollars around.

I think of this when I see neighborhood hardware stores go under while we all Amazon packs of nails to ourselves instead of walking down the street.

I'm trying to keep focusing on small business—buying local, supporting my neighbors—and this essay was a nice reminder. I hope you enjoy it. To check out more of Robin's work, including his new book '​Moonbound​,' visit ​his website here​ or sign up for ​his email list here​.

Have a great week everyone,

Neil

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Public Service: Good To Eat

Written by Robin Sloan

I’m an ardent booster of my little neighborhood, roughly where Oakland, Berkeley, and Emeryville mash together, up against the railroad tracks, an old meatpacking district now residential (small single-family, sprawling condo) and industrial (the country’s ​tastiest jam​, sophisticated ​cardboard box manufacturing machines​) and intellectual (mostly biotech, including a ​mycelium leather lab​).

Berkeley Bowl West, arguably the best grocery store in the country, sits along a bucolic greenway.

There are also restaurants, of course, and one in particular has transformed and enlivened the entire neighborhood. Called ​Good to Eat​, it is the brick-and-mortar realization of a pop-up that for many years offered Taiwanese dumplings at a local brewery. The restaurant is approaching its second anniversary; it has become my favorite in the entire Bay Area.

Good to Eat is the vision of Tony Tung and Angie Lin. Chef Tony is the kitchen mastermind, honoring and renewing classic Taiwanese cuisine. Angie is, among many other things, the restaurant’s voice ​on Instagram​, a fountain of energy and invitation. (Her record, in Instagram Stories, of a recent research trip to Taiwan was basically a mini-documentary.)

A sign of great people is that they attract great people, and Good to Eat’s whole team sparkles. It feels most nights like there must be a camera crew perched just out of sight, filming a segment for some children’s TV show, intended to model “careful work” and “cheerful collaboration” for impressionable young minds.

And there is a surprise here. The casual, friendly service and reasonable (for the Bay Area) prices don’t quite prepare you for the food, which exhibits a level of precision and creativity that approaches fine dining. It’s delightful to realize: all those years with the pop-up, slinging dumplings, THIS is what Chef Tony wanted to do. She had a secret plan!

​Just look at this menu​.

(If I was ordering today, right now, I’d get the eggplant noodle, the golden kimchi — my favorite kimchi I’ve had anywhere — the bok choy, and, yes, the fu-ru fried chicken. But this would imply NOT getting the red-braised pork belly with daikon radish … hmm … )

All together, it is a perfect package: food, space, esprit de corps. Of course, it helps that Kathryn and I have known these folks since their pop-up days, and are always greeted warmly … but visit twice, and you’ll be greeted warmly, too.

Good to Eat offers the tangible argument: enthusiasm and care are not in short supply. They don’t need to be hoarded. They ought to burn bright, spill out onto the sidewalk.

Here’s something important to understand. It is, at this time, approximately impossible to open and operate a restaurant in the Bay Area. The exorbitant cost of every input yields eye-popping menu prices; those prices keep customers away; the whole commercial equation becomes tenuous. There has been a wave of closures, as longstanding favorites throw in the towel.

It’s not just restaurants. Every kind of physical establishment feels, presently, improbable. It’s so much easier to … do something else. Anything else! Yet, it is physical establishments — storefronts and markets, cafes and restaurants — that make cities (like the donut megalopolis of the Bay Area) worth inhabiting. Even the places you don’t frequent provide tremendous value to you, because they draw other people out, populating the sidewalks. They generate urban life in its fundamental unit, which is: the bustle.

In taking on this task — setting out their sandwich board (you know I love a sandwich board) and opening their doors to everyone — people like Tony and Angie provide a profound public service.

It shouldn’t be so difficult! And this is not just a post-pandemic thing. The Bay Area has, for decades, been a daunting place to open your doors. Many of America’s urban hubs share this overheated deformity. It’s breathtaking to visit a country like Japan and find the most tenuous businesses (with the scantest hours) puttering along happily … simply because the rent is so low.

The shortage of useful, flexible space imposes costs — opportunity costs, if you remember econ 101 — borne by all of us, not just the Tonys and Angies of the world. Maybe that’s fair payment for the other gifts these places provide … but I’m skeptical. We don’t know, will never know, what we’re missing, except that it’s a lot.

Anyway, this is all to say: these days, it’s a minor miracle when a great new restaurant opens and stays open, so if you’re in the Bay Area, you should make haste to 65th Street in Emeryville. The patio is lovely, but/and Kathryn and I always sit at the bar. Get the kimchi. Yeah … get the fried chicken, too.

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P.S. Shoutout to Michael Werner who responded to this post by sharing a delightful Kurt Vonnegut story from a PBS interview with journalist David Brancaccio about telling his wife he's going out to buy an envelope:

Oh, she says, well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?

And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.

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You know what else makes cities great? Bookstores! And you should spend more time visiting them.

But not every neighborhood has great access to books. Listen to my interview with Latanya and Jerry of Bronx Bound Books to learn how they’re using a bus to bring books to the Bronx.

Sign Up for a Dose of Inspiration:

Every other week, I send an email out with an article I’ve written, or one of my favorite speeches, essays, or poems. No ads, no sponsors, no spam, and nothing for sale. Just a dose of inspiration or beauty!

The 3 S’s of Success

“How can I be successful?”

It’s a question many of us ask ourselves and have trouble answering. Because what is success, anyway? Is it writing a book and selling a million copies? Is it winning awards and gaining respect from your peers? Or is just feeling satisfied with your work?

We’re often told that success is in the eye of the beholder — that we need to define it for ourselves, on terms that are meaningful to us.

I believe that’s true but that advice doesn’t tell us how to do it. Try as we might, many of our achievements wind up fitting a mold that suits somebody else — employers, parents, societal expectations — at least as much as, if not more than, it suits us personally. And we still find ourselves left unsatisfied or unhappy, wishing we had something more or something else, no matter how ‘successful’ we’ve been.

I think one of the reasons why is because there roughly are three types of success. I call them the 3 S’s. The trick is to first decide that you can’t have all three of them at once and that you therefore must figure out which one you’re really aiming at.

Here’s how I draw the 3 S’s of success on a triangle:

1. Sales success is about getting people to buy something you’ve created. Your book is a commercial hit! Everybody’s reading it, everybody’s talking about it, you’re on TV. You sell hundreds and then thousands and then millions of copies. Dump trucks beep while backing into your driveway before pouring out endless shiny coins as royalty payments. Sales success is about money. How much did you sell?

2. Social success means you’re widely recognized among your peers and people you respect. Critical success. Industry renown! To extend the book example, let’s say the New York Times reviews your latest novel and some writers you respect send you letters saying they thought the book was great (whether or not it’s a commercial hit).

3. Self success is in your head. It’s invisible. Only you know if you have it, because it corresponds to internal measures you’ve established on your own. Self success means you’ve achieved what you wanted to achieve. For yourself. You’re proud and satisfied with your work.

These three categories are broad and approximate but I think that’s why they’re useful: Chances are good that any major achievement you reach will fall more clearly into one than another. They apply to pretty much all industries, professions, and aspects of life.

The point is that success is not one-dimensional.

In order to be truly happy with your successes, you first need to decide what kind of success you want.

Are you in marketing? Sales success means your product flew off the shelves and your numbers blew away forecasts. Social success means you were written up in prestigious magazines, nominated for an award, or shouted out by the CEO at the all-hands meeting. Self success? That’s the same: How do you feel about your accomplishments?

Are you a teacher? Sales success means you’re offered promotions based on your work in the classroom because the bosses want to magnify and implement your work more widely. You’re asked to become a Vice Principal or Principal. Social success means educators invite you to present at conferences, mentor new teachers, and the superintendent recognizes you for your work. Self success? Again: How do you feel about your accomplishments?

There is a catch, though.

I believe it’s impossible to experience all three successes at once.

Picture the triangle above like one of those wobbly exercise planks at an old-school gym. If you push down on two sides, the third side lifts into the air. In our lives and work, it’s rare that any given thing we do — any single success we achieve, no matter how great — can satisfy ourselves and others in equal measure. Aspiring to that, if you ask me, is a mistake.

Sales success, for instance, can block self success. That’s what happened to me as a writer when I got hooked on bestseller lists, blog stats, and brand extensions. Personal goals took a backseat to more tangible commercial ones. I started making things because I was asked to and not because I wanted to. Sure, the saying goes “make hay while the sun shines,” and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with chasing commercial success, but I’m pointing out that if that’s your north star it can distract or block you from chasing deeply personal goals.

Look at it the other way.

Personal goals don’t necessarily have a marketable strategy so no sales or social success may follow. I’m talking about making that triple-decker chocolate birthday cake you bake for your daughter, the incredible twelfth grade chemistry lesson you put your heart into for weeks, the backyard deck you built with your bare hands. You wouldn’t expect royalty payments or critical reviews from those endeavors. You’re not trying to sell cakes, lesson plans, or decks. You could! But that wasn’t your goal.

And, finally, let’s peek at this from a final view. Critical darlings often sell poorly. You see this almost every year at the Oscars. Spotlight wins Best Picture — tense, dramatic, wonderful acting. How much did it gross at the domestic box office? $45 million. That same year Furious 7 made $353 million.

Which would you have rather made?

There is Sales, Social, and Self success.

Spend time thinking about which one you want and then go.

Good luck!

Take More Pictures: The counterintuitive way to build resilience

When I was researching my book on resilience, I discovered something so obvious it blew me away.

I think I was around nine years old when my dad bought me the Complete Major League Baseball Statistics, a frayed paperback with a green cover. I treasured it and kept it in my room for years. I flipped through it so many times.

As I paged through the numbers, I started noticing something interesting. Cy Young had the most wins of all time in baseball (511). He also had the most losses (316). Nolan Ryan had the most strikeouts (5714), and the most walks (2795).

Why would the guy with the most wins also have the most losses?

Why would the guy with the most strikeouts also have the most walks?

It’s simple—they just played the most.

They tried the most and moved through loss the most.

When everything rests on the numbers

Sometimes, achieving something really is about quantity over quality not the other way around. I’ve asked wedding photographers how they manage to capture such perfect moments. They all say the same type of thing: “I just take way more pictures. I’ll take a thousand pictures over a three-hour wedding. That’s a picture every 10 seconds. Of course I’m going to have 50 good ones. I’m throwing 950 pictures away to find them!”

Sometimes, when I’m doing Q&A after a speech, someone asks me a question along the lines of  “So, congratulations on the success of The Book of Awesome. My question is: How do I get paid millions to write about farting in elevators?”

To me, this is like asking, “So you won the lottery. How do I win the lottery, too?”

I always answer the same way, with a reply I stole from Todd Hanson, former head writer at The Onion. He said that whenever someone asks him the question “So how do I get a job writing jokes for money like you did?” he gives a straightforward answer:

“Do it for free for 10 years.”

We cannot hack our way to success

Today, we’re surrounded by tales of companies with million-dollar valuations that grow at lightning-fast rates. We hear about tiny startups that Google acquires for billions of dollars, just a few months after launch. We want to read about the fastest way to get a six-pack or accelerate our careers. But ultimately, what we want to find—quick fixes, easy answers, shortcuts—isn’t there.

Some things take time. They take time. They just take time. It’s not about the number of hits but rather the number of times you step up to the plate. The most important questions to ask yourself are:
 

1. Am I gaining experience?

2. Will these experiences help?

3. Can I afford to stay on this path for a while?

Sometimes? No. Other times? Yes. And either way you’ll help yourself see that you are learning, doing, and moving—even if that means lots of failure on the way.

“I’m a big fan of poof”

Seth Godin, bestselling author of over 20 books, offered similar advice in an interview with Tim Ferriss: “The number of failures I’ve had dramatically exceeds most people’s, and I’m super proud of that. I’m more proud of the failures than the successes because it’s about this mantra of ‘Is this generous? Is this going to connect? Is this going to change people for the better? Is it worth trying?’ If it meets those criteria and I can cajole myself into doing it, then I ought to.”

And in and interview with Jonathan Fields on Good Life Project, he said, “I’m a big fan of poof.” What’s poof? The idea that you try and if it’s not working—poof. You go try something else.

I’m writing this article as part of my research, lessons, and ideas on resilience in You Are Awesome. That book came out over a year ago now. Is it a hit? Is it a flop? Honestly, it almost doesn’t matter. Because, either way, the only choice I have is to move on to the next thing.

Sure, I want it to succeed. But I can’t determine that. All I get to do is take more pictures. All I get to do is keep going with my next book, next talk, next project, next whatever, whether this one is a hit or goes poof.

You need to do the same.

Success stories are not stories of success  

We need to stop looking at successful people with the lens that their lives contain a success that led to a success that led to another success. Because you know what we’re really looking at? Not success, not really. Just people who are just really good at moving through failures.

Moving through failures, swimming through failure, recovering and going forward from failure? That’s the real success. Successful people get to where they’re going because they are willing to try something when the possibility of failure is high … they know and accept that and don’t shy away from it.

So when it comes to long-term success, remember it’s not how many home runs you hit. It’s how many at-bats you take. The wins will only pile up if you keep stepping up to the plate.

This is an edited excerpt from You Are Awesome: How To Navigate Chance, Wrestle with Failure, and Live and Intentional Life