I started my undergraduate degree as a computer science and physics student. But despite my love of technology (and physics, incidentally), I quickly realized that I didn't want to end up as a software developer. I was interested in so many other things: art, design, business, real estate, entrepreneurship, cities, and so on. And at the time, I was struggling to remain focused on writing code.

So by the middle of my second year, I decided to drop every single one of my classes and construct my own program until I figured out what I truly wanted to major in. My course schedule ended up spanning everything from the urbanization of ancient cities to the philosophy of aesthetics. It was a pretty great program if you ask me. But others wondered what I was doing.

I did, however, already have leanings toward architecture. It felt like the perfect combination of art and science. And so while enrolled in my made up program, I started exploring the possibility of transferring schools and switching majors. Around this time I also started meeting with architects to try and learn more about the profession and see if this is something that I really wanted to pursue.

I'll never forget this one lunch. The architect I met with -- who will, of course, remain nameless -- told me very clearly: "You should do anything besides architecture. If you like drawing become an animator. If you like design, do graphic design. Just don't become an architect." Naturally, I came out of that lunch and decided to spend the next seven years getting two degrees in architecture.

And even though I never became a licensed architect, and almost certainly never will, I would do it all over again given the option. I loved the journey and it is this circuitous journey that led me to where I am today, which is in a highly fulfilling career in real estate. I create new things and those things have the opportunity to improve people's everyday lives. I'm grateful for that. But the path was anything but clear at the time.

I am telling all of you this story because I was reminded of it when I read this fantastic article by Charles Duhigg called, Wealthy, Successful and Miserable. It is the story of how Charles, a Harvard Business School graduate, discovered that -- despite obtaining boatloads of financial success -- many of his classmates actually ended up miserable after school.

Sure, we all need and deserve basic financial security. And when we don't have it, money can really buy a great deal of happiness. But there's lots of research out there, some of which I have written about before, that suggests that happiness quickly plateaus once our basic needs are met.

As soon as we're no longer worried about money, we actually crave other things from our paychecks. We want it to also be a source of purpose and meaning. To give one concrete example, the article cites a study about a set of enthusiastic and high performing janitors in a large hospital. What was ultimately found was that they saw their jobs not just as cleaning, but as a kind of healing for the patients. They had purpose.

But what I found most interesting about the article was the discovery that finding happiness in life and business might require, or be aided by, a bit of struggle along the way:

And many of them had something in common: They tended to be the also-rans of the class, the ones who failed to get the jobs they wanted when they graduated. They had been passed over by McKinsey & Company and Google, Goldman Sachs and Apple, the big venture-capital firms and prestigious investment houses. Instead, they were forced to scramble for work — and thus to grapple, earlier in their careers, with the trade-offs that life inevitably demands. These late bloomers seemed to have learned the lessons about workplace meaning preached by people like Barry Schwartz. It wasn’t that their workplaces were enlightened or (as far as I could tell) that H.B.S. had taught them anything special. Rather, they had learned from their own setbacks. And often they wound up richer, more powerful and more content than everyone else.

We are, of course, talking about the "also-rans" at Harvard Business School. They're no slouches struggling to find work. But I don't think that negates the point being made here. It can be easy to get caught up doing what we think we ought to be doing when in reality we should be finding meaning in something we hopefully love doing.

The journey of Architect This City has been an organic one. When I first started blogging regularly in September 2013, I had no plan in mind other than that I wanted to write about cities. I had just come off working full-time on my startup, Dirt, where I had gotten into the habit of writing and I enjoyed it immensely. So I wanted to continue.

Cities seemed like the perfect umbrella to capture all of my passions: architecture, design, planning, real estate, and even technology. And so I rebranded brandondonnelly.com—which I had already been using as a microblog—and slapped the title “Cities” on it. (That personal microblog has since become brandondonnelly.me.)

Then, after a few months of blogging, I was having drinks with a good friend of mine and telling her about my new daily discipline. She immediately asked me what it was called and, when I replied by saying that I didn’t really have a name for it, she insisted that I create one immediately. Since she’s one of the brightest people I know, I gave it some serious thought. A few days later, Architect This City was born.

I liked the idea of having a distinct brand, because then it meant it could grow beyond just a personal blog. It could become a real community of people passionate and committed to building better cities. And that ultimately became the goal as I got deeper and deeper into writing.

Since that time last year, I’ve had friends guest blog on ATC. It has gone on to become syndicated on Mobility Lab and Urban Times. And it has been featured by the Guardian in the UK has one of the big city blogs in the world. But even more exciting are the moments when somebody tells me, either face-to-face or through a quick message, that they’re really enjoying ATC and that they read it daily. That’s what keeps me going.

Lately though, I’ve been thinking about what’s next. What’s the purpose of ATC? What’s the why? I thought about writing a manifesto of sorts, but that just seemed unnecessarily onerous. So I sat down, primarily on the subway, with Evernote, and I wrote a purpose statement for ATC:

To promote the building of beautiful and environmentally sustainable cities that offer strong economic opportunities and a high quality of life.

That’s really what I believe cities should do. They should be enjoyable and beautiful places to live life and they should empower people to get richer. At the same time, we need to be aware that as more and more of the world’s 7 billion people move into cities, the need for environmentally sustainable solutions is only going to increase.

So those are the kinds of discussions I hope we can have on ATC. Regular scheduled programming will continue as usual, but hopefully now the why is clearer. If you have any feedback on the above statement, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.

I started my undergraduate degree as a computer science and physics student. But despite my love of technology (and physics, incidentally), I quickly realized that I didn't want to end up as a software developer. I was interested in so many other things: art, design, business, real estate, entrepreneurship, cities, and so on. And at the time, I was struggling to remain focused on writing code.

So by the middle of my second year, I decided to drop every single one of my classes and construct my own program until I figured out what I truly wanted to major in. My course schedule ended up spanning everything from the urbanization of ancient cities to the philosophy of aesthetics. It was a pretty great program if you ask me. But others wondered what I was doing.

I did, however, already have leanings toward architecture. It felt like the perfect combination of art and science. And so while enrolled in my made up program, I started exploring the possibility of transferring schools and switching majors. Around this time I also started meeting with architects to try and learn more about the profession and see if this is something that I really wanted to pursue.

I'll never forget this one lunch. The architect I met with -- who will, of course, remain nameless -- told me very clearly: "You should do anything besides architecture. If you like drawing become an animator. If you like design, do graphic design. Just don't become an architect." Naturally, I came out of that lunch and decided to spend the next seven years getting two degrees in architecture.

And even though I never became a licensed architect, and almost certainly never will, I would do it all over again given the option. I loved the journey and it is this circuitous journey that led me to where I am today, which is in a highly fulfilling career in real estate. I create new things and those things have the opportunity to improve people's everyday lives. I'm grateful for that. But the path was anything but clear at the time.

I am telling all of you this story because I was reminded of it when I read this fantastic article by Charles Duhigg called, Wealthy, Successful and Miserable. It is the story of how Charles, a Harvard Business School graduate, discovered that -- despite obtaining boatloads of financial success -- many of his classmates actually ended up miserable after school.

Sure, we all need and deserve basic financial security. And when we don't have it, money can really buy a great deal of happiness. But there's lots of research out there, some of which I have written about before, that suggests that happiness quickly plateaus once our basic needs are met.

As soon as we're no longer worried about money, we actually crave other things from our paychecks. We want it to also be a source of purpose and meaning. To give one concrete example, the article cites a study about a set of enthusiastic and high performing janitors in a large hospital. What was ultimately found was that they saw their jobs not just as cleaning, but as a kind of healing for the patients. They had purpose.

But what I found most interesting about the article was the discovery that finding happiness in life and business might require, or be aided by, a bit of struggle along the way:

And many of them had something in common: They tended to be the also-rans of the class, the ones who failed to get the jobs they wanted when they graduated. They had been passed over by McKinsey & Company and Google, Goldman Sachs and Apple, the big venture-capital firms and prestigious investment houses. Instead, they were forced to scramble for work — and thus to grapple, earlier in their careers, with the trade-offs that life inevitably demands. These late bloomers seemed to have learned the lessons about workplace meaning preached by people like Barry Schwartz. It wasn’t that their workplaces were enlightened or (as far as I could tell) that H.B.S. had taught them anything special. Rather, they had learned from their own setbacks. And often they wound up richer, more powerful and more content than everyone else.

We are, of course, talking about the "also-rans" at Harvard Business School. They're no slouches struggling to find work. But I don't think that negates the point being made here. It can be easy to get caught up doing what we think we ought to be doing when in reality we should be finding meaning in something we hopefully love doing.

The journey of Architect This City has been an organic one. When I first started blogging regularly in September 2013, I had no plan in mind other than that I wanted to write about cities. I had just come off working full-time on my startup, Dirt, where I had gotten into the habit of writing and I enjoyed it immensely. So I wanted to continue.

Cities seemed like the perfect umbrella to capture all of my passions: architecture, design, planning, real estate, and even technology. And so I rebranded brandondonnelly.com—which I had already been using as a microblog—and slapped the title “Cities” on it. (That personal microblog has since become brandondonnelly.me.)

Then, after a few months of blogging, I was having drinks with a good friend of mine and telling her about my new daily discipline. She immediately asked me what it was called and, when I replied by saying that I didn’t really have a name for it, she insisted that I create one immediately. Since she’s one of the brightest people I know, I gave it some serious thought. A few days later, Architect This City was born.

I liked the idea of having a distinct brand, because then it meant it could grow beyond just a personal blog. It could become a real community of people passionate and committed to building better cities. And that ultimately became the goal as I got deeper and deeper into writing.

Since that time last year, I’ve had friends guest blog on ATC. It has gone on to become syndicated on Mobility Lab and Urban Times. And it has been featured by the Guardian in the UK has one of the big city blogs in the world. But even more exciting are the moments when somebody tells me, either face-to-face or through a quick message, that they’re really enjoying ATC and that they read it daily. That’s what keeps me going.

Lately though, I’ve been thinking about what’s next. What’s the purpose of ATC? What’s the why? I thought about writing a manifesto of sorts, but that just seemed unnecessarily onerous. So I sat down, primarily on the subway, with Evernote, and I wrote a purpose statement for ATC:

To promote the building of beautiful and environmentally sustainable cities that offer strong economic opportunities and a high quality of life.

That’s really what I believe cities should do. They should be enjoyable and beautiful places to live life and they should empower people to get richer. At the same time, we need to be aware that as more and more of the world’s 7 billion people move into cities, the need for environmentally sustainable solutions is only going to increase.

So those are the kinds of discussions I hope we can have on ATC. Regular scheduled programming will continue as usual, but hopefully now the why is clearer. If you have any feedback on the above statement, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.