If you’re somebody who has a lot of ideas, it can be pretty easy to get overwhelmed and/or distracted by all of the possibilities. It’s also worse when you’re an optimist and you believe it can all be done. I am definitely guilty of this. It is one of my weaknesses.
We all have a finite amount of time to work with and so saying no to the stuff that isn’t core is critical. I believe I am getting better at this, but every now and then I find myself having to do some pruning. And once I do that, boy does it feel great.
Seth Godin has a fantastic blog post on this topic that I love called, No is essential. Here it is in its entirety (it’s a short post):
“If you believe that you must keep your promises, overdeliver and treat every commitment as though it’s an opportunity for a transformation, the only way you can do this is to turn down most opportunities.
No I can’t meet with you, no I can’t sell it to you at this price, no I can’t do this job justice, no I can’t come to your party, no I can’t help you. I’m sorry, but no, I can’t. Not if I want to do the very things that people value my work for.
No is the foundation that we can build our yes on.”
To drive the point home even further, let’s shift gears and talk about wine. (For all of you fellow wine drinkers.)
In viticulture, overall yield – usually measured in hectoliters per hectare of vineyard – is often seen as an important indicator of quality. The idea being that low yields produce better wines because the flavors get concentrated over fewer grapes.
Part of what drives this is the leaf to fruit ratio. Too much fruit and not enough leaves, means the grapes won’t ripen properly.
The parallel to this conversation is that leaves are much like time. There’s only so much of it. And while many of us are constantly trying to maximum yield – I know I am – there are limits to the kind and quality of grapes we can produce when we do that.
I know this in principle. And more and more, I know this in practice. I am learning to say no.
Image from Flickr
On Tuesday night I attended a great industry event that Quadrangle Architects organized about mid-rise buildings.
Mid-rise buildings (somewhere around 4-12 storeys) are all the rage in Toronto these days. But there are many challenges associated with this building typology and this was an event to talk about them and hopefully push things forward.
One of the speakers at the event was Jeanhy Shim of Housing Lab Toronto. And I’d like to share one of her slides here:
Earlier this week I wrote a post about a new build home under construction at 37 Canerouth Drive in the west end of Toronto. As part of that post, I asked people what they thought the home would be valued at when it was completed. There were just under 10 responses (many thanks!) and I thought it was really fascinating to see the ranges.
A lot of you responded in the comment section of the post, but a bunch of the other estimates came in via Facebook, Twitter, and email. It isn’t a huge data set, but I’ve nonetheless consolidated the ones I could remember I received:
$2,375,000
$2,750,000
$1,800,000
$3,000,000
$8,500,000
$2,600,000
$3,500,000
$1,750,000
If you average these estimates, you come to a value of $3.3M. However, the clear outlier is the $8.5M. So let’s take that one out and see how the number changes. If you do that, you then get an average estimate of $2.5M. A pretty big swing.
Now, I don’t know offhand how accurate that number really is, but I’m fascinated by this idea of “the crowd” determining value. Particularly for markets such as housing where supply can be completely heterogeneous and there isn’t a lot of transaction volume to refer back to (compared to other types of markets).
Because my strong belief is that under the right circumstances and with enough data points, this number could end up being hugely accurate. And, it could also be more forward looking since it’s capturing current market sentiment as opposed to being based on historical transaction prices.
If you have any thoughts on this, I’d love to hear from you :)
It reads:
Value = (rational benefit x emotional benefit) / price
I believe she admitted to taking it from someone at Bruce Mau Design. But that’s okay. That’s how ideas build. What I really like about it is that it attaches a value to the things that are difficult and sometimes impossible to measure: the emotional stuff.
As I mentioned in this post over the weekend, we are all obsessed with the quantitative side of our businesses. In the case of development, we look at prices, per square foot prices, apartment sizes, and the list goes on. And we often reduce our “products” to these sorts of key metrics.
But if you’re competing just on numbers, then you’re missing a big and important part of the equation. People consume things – and housing is no different – for a number of different reasons. We buy things because of how it makes us feel, how it reinforces our sense of self, how it improves or promises to improve our lives, and so on. These are all harder to measure than square footage.
But we are living in a data driven world and more and more of this type of information will become available for city building. If you and your business can get your head around it first, you’ll have a huge advantage.
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