Life is all about making decisions. Two of the most critical decisions that you would have to make in your life would be “which career to choose?’ and “how to figure out your career?”
Below are seven steps to help you out with these questions in the most efficient way possible. Whether you are planning your career for the first time or changing your career, acting upon them would surely help.
Analyze Yourself
Every individual in this world is unique. Each one has his or her own set of skills, knowledge, interests, abilities and capabilities. This is the reason why some are good at mathematics, while others are good at languages. Some are good at geography, while others are good in history.
Determining your interests, skills and abilities can give you an idea of what career you should be looking into. Self-analysis can be done through a variety of ways. Self-assessment, self-evaluation tests, and counselling are some widely used methods.
List Down Prospective Occupations
After completing proper analysis of yourself and identifying your strengths, you should next consider what you are interested in doing for years to come. Use this information to narrow down your career choices. List down 5 to 10 jobs that best match with your capabilities, skills and interests.
Dig Further into Prospective Careers
After shortlisting your best job picks, get intel about each career path. Make sure that you get as much information as you can about educational or training requirements, job roles, employment outlook, earnings, and growth opportunities.
You can get this data through a professional in each of these fields or through online research. As much as possible, do the first. You might be able to find a number of your colleagues, friends, schoolmates or even relatives who are already working in these niches.
Apart from getting inside information, you’ll also be able to get a headstart in networking with professionals in the field.
Narrow Down Your List
Now it’s time to eliminate the jobs or career paths which you find don’t provide the best opportunities or which you’ve changed your mind about. Most people reject careers on the basis of educational requirement, potential earnings, and growth opportunities, since these things matter the most during your career.
Eliminate the ones you find unsuitable and narrow down your list even further to 1-2 options.
Nest, make short term and long term goals related to your field. Set S.M.A.R.T goals.
S.M.A.RT is an acronym for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. You cannot achieve your short term goals without hard work, dedication and commitment.
Once you have developed your career goals, start writing down an action plan. Include potential hurdles, steps to cope with them, and resources that can be used when help is required.
This career action plan should adequately address and anticipate all issues and scenarios that may arise and set you up for success.
Obtain training
This is the final and the most crucial step in how to figure out your career. This is the step that consumes majority of time, effort, and patience of most people.
Commit to obtaining the proper training to achieve your goal. The training you need depends entirely on the profession you’ve finally chosen.
You might be required to obtain a proper college degree, a short course, an internship, or vocational training. This would obviously require money and a whole lot of effort, so make sure that the profession you’ve chosen is something that you’d be happy to wake up for each morning.
From the architect. One storey high private house is located in Koidu village, Estonia in a private housing area. The geometry of the building is inspired by the plot and the movement of the sunlight. The building is a shape-shifter offering different views from every angle and changing its form to catch as much warm southern and western sunlight as possible.
The main building was erected on the western side of the plot while the grill house stands on the east side inside a small hill and acts as an echo of the main building. Between these two volumes an inner rectangular courtyard is created with golden ratio proportions. The landscape protects the yard from the traffic noise and offers privacy.
Spacious living room, with a height up to 6 meters, is located on the western side of the building and opens into both south and west. The living room is tightly connected with the terrace outside. The shape of the patio is also created to follow the sun and open to the south and west. The main part of the terrace is covered with the edge of the roof protecting it from the rain. The wide overhang protects the living room from the sharp and hot summer sun. In the winter when the sun is lower, the light passes under the eave to warm the building. There is a chance that a neighbouring house will block the western sunlight in the future. To maintain the access of the valuable evening light into the living room, a special sun window was created higher from the eyelevel.
Ground Floor
Main parts of the constructions are made out of stone and laminated wood. The facades are covered with painted larch wood. The natural tree sap in the wood protects the material and holds is appearance for decades without any artificial additives.
Product Description.The most important material in this project is wood, which is used in both structural design as well as on the façade. Wood is a renewable material and the production has a relatively small ecological footprint. Laminated wood used for the roof construction in this project is made out of local Estonian wood and produced by an Estonian company Arcwood.
The facades are covered with painted larch wood. The natural tree sap keeps the material weather proof and it can last for decades.
The more I talk to people about their struggles, the more I realize that we all have some sense of dissatisfaction with ourselves.
I have it, and I’d be willing to be everyone reading this does too. Consider some of the ways we’re dissatisfied with ourselves:
We constantly have a feeling that we should be better, doing more, more productive, more mindful, and so on.
We doubt ourselves when we have to speak in a group or in public, and feel that we’re not good enough to contribute.
We are unhappy with certain aspects of ourselves, like our bodies, the way our faces look, the way we procrastinate or get angry or lose patience as a partner or parent.
We think we need to improve.
This is a constant condition, and even if we get a compliment from someone, we find a way to undercut it in our minds because we think we’re not good enough for that compliment.
It affects our lives in so many ways: we might not be good at making friends, speaking in public or in a group, finding a partner, doing the work we’re passionate about, finding contentment with ourselves and our lives.
And we don’t like feeling this way, so we run. We find distraction, comfort in food or alcohol or drugs or shopping, lash out at other people when we’re feeling defensive about ourselves. It’s at the heart of nearly all of our problems.
So how do we deal with this underlying problem? The answer is profoundly simple, yet not easy.
Before I go into dealing with the problem, we should discuss something first — the idea that we need to be dissatisfied with ourselves to make life improvements.
Unhappiness with Self as a Motivator
I used to think, as many people do, that if we’re unhappy with ourselves, we’ll be driven to get better. And if we were all of a sudden content with ourselves, we’d stop doing anything.
I no longer believe this. I do think we’re often driven to make improvements because we’re dissatisfied with ourselves, and that’s not a bad thing. We have hope for something better.
But consider:
When we are unhappy with ourselves, it’s hard to be happy when we do something good. We’re still dissatisfied. So doing something good, then, isn’t the reward it could be.
We have habits of running from this bad feeling about ourselves, so procrastination and distraction become the default mode, and this gets in the way of our efforts. In fact, we’ll never solve the problems of distraction and procrastination until we can learn to deal with this problem of unhappiness with self.
Unhappiness with self can get in the way of connecting with others (because we think we’re not good enough, and so can feel anxiety about meeting others). We can’t solve this, no matter how much we want to improve, until we address the underlying issue.
Even when we make an improvement, the feeling of dissatisfaction with self doesn’t go away. So we try to improve some more, and it still doesn’t go away. In my experience, it never does, until you’re ready to face it head on.
During this awesome period of self improvement driven by dissatisfaction, we don’t love ourselves. Which is a sad thing.
So is it possible to get things done and make improvements without dissatisfaction with self? I’ve discovered that the answer is a definite “yes.”
You can exercise and eat healthy not because you dislike your body and want to make it better … but because you love yourself and want to inspire your family. You can do work out of love for the people it will help. You can declutter, get out of debt, read more, and meditate not because you’re dissatisfied with yourself … but because you love yourself and others.
In fact, I would argue that you’re more likely to do all of those things if you love yourself, and less likely if you dislike yourself.
Dealing with Dissatisfaction
What can we do about our continual dissatisfaction with ourselves? How do we deal with self-doubt, feeling like we’re not good enough, unhappiness with certain parts of ourselves?
It turns out that these feelings are perfect opportunities — to learn about ourselves and how to be friends with ourselves.
Here’s how:
Each time we have these feelings, we can pause and just notice.
Turn towards the feeling, seeing how it feels in your body. Be curious about how it feels, physically.
Instead of running from this feeling, stay with it. Instead of rejecting it, try opening up to it and accepting it.
Open yourself up to the pain of this feeling, and see it as a path to opening up your heart. In this way, getting in touch with the pain is a liberating act.
See this difficult feeling as a sign of a good heart, soft and tender and loving. You wouldn’t care about being a good person, or a “good enough” person, if you didn’t have a good heart. There is a basic goodness beneath all of our difficulties, and we just need to stay and notice this goodness.
Smile at yourself, and cultivate an unconditional friendliness to all that you see.
Now, I’m not claiming that this is an easy method, nor that it will cure our difficulties in one fell swoop. But it can start to form a trusting relationship with yourself, which can make an amazing difference.
I recommend that you practice this each time you notice self-criticism, self-doubt, unhappiness with yourself, harshness towards what you see in yourself. It only has to take a minute, as you face what you feel and stay with it, with unconditional friendliness.
If you really want to focus on this powerful change, reflect on it once a day by journaling at the end of the day, reviewing how you did and what you can do to remember to practice.
In the end, I think you’ll find that love is a more powerful motivator than unhappiness with yourself. And I hope you’ll find a friendship with yourself that will radiate out into your relationships with everyone else you know and meet.
Due to its ability to mold and create different shapes, concrete is one of architecture’s most popular materials. While one of its most common uses is as a humble foundation, its plasticity means that it is also used in almost all types of construction, from housing to museums, presenting a variety of details of work that deserves special attention.
Check out this collection of 40 projects that highlight the use of concrete. Impressive!
This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as “Q&A: Steven Holl.”
For twenty years, Maggie’s Centres have been providing cancer treatment to patients within thoughtful, beautiful spaces designed by renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry, and Zaha Hadid. Steven Holl‘s Maggie’s Center Barts, located adjacent to St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in central London, is slated to open at the end of this year. While the design has been somewhat controversial in the UK due to its contemporary nature, the cancer care facility incorporates innovative lighting, sustainable materials, and a compact structure in a way that is—according to the architect—entirely complementary to its historical neighbors. We spoke with the renowned architect to learn more about the project and what it has meant to him over the past four years.
Vanessa Quirk: What is your relationship to the city of London?
Steven Holl: I went to the Architecture Association in London, and lived there in 1976. Those were great days, when Zenghelis and Rem were running Unit 9. I was a critic there, in the graduate school. We discovered Zaha Hadid as a student. It was a wonderful year. There was amazing energy happening at the AA.
VQ: And that particular site, where the hospital is?
SH: I recall being there, and, of course, when we were given the commission, we did a lot of studies about that site. That square and the history of that place goes back hundreds and hundreds of years. It’s a very important area, in the heart of London.
VQ: Can you discuss the challenge of designing a vertical building that still maintains all the goals and aspirations of a successful healthcare building?
SH: Well, it had to be vertical, because of the constricted nature of the site, but that was an exciting challenge. It’s like a house, you know, and it has a sense of vertical space, a sense of movement up.
Looking at my first concept drawing from 12th of March, 2012, you see this idea of a thing within a thing within a thing: a glass case surrounding a concrete frame, inside of that, a kind of basket-like bamboo structure, which gives a kind of warmth, a kind of structure on the inside. The development of it really has a lot to do with that site. I was inspired by this ancient Gregorian chant notation, because right there is St. Bart’s, the church where that notation was used. That cathedral is that old.
Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects
We developed something for this project that’s never been done before, with a company in Germany, because I wanted these colored notations floating on the staff lines of the façade. We developed something really exciting, a UV safe film that’s layered between two layers of a material called Okalux, that carries the color. It’s like a micro-optical painting. It gets blurry at the edges. This is a super-economic, 21st-century stained glass experiment.
It’s not just a glass wall. If you look at Okalux, it’s like polar bear hair. It’s hollow, it’s in tubes. It’s wedged between two panes of glass; it creates an insulating boundary, and it allows light through.
Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects
VQ: There’s been a lot of research lately about lighting and health. Do you think there will be some impact with this kind of lighting on wellness?
SH: Absolutely. The whole building is carefully orchestrated in natural light; all of my buildings focus on this condition of natural light. I believe that is a very important, helpful aspect of making architecture in the 21st century.
As the day changes, and the light changes, there’s a real interest in the way this color wash can be thrown onto the interior in small ways, and always changing. I’ve always loved the feeling of the light that comes in the cathedral, where splashes of color come down on the floor, projected down.
There’s a train station in the middle of Helsinki that Eliel Saarinen made, with these subtle pieces of stained glass in the façade wall, and it throws these wonderful pools of color into the interior. Really something that gives a kind of special energy to the place. It changes the way we feel in space. It gives us an uplifting feeling. I’ve been in Rem Koolhaas’ Maggie’s Centre, and Zaha’s, and I think there’s a quality to the architecture that improves our psychological well-being, to be in these spaces.
What’s really interesting about this project is that it’s promoted by Charles Jencks. Now, if you remember, Charles Jencks wrote a book called “The Language of Postmodern Architecture” in 1977. In that book, he argues that modernism was all wrong. It can’t change the way we live, et cetera, et cetera. Look, they’re blowing up the Pruitt-Igoe housing. Architects should give up trying to change the way people live, et cetera, et cetera. Right? It’s a very cynical statement.
Now, with these Maggie’s Centres, he’s come 360 degrees. He and I both discussed this—architecture does change the way we live. It can be something that transforms our feelings, our emotions, our sensations, and our feelings of well-being, and that’s what these Maggie Centres are all about.
It’s 6,500 square feet. It’s not a big project, but it’s a very important project, because it says something, in the history of architecture. We went through this terrible period called postmodernism, which really, I think, was a waste of a lot of people’s focus. What’s really exciting is the dimension of architecture which is uplifting—that’s what’s exciting about working on these Maggie Centres.
VQ: When you’re designing a healthcare facility, do you think carefully about the healthiness of the materials?
SH: Absolutely. It doesn’t have to be a healthcare facility. Every piece of architecture that we make, we think carefully about. We just finished a house called Ex of IN House. Everything that’s in that house is considered carefully. There are no formaldehydes, there are no off-gassing materials. It’s all natural woods, without anything on them.
I think all buildings should be done with this care, not just in cancer care. They all should be done with extreme care. Certainly we should never use carcinogenic materials in our constructions, and I never do. I’m always working to be as green as possible. Like in the Ex of IN House, it’s all geothermally heated, with special thin film solar panels on the roof.
VQ: And the inner layer of perforated bamboo? Why that material?
SH: Because it’s ecologically sustainable. Bamboo grows overnight, and it’s more ecological than cutting trees down. I’ve been using bamboo in China a lot, and there we use it in our projects for the same purpose, to maximize sustainability.
Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects
VQ: To what extent do you think a contemporary design needs to be referential to its context?
SH: The Gibbs building is a very important historic building, and I think the real way to give it its due is not to ape it in any way. I think the last thing you would do is to make a stone extension, trying to imitate that beautiful stone—you can’t.
I think it’s a similar thing that we did at the Pratt Institute, where you have these two buildings, 1850 and 1864, flanking this new section. The idea is that the new section is unabashedly 21st century, but it pulls lines from the other two, as the floor plates are pulled through.
We developed the same complementary contrast with our addition at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, which opened in 2007. We saved the 1933 neoclassical stone museum façades all the way around, and added a connection below ground to our glass architecture in the landscape. That’s a super modern expression, but it’s the best way to save and complement that existing building. We won that competition because the other architects were going to build up against the building on the north wall. They all followed the competition brief, and we said, “Wait a minute, that’s not what you should do here. You should keep all the façades free.”
Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects
There’s a kind of plasticity of modern architecture that allows it to reveal and geometrically respect the historic architecture, while being something quite different.
Each project takes on a different series of challenges, but this one, I’m very excited about it. I think we achieve a lot in the little urban fragment of a postage stamp size that we’re allowed—a glowing lantern, if you will, in that constrained site.
It’s been a long process. It’s four years so far, but architecture takes time. And it’s there for a long time afterwards. I feel very fortunate to be able to make something in the great city of London. Even if it’s very small. I’d say that architecture doesn’t have to be large to be meaningful.
There was a point in my life and career where I sacrificed my own health and personal power for the needs of everyone but myself. I gave it away to anyone who asked and it showed on my body. I put on 40 pounds, developed high blood pressure, and felt just awful about my appearance.
But, then I started my own business, and I looked around at the 3 beautiful, young men I was raising and I knew this just wasn’t cutting it. I knew something had to change. I needed to reclaim my power in order to be successful in all areas of my life. I knew I had to set an empowering example for my boys.
As a registered dietitian nutritionist with over 25 years of experience, I also knew that changing my eating and exercise habits was just a very small piece of the puzzle. I was going to have to change how I lived my life on a deeper level in order to create lasting change. Lasting, empowering change was definitely going to take more than just eating less and exercising more.
And this is especially true for women because we’re emotional in nature. As such, for most of us, taking the practical steps of losing weight by dieting and exercising doesn’t cut it.
We need to go deeper. I call it “reclaiming your power & your body”, because there’s a part of us that is lost. When we have spent so many years of sacrificing ourselves for our careers and the needs of others, we’ve lost that inner fire and we need to reclaim it in order to experience the lasting change.
If this sounds like you, here are 3 ways you can reclaim your power and your body today:
1. Own Your Uniqueness
Have you been spending a lot of time obsessing over your imperfections? Or maybe you’ve spent years trying to get back into the size you used to be back in college?
While there’s nothing wrong with working towards goals, there’s a lot wrong with not loving and accepting who you are right here and now. You can’t get to your goal if you’re not willing to love and accept yourself as you are.
Put your obsession to good use and turn it into obsessive love for yourself!
We’ve all heard that self-care is important, but what’s even more important is creating self-care rituals that are meaningful to you.
If being out in nature really makes you feel good, do it more often. If eating at the table is something you value (instead of eating on the fly), do it more often. The theme here is “Do what you value more often”.
3. Manage Your Energy (not your time)
Instead of putting all of your energy into better managing your time (so you can free up more energy), go about it the opposite way and work on better managing your energy so you can free up more time in your schedule.
Studies show that you’re more productive when your energy is high (or at least stable). So do more of what gives you more energy throughout the day (nourishing food/drinks, walking breaks, soothing baths at night).
When you’re a woman in leadership, it’s important that you take care of not only your body in a physical way, but it’s a must that you care for your mental and spiritual health as well. Being in the FULLNESS of your health is necessary for the evolution of your life and your mission.
I’ll admit that these methods aren’t for everyone because they aren’t linked to trendy “superfoods” or hardcore exercise routines. But it’s the starting point if you want to finish strong.
True and lasting transformation begins on the inside.
Aedas has unveiled plans for Gemdale Changshou Road, a new mixed-use project located within Shanghai’s urban city ring that will add 45,000 square meters (484,000 square feet) of terraced office and retail space within close proximity of a planned residential development.
Led by Aedas Hong Kong Director Andrew Bromberg, the design is nicknamed “Cloud on Terrace,” as it uses a series of green terraces as a visual and occupiable “bridge between the low-rise, residential developments to the south and Changshou Road to the north.”
Courtesy of Aedas
At its base, the retail podium creates a streetwall along the property edge, gradually stepping away with vegetated terraces to meet the tower setback. Entrances to the retail areas are located at both ends of the building, facing the most highly-trafficked pedestrian junctions and linking to two nearby metro station entrances. According to Aedas, these design decisions will make the development highly accessible, providing a “missing ‘humanism’” to the neighborhood.
Courtesy of Aedas
As the building rises, the terraces dissolve into the tower’s deliberately ambiguous form, articulated with soft corners and a rippling curtain wall façade to gently reflect its surroundings. The architects describe the visual impact as one that will “allow the tower to float above the green terraces of the retail below as a ‘cloud’ may sit on hill.”
Section. Image Courtesy of Aedas
Further contributing to its interaction with the street, the tower has been oriented to optimize views along Changshou Road, while below, a recessed ‘cave’ breaks down the mass to a human scale.
Level 1 Floor Plan. Image Courtesy of Aedas
Typical Office Floor Plan. Image Courtesy of Aedas
The building has also been designed for ideal light conditions: horizontal ribs around the tower act as sunshades and high-performance, low-e, low-iron glass has been specified for the curtain wall to reduce solar gain on the office floors. Natural landscaping on the podium balconies will also provide cooling and shading benefits to the naturally-ventilated environment.
Courtesy of Aedas
Gemdale Changshou Road is expected to be completed in 2019.
