45 Things I Learned This Year
I turn 45 today. Here’s forty-five lessons on everything from the value of conflict and how to interact with teenagers to the best American ice cream and TV drama right now. Views are my own.
1. Aging is painful — and liberating.
If my life expectancy would be that of an average Finnish man of my age, I would have 36 years left. I am starting to have colleagues who are half my age. I have less hair than few years ago. I need to change contact lenses to glasses when I do reading in a darker space. It is fairly clear that I cannot be considered young.
Acknowledging the pain that comes from letting go of the idea of youth makes it easier to deal with it. Accepting age allows you to accept your body aches, your receding hairline — and your life experience. I feel aging allows you to be more in doubt. It gives you ease in saying that you don’t need to know it all. Aging is liberating. But in no way painless.
2. Old Bay Seasoning is great on fries.
In Baltimore, you see people wearing T-shirts and having bumper stickers with the logo of the spice blend. It is not public what are the 18 spices in it but has at least paprika, red pepper and black pepper. The most well-known use is on steamed crab. But it’s pretty amazing on French fries to give them a bit of a kick.
3. It’s good to have a self-care playlist.
Mine on Spotify consists of songs that have been important at different times of my fifteen-year relationship with my husband. Some songs take me back to moments of absolute joy , some bring back tough times. I listen to the songs on work trips when I feel homesick or when I am just not having the best of days. I often start my day with one song from the list: Paul Simon’s Born at the Right Time.
4. Most good services have an element of choice.
According to Amartya Sen, a good life is being able to live a life one has reason to value. Crafting a life that looks like yours has intrinsic value (as in value in itself) in a democratic society. But choice also holds instrumental value (as in being useful). Choice makes services function better and creates better customer experience. A real test for service design is to make sure that the choice architecture is designed so that people can make informed choices. A service provider, like a government, has the right to set priorities. All choices do not need to be presented as equal.
5. Voice typing is an amazing tool for “vomiting out” a half-baked idea.
Audio commands “period”, “comma” and “new line” help organize the text. Voice typing at least on Google makes ridiculous “mistakes” but gets better every month. I use it often when I have a writer’s block or on a walk.
6. At 25, I valued sarcasm over enthusiasm. At 45, the tables have turned.
In the late 1990s in the social science student circles, making fun of things was the way to demonstrate that you had brains. You were more passionate about what you were against and other people’s shortcomings than what you stood for. I still find myself sliding into this coping strategy at times when I cannot read the room or when I feel insecure. But as I have gotten older, I find myself enjoying more the company of people who throw themselves into difficult things, are open to critical feedback but stand for something, work on building something better. Standing for something is brave as it opens you to attacks.
7. Soaking radishes in water eases the spiciness a bit.
I love radishes. We grew these on our backyard in Baltimore and they were too “hot” to eat in wedges. Soaking them in water cut out some of the heat and also kept them crisp in the fridge for several days.
8. The culture of government needs to be one that rewards employees for an ethical and fair way to get results, not just for good results.
New Public Management brought a lot of efficiency and customer orientation to public services. But it has also led to absurd incentives where workflow or mere headcount is rewarded over impact and equality. This demoralizes a lot of people who have made the ethical choice to work for public good. Building a culture that rewards for setting measurable, doing your best and sharing wins and failures early and openly is not easy. It requires leadership that has the stamina to shield their staff when faced with public uproar over doing things differently.
9. Write your social media posts on Google Docs or Notes, not directly on the site/app.
I have noticed a disturbing issue: I keep making a lot of typos when writing with my phone. I am not sure if that is age or technology or both. Just the moment it takes you to copy/paste the text from one place to another allows another review round for your brain to spot mistakes. It also gives you the option to tone the emotion down a bit for greater effect.
10. Invite people to learn with you before you ask their opinions.
This works with teenagers — but also in professional partnerships. For instance with teenagers, we adults are asking them often to choose from options they have no experience of and then we are surprised if the response we get is “whatever”, “dunno” or doing what they know — like staying at home. Forcing people to take a stand too early leads us to make hasty judgements and easily pushes us into trench warfare. The show and share strategy makes you more equal and demonstrates that you value and respect the other person’s agency and knowledge and want to learn together.
11. Have a chit-chat in the elevator.
I have had to learn thiswhen moving to the US. This is not something people usually do in Finland. Here’s an easy script:
“Hi. How’s your day going?”
“Not too bad, thanks. You?”
“Good, thanks. Well, I’ll get off here. Have a great day.”
“Take care.”
12. Foster conflict — but require respect.
I am convinced that we in government need to be more skillful in recognizing disagreement. I have seen time and time again that a well intentioned push for consensus trumps the views of minorities or leads to a watered down solution that does not really solve the problem it was supposed to.
A city is not supposed to be a harmonious agreement. There are limited resources, limited land and different ways of life. We move to cities for freedom to craft a life that looks like ours. But a city should not be a hostile battle ground. Political philosopher Chantal Mouffe says well that we need to move from treating people as our enemies to treating them as our adversaries — respecting and defending their right to voice their views — but acknowledging that all conflicts cannot be solved with discussion and building a good process .
We should also create room for people to voice their displeasure even with the final decision along the lines of:”I am not excited about this. This is difficult for me and I would have chosen otherwise. But I value that I could voice my opinion and you listened to it and I recognize I am in the minority here.”
13. Organize your thoughts with Miro.
The new job has brought new toys to my life. My favorite feature in Miro, an online bulletin board, is that you can write your thoughts first on Excel on separate lines. When you copy and paste them from Excel to Miro, it produces individual Post-Its, which you can then move around and group.
14. The best American store ice cream is Tillamook Coffee Almond Fudge.
The amount of choices in an American supermarket is just ridiculous. During my first week in the US, I sent a video of the ice cream aisle to my family in Finland. After months of serious testing, we have a winner. My favourite ice cream is not as sweet as most American ice cream as the coffee adds a bit of bitterness. (I have also sent a video of the cereal/granola aisle.)
15. People in the Nordics are fortunate because, in most cases, going to the doctor is not a financial risk assessment.
It has been a new and chilling experience to ask yourself: am I sick enough to take a risk of several thousand dollars? Even when I have a fairly good health insurance, I am still not 100% sure what it covers and does not cover. Quite often at the doctor in the US you are asked to sign a form stating that you carry responsibility for all the costs even when they say that your insurance “should” cover this. If you don’t have this risk in your life, it is easy for Europeans to make fun of Americans being so obsessed with money.
16. Turn your “golden boy” privilege into feminism.
I and many other “nice young men” have benefited from this casting during our careers. Benefiting from this does not necessarily mean you have not worked hard, that you have not done good things, that you don’t have skills or that you have necessarily had it easy. That is not how cultural bias works.
It also does not mean that you should stop pushing for progress or stop trying to make things better. It only means you have the responsibility to pay attention to whose opinions are amplified in group situations, to make sure credit for work goes to the ones who did the work, maybe pay slightly more attention to the gender balance of the groups you join to make things happen, always suggest people of different genders when you are asked for recommendations on “good people” and educate yourself on other people’s realities. It takes learning. I am very grateful for some of the women who have corrected me and helped me improve. A couple of things I have tried to do more:
- talk about gender and unequal expectations
- wait for someone else to start the discussion or ask the first question
- link my comment to someone else’s comment in a conversation
- check the gender balance of my meetings with experts on a bi-monthly basis
17. Cities can build partnerships with philanthropy that improve the quality of public investments by pushing for clearer mission statements, more engagement and higher quality design.
The Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation´s conditional commitment to Finland’s new Museum of Architecture and Design is a great example. They have decided that they are willing to put 20 million euros into this massive museum project but only if its impact, visibility and quality are of world-class standard. The early conditional decision raised the bar for the project and create a good tailwind for the political decision making.
The ultimate test for public officials in partnerships like these is ensuring the public value of the investments, ensuring transparency of the process and creating room for citizen’s voice in the planning. But it also requires that public officials understand that philanthropies are legally bound to their purpose stated in their statutes and the project needs to support that for it to be successful.
18. Share your drafts and insecurities early when venturing on something you have never done before— but with people who want you to succeed.
I started in January working in an institution of world-class research excellence. For several months I felt like an imposter. I thought that soon these remarkable people, as I felt them to be, will find out that I am not like them. On a rational level I knew I was not hired to do the same work as most research faculty but emotionally it was not easy. As someone who has been advocating for learning new things for years as public policy, I got a needed reminder how scary it is to do something you have never done before.
Sharing this insecurity with a colleague with all those accolades, PhD and all, helped a lot. She did not make fun of the feelings. She approached them with curiosity. She said research is supposed to be hard. But she emphasized that I am in the right place and they knew what they were getting.
What she did then was critical: turned the emotion into action. She encouraged me to write my preliminary research ideas down so she can see how I organize information and that we have a common ground for conversation. She suggested very direct and at times extremely detailed corrections — up to a single word — but also highlighted what she felt was excellent and what was new to her. The feedback was easy to understand yet supportive. She also validated the experience I bring that others do not have. I felt that she was in my camp but wanted to help me learn to be better.
19. The higher you are in the office hierarchy, the more relaxed you can dress.
I became a Director of a 300-person organization at the age of 34, which is young on City of Helsinki standards. The longer I spent on the role, I started changing dress shoes back to sneakers and choosing a slightly more relaxed style — and the world did not collapse. It confused some staff who expected a different flair from an executive but mostly it made the situations easier for me and others. I also noticed that by doing that, others could go more casual too.
20. Everyone needs a hobby.
Hobby is something you do because you want to do it, not because it is useful or you’re good at it. I have been advocating for the importance of hobbies for the last decade. A while back my husband pointed out that I don’t actually have any hobbies. I am good in trying out a lot of things but they don’t seem to stick. My “birthday resolution” is to find a hobby.
21. The most revealing job interview question is:”Tell me about a mistake at work and what you learned from it.”
I would suggest that you don’t hire the people who tell a story of a situation where they were right and everyone else was wrong and the lesson was that other people should listen to them.
22. Cities should compensate residents for their time more often if we really see residents as experts in their own lives and think their views are crucial for designing public services,
A lot of participatory democracy models are built on an exaggerated and slightly misguided ideal of an active citizen. This favors the educated, university students, the wealthy, the retired. It puts blame on people who juggle two jobs, have small kids or take care of a sick loved one. Sometimes a town hall with the mayor just is not a priority. That does not make you a bad person or lazy.
It is the job of government to remove obstacles from participation to public forums (like providing online participation, interpreters, easily understandable language and easy interaction tools) and being better in welcoming people in. In the case of service development, compensating people more often — or at a minimum, providing food and childcare — would send a message that you value their experience and gives them room to speak truthfully.
23. You have better conversations on race when everyone understands that they have a race.
In a truly diverse workplace everyone has a racial identity. This means that also white people come to terms with the privileges that come in our culture with “whiteness”. This learning journey — which I am only starting — is one of the things I am most thankful for working in the US. It is a sobering and at times very uncomfortable experience. But it leads to better, more honest discussions on race — when we all have one, when we talk about “us” and not about “your community” integrating to “the society”. I am convinced that this leads to better professional skills, better hiring, better results and a stronger organizational culture. This recognition raises the bar for behavior and emphasizes the need for everyone to educate yourself.
24. Don’t open with The Wire quotes if you’re visiting Baltimore.
The Wire is a fictional police series based in Baltimore, which is claimed by many as the best television series ever made. And it is amazing. But even if it is inspired by true events, it is drama, not a documentary.
Yes, there are problematic parts in all communities. But still, don’t start start conversations with Baltimoreans from The Wire. It’s a bit like with family. No one wants someone from the outside to tell you what is your story, the story of your family or your city — especially the painful parts of it.
Baltimore is also care, camp, raunchy, hospitality, love and pleasure. There’s been very few places where people have demonstrated such friendliness and hospitality as in Baltimore. I am talking “come over to our house” or “I can water your plants when you’re away” or “here’s some eggs and honey from our yard”. Baltimore is home to one of America’s most beautiful baseball stadiums, of an amazing aquarium with stunning sharks, of John Waters, of Nina Simone and of the original pink flamingo garden ornaments. And ice cream made with Old Bay Seasoning.
25. Cod from a freezer with cajun spices grilled in the oven makes a great weekday meal.
As a Finn, I have eaten a lot of salmon in my life. Nowadays, I am actually leaning more towards cod than salmon as a weekday meal fish. It’s also cheaper.
26. Talk about your friendship.
A sign of a true friendship is that you talk about the friendship and what it means to you. I heard this in a conversation between Richard Reeves and Reid Hoffman and it stuck with me. A friend is someone who is on your side but dares to correct or check on you when you are not bringing your best self to a situation. Acquaintances are different than friendships. They are relations in which you have a good time but you don’t really go into difficult stuff.
27. Do your homework when meeting researchers.
My experience is that most researchers love to talk about and share their work. But they do not want to repeat the basic things in every meeting. A respectful and productive way to engage with researchers is that you do your homework and read something they have written. Same goes for journalists who interview researchers. Do your homework.
28. The growing division in the labor market to those with incredible freedom, convenience and autonomy and those with none of that is one of the biggest risks for today’s democracies.
The sense of servitude — as in your life is totally organized around fulfilling other people’s most trivial needs — combined with the media’s exaggerated attention on the middle class remote work hacks, feeds justified resentment and anger towards the elites. While there are serious problems in our labor market to fix, very few people want pity. Most people doing a physically demanding job with long hours — like in a restaurant or delivery — do not want condescending and victimizing language from the elites. As Lotta Junnilainen and Lotta Haikkola wrote in a recent article in the book Kahdeksan kuplan Suomi (Gaudeamus) on restaurant and bar workers, the liberal elite’s system-focused concern on the labor market seems to miss the pride that stems from working hard, helping your colleague, doing a good job and seeing happy customers.
29. Thinly cut celery and pear with kale and a splash of red wine vinegar makes a great simple salad.
I have never been a big fan of celery. But cutting it really thin and combining it with something acidic and something sweet does the trick. If you want to be fancy, add some nuts.
30. Serve refried beans with tacos to reduce the amount of meat (if any).
You can get it in a can. It tastes so much better than it looks. There is a vegetarian version and one with lard in it. You just heat it in a small pot on low heat. You then spread it on the bottom of your tortilla or serve it as a side dish next to Mexican rice.
31. Have an answer ready for “how was your weekend”.
The American conversation culture is different than the Finnish one. I have discovered that it is helpful to think on my walk to work what I want to highlight from let’s say the weekend or a trip and sum it up in 30 seconds. It should be interesting but not too heavy. Not the easiest thing for a Finn. Maybe some day I can master this without preparation.
32. When it comes to news, read more rarely than doomscroll through the day.
I have no news alerts on my phone. My news routine is walking on Sunday to the store to get The New York Times (and sometimes The Washington Post) and then take 2–3 hours with it reading also on issues I am not automatically interested in. I feel better. I often come out of this weekend routine thinking that this issue was actually much more multi-faceted than I thought.
33. Trees are a big political issue.
In many American cities people have voted to raise taxes to get more trees and parks. Trees are are simple and fairly affordable strategy for making our cities friendlier, safer, cooler and more attractive. As climate change makes our cities hotter and leads to more rain, floods and storms, the need for trees is a public health, a public safety and an environmental issue.
34. If you want to change things with people, you need to start from where they are, not where you want them to be.
This is so much more difficult than it sounds like. People can sniff it immediately if you’re judging them. You should also be prepared that even when you come with great opportunities — even money — and sincere motives, you might be met with skepticism. People — teenagers, underserved communities, wealthy individuals — often want to see if you can handle it, whether you are here only to extract and whether you can be trusted before they start opening up. This strategy calls for humility, time and willingness to listen without judgement. (inspired by Saul Alinsky)
35. When it comes to meat alternatives (or non-dairy yogurts for that matter), you need to kiss a lot of frogs to find the prince.
My diet is not yet as sustainable as I would want it to be. Changing your diet — or any lifestyle change for that matter — takes patience but it also requires you to be ready to face disappointment, learn new skills and take risks. We have had several dinners or breakfasts where the food is not up to par and we end up having a discussion on the cost of our principles. But we’re getting further.
When it comes to meat alternatives, Impossible makes great bolognese and burgers and holds its structure better than Beyond Meat. We have also found that a chorizo-flavored seitan is fantastic in a taco. When it comes to non-dairy yogurts, my favorites are Kite Hill (almond milk) and Forager (cashew milk).
36. Research collaborations between academic researchers and city governments often suffer from misaligned expectations.
The last six months have been quite eye opening when reading more research and talking to researchers. People outside academia often do not recognize that most good research is not done overnight and credible researchers do not want to jump to conclusions. Also, most researchers already have too little time for the actual research and the incentives in the academic world don’t support societal impact work.
I am all the more convinced that city service delivery and policy making could benefit greatly from stronger research involvement. But there is a clear need for translation so that both parties feel understood and respected. A lot of cities would benefit from having all its research partnerships negotiated from the city’s side by someone who knows the world of research.
37. Try not to be a martyr.
Alejandro Varela has this beautiful line in his book The Town of Babylon:”I am a martyr without religion.” In the book he is a gay public health professor visiting his hometown, insisting to walk everywhere in scorching heat even if people offer him a ride and are driving to the same place. When I heard this in an audio book, I had to stop walking and write it down. Taking odd pleasure of doing things the more difficult way, passing opportunities for pleasure or stretching yourself when no one is really asking for it is a habit to learn out of.
38. The latest season of Borgen was a disappointment.
The Danish political drama Borgen’s first seasons were this shining beacon of television that focused on politics and not on hunger for power or interpersonal relationships. The latest season — with darker tones and uglier strategies — was I guess a description of our time but in these times we would have needed a Birgitte Nyborg who is still more Jed Bartlet (West Wing) than Claire Underwood (House of Cards).
39. America is a snacks paradise.
My current favorite is Unique Snacks Extra Dark Splits from Reading, Pennsylvania. They are small, slightly charred hard pretzels. They taste a bit burnt in a way that you have to give your mind a moment to decide whether this is awesome or something to take back to the store and ask for a refund. The charred pretzels have managed to topple the Trader Joe’s peanut butter pretzel from the pedestal.
40. If you have ten months to solve a problem, spend six of them on enriching your data by talking to people and reframing the problem.
When doing my research now, I have had to reorient myself to have patience to build a solid literature base and gather new data for my research before starting to think of possible conclusions. To put it differently: to trust the process and not jump over steps. During the first months, my research question changed four times. For a person coming from a executive space especially during a global pandemic, this is bloody difficult.
41. Don’t heat your tortillas in a microwave.
They get soggy. Heat them quickly on a really hot pan. You know when to flip the tortilla around when it starts to bubble up and has a few brown/black spots. Get a pouch to keep the warm ones in or fold one from aluminum foil.
42. ‘Institution’ and ‘bureaucracy’ signify beautiful things.
They describe the structures that allow us to plan our lives and build our businesses. Being an institution signals that you are here for the long run. A good bureaucracy is one where people or companies can rest assured that when they apply for a building permit or a social benefit, it will be handled in a transparent and predictable manner based on law and precedent and the reasons for the decision are written out clearly. A sign of a good bureaucracy is that there is a right to appeal if one feels the decision is done unfairly.
43. This year’s best TV series are Somebody Somewhere (HBO) and The Bear (Hulu).
Both are series of dysfunctional yet loving families, sense of place, responsibility and the acts of resistance of the working class. Somebody Somewhere opens new territories for humor where we laugh with people, not at them. The Bear is a masterpiece of editing and a love letter to small business — and restaurants. There were episodes of the Bear where the pace is so intense that I could not fathom that I had been watching the episode for 20 minutes.
44. The word ‘race’ carries a different meaning in the US than in many European countries.
I have noticed how stark this difference is when talking about European practices in the US and talking about US-based practices in Europe. In the US it would be a sign of ignorance to have a societal conversation without acknowledging racial equity or justice. In many European countries the word ‘race’ causes a shock reaction and is easily associated with the holocaust. Due to the second world war atrocities, in many European countries it is illegal to categorize people according to race. Europeans try to have the same equity discussion by using terms like “mother tongue”, “foreigner” or “immigrants”, which are not without problems as immigrant often refers only to people of color and a high level of perceived “otherness” — the rest are what we call international talent or expats. It also falsely categorizes black and brown people who are not foreigners or immigrants into a group of newcomers.
45. Everybody has the right to be a somebody.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt writes in Vita Activa (Human Condition) that when we see only a person’s contributions, we can only understand what he/she is or was. According to Arendt, we can only know who someone is or was, when we know a story where they play the lead role.
When we feel like we are treated or seen as a nobody or an anybody — a person without a story — , our reaction is aggression or defeat. It pushes us attack others or detach completely. The feeling of being less worthy is so destructive that it is easy to exploit. It feeds into a scarcity mindset where we think that if someone gains something, someone else has to lose — and it better not be us. People feeling like a nobody leads them to destroy things and vote for politics that might even weaken their own position just to keep someone else lower in the hierarchy.
(inspired by Hannah Arendt, Martha Nussbaum, Georg Simmel and Heather McGhee).
Disclaimer:
All the views expressed on this list are mine and do not necessarily express the views or opinions of my employer.
