“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Oh but sweetie, that’s not for people like you…

Let’s start by stating something we all know to be true: everyone has a “vibe”.

The “tech bro” vibe, the “artsy fartsy” vibe, the “dorky” vibe, a “gamer” vibe, a “sporty” vibe, a “boss babe” vibe, and the list goes on. 

We had certain associations as kids maybe. 

Perhaps you were the kid who got straight A’s, and your family pinned onto you their hopes and dreams of raising a future doctor. 

Maybe you were a rebel, and sculpted your identity around denim and black nail polish. 

Were you “not good at math” or “not sciencey”? Did teachers chuckle condescendingly when you announced your dreams to travel the world and backpack across Asia?

Some of us didn’t do intense extracurricular sports as kids, so for the rest of time immemorial, we are simply “not athletic”. A decade later, when you start training for a marathon and taking creatine, the peanut gallery is alive with chatter.

We struggled with a single physics class in college, so gave up on becoming engineers. The whole class was white males with vitamin D deficiency anyway. You have melanin and XX chromosomes. Is it a sign?

Once, when frying an egg, you set the fire alarm off, so you decided “I’m just not a good cook”. Someone ate your innocent first attempts at some “easy, 30-minute” casserole a lady on Instagram made, and everyone thought it was too salty. 

So you put away your apron and never stepped foot in the kitchen again. It’s just not “your thing”.

Don’t change your mind.

But what happens when you decide that despite almost failing Algebra I, you want to build a rocket ship? 

Yes, you burnt that egg once when you were thirteen, but now you want to make a frittata to impress your snobby friend who only cooks recipes from the New York Times.

The “vibe” that once seemed almost predetermined- that seemed so entrenched in how other people saw you that it became you for a bit- becomes a prison. 

But Sofia, you’re a writer!

This is what happened to me. 

I have always been a writer, a crepuscular moody introvert whose creative juices come alive between midnight and 3am. 

Guess which ungainly middle schooler with a skirt down to her ankles once made her short stories about murder, betrayal, and “no-one-understands-me”-ness?

Yeah, it was probably (always) me. 

Ever since I was little, this was simply how I made sense of the world. 

It was not through human conversation, but through effusive journal entries, a pile of unfinished drafts in my Google Drive, and reading books way past my bedtime.

So naturally, the societal algorithm destined me toward either law, journalism, or eclectic writerly isolation. 

As such, my loved ones were perplexed when I started talking about nanotechnology, coral reefs, seagrass, and mycelium bricks. 

It didn’t fit my “vibe”. 

I was an error message everyone rushed to debug. 

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” -Henry David Thoreau

In Denial

How does one reckon with being naturally interested in all the wrong, mismatched things?

Well, usually it’s through denial. 

So I swung around, leaning into different molds I thought would satisfy my curiosity and leverage my skills, feeling more and more like I didn’t quite belong anywhere. 

In fact, it took years until I finally found the right balance between my interests, and became comfortable with resisting the prison of other people’s assumptions of what you “should” be. 

Now, I have no problem with being both the scientist and the artist, with being a Renaissance woman, with being at the intersections, with defining my career from the ground up. 

What I Learned From Having Mixed Vibes

#1: There are ways to say “I don’t know” without sounding like a loser. 

When I was in high school, at that stress-induced time when everyone was applying for university and announcing their ambitions to proud (or disappointed) audiences, I felt utterly stuck. 

When everyone around me seemed to have a simple, digestible 5-year plan for their life, I was caught in a web of indecision, overwhelmed by the fact that I simply had no idea what to do and where to go. 

There was this rush to get to that enlightened point of certainty, to have an answer people would be impressed with. 

Fast forward several years later, when all those same people with shiny aspirations have now changed their major seven times, paused their degree for a gap year, or doubted and questioned themselves many a late night.

Now, there is something I know with certainty: none of us really knew. 

We wanted so desperately to have a plan. Our parents wanted us to have a plan. So they told us to study something “safe” like medicine or engineering. 

The lady from down the street asked about the plan too, and told us we should really consider studying AI because it’s all the rage.

Our teachers advised a plan (“Oh Sally, you would be a wonderful candidate for studying French. You would absolutely love it!”). 

But that doesn’t change the fact that you still don’t know. 

Now I’m halfway through college, and while I know more, and have significantly more clarity about my future than I did then, there are still lots of questions. 

What’s the difference?

Now I know how to say “I don’t know” with confidence and authority. 

I say “I don’t know, but this is what I’m thinking…” or “I don’t know, and this is what I’m doing to get closer to an answer.” 

#2: You don’t need labels. You need data.  

Let’s talk about how we’re all lazy but desperate and insecure egomaniacs. 

I mean, let’s be honest, it’s kind of fun to go home for holidays and to nonchalantly throw around phrases that make it sound like you have your life together. 

It’s reassuring to talk about your super-committed, always-romantic “green-flag” boyfriend who makes six figures and volunteers at the animal shelter every weekend. 

We would love to talk about how we landed that coveted Google internship, and like Elle Woods, act like it was no big deal (What, like it’s hard?). 

On the other hand, it can feel discouraging to be the single, not-yet-sure, maybe-maybe-not one with horror stories in place of victories. 

But actually, taking your time can be an incredible strength, and land you in a way more aligned decision in the long-run. 

When I took a gap year, it was easy to feel behind as my friends raced ahead and settled into college. Meanwhile, I took the year to try out different passion projects, jobs, internships, courses, and athletic challenges. 

It was the pause before the next chapter of my life, and it made all the difference. 

Having the space to fail, to test, to messily realize both what I didn’t know that I thought I knew, and what I knew that I thought was a mystery, gave me the confidence to use my time in college to get even more narrow. 

I learned to not simply ask what I would like to do, but to instead consider what I’m already building/learning/exploring, and why it works or doesn’t. 

Then, with that information, I find new ideas to test, curating these options based on my interests and skills already.

#3: Your dreams set the scale. 

I used to think mood boards and “manifestations” were a bunch of fluffy nonsense…until I tried them.

Giving myself permission to imagine my dream life, dream career, dream love, dream home, and more, made me realize that none of it was actually out of reach. 

This changed my mindset about success completely. 

I realized that half of “succeeding” is giving yourself permission to pursue. 

It’s about giving yourself permission to go for it, even if the “thing” you’re going for is wildly ambitious. Often, we shut ourselves down before even considering the logistics.

The answer is simple: allow yourself to imagine that “impossible” life, the one you stopped believing in because someone told you it wasn’t “realistic”. Don’t stop yourself when the “what if…” thoughts roll in. 

“I realized that half of ‘succeeding’ is giving yourself permission to pursue.”

It might be geographical: “What if I lived on the beach and had seventeen dogs?”

It might be entrepreneurial: “What if I owned a coffee shop that was also a pottery studio?”

Maybe it’s about a creative project or an educational pursuit: “What if I directed a short film and went back to school to study medieval poetry?”

 Let yourself dream again, and let those dreams exist in your mind long enough for you to actually treat them seriously. 

#4: Most decisions aren’t binary.

You contain multidudes.

So I’ll be the first to assure you it’s not a problem to be fixed, but rather a strength to be nurtured. 

Sometimes you think you have to choose between two sides of yourself, and you actually don’t.

I thought I had to choose between a “sciencey” path and an “artsy and humanities path”, and I found I could have both in my life, at just the level I wanted them. 

I realized it’s not a choice between being either a starving artist or a creatively-repressed robot who never produces or creates anything. 

There’s a gradient. 

You can also be: an artist with a day job, an artist who also does freelance work, a hobbyist, someone who starts out with a day job and transitions to being an artist full time. 

Personally, I’ve made the decision that I don’t want my art to be my main income source. I simply don’t want financial pressure on my creativity. 

That said, I still take my creative pursuits seriously even if it’s not how I plan to make money.

In reality, when it comes to career paths, it’s usually not a choice between “do” or “don’t” but more so a question of “how” and “to what extent”.

“When it comes to career paths, it’s usually not a choice between “do” or “don’t” but more so a question of “how” and “to what extent”.”

#5: Your education is only as good as how you keep learning. 

Going to college for me is about learning how to self-educate once I’m done. 

It’s about learning how to think, conversate, read, how to study and pursue opportunities.

College teaches me how to engage with peers and people who are experts in their field, and about what I want to learn more about and to what extent.

We live in a world that places a huge emphasis on pieces of paper that say what you did, when, and with what institution. 

But once you have those pieces of paper, what really gets you across the line is those skills you actually acquired. 

So yes, degrees are useful tools, but what affects you most over the course of your life is how you independently develop knowledge and wisdom. 

I Gave Up The Search.

The biggest misconception I had about building a career that blends, and diverges, and takes its own unique shape, is that I had to “find” it. 

The truth ended up being that a career isn’t something you find; it’s something you build. 

How do you build it?

With the small decisions to pursue a project or not, to apply for a certain role or not, to reach out to a person in a certain field or not. 

It’s about finally giving yourself permission to define what a dream job can be, and then being bold enough to make it a reality.

“If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Thought to Action

1. Treat Your Life Like a Lab: Reframe one uncertainty as an experiment instead of a decision.
2. Shorten the Feedback Loop: Ask: how can I learn something in a week instead of a year?
3. Document What You Learn: Keep a simple log: what I tried, what happened, what surprised me.
4. Detach Outcome From Worth: Let experiments succeed or fail without meaning anything about you.
5. Practice Staying in Motion: When something doesn’t work, don’t restart. Adjust and continue.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post When Your Vibe Gets In The Way Of Your Heart appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Simplicity carried to an extreme becomes elegance.” -Jon Franklin, American author and Pulitzer Prize winner

Design is small tweaks over a long time.

For several months, I have been staring at my laptop screen, knowing I had to talk about evolutionary biology and design, but not knowing exactly what shape to make the words and what angle to enter into the topic. 

I first got the inspiration to write about it when completing an assignment for an evolutionary biology class. As part of this project, I had to conduct a phylogenetic analysis, using software to construct a sort of “family tree” of related species, called a phylogeny. 

Through it, we could see how species have evolved, where they branched in the evolutionary tree, and when certain traits adaptively radiated. 

It was fascinating, with lots of crossover to how ideas evolve, or how etymology shapes, or even how culture spreads across geography. 

But nowadays, we seldom make the link between biology and other domains. 

So I thought about this. For months. 

Then, as I munched on a bag of highly addictive caramel popcorn, it hit me: design is not about the idea coming to you all at once. 

It’s about riffing, iterating, and building something better than what you had before. 

And guess what?

That’s also exactly how design works in biology. 

Much like in evolution, it’s not about starting out perfect. It’s about making many small tweaks over a long period of time until you arrive at an end product you’re proud of. 

#1: The Underrated Power Of a Terrible First Draft

The idea of being struck by a bolt of lightning and suddenly having a stroke of creative genius is a widespread myth that afflicts millions of perfectionists and overthinkers worldwide each day. 

We are tormented by the fact that we will somehow blasphemize the idea in our head by putting it out into the world, and realizing it isn’t that great in real life. 

It’s the fear that we will turn potential into actuality, and in doing so, be confronted with so many mistakes and imperfections.

 And these mistakes? 

They will have the final say over what we are capable of on a deeper level. 

The sappy poem you wrote about your crush in seventh grade? Definitely nowhere near Jane Austen or Maya Angelou level. So your literary career is over. 

The lumpy scarf you knit three Thanksgivings ago, where you messed up the pattern and ran out of yarn? Yeah, you better give up knitting now. 

If you make that “cringe” post about that incredible passion project you’ve been working on, your cousin’s friend’s sister will not be impressed. 

And who are we if our cousin’s friend’s sister doesn’t approve of us?!

Maybe no one will care. They might think you’re being “performative”. 

Evolution doesn’t work this way. 

It throws out so many terrible first drafts it would make you dizzy. It leaves so many of its genetic “ideas” behind.

And yet?

And yet. 

Look around you. 

There is life everywhere, in the most impossible niches (check out this magnetic bacteria I heard about recently). This life is designed impeccably. Why? Because of those terrible drafts that paved the way. 

#2: Random Mutations 

The irony is that as much as we are creatures of habit, we are also built on randomness. 

While a lot of the traits we have as humans seem to make sense, they are also the product of random differences in our genetics being passed on because they help people survive and perpetuate the human race. 

But random mutations aren’t just biological. 

They also apply to the design process, where we not only ideate, but also iterate and test. 

For example, if you’re inventing a new pasta recipe, you might add some of the more “classic” ingredients (marinara sauce, cheese, basil…). 

Then, you separate the pasta, and decide to test out some ingredients you have never added before. For one bowl of pasta, you throw in some edamame beans. In the other, you add some chopped spinach. The last bowl gets some broccoli. 

You have tried something completely random that in all likelihood will end up tasting either neutral (i.e. you don’t mind whether it’s there or not) or worse (i.e. you will never add it to your pasta again).

However, if you do this enough times, you will also get the third outcome: realizing that your random new ingredient makes this dish taste better. 

After trying potatoes and corn on pizza (I condone it!), a flavor unique to audacious Japan, I have come to realize this is a tried and true approach to generating masterpieces. 

Creative genius isn’t about just knowing to put potatoes and corn on your pizza. 

It’s about having the courage to try pizza with a bunch of other weird toppings, knowing eventually, you will stumble across a great combination. 

#3: Steady Rivers Cut Through Immovable Mountains.

This is the age of doing everything all at once.

You must cram every big life milestone into a 5-year plan. Log it in your bullet journal. Post about it with a “candid” (but also totally staged) photo with a caption that reads “#blessed”.

We are in the “instant coffee”, “instant results”, and “instant progress”  world. 

Evolution doesn’t work that way. 

Instead, evolution makes the smallest changes you could imagine, but compounds them over millions, and even billions, of years. 

This act of compounding and iterating on tiny mutations is what has produced some of the best designs we know to occur within life. 

Consider the eye, which first evolved only as a light-sensing organ, and later developed the lens, retina, iris, and more. 

Across the animal kingdom, eyes take all sorts of weird and wonderful appearances. 

One of the common traits among all of them, however, is that they sense light, and have been knee-deep in the evolutionary design process for millions of years. 

So take it slow.

Small consistent changes will get you way farther that sporadic drastic steps.

#4: It’s not the strongest or smartest, but the most adaptable…

There is a beautiful quote attributed to Albert Einstein that goes, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” 

Isn’t that such a relief?

Maybe in second grade you did not always ace your spelling tests, and in third grade you weren’t the first to learn your times tables. 

In fact, maybe right now, you feel like kind of an idiot because you cracked an egg in a way that made the yolk break. You turned all your white clothes pink because one red sock snuck into the washing machine. Maybe you accidentally clicked “send” on an email before actually adding the attachment. 

If you have ever felt stupid, or weak, or incapable, or unworthy of success, there is good news: you don’t have to be perfect; you just have to be adaptable. 

When climate change strikes, or human beings destroy yet another vital habitat, the way species perpetuate is by adapting to change. 

If there is an extinction, they fill the empty niche. 

New mutations occur, and the old species adapt to the new habitat, food sources, and conditions. 

Evolutionary biology says that when Life (yes, with a capital ‘L’) happens, you adapt. 

Design should adapt the same way too.

Design is dynamic. 

The unifying theme connecting evolutionary biology with design thinking is that, contrary to what we might think about both domains, they are dynamic and evolving.

Both design and evolution are about responding to change and to need. 

Design is the space between stimulus and response where we decide what the next iteration will look like. 

It means saying “this next draft won’t be perfect, but it’ll be closer than what came before”. 

Thought to Action

1. Lower the Stakes on One Creative Act: Make something deliberately small, unfinished, or silly. Let it exist without optimizing it.
2. Feed Your Imagination Intentionally: Consume one strange or delightful input today—a poem, a walk, a conversation, a Wikipedia rabbit hole.
3. Create Without Explaining: Make something you won’t post, monetize, or justify. Let curiosity be the reason.
4. Keep an “Idea Garden”: Write down half-formed ideas without judging them. Growth likes space.
5. Practice Creative Permission: Before starting, say: “I’m allowed to explore this.” Then begin.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post The 4 Design Secrets From Evolutionary Biology That Unlock Results appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Doubt never announces itself with loud footsteps or broken doors; it slips quietly into the room, carrying the dust of old memories, unfinished healing, and fears you believed you’d already outgrown. It knows precisely where you’re tender, exactly where to press, and how to make you question the very ground you stand on.” – Cyndi Stuart

When you’re a kid, you can be anything.

When you’re five, it’s cute if you want to be a doctor, artist, mom, Arctic explorer, and rock star. It’s one for each weekday, and then you can take the weekends off, right? 

All it takes to make new friends is to show them what you just pulled out of your nose.

It’s okay to say things like “I don’t know”, or to change your mind. One day, you can want to be a Michelin chef, and another day, an astronaut. 

You have freedom, encouragement, and options in abundance. 

In fact, when I was still in pre-adolescence, I remember feeling the same way. 

And why not?

I loved to write stories, put on plays with my cousins, tend to my own little garden after school, and “rescue” bugs that had fallen into my grandparents’ swimming pool.

Enter: the corruption of adolescence. 

Then something happened, and I suppose it happened gradually. 

As I started to move from my pre-teen middle school years into high school, people started to ask the “what do you want to do when you grow up” question a lot more seriously. 

Now, it wasn’t cute to have five answers. It was actually an existential problem. 

Now, I had to choose classes. I had to write college applications that indicated my future plans. Most intimidatingly, I had to have an answer for everyone who asked me these questions. 

Oh, and if the honest answer was “I don’t know”? You better believe I was about to have an entire audiobook’s-worth of unsolicited advice dumped on my already-overwhelmed head. 

The overwhelm made me shrink.

I have no problem now diagnosing my seventeen-year-old self as a diehard people-pleaser. 

Ultimately, my grades were fine (and actually kinda good if I do say so myself), but I was still afraid I had fundamentally not done enough over the years. After all, I hadn’t cured cancer, gone to the moon, or the like. 

I was struggling with making big decisions. So the pressure of “reality” forced me into feeling like everything must have its justification in my life. 

Why was I studying?

To get good grades so high-ranking schools would accept me. 

Why was I pursuing X extracurricular?

Because “clever students” pursue it, and I need to show I’m one of them. 

Et cetera, and so on. 

I asked the “why” question about creative writing too. However, for this thing that had been a passion since I was a mere pipsqueak, my justification was too weak. 

“Because it’s what lights my soul on fire and cures all my heartaches” wouldn’t cut it for the college essays. 

Well… that was stupid.

Ever since I was a little kid writing stories about my grandmother’s dog and tending to the plants in my garden, I was an artist. 

There are no “if”s or “but”s about it. 

It’s who I was at my very core, and for some reason, I sought to deny it so I could turn myself into someone I thought the rest of the world wanted. 

What I thought I should be is still unclear, but it mostly involved not doing the things I actually liked because I thought the friction of pursuing things that didn’t “set my soul on fire” would somehow make me more worthy of success. 

#1: Choosing to suffer didn’t make me more worthy.

Since that time in my life, I have been on the slow, humbling path of creative recovery, gradually growing back what I tried to squash during those years with the help of figures like Rick Rubin(The Creative Act: A Way Of Being) and Julia Cameron(The Artist’s Way), and learning so much about myself in the process. 

The biggest lesson for me, however, has been to stop choosing suffering for suffering’s sake. 

With some introspection and willingness to explore different options, it’s entirely possible (some might even say inevitable), to eventually stumble upon that much-coveted ikigai. That is, you will find the convergence of what you love, what the world needs, what you can be paid for, and what you’re good at. 

#2: Listen to your jealousy.

Now, this path was not paved with good intentions I’m sorry to say. 

In fact, a lot of times, I find change is fueled by feelings like anger and jealousy, which tell us “something is missing here”, and “they have what I’m missing”. 

Being an artist is really about how you live your life, and prioritizing creativity regularly. 

If you find yourself jealous over the extent to which others are able to publicly express themselves creatively, or jealous because they actually have creative projects they’re working on, then maybe you should start working on something too. 

Your jealousy is telling you what you want your life to look like. 

Listen. 

#3: There doesn’t have to be a “point” for you to start exploring.

Of all the best things that have happened in my life, few emerged from a clear “plan”, in which there was a predetermined “reason” for every minute spent. 

In fact, I think that kind of spontaneity is part of what makes life beautiful. 

“Wanting” to write a short story, “wanting” to wear your clothes differently, “wanting” to try a new recipe, “wanting” to listen to a new genre of music, and even “wanting” to try out a life in which you are an artist is enough. 

It doesn’t always have to be about how much money you will make doing it, or how “aesthetic” it will look on your Instagram story. 

Do it because you want to. Wanting to is enough. 

The Courage To Be Like A Kid Again

There is a quote attributed to Deepak Chopra that goes, “The most creative act you will ever undertake is the act of creating yourself.” 

It means that to be an artist, you also have to live like one, and apply that creativity to embodying the identity of who you want to be. 

For me, that has meant tuning into those expansive, hopeful dreams of Little Me, and asking, “Wait…how can I make her excited about the life I’m building?”

In doing just that, I have been pleasantly surprised to find that a life of a scientist-artist-author-explorer actually is possible for me. 

In fact, it’s a lot more accessible than I once imagined. 

Thought To Action 

1. Pause and Write Your “Failure Archive”: List three things you tried that didn’t go as planned this year. Don’t fix them. Instead, just name them and how they made you feel.
2. Reframe Effort as Evidence: Track one kind of effort for two weeks (reading time, daily creative minutes, meaningful talks). Let the action be the metric, not just the outcome.
3. Create a “Growth Pause”: Pick one thing you’ll do less of (doomscrolling, chores as avoidance). Put a boundary around it and note what space that creates for something nourishing. 
4. Rediscover Joy in the Small and Slow: Read one short piece of writing without pressure—no speed goals, no expectations.
5. Set One “Next Try Intent”: Choose one thing from your failure archive and decide a small, doable step you’ll try next quarter — no perfection, just continuation.

Sources 

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post How To Stop Asking For Permission To Be An Artist appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being.”

– Eckhart Tolle

Insights From Mt. Takao

Of all the weird natural systems on the planet, I thought I was over mushrooms. I really did.

Turns out though, we’re back in love. And yes, today I will subject you to that obsession. 

On a strictly academic mission, I climbed Mt. Takao, and got to have a lot of fun drawing different geological features and eating sweet treats (it’s a hard life, I know). 

From that trip- one of the best homework assignments I have ever had to do- I gained some random insights, as many silly backpackers do when swearing off mainstream society and disappearing into the woods.

If you’re wondering about the deep theme of these insights, don’t bother, because there isn’t one.

Rather, I decided to draw from my favorite moment on the trip: the oyster mushroom. 

Me sitting on the forest floor, drawing a mushroom

#1: Systems thinking

It was when I started to see mushrooms cropping up everywhere, and eventually sat on the cool shaded forest floor to draw a few by hand, that it really struck me: this cute little mushroom, right here before me in its dark non-plant-non-animal glory, was part of a huge planetary system that made the perfect conditions for it to end up before me. 

I mean, stop and think about this: mushrooms require particular soil conditions, particular temperatures and moisture, and it’s even larger systems that manufacture these conditions. 

You can zoom out and zoom in, and on all different scales, you can explain the simple presence of a mushroom on the ground. 

Then I thought about it some more, crouched there as one with the little white oyster mushroom, and felt it was a tragedy that when we think about the world around us, it’s often easy to forget about the systems things are made up of. 

Be a systems thinker. 

So what is there to do? 

Try what I did. Choose one object- an apple, an ear bud, your half-eaten sandwich…

Zoom out to the biggest force you can think of that brought that single thing to where it is now. 

Now zoom in. How was your sandwich made – from the bread to the seedling that ended up creative that tomato slice?

#2: Fast-track to replenishing creativity. 

There is nothing like a long train ride followed by a long hike to really clear your head. 

On my way to Mt. Takao, I enjoyed this uninterrupted hour of time on my Kindle, reading about plant leaves and atmospheric gases in David Beerling’s Emerald Planet as my friends napped in their seats. 

It was peaceful, quiet, and I got to let my mind wander along different trains of thought. 

On the trail, it was the same. 

I marveled at the trees, stopping every five steps to take yet another photo of a ravine, towering cedar tree, or translucent spider web. 

But, once again, I had hours upon hours of time to just think. 

No music, no notifications, no to-do list besides keep watching until you reach the top. 

By the time I got back to Tokyo though, I had several new notes on various projects, random tangents, and interesting questions to look up when I got home. 

Make time to think uninterrupted. 

One of the best systems, I realized, to create emptiness in which to nurture the baby seedlings of your creative garden, is to do something where the emptiness is a natural byproduct. 

Hiking is like that. Showering is like that. Reading is like that. Sometimes, even household chores are like that. 

When you do something where you mind can detach from the nagging expectations of a looming Google Calendar block, your creativity will step in and have a play. 

There are probably already tasks like that for you, and you might not even notice it. 

Next time, pay attention as your mind wanders. Savor the creative play. 

#3: Nature is therapy. 

In the deep cavernous well that is my camera roll, there lies a meme. 

On one side is a gray-skinned, sleep-deprived cartoon with bags under their eyes, asking Jesus, “Is this it? Is this the hardest test you have for me?” Jesus replies, “You literally just have to put your phone down and go outside.”

It’s funny, but accurate. 

Why are we always surprised that when we hide from the sun and spend twelve hours a day in front of a screen, we also happen to feel miserable and depressed?

Truth be told, humans weren’t designed to stare at screens. We were made to hike through forests, draw tiny mushrooms, and gaze in wonder at a deep green range of mountains. It’s what humans have been doing for millions of years. 

Nonetheless, I am still impressed at just how rejuvenating it feels to have a day outside, my phone tucked away at the bottom of my backpack, where the Notification Bird can’t get to me. 

Put down your phone and go outside. 

It’s hard to get away from screens- whether it’s your phone, or the laptop where you work all day. 

Still it’s worth making a deliberate effort, because your stress, worry, and constant existential dread will melt away. 

To make it more fun, take someone adventuring with you. Make it fun and easy. Bring a notepad. 

Maybe, like me, you will end up crouched in front of a mushroom, amazed at the multitudes it contains. 

Thought To Action 

1. Map the Impossible: Write down three “too big” ideas you’d pursue if fear, money, or skill weren’t limits. Circle one. Start with the smallest visible step.
2. Use Tech Intentionally: Schedule a daily “digital audit”—10 minutes to check what tools you actually use to create versus to consume. (See this guide to mindful tech habits).
3. Build an Independent Study Track: Pick a theme you want to master this year (creativity, AI, storytelling) and design your own syllabus—books, podcasts, projects, mentors.
4. Pair Reading with Doing: For every chapter you read, add one experiment to test the idea in real life.
5. Reflect in Reverse: Once a week, ask: “What did I not do because I underestimated myself?”—then do one of those things, badly but bravely.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post 3 Secrets A Mountain Mushroom Taught Me About Creative Focus, Systems Thinking & Inner Peace appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Cinema is a mirror that can change the world.” -Diego Luna

Go watch a Disney movie. 

There are basically two ways to learn life lessons in my book: 1) the hard way, by getting your heart broken and your dreams crushed, or 2), the easy way- by watching a Disney movie. 

I know you have Hakuna Matata memorized, and it’s the only Swahili phrase you can say. Your first exposure to talking furniture was probably Beauty and the Beast. 

And of course, you watched The Little Mermaid 14 times before the DVD mysteriously disappeared because your parents couldn’t take it anymore. 

If you’re like me, the first romances you ever idealized were also Disney romances, and maybe some of your first Halloween costumes were from the classic 90s and 2000s films too.

So if you grew up waiting to become a Disney princess or imagining your dog as an animated sidekick, this is for you.

All those hours you spent watching movies might just have taught you some incredible lessons about courage, joy, and how to stay true to yourself in a world that aggressively manufactures sameness. 

(Also, I tried to give minimal spoilers if you haven’t seen some of the films below!)

Me dressed as Elsa (Frozen) at 12 years old

#1: What Else Can I Do? (Learn from Encanto)

The very thing you are trying to suppress, hide, or change, is the path to becoming even more powerful if you lean into it.

One of the most powerful messages to learn from Encanto is to lean into your shadow self, mirroring some of what Robert Greene writes about in 48 Laws Of Power. 

But what do I mean by this?

Throughout all my high school years, I felt like I had to squeeze and contort myself to fit into a predetermined future box that contained a single career. There was a set list of jobs, and you were just supposed to pick one based on the class you did the best in. 

It was a pretty straightforward algorithm if you had one favorite class, or could easily clump your interests into a definitive job description. 

But for me it was a nightmare, because I loved all my classes, and found all the jobs super cool. 

My solution? 

Suppress, hide, and try to change. 

I loved creative writing with a passion, but this didn’t make sense in the context of science and math. People only saw the link between writing and science if you were planning on going into journalism or sci comm. 

I tried both on, but I knew there was still something missing. 

So what did I do?

Suppress even more. 

It got worse and worse until I took a gap year before college, where like a plant transplanted from a tiny plastic pot to a big wide-open field, my roots spread out wide and far, and I got to reinvigorate my love for writing in all its expansiveness. 

Now I don’t try to suppress; I try to explore. I ask what else can I do?

The answer is always a pleasant surprise. 

#2: When I’m Older (Learn from Frozen)

All the crazy things happening to you now will make sense in the future. Trust the process.

Olaf sings this song in Frozen II as a bunch of crazy things are happening in the plot and he is lost in the woods without the other characters. 

In short, he has every reason to panic.

However, the charming thing about Olaf is that instead of panic, the entire time, he is reassuring himself, “This will all make sense when I am older.”

What I love about this is the fact that while we might usually see Olaf as the naive, childlike comic relief in the film, he is actually right. 

When I was 13, I moved to England from Miami. 

Yes, from Miami, where you have to worry about wearing enough sunscreen, to England, where you have to take Vitamin D pills just to stay sane in the winter. 

As a 13-year-old already halfway through the social Rubix cube of middle school, moving to an entirely new continent and starting over was tough. 

The first year, I had almost zero friends, and was constantly lamenting the gray skies and strange new education system I had been transplanted into unwillingly. 

When my life didn’t play out how I wanted it to, one of the hardest things for me to do was to take a step back and go “This will make sense one day.”

And guess what?

Seven years later, I can confirm it made perfect sense. 

If I hadn’t moved to England, I wouldn’t be who I am today. 

That said, wouldn’t it be so much easier if we could learn from Olaf and walk through the woods when we feel lost, alone, and hopeless, and trust that yes, this will all make sense when I am older?

#3: Gaston (Learn from Beauty and the Beast)

No matter how amazing you are, there will always be people who reject you. Don’t try to make sense of it. 

Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking: “But he’s the villain in the movie. Why are we learning from him?”

Hear me out: Yes, I know Gaston is the villain. I know he is self-absorbed. Maybe even a narcissist. 

Let’s take a step back, though. 

In this song, LeFou (Gaston’s bro, if you will) is trying to cheer up Gaston because he is feeling down and out about Belle rejecting him. So he lists off all the things about Gaston that are impressive. 

“Gosh, it disturbs me to see you, Gaston,” he says. “Looking so down in the dumps…There’s no man in town as admired as you. You’re ev’ryone’s favorite guy. Ev’ryone’s awed and inspired by you, and it’s not very hard to see why.”

Wow, so Gaston is a great guy to a lot of people. Yet for whatever reason, his insecurity is blinding him to this because he is hung up on the fact that Belle won’t marry him. 

Imagine how differently Beauty and the Beast would have gone if Gaston just had the emotional maturity to let Belle go, wish her the best, and marry any of the many women who really wanted to be with him. 

My ten-year-old sister once said something very wise, as children have a beautiful tendency to do. 

She said, “Sometimes you want to be friends with someone, but they don’t want to be friends with you. That’s okay.” 

It struck me, because she’s absolutely right.

In trying to bend over backwards for the people who don’t want what you have to offer, you miss out on appreciating the people who are your biggest fans. 

#4: We Don’t Talk About Bruno (Learn from Encanto)

We all have Brunos in the closet, even if we pretend we don’t. “Not talking” about something won’t make it go away. 

Can you tell I loved Encanto?

This song broke the charts because it’s catchy in every language, but really, it’s about being in a family that avoids talking about the hard stuff, in this case about what on earth happened to Uncle Bruno. 

But this doesn’t have to be about family. 

As individuals, we all have Brunos in the closet, and we refuse to talk about them, or even acknowledge them, until they blow up in our faces. 

You know how when you’re driving and your gas is low, your car will give you a little red warning?

50 miles becomes 20, 20 becomes 10. Sometimes, even at 0 miles, you can still go a little further before getting stranded. 

Well, once I got to 0 miles of gas in the tank, and I barely managed to get home. 

It’s easy to ignore a blinking red light telling you to stop at a gas station, but hard to ignore when you’re stranded in the middle of a winding mountain road. 

Address the thing before it becomes catastrophic. How?

It starts with talking about your Bruno.

#5: Spoonful Of Sugar (Learn from Mary Poppins)

Make the hard thing a little more fun. 

Perhaps the only thing more timeless than Mary Poppins is that universal groan right before you start the one long, boring task you’ve been avoiding all week. 

Disney’s solution is simple: take your medicine with a spoonful of sugar. 

Mary Poppins puts it this way: “In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap! The job’s a game, and every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake.”

About 2 months ago, I climbed Mt. Fuji with some friends. Before you climb, you are pumped with adrenaline, and at the top you have the wonderful sense of achievement.

In the middle, though, motivation is sparse. 

So what did we do?

We either sang musical number after musical number, or we listened to the rest of the group as they sang musical numbers. 

In the upper half of the mountain, I even came up with a game we all played together, where I would give a word like “boat”, and they would guess a musical number with that word in it. 

Did our legs still hurt? Absolutely, but our minds were on the likes of Hamilton, West Side Story, and Wicked instead.

Playing a game and singing songs didn’t make the climb effortless; it just kept us from dwelling on our sore feet, exhausted legs, and the sense that the mountain just kept getting taller. 

It works just like Mary Poppins claims: “Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way.”

#6: How Far I’ll Go (Learn from Moana)

Trust the instinct telling you to try something random and new. It knows something you don’t yet. 

Moana is, like most princesses, unsatisfied with staying in her comfort zone. The difference between her and the rest though, is subtle. 

“I’ve been standing at the edge of the water, long as I can remember,” she says. “Never really knowing why.” Then, later in the song, she confesses, “I can lead with pride. I can make us strong. I’ll be satisfied if I play along, but the voice inside sings a different song. What is wrong with me?”

Nothing is wrong with you, Moana.

Much like Olaf trusts that everything will make sense later on, and like Isabela in Encanto has to lean into her shadow self to realize the true extent of her powers, Moana needs to trust that her urge to explore is telling her something important. 

Last Christmas, I got a small crafting kit under the tree. It came with two short, chunky wooden knitting needles, and a little clump of magenta-colored wool yarn. 

To my surprise, I spent all of Christmas Day knitting in my pajamas until I produced a mug cosy, completing the craft kit. 

In the week that followed, my mom and I went to the knitting shop to pick up more yarn so I could make a bigger project- a scarf.

I kept following that random new obsession, and almost a year later, I have also made a tote bag, hand warmers, and a scarf for my dog!!

Okay, maybe I didn’t defeat any evil demi-gods or giant crabs like Moana did, but I listened to the voice, and it told me I like this- let’s explore it. 

After all, you never know how far you’ll go…

#7: Do You Wanna Build A Snowman (Learn from Frozen)

Everyone has someone looking to them for love and support. Be there for them when it’s easy, but especially when it’s hard. 

Frozen is, ultimately, about sisterhood, and that’s one of my favorite things about it. 

It teaches us how to lean on others, especially in a world that trains women to see each other as competition. 

In this song, we see Anna begging her big sister, Elsa, to build a snowman for her, but it’s never really just about building a snowman. 

This is a plea for connection. 

The powerful message of this song, though, is that connection doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t have to make it about having a deep, existential conversation. In fact, you don’t even have to spend money.

For Anna and Elsa, it just means going outside together and building a snowman. 

As a proud big sister myself, one of my favorite things to do with my own little sisters is to bake. Whenever I visit, we make something tasty, and in the weeks and months leading up to a visit, we compare notes on what recipes to try. 

It’s not really about baking, although baking is lots of fun.

Really, it’s about connection.

We all have someone in our life who is the Anna to our Elsa, and could use our lova and support. 

Frozen just tells us it’s actually not as hard as we think to provide it. 

Apply What You Learn After The Movie.

Learning doesn’t stop after the credits finish rolling though. 

You can continue to engage with these Disney films by relistening to each of these songs using the links below:

1. What Else Can I Do?
2. When I’m Older
3. Gaston
4. We Don’t Talk About Bruno
5. Spoonful Of Sugar
6. How Far I’ll Go
7. Do You Wanna Build A Snowman?

Thought To Action 

1. Upgrade Your Inputs: This week, read one thing that feels above your level—a book, essay, or paper that makes you slow down. Growth hides in friction.
2. Curate Your Feed: Audit your digital spaces—unfollow three accounts that shrink your thinking and replace them with three that expand it and help you learn.
3. Start a “Curiosity Thread”: Pick one question that won’t leave you alone and spend 15 minutes a day chasing it down. (Here’s how to build a personal learning ritual).
4. Try AI as a Reading Companion: Feed a dense article into an AI tool and ask it to explain it five ways—like a teacher, a friend, a skeptic, a poet, and a child. Notice what each version unlocks.
5. Share a Synthesis: Write a one-paragraph reflection and post it publicly or in your notes—learning cements when shared.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post- just my precious childhood memories. 

The post What Disney Songs Helped Me Learn (The Easy Way) appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid

You know the feeling?

One of my favorite ways to spend a quiet evening is to read on my Kindle. 

You know the feeling? 

You unwrap a cool facemask from a little plastic bag, breathe in the warm smell of hot herbal tea from your favorite mug, and slip into clean sheets and soft pajamas to then cuddle up with a good book until you turn out the lights. 

This, for me, is an ideal evening, and I have fought hard against the constant pressure of all the other things I could be doing in that time instead. 

Why? Because for me, if I’m too busy to read, I’m just too busy, period. 

While I flit between many different books, I find a special comfort and joy from reading fiction, especially when school requires me to already read other more technical materials. 

But it’s not just about intellectual relief- it’s also emotional. By reading fiction, I get to step into the minds and lives of other people, to witness their heartbreak and victories and know that if it’s possible for them to prevail, it’s also possible for me. 

Right now, I’m reading Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko, which I highly recommend if you like historical fiction and/or K-dramas.  

Me reading on my Kindle with a face mask from 7/11

Plot twist!

However, I’m also an aspiring scientist, eager to get involved in, and learn about, research in fields like materials science and geochemistry. When I have a few minutes to spare, you can even find me on Datacamp, probably trying to master AI before it masters me. 

These aren’t contradictory facts, nor should they be, but I find myself constantly frustrated with the notion that the only books that help you grow as a person are in the personal development section of Barnes & Noble. 

If you want to get ahead in your career, be more content in your personal life, and generally be a better citizen of the world, fiction helps too. In fact, it helps a lot.

Today, I want to tell you why. 

#1: People with hobbies go farther.

There’s a myth I want to bust before anything else, and it’s this: that STEM is not for “creatives”.

I know why this myth exists. People sometimes assume that if you are good at math and/or spend most of your time coding, in a lab, or losing sleep on AutoCAD, that you won’t also be an incredible painter, ballet dancer, poet, or professional trumpet player. 

And maybe for a lot of people in STEM, that’s the case, but I have also personally encountered many exceptions. 

In fact, research by Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein from Michigan State University even supports this. They looked at 773 Nobel Laureates across all fields of academia, and found that among the most successful thinkers, one of the common traits is that they have hobbies outside their work. 

For many, this included creative hobbies like playing an instrument or writing poetry. 

Now, if you don’t know what your quirky hobby might be, I’ll give you a good place to start: pick up a book. 

No, not Atomic Habits or 4 Hour Workweek, for crying out loud. 

Pick up something obscure but cool, intriguing but a little less well-known. Think like you were a little kid, and pick up a book that will just bring you untapped joy to read. 

Call it a “guilty pleasure” if you want. I call it “food for the soul”.

#2: Reading builds cognitive endurance.

Okay, I’m going to be your crunchy-granola aunt for a second, and tell you to get off the dang Instabook. 

Yes, I know you have to check the seventeen reels of cat memes your cousin sent you in the past hour, and that you have to respond to the reel your mom just sent about “Top 4 Study Tips For College Students”. 

I know. I get it. People are counting on you. Life is hard. 

But all that dutiful scrolling you are doing to keep sending your friends the funniest reels in all the land is taking a toll on your ability to actually focus.

My innovative solution is tried and tested, and surprisingly, it is not to just cold-turkey delete all your accounts and throw your phone into a lake. 

Now that you’ve breathed your sigh of relief, what is my solution, anyway?

Read.

Friend, there is no way to escape social media. 

I know because like you, I have grown up with its cold ubiquitous eyes all around me too. So if you don’t want to quit, don’t. 

Try this challenge that I started about a year ago instead: each week, read your social media screen time. 

If it was 10 hours, challenge yourself to read 10 hours that week. If it was 7 hours, try reading an hour daily for a week. 

Spoiler: if you do this for long enough, like I did, you will find your screen time gradually falling to a less existentially-terrifying number. 

It will go from 14 to 10 to 4 to 3. 

And guess what? 

By then, you might actually find yourself at peace when you have to sit still for a few hours to review some journals, do a coding spring, or answer the emails piling up in your inbox.

#3: Reading fiction restores your sense of wonder.

Let’s face it, when you’re a kid, it’s easy to get excited. 

You get excited for lunchtime, for art class, for recess, for PE. Then, when you get home, you get excited to play with your toys and have some ice cream after dinner. 

When it’s Friday, you get excited for the weekend. When it’s Christmas, you get excited for, well, everything. If you go to the park and find a worm wriggling around the dirt, you get excited because you found a worm wriggling around in the dirt and decided he was named Gary.

The thing is, growing up can make us less excited. It can dull that beautiful sense of childlike wonder with a long list of explanations and crushed dreams. 

Then, we learn to make excuses: “I’m not good at math”, “I’m not sporty”, “I’m an awful cook”, “I just can’t draw.”

What I want to know is what happened to that little kid inside of you who did stupid, random stuff just because it was cool and it was fun, and really, deep down, nobody else knew what they were doing either. 

If you’re in STEM, I know there is a little kid inside you whose eyes grew wide when hearing an astronaut talk about space, or who yearned to make something explode in chemistry class.

For me, the way to bring that kid back is by reading fiction. 

Why?

Because when you read fiction, nothing is off the table. 

You can revel in the ridiculous and savor the stupid. It doesn’t have to be intellectual or technical, or about meeting an ever-increasing standard for “good enough”. 

You get to find something cool and exciting that no one else understands. 

What a gift.

Buy the book.

I once heard Ramit Sethi, author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, talk about his rule when it comes to buying books. It was simple: if you’re thinking of buying it, do. 

Why?

Because the ROI of reading a book is way more valuable than the $20 it might cost to buy it. 

So if you find yourself wandering through a bookstore, don’t stop at the personal development section. 

Wander into the fiction aisles too…you may just strike gold. 

Thought To Action 

1. Upgrade Your Inputs: This week, read one thing that feels above your level—a book, essay, or paper that makes you slow down. Growth hides in friction.
2. Curate Your Feed: Audit your digital spaces—unfollow three accounts that shrink your thinking and replace them with three that expand it.
3. Start a “Curiosity Thread”: Pick one question that won’t leave you alone and spend 15 minutes a day chasing it down. (Here’s how to build a personal learning ritual).
4. Try AI as a Reading Companion: Feed a dense article into an AI tool and ask it to explain it five ways—like a teacher, a friend, a skeptic, a poet, and a child. Notice what each version unlocks.
5. Share a Synthesis: Write a one-paragraph reflection and post it publicly or in your notes—learning cements when shared.

Sources

Cima, Rosie. “The Correlation between Arts and Crafts and a Nobel Prize.” Priceonomics, 11 Sept. 2015, priceonomics.com/the-correlation-between-arts-and-crafts-and-a/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2025.

Varner, Grant. “The Side Hustle of the Nobel Laureates.” Grantvarner.com, Grant Varner, 3 Mar. 2025, www.grantvarner.com/p/the-side-projects-of-nobel-laureates. Accessed 12 Oct. 2025.

The post Why It Would Be Silly Not To Read More Fiction appeared first on Green Also Green.

“What is now proved was once only imagined.” – William Blake

Training myself to think bigger.

After reading more about neuroscience this year, and developing greater intention with how I visualize my success, I discovered something crazy: I was used to thinking small.

This thought has driven me toward a long, winding road of daydreams, journaling prompts, and award-deserving mood boards. 

It has all given me a great sense of excitement and enthusiasm for life, and it’s all rooted in one question:

What if?

So many of us go through our day-to-day lives accepting everything exactly as it is. Let’s start there. 

What if you could make X better? What if you could read the book you’ve been meaning to start for 6 months? What if you didn’t have to feel Y or worry about Z? 

This exercise goes beyond personal development though, and can even make for a fun creative exercise in other tasks. 

Allow me to share some of the items on my own “what if” list now:

• What if I learned more about ethnobotany?
• What if I increased my time to action?
• What if I bought a bunch of land to turn it back into natural habitat? 
• What if I bought e-waste and found a way to deconstruct it while preserving the quality of the materials?

The Enduring Power Of “What If”

#1: Deepen your understanding. 

In adding items to my “what if” list, I have learned the skill of asking increasingly more obscure, random hypothetical questions. 

Exploring their answers often reinforces fundamental concepts that are tangibly applicable in my life. 

For example, in studying geochemistry, I got to thinking, “why isn’t there silicon-based life on earth?” Like carbon, silicon is what you would call tetravalent- it has just as many valence electrons as carbon, and thus, you would imagine, just as much opportunity to bond. In fact, most minerals on earth are silicon-based. 

After asking around and exploring this idea, one of my peers shared some papers he wrote on the subject, which I got to enjoy reading. 

In the end, asking a “stupid” question allowed me to make connect with others while deepening my own awareness of key concepts within geochemistry and evolutionary biology. 

#2: Challenge your assumptions. 

Let’s talk about “what if”’s favorite cousin, “why not”. 

For most of my life, I believed the narrative of choosing one career and using that end goal to make all my decisions. 

It was: if you want to be a doctor, read chemistry books. Wanna be a lawyer? Read about philosophy. And if you like both chemistry and philosophy, just pick one for crying out loud!

For a long time, it was tormenting to be the kid who simply liked everything. I was overwhelmed by the infinite paths I could take, and simultaneously saddened by the fact that they all seemed to lack the crazy diversity I dreamed about. 

Then I asked a question: Why not cultivate my unique portfolio of skills and interests? Who says I can’t design a career perfectly suited to what I’m good at, interested in, and hoping to get out of life?

When I asked this question, I realized that the answer to this “why not” boiled down to two things: fear of uncertainty and not wanting to put in the effort to discover the life that would truly fulfill me. 

Most of us do not realize how much we take for granted- intellectually, in our relationships, in the way we live our lives. 

So start asking yourself “why not”, and you might be surprised by the answer.  

#3: Realize your big dreams are attainable.

Here is some tough love: you’re not special. 

Throughout the course of human history, millions of people have also faced heartbreak, loss, financial ruin, and uncertainty. Many of them have also come out of those things with the reinforced determination to have crazy amazing lives. 

So what if there was a way to chart the path from exactly where you are to the amazing world, life, or career you envision?

What if you are not limited by your circumstances, but instead by your creativity?

We tell ourselves certain things are impossible for us, but when we ask “what if”, we realize an unsettling but reassuring fact. Actually, there is no real reason why someone else in your position could’ve gotten/done that thing and not you. 

When I do this exercise for myself, it can be disheartening. I realize that the responsibility to create what I want is fully up to me, and in a lot of ways, I fail at it.

Yet after that stark realization, there is also a glimmer of hope- yes, it’s up to me, but also, I have every power to fix it. Why? 

Well, why not?

What if it works?

Go and see for yourself. 

Open a new “Note” on a note-taking app, and title it “What If List”. 

Write one question. Make it crazy. Make it unhinged. 

Let’s see where it takes you. 

Thought to Action

1. Start a “Future Self” Journal: Write one page from the perspective of your dream self—what are you building, learning, wearing, prioritizing? Use this to guide daily decisions.
2. Identify Your Personal Design Criteria: What makes a task or project feel deeply worth it to you? Make a mini checklist. Use it to evaluate new commitments before saying yes.
3. Create a “Someday Stack” of Ideas: Start a list of crazy, impractical, or ambitious project ideas that you don’t have time for yet. This becomes your personal innovation vault.
4. Study Someone Whose Job Didn’t Exist 20 Years Ago: Look up someone in a role like climate designer, circularity strategist, or biofabrication artist—and reverse engineer how they got there.
5. Fuel Up With Fiction That Thinks Ahead: Read a sci-fi or speculative fiction book this month. Start with something weird. It will stretch your imagination more than any TED Talk ever could.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post. 

The post Use This Secret Tool To Build A Crazy Imagination appeared first on Green Also Green.

“Better to be a nerd than one of the herd!” -Mandy Hale

To be weird is to be free.

The enemy of every weird little seedling of an interest in the following question: “What’s the point?”

Don’t get me wrong- “points”, “reasons”, and “objectives” are one of the handiest tools of progress, but to let this bondage seep too deeply might be hurting your imagination, and paradoxically, your ability to solve the biggest problems in life and work. 

To be weird is to be free. 

And here is something even more wild:

To be weird is to see the world through a lens that makes you and your pair of eyes different from all the rest. 

To fall in love with random vats of knowledge is a superpower. 

Today, I want to tell you what that superpower has afforded me. 

#1: Nanotechnology

Richard Reynman said it best with his famous lecture, “There’s Plenty Of Room At The Bottom”. 

Indeed, there is. 

This was the lecture that introduced the world to nanotechnology in 1959, and over sixty years later, nanotechnology is still just at its genesis. 

As for me, my journey with nanotechnology started about a year ago when I first arrived in San Francisco as a student, and this idea of tiny things being powerful felt somewhat symbolic. 

Imagine a structure that is but a billionth of a meter revolutionizing energy storage, medicine, and more. 

It is humbling, and almost inspirational to be a fly in the wall (or a student at a desk) for research like this, and I was grateful for the opportunity. 

Since then, I have explored nanotechnology at various levels. 

I went close-up when I participated in weekly lab meetings at a nanotech lab group at UC Berkeley. Beyond that, I enjoyed getting excited about research papers that discussed things like how to translate nanostructures in butterfly wings to fiber optics. 

What it taught me:

• To be ahead of most other people, all you have to do is show up consistently.
• Medium brain with enthusiasm > Big brains with zero interest.
• Bring a book when you’re using public transport.

#2: Destigmatization Of Women’s Health Through Art

I’ve always been a numbers girl, but when I read “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado Perez, I felt like the numbers were telling me a story I didn’t like. 

Even before reading this book I had experienced a few of the perks associated with syncing your lifestyle with your menstrual cycle. The biggest advantage to this personally was regarding my mental health, and the impact of taking magnesium during my luteal and menstrual phases. 

What was once the half of the month in which I routinely questioned everything and doubted myself the most became actually pleasant.

The more I explored this, the more I found myself evangelizing the approach to other women, urging them to explore their own hormones more deeply. 

It was Criado Perez’s book, though, that really sparked the feeling of rage. 

I saw that this wasn’t just about “perks”. 

The gender data gap was actually causing premature deaths for women (e.g. male-only crash test dummies & biased cardiovascular studies). It was putting them in danger (e.g. poorly lit public spaces). It was even leading to women giving up on their dreams (e.g. female PhD candidates experiencing little to no support when they get pregnant and often dropping out completely).  

I was upset, so I finally decided to do something. 

Over the past 4 months, with a group of friends, we created a comic book centered on menstrual health. Our hero, Amara Reyes, gets her powers from getting her period. 

Our mission?

To tackle the stigma around women’s health head on using storytelling and art. 

What it taught me:

• People will respect you for having the courage to say what they are afraid to. 
• You go farther as a team but faster as an individual. 
• An inspiring leader is an accountable leader. You don’t have to be perfect, but you have to take responsibility for your actions and get back up when you make a mistake.

#3: Female North American Bullfighters From 1930s-1960s

The past year and a half I have been in the process of re-igniting my deep love for creative writing. 

As a kid, I used to regularly enter short story competitions, and over my high school years it ended up getting pushed aside in favor of more “realistic”, “practical” paths. 

Then, I realized you can have exactly the career you want if you’re willing to put in the work to build it, and part of the career I want is that of an artist. 

After writing the biography of a retired champion golfer in South Carolina over my gap year, I grew interested in historical fiction as a way to empower ourselves using true stories from the past. 

This is when I came across Patricia Lee McCormick, an incredibly successful bullfighter from the 50s (the first woman to fight bulls professionally in North America) who dealt with several of the challenges inherent to highly male-dominated fields such as bullfighting. 

Her story is inspiring, and the more I dug, the more I found other women like her- amazing bullfighters whose stories few of us have even heard.

Learning about McCormick got me excited about writing a story- a long one- to capture this. For months I experienced a major block about how to write her story, and eventually how to write a story that was a composite of many experiences, given the poor documentation of these women’s lives. 

Now, I’m knee-deep in this project, and loving the process of becoming more and more in tune with the world of bullfighting.  

What it taught me:

• We all come from a long line of people who overcame struggle and adversity. You are not alone; you are genetically programmed for resilience.
• The “good old days” were very screwed up. Be grateful for the privileges your ancestors fought to leave you with. 
• Impulse-driven creativity only works when you actually make space to hear the creative impulse. 

#4: Knitting

I made my dog a scarf.

Yes, it’s true, and I think she really liked it. 

I learned to knit last December, and when I’m not in school, navigating a flurry of deadlines, I relish the way it feels to just sit on the couch, listening to music or a podcast, and just knit for a couple of hours. 

So far, I have made a very cute gray wool bag with a lining that I sewed on the inside, a mug cozy, a scarf that has a chevron pattern which I’m still working on, a pair of fingerless gloves, and a dog-scarf. Sadly, when I was moving out of San Francisco in April, I lost my first project, which was a half finished purple scarf. 

It was a hobby that came out of nowhere, which I picked up on Christmas day when I got a knitting craft kit under the tree. 

Still, it has been one of the most rewarding hobbies to randomly sprout in my life. 

Now, I’ve realized that I would also really love to learn how to sew and crochet….

What it taught me:

• 80% of the time, it ends up being way more accessible than it feels when you first try to learn it. Keep trying again, and you will find it gets way easier with practice. 
• If you messed up one row, don’t keep going. Stop and evaluate your mistakes before they get even harder to resolve. 
• Beautiful things take time to grow- whether it’s a scarf, a bag, a relationship, or  a life. Be patient with your journey. You are exactly where you need to be.

Embrace your weird side.

To be “weird” is not just a savvy career move and a swift de-stressor from a busy day. 

“Weird” is a way to liberate yourself from the long list of “should” and “should not” tasks that rule so much of life. 

It’s a way to reclaim what makes us human, to radically fight for your free will, for joy, for creativity, for sovereignty over your calendar, mind, and spirit. 

Being weird is how we tell the world I am alive and I am free.

Thought to Action

1. Redefine “Cool”: Write your own definition—what draws you, not what sells.
2. Try a Micro-Rebellion: Create or wear something that feels fully you, even if it’s outside your comfort zone.
3. Start a Curiosity Journal: Follow your questions like da Vinci—capture 1–3 curiosities each day.
4. Read Fiction with Designer Eyes: Notice how stories spark material or systems ideas—see my insights here: 3 Easy Ways to Unleash Creativity and Innovation
5. Replace Performing with Experimenting: Trade one habit driven by approval for one driven by pure creative curiosity.

Sources

No external sources were used for this post.

The post My Top 4 Weird Interests This Year (And What They Made Me Realize) appeared first on Green Also Green.

“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success.” – Nikola Tesla

Materials shape the world.

All around us are items made of different materials with different life cycles. 

No matter what though, for every material you see, there was also someone who had to decide to use that material, and had to decide how to synthesize it and assemble it into a product. 

For each and every product, there are also different additives, various dyes or preservatives, and a wide range of demands during manufacturing, whether it’s heat or water in varying quantities, or manual labor in dangerous conditions. 

Quite literally, all these materials make up the world around us. 

But that’s not all. 

They are also changing the world around us. 

Because of that, the future of materials is the future of the world.

So today, I want to celebrate some of the 4 most thrilling (but also weird) new materials that will change the way we manufacture the items all around us. 

Ready?

#1: Nanomaterials

After getting close-up experience with a UC Berkeley lab developing new nanotechnology, I have grown increasingly interested in the future of nanomaterials. 

But what is nanotechnology?

The prefix ‘nano’ refers to a billionth. So nanotechnology is tech that involves the manipulation of atoms at the scale of 1-100 nanometers. In other words, technology that requires us to rearrange atoms at 1-100 billionths of a meter. 

The field was first founded in 1959 by Richard Feynman, after a lecture called “There’s Plenty Of Room At The Bottom”. 

He suggested we could manipulate individual atoms as a more robust form of synthetic chemistry. 

It was unusual to suggest something like this at the time, but since then, research on nanotechnology has boomed.

Now, we can easily expect the future of nanotech to have applications in energy storage, medicine, and even environmental protection. 

That said, there are still plenty of research gaps yet to be filled, with research into graphene and carbon nanotubes advancing the quickest.

But as Feynman proclaimed, still “there’s plenty of room at the bottom”- for creativity, innovation, and an exciting new future of materials. 

#2: Mycelium

I’ve had my eye on mycelium-based composites for a while. 

But what even is mycelium?

If you’ve ever seen a mushroom, think of it like the rest of the mushroom’s body. In reality, the mushroom you might be imagining is only the reproductive organ of the mycelium, meant to disperse spores to new places. 

Underground, in a dead log, or wherever it is growing, the mycelial network stretches far and wide. In fact, it is even considered the largest organism on earth (!).

However the wonders don’t stop there.

Combined, the production of concrete and steel contribute to approximately 15% of our global carbon emissions. 

Already, people are using mycelium to replace both of these, which release a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere every year. 

Furthermore, mycelium has been used in clothes, accessories, and even alternative meats. 

What’s left is to refine our production processes and explore the material properties of mycelium even more.

But who knows?

Maybe in 20 years, you will be living in a house made of mycelium bricks, wearing mycelium leather, and eating a hamburger made of mycelium and peas. 

#3: Carbon-sequestering Carbicrete 

Okay, so maybe I said some ugly things about concrete.

But let’s please talk about concrete’s precocious baby cousin: carbicrete. 

Right now, concrete is the most used substance on earth after water.

A key ingredient to concrete is cement, which emits 8% of the world’s carbon emissions. 

Enter: carbicrete. 

Carbicrete essentially allows us to make concrete without using cement, instead replacing it with steel slag as the primary binder and carbon dioxide as the activator. 

Steel slag is a by-product of the steel industry, so using it as a raw material minimizes industrial waste. 

Furthermore, using carbon dioxide as the activator removes carbon emissions from the environment and helps to mitigate climate change.

Ultimately, curing the concrete with carbon dioxide lets us sequester 1 kg of CO₂ per standard concrete block, which holds a lot of promise in the face of current emission trends.

Now just imagine what would happen if we adopted carbicrete on an even larger scale!

#4: Metamaterials

If you’re a fan of Harry Potter, I need to tell you something. 

Invisibility cloaks are real. 

And guess what?

It’s all thanks to metamaterials. 

These are artificial materials (so you can’t find them in nature) that were designed with certain properties in mind. 

Think: noise-cancelling barriers, cloaking devices, and super-lenses. In a lot of ways, these materials feel like the supernatural heroes of the material world. 

They are very much the stuff of comic books and Marvel movies!

But how will they save the planet?

So many ways!

For starters, they can help to increase energy efficiency, such as in solar panels or thermal regulation in buildings. 

Additionally, metamaterials can be used to develop lightweight and high-performance materials for applications like transportation. 

Also, they can be used for passive cooling and heating systems, water purification, and desalination. 

That said, there are still many challenges with metamaterials in terms of fabrication, design, and characterization. 

We still need to work to make them better. That goes without saying. 

But you already know, if you start to see scientists showing off real-life invisibility cloaks, that amazing things are happening. 

It’s enough to make me absolutely thrilled for the next 20 years!

Thought To Action 

1. Design a Life You’d Want to Live In: List three feelings or values (e.g., curiosity, calm, freedom) you want to feel more often. Now ask: What would a day designed around these look like?
2. Choose One Thing to Repair or Repurpose This Week: Whether it’s sewing a hole in your sock or reusing packaging in a creative way, practice seeing value where others see waste.
3. Imagine a Future Without Trash: Write a short paragraph or draw what your neighborhood would look like if nothing was disposable. What would change?
4. Audit Your Footprint (Literally): Check the label on your most-used shoes or clothes. What are they made of? Could a more sustainable material work instead?
5. Read About the Next-Gen Materials: Check out mushroom leather, mycelium bricks, or algae packaging. Explore how artists and engineers are already building that future.

Sources

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/381686851_A_review_of_applications_and_future_prospects_of_nanotechnology

https://pubs.rsc.org/aa/journals/articlecollectionlanding?sercode=na&themeid=ff357ff7-0458-45f1-b224-27a11965624b&utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/does-steel-and-concrete-needed-build-renewable-energy-cancel-out-benefits

https://www.theclimategroup.org/sites/default/files/2024-09/The%20Steel%20and%20Concrete%20Transformation%20-%202024%20market%20outlook%20on%20lower%20emission%20steel%20and%20concrete.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/18/namibia-homes-built-from-mushrooms-mycohab-mycelium?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://fungalbiolbiotech.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40694-021-00128-1?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0734975025000035?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://solve.mit.edu/solutions/8782

https://news.mit.edu/2025/mapping-future-metamaterials-0327?utm_source=chatgpt.com

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/384601877_Metamaterials_A_Comprehensive_Review_of_Design_and_Applications

The post 4 Weird Materials That Will Save The Planet appeared first on Green Also Green.

“I want to be a superhero, I want to be Spider-Man or Batman. Will you let me know if you have any connections? Let’s make it happen.” -Stephan James

LinkedIn is not the problem.

LinkedIn is not the problem; you are. 

Now, before you un-connect with me, hear me out.

So many of us are quick to say we hate LinkedIn. We hate how transactional it is, and how the way professional experience translates into a headline often feels like a sort of strange witchcraft. 

We hate that you can say one thing and be living another, and that it always somehow feels like the person you know IRL is not the one you see online. 

It feels fake, and we all know it.

There are lies, to be sure, and there is a lot of window-dressing. I’m not here to excuse that at all. 

But beneath all that, there is something else…

Today, I want to talk to you about the opportunity of LinkedIn, and by the time you have finished reading this post, you will wonder why you never took advantage of it. 

Furthermore, you will realize that 99% of us are using LinkedIn all wrong, and that with a few small changes, it can be transformed into your secret weapon for success. 

#1: LinkedIn arithmetic. 100 real connections > 500 random connections. 

Ah, the “500+ connections”. 

At the beginning of my freshman year of college, this was the Holy Grail of humblebrags. 

What surprised me, though, was that while everyone obsessed about the number, no one seemed too fussed about the quality. 

So in the end, what happened was that most of those “500+” connections were superficial and ultimately useless. 

They were not people rooting for you to succeed. They were not mentors or people you admired. In fact, lots of times, they were not even people whose profiles you had looked at. 

It was a status symbol more than a tool, and I quickly learned that seeing LinkedIn like this was a mistake. 

Since I downloaded LinkedIn less than I year ago, I eventually got to 500+ connections, but here are a few examples of bigger wins I achieved using the app:

• 9+ months of participating in a UC Berkeley lab focused on applications of carbon nanotubes
• 2 data analysis projects with a women’s health non-profit
• Free mentoring sessions with senior women in the fields I’m passionate about
• Doubling web traffic to my blog

How did I achieve these wins?

Firstly, by changing my mindset from quantity to quality. 

I sought to talk to people, to connect, and most of all, to learn. 

#2: Don’t ask for jobs. Ask for conversations. 

I am under no illusions; in almost every skill I could have honed, I am an amateur. 

I’m only a sophomore in college. 

I’ve only been alive on this planet for 20 years. 

Despite all that, I am armed with strong curiosity and genuine interest. 

So what do I do?

I give curiosity and interest. 

When you reach out on LinkedIn as someone hoping to advance and grow, people will line up to help you. 

When you reach out coldly, asking for a favor without having given one first, people will dismiss you with no guilt. 

#3: Give value to get value. 

Successful people get dizzying amounts of solicitations on LinkedIn. They are used to other people wanting something from them. 

So don’t try to take. Instead, try to give. 

Consider inquiring about what sorts of problems they face and whether they would let you help out. 

Maybe you have familiarity with a certain technical skill, like programming, Excel, or AutoCAD. Perhaps you know someone who could help them. 

Offer value to get value. 

Open LinkedIn & Leverage These Hacks Now.

Set a timer for five minutes. 

Ready?

Okay, first, scroll through all your connections, and pick 3 people who have recently been working on projects that you genuinely find cool. 

I’m talking projects you could fangirl about, maybe even projects you would dream about being a part of one day. 

Have you chosen your people?

Now it’s time to reach out. 

Tell them you are inspired by or interested in their work (be specific!), and then ask if they would be open to a 15-minute informal chat to discuss it more. 

Don’t ask about internships. Don’t ask about job openings. 

Just a chat.  

This isn’t about getting something for yourself. More so, it’s about connecting with people who truly inspire you. 

By connecting them, you will get insights into what they did to succeed and how you can get there too. Maybe it’s a reference to someone else in the field, or some reading material to explore.

Sometimes, you will even find that they need exactly the type of help you can provide, and an opportunity does emerge from the discussion. 

If it doesn’t, though, you have at least become a high-quality contact to reach out to in the future. 

What’s to say in a month that 20-minute chat hasn’t turned into a 10-week internship, a groundbreaking realization, or even a life-changing career pivot? 

The only way you’ll know for sure is if you give it a shot and finally stop hating LinkedIn. 

Thought To Action 

1. Ask “What If” Every Day: Start or end your day by writing one bold “What if…” question. What if your shoes were edible? What if your routines were designed for joy? These questions open space for unexpected insight.
2. Do a 5-Minute Redesign Challenge: Pick an object you use daily (a water bottle, backpack, phone case) and sketch or describe how you’d redesign it to be more circular, comfortable, or creative.
3. Make Space for Creative Input: Commit to one hour a week where you absorb inspiration—watch a documentary, visit a museum, or read outside your field. Creativity is fueled by unexpected collisions.
4. Redesign Something That’s Annoying You: Find one product, system, or space in your life that bugs you—and reimagine it. You don’t have to fix it in reality, just give yourself permission to sketch possibilities.
5. Start Your Future Job Library: Curate a mini reading list around your dream career or project. Not sure where to start? This post will show you how to learn from curiosity, not credentials.

Sources

No external resources were used for this post.

The post How To Not Hate LinkedIn (And Start Building *Real* Connections) appeared first on Green Also Green.