Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1208

I’m late. I’ve been meaning to write this post all week. I think #FirstSevenJobs is a great trending meme. It shows that careers and life are often a non-linear journey. It’s also not all privilege. Many (most?) successful people started off from very humble beginnings.

But as I was trying to list out my first seven jobs, I came to the realization that I have done a lot of different things for money and out of interest before I settled into my career. Many of them also overlapped each other and I couldn’t quite remember which came first. I also worked all throughout University.

So I’m going to break the rules. Rather than only list my first seven jobs, I’m going to list all of the gigs I took on before getting into the business I’m in today. Like Seth Godin though , I’m in a way thinking of these more as projects, than as jobs.

Here’s my list:

1. Bagged and carried people’s groceries at Sobeys
   

2. Shovelled dirt at a green house
   

3. Sales Associate in computer department at Staples
   

4. Traveling Sales Representative for Hewlett-Packard

5. Sold burnt CDs at my high school (until everyone else had a CD burner and I lost my unique value proposition)

6. Built custom computers (anyone remember when overclocking was a thing?)

7. Mover (usually for offices)

8. Sales Associate at Sony Store (these stores no longer exist)
   

9. Started online community for students at StudentLifestyle.com (I clearly didn’t execute as well as Facebook)

10. Model/actor with Ford Models (included one summer in Taipei and Hong Kong)

11. Waiter at a Thai restaurant on Queen Street (I lasted 1 week; I hated serving people)

12. Started daily photoblog at bdonn.com (shut down about 15 years ago)

13. Nightclub promoter
    

14. Paid DJ at exactly 1 wedding

15. Sales Associate at trendy clothing store
    

16. Sales Associate with Telus Mobility dealer (sold mobile phones)
    

17. Security Guard (paid reasonably well and gave me time to study in undergrad)
    

18. Intern at Canadian Architect (magazine)

19. Intern Architect

20. Teaching Assistant at the Wharton School
    

21. Started global real estate listing platform (failed)

22. Development Intern (real estate)

Looking back, it’s probably no surprise that I studied computer science before studying architecture.

What’s your list?

Please share in the comment section below. Feel free to keep it to seven if that’s what you prefer. But I found that difficult.

I was out with for a bike ride the other night with a good friend of mine and we were talking about all of the creative and social media-based projects that we would like to do. Everything from a daily vlog to a regular podcast. Sadly there are only so many things one can focus on.

If you’ve been reading this blog since the beginning of this year, you’ll know that I’ve been trying to write a book on “becoming a real estate developer.” I believe there’s a lot of interest in this topic. It’s the number one question I receive from readers: “How do I become a developer?”

But with everything that’s going on this year , I have decided to turn the research and writing I have done to date into a blog series that I’m calling BARED (Becoming A Real Estate Developer). I’ve interviewed a lot of fantastic people in the business and I want to get that information out there.

The focus of the series – which was the intent of the book – is to uncover the early decisions and first projects that these now successful developers made and took on. In other words, it’s less about their current successes and more about what they did to get there.

So no book. But expect to see the first BARED post very shortly. I think I’ll start with 3 posts and then gauge the response.

I am a big believer in making things. 

That could be writing a blog post, recording a podcast, coding an app, designing a building, making something tangible, or whatever. It is the act of creating something. And it’s one of the reasons I love what I do. At the end of the day, I have had a hand in (hopefully) creating something awesome that didn’t exist before.

I don’t think everyone feels this way but, for me, when I don’t block time to “make things” I can sometimes feel antsy. I need time to do creative things. It makes me feel like I’m being productive. It makes me feel like I’m producing output, as opposed to just sitting in meetings and making sure everything is on track. Maybe that’s the architect in me.

Paul Graham describes these two mindsets as that of a manager and that of a maker. And in a great essay published in 2009 , he talks about how different these two people’s schedules can be. Below is a longish excerpt that I think you’ll find valuable for life and business.

“There are two types of schedule, which I’ll call the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. The manager’s schedule is for bosses. It’s embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour .

When you use time that way, it’s merely a practical problem to meet with someone. Find an open slot in your schedule, book them, and you’re done.

Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

I find one meeting can sometimes affect a whole day. A meeting commonly blows at least half a day, by breaking up a morning or afternoon. But in addition there’s sometimes a cascading effect. If I know the afternoon is going to be broken up, I’m slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning. I know this may sound oversensitive, but if you’re a maker, think of your own case. Don’t your spirits rise at the thought of having an entire day free to work, with no appointments at all? Well, that means your spirits are correspondingly depressed when you don’t. And ambitious projects are by definition close to the limits of your capacity. A small decrease in morale is enough to kill them off.”

This really resonates with me. It’s a great reminder, regardless of which schedule you’re currently on. Because even if you’re firmly ensconced in one of the two camps, chances are you work with people in the other one. And understanding where they’re coming from is important.

Paul then goes on to talk about speculative business meetings in his essay. These are the “let’s grab coffee” meetings. They’re costly if you’re on the maker’s schedule, but they’re expected if you’re on the manager’s schedule. I have learned to cap these throughout the week. They can easily overwhelm a calendar.

The big takeaway for me after reading Paul’s essay is that – if you make things – you have to be draconian about blocking time for that. I completely agree that even one meeting can derail an ambitious make session. So I am going to work harder at doing just that.

Would you consider yourself to be a manager, maker, or both? I aspire to be both.