The Monthly Edit No. 02 | June | New York, running and reading

Hello from New York City! 👋 I am writing this as I am enjoying a beautiful week in NYC as I tagged along for the Mr’s business trip. It was definitely not in the cards – nor in the budget after the 3-week vacation in Japan earlier this year – to visit this year, but tagging along to a business trip significantly reduces the expenses. I am also working while here but I am making the most out of this “workation”. I’ve been working in the mornings – starting the days at 6 am due to jet lag and trying to get a bit of an overlap with European business hours is brutal – and then enjoying long afternoons in the city.

What have I been up to in New York

I am loving it so far and living my dream life. I am not on a crazy tourist schedule because I just don’t have the stamina for it, but I actually enjoy this slower pace I’m on. Strolling a bit, visiting some museums, enjoying coffee breaks and public spaces – no one does public parks and plazas quite as New York I’d say. These spaces are so well taken care of and so enjoyable to be at. My favourites so far have to be Bryant Park – where I’m writing this from – and Rockefeller Plaza. I am in total awe and feel so blessed to be able to experience it. And to be honest I actually kind of prefer it to a full on tourist experience because I feel like I am living and working here instead of rushing from one tourist attraction to the other – even if it’s just for just one week.

Even with the slower pace and only being free in the afternoons during the week, I managed to squeeze in a lot in one week. I ticked off plenty of items off my NYC bucket list. I had four museums on my list and the free afternoons were perfect for that especially given that being outdoors meant withstanding 30-35 C degrees. I visited the Guggenheim Museum and the MET on my own, and then once the Mr got free from his work meetings, we hit MoMA and the American Natural History Museum. My favourite has to be MoMA so if you are going it should be at the top of your list. I especially loved that it had a room dedicated to some of Brâncuși’s sculptures on display. I had missed the Brâncusi Exhibition at the Centre Pompidou while in Paris earlier this year so I was extremely excited to still get to see some of his work this year. I might be biased but I truly think his sculptures are the most beautiful art I’ve ever seen. If you are not familiar with his work then I highly recommend to have a read about the father of modern sculpture and his work.

Aside from immersing myself in art as much as possible, both the Mr and I wanted to run in Central Park. For the second part of our trip we changed our hotel to Midtown Manhattan and very close to the park so we squeezed in two beautiful morning runs. It was so ecstatic to join the crowd of Central Park runners and also a great way to explore the park and the city afterwards.

Worth mentioning is that we also managed to attend a Broadway show. I had not planned it in advance but decided on a whim and bought same-day tickets to watch Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (found at a reasonable price). The show was spectacular and the special effects truly made me feel like there was magic happening on the stage. The story and the numerous plot twists kept me on my toes and made it a great experience. If you are a Harry Potter fan and want to watch it – it’s also playing in London by the way – I would totally recommend it.

Other than that I walked a lot, worked from the beautiful and magical Public Library a couple of days, shopped a little (see below) survived almost exclusively on bagels, pastrami sandwiches and iced coffees and overall had an amazing time. I’ve also posted a few reels on Instagram so make sure to catch up with my adventures there.

A few words of inspiration

On my second day in the city, while taking an iced coffee break in Bryant Park, I saw a graduation ceremony being held in the park and since I was there I also heard the speech. Little side story here is that even though I have double Bachelor’s degree and a Master’s degree I’ve never attended a graduation ceremony. For my Bachelor’s one in Spain I didn’t bother going because I had already moved to Berlin and didn’t want to spend on the flights. Looking back now, I kind of low key regret not having the experience but it is what it is. As for my Master’s, it happened during Covid so there was no in person event.

Anyways, the speech referenced a quote that I wanted to share here too, for a small dose of inspiration. It’s by Jimmy Valvano, an American basketball player, coach, and broadcaster, from a speech given shortly before he died from cancer in 1993. Here is the link to the full speech and transcript.

“When people say to me, “How do you get through life?” Each day’s the same thing. To me, there are three things we all should do every day. If we do this every day of our life, you’re going to … What a wonderful … Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think, you should spend some time in thought. And number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears. Could be happiness or joy, but think about it. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”

Work thoughts

Decision making frameworks. I love systems or frameworks that help me simplify my work life. And the reality is that most of my brain power often goes towards decision-making. Which is also what often drains me the most. While good decision-making is a key skill to nurture, I sometimes struggle to make decisions as fast as I’d like to and spend way too much time overthinking. Over the years, I’ve discovered and used different decision-making framework, and in this old post you can find my favourite decision-making frameworks to make better and smarter decisions. For today’s edit I would like to extract the two key ones I tend to use most in my dat to day to both make product decisions but also to manage my own work and tasks.

The Eisenhower Matrix. This is perhaps one of the most known decision-making frameworks and simplest to use, yet extremely effective. The two dimensions that it applies are importance of a decision or task and urgency. It classifies tasks into four quadrants based on whether they are important/unimportant, and urgent/not urgent. It’s great to use for prioritising tasks and work. By applying it, you can easily define which tasks to address immediately, schedule, delegate, or delete.

The Impact x Effort Matrix. This one is a long-time favourite of mine that I use on a daily basis for a lot of things. I use it to prioritise my own work and the tasks I spend time on, but also for product decisions and product planning. Should we build a certain feature, or should we embark on a certain project? It’s great to understand what you should prioritise and when, and what you shouldn’t. It allows you to identify quick wins, big bets/projects, fill-ins and thankless tasks.

View after a run in Central Park

What I’m shopping for

Black structured blazer. You would think I have plenty of good black blazers. But you’d be wrong to think so. I have one beautiful vintage oversized blazer I shopped while on a trip in Bordeaux a few years ago and that I resurrected from the bottom of my closet earlier this year and I’ve been wearing on repeat since, see here and here. But aside from that I don’t really have any anymore. I had a couple of cheap ones from high street brands over the years that I ended up parting ways with. So for the last year I had a black blazer on my wishlist. I got a beautiful 100% wool blazer that is structured, slightly oversized and with a modern yet minimal style from Banana Republic on 5th Avenue while on sale (snatched it for half the price) and I love it.

Beauty. I’ve just placed my bi-annual discovery order on Cult Beauty, and re-stocked my holy grail detox shampoo from Ouai alongside trying a few other things. I am also getting a little summer gift bag with my order, which I am very excited about. I have to say I love Cult Beauty for their rewards system and all the edit boxes they do throughout the year.

Hair care. Speaking of beauty products, for the past year I’ve been using a few of the Ouai products and I love them. Their products have the best smell in the world, and the products work their magic with me. So much so, that even the Mr switched to using them – mainly the shampoo. My favourites are the detox shampoo and the leave in conditioner which I cannot live without anymore. Speaking of hair the other product I discovered last year and plan to buy full size is the Christophe Robin scalp scrub, which I previously had a small version of and absolutely loved and can totally recommend.

What I’m reading

What I’m currently reading. Since the last edition I read four books, which I am pretty pleased with. Two summer reads “The Hotel Nantucket” and “The Island” (quite enjoyed the first one and would recommend it for an easy beach read but not so much the second one). I also read Elizabeth Gilbert’s “The Signature of All Things” given that I loved “City of Girls”. It’s extremely well written but I am not sure I have yet made up my mind about how I feel about it. For my New York trip I also bought a few books set in he city and read “The Sun is also a Star” while taking coffee breaks in the parks.

Need a good book for summer? I have this old reel with my top 5 book recommendations for summer reads if you needs some inspiration. Top of my list are “Circe”, “City of Girls” and “Where the Crawdads Sing” though I have a few more that I would add to the list so maybe I will prepare a post with my favourite ones soon.

What else?

Running. I am back into running and oh my, it’s difficult to pick it up again after 3 years. My last proper run was a 10km run I did in 2021. And boy am I feeling it. I am slowly building up my stamina to get to an easy 5km run, but I won’t lie. It’s tough and slow progress. On the flip side, while it’s been less than a month, I’ve already packed in 15 runs and in three different countries – Germany, Czech Republic and the US. My most recent runs were in Central Park – total bucket list level achievement – and I am so happy and proud of myself for doing it. Granted, they were tough runs – most runs are still tough – especially because it was scorching in New York and even at 8 am we had almost 30 C degrees. Also, running has been such a great way to see the city. And that post-run iced coffee and bagel run was something else!

That’s it from me in this edition. Thank you for reading and stay tuned to more updates on the blog, I’ve an upcoming blog post with a bag review, my beloved Goyard St Louis tote where I spill all the beans. And I mean all the beans.

2 Comments

  1. Loved reading this post!
    I like the idea of Monthly edit, specially when it gives a sustainable pace to reflect and document. Thanks for sharing your experiences and knowledge.

    On a side note, just by reading your description of running in the Central Park, I feel like getting a run myself right now..

    1. Thank you so much for sharing! I do think I also prefer the slower pace for the monthly roundup indeed. Oh yes, running in Central Park was definitely a unique experience. Can’t wait to be back in NYC and do it again. It was such a magical trip! Hope you did squeeze in a run with the extra dose of inspiration (or else)! ☺️

Leave a Reply