Table of Contents

• Welcome Wagon

• The Inspiration Behind

• The Realization Forward

Welcome Wagon

If you know me, you know I’m not big on ‘catch phrases’, ‘buzz words’ or anything of the like. I certainly understand the sentiment around them, and even have my own ‘mantras’ like keep it simple that I strive to live by, but I think some of them have gone too far into the realm of over-speech or nothingness. How about those buzz words! wink

Still, I’ve recently adopted a new catch phrase that means more to me then I initially realized. My wife likes to decorate, it’s probably her main hobby. She’s great at it, in fact I’d say she’s an expert decorator. But she’s terrible at hanging pictures, artwork, those frilly things or anything of the like. And since I’m on my ‘teach a man to fish’ phase of life I try to help her rather than do it myself. So, I started telling her to Find Your Zero, the same thing that was said to me many moons ago. It felt like a Miyagi moment, so here’s the brief story behind it.

The Inspiration Behind

Back when I was really fresh in Residential Design - bright eyed, world was my oyster type deal, I worked with one of my original mentors Marcel who used to tell me the easiest way to design a wall to ceiling truss connection was to ‘find your zero’. That is find the 0-point. The Ground, the common point, the start and focus on that. Then, use a lil geometry, a lil intuition & a lil common construction practice to line up and perform my work.

All sounds just a lil complicated 🤦🏾‍♂️ but as a young, hungry, designer once I got it (understood) it made perfect sense. As my career grew, Marcel would start applying it to other things: a floor system, lining up a protractor on a drafting table, a measurement, etc and before long the phrase took on a life of it’s own.

The Realization Forward

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed there was a lil bit more wisdom in those words than initially suspected. Quite a lot in fact!

Find your zero can apply to many things - balance, well-being, what you deem to be success. It simply means ground yourself before you start your work so that you can focus and then perform. Simple. Nice words from a great man that stick with me to this day and I still use them both in design, and in life.

Oh and especially when hanging artwork!

find. your. zero.

Ground yourself and then focus and then perform.

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