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It’s a Joy. You Just Have to Be There for It.

My son and I were driving to school the other day, and he started to say his goodbyes as we pulled out of the driveway. He said goodbye to the house, goodbye to our neighbor’s dog. And then, spotting something by our front door: “Goodbye, pumpkins! I love you! Have a good day!”

He is such a sweet, wonderful kid, and I’m so glad I wasn’t too busy fiddling with my phone to miss it.

I find that he is full of amazing little moments lately. Every week, he does something I’ve never seen before.

The challenge, of course, is that we spend a lot of time together, and yes, toddler time can be dull. I try to put my phone away as much as I can, but I’m certainly guilty of looking at it while he’s there, or of reading a book or generally letting my mind wander while we’re together at home.

But I try to be present as much as I can, because every once in a while, my son says goodbye to the pumpkins, and it’s the cutest thing he’s done in his entire life.

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Those are our pumpkins, which I really do need to take to the recycling center to compost. They’re getting a bit gnarly after a few weeks outside!

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You Don’t Have to Listen.

I just finished the book, “Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!” — it’s an oral history of the movie “Airplane!” I didn’t know much about the three guys behind the movie: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker. They were friends who grew up in Wisconsin together. They started a sketch comedy show in Madison, then moved the entire thing to Los Angeles. From there, they made their first movie, “Kentucky Fried Movie,” before eventually hitting it big with “Airplane!”

But throughout the book, they shared that they had a few ideas that might have been huge:

When we still thought of ourselves as a TV sketch group, we had the idea of doing a national show with comedy sketches and musical acts. It was essentially the idea for “Saturday Night Live.” We took it to our William Morris agent, and she said, “Nah, that’s not a good idea.”

Stupid — not her, us for listening.

It’s a nice reminder that you should listen to your gut. Like with “Kentucky Fried Movie.” They wanted to film a teaser of the movie — 10 minutes of sketches that they could show to studios. They couldn’t get someone else to fund the thing, so they put up the money to film it themselves. That got them the funding for the movie, which went on to make more than $7 million at the box office.

Some ideas are a little ahead of their time. If you believe in it, go for it.

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Where Do You Invest?

The photo of the sticky notes saying, "Time," "Money," and "Love"

I put these sticky notes by my desk earlier this year. It’s cheesy, but they say: “Where do you invest your…”, and there are three things listed:

• Time
• Money
• Love

And anytime I start to get sucked a little too far into my work, I think about where I’m making those investments. Maybe I need to go volunteer. Maybe I need to turn down that next project to make time for the family. Heck, maybe I just need to get outside.

But it always reminds me that I’m more than just my work.

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Take More Swings.

Simon Castro gets into the windup in the San Antonio's 2-1 victory over the Frisco Rough Riders on May 23, 2010.

About a decade ago, I made a commitment to start writing more on danoshinsky.com. It was a small thing — the goal, at first, was just to have a place to write. I was in a job at the time that involved a lot of technical writing (subject lines, captions, stuff for SEO), but I wanted a place where I could do my own thing and share what I was learning.

So I made a commitment to write once a week.

And one of things you learn when you start writing once a week is that some posts are good, some are great, and some are lousy.

But you also learn: By taking more swings, you have more chances for success.

Let’s lean into the baseball analogy here. Let’s say I hit .300 on my posts — three out of every 10 posts is something I’m super proud of. More swings means more opportunities for success.

A hit rate of .300 on 12 posts means I’d have four hit posts a year.

But by writing weekly, I’ve got 52 posts — which means a hit rate of 17 posts.

Could I go further? Maybe I could up my outage of posts. If I somehow wrote 365 posts — and I feel dizzy just thinking about writing that much — I’d have 109 hits in a year. (Though honestly, if I wrote that much, I wonder if my hit rate would naturally go down. More output doesn’t mean I’d be consistent with the quality of my writing.)

But the point is: It’s a good thing to take more swings. Not everything is a hit, and that’s OK. But every time I take a swing, I’ve got a chance to do something great.

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I took that photo at a San Antonio Missions minor league baseball game back in May 2010. The pitcher is Simon Castro, who went on to pitch parts of three seasons in the majors with the Chicago White Sox, Colorado Rockies, and Oakland Athletics.

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It’s One Day.

A Denver hockey player fires a puck at the goal.

One of my favorite things to do after one of my teams loses is to check the message boards or comments where fans of that team post.

After a win, fans are always in a good mood. Their team won, the team’s players are heroes. It’s just one win — but hey, this probably means we’re going to win it all!

But after a win, everyone’s on their worst behavior. The quarterback can’t win the big one! The point guard needs to be benched! The pitcher should be cut!

It’s an odd tradition, I admit. Why read the comments after losses? But I like to do it as a reminder: We’re never as good as we are on our best days, and never as bad as we are on our worst days.

And today? It was just one day.

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That photo of a hockey game, featuring Denver University and the University of Minnesota-Duluth, comes via photographer Logan Weaver.

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Find Your One Liner.

Pete Carroll signs a USC football helmet in 2010.

There was a wonderful story the other day from Ben Malcolmson, right-hand man for NFL head coach Pete Carroll, in which he wrote about finding your true identity. He told a story about a talk that Pete once gave:

During his talk that day, Pete asked the room: “How many people here have a philosophy for life or for work?”

Probably three-quarters of the room raised their hands. Then he asked: “How many people could tell me that philosophy in one line?” All but three or four arms bashfully went down. Pete called on one of the people who had kept their hand raised and had them share their philosophy in front of the whole room.

For the longest time, I’ve had a simple one: “Find the things you love and the people you love and make time for both.” Whenever I feel a little lost or uncertain, that one liner helps remind what I need to do to get back to a good place.

Malcolmson has some suggestions on how to find your one liner. It’s worth taking the time to try to find yours.

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That photo of Carroll was taken in 2010, when he was the head coach at USC. It was taken by Warwick’s Books, published on Flickr, and used here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

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Finding the Right Signals.

Blurred out faces on a Zoom call, with a green coffee mug in the foreground.

I’ve done a few AMAs on Zoom this year. These are private calls where teams can join and ask me, well, anything. They don’t tell me what they’re asking in advance. They show up, surprise me with questions, and give me the chance to share a few ideas back.

They’re a lot of fun to do — and I’m especially thrilled when I get asked a question and I have a link — or maybe even a few — from Inbox Collective that I can share to help answer it. 

A few years ago, when I started publishing original stories on the site, I told myself that I wanted to use Inbox Collective to answer the big newsletter questions that I hadn’t seen answered elsewhere. And I’m finding through these AMAs that I’ve done a pretty decent job of that!

I’m always looking for signals that I’m on the right track. Those could mean page views or email replies or client inquiries, but sometimes it’s the unexpected signals — like having plenty of links to share on Zoom calls — that are an indicator that I’m doing something right.

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That photo of a blurry Zoom call comes via David Montgomery and Unplash.

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Keep Betting on Yourself.

15 years ago, I quit my job at a TV station, moved to Biloxi, Mississippi, set up a basic website, and started publishing stories about the five-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I was my own reporter, editor, photographer, publicist, IT team — I did it all. The end result was a fellowship, which led to more reporting in Springfield, Missouri, and then that led to my gig at BuzzFeed.

I bet on myself, and I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today if I don’t make that bet.

But not all bets are big. Inbox Collective was barely a few weeks old when I went to a journalism conference in New Orleans in September 2019. I told my wife that I wanted to host a happy hour for readers of my newsletter. I didn’t have any idea how many people would show up or even if any would show up — but my bet was that if I met some people, something good would come from it.

50 people RSVPed. A few no-showed, a few brought an extra friend. I ended up spending about $400 on drinks. (Thanks to everyone who bought happy hour beers and not full-priced cocktails!)

But most importantly: I landed five clients from that one happy hour.

Anytime I feel stuck, I try to remind myself: Keep betting on yourself. Place small bets, and place big ones. It’s worked before; it may work again.

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I took that photo in 2010 in Pass Christian, Mississippi. It’s of a bust of W. Dayton Robinson, whose $2 million donation helped City Hall expand after Katrina.

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You Can Do More Now.

We went on a hike this weekend. It was only four miles, but it took four hours — we started at about 8,000 feet, then went more than 1,000 feet up a mountain, all while I carried a two-year-old in a carrier on my back.

And as we went up, I kept thinking: There’s no way I could have done this last year.

Last year, we did some hikes around Utah, but rarely more than an hour at any one time. We just got too tired to do any more than that.

But the more we hiked, the stronger and more capable we’ve gotten. We can hike stuff now that would’ve been impossible not all that long ago.

All that work opened up new doors, new possibilities.

Keep going.

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That‘s the view near the top on our hike at Alta. Looking down, you can see another ski mountain, Brighton, in the distance.

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Make Time For It.

Last summer, I set a weird business goal for the year ahead: I wanted to try to play golf or go skiing at least 50 times over the course of the calendar year, starting September 1st.

And you might be thinking, “Dan, that’s not a business goal! That sounds like a personal thing!” But for me, it represented an evolution of my business. I love doing this work because it gives me flexibility to do the things that I love outside of work. But if I’m not actually doing the stuff that I love, it means I’m taking on too much with Inbox Collective.

So it’s the end of the summer, and it’s been a year. How’d I do?

This year I hit 25 days of skiing, and 22 days of golf.

(I tracked everything in a Google Sheet, if you’re curious.)

Yes, I came a little short: 47 days, not 50. But I’m still so happy with that number — it’s more skiing and golf than I’ve ever done in a single year! Plus, I’ve got a kid (who isn’t quite old enough to go skiing or play golf with me, though he did come out a few times to help “drive” the golf cart), so maybe in a year or two, getting to 50 days will be easier.

It’s not easy to make time for big things like this — even once a week was a challenge! But getting so close to the goal means I’m on the right track.

Here’s to more time outside of work, more time for yourself, and more time doing the things that you love.

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That’s Sally and I at lunch at Alta on a spring ski day. Nothing quite like skiing on a Monday instead of working!

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