Category: Good. Better. Done.

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Why A Side Project Can Be So Valuable.

If you’re still in school, or just out of college, you should really have a side project. If you’ve got a job or an internship for the summer, that’s great — but that gig probably isn’t showcasing your work in the way you want. It’s up to do to build your own showcase.

But you should also understand this: As someone who’s hired (and, at this moment, hiring), when I look at your side project, I’m going to be asking two questions:

1) Does that side project make you better at the thing you really want to do?

2) Does it reveal something about you?

Let’s take those one at a time:

Does it make you better at the thing you want to do? — If you’re applying to a newsletter job, and you’ve got a side TinyLetter, I’ll be intrigued. I’ll want to see how you’re applying relevant newsletter skills on a personal level: Are you running A/B tests? How are you measuring success, and what tools are you using to measure it? If you’ve been working in a non-editorial job for a few years (like marketing or advertising), having a TinyLetter as a showcase for your skills might be a good way to prove that you’re ready to transition to a newsletter job, and to show me that you’ve been honing your skills through that side project.

Does it reveal something about you? — Maybe you’re applying to that newsletter job but your side project doesn’t have anything to do with newsletters. Maybe — and I’ll use a random-but-real example from two of my old co-workers — you launched a podcast about the Baby-Sitters Club series.

Making that podcast won’t tell me a lot about your ability to edit a newsletter, but it’s still relevant, because it tells me a lot about the way you think and the way you take on big tasks. Just from listening to your podcast and talking with you about it, I’ll be able to learn a lot: What you’re interested in, how you approach a new project, what kind of tools you use to stay organized, and how you collaborate with others.

I can’t say this enough: Start something new. It’ll give you an outlet for your creativity, showcase your work — and it might help you get hired.

———

That stock footage at the top doesn’t have much to do with this post — I just kinda liked it. It comes via Unsplash, my favorite site for stock photos, and photographer Stephen Di Donato.

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Some People Specialize, Some Are Versatile.

A basketball team can put five players on the floor at one time. A baseball team can have 25 players on the roster on game day.

So how do you build the best possible roster with those limitations?

I’ve been fascinated by some of the ways teams are trying to address that question. In basketball, the buzzword of the moment is “positionless.” Instead of trying to find players that fit traditional roles — like a big, burly center to play in the post — teams are looking for players that can fit multiple roles. In today’s NBA, the ideal big man might be asked to dribble the ball up the floor, hit 3s, and also defend inside.

Of course, it’s not easy to find players who can do that. LeBron James is built like a center and passes like a guard — but he’s a once-in-a-generation type player. The challenge is how to find lesser talents that still bring a meaningful combination of skills — scoring, passing, defense — to the table.

Baseball started moving in this direction last season, when the San Diego Padres tried to use their backup catcher, Christian Bethancourt, as an occasional pitcher. (He got hurt in the first month and only played in eight games.) Still, the idea made a lot of sense. On a baseball team, you’ve got eight starting position players and five starting pitchers. That leaves 12 spots for your backups: 7 or 8 pitchers, and 4 or 5 players for the rest of the field. But if you can maximize those spots by having a pitcher who can also field, it opens up new possibilities for a team. Suddenly, you can keep an extra player on your roster — a sixth starting pitcher, an extra pinch hitter — instead.

This year, the Los Angeles Angels have a player on their roster who might really kickstart a trend towards versatility: Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese-born player who came to the majors this year with LeBron-like hype. He’s one of the Angels’ starting pitchers, and when he’s not pitching, he’s the team’s designated hitter. It’s only the second week of the season, but so far, it’s going incredibly well:

The old model would have forced Ohtani to specialize: You can hit, or you can pitch, but not both. But if Ohtani continues to play at a high level at two positions, this might change the game for good. It could take a few years for the impact to trickle down to college and high school ball, but eventually, you’ll see more players who can serve multiple roles on a team.

For anyone early in their non-sporting careers, it’s worth thinking about what’s happening here and how it might impact your career. If you had the choice, would you rather pitch yourself as a specialist, or as someone who’s versatile?

There are some limits to versatility: I remember pitching myself after college as a do-it-all backpack journalist, someone who could shoot video, write and report, handle social media, and edit stories. The truth was: I was a hard-working reporter, but barely proficient at the other skills. There’s a big gap between “I can produce video” and “I’m great at producing video.” Companies hire for excellence, not competence.

I wish I’d pitched myself as more of a compromise, a combination of versatility and focus. I was a strong writer, a good reporter, and starting to develop as a photographer. Those three skills made me an interesting candidate. But the more I added in — I talked about work I’d done with interactive graphics in Flash, and experience with data — the more it looked like I was trying to pad the resume.

The point is: Versatility can be an asset. It’s something that might get you in the door at a place that only has so many spots on their team. But if you’re going to pitch yourself that way, you’ve got to be good at everything you do — recruiters will see through it if you’re just adding fluff to your resume.

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You, Too, Can Make A Thing.

I was so excited to find a story in the New York Times Food section this week, titled, “A New Generation of Food Magazines Thinks Small, and in Ink.” Here’s how it starts:

Shayne Chammavanijakul, a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, felt let down by the way some magazines depicted Asian cuisines — framed as alien, styled with visual clichés and oversimplified. So she started her own.

Last summer, between her freshman and sophomore years, she fried corn chips and rolled burritos at Chipotle, saving her wages to pay a few contributors. She gathered enough financial and editorial support from friends and family to print 10,000 copies of the first issue of Dill, packed with articles about noodle dishes, from Indonesian soto ayam to Filipino pancit puso.

“We present things in a way that isn’t sensational,” said Ms. Chammavanijakul, 20, whose family has roots in Thailand. “Food isn’t bizarre or cool or something you do on a dare. We have no interest in exoticizing it.”

At a time when traditional food magazines are shrinking and cutting staff, Dill is part of an unexpected groundswell across the country: a wave of small, sophisticated print magazines, produced on a shoestring by young editors with strong points of view and a passion for their subjects — from the subtleties of regional Thai home cooking to the intersection of food and queer culture.

I read that story and smiled because… well, this is exactly what I’d be trying to do if I was still in college.

I’ve written before about stry.us — what we did right, what I did wrong — but I don’t think I’ve ever written about this before: Part of my plan in Biloxi involved a print magazine. (Somewhere back in a closet in D.C., there are still probably 50 copies in a box. At the top of this post, that’s a photo of the cover.)

Why a print magazine? When I was in Biloxi, I wasn’t quite sure what I was building towards. I didn’t know if stry.us was going to be a business, or just a showcase for my work. But I knew that either way, I needed to be able to showcase my best work — and the basic WordPress site I’d made together wasn’t quite it.

So I found a printer in Biloxi who liked what I was doing. I took my favorite 8 or 9 stories, and packaged them together into a more cohesive story about the Katrina recovery. The idea was that if I was meeting with a publisher, I could always pull a copy out of my bag and say, “This was what I was working on the whole time.”

If they asked who wrote the stories, I could say: I did.

If they asked who took the photos, I could say: I did.

If they asked who laid the thing out in InDesign, I could say: I did.

I didn’t want to be a designer or a photographer. But I did want to prove that I was capable of being more than a reporter.

The barriers to making something basic weren’t high: It took a lot of time, and a few hundred dollars. I wish I’d tried something like it in college: I think a group of reporters, editors, photographers, and designers could have made something pretty amazing — and it would have been a heck of a showcase for our work.

It doesn’t have to be a business. It doesn’t have to be anything more than an issue or two. It’s just something to show off your work.

When you make something new, you show us how you work — and what you can do.

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Here, Watch This.

I love a good behind-the-scenes video. This one’s about a Spike Jonze-directed Apple ad, and it’s absolutely fascinating to see how many people and moving parts (literally, the set moves) go into making something like this. I watched it and couldn’t stop thinking about how incredible the talent must have been on this production — the dancers, the coaches, the engineers. When you work with the best people, you can make something exceptional.

Watch it here.

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Try Weird Stuff.

I’ve written before about my love of the morning paper — the physical edition that shows up on my doorstep every morning. You never know when you’ll flip through the pages and find something unexpected.

For instance: the obituaries. I’d never go looking for them online, but in the paper, I try to make a few minutes for them. If these people made it to the New York Times print edition, they must have left some sort of mark.

Here’s one from this week that caught my eye:

“Ethel Stein, a weaver who created countless intricate textile artworks and one particularly influential sock puppet, died on Friday in Cortlandt, N.Y. She was 100.”

A particularly influential sock puppet? Go on…

“A more lighthearted part of her legacy came from a side business that grew out of her penchant for repurposing things that others might have discarded. She turned old socks into puppets, first for her son’s nursery school, then for a growing body of fans.

“She began selling them at a booth in a department store in Manhattan; a monograph published by her representative, Browngrotta Arts, says she sold 10,000. One wound up in, or on, the hands of a young puppeteer named Shari Lewis, who by 1953 was making a name for herself in children’s television in the New York market. Ms. Stein, the monograph says, designed several puppets for Ms. Lewis, who would later in the 1950s achieve national fame with Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse and the rest of her puppet pals.”

How incredible is that? An artist’s side project accidentally helped launch one of the most influential children’s TV shows in the country.

Reading about Ms. Stein, her side project reminded me so much of my old co-workers at BuzzFeed. Everyone there had something they did just for fun: a podcast, a newsletter, a weird Tumblr. Some people did physical crafts. Some people were in bands or choirs. Everyone did something.

Try something yourself: something fun, something weird. Make a new thing. You never know where it might lead.

———

That photo is by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

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Everything Will Go Wrong.

Watch this video of Stevie Ray Vaughan, the legendary guitarist, on “Austin City Limits” back in 1989. You’re about to see something extraordinary: About 30 seconds in, one of Stevie Ray’s guitar strings is going to break. He’s playing live, in the middle of a guitar solo. He’s recording for TV.

And he doesn’t miss a note:

Somehow, he plays through it, signals to his guitar tech for a new guitar, switches to the new instrument, and continues playing — like it’s no big deal.

Maybe because to a guitarist like Stevie Ray — someone with decades of experience on stage and in front of the cameras — it simply wasn’t.

All those hours of practice, all those hours on stage — they’re not just about helping you gain experience. They’re also preparation for all of the tricky situations that inevitably arise along the way.

There’s really only way to learn how to make things work when things go wrong: By screwing up, over and over again. The more things break in key situations, the more you learn how to handle it, and how to prepare for the next time.

That video of Stevie Ray? That wasn’t the first time — or probably even the hundredth — that he’d broken a string on stage. He’d been through it before, and so had his crew. They knew their roles.

Things will go wrong. Have you put in the work to learn what to do when it does?

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Here, Read This.

A former co-worker of mine, Natalie, wrote about the One-Minute Rule — the rule if that if you can complete a task in less than a minute (responding to an email, cleaning a countertop, making your bed), you should do it right then and there. Definitely worth your consideration:

Read it here.

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Make Sure Someone Holds You Accountable.

I’ve only ever lost weight once — from 2012 to 2013, when I decided to compete against my Dad in a $1,000, winner-takes-all competition we called The Belly Challenge. It worked for a few reasons:

1) I didn’t want to lose to my Dad, and I definitely didn’t want to write him a check.

2) I moved into a building with a gym on the ground floor, so I never had the excuse that it was too cold outside to go to the gym, or too far away.

3) I was living in Columbia, Mo., and Springfield, Mo., working a ton, and too busy to drink much.

But mostly, one thing changed that helped me lose the weight: Other people started holding me accountable for my actions.

That was the year I started working out a few times a month with a personal trainer. Having someone there to push me and encourage me really helped — I was willing to try workouts that I would never have tried without a workout partner. I also tried harder knowing that someone was watching (and judging!) me. With someone else there for my workouts, I couldn’t be lazy, and I couldn’t quit.

The other thing that helped: Dad and I held each other accountable. I’d text him after my workouts, and he’d text me after mine. If I found out that Dad had gone for a long bike ride or a swim, I knew I needed to make time for the gym, too. One of us couldn’t let up if the other one was still working hard.

Accountability is what I love most about working with a team — your colleagues are the ones who hold you accountable and make sure you’re performing at the level you’re capable of. They can encourage you when you need help, and help push you to do better work. They can be honest with you when your work is holding the team back.

It can be hard to take on big tasks on your own — but with a team, a shared set of goals, and a sense of accountability, you can really do great work.

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That’s me and Dad, back in 2011 before we started The Belly Challenge.

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How To Pick a College.

I remember the first time I visited Mizzou. It was towards the end of the winter — maybe late February or early March. There weren’t flights to Columbia back then, so you had to fly to St. Louis, and then take the MoX shuttle to town. (Meet near the mural of astronauts at baggage claim, grab your complementary 8 oz. bottle of water when you board the van, two hours to Columbia. I’d eventually learn that ride by heart.)

I was riding in the back row of the MoX, sitting next to a man in his 50s. We struck up a conversation. He’d gone to Mizzou, and he loved the place — loved the teachers, loved the school spirit, loved Columbia. If Mizzou had sat me down next to Truman the Tiger and played the fight song for two hours, they wouldn’t have found a better cheerleader for the university.

I went into the weekend curious about Mizzou — but not sold on it. I had always wanted to go to school in a college town. I loved schools with school spirit, and with big sports programs. I wanted to go to a place with a great J-school, and I wanted a place that was a little different than the D.C. suburbs.

Columbia, Mo., was certainly all that.

But I didn’t really know what I liked about Mizzou until I started talking to the people who knew it best.

It was that guy in the back of the MoX, telling me why he loved Mizzou. It was the reporter who took time while traveling on assignment to call and tell me what the J-school had done for him. It was the friend of a friend who made sure I knew about the lifelong friendships he’d made at school.

They helped reveal something special about the culture at Mizzou — and it’s only through hearing the stories of the people who’d been there that I knew where I wanted to go to college.

If you’re reading this and you’re picking a college, here’s my best advice: No matter where you go, your experience at school will be shaped by the people around you. Even at the biggest schools, you start to break down a campus into smaller communities: Clubs, teams, classes.

It always ends up being about the people.

So when you’re picking a school — or for that matter, a job, or a place to live — talk to the people who’ve been there. They’ll reveal far more about the place than any college guidebook or tour will.

One more story: I remember when my little brother was visiting colleges. He was down to two final schools: Michigan and Southern Cal. He visited Michigan in the dead of winter — early February, temps far below freezing. He visited USC a few weeks later — I don’t believe the temperature went below 72 or above 75 degrees all weekend.

We were sure he was going to pick USC.

And then he told us he was going to Michigan.

Why? Because, he said, he’d thought a lot about the types of kids he knew who were at Michigan, or who’d gone to Michigan. They were the kind of kids he wanted to be: Passionate, hard-working, humble, smart.

And if kids like that belonged at Michigan, then he did, too.

Look to the people, listen to their stories. They’ll guide you to a place that’s right for you.

———

I took that photo back in 2007 at a Mizzou baseball game.

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