Dan Oshinsky | danoshinsky.com

07/19/202307/19/2023

The Rules Haven’t Changed.

The rules I outlined for BuzzFeed in 2012: Shareability, personality, timeliness, and reliability.

I found a notebook full of notes from my earliest BuzzFeed days — I started writing these notes back in 2012. On one page, I outlined a few rules for success for BuzzFeed’s newsletter strategy:

• Be kind, show love, give lots
• Personality resonates.
• When they let you into their inboxes, they’re making you their friend. They want to listen.
• Make sure we give them great stuff
• Make a connection
• Shareability + personality + timeliness + reliability

And those rules still apply to newsletters today.

So there are two possible explanations for this:

1) I was some sort of email genius who accurately predicted the future of the space. (Very unlikely.)

2) The rules haven’t changed much for building great products over the past decade. (Ding ding ding!)

The latter holds true for any product I’ve worked on over the past two decades. The technology changes, the terminology changes — but the basic rules for creating great stuff remain the same.

And I don’t know what the future holds, but I’d bet that in a decade, if I look back on this list, these rules still won’t have changed.

———

That’s the photo from one of my old BuzzFeed notebooks. I found it while cleaning out my apartment earlier this year.

07/11/202307/11/2023

You’re Ready.

So often, I hear the same excuse for why someone isn’t going to launch a new project: I’m not ready.

And I’ll ask:

Are you ready to ask lots of questions?

Are you ready to try new things?

Are you ready to make mistakes?

Are you ready to put together your team?

Are you ready to learn?

Congratulations. You’ll figure out the rest as you go — but you’re more than ready to start right now.

———

That photo of the starting line on a track comes via Unsplash and photographer Markus Spiske.

07/01/202307/01/2023

Make Time for a Self Review.

It's not just about data. It's also about the bigger story.

This year, I started writing a quarterly review of my business.

Every quarter, I take 20-30 minutes to go into a Google Doc and jot down a few thoughts on the quarter’s work. What worked well? What am I excited about? What needs work? What’s on the horizon? I write it all down.

The more of these I write, the more I can track my progress over time. I’ve got my spreadsheets to show me the hard numbers — but the quarterly review is a way for me to track how I’m feeling about the business.

It doesn’t take much time, but as I progress, I’ll be able to better understand the trajectory of Inbox Collective — what I did and why I did it. It’s another tool to help me hold myself accountable and to build a better business.

———

The data is great, but it helps to be able to track the bigger story alongside it. To that point: At top is a photo of a chart, taken by Isaac Smith for Unsplash.

06/24/2023

It’s Probably Not a Crisis. You Just Haven’t Learned How to Handle It Yet.

A black MacBook pro shows a 404 error message.

Earlier today, I typed this very website into my browser — https://danoshinsky.com — and nothing came up.

There was an error message on screen. So I typed in a different URL, and then a third. Those pages loaded correctly — it was just my website that wasn’t loading.

A decade ago, this would’ve been a crisis for me. I would’ve spiraled, and started frantically Googling stuff to figure out a fix. It would’ve ruined my afternoon.

But I’ve seen a few things at this point. I’ve had website errors; I’ve dealt with a few tech situations. I’m no IT person, but I can handle a few small things.

So I went through the options, and within about two minutes, had figured out the issue. I hopped on the phone with my hosting service, and three minutes later, my website was up and running again.

It’s nice to know that I can handle certain small issues like this. But it’s also a nice reminder: The older we get, and the more stuff we run into, the easier it is to handle problems like this.

The first time you run into something, it’s a crisis. But the third time you’ve dealt with it? The fifth? The tenth?

It’s not a crisis — it’s an issue. It’s something small you can handle.

You’ll learn how to handle it, and the next time, it won’t seem quite so bad.

———

That photo of a 404 error page comes via Erik Mclean and Unsplash.

06/17/202306/17/2023

Things Always Change.

a photo of a green stoplight next to a red left turn arrow at dusk

Sometimes, change happens slowly. You start to feel the changes coming, but they’re not coming all that quickly. You can see the transition period happening. You can prepare for the change.

And sometimes, it just happens.

You’re looking around and notice that everything’s suddenly changed. No warning, no advance notice — it’s all different.

But no matter what changes, or how fast it changes, remember: Things will always change.

Change is inevitable. Be prepared.

———

Life is full of mixed signals. That photo of stoplights comes via Ian Anderson and Unsplash.

06/10/2023

Now Yourself More.

Mel Brooks, in a tuxedo, with his wife Ann Bancroft, talk with others at the 1997 Emmys.

I was reading this interview that Judd Apatow did with Mel Brooks for The Atlantic. If you know me, or if you’ve been a longtime reader of this blog, you know I love Mel. (I have written fondly about him many, many times.) The man’s lived an amazing life, so I always make time for a Mel interview or talk show appearance.

This latest interview closed with a fantastic back-and-forth between Mel and Judd:

Apatow: Your body of work is so enormous. How do you look at it now?

Brooks: I don’t look back at it. I simply don’t. I just know that we did a lot of good things.

Apatow: Well, there’s a quote from you where you said, “We should enjoy life; we should not future ourselves so much. We should now ourselves more.”

Brooks: Yeah.

Apatow: Has that always been your philosophy?

Brooks: No, I just made that up at the moment.

The closing punchline aside, it’s that line — “we should not future ourselves so much” — that stuck with me. I know I’m guilty of getting ahead of myself and worrying about what might happen in a year or two or five. But I don’t know what will happen in the future, and neither do you.

Stay in the moment. Enjoy the moment.

Now yourself a little more.

———

That’s a photo of Mel with his wife, Anne Bancroft, at the 1997 Emmys. It was taken by Alan Light, and reused here thanks to a Creative Commons license.

06/03/2023

Most of Your Ideas Are Bad Ideas.

Earlier this week, I found a notebook from my BuzzFeed days, and inside, a few pages in, found an idea for a newsletter that I never seriously considered launching.

The idea was for a joke newsletter, one I called “the Apocalypse newsletter.” On the page, I drew the landing page for the newsletter, with a big headline: “When the world ends, you’ll be the first to know!”

The idea first came, maybe a decade ago, during a series of conversations about breaking news alerts. It felt like so many other organizations sent breaking news alerts for the tiniest things. I felt like breaking news should be reserved for stuff that you couldn’t leave your house without knowing. And then I took it a step too far: What if we created a breaking news alert that was only sent if the world was truly ending?

What would we send the rest of the time? An occasional email highlighting stories that proved — jokingly, of course — that the end of the world was near.

This newsletter never went further than the piece of paper I drew it on. I never had a serious conversation about it.

There are a lot of ideas in that notebook. Some were real ideas that turned into really good newsletter products, like our lineup of Courses. Some were silly ideas that we launched and turned out well, like This Week in Cats. Some never got off the ground (an idea for a British TV-focused email). There are far more bad ideas in there than good.

And that’s OK.

Even the bad ideas get your wheels turning. It’s easy to draw a line between that joke idea — One breaking news alert, sent at the end of the world! — and a real conversation, one I’ve had many times over the years, about what really constitutes breaking news. Even the bad ideas still led to deeper thinking.

Let the bad ideas come. Jot them down. Give them consideration.

You never know when that truly bad idea might lead you to something worth pursuing.

———

That’s the sketch of the Apocalypse newsletter landing page. A bad idea, yes, but so are most of my ideas.

05/29/2023

It Never Gets Easier.

There’s this lie I’ve been telling myself for the past decade: Once I get through this next stretch, things will get easier.

But I know what’s going to happen. After this stretch of work, after this stretch of travel, after this stretch of busyness, things aren’t going to slow down. Things aren’t going to stop.

There’s always going to be more.

Things don’t magically get easier at the end of these stretches. There will be new challenges, new problems.

There’s always more.

But the good news is: Even though it doesn’t get easier, that doesn’t mean it’ll get harder. You’re always learning and figuring out new ways to solve problems. New obstacles appear, but you’re also learning more about how to get past them.

No, it never gets easier. But you’ve gotten through hard things before. You’ll get through these, too.

———

That photo of a boulder comes via Callum Parker for Unsplash.

05/20/2023

Invest in What’s Next.

A bronze bull sculpture stands proudly on Wall Street, representing the resilience and power of the financial markets. This iconic symbol serves as a reminder of the bullish optimism that drives the world of finance.

At age 30, in my annual Things I Believe post, I wrote:

You don’t need to be able to predict the future — but it helps if you can see what’s coming around the corner.

I certainly don’t know what the future holds. But I think I can see certain pieces that will matter in the decade ahead. I think small, curated, in-person events will matter. I think relationships will matter. I think expertise will matter. I think that there will still be a desire to learn new skills — that will matter.

And so I’m starting to make investments in what’s next: Dinners, writing, workshops, partnerships.

You should do the same. Try to identify what’s coming in the next month or the next year or the next decade, and start to make moves to invest in things that will help you in whatever comes next.

Maybe that means starting to have conversations with others who operate in the space you want to move into.

Maybe that means finding ways to level up your skills in a certain area.

Maybe that means making a little time to work on the ideas you have.

Maybe that means launching something small to start to carve out your niche.

Maybe that means finding partners to work on these ideas.

Whatever’s next is coming. Time to make your investments now.

———

That’s the eye of the famous bull on Wall Street. This post isn’t about that type of investing, but it still seemed like a nice fit for this blog post. The photo was taken by Redd F for Unsplash.

05/13/202305/13/2023

Busy vs. Occupied.

I was talking with a friend the other day, and he told me that something was annoying him. He’d been talking to his parents, who are both retired. He’d asked if they could help him with this big task, but they said they couldn’t — they were too busy.

“I don’t get it,” he told me. “They’re having lunch or dinner out every day, they’re playing pickleball, they have volunteer projects. That’s all stuff they’re choosing to do! But I’ve got work and family stuff. I’m the one who’s really busy!”

They’re not busy, I told him — just occupied. (Too occupied to take on this one task, unfortunately for him.) But it’s easy to confuse “busy” and “occupied.”

And it reminded me of something I used to do — or, if I’m being fully honest, that I occasionally still do — when I want to feel busy. I’d collect a bunch of small tasks and put them on my to-do list. And I’d cross them off. At the end of the day, I’d feel like I’d accomplished something — look at all the tasks I’d completed!

But then I’d look at the bottom of the list, and there would be one big task still on my list. It’d been the one thing I had to accomplish, and I hadn’t even started it. Deep down, I knew that I was only taking on all these other tasks to try to make myself feel better about avoiding the big task.

But occupied and busy aren’t the same thing. And sometimes, you have to stop what you’re doing and just do the work.

Might as well do it now.

———

A pickleball photo seemed appropriate for this post. That one was taken by Patrick Hodskins for Unsplash.