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I Am 27 Years Old. This Is What I Believe.

I am 27 years old, and I think I’m on the cusp of something very big. This year, I see amazing things on on the horizon. This can be the year my team at BuzzFeed turns our little newsletter project into something huge. The groundwork has been laid. Now it’s about putting in the work and finding new people to help take us to the next level.

And then there’s everything that’s happening at home — all of it big and wonderful and scary and amazing. 27 has already brought such great things, and I know there is more still to come.

This isn’t quite like the versions of this post I’ve written before. Those posts were different: at 24, feeling young and still learning to do the work; at 25, just days before I got a job offer in New York that would change everything; and at 26, as I started to truly find my place. Those years were about the slow, often awkward transition that happens as your college years fade away and your 20s really hit — with all of the responsibility that comes with it.

And so at 27, I’m embracing a brand new sort of shift. I’m not trying to prove that I belong here anymore. I do belong here. I feel grounded in who I am, I feel confident, and I believe that I have the right people behind me. So I want to use 27 to set big, ambitious goals and then blow right past them.

27 feels like the year I make the choice to say, Fuck it, why not me?

Over the past year, there are certain things I’ve come to believe hold true. I know that my beliefs will continue to change. I know that I will change.

But here, at 27, is what I believe:

You should ask for more.

Nothing good comes from setting the bar low. Aim big.

The best shit is hard to do, but we should try to do it anyway.

Anyone can have a good idea. Anyone can find the money to back it. But the only thing that really matters is the leadership behind it.

We need more people who want to learn how to lead.

People can always learn new skills, but not if they don’t already know how to do the work. Find people to stand beside who value the work the way you do.

It’s OK to cut things out that you don’t believe in anymore.

It’s OK to say “no.”

Great work starts with setting great habits. A lot of the work is about doing the same stuff over and over again. Even on the days where you don’t feel like it.

People get tired of success. Don’t believe it? Go ask any college football fan who just saw their coach fired for “only” winning 75% of his games.

Don’t mess with happy.

Enthusiasm is a wonderful, contagious thing.

Good things come from messy situations — if you know where to look.

You learn the most about people when you go on big adventures with them.

We’d all be happier if we found five or 10 days a year to celebrate with people we love. There are plenty of good opportunities — college football tailgates, Friendsgivings, long weekends — but we could all find more reasons to get together with friends and family.

You don’t have to be serious to be successful. Some of the best people I know are the silliest. That’s not an accident. They’ve figured something out.

A lot of life is just making choices and learning to live with them.

And most of all: The things that make you feel the best are the easiest to do: Saying thank you, offering someone a compliment, writing a friend a kind note. This is the easiest stuff to do. We can always do more of it.

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Staying Ahead Of The Line.

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Here’s another hard truth about doing the work: It’s largely about setting goals and accomplishing goals. And accomplishing goals is really freaking hard.

The work usually goes like this:

1. You set your goals.
2. You start accomplishing some of your goals.
3. You feel great about how much you’ve accomplished already.
4. You feel like you’re accomplishing so much so fast!
5. You look at the calendar and realize that it’s almost the end of the year and you’ve still got a million things left to do.
6. You flail wildly and struggle to the end of the year.

And this is in a good year.

As soon as you set your goals, you basically become Missy Franklin, the swimmer in this GIF:

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The yellow line represents the world record pace. In order to beat it, she has to stay ahead of that line. And no matter how fast she goes, she can’t seem to get ahead of the yellow line.

This is the nasty secret: You won’t ever really get ahead of the yellow line. You rarely get to feel like you’re way ahead your goals, because — and this is really, insanely annoying — as soon as you do beat your goals, you’re going to set new, more outrageous goals. And then you’ll flail again in hopes of catching up to those.

You set the bar, hit that new height, and reset everything. But you never really get ahead.

Mentally, it’s a massive adjustment — there are no true end goals, just carrots that you’re forever chasing down the road. But over time, you learn to adjust. You learn to celebrate your smaller victories, and to cherish the really big accomplishments.

And then you go and chase the next big goal. That’s just how it is.

That GIF of Missy Franklin breaking the world record in the backstroke at the 2012 London Games comes via this YouTube video.

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Once You Display A Skill, You Own It.

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My new favorite thing comes from — of all places — an ESPN article about the Kansas City Royals. Writes Jonah Keri:

“‘Once you display a skill, you own it.’ Fantasy baseball guru Ron Shandler coined that expression, which essentially means that once a player shows the ability to do something in baseball (hit home runs, strike guys out, etc.), he maintains the potential to show that skill again in the future. That applies to displaying a particular skill in the minor leagues. While phenoms like Mike Trout can spoil us with their ability to dominate almost from day one in the big leagues, the reality is that even minor league superstars can take several years to truly blossom in the majors. Still, those dormant skills often resurface over time.”

I freaking LOVE this idea. I’m obsessed with it.

“Once you display a skill, you own it” means that if you can write, if you can dance, if you can play the piccolo while juggling, the expectation is that you’ll be able to show off those skills in the future — and can even get better at it. Maybe you won’t be incredible at it right away, but with work, you could be.

And “Once you display a skill, you own it” also means that the sooner you show off those skills, the sooner the people you want to work with are going to invest their time and money and energy into helping you develop — and eventually own — those skills.

But it’s not enough to say you have the skills. There’s a difference between telling me you’re a photographer and showing me. I’ll put the time into working with (and maybe even coaching) the latter, but the former won’t get much more than a courtesy glance.

Show me what you can do. Even if it’s just a glimpse at what you can do. The sooner, the better.

That photo of former Kansas City Royals pitcher David Riske comes via Flickr’s @flyfshrmn98.

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The Frame Matters.

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Seven years ago, The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten conducted an interesting experiment. He took one of the world’s best violinists, Joshua Bell, and had him perform on a Friday morning during rush hour at a subway station in Washington, D.C. He didn’t tell anyone who Bell was. As Weingarten explained in his article:

“His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities — as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”

The simple, shocking answer: No.

As Weingarten went on to point out, maybe the end result wasn’t all the surprising. If he’d told passerbys that Bell was a famous violinist, would they have stopped? Probably! But they had no context for Bell, other than that he was playing a subway station. And playing a violin at a subway station isn’t exactly a indicator of fine musical talent.

Which leads to another big question: How do you recognize what is great if you don’t have the proper frame for it?

That’s the challenge for anyone who wants to product amazing work. It’s not enough to merely create the work. You also have to include the context to show everyone why it’s so amazing. You have to answer certain questions: What’s it an improvement on? How does it help me? And showing that can be a real challenge.

But it’s an essential challenge. Without it, there’s no context — and without it, your work might just go unnoticed.

That photo of a picture frame comes via Flickr’s LUH 3417.

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Bye For Now, Twitter.

bye, Twitter

I’m not going to write a long thing about Twitter here. It’s been written before, and from Twitter users far more insightful than me (including here and here and here and here, and that’s just a small sample).

But what I will say is: Especially in the last year, I’ve realized that Twitter frequently makes me sad. Or angry. Or frustrated.

I log into Twitter, and I leave mad about the world.

What I loved about Twitter early on was that it helped me discover interesting things to read or watch, and interesting people to talk to. But I don’t feel that way anymore. Right now, when it comes to discovery on the internet, I’m more excited about apps or email newsletters.

So here’s a very quiet goodbye to you, Twitter. Maybe I’ll be back one day. Maybe not.

Anyway, bye for now. Six years is a long time since that first tweet:

That original artwork at top comes via Flickr’s Pete Simon.

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Wanting To Skip Ahead.

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Sometimes, when I’m in the middle of a big project that’s still got more work to do, I just want to hit fast-forward and get right to the end — to the “good” part.

I never feel this way at the start. At the start of something, I’m excited! I’ve got ideas, and ambition, and lots of momentum. I have a concept in my head of how things will pan out, and I can’t wait to get there.

But something happens once I get into the work: I get a little antsy. I want to skip ahead to the part where everything’s working. This happens all the time: I’m bogged down in the work of all of it, and I want to skip ahead to the reward and see how it all pans out. Did I succeed? Did my predictions come true? And once I’ve hit that finish line, what’s the next series of steps and goals I’ll be shooting for?

This is natural, especially when there’s a lot of amazing stuff in the works. You remember the “Harry Met Sally” quote: “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Take Meg Ryan out of that sentence and insert your own big project or ideas, and the same is true.

But that’s not how it works, of course, and I always eventually realize that. You have to go through the tedious, hard stuff. Great companies get founded because of the tedious, hard stuff learned along the way. Great writers and thinkers and people get to that level of greatness because of the stuff learned along the way.

There is no fast-forward button, because to fast-forward to the results is to miss everything valuable that’s learned between points A->B.

So I always get back in there and keep doing the work, even if it feels like I’m miles away from where I want to be. Maybe I’m really closer to a major breakthrough than I think — maybe you are, too.

That photo of a VCR comes via Flickr’s Rob Ketcherside.

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United, We Stand.

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This is something I’ve written about before — waiting for permission, as opposed to just going out and doing stuff — but I had a funny moment last week that made me think of it again:

I went to a show at Lincoln Center here in NYC. It was a free show, and one of my favorite New York bands, the Lone Bellow, was playing.

And everyone there — EVERYONE — was seated.

No matter what the band did, they couldn’t get the crowd to stand up. They asked, and they implored, and they stomped around and played. They never got mad about it, but having been to a Lone Bellow show before, I’m pretty sure they would have been happier had everyone stood up and danced.

And then with three songs left, a few people walked up to the front of the stage and started to dance. Ushers let them stay. And then more people walked up. And then from the back, I could see people pointing and gesturing: “Hey, let’s go up there, too!”

By the end of the show, there were a few hundred people in front of the stage, dancing.

I’m not sure why people didn’t go up earlier. I’m not sure what they were waiting for.

But beyond the matter of permission, there was another thing: When these fans were all seated and spread out, it was tough to tell how many true fans there were at the show. But when they all got together in front, it was obvious: The band had a big following.

Just the act of bringing those people together — a few groups of friends here and there joining to make a pretty big crowd — made a huge difference in the way the rest of the audience reacted to the show. Others started dancing. And when the show ended, the band got a standing ovation.

All those people coming together to enjoy the show made a huge, huge difference.

When you’re putting fans behind a piece of work, I think there’s a lot to learn here. Get those fans organized. Give them something to get excited about. And let them be visible — together is always better than alone.

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Don’t Stop Now.

I continue to be amazed at how often people stop — just stop.

These are people who say they love what they do, and are passionate about making it work. People who’ve started something.

And then they just stop.

But stop is the polite way of putting it. They give up. They quit.

And here’s the thing: Projects don’t work out. That novel or that screenplay or that launch — it doesn’t work out. And it fails more often than you’d like to know.

The best people I’ve met, though, don’t stop. They see ideas through to execution. If it fails, it fails. But it isn’t going to be because they didn’t put in the work.

So keep going. Just keep going — even when it seems like the work is shit, or isn’t taking you anywhere.

I believe this to be true — and so do many of the smartest people I know: The people you want to work with are those who keep going when the work gets hard. Those are the people you’re going to want on your team.

Be one of those people, too. Keep going.

That stop sign photo at top comes via Flickr’s Lion Towers.

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Four Things To Ask Yourself Before You Start.

Before you start the work, you’ve got to ask yourself:

Are you willing to struggle? Because you’re going to struggle with this. The work is going to kick your ass, and just when you think you’ve made a breakthrough, it’s going to kick your ass again. You are going to ride that struggle bus for a long, long time.

Are you willing to feel stupid? Because you’re not going to know everything — not by a long shot. You’ve got so much to learn, and it’s going to get to a point where you feel like you don’t know ANYTHING. It’s actually a good thing. It means you’re growing your skill set and pushing yourself into brand new areas. But it’s also really, really hard to cope with the fact that at times, you feel pretty dumb.

Are you willing to find the best people? Because you’re not going to get anywhere without the best people. You’re going to have to find people you love to collaborate with, and people who will push your work into brand new areas, and also people you wouldn’t mind getting stuck with in a room at 2 a.m. (Because, btw, you probably will be stuck in a room with them at 2 a.m. at some point. It happens.)

Are you willing to keep going? Because after all this, you have to be willing to push on and keep doing the work. You have to be willing to launch stuff that isn’t quite perfect, and then go back and make that work better. Above all else, you have to be willing to keep stepping out there and pushing your work into the world, because it’s the only way to do it.

So are you willing to do all that? Because if you’re not, you’re not quite ready to start.

That photo of a state fair comes via Flickr’s Omar Bárcena.

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Just Do The Best You Can Do.

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Three years ago, I wrote a post about Todd Snider, a singer/songwriter I really love. Whenever I’ve gone through strange times, I’ve always had Todd to remind me that things can — and almost certainly will — get even weirder along the way.

This line especially stands out for me, re-reading that post now:

I know haven’t gotten that far in the entrepreneurial process. No, I don’t know what lies ahead.

But I suspect that when I get there, I’ll find there’s a Todd Snider song that explains it perfectly.

And, of course, three years later, there is.

It’s from a song called “Money, Compliments, Publicity,” and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I don’t always know what the right next decision is for me, and sometimes, I’ve wondered if there’s a magic piece of advice that could just unlock everything.

Todd’s obviously wondered that, too. And so he sings:

I went to see this therapist
She said, “Just do the best you can do
Do the best you can do”
I was hoping for something more specific

I love that. Most of the time, there isn’t a phrase or a single piece of advice that’s going to solve everything. You just have to listen closely, think wisely, and make the best choices you can.

And then move on.

Thanks for the reminder, Todd.

That photo of Todd comes via Flickr’s kubacheck.

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