Tag: do the work

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Running on Empty.

a rusty old gas tank in front of a barn in Latvia

This was one of those weeks where it felt like everything happened. I launched a new product. I held a webinar. I talked with 15 different clients. I sent a thousand emails (give or take). I helped a ton of clients with end-of-the-year projects. 

And then Ben got sick, and so did I.

There was a moment on Friday afternoon when I thought about taking on a bit more work. I had a lot more stuff to do. But Ben was down for a nap.

So I took a nap, too.

You can’t operate on empty. You have to make time for yourself. Take a week. Exercise. Cook yourself dinner. Read a book. Go to bed at a reasonable hour.

Do literally anything other than work.

Yes, you’re busy. We all are. But the work isn’t going to be very good if the tank is empty.

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That photo of an old gas tank, left out to rust somewhere in Latvia, was taken by Krišjānis Kazaks and shared via Unplash.

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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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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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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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Never Better Than Now.

I remember when my dad turned 40. They threw a big birthday party, and friends gifted him this giant inflatable cane. Everyone at the party signed it. It sat in his office for a long time, and I every time I visited dad at work, I remember reading the inscriptions and names on the cane. There were a lot of jokes about my dad officially reaching old age, and I couldn’t disagree.

To a kid, 40 felt like 100.

But I’m 38 now, and looking up at 40 feels strange. I certainly don’t feel 100; I feel a lot closer to the starting line than the finish.

I also know that I don’t know when the finish line arrives.

I’m trying to remind myself that there’s never a right time to do the big stuff. Sometimes I try to tell myself that the timing will be better just a few months down the road, even though I know that’s not true. If you want to do something, you should do it now. Next year, next month, next week — none of this is guaranteed.

There’s never been a better time than right now.

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I took that photo alongside the harbor in Copenhagen one morning a few weeks ago. I was sitting there, watching the sun rise on a beautiful morning, and thinking about the fact that I do something that lets me travel to such beautiful places and work with such interesting people. I know how lucky I am.

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Kick Over Rocks.

I stumbled upon this story the other day about the CEO of Pittsburgh’s airport, Christina Cassotis. I’ve got a soft spot for Pittsburgh — my wife’s from there, we got married there, and about once a year, we fly through there to visit my mother-in-law. The Pittsburgh airport’s a bit dated. It was built to be a hub for US Airways, but now that airline no longer exists, and the airport they have doesn’t really fit with what the city needs.

So I was fascinated to read this story in Pittsburgh Magazine about Cassotis, an executive who, by all accounts, is doing great things to rebuild and modernize the airport. (The rebuild of the airport will cost $1.7 billion, per one account.)

This was my favorite section from that Pittsburgh Magazine article:

“You don’t know how things work around here,” someone yelled after she instituted Uber pickup at the airport soon after she was hired. “Who do you think you are? You think you just come in here and change things?”

“Yeah, I actually do,” Cassotis replied. “That’s my job. My job is literally to kick over rocks. We have to do things differently if we’re going to get different results.”

I absolutely love that mentality. Sometimes, you need leaders who can guide you through a series of slow, steady changes. Sometimes, you need a leader who can recognize when things have been broken for a long time and really roll up their sleeves.

Never be afraid to kick over those rocks.

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That’s a photo I took at Pittsburgh International Airport back in 2019. When you’re walking to the train to take you to baggage claim, you used to have to walk past two statues of legendary figures in western Pennsylvania history. One is George Washington. The other is former Steeler Franco Harris. I always loved that in Pittsburgh, these two men were given statues right next to each other, and no one seemed to think it was odd that our nation’s first President and a guy who played fullback in the NFL were given equal weight.

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A Trick for Prioritization.

a yellow legal bad with sections for NEED and LIKE written out.

Here’s little trick I like to use when I’ve got way too many tasks on my to-do list and can’t figure out what to prioritize.

Open up a spreadsheet and type out all the tasks you’ve got on your list. Then create three columns, and put these headers at the top:

• What you NEED to do this quarter
• What you WANT to do this quarter
• What you’d LIKE to do this quarter

NEED is the stuff that 100% absolutely must get done.

WANT is the next bucket of tasks you’re most excited about.

LIKE are things you’re interested in… but you can’t quite make a priority.

I know I’m guilty of focusing on stuff that isn’t in those “Need” or “Want” buckets. Sometimes, just seeing everything laid out like this helps me refocus on what’s most important.

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That’s a sketch that Canva’s AI tool created for me. It’s a decent example of what this exercise might look like if you did it on a yellow legal pad.

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Inches, Not Miles.

Something I’ve been telling my teams a lot lately: Growth comes in inches, not miles.

I’m seven years into running my business, and more than a dozen years into working my field, and it feels like I’m just starting to get to a place where I can do the work I’m most excited about.

Everyone wants to move quickly, but the good stuff takes time.

You don’t always move as fast as you want to. Celebrate the little wins. Take the inches when you can.

They all add up.

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That’s a a phot of a biker pedaling forward on a bike path, surrounded by green grass and blooming trees. It comes via Unsplash.

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Don’t Overthink This.

a brown chair, a white table, a simple fern, up against a white wall.

90% of my advice to clients is boils down to three words:

“Don’t overthink this.”

People get into their heads when it comes to tweaking their strategy or tactics. They get caught up thinking that there are a series of three-dimensional chess moves that will fix what’s wrong.

But usually, the fixes are simpler than that: Your positioning is unclear. You’re not targeting the right audience. You’re doing too many things at once.

My job is often to tell teams: You’re overthinking things! Let’s simplify and get back to the core of what you do well.

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That’s not the fanciest desk set up in the world, but it’d work just fine? Why? It’s so darn simple. Thanks to Unsplash for the photo.

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Stay Right Here.

As silver DeLorean, like the one seen in “Back to the Future,” as photographed from behind.

I keep thinking about this line from poet Andrea Gibson in their book, “You Better Be Lightning”:

Regret is a time machine to the past
Worry is a time machine to the future

I’m as guilty as any of having my head somewhere else. Sometimes that means thinking about mistakes I’ve made or things I could have done better. Sometimes that means spending too much time thinking about all the stuff I have to do in the weeks and months ahead.

Gibson’s lines are a reminder: Wherever your feet are, keep your head there. There’s work to do right here, right now. That’s where your mind needs to be, too.

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Feels like the only appropriate photo for a post like this is of a DeLorean. That photo comes via Unsplash.

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