Tag: do the work

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Try It Before You Realize How Hard It Is.

When I was 17, I got an summer internship working at a paper on Nantucket. It didn’t pay much, but the paper was small — there were maybe eight of us, total, putting out a newspaper every Wednesday — and they gave me opportunities to write. For a high school junior, it was a great job.

Being young had its advantages: I was willing to say “yes” to assignments that more veteran reporters would have been wise enough to say “no” to. I pitched a weekly profile on local workers, a new police blotter column, and several big feature stories. It was a lot for one reporter to take on, but I didn’t have enough experience to know better.

But nothing really compared to something my boss, Don, pitched to me. He’d seen a weekly paper in another town that had printed an ambitious special section. They’d dispatched a handful of reporters and photographers, in shifts, to document a single day in their town, and then packaged it all together into a special section on 24 hours in the life of their city.

Don suggested that instead of having a team of reporters and photographers attempt that, I could do it alone. 24 hours, a bunch of stories and original photos — by myself.

No one else on staff would have been dumb enough to agree to that. Of course, I did.

So what happened? That day, I set out with a camera, a notepad, and my RadioShack tape recorder. (It was 2004.) It was a quite the day: I interviewed people all over the island, ate lobster on the beach (for journalism! And also for my first-ever expense report!), and reported a story from a nightclub that wouldn’t legally allow me to enter their premises for another four years. At one point, in the middle of the afternoon, I stopped by the office to hand over a flash drive of photos. I remember one of my co-workers semi-jokingly announcing, “Look! He’s still alive!”

In the end, we turned my package of stories and photos into its own eight-page section of the paper. My bosses were thrilled, and so was I: By trying something that no one else was willing to try, I ended up with my own section of the paper. Not bad for a summer intern!

Naïveté was my secret weapon that summer. I wasn’t scared or nervous or overwhelmed by anything at the paper — just excited to try new things. That mentality got me all sorts of exciting opportunities. Over and over, I tried things because I didn’t know how hard they were supposed to be. Fifteen years later, I’ve learned how hard many of these things really are — but I’m still trying to push for new things anyway.

———

That’s a photo I took a few years ago, flying above Nantucket.

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Find An Accountability Partner.

A little while back, I wrote about one of my proudest personal success stories: The year I lost 30 pounds. What was my secret that year? It was simple: I had people in my life who held me accountable:

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.

My trainer and my dad were what I’ve started calling Accountability Partners. They were there to check up on me, and make sure I was staying on track. If I made a promise, they were there to make sure I kept it.

Up until this year, my Accountability Partners had always been people. But in the last few months, I’ve tried something new to hold myself accountable: Apps.

For workouts, I’ve tried Aaptiv. It’s an app with audio-based workouts for every part of the gym. You pick the level of intensity, length of workout, and type of workout (treadmill, stair climber, elliptical, etc), and Aaptiv suggests a handful of workouts, led by a trainer. I’ve loved the combination of familiarity — a favorite trainer coaching you in your ear — and music. I find that I get a lot more out of each workout when I’ve got someone coaching me through it. Last year, I might have gone to the gym for 20 minutes, felt a little lazy, and have just jogged slowly for a mile or two on the treadmill. This year, having Aaptiv has made sure that I actually put in real work when I’m at the gym.

When it comes to eating well, I’ve experimented with Weight Watchers. I don’t do it for long stretches — a month at a time, max — but it’s helpful in keeping me from wasting calories on unhealthy snacks or desserts. Their app makes it simple to track your meals, and I find that when I’m using the app, I typically drink a little less and eat a little better.

At work, my big weakness is wasting time. (An unfortunate side effect of working on the internet is that you’re always on the internet!) I haven’t found an app I truly love for staying productive, but I have had some success with Forest. You set a timer, and it keeps you from opening a tab and heading to Facebook, YouTube, or the other sites where you might waste a few minutes. When my mind drifts and I go to open a new tab, Forest makes sure I keep my focus.

Nothing is quite as good as a friend or co-worker to hold you accountable. But in certain cases, an app can serve as a pretty good Accountability Partner, and help you do good work.

———

That photo of a team supporting each other comes via Unsplash.

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Ignore The Wheel. Watch The Board.

The Oshinsky family has been watching a lot of “Wheel of Fortune” lately. The more I watch, the more I realize how much strategy goes into playing “Wheel.”

In particular, I’ve noticed something that nearly all the best players do: They ignore what’s happening on the wheel. As soon as they spin, they turn right back to the board, and try to figure out the puzzle.

“Wheel” is a game full of distractions. There are two hosts (Pat and Vanna), a wheel full of prizes, two other contestants, and a studio audience, not to mention all the lights and cameras. There’s a lot going on — and so many contestants get distracted. Every night, there’s a contestant who’s too busy watching the cash and prizes spin around on the wheel, and when they have to call a letter, they have no idea what to say. They panic and miss.

The secret is simple, though: Just keep watching the board. It doesn’t matter what the wheel lands on — Pat always calls out the dollar value anyway. The three or four seconds when the wheel is spinning is time when you could be solving the puzzle in your own head.

It’s so easy — whether you’re on “Wheel”  or at work — to take your eyes off the ultimate goal. Much of what’s happening around you is a distraction. You have to keep asking yourself: What really matters here? Am I focused on the right thing? What does success look like, and am I working on things to help us achieve it?

In other words: Ignore the wheel. Just watch the board.

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Do The Damn Thing, Dan.

I’ve been using this to-do app, TeuxDeux, for seven or eight years now. I swear by it. Everything that I need to do during the day, from attending weekly meetings to running an errand, goes in TeuxDeux. If I’m on the go and I suddenly remember that I need to follow up with someone or take care of a task, I add it to TeuxDeux. As long as it’s on my list, I won’t forget to do it.

But the issue isn’t always forgetting to do certain tasks. Sometimes, I see a task and realize that it’s going to take some time, or put me in a situation where I have to have an uncomfortable conversation with a colleague, and I tell myself, “Maybe I’ll save this for tomorrow. I’ll be in a better space to handle this then.”

The nice thing about TeuxDeux is that if you don’t cross something off the list, it just moves on to the next day, ready to be crossed off.

The bad thing is: If you procrastinate enough, you show up for work on Monday and see a half-dozen of those “Maybe tomorrow!” kind of tasks piling up on your to-do list.

I’ve finally had enough of those days. I need to hold myself accountable and make time to cross these things off my list. So I’m starting a new routine: I’ve added a twice-monthly block of time specifically designated for these types of tasks. I’m calling it DTDT Time: Do The Damn Thing Time. (It needs a better name, but it works for now.)

It’s a 90-minute block, every Tuesday — when things tend to be a little calmer around the office — to make sure I take care of those lingering to-dos. If I’ve been putting something off, well, it’s time to finally take it on. It does me no good to drag my feet on these. I’ve just got to do the damn thing — and hopefully, with this new routine, I’ll be making the time to do just that.

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That image of TeuxDeux comes via their blog.

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Be Wrong More Often.

Most of my ideas are bad. Recently, I started a notebook that I’ve been filling exclusively with bad ideas: TV shows that should never get made, apps that should never be launched, products that should never be spoken of to another human being. It’s humbling to add another bad idea to the notebook. For every 100 ideas I have, 70 are incredibly bad, 20 are acceptably terrible, and maybe — if I’m lucky — 10 are decent enough to do something with.

And I think that’s a pretty good success rate.

In my time at BuzzFeed, I learned that it was OK to have ideas that didn’t work out. There was so much that we did at BuzzFeed that worked, and worked incredibly well. But for every launch that grew into something big, there were dozens of ideas that failed: BuzzFeed University (a program to get ad agencies to create their own BuzzFeed sponsored content), Star.me (a collaborative social media site that was a cross between BuzzFeed and Giphy), or Fre.sh (a leaderboard for the internet). These were the kinds of projects that, as Jonah Peretti wrote in a 2013 memo to the staff, “don’t distract from the core and have the potential to be much bigger in the medium term future.” They weren’t, but that didn’t matter. As the internet mantra goes: We failed fast, and often.

But here’s something I didn’t always understand about that saying: It’s not just about trying lots of things and seeing what sticks. The hard part is reminding yourself that it’s OK to be wrong.

I’ve never met anyone who liked being wrong. But I’ve met some who have accepted it as part of the process. You come up with ideas, or you test out a new theory, and it doesn’t work out. Then you have to admit to yourself and to your team that the thing you believed in isn’t worth pursuing anymore, or that you need to change course. (Sometimes, even when it’s painful, you’ll even have to admit to a colleague: “Yes, you were right.”) The most productive people I know have these conversations on a monthly basis — or sometimes, weekly.

In other words: If you’re doing things right, you’ll often be wrong.

It’s not easy to admit that your ideas aren’t great. It’s not easy to admit that you were wrong. It’s not easy to kill your darlings.

But it’s part of the process: Come up with lots of ideas, pick your favorites, and be willing to be wrong. Don’t get discouraged: Just because you were wrong before doesn’t mean you’ll be wrong forever. The great ideas will come soon enough.

— — —

That photo of a stop symbol comes via Kai Pilger and Unsplash.

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The Gym Radius, and What It Means For Your Work.

A few months ago, I started going to a new gym. I’d been at the same one for a few years, and I generally liked it. It was a huge space, with lots of daily classes, tons of machines, and nice locker rooms. They had multiple locations across the city. But despite that, I’d pretty much stopped going.

It wasn’t the gym itself — it was the location. The gym was a 12-minute walk from my apartment, and on anything less than a perfect day, I’d talk myself out of working out. I’d tell myself that it was too far away to walk in the cold, or too wet, or too humid.

I think I’m like a lot of people: I’ll work out, but only if the gym is so close that I can’t make an excuse for not going. Let’s call that excuse-free zone “the gym radius”: the distance from home or work that a gym needs to be to get you to visit regularly.

My gym radius is tiny: a 5-minute walk from my apartment. When I lived in Columbia and worked out 4-5 times a week, it was because there was a great gym on the ground floor of my building. It’s tough to make an excuse — even in a snow storm — when all you have to do is walk downstairs to work out. In Springfield, the gym was a short drive away — still close enough for me.

Now I’m at a gym that’s a quarter-mile away — five minutes, door to door. It doesn’t have the classes or the amenities of my old gym, but it turns out that I don’t really care about that. All I want are some machines, an area to stretch, and a short walk — that’s enough to get me out a few times a week to do the work.

I’ve been thinking about what this means for the rest of my work. What are the other situations I need to put myself in to do great work? If I were you, I’d be asking:

Do you work well remotely, or do you need to be in an office? — Some people work well in a remote setting, but others feed off of an office environment, where casual conversations might lead to unexpected ideas. (Some of my favorite projects have been the result of a quick chat in an elevator or by the coffee machine.)

Do you work better with others or prefer to fly solo? — Make sure you know the answer here, and find a role that allows you to play to those strengths.

Do you like to operate as a manager or an independent contributor? — Again, understanding your strengths — Do you like to lead? Do you mind taking on responsibility for the work and output of others? Are you willing to make sacrifices for the sake of your team? — can push you towards the right role in a company.

Can you multi-task, or do you prefer to focus on specific tasks? — I’ve found that most people aren’t great multi-taskers — in fact, multi-tasking typically leads to lost of unfocused, unfinished work. If you’re like me — I’m not a very good multi-tasker — then make sure you’re blocking out time during the day to focus in on one specific project. Even a 30-minute window without distractions can be enough to make huge progress on a task.

These questions are just starting places for a bigger conversation about work habits. But remember this: If you want to do your best work,  make sure you’re putting yourself in the right situations — and the right settings — to do it.

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That photo of someone working out comes via Victor Freitas and Unsplash.

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The Importance of Glue Work.

A post shared by Elmer's (@elmersproducts) on

I wanted to pass along this wonderful talk from Tanya Reilly, an engineer at Squarespace, where she talks about a concept she calls “Glue Work.”

What’s Glue Work? These are the behind-the-scenes contributions that someone puts in to help their team. At any successful company, there are always a few folks who quietly do this type of work. It’s not core to their job, and they don’t always get recognition for it, but it makes a difference.

And reading through her talk, it reminded me of something from sportswriter Seth Davis, who covers college basketball. Every year, he releases his All-Glue team: a list of unheralded players who elevate the play of their teammates. Here’s what he wrote in 2009 about J.T. Tiller, from my Missouri Tigers:

The Atlanta Celtics are one of the most glamorous programs on the amateur basketball circuit, which is why Mike Anderson, then UAB coach, watched them play many times during the summer of 2005. But instead of locking in on mega scorers, Anderson instead found his gaze drifting toward J.T. Tiller, a 6-foot-3 guard from Marietta, Ga., who was drawing scant interest from other high-major schools. “He was one of those kamikaze guys who did all the little things that add up to winning,” Anderson recalls. “He played so hard and gave everything he had, and he had a huge impact on the game just from a defensive standpoint. Most guys don’t get after it defensively during the summer, but this kid had no ego. He was all about winning.” …

Every coach asks his players to do the subtle, unglamorous things that don’t show up in a box score, but Tiller is one of those rare players who specializes in doing just that.

He is, in other words, the consummate Glue Guy.

I love this kind of teammate — unselfish, and committed to doing the extra work to make the team better. At Stry.us, all of us sometimes had to do Glue Work. I remember one reporting trip, to Joplin, to cover the story of a mosque burned down by arsonists. That day, I needed to serve as a last-minute photographer, an editor, a driver (and at one point, the last two things simultaneously, during one memorable drive down I-44). Having a team full of people who could glue things together meant that we could always get done whatever we desperately needed to do — but didn’t yet have.

On a great team, you need that glue. Reilly’s talk is a wonderful study of why it matters, and how those who do that type of work can make sure they get the respect, recognition, and career success that they deserve.

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That photo at top comes via the Elmer’s Instagram.

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It’s OK to Believe.

In the waning moments of Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, with my Washington Capitals leading the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the team just one game away from advancing to the next round of the playoffs, Caps radio announcer John Walton said a wonderful thing on the radio:

“It’s OK to believe,” he said.


If you’re a Capitals fan, that was easier said than done. The Capitals had been around for 43 seasons. They had made the playoffs in 28 of those seasons — but prior to this season, had only made one Stanley Cup Finals. In 10 of those seasons, the Capitals had held either a 3-1 or 2-0 series lead in a playoff series — a commanding lead by hockey standards — and lost. No team in NHL history compared when it came to playoff collapses.

And yet, there was John Walton on the radio, reminding all of us: “It’s OK to believe.” I think we all needed that reminder — we’d been through so many playoff losses that the idea of a win seemed almost impossible.

The next game, Game 6, on the road, in overtime, the Capitals finally broke through and beat Pittsburgh.

In the next round, down three games to two, the Capitals won two in a row — shutting out Tampa Bay in both games — to secure a place in the Finals.

And then, after going down 1-0 to Vegas, against a team that hadn’t lost three games in a row all season, the Caps won four consecutive games to win the Stanley Cup.

I still can’t believe it: The Capitals are Stanley Cup champions! Caps fans have been through so much over the years: We were told our team didn’t play hard enough, or were too unlucky to break through. Whatever the case, the team always seemed to lose — until they broke through, shed their playoff baggage, and changed the narrative forever.

I keep thinking back to what John Walton said during the Pittsburgh series. You were right, John: It really is OK to believe.

It’s OK to believe to believe that you can do something great.

It’s OK to believe that all the work you’ve been putting in might lead to something big.

It’s OK to believe in the team around you — even if others have their doubts.

It’s OK to believe that your best work is still ahead of you.

It’s OK to believe that this time will be different.

It’s OK to believe in something that nobody else sees — and to be willing to sacrifice something for the opportunity to prove yourself.

There is so much that goes into being successful at the highest level. You need the team, the resources, and a lot of luck — but the Caps just proved it:

It’s OK to believe.

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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.

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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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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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