Tag: do the work

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Just Don’t.

“Percentage wise, it is 100% easier not to do things than to do them.” — John Mulaney

 
Don’t.

Just… don’t.

The work will be hard. It’ll be draining. You’ll be tired all the time. You’ll be working harder than you’ve ever worked.

And the work won’t stop. You’ll go to bed at midnight, having put in a full day of work, and you’ll wake up the next day with just as much — probably even more. It’ll just keep coming at you, work day after work day, and the only way to deal with it will be to keep going, deeper and deeper into work that won’t ever end.

You’ll be an emotional wreck. You won’t be sure that what you’re doing is right, and your friends will probably tell you that you’re crazy. Most days, you’ll agree. You’ll be a bad break away from a nervous breakdown, or a big break away from floating on air, and you’ll never be sure which way the next 90 minutes might take you. You will never feel like you’re standing on solid ground.

You will feel alone, and you will feel helpless, and you will feel scared.

You will want to quit. You will tell yourself that quitting is the way out.

And then you will wake up and do it all again the next day. You will want to quit, but you’ll be even more scared that quitting might take you to an even worse place.

So you’ll keep going, day after day, hour after hour, task after task. You’ll lose the ability to tell the difference between a step forward and a step back. Soon, all you’ll be sure of is that you’re taking steps — but you’re not sure where they lead.

The work will make you question everything. The work will bring you to tears. The work will hurt.

The work. It will take everything you have to keep it from crushing you.

So, just… don’t. Don’t do it. Not doing the work is the easy way out. Not doing it is the sane way out.

Unless you want to do something really great. In which case: You’re going to have to do the work. It is the only way.

And yes, you’re going to be tired, and scared, and totally unsure of yourself.

But you’ll be doing the work, and there won’t be a single thing you’d rather do than that.

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Demand The Finish Line.

“I applaud the guy who has the courage to meet the confrontation.” —Kim English

 
I ran a 10k on Saturday — my first in six years.

And this thought popped into my head, somewhere around mile 4: You did it, Dan.

Yes, I knew I had 2.2 miles left. But I knew I was going to get the finish line.

You can’t always say that at the starting line. Or even at the halfway point.

But I knew, with 2.2 miles left, that there wasn’t anything that would keep me from that finish line. I knew I had the final few minutes in me.

At a certain point, the mind takes over. Getting to the end of a 10k — or whatever your race is — is about demanding of yourself the finish line.

You’ll see runners on the side of the race, telling themselves they aren’t “able” to go the distance. That’s bull.

A 10k is all about wanting to get there. Anyone can run six miles. Maybe not six fast miles. But anyone can run that distance — as long as you keep yourself moving forward. As long as your mind wants it more than whatever your feet are telling you.

In that kind of race, Want To > Able To.

Do you want to get to the finish line? Do you want to know you went the distance?

In these short races, want is all that matters. Want is what gets you to the end.

That photo from my 10k comes via @anasarbu.

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The Two Types Of Routine.

“Funny thing happens when you keep putting one foot in front of the other: you get somewhere.” — Marina Martin

 
Something you learn from doing the work: There are two types of routine.

There’s good routine: A process to help you get through tasks faster.

Then there’s bad routine: When things get dull.

Creating the first time of routine helps you get through your workday. The second makes you resent your workday.

Anyway, point is: We tend to talk about it in negative terms, but routine isn’t always a bad thing. And when you find the good routine, it actually helps keeps you moving forward.

Just something you’ll learn when you commit to the work.

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Lucky + Good.

“Crush it where you’re at.” — Skip Prosser

On Friday, Florida Gulf Coast — a school that did not exist when I was born — beat Georgetown in an NCAA Tournament basketball game. It was one of the biggest upsets in the history of March Madness.

There were a lot of moments in the game where it looked like FGCU could pull the upset. But the moment when I knew, when I was absolutely sure it could happen, came with 2:17 left. FGCU’s Dajuan Graf stepped to the free throw line. His team was up 8.

And his free throw hit every part of the rim. It hit the backboard. It hung up there forever. It had no business going in.

But it did.

To pull of a huge upset, you need to be good AND you need to be lucky. You need the bounces to go your way when it matters most. You need a lot of things to align.

That matters in basketball, and it matters in your work. It is not enough to be good. Getting the breaks matters, too.

Lucky + good is a pretty excellent combinations. On some nights, even for a 15 seed going up against a 2, it might just be enough.

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Building Big Things Never Happens Fast.

“Velocity, not speed.” — Siqi Chen

 
There is a funny misconception that exists in the general public about building big companies. They see something like Instagram, which sold for a billion dollars, and think: The path from A to B(illionaire) doesn’t take that long.

Wrong.

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.

I work at BuzzFeed now. That photo at top is what our office looks like today.

But this is what it looked like in 2007, in the earliest days of BuzzFeed.

Not quite as exciting, right?

I remember those types of days at Stry.us. I remember sleeping on the floor in a small apartment next to a cow pasture. I remember that when I hit the “Sleeping On A Floor In A Small Apartment Next To A Cow Pasture” point, that was actually a big milestone for Stry.us.

Good things come slowly. You build with good people. You find ways to hang in the game as long as you can.

The road is slow and long and kind of boring sometimes. If that doesn’t sound like your idea of fun, that’s okay. Building big things isn’t for everyone.

But if that sounds like something you like? Well, start as soon as you can. You’re going to need all the time you have.

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Another Thing I Learned Watching Missouri Play Basketball.

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?” — John Wooden

 
So that photo at top is of me. That’s me from, I believe, my sophomore year at the University of Missouri. Yes, that is my yellow pinstriped jacket. (Also, yes, that is very bad sophomore year beard.)

I went to Missouri, and I love my alma mater. The sight of our colors makes me happy. Tigers, in general, now make me really happy.

And I love rooting for my Missouri Tigers. There aren’t a lot of Missouri fans outside of the state of Missouri. But we are a passionate few.

This year, Missouri has a strange basketball team. They have a really good point guard, and several really good shooters, and two really good big guys. They rebound extremely well, and they have lots of experience. They should be an exceptional basketball team.

Except that they are not. In this last two months, Missouri has lost six basketball games that were decided in the final 30 seconds. Missouri has lots of talent, but it just can’t seem to win close games.

As a Missouri fan, this crushes me. I WANT them to win. I absolutely love it when we win.

And this year’s team is SO dangerously close to being a really good team. But they are not. Great teams win games — they win blowouts, and they win close, and they win when it does not seem possible that winning could ever happen — and this Missouri team does not do that.

When I look back on this season, I feel a sense of disappointment. This team is that friend that everyone has, that friend who has lots of talent — who has ideas, and ambition, and decent skills — but who can’t figure out how to put it all together.

This team is disappointing for another reason: They cannot figure out how to put it all together IN THE MOMENT in which it matters.

Doing the work well matters, but doing it well in the time you have matters even more. There is a moment for your work, and when it passes, it passes.

So it goes for my Tigers. There will be other seasons, sure. But for this team, for this moment, time is almost out. The work is almost over. The season will be over with one more loss.

This time won’t come around ever again. You put it together now, you get better, or you find yourself watching others get their moment instead. How it goes.

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Two Great Questions: Why Not? And What Else?

There’s a pizza place around the corner from me that’s pretty good. They’ve got a good pepperoni and mushroom slice, and they’ve got this chicken caesar pie, too, if you’re into something kinda different.

But what I like most about this pizza place are the guys behind the counter. There are two guys I see most often working the counter, and they’ve each got a catchphrase.

The first guy waits for you to order, and when you announce your choice of slice, he says, “Why not?”

Order another slice, and you’ll hear, “Why not?”

Hang around the restaurant for 10 minutes and you’ll hear him say it over and over again.

The second guy behind the counter has a different way of responding to each order. Each slice is followed by a simple question: “What else?”

And usually the customer pauses and says, Well, maybe that one? Or that one?

“What else?”

Maybe that one…

I really like this pizza place, because I really like those two questions. I like how, subtly, really good questions can challenge a captive audience. The right questions can force someone to take action that they might not otherwise take.

I’d like more people to ask questions like that when they’re taking on new work. Something too big? Too scary? “Maybe I shouldn’t do this,” you find yourself saying.

Well, why not?

And when you think you’ve hit the end of some work, and you’re trying to figure out if there’s anything left to do:

Well, what else? Is there something more to do?

Those two really good questions could unlock a lot of really good work. Don’t thank me, though. Thank the pizza place on the corner.

———

That photo was taken by Peter Bravo de los Rios for Unsplash.

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The Easy Way Out.

“The journey is all. The destination is beside the point.” — Leo Babauta

 
Let me pose a hypothetical to you for a second. Tomorrow, I’m going to give you the chance of a lifetime:

I’m going to make you a lottery winner. You’re going to get $20 million. You’re never going to have to work again.

But there’s a catch: In exchange for that $20 million, you’re also never ALLOWED to work again.

You can take the $20 million, and never work another day in your life — never ever — or you can stay on the path you’re on, grinding it out, trying to make it in this world.

What do you choose? A life without work but lots of money, or a life with a lot of work and whatever money you can make along the way?

If it’s me, I take the latter. Yeah, the $20 million would be nice for a while. A few months on the beach somewhere, swimming and napping and drinking away the day. I could do that.

But after a few months, where would I be? What I’m doing matters to me. I want to make a big contribution to this world, and my work is largely how I make my stamp. Take away that, and what am I?

People say they want the easy way out, but I’m not so sure I buy that. The road ahead is tough. It’s going to suck.

But it’s also really rewarding. There is satisfaction in putting in the work, day in and day out.

So me? I’d reject the money and stick with the road I’m on. I know it’ll be rewarding. I know it’ll be hard. Maybe it’ll make me a little money along the way, or maybe it won’t. But it’ll my road to make.

I probably won’t get the months and months of drinking on the beach on this path, but if I do good work, I might get a few good weekends a year in a sunny place. That’d be alright by me.

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Too Late/Too Soon: The Fear.

When do you know that it’s time? The fourth in a month of posts about how I learned to stop worrying, buck up and do the work.

 
The fear caught up to me on the flight to Mississippi. I remember looking out the window as the flight came over Gulfport. I didn’t recognize anything.

I was alone, in a state I’d never seen, in a city where I knew no one. I essentially showed up with nothing more than a dream and a name — and nobody had ever heard of “Oshinsky” or “Stry.us.”

And then I landed, and my cell phone didn’t work for two days. It couldn’t find the satellites.

I felt very, very alone. I was equal parts cocky and terrified.

I remember calling a friend in Kansas City. I was in my hotel room at the IP Casino in Biloxi. I’m moving to Mississippi to do some reporting, I told her. I don’t think she believed me.

I don’t think anyone really believed me at that point, actually. My bosses, my parents, my friends — they all knew that I had the ambition to do something as audacious as Stry.us. But no one knew if I actually had the drive to will something like that into existence.

And to do it solo! That would be a challenge in itself. I knew nothing about business, and only a little about how to report from a foreign place. This was, at best, an unreasonably large challenge for a 23-year-old to take on.

The fear really hit on the drive to Mississippi. I think it happened as I got close to Biloxi, somewhere along I-10. I started to realize: I’m doing this! I’m moving here! This is actually happening!

And scarier still: The only thing between this working and this failing is you. Only you can decide how big this can be.

Hoo boy. That’s a lot for a kid to stare down. And I really was a kid: An ambitious, hungry, dumb kid.

The timing was right, but I was scared. I had a big apartment with an IKEA table and a Target futon — and I never bothered to put the futon together. I just slept on the cushions all summer. I ate peanut butter and jelly and tuna fish all summer. There wasn’t anything stable about my living conditions.

And the reporting was as strange as anything I’ll ever do. I had stories to tell, but no one knew my name. I worried that they wouldn’t talk to me. I worried that they wouldn’t take me seriously.

I think one thing that saved me was the humidity. I was always sweating in Biloxi in that 100+ degree heat. But I would’ve been sweating if it was 15 below — I was so nervous!

The humidity masked the flop sweat, I think.

And after a few introductions to sources, I started to feel confident. When I got the first story up, I felt like I had something. I could show off my work.

Better still: The people in Biloxi were used to being interviewed. They’d all been quoted somewhere or another. But they all felt like they had more stories to tell.

All of that helped keep the fear at bay. It never really left. But I settled down enough to go out and do my job, and keep going. I knew I had three months to do this reporting. Every day I lost was a day I couldn’t get back.

That helped keep me going.

I also didn’t fully realize how insane I was to be living in Mississippi by myself and doing Stry.us. I wasn’t aware of how crazy this thing was.

That helped, too.

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Too Late/Too Soon: The Dream.

#dreaming

When do you know that it’s time? The third in a month of posts about how I learned to stop worrying, buck up and do the work.

 
The dream really started sometime in the spring of 2010. I’ve told this story a few too many times: I was working at a TV station. I was frustrated with my place in the journalism world. I decided I wanted to do something about it.

It was time to do big work. I was sure of that.

So I came up with a spinoff on the original de Tocqueville journey. I called it Four Days in America. I’d go to a place for four days. Do some reporting. Package it all into a big story. And then ship off to the next place

I’d see the country, tell some amazing stories and find myself along the way.

Dumb idea, Dad said. You’re going to travel all across the country, by yourself, and move just frequently enough to never make friends? Are you just trying to isolate yourself, Dan?

And he was right. To move from place to place, with no consistency, with no backbone to work off of? It couldn’t work. Four Days in America was a hopeless idea. To even attempt something like this, I needed a support system.

So I went to the backup plan: One place, three months, tons of reporting. Tell one great story. Chase one big thing at a time.

I had a few places in mind, but one stuck out above all else: The Mississippi Gulf Coast. It was five years after Katrina. Oil was leaking out of the Gulf. The economy was terrible.

I didn’t know anyone there, but I decided that if I could put a few pieces in place — a place to stay, a story to cover, a website to publish on — that I might be able to make something of a summer in Biloxi. I knew that having a structure was going to be a game-changer for me.

Best case, I could turn my little reporting enterprise into a business. Worst case, I’d have a nice portfolio of clips to apply for future jobs.

Well, that wasn’t actually the worst case. The worst case was that I’d quit my job, move to Mississippi, and then get scared. I’d back off the story.

I’d quit Stry.us, too. I’d leave Mississippi with nothing.

That really scared me. I couldn’t take two steps back. This was my time to do something big.

I knew I had enough to start. I bought http://stry.us. I put up a Facebook page. I told my bosses that I was going to leave my job in a month and move to Mississippi.

My parents thought I was trying to punish myself. They thought that moving to Mississippi, in July, was a sort of self-inflicted torture.

I thought it was a way forward. I didn’t know what it was leading toward, but I knew that something would come of all this work.

But that’s all it really took to start: A dream, and an uncertain goal, and the knowledge that I had a moment to actually do something big.

It was going to be a big success, or a big mess, but I was going to do it — and do it now.

Photo at top by Jochen Spalding

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