inspiration comes from strange places | danoshinsky.com

01/23/201404/26/2015

Your One Swing.

There’s this one thing that my Uncle Billy said to me about two weeks ago. It was after my grandma’s funeral. We were sitting on the couch, watching the game, eating chopped liver. We were talking about, I dunno, the Broncos or the chopped liver, probably. Doesn’t really matter now.

But somewhere along the line, Uncle Billy dropped this bit of life advice, and it’s stuck with me: “You get one swing.”

Uncle Billy’s 88 years old. He went to war, married a girl he loved, went fishing more times than anyone else I know, showed up for every birthday and bar mitzvah I can remember. As far as Great-uncles go, he’s been a pretty stellar one.

I’ve heard that bit of advice before, obviously. It’s there on fortune cookies. It’s there in self-help books. Hell, there are people at my office who’ve worn YOLO T-shirts before. (Ironically, but still.)

But none of that quite carries the weight that it does when it comes from someone like your 88-year-old Great-uncle, does it? (And at a funeral, no less!)

One swing. Just go for it.

Alright, Uncle Billy, here goes.

That photo of a golfer comes via Flickr’s Nick Jewell.

12/30/201312/28/2013

This One-Armed Guitar Player Reminded Me That People Are Awesome.

The best part is Robert Randolph is wearing a Sergio Tacchini warm-up. #ParkCity50 pic.twitter.com/AprdXWFM6o

— Andy Miller (@AndyMacMiller) December 21, 2013

I saw something last week that I have never seen before, and will probably never see again.

I was in Park City, Utah, for the holidays. Mom had heard on the radio that Robert Randolph & The Family Band would be playing a free show at the base of Park City. We got off the slopes early and headed to the show.

I’ve seen Robert Randolph play a half-dozen times now, and he does a fun thing during some of his shows. During an extended jam, he’ll pick up a guitar and extend it toward the crowd. He’ll give the crowd a look: Anyone out there play?

A few years ago, in Kansas City, I saw a kid — no more than 15, I think — come up and cover “Purple Haze” with the band. If you’ve never seen a teenager jam with a guy on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Guitarist lists, you really should.

Anyway, Robert picked up a guitar midway through the Park City set. A college-aged kid with a big fro came up first, played a few licks. Robert shook his head and sent him back into the crowd.

A second guy — maybe in his early 30s, still wearing his ski clothes — came up, and Robert let him play for two or three seconds before sending him back, too.

Then a third guy came up. Robert’s guitar tech came over with the guitar, and the guitarist whispered something in his ear. The tech brought over a chair, and the guitarist sat down.

Then he took off his right arm.

And then with the stump of his right arm, he began to play.

And Robert smiled. Because right away, you could tell: The dude with one arm could really play.

Robert jammed with him on a song. And then another. And then another.

When Robert finally said it was time to go, the crowd went insane. A one-armed guitarist holding his own with a dude considered one of the greatest guitarists ever — even a week later, I keep asking myself, Did I really see that?

I walked up afterward to congratulate the guitarist. His name’s Jeremiah Maxey, and he plays in a few Park City bands, including one called — and I couldn’t believe it when he told me — the Right Hand Band.

So here’s to you, Jeremiah. I’ll see a lot of shows in my life, but I don’t think I’ll ever see something quite like the three songs you played with Robert Randolph. Thanks for having the guts to walk up on stage — and for the reminder that people can be pretty amazing, sometimes.

12/20/201312/20/2013

Hurry Up And Wait.

I heard the voice of my mother today while waiting in line at JFK to get through security. I’d hurried through work, and then hurried my way over to the train, and then hurried through check-in, and then… I waited. I waited for 20 minutes at airport security, because that’s how it works.

My mother has a saying for that: It’s the hurry up and wait.

When we were kids, she’d always point out how strange it was to watch people rush to be first in line for something. We’d be on a ferry, and people would rush to their cars. We’d wait on the top deck, holding onto the view as long as we could. What are those people rushing for? she’d always point out. It’s not like they can drive off until the boat docks anyway.

As I get to work with bigger teams on more ambitious projects, I find that the hurry up and wait rule applies there, too. Sometimes, you push and push on a project, only to find that the rest of your team isn’t ready to take the next step. Or that a key piece of technology or code isn’t ready. In the end, you’ve rushed through your work for nothing.

It’s certainly great when you can get your work done efficiently. But the people around you matter — especially the pace at which they do their work. If you’re not all moving together, you’re just hurrying up to wait.

And what good is that?

That photo of airport security comes via Flickr’s Karl Baron.

12/09/2013

You Have No Excuses.

Sometimes I write long on this blog, and sometimes I write short. And sometimes I read a story like this, and simply want to say: Read this. Read this, and remember: Opportunity is there for those who put in the work, and who let others help.

12/06/2013

Time Off.

A wonderful thing happened on Wednesday:

I had a busy day at work. A ton going on. Lots of new projects and things that I was trying to get done.

And then I left work to head to a dinner party. The whole way there, my mind was still on work — what needed to be finished on Thursday, what I had to focus on first.

And when I got to the door, I took a minute. I promised myself: While I was inside, work was off limits. No thinking about the tasks ahead. No planning out the next work day.

I needed those two hours, to be around friends and to recharge. Work wears on you. I haven’t always been great at making time for life outside of work. But after a few hours with friends, just making time for them, I came back on Thursday really excited and ready to get at my to-do list.

There is a time for work, and a time for play, and after all these years, I feel like I’m finally starting to learn which is which.

That photo at top comes via.

12/02/201312/02/2013

The Opposite.

One of my favorite stories of the college football season came from the University of Southern California. The Trojans had an awful start to the year. They fired their head coach a month into the season. They replaced him with Ed Orgeron — an assistant coach who had previous served as head coach at Ole Miss.

And had lost — often — at Ole Miss.

When he got the new job at USC, he was asked about his time at Ole Miss:

“I was given a good shot, and I was really discouraged that I didn’t make it,” Orgeron said. “I had to look at myself.”

So what happened this time around? He looked at what he’d done at Ole Miss, and he did the opposite. Literally:

Every decision from team meals to whether music played at practice, Orgeron reversed. Fifteen times a day, he says, Orgeron thinks about how he would have done something at Ole Miss and then stops and goes the opposite direction.

Suddenly, a Southern Cal program that was languishing in tension and self-pity has started winning again, having fun again

Under Orgeron, USC finished the year 6-2. And the lesson here is so great: We don’t always do the work the right way the first time. We make mistake in the way we treat people, and the way we try to get things done.

Sometimes, it requires you to make little fixes. Sometimes, you have to make huge changes.

But you can’t be stubborn. If it’s not working — and if the results aren’t there — you have to be willing to be flexible. Change can be a powerful thing.

11/25/201311/25/2013

What Do You Have To Show For It?

Ask me what my favorite college basketball team of all time was, and I’ll tell you: The 2011-12 Missouri Tigers. I loved that team. They could pass. They could shoot. They were insanely entertaining.

With a few weeks left in the season, I remember a conversation I had with a buddy of mine, a fellow Mizzou fan. Our Tigers had only lost 1 or 2 games all year. They were ranked as one of the four or five best teams in America.

We were watching a truly great team playing in a special season. The only question left was:

When it was all over, what would they have to show for it?

Success in a sport like college basketball is a pretty strange thing. Only one team gets to win the championship, but even winning three or four games in the NCAA Tournament is considered a pretty big accomplishment. Our Tigers didn’t have to win it all — to be considered one of the great teams, just making it to the Elite 8 or Final 4 would do.

Then Mizzou lost its first game, a monumental upset at the hands of Norfolk State. And that’s what fans remember about that team. Not the huge highs. Not the Big 12 Championship.

Two years later, fans remember what Mizzou had to show for it: A big “L” when it mattered.

Because this is how it goes. You have to find the right people. You have to put in the work. You have to put in a lot of it.

But at some point, you need to go out there and show the world what you’ve got. The end product matters — it’s what they remember about you.

So when you’ve put in the work, you have to ask yourself: What do you have to show for it?

Better make it count.

11/14/201311/13/2013

Knowing When To Tear It Down.

I’ve had a lot of trouble with Time Warner this year. They service internet at my apartment, and — somehow — they’re the only provider who offers internet on my block.

Which is a problem, because, 1) I work on the internet, and 2) Time Warner’s internet is wildly unreliable. I’ve had seven visits from Time Warner this year to fix my internet. SEVEN! And it still goes out every two weeks.

But what I find interesting is what the repair staff for Time Warner has told me about why the service is so unreliable. The fault, they say, lies almost entirely with a bad infrastructure of cables that was first laid out in New York. The repair team can make little fixes, but ultimately, the infrastructure needs to be redone, and until it’s fixed, Time Warner is going to remain unreliable.

So here’s where I bring this back around to the work we all do.

There are times when you discover that small fixes are enough to get the job done. When a few changes can make a difference.

But there are other times when the infrastructure of a project or a team is fundamentally broken. You can’t just duct tape things together in those cases. You have to tear it down and build it all over again.

The difference between those who get the work done and those who don’t is often understanding where you stand. Does this require a little fix? Or is this a total do-over?

It’s hard to the work if the thing you’re working from is broken. Time Warner is proof of that.

That photo of a router comes via.

10/28/201310/27/2013

What Happens When You Add Up All The Work.

That’s a photo of me in 7th grade. I’m in the center, wearing the fireman’s hat. I was shorter then. When I went for a checkup in 8th grade, the doctor said I’d probably top out at 6′.

Then I grew 6 inches in a year. And kept growing.

But a funny thing about that: No one really noticed. Not my family. Or my friends.

Growing 6 inches in a year is a lot, but it happens incrementally. A quarter of an inch here, a half an inch there. The change happens so gradually that you don’t notice what it’s all adding up to.

So we didn’t notice anything — until some cousins from out of town visited, and noticed that I had obviously grown a lot. The news came as a shock to everyone I knew. (Even me, kind of — I had spent the winter complaining about how my entire body hurt all the time, but I wasn’t quite sure why.)

We go through these changes all the time. Little things and alterations that add up, tiny changes in the way we work and the types of work we do. Eventually, they add up to something big.

But when we wake up in the morning, we don’t feel like we’re making big changes. We don’t notice what’s happening all around us. We look at the little picture, and never the big.

Often, it takes an outside force for us to take stock of what’s been going on.

But if you’ve been doing great work, and you’ve been putting in a lot of work, you start to notice what you’ve been building all along. It could be something really great.

10/21/201310/20/2013

Celebrating The Big Moments.

I saw a show at Carnegie Hall on Friday. The band was The Lone Bellow, a really exciting group in the Mumford & Sons/Lumineers vein that’s just starting to get some national attention. The Carnegie Hall show was one of their biggest ever.

The band invited their family to the show. During a break between songs, they told the crowd that the first four or five rows were all family. The mandolin player, Kanene Pipkin, had her dad front and center, and he spent most of the set dancing and waving his arms and cheering.

The best moment of the show came during the encore. After the band had finished a song, the room went dead silent. And then we all heard the voice of Pipkin’s dad, turning around and loudly asking for one of his relatives.

“Dad,” Pipkin said, embarrassed, “we’re trying to play an encore here.”

It was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen at a concert.

And it was also a really amazing reminder: Getting to a stage like that isn’t easy. The Lone Bellow began as a side project. They played shows to tiny crowds, and a few years into their existence, they still haven’t broken through to a huge audience.

But on the night they played Carnegie Hall, they chose to share the evening with the people who’d supported them and believed in them all along. We don’t always take time to celebrate the big moments and breakthroughs, but it was pretty amazing to see the band do just that on Friday night.

They’re a heck of a band. Here’s to many more big nights for you and yours.