Tag: keep going

Posted on

The Hard Thing Is That There Are Always More Hard Things.

photo-1444090695923-48e08781a76a

It’s fall, which means I’m already thinking about plans for 2016. The new year is less than 90 days away, and there are a ton of big decisions to make between now and then.

As I think about the state of my four-person team at BuzzFeed, these challenges come to mind for 2016:

-We need to grow our team.

-We need to find a way to train new team members in the way we work — how to launch stuff quickly, mess around with new ideas, and use data to make informed decisions.

-We need to maintain the industrious spirit of a small team while growing into a (slightly) bigger one.

-We need to continue to grow our subscriber base.

-We need to launch new products.

-Some of those products will be launched in other countries.

-And some of them will be launched in languages other than English.

That’s a lot — and the secret is, it’s just the stuff that’s in front of me right now. In three months, we’ll have almost certainly knocked a few things off that list… but a new challenge or two will be added to it. Maybe we’ll add our first team member in a different city. Maybe we’ll be forced to make unexpected cuts to our lineup of newsletter products. Maybe we’ll have challenges implementing new types of advertising into our newsletters, or struggle to communicate with other teams here at the company.

Something new will come up. It always does.

And that’s the truly hard thing about working in a startup like BuzzFeed, I’ve found: There are always new challenges to face. Once you’ve mastered one challenge, another one presents itself. Sometimes, old challenges show up again in new ways!

The hard thing is that there are always more hard things to take on, and you have to be mentally prepared to taken on challenge after challenge. It’s why it’s so important to have those moments during the day to think, and it’s why it’s doubly important to have a great team behind you. The challenges will always keep coming. Make sure you have the time to center yourself, and make sure you have the team to take on what’s next.

———

Yes, that’s an incredibly obvious “mountains beyond mountains” metaphor of a photo at top. It’s from Unsplash and photographer Nitish Meena.

Posted on

Another Chance To Do Better.

Af0sF2OS5S5gatqrKzVP_Silhoutte

This week marks the end of the Jewish High Holidays. I like the High Holidays for a lot of reasons: You get to see family members that you don’t see every day; you get to feel this connection to an incredible, ancient tradition; and you get to eat a ton of lox. (Mostly, I like the lox.) But the holidays mean something else to me: They’re an opportunity to spend time thinking about the year past — and the year ahead.

When I think back, I first think of the big things I did right: Goals accomplished, projects launched, and little victories that made the past year so special. Then I start thinking of the times where I erred: Failures in communication or execution, or wrongs committed. (There are, sadly, always a lot of these.)

And then I look ahead. And no matter what’s come before, I always remind myself: Next year is a new chance to do a little better. I’ll never be perfect, and I’ll never come close. I will certainly make mistakes. But the goal isn’t perfection: The goal is do a little better than before. If I can do 5 percent better this year, and 5 percent better the next, and 5 percent the year after that…. well, over time, all those 5 percents are going to add up to something pretty impressive.

So here’s another year — 5776 on the Jewish calendar, if you’re keeping score — and another chance to do a little better. Here goes.

———

That photo of a sunset comes via Unsplash and photographer Mayur Gala.

Posted on

Let’s Make Yesterday Count.

by Thomas Brault

When I first started working, there were really only two types of days: good days, and bad days.

But over time, those two categories spawned a whole new set of days. There were good days that were slow, and good days that were fast; good days where a dozen great things all seemed to happen at once; good days where it felt like months of work paid off on the same day.

But there were plenty more good days where nothing obviously good happened — where no big work seemed to get done, but that still definitely qualified as a good day.

Those are actually some of my favorite days, but they’re hard to recognize in the moment. They’re the days where you’re doing lots of work to set up another day. For me, that might mean working with someone on my team to brainstorm a big new idea, or building out the tech back-end for a project. It could even be a day where I’m working on spreadsheets or other monotonous work that just has to get done.

It’s that kind of work that frees you up to do the exciting stuff another day, like launching a project or hiring a new member of the team. Those are the days when you lay out the framework. The next day, or the day after that, you’ll start building something big on top of it.

So when I get to those exciting days down the road, I try to remind myself to make those yesterdays count. I’ll tell myself: You’ve already put in the hard work. Now make something awesome with all of it.

Great work is built on a whole lot of yesterdays. When a big work day arrives, take a moment to appreciate how many good days you’ve already put in to get to a day like this. And then go out and do the work to make those yesterdays count.

———

There’s probably a symbolic meaning to that photo, but I mostly picked it for this post because it looks cool. (Hey, not everything has to have a deeper meaning!) It’s by Thomas Brault for Unsplash.

Posted on

The Worst Piece Of Advice You Can Give.

Here’s a piece of advice you’ve certainly heard before: Not where you want to be? That’s OK.

Just fake it ‘till you make it.

I really hate those words. I think it’s a very dangerous piece of advice — especially for young people who are still trying to find their way.

And here’s what I want to say instead:

Don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t. When you’re young, there are days when you feel like you know everything — but far more when you’re convinced you know absolutely nothing. And on those days, it’s easy to pretend to be the expert you aren’t just yet. Some people make a short-term (and shortsighted) choice to fake it.

But there’s never a need to fake your expertise. Never.

So don’t fake anything. And anytime you feel like you’re becoming a person you aren’t, here’s all you need to remember:

Be confident in who you are and what you know. You probably know more than you give yourself credit for!

Be honest with people about who you really are.

And when someone asks you for something and you don’t have the answer, it’s OK to say, “I don’t know.”

But there’s a catch: The minute you say it, you have to start working towards actually finding the answer. That means realizing that you’re smart enough to build the support system around you to get the right answers, and understanding that you’re going to have to work hard to keep learning.

That’s the harder way — but it’s also the one that’s going to earn you trust and pay dividends in the long run.

Posted on

Wait, How Does Everyone Else Know What The Hell Is Going On?

Jason Mraz

I spent the first six months of 2008 studying abroad in a little seaside town in Spain called Alicante, “studying” being a very loose term for what was actually going on. The last few weeks, some Americans came out to visit, and I kept asking them the same question: What did we miss while we were away?

For the most part, I’d stayed pretty current on what was happening in the States. I was reading the news every day, and I’d watched the Super Bowl, and I was even up-to-date on the latest episodes of “Lost.”

But there was other stuff I knew we’d missed: The ad campaign that everyone in America knew by heart, or the catchphrase everyone had heard, or the hit song that kept playing on the radio. I was so scared of coming back to the U.S. and feeling like I’d been on a different planet.

But everyone kept telling me: You really haven’t missed anything.

So fast-forward to the fall. I’m back at school, at I go to the piano bar on a Wednesday night. It’s acoustic guitar night, and it’s mostly the same old stuff: Garth Brooks, Journey, Elton John.

And then the musicians break into a song I’ve never heard before, and everyone — and I remember it being literally every person in the bar — starts screaming out the lyrics.

I looked at my friends and asked them what the hell was going on. What was this song, and how did everyone know it?

This song, Dan? This is that Jason Mraz song that blew up last spring. It’s called “I’m Yours.”

Everyone in the world had heard that song at that point…. unless, of course, you had been living in Alicante, Spain, where the radio was still mostly playing 2007’s hits (with a healthy bit of Tupac thrown in). Nobody had mentioned that Jason Mraz had a no. 1 hit. I was the only person at that bar who hadn’t heard that song 50 times.

If you’ve never been in that boat — if you’ve never had a moment where you realize that you’re the only person in the room who doesn’t know what the hell is going on — know this: It’s a strange feeling. All you want is to be in the loop as quickly as possible.

I wish I could say that the Jason Mraz song was my one experience with that feeling, but it wasn’t.

It’s also how I felt for first three months of my job at BuzzFeed.

You have to understand: When BuzzFeed hired me to build out an email program, I didn’t really know much about email. I had launched two small newsletters, yes, but otherwise, I was in way over my head. BuzzFeed knew that, too — but neither of us realized how truly clueless I was about email and publishing and BuzzFeed and pretty much everything on the internet.

I was working with Dao, who is now our publisher, and Dao knows everything about everything. She’d throw out basic acronyms and I would jot them down in a notebook to Google later. She’d start talking about spreadsheets, and I’d run home at night to learn how to use Excel.

Everything was brand new. Everything. And it felt like I was the only one in the room who could say that.

There were days where I truly felt like a fool, and many more where I wondered when I would ever feel like I had a grasp on my job.

Luckily, I asked a lot of questions. Luckily, the team I was working with answered them, and taught me so much in the process. Luckily, I really did want to get good at this job, and worked like crazy until I got there. But that’s the only way to do it: Find people who can really help you, ask as many questions as you can, and work your ass off to get to where you need to be.

The only other option is feeling like a fool. And that’s not much of an option at all.

———

That photo of Jason Mraz comes via Flickr’s @gueamu.

Posted on

Hope For The Best. Expect The Worst.

I sat down today to write a thing about Mel Brooks. Now, up front you should know:

1. I love Mel Brooks.
2. There isn’t a week that goes by where I don’t quote one of his movies. When will then be now? Light speed’s too slow! Who dares give me the raspberry? (And those are just the Spaceballs quotes!)

So when a new Mel Brooks special came on HBO, I made some time for it. It’s fantastic, and it closes with Mel singing the title song from “The 12 Chairs.” (You can/should watch it here.) The opening verse goes:

Hope for the best
Expect the worst
Some drink champagne
Some die of thirst
No way of knowing
Which way it’s going
Hope for the best
Expect the worst

It’s just a perfect Mel Brooks thought, and anyone who’s ever worked on something big knows the feeling. Before you go in on anything big — a project, a book, a company — sometimes it works out, and sometimes, shit happens!

That’s just how it goes. You do what you can, and you surround yourself with great people — and then you hope for the best.

Anyway, I sat down to write something longer about this — about how perfectly it captures what doing the work is all about, and what it means to go through this life — and then the chair I was sitting in broke. The back of it just snapped in half.

I sit down to write something about how life is funny, and then life goes and almost knocks me literally onto my ass.

You’re right, Mel. Life really is funny like that.

Posted on

Staying Ahead Of The Line.

swimmer

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:

ahead-of-the-line

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.

Posted on

Wanting To Skip Ahead.

4657515713_931eeee0e8

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Proudly powered by WordPress