I’m Dan Oshinsky, and I run Inbox Collective, an email consultancy. I'm here to share what I've learned about doing great work and building amazing teams.
Here’s a section from part of the Lakers’ playoff run that season. Jackson had been critical of Shaq’s free throw shooting abilities. (That playoffs, he shot 109 of 254 from the line.) Here’s what Jackson had to say about one pre-game effort:
“The press made a big deal out of [Shaq’s] dedication, showing up at the arena today three hours before tip-off to work on his free throws. To me it was no big deal. That was exactly what Shaq, as a professional, should be doing.”
And… he’s absolutely right.
Where else but in sports do we hear about how hard people practice? We don’t praise the coders who spend weekends diving into the craft. We don’t compliment the writer who stays up late working on drafts that never get read.
“Slump? I ain’t in no slump. I just ain’t hitting.” — Yogi Berra
Over the years, I’ve developed a sixth sense for certain things during sporting events. Like many sports fans, I know exactly when to flick back to the game after a commercial break. Like other sports nuts, I can usually tell you the cliché the announcer is about to spout just before he spouts it.
And of course: I can tell you when one team has the Mo.
You know Mo, or maybe you know it by one of its pseudonyms: Uncle Mo. Mighty Mo.
Big Mo.
Mo is momentum. Mo is how teams make comebacks that don’t seem possible. Mo is how the hot goalie gets hot, and why the power hitter suddenly can’t swing the bat. Mo is that mighty force that can upend even Murphy’s Law.
You can have skill, strength, strategy and coaching, but if you don’t have Mo, you’re not going anywhere.
I’ve seen it with my own eyes: Some nights, Big Mo just gets rolling, and crazy things start happening.
I didn’t do a solo dive. I jumped with a guy. His name was Dave. He was an experienced diver. He was the one who packed the chute, who opened the door to the plane, who yelled, “You ready?”
He was the one who threw me out of the plane, with me attached to his stomach.
I was thankful that he was there. Without him, I can’t imagine finding the courage to jump.
I’m wondering now: How many steps are there in our lives that we couldn’t do alone? How many journeys are there that demand a partner or a mentor?
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you, and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” — Steve Jobs
“I’m so grateful that I struggled.” — Ellen DeGeneres
Those are the words of someone who’s really, truly learned what it’s like to see bottom. Look at her resume, and you’ll find that Ellen DeGeneres has been low places:
• She got into comedy by accident.
• She worked crappy nightclubs and bars. (Once, she worked a restaurant that had the words, “Soup of the Day: Broccoli, and Ellen DeGeneres” on the chalkboard outside. Her name was below the soup.)
• She made it to “The Tonight Show,” where she was the first woman ever to get called over to sit on Johnny Carson’s couch after performing stand-up.
• She made some movies that flopped.
• She got her own TV show.
• On that TV show, she confessed that she was gay.
• The ratings tanked, and her show was cancelled one season later.
• She couldn’t get a job in TV or movies for three years afterward.
And then somewhere in the 2000s, things just started to click. She was in “Finding Nemo.” She got her own talk show. And all that work just started to spin itself into success.
Ellen said those six words at top — “I’m so grateful that I struggled.” — at an award ceremony being held in her honor at the Kennedy Center last month. Sometimes, award ceremony acceptance speeches ring hollow, but this one hit home. And it got me thinking:
What would it be like to be on stage accepting that big award without the lifetime of struggle?
What would it be like to reach success without the bumps and the roadblocks and the failures? Would it mean as much?
When Ellen said she was thankful for the bad times, she meant this: The struggle is when you find out whether or not you’re willing to put in the work. Over the years, after all the criticism and the pain, Ellen found that it was worth it to keep putting in the work — and I think our world is better for it.
Nothing great comes in this world without a lot of work and a lot of struggle.
Embrace the struggle. Embrace the pain.
It’s the stuff that’s molding you and guiding you toward something really amazing.
There’s a quote in that book that’s fascinating. McCloud talks about the cartoonist’s challenge. You’ve got a handful of panels in which to tell a full story, which means that you can’t show every action. You’ve got to pick and choose the parts you want to show.
Let’s say you’ve got a cartoon of a man at Starbucks. In panel 1, the man might be picking up his coffee from the counter. In panel 2, the man might be yelling while the coffee burns his lips.
What’s amazing is that the brain is able to put together the middle step — somewhere between panels 1 and 2, the man drank the coffee, and the coffee was too hot — even though it’s never actually shown in the comic.
”The phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. It’s called closure.”
Basically, if there’s a story being told, and there are loose ends to the story, the brain is capable of closing the loop. It takes the parts it has and jumps to a conclusion.
But what if, in our little coffee hypothetical, what we think happened wasn’t what happened. What if something else happened between the man getting the coffee and the man screaming? We never actually saw the man drink the coffee, after all. Isn’t it possible that something else happened there to cause the man to yell, but our minds had already decided what we wanted to see?
What if our minds closed the loop but changed the story along the way?
So let’s bring this back to you.
If you’re reading this post, you’re someone who’s trying to do awesome work. I salute you, creator of awesome stuff. You’re doing the work we need more of in the world.
But I’m also warning you: The haters are coming for you. Haters love to hate on awesome work.
And your work is no exception.
They’re going to come and see parts of your life’s story. They’re going to see certain things you’ve done or written or said, and they’re going to connects the dots for themselves. This is what McCloud warned us about brains: They like to finish unfinished stories.
You have no control over how they decide to close the loop on your story. It is entirely out of your control.
Here’s more proof that McCloud is right. Jimmy Kimmel sent out a TV camera two weeks ago to document voters’ reaction to the previous night’s debate. There was only one problem:
There wasn’t a debate the night before.
And yet: Here’s 3 minutes of voters responding to a debate that didn’t happen. They took this single bit of information from the cameraman — there was a debate last night! — and whatever preconceived notions existed in their minds, and they closed the loop for themselves:
So here’s what you need to remember: Haters are going to hate. When it comes to your story, they’ve already closed the loop for themselves.
You cannot control the haters, but you can control the work you do.
Focus there. Do the best work you can.
A huge thank you to Ross Nover, who gave a talk last week at Refresh DC that inspired this post. Also: That photo at top comes via someecards.
“There’s always better. There’s always faster. There’s always more. But there will never be another now.” — Dustin Curtis
A question I’ve gotten a lot this year:
How do you know?
How do you know when you’re doing something you really, really love? How do you know when you’re doing the work that’s meant for you?
The answer is a strange one: You just kind of know.
Here’s how I knew with Stry.us: At the end of last year, things were starting to ramp up with the project. Then my family asked me to join them out west to go skiing for a few days. I took a week off. And after a few days, I found myself on a chairlift thinking a very strange thought.
That night, I wrote this note to myself:
“I had a weird sensation today. I was on the slopes, skiing. And I realized: I shouldn’t be here. I should be working.
“I actually WANT to be working right now. Rather than skiing.”
It was a strange feeling. It was the first time in my life that I can ever remember wanting not to vacation.
My work, I realized, was just more fun.
The more I talk to people who do work that they love, the more I hear that same refrain: At some point, I just knew. I wish there was a better way to measure it, but I haven’t found it just yet.
When it’s right, there’s something that finally just clicks inside of you.
So if you’re searching for the right work, make sure you listen to yourself. If you find yourself telling friends that you can’t go out for a drink because you’ve got some work you really want to do, then you’re doing something you love.
And if you’re considering flying home from a ski vacation on New Year’s Eve so that you can get back to work — well, you’re definitely doing something you love.
But if you’re not getting that feeling — that sense that what you’re doing is so important and so awesome that everything else should go on hold — then maybe it’s time to start searching for new work.
This year, three of my teams had amazing seasons. They did things that they weren’t really supposed to do.
My Missouri Tigers had the best season in school history and earned a no. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. My Washington Capitals shook off a bad funk, made the playoffs and upset the defending Stanley Cup champs. My Washington Nationals finished with the best record in baseball.
But then came the big games.
My Tigers hit front rim on a three pointer at the buzzer and lost by two to Norfolk State in the opening game of the tourney.
My Caps gave up the game-tying goal — one that went off the post — with 6 seconds left at Madison Square Garden in Game 5, and then the game-winner in OT, and went on to lose to the Rangers in seven games.
My Nats were one strike away from the National League Championship Series, but somehow couldn’t get it, and lost, 9-7, to the St. Louis Cardinals.
An inch or two here and the Tigers hit that three. An inch or two there and the puck hits the post and goes out for a Capitals W. An inch or two anywhere and the Nats win their first postseason series in 70 years.
Change a few inches, and this is the best sports year of my life.
Instead, it’s just another year that wasn’t quite good enough. Another year in which my teams were “close.”
Close is disappointing, yes. But it’s also a powerful measuring stick.
I went to see Dispatch last week in D.C. They’re a band with a fascinating backstory. They’re a New England-based jam band with a Dave Mathews meets Phish meets Paul Simon kind of vibe. In the late 90s, they got big despite releasing their music without a major label. Then, right as they were starting to go mainstream, they broke up.
But last year, they reunited, and this year, they released their first full-length album in a decade.
Live, they’re fantastic. I’ve seen them a handful of times, and I’d put their show up against any. The show is a ton of fun to go to. The crowd jumps up and down, everyone’s singing along — it’s just a really good time.
But last week in D.C., tons of stuff went wrong at the show. The sound went out during their third song, and again during the fourth. Some guitar strings broke. The band had a few false starts on songs.
But the funniest came about halfway through the set. You know it’s not your night when something like this happens:
Chad Urmston, lead singer of Dispatch: “We’d like to call out some friends to join us on this next song.”
[Stage manager runs out and whispers something in Chad’s ear]
Chad: “Uh, apparently our friends are already driving to Atlanta for tomorrow night’s gig.”
So did the band panic? Did they freak out?
Hell no! They called up four strangers to sing backup vocals on the song instead.
Seriously. They grabbed four random people from the crowd, briefly taught them the chorus, and then started playing.
It’s not just your instruments that you need to master. You also need to learn how to play live — because lots of things can go wrong live. A band like Dispatch has spent so many hours on stage that they’ve mastered how to keep doing work even when everything’s going wrong.
Most people want to plan for the road ahead, but you can’t really plan for most of what’s about to hit you. All you can do is have the confidence to get through bad situations.
You have to stay calm and keep putting one foot in front of the other when it hits.
Dispatch did it last week, and they pulled off a hell of a show — even with all the technical difficulties.
Bravo, boys. One day, may the rest of us learn how to keep going when things go wrong.
“Ignore the money and the news. Find good people who make wonderful things, and help them do it.” — Erin Kissane
About once a month, I get an email from someone I don’t know. The email reads as follows:
Hi, Dan.
I’m a huge fan of Stry.us. I’m thinking of starting my own news site devoted to long-form journalism. I was hoping I could talk with you about how to get started.
I have gotten a lot of these emails, and I’ve followed up with almost all of them. Of the people who’ve emailed me, a small number have actually gone on and done something. A much larger number shoot me a couple of emails or maybe spend 20 minutes on the phone with me before deciding not to take on their dream.
This is what I’ve learned from the conversations with all of these people. The lessons here are from the journalism world, but they’re pretty universal themes, I’ve found.
1. People Rarely Follow Their Effort — People tend to think about their own passion first. They’re told that if they care about something, they should focus on that.
I know this: Just proving that you’re willing to do the work is a differentiator in this world.
2. Having a Team Matters — The people who’ve gone forward with these projects always have a team/tribe behind them. Even if it’s just a few readers who are really excited about the project. Even if it’s just a few people who want to copy edit stories.
The people who go forward have always found other people who buy into the dream, too. It’s much easier to quit when it’s just you.
3. Experience Only Takes You So Far — Some of the people I’ve talked to have had lots of experience in the news world. Some have had very little.
But when you’re trying to start something big, experience is only a small part of the equation. I’ve said it before: You also need time to make it happen, and a great team behind you, and a lot of hustle.
The people who say they can’t do something because they don’t have enough experience are usually just making excuses for themselves.
If you want to start something, then do it. But please, remember: Anyone can start something. What counts is that you follow through. That you hustle. That you do the work.
There are people in this world who talk, and there are people in this world who do.
