Tag: lessons learned

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Be Prepared.

When I interviewed a candidate at BuzzFeed for a role on the newsletter team, I always asked the same first question: Do you subscribe to any of our newsletters?

These were candidates who’d applied specifically for a job on the newsletter team. They’d submitted resumes and cover letters for the role. We’d read through them, picked the candidates we’d liked, and set up a quick phone screener — 20 minutes on the phone to ask a few questions. Each candidate had a few days to prepare for that interview.

And yet: Probably forty percent of the candidates I interviewed immediately said “no” to my simple question: Do you subscribe to any of our newsletters?

I was always astonished by that. How could so many people know absolutely nothing about the types of work we’d done? Signing up for a newsletter was remarkably easy, and free. And yet two out of every five candidates failed to do even that.

In all the interviews I did, I can’t recall a single candidate who answered “no” and got a second interview.

I tell that story now because I’m reading “In the Land of Men,” a memoir by Adrienne Miller about her time working at GQ and Esquire. In it, she tells the story of her first day of work, walking through the office with GQ editor David Granger:

“As Granger and I spoke, it became apparent that I did have one thing going for me: I was able to talk about past issues of GQ. Later, he said that I got the job because I was the one person he’d interviewed who’d actually even bothered to open the magazine.”

“ ‘Never underestimate how unprepared most people are,’ he would later observe, correctly.”

The bar to clear in a first interview is pretty low: Show up on time, have a few questions ready to ask, and make sure you’re knowledgeable about the place you’re interviewing at. That minimum effort won’t get you the job — but it might be enough to get you to the second round of interviews.

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Email Is For Action.

Before you send an email to a colleague, ask yourself one question: What do you want them to do when they get this email?

The best emails are the ones that have a clear next step. Email’s the perfect way to:

      • Get a quick answer to a question
      • Set up a meeting or call
      • Review a document
      • Connect two colleagues

And when you send the email, make sure the subject line of your email conveys that immediate action. (For instance: “Here’s the contract for our upcoming work”, or “Can you review this document by Friday?”) Get right to the point, and make sure that the call to action is right there so you get the fastest possible reply.

Email’s great for action, but unfortunately, it’s a lousy place to start a discussion or have a deeper conversation. I’ve always found it far better to have that sort of conversation elsewhere: In person, on the phone, or even via a chat tool, like Slack. If you need that kind of depth, send the email to set up the meeting, but then move things to a better forum.

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Be Good To Each Other. Enjoy Every Moment.

My grandma passed away this week — she was 96 years old. The past few days, I’ve been thinking about something she told us a few years ago. My brother and I went to visit her, and at the end of our visit, Grandma made sure to mention something to the two of us. She said: “Be good to each other. Enjoy every moment.”

When I think about her today, and always, I’ll try to remember those words.

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One Lesson From Remote Work: You Have To Find Time To Pause.

I’m just a few months into working remotely as I grow Inbox Collective. There’s a lot I like about it. For one: I’m writing this from Utah, where I’ve been working for the past 10 days. It’s been fun getting to work in a new place (and then getting the chance to ski when I can).

But something I’ve learned about remote work: Your office is wherever you are. If you’re on a plane and there’s decent WiFi, that can be your office. If you’re on a chairlift checking your email, that’s your office. If it’s midnight, and you’re at home, on the couch, laptop open, well, that’s your office.

When you’re remote, it’s easy for the work to follow you around all day. I wake up, walk over to my desk, and often start my day by 7 a.m. But if I’m not careful, it can be 10 p.m., and I’m still there, working hard. And I’ve learned quickly that that’s not a recipe for success. If I try to work long hours every day, including weekends, I’l burn out.

So I’m trying a few things this year that are a little different to make sure I keep that balance between work and play. Here’s one: I’m pushing myself to make 90 minutes every day, in the middle of the day, for a pause. I can go to the gym, take a walk, step out for lunch, or get coffee with a friend — but I have step away from the desk for a little bit.

Here’s another: I’m going to set a time to shut down work at the end of the day. (It’ll be around 7:30-8 p.m.) I’m thinking of this as the “pencils down!” request your teacher probably gave you in high school at the end of a test. There’s always going to be more work, and I can’t just work all day. I’ve got a lot on my plate — consulting work through Inbox Collective, work on Not a Newsletter, and speaking gigs. I know I have to find time to pause.

We’ll see how this goes in 2020. I’m hoping that creating this time for breaks gives me the time to focus on the other things happening in my life — and hopefully, gives me the energy to come back and tackle bigger work projects in the long run, too.

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That illustration is by Katerina Limpitsouni for unDraw.

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Write It Down. Remember Who You Are — And Who You Were.

It’s been almost a decade since I started keeping a journal.

I’d never thought of myself as a journal kind of guy, but there was this online journaling tool that came out of Y Combinator, called OhLife. It launched right around the time I moved to Biloxi to work on Stry.us, and it seemed like an interesting way to document my days on the Gulf Coast. Every day, they’d send me an email that said, “How did your day go?”, and I’d write back. It became a habit at first, and then a ritual. A day couldn’t end without me writing down a few thoughts.

As I wrote more entries, OhLife would write back to me and say, “Remember this? One year ago you wrote…”, and include an entry from a year ago on that day. There were moments in 2013 when I was in New York, working at BuzzFeed, and reading about things that had happened in Mississippi — all of which made me wonder: Had all that happened in just the past year?

In 2014, OhLife shut down, but I kept journaling. My current setup is simple: I’ve got an email that lands in my inbox every day at around 6pm. I reply to it, and the reply gets added to a doc with all of my previous entries. Every once in a while, I’ll open up my doc and search for a random date, just to see what I wrote on that day. As I write every year in my Things I Believe post: “I know that my beliefs will continue to change. I know that I will change.” And every time I look back on my notes from a particular day, I’m reminded of just how true that is.

I didn’t realize that the simple act of journaling would mean so much to me. It’s a moment for reflection in my day, and an opportunity to document my progress (or, in those early years, the lack thereof). I think it’s one of the most valuable things I do every day.

And if you want to get started with journaling, there are apps that make it easy. There’s even one of this list that allows you to send everything via email!

Give it a try. Over time, you might be surprised to reflect upon the person you were back then — and the person you’ve become today.

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That photo comes via Hannah Olinger for Unsplash.

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Give Yourself Time.

Today is my last day at The New Yorker — and tomorrow, Sally and I will get on a plane, go to a beach, and do a whole lot of nothing for a few days.

If you’re switching jobs, that time off between work is invaluable. Once you get into the new job, those first few months will be intense. You’ll be meeting people, getting up to speed, and going through the montage scene. It’s going to be a lot — and if you don’t give yourself time to recharge, you might burn out.

So do yourself a favor: If you’re leaving for a new job, ask your new boss for time off — two weeks, minimum. (They’ll want you to start right away. Don’t be afraid to push back.) Give yourself the freedom to go travel somewhere nice for a few days — the kind of vacation you might not get to take once your new job starts. Get away from email, get away from work, and just enjoy yourself. Give yourself the time to read, to travel, to relax, to do as little as you please. Don’t hop into the next thing until you’ve taken that time for you.

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That photo was taken the last time I took some time off and went to the beach for a whole lot of nothing.

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I Worked for Two Years at The New Yorker. This Is What I Believe.

Every year, around Thanksgiving, I write a blog post that I call The Things I Believe. It’s an inventory of the year that was, as I look back on what I’ve learned and the person I am at that moment.

As as I approach my final day at The New Yorker — in September, I start full-time on Inbox Collective — I wanted to look back at two years in this newsroom. It’s been an incredible place to work, and I feel so lucky to have been a part of this team. So as I look back on my time at The New Yorker, this is what I believe:

Whatever it is you do, be the best at it — Whenever someone asks me how to get a job at The New Yorker, I always tell them: This is a place full of the best people in their field. I truly believe we have the best editors, writers, fact checkers, and artists anywhere. My colleagues are so unbelievably good at what they do — I continue to be amazed at how talented this team is. And if your ambition is to work at The New Yorker one day, keep working to be the best in your field. When you are, this place might be ready for you.

Give yourself time to focus — It’s not just that the people who work at The New Yorker are talented. It’s that they’re given the opportunity to focus on their work. It’s not uncommon to hear that a copy editor or a fact checker is going to be working on a particular piece for a few days — or longer — to make sure that the work is done right. Focus breeds excellence.

Make the extra phone call — Before The New Yorker, I’d never worked at an organization that had a dedicated fact-checking team. Our fact checkers check everything — and I do mean everything — that can be checked. Here’s a glimpse into the process, as explained through the experience of actor Daniel Radcliffe, who was once tasked with fact checking a review of a Mexican restaurant. Their attention to detail is remarkable.

Don’t take yourself too seriously — Here’s another secret of The New Yorker: If we just published lengthy profiles about Polish novelists or reported pieces about the future of modern dance, I’m not sure we’d get that many readers. What sets The New Yorker apart is the humor. This is a place that can be silly, goofy, and subversive, and that makes all the difference.

It’s been a joy being a part of this team. I’ll always be a reader — and a fan.

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That New Yorker cover comes via the excellent @NewYorkerArt Instagram.

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Everyone Gets the Chance to Make Their Own Mistakes.

I’m on a bus on the New Jersey Turnpike, heading home. I’d say we’re driving north, but that’s not quite right — we’re not moving. There’s a huge crash on the road, and traffic’s stopped. What should be a four-hour drive from Washington to New York will take nearly six.

It didn’t have to be this way.

Whenever I take the bus home, I keep an eye on Google Maps. I’m not driving, so I don’t need to know the best route home, but I do like knowing when we’ll arrive. The bus is fine — it’s cheap, and it gets you where you need to go, but it’s not the most comfortable way to travel. Still, I find that as long as I know when it’ll all be over, I can maintain a level of sanity. Sure, it’s a little too hot in here, and the people two rows up are talking a little too loudly — but there’s only an hour left!

On this trip back, though, I saw something I’d never seen before on Google Maps: a warning that we were about to drive into the massive traffic jam caused by the crash that we’re now stuck in. Google Maps made it pretty clear: We had to get off, or we’d end up in this jam. It suggested multiple alternate routes, any of which would save us upwards of 75 minutes. Just off the bridge, I watched as dozens of cars in front of us suddenly veered to an exit, guided by Google Maps to a better route. On the Turnpike, signs above the roadway warned: “CRASH AHEAD — SEEK ALT ROUTE.” Soon after, more cars — clearly noting the sign, and having opened up Google Maps — found the exit ramp.

Our driver plowed onward — into the jam.

All of this has me thinking about the mistakes we make in life, and what we learn from them. When you’re young, you’re going to make mistakes. Small ones, big ones, dumb ones — you’re going to make them all. You’re going to do things that make you look back and go, What was I thinking?

There will be people in your life who try to steer you away from those mistakes. Often, you’ll ignore them, and make them anyway. Some lessons you just have to learn from experience.

But what I’m most curious about is how you react to those mistakes. It’s OK when you screw up — that’s going to happen! But what happens next? What do you do differently next time? What conversations do you have next to help you learn from the mistake? Do you own the mistake, or not?

I’m here in the back of this bus, wondering what our driver — and what the rest of the folks stuck on the Jersey Turnpike — will do next time. Will they change their driving routine? Will they do some research into apps (Google Maps, Waze, etc.) that might be able to offer them a better route? Will they pay more attention to road signs that warn, in giant letters, “SEEK ALT ROUTE”? Or will they blame it on bad luck, on bad drivers, and stick with the habits that got them into this jam in the first place?

Everyone gets the chance to make their own mistakes. But when you make them, accept the blame — and find ways to learn from them.

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Those are screenshots of one of the routes Google Maps suggested — and the one we took.

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Beware The Silver Bullet Metric.

A few years ago, I wrote about one of the best pieces of advice I got from my old boss, Dao Nguyen:

I’ve learned a lot from Dao over the years. But one sentence in there really drives home Dao’s biggest message: “Anyone who just optimizes to one metric is going to eventually have a problem.”

What we’ve learned with newsletters is that there is no “silver bullet” metric. If you try to optimize your email for open rate, you’ll try to game the system with headlines that entice subscribers to click. (Case in point: “You’re Fired.”) But if you overpromise and underdeliver, you’ll lose subscribers in the long run. If you try to optimize for clicks, you’ll use bold colors and buttons. It’ll work well at first — but readers will learn to tune them out. There are dozens of other metrics out there for email. And what Dao’s taught me is true: If you focus all of your energy on a single metric, in the long run, you’ll fail.

What I’ve recently learned is that there’s actually a law that explains exactly this! It’s called Goodhart’s Law, and it has one key rule: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Or as NPR’s Planet Money put it in a fantastic recent episode: “Be careful what you measure because your employees are going to make it happen.” They may break some rules to hit their assigned goal. They may actually make things worse, from a big picture perspective, to reach their target. But Goodhart’s Law suggests that if they have that silver bullet metric in mind, they will find a way to hit it.

Listen to the whole “Planet Money” episode — it’s a fantastic look into how things can go wrong at the office.

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That photo, of an old GE voltmeter, comes via Thomas Kelley and Unsplash.

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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.

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

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