As long as I can remember, it has always (always, always) taken me three attempts to make something right. Whether it’s the smallest bit of graphic design, the most important copy for an email blast, or even a recipe attempt – it always, always takes at least three tries before I make something that I would even consider sharing with my closest allies.
Thinking about the three attempts, they almost always follow the same pattern:
The first attempt was just to get the idea out of my head.
The second attempt was either starting completely over (because attempt one didn’t work), or beginning to hone in on the idea.
By the third attempt, I am finally starting to get somewhere.
I thought this was just me. Maybe, I wondered, I’m 1/3 slower than the most genius designers, writers or bakers out there.
Turns out, I’m not unique (just like everyone else)!
Talking to other creatives – especially designers and writers – they report the exact same thing: things don’t really start to come into focus until the third attempt at something.
The first draft is the “down draft”. For me, it’s about getting it out of my head and down on paper.
The second draft (assuming that I didn’t just immediately throw away your first try entirely) is the “up draft”. I start to clean it up a little bit here and there. Smoothing some edges out in the idea or presentation.
The third draft (again, assuming I haven’t bailed in shame and private embarrassment) is the “dental draft”. I wish I could take credit for this awesome name, but it was in fact Anne Lamott In Bird by Bird. She named a third draft the dental draft to “check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy”.
Once I came to terms that this is just the creative process, I could embrace it and stop feeling like feel like less of a sham.
I’ve taken the last couple of weeks off of work. The break was very necessary, but I didn’t really understand why until the last day or so.
I’ve felt extremely overwhelmed in life. Work was suffering. I was snapping at my family. My body physically hurt. It wasn’t good.
I’m working on being more deliberate in all kinds of things: how I spend my time, what I eat, even what I’m going to spend my attention on.
Today I took a small step and put my phone out of reach when I was home. Left it in the kitchen.
During my vacation, I noticed that I still felt strangely overwhelmed – despite turning Slack and email notifications off. Despite no meetings. Despite intentionally not talking or even thinking about work.
I also noticed that I spent a lot of time looking at my phone while on vacation. There’s a lot more free time on vacation. And I noticed that I started spending it looking at my phone. Twitter. Online news. Reddit. Instagram.
Literally nothing of value. And with the outcome of distraction and some feeling of being overwhelmed. What the hell?
So today, my phone wasn’t in my pocket. The most noticeable outcome of this is that I sometimes just sat there with nothing to do. So I would actually watch what was going on. Wife cooking dinner. Kid playing with cars. The rain outside.
Just not having that little screen in my pocket, nagging me, giving me something to do instead of sit with my thoughts. It made so much difference. Unexpectedly.
I attempted to replace a water filter in my house this week. It’s something I do every 4-6 months. I made the typical mistake of thinking that it would just be half an hour, or so. One thing I’ve learned in the last four years of owning a house is that it’s never half an hour. Literally ever.
Attempting to replace the water filter resulted in sediment getting into the faucet in my downstairs bathroom. The faucet is so old (and cheap), that I couldn’t take it apart to find and clean out whatever was causing the clog.
Attempting to replace that faucet resulted in multiple trips to multiple stores. It turns out that the downstairs countertop is so old (and cheap) that it has a very unique pattern for the faucet. After multiple trips to Lowe’s and Home Depot finally resulted in finding the one faucet that would work in my bathroom.
Attempting to install the faucet resulted in multiple trips to multiple hardware stores to find very specific sizes and lengths of water supply lines. It turns out that the plumbing in my house is so old (and cheap) that it was done by someone who didn’t know how to plumb.
OK. Faucet’s in. Now, just the simple task of replacing the drain. Attempting to install the new drain resulted in more trips to the hardware store, and multiple calls to my father-in-law. It turns out that the plumbing in my house was done very poorly.
My attempt at replacing a water filter in 30 minutes resulted in spending about $100 on a new faucet and plumbing materials, and took about two days. But hey, now I know to just call someone when I need anything done on my house how to sort-of install a faucet.
Upside, I got to spend a lot of time wondering what the art direction was for the photo on the faucet box. I can only assume it was “two well dressed adults share a laugh in a co-gendered bathroom while the female adult washes only a single hand”.
two well dressed adults share a laugh in a co-gendered bathroom while the female adult washes only a single hand
I constantly think about trying to use my iPad as my full time computer. It’s a completely irrational thought, but I can’t shake it from my brain.
I’m not sure why. I think it’s because it’s cool and different, and probably also because I am particularly fortunate to even have it as an option. This feels like the future to me. Just a little device that does everything you need it to. Despite it needing to be very connected to the Internet to do anything valuable, it feels like a way to disconnect from technology.
I told you this is irrational.
I’m always looking up articles about it, and they all come to the same conclusion: I probably shouldn’t.
(Semi-related: There’s something about the changing seasons that make me want to make these kinds of changes. In about March, as the weather begins to turn and there’s more sunlight out, I seriously consider going full-time Linux.)
There’s no reason for any of this. My Macbook Pro does literally everything I would want my full-time iPad setup to do:
iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger
Photos
Gmail
Google Docs
Access to docs in the cloud
Spotify
And in literally every aspect, my laptop does it better … and faster. But then I see a guy in the airport lounge doing everything from his iPad Pro, and I’m jealous for some reason.
When I’m at home or on vacation, I use my iPad as the only computer. This is primarily so I’m even less inclined to check in on work, but there’s also something nice about only having this little glas slab to keep up with. (Come to think of it, it’s usually vacations when I contemplate switching to an iPad full time.)
I can’t quantify what’s nice about it, because it’s irrational.
I know it’s possible to switch over to an iPad for non-work stuff: my wife replaced a MacBook Air with an iPad two years ago.
She has one complaint though: it’s harder to type on an iPad than it is on a computer. She doesn’t send long-winded emails to her friends (but who does anymore, anyways?). When she needs to send a big email, I hook a bluetooth keyboard up to her laptop – or just give her my laptop so she can log in to Gmail.
You could buy a keyboard, but then you need to carry that around. Two parts. Or you can buy one of those folio cases that includes a keyboard. But then at that point, aren’t you basically just carrying around an under-powered computer?
Not to mention, by the time you add it all up, you’re starting to knock on the door of the price of a new laptop.
In 2020, I promise to stop considering this. Until I see a guy at the airport “living the dream”.
I’ve been keeping a list of tools that I’ve found useful when researching a new online business, and usually shoot part of the list to someone once a week. So instead, I’ll post them here for you! No affiliate links on any of the links below. Shoot me an email if I’m missing something great.
http://keywordtool.io – enter a keyword, then click the “questions” tab to see what questions others are asking for that keyword. Useful for content generation.
https://ahrefs.com – useful to understand what your competition is ranking for, and to identify long-tail keyword opportunities.
kwfinder.com – general metrics on your keyword and similar, related keywords. Gives you a “keyword difficulty” rating, to understand how much competition exists for your phrase. Maybe my favorite because most of it is in front of the paywall.
If you’re looking to install Plex on a Raspberry Pi, this is the ultimate guide. I’ll show you how to install Plex easily, mount an external drive to store all of your data, and set up Plex so that you can easily watch files on any device.
Fox took Family Guy off of Netflix, but we had been watching it for years on Netflix. We don’t want to pay for a Hulu subscription (it has ads!), and don’t have a DVD player anymore. Plex to the rescue!
Installing Plex on a Raspberry Pi is Simple
I’ve had a love affair with the Raspberry Pi, so I’ve got a few around the house. I also went through a “back all your data up… twice!” phase in my house, so I have a huge WD hard drive laying around doing nothing.
The perfect combination.
To get a Plex server up and running on a Raspberry Pi, you need some essential equipment:
A Raspberry Pi 3. I always get this Raspberry Pi starter kit from Amazon since it comes with an SD card, power cable, heat sink and enclosure. And can be at my house in 2 days.
A big external drive. While this is optional, I used a WD MyBook DUO since it has USB ports on the back. I use these USB ports to power the Raspberry Pi so that I don’t take up all of the electrical outlets in my office. But, any hard drive will do. Here’s a 4TB hard drive for less than $100, which is probably more than enough space.
Now, let’s get Plex on it. First, update Raspbian.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Install the HTTPS transport package
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https
Plex comes in a new repo, called Dev2Day. To get it, we need to add a key:
Install Samba. This lets you run your Plex in a closet, but add files to it from another computer.
sudo apt-getinstall samba samba-common-bin
Configure Samba to share your media directory. Open the Samba config file:
sudo vi /etc/samba/smb.conf
Scroll down to the very bottom of the file and add this:
[Plex Media]
Comment = Plex media folder
Path = /mnt/media
Browseable = yes
Writeable = Yes
only guest = no
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
Public = yes
Guest ok = yes
Be sure to replace /mnt/media with your media mount point.
Restart Samba:
sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart
Now, we need to create some folders that will make Plex easier to use.
In your terminal, create a folder for TV shows:
mkdir /mnt/media/TV
And create a folder for Movies:
mkdir /mnt/media/Movies
Now, add your media files to the appropriate folders.
If you’re on a Mac, you should see your pi appear as a shared drive in your Finder. You can also connect directly to it by going to Go->Connect to Server, and typing in smb://raspberrypi.local
Once you have your movies and TV shows copied over, we can set up Plex!
In your browser, go to http://raspberry.local:32400/web. If that doesn’t work, replace raspberrypi.local with the Pi’s IP address.
This will bring you to the Plex web app. Create an account (or sign in if you already have a Plex account). Plex will give you a quick guided tour, then will give you the chance to “Add to Library”.
Select the media type and the folder that contains that content. Plex will index these files for a few minutes, then organize it for you.
But if you’re like me, editing fstab rarely works right the first time. This typically results in your system crashing on startup with a message saying that your Raspberry Pi has gone into “Emergency Mode”. You fix this by removing (or editing) the new line from your fstab file. But how do you do that if your system won’t start up?
Here’s how to get your Raspberry Pi out of Emergency Mode, and booting again:
Take your SD card out of your Pi and mount it on another computer.
Open the boot partition, and the file cmdline.txt
Add init=/bin/sh to the end of the line and save the file
Unmount, place back into your Pi, and power up your Pi. Your Pi will boot into a minimum shell environment as root.
At this point, you need to mount the actual filesystem, but without loading fstab. To do that, enter mount -o remount,rw / –target / and hit enter
Now, edit your fstab file by entering vi /etc/fstab and hitting enter
After you’ve made your edits, exit the file, then at the command line, type exit. The system will panic, but it’s fine.
Remove the SD card from your Pi and put it back into the other computer.
Open the boot partition, and the file cmdline.txt
Remove init=/bin/sh from the end of the line and save the file
Unmount the SD card, place it back into your Pi, and power up your Pi. You should be good to go now.
To lead a productive team, teach them how to make the right decisions.
A good team leader makes themselves unnecessary. 1Not useless. Useless and unnecessary are two different things.
It shouldn’t be necessary that you’re in every meeting. It shouldn’t be necessary that you leave an opinion on every Confluence page. And it definitely shouldn’t be necessary for you to make or approve every decision.
As “the single wringable neck”, you hold the responsibility for the progress of the project. But that doesn’t mean that you need to do all the work.
Some leaders like to consider themselves “deeply involved” in every aspect of the product. I’d argue that these guys are holding their teams back from being truly creative, and literally killing themselves in the process.
GSD(WY)
So, how do you make sure that the right things are getting done (without you), by the right people, at the right time – while not involving yourself in every decision?
To reduce responsibility confusion, set crystal clear role expectations: Does your engineering counterpart know exactly what you’re expecting from him in that role? Does the design team understand exactly what problem they’re solving, why it’s important, and when you want to see the next version? Does this business team understand what their involvement should be at this time, and when it’s likely to change? If possible, establish expectations on the very first day a new member joins the team. (And if that’s already past, cancel some meetings and do it today!)
To reduce priority confusion, over-communicate the problem: How often do you re-iterate the problem you’re trying to solve, and why when? Who on your team would (and wouldn’t) be able to recite it from memory? When everyone knows this, everyone is more likely to make the right prioritization call in your absence. Start regular reviews with the problem. Reiterate it at the start of planning meetings. It’s easy (and understandable) to lose sight of the forest for the trees, especially when it’s crunch time. State the problem as often as possible to help keep everyone focused.
To increase decision-making speed, make it OK to be wrong: If the goal of this is to get out of the way of your creatives, then you have to make it OK for them to make decisions without first consulting you. If not, figure out what information you have that they don’t and relay it to them.
The Ultimate Test: Disappear
You can test how unnecessary you are by marking yourself as Away on Slack for a few days. There’s a cognitive blocker to sending someone a message on Slack while they’re away, which usually results in that person making a decision or getting the answer somewhere else. Use this to your advantage to see how your test reacts when you’re not around.
An infinite amount of information readily available
Independently, neither of these are actually problems 2I would actually argue that both of these is what makes good employees great employees..
At the intersection of Imposter Syndrome and infinite content is where we spend too much time. We’re spending time reading how others have solved their own problems instead of solving our own.
The intersection of Imposter Syndrome and infinite content is a dangerous place to spend time. The intersection is why Hacker News, Twitter and Medium are all popular in our profession today.
We’re so insecure in our own skills and experiences that we try to read as much as possible.
We assume that everyone else has figured it out.
I read this post about Scrum, I can finally get my team to do it “right”. It’s been retweeted 13.4k times, so it must be good.
If I read this Medium article about the best user research questions, I’ll finally start to get value out of my user research. It’s got seventy-billion “claps”, so it must be good.
Everyone else is reading this book, so I better get in on it.
Thing is: the authors of those blog posts probably feel the same way.
But we don’t think about that. We skim the article (at best) with confirmation biases running in the background, fixate on the bulleted list of “solutions” at the bottom of the page, share it in our team’s Slack page, then wonder why the problem won’t go away.
And because their solution to their problem didn’t solve our problem, we actually feel worse. So we read even more.
Most blog posts about how some other awesome founder or design team or engineer lacks enough context to actually be useful. 2It’s not lacking because the author is trying to be sneaky. Adding context is hard to do well without your 500-word post becoming a novel.
Those blog posts, Quora answers, clever Tweets, and sometimes entire books, lack context.
Your team is not the same as their team. Your experience is not the same as their experience.
If you’re a manager, stop sharing Medium articles, tweets and blog posts. Read what you want to read 3I would argue that you should reduce this as well, but I’m not here to tell you how to live your life., but establish a point of view and share that with your team, instead. Help create an opinionated team with a point-of-view to solving problems, not just a team that regurgitates whatever article was popular last week.
And if you’re an individual contributor, do the exact same thing.
The story of how a group of Disney engineers worked on a secret project to breathe new life into an aging Walt Disney World audience.
Disney’s MagicBand is part park ticket, part credit card and part room key. But the result, and the story behind it, is typical Disney magic.
The technology is, obviously, very cool. But what’s particularly inspiring about these articles is how it tells the story of Disney designing this wristband as the way to remove every friction point from a Walt Disney World vacation experience.
These are pretty long reads, but are totally worth the time.
