When I started on this self-employed adventure, I had no structure. This was the first adjustment. I allowed myself to be distracted by potential projects, pitching things, doing unpaid work in the hope that it would pay off (it didn’t). Over time I created habits for myself, drew boundaries, evolved to this 5 days on / 1 day off which I have found works really well for me.
But projects started to come in, and my work started to change. I’ve had periods that were very busy with client work and heavily scheduled (e.g. at the start of May I was doing so many technical interviews). This past week I had:
1 technical phone screen
2 calls about a panel I’m moderating (+1 no show that I had to reschedule).
1 meeting about project A
3 daily standups about project D, plus two in-depth planning meetings and another people management meeting.
2 hours in-person work with admin (she finished the rest at home).
Real-time work and back and forth with UX designer about the UI refresh.
The other thing that has changed is: I have more deadlines in my life. Right now there’s a list of things that I need to finish before I leave on Thursday that makes me want to panic. Instead I spent the last hour working (inefficiently) on something that has a deadline of the following Tuesday. I’m not sure if I’ve been engaging in structured procrastination, indulging my need to feel in control of something (anything!), or just having a normal approach to a Sunday morning.
There’s good things about this, not least of which: feeling overbooked means that I don’t chase work anymore. (I hated this, and also spent too long on back and forth that would go nowhere.)
I also feel more effective, but this isn’t the same as being more effective. I can point to a list of things that I did last week, but I see value in execution not in ideas (or meetings!). So I look at the list and see “oh that was a busy week I got stuff done” and then rationally think “did I really?” – how much of that will matter a week from now, a month from now, a year from now?
Maybe none of it.
Some Observations
Having say, 40-60% of my time structured has in fact meant that 100% of my time needs to be structured (and resulted in me needing to devote some time to getting organised). My day for my own projects has to be planned better and ruthlessly protected, because otherwise nothing happens. Similarly my day off comes with a list of goals because having more constraints around my time means that running the odd errand needs to be planned and can’t just be taken care of when I’m feeling like a break anyway.
I mainly feel the loss of large blocks of time. Tracking small things that can be taken care of in small gaps helps but isn’t a panacea because most small things in practise fall into categories of unimportant things that shouldn’t be done at all and things taking <5 minutes that should be done when you think of them.
It’s possible to carve out time for things that I want a day for. I’ve found it close to impossible to carve out time for things that I want more than a day for.
I am so focused on checking things of The List that I don’t make time for those things that are unknown.
Planning has become more natural to me. I have an all day flight next Friday and I already assembled a list of what I need to be able to work offline during it.
I quite enjoyed The Charisma Myth (Amazon), although I’m not sure how much more Charismatic I managed to become from reading it!
Charisma is behaviour (not personality!) that can be learned. Marilyn Monroe could turn charisma on and off.
A young woman went to dinner with William Gladstone and separately also with Benjamin Disraeli. She said she left dinner with Gladstone thinking he was the cleverest person in England. Disraeli made her feel like the cleverest person in England. Disraeli won the election.
Quick tips for increasing charisma
Lower the intonation of your voice at the end of sentences.
Reduce how quickly and how often you nod.
Pause for a full 2 seconds before you speak.
Being present shows in interactions. Charisma comes from internal mental state, not external. People can tell (from micro expressions) if you are faking it.
Transfer technique. Imagine passing off problem to something else. This can be surprisingly effective, because initial reaction to everything is “what if this were true?”
Managing negative thoughts. First, it’s normal to have them, we shouldn’t berate ourselves for it! Try not to fixate on them; see them like graffiti on the street. Don’t assume thoughts are accurate. Depersonalise. This is like The Happiness Trap book.
Warmth. This comes from feeling goodwill towards others, but also from practising self compassion towards ourselves.
Power, presence and warmth are important for charismatic speaking and listening.
Great listening skills are key to communicating charismatic presence.
Never interrupt people and occasionally pause for a second or two before you answer.
People associate you with the feelings you produce in them. Avoid creating negative associations: don’t make them feel bad, or wrong.
Make people feel good, especially about themselves. Don’t try to impress them – let them impress you, and they will love you for it.
Use visual metaphors, they are more memorable.
Use as few words as possible, and deliver as much value as possible: entertainment, information, or good feelings.
To emanate vocal power, use a slow, measured tempo. Insert pauses between your sentences, and drop your intonation at the end.
To emanate vocal warmth just smile, or imagine smiling.
We react more to how something is said than what is said, especially in high stakes situations.
Approach difficult people individually, tailor charisma style to each person.
Express appreciation for help or positive impact. Help them to rationalise action in your favour.
When delivering bad news, get into a state of compassion. Show warmth and care in your timing, body language, verbal language.
When delivering criticism, get into a state of goodwill and focus on behaviours rather than personal traits. Don’t use don’t do.
When delivering apologies, show presence in hearing them out completely, show warmth in apology. Power to correct or prevent reoccurs helps.
On the phone it is necessary to work harder to be present.
When writing emails, remove extra words. Look for I rather than you. Start with you.
Credit: Flickr / Edmund YeoThe hardest thing about moving is obviously leaving people you love behind. There are two parts of this – first, there are always the people who don’t seem to be bothered that you left. Which even though I know, and expect now, I still find crushing. The ones who stop hanging out even before you leave because, I don’t know? You’ll be gone so there’s no point anymore?
Then there are the people who you know you’ll see again, and who make the effort to stay in touch, and who let you know they they’re sad you’re going, sad you’re gone. It’s been three months since I left Sydney and there are still people I miss every day. Who I message just to say hi, which we can get out of the habit of doing, it can seem weird. But these are my people. They miss me too. I think they like it. (Approaching two years since I left Canada, there are still people there I miss like crazy too).
But that it’s hard to leave people is obvious. And we worry about the big things, like taxes, and distances, and where will we live.
Every time I’ve moved, I’ve got culture shock. In Ottawa it was being unable to order pizza. KW, it was being unable to find bagels within walking distance of my apartment. Sydney, it was being unable to find a pharmacy when I needed a basic over the counter med (for a stress induced mouth ulcer, oh the irony).
London, I think it was the difficulty I found in leaving for two week trip now that I (1) keep food in my apartment and (2) heat my apartment. Even in Canada, I usually didn’t bother heating my apartment, because I lived in apartment buildings and just leached off the passive warmth of the whole building. But in London I live in a cold and slightly damp basement flat, and I actually have to heat it. And in London, there is no mall food, so I go to the grocery store, and put things in the fridge, and have to make sure that the fridge and bin and recycling are empty, because when you actually buy food and throw out it’s remnants and packaging, this is something you need to worry about.
The heating thing is a little more weird, but maybe will make sense when I explain that it was nearly a month into my lease before I actually found the thermostat. Most of the time I’m still cold, but now it’s set to 20 degrees rather than 15 sometimes I don’t need a blanket AND a sweater.
I also forgot a bunch of stuff (belt, hair serum, drugs, charger for my UP band) because my packing was honed in my Sydney apartment. I think it’s changed because I have more, smaller places to keep things.
But anyway, the hardest things are the little things, and habits. Trying to form new habits like, walking more, or when I go to the gym, are the things I’m having the most difficulty with. Especially when it’s dark, and grey, and I just want to wrap myself in blankets in my chilly apartment and worry about it tomorrow.
Moving is hard. I miss Thursday night workouts with my friend, near weekly theatre trips with another, and it being so easy to find someone to do anything with. I miss calling people for a chat on the walk home from work.
But I also miss… having a tumble dryer. The weekend Cate-time double bill (gym -> mall food -> gym). Iced tea. The walk to work. Knowing where to get my hair cut. And being able to leave for a trip without needing to worry about taking out the trash.
I like to think – and I have some validation for this – that I am an excellent gift giver. It’s getting to be the time of year where we worry about gifts, so I thought I’d write up some of my thoughts.
The Five Love Languages (Amazon) is a somewhat soppily named book but it’s actually really not about ideas of conventional “romance” but rather about how the different things people value and how to show affection in a way that is meaningful to the person you care about. It’s worth reading, in my opinion.
But sometimes convention dictates that you buy something. This is for those occasions. (Most links are Amazon links).
Great gifts are are an expression of the relationship you share, and so often come from an interest you share. A lot of the examples below are accessories, beauty products, and consumer electronics… because these are the things I know. These things can be expensive, but I don’t think expensive is necessary for a good gift!
Actually, whilst I was writing this, staying at a friend’s place, a friend of hers called over with “medical supplies” because I’d twisted my ankle. We ended up chatting and going out to a raspberry pi workshop together. Total cost of gift in dollars? Not many. But gift itself – thoughtful surprise, new experience, and a great story? That’s incredibly special.
The Best Gift is an Experience You Share
This is a lovely thing to do with your partner, or best friend. An ex and I decided not to do gifts for each other one year, and instead we booked a trip. Last year, for a friend’s birthday, we went stand up paddle boarding together and then for a delicious brunch.
If there’s something you’ve been meaning to try together, or a play or show you both want to see, this is great time to get around to it! Or look for getaways – often LastMinute.com and Expedia have great deals for a weekend escape. There are also lots of places on the internet where you can find “experiences” – hot air ballooning? Driving a race-car?
Cheaper options: an art gallery, a nice meal out, wine tasting, one-off cooking class, a movie at the theatre. Or, go to your favourite makeup counter (I love Clinique), and get your makeup done together – and then treat your friend to one of the products.
When I was leaving Sydney, I spent a weekend in Melbourne with two girl-friends. It was great – and one of them especially was focused on it being the kind of experience for me that is a gift. I have great memories as a result.
The Second Best Gift Is Something They Love, They Wouldn’t Buy For Themselves
A lot of my friends work in the tech industry, so this is surprisingly hard (high disposable income). However this is often the category of gifts for women who spend their days running from thing to thing with no time to take care of themselves. This is the category in which gifts for my parents often fall in.
Specifically – I buy my mom high end accessories (beautiful handbags from North America, I love Coach), and bits of technology – my dad and I bought her an iPad when they first came out, which she loves. When I travel, I look for pieces of jewellery that I think she will like.
My dad, for example, loves Verbena shower gel from L’Occitane, and was eking out the last of a tiny hotel miniature. So one year his gift was a year’s supply of Verbena products.
Lots of people have their weird little economies – if you notice them, you’ve found their gift. The product they only use on special occasions, the product that they only use the tiniest amount of. The thing they talk about getting but never seem to get around to. Buy them that.
It’s important that this gift is not an obligation to do something. E.g. a spa voucher can be a good one, but someone who is already stressed out this can seem like you are just adding something else to their todo list. Flowers are often great – hard to justify buying for yourself, but so lovely to receive from someone else! Plants are less good, because they are an ongoing obligation (i.e. think twice before you buy someone who doesn’t already have a plant, a plant).
When I moved to Sydney, I kept not getting around to buying a kettle. Someone bought me this incredible Breville tea maker. It really made the best cups of tea I have ever drank. Usually, I have sugar in my tea because otherwise I find it a little bitter, but with tea from this kettle… completely unnecessary. Amazing.
Gifts That Are Useful
The best gift I ever gave someone, was the gift of good hair. She’d been unwell and I was present for a conversation where she mentioned that her dry hair was bothering her. I knew just the thing (Bumble and Bumble super rich shampoo and conditioner, and Kerastase serum). But this one is less about what than about listening. People will tell you what’s on their mind, if you listen. I’ve bought a number of female friends the (Kindle) book Married White Female Seeks BFF, after they talked about finding it hard to find friends after a move, for example. One of my friends was stressing out, having returned to work after having a baby. I got her a month’s worth of house cleaning.
A wrench is useful, but this is not what I’m talking about. A generically “useful” gift like a toolbox, wine glasses, or a standard box set of beauty products is not the goal here. The gift that addresses the thing that’s on their mind – that’s what I’m talking about. Listen.
One of my friends bought me a set of plates and mugs, because I’d complained that my roommate had used the last one. Another friend bought me an extra large mug, because it addressed my issue of drinking tea two cups at a time. These are my idea of useful gifts (for me! Not for someone who never drinks hot beverages!)
Gifts With a Story
I often bring people little things back when I travel. Especially when I was dating someone, but going away a lot without him, I would always bring him back little things – tshirts I thought he would like, headphones from Tokyo, socks, maple products from Canada. I bought one of my friends back so many pairs of socks from Tokyo, because we both love the little socks that you can wear with ballet flats, or Toms. I think this is a way to share an experience you had without someone, with them. “You weren’t there, but I saw this and I thought of you.” Knowing someone thought of us when we weren’t there, makes us feel special.
Added bonus here, it gives you something more than “Happy Birthday! Love Cate xox” to write in the card. That’s where you write them a story.
One of my favourite gifts to get is jewellery. I wear a lot, changing it up most days, and I buy it whenever I travel, so I have pieces from all over the world and each one has a memory. Most recently, a friend in Australia brought me something back from Canada – with a beautiful note in the card that combined two of the countries I’ve lived in, which was so lovely. When someone else chooses me something, it’s almost always something I wouldn’t have found myself, but still something that I love, with a different kind of memory. And when someone complements it, I say, “my friend bought me this”, and I think of them again. And if I’m far away, it reminds me to send an email.
Gifts For People You Don’t (or Barely) Know
This is either the hardest one, or the easiest one, because we don’t feel obliged to give it any thought and just buy a bottle of wine. Added constraint: usually budget is more of a consideration, here. Apologies for the gender stereotyping.
First up – I think a bottle of wine is a terrible gift for someone you don’t know. Are you sure they drink, even? And if they do, what kind of wine do they even like? Alcohol is often my go-to gift for men I don’t know (once I’ve check that they drink) but I try to make it a little more interesting. If I’m coming from Canada, I’ll pick up some Ice Wine (or, recent discovery, Maple Wine), which I used to take back to Scotland for an ex’s family. Whether or not they like it, there’s novelty value there. Or, as my grandpa is very into wine, I get a lesser-known recommendation from him and search it out.
My go-to gift for women I don’t really know is Clinique’s Deep Comfort Hand Cream. I’m not in general advocating buying people beauty products without knowing enough about them, but I make an exception here for a few reasons. First – my major need for such gifts is in the winter months (in the northern hemisphere, at least), when dry hands are pervasive. Second, hand cream doesn’t have the difficulties of body products (e.g. layering with perfume etc). Thirdly, I find that whilst women are often committed to facial (I’m all about Clinique) and body (love Biotherm) products, they are happy to experiment with hand creams. Finally, like all Clinique products, it’s hypo-allergenic and also it’s neutral smelling.
I firmly believe that gifts in this section should be consumable. A thing to keep is a thing to find room for, and that’s not an obligation you should put on someone lightly. No matter how much you hear that someone likes ceramic sheep, do not buy them a ceramic sheep until you have heard the story behind their entire collection and confirmed they do, in fact, love, ceramic sheep. Some people collect, some people have collections forced upon them, and once word goes round “loves ceramic sheep!” family members can think “all further gifts sorted!”, whilst the unfortunate new collector curses themselves for an excessively convincing display of enthusiasm.
Check that someone drinks, before you bring them alcohol. Check for food allergies and limitations (diabetes? recent heart surgery?) before you bring food. Check for pollen allergies before you bring flowers. But overall here, I would say that the goal is not to buy them something they love (hard to do for anyone, let alone someone you don’t know), but something you can have a conversation about that shows you have shown some thought. Hopefully they will at least like it, or find it interesting, at least.
If you are buying for someone who does not live near you, think local – find an artesian food shop near you and explore, ideally something your region is famous for. I would always bring maple products from Canada, for example, but interesting ones (I think you can find the best at Montreal Airport, where there is an actual maple shop, but most Canadian airports have a good selection. Australian airports have pretty good selections of TimTams). When I arrived for this visit, my friend had picked up some interesting orange marshmallows from a local foodie store – they were delicious and interesting, and led to a conversation about where she had found them – win!
Go off the beaten path. If they love chocolate, don’t, for the love of all that is cocoa, buy them a box of Milk Tray (British – insert name of standard box of chocolates for your country here). Go for something more interesting! Think quality (and a new experience!) over quality. If you’re opting for flowers, don’t be bland and get a Poinsettia or something predictable, find out the colour of the sitting room/dining room/kitchen and tell the florist, who will be able to create an interesting arrangement that will look great in one or all of those environments. And if it doesn’t, well, hopefully there are other rooms and flowers don’t live forever.
Combine bits of information. Loves chocolate and spicy food? Chilli chocolate. Loves chocolate and candles? Chocolate scented candle (can be a nice gift for a teenage girl). Loves to ski but is always cold? Handwarmers.
Gift Wrapping – Making The Gift Itself an Experience
I used to have so much fun putting together gifts for my ex’s cousins. I would supplement their gift proper with interesting candies, and other things – one time I found tiny sparklers! So cute! Another time, I found drinking straws that flavoured milk as you drank it.
And then I would pack it beautifully, I would have got them similar things, but would use a different gift bag for each one (teenage girls have favourite colours, and their relations usually know them) with tissue paper, and the little bits and pieces there in layers.
One of my grandmothers used to create that kind of experience for me and my sister at the holidays, we’d get enormous stocking full of little bits and pieces, and it was so fun! She didn’t have a lot of money to buy expensive gifts, but she created experiences for us, and that was amazing.
Gift wrapping is great! And often stores (especially little boutiques) will gift wrap for you – it’s always worth asking. If travelling any distance (especially flying) this can be hard, though. When I was in India for my friend’s wedding, I had the hotel wrap her gifts for me (possibly not something you can pull off in a western country), and they did a great job! Alternatively, buy your gift wrap on arrival, or pack the gift wrap/box/bag separately from the gift itself. Sometimes stores will even do this for you – for example, Coach gave me everything I needed to wrap my mom’s gift myself.
The timing is another way to create an experience. When I would bring back lots of little things for the boy, I wouldn’t give him them all at once, but instead look for the right moment. When he stayed over and forgot clean socks, and I just happened to have had some I bought back from San Francisco, it wasn’t just a gift, it was a funny conversation that created a fond memory.
Once, one of my friends, knowing that I was feeling a little low, delivered me a beautiful basket full of little treats and cute things – including some fun tissues – to the office. It made my day.
One Last Tip
A lot of things – airlines, credit cards, stores, have points programs. I had a friend who used to save up all her Boots (British drug store) points all year, and then use them to buy all her seasonal gifts. I think this is a great idea, as long as you are still being thoughtful. Credit card and airline points often have good electronics, for example if something like high quality headphones (I just got these, which are AMAZING, but insanely pricey) are on your list. Airlines especially, also have “experiences” – so trying something new with a friend may not need to cost you actual cash.
Finally…
Finding thoughtful gifts for people, sharing experiences as a way to celebrate, has become such a source of pleasure for me. My family aren’t really gift people, so it wasn’t something I grew up around or even came that naturally to me – but I’ve learned. My final suggestion, if you feel like you have no gift giving talent, is to pick one, really special person, who you want to do something nice for and start from there. And if you want to chat about it, ping me! I would love to help, if I can.
My friend and teammate says to me, “do you make a habit of spending your birthdays on planes… after breakups?
It’s only the second time.
It’s really how the dates worked out. With the timezone change, it means my birthday is going to last for 40 hours… I can celebrate on two continents! In two hemispheres.
It is also a way of completely ignoring it, should I decide to go that route. Sadly the dates didn’t work out for me to just skip that day, pretend it never happened, and have a do-over of being 26 (related: I won’t be experiencing April 12th this year, let me know if anything good happens).
Then, another friend and I were talking about “The List”. The list of requirements for your next partner, that you make after a breakup. Specifically it tends to include characteristics about your ex that you think were key to why you broke up, and if that one thing had been different, maybe it would have all worked out and everything would be hunky dory.
Over the course of my dating life I have put on the list: physicists, computer scientists (this one soon got removed, given the circles I move in it’s pretty much signing up for celibacy), men whose mothers don’t have careers, men whose parents are extremely religious, men who are religious themselves, grad students…
As our conversation progresses, I realize that the list is complete bollocks.
It’s trying to distill what failed and what we learned into a couple of characteristic, like if we could just find the intersection of all our desirable characteristics and exclude all the undesirable ones, there would be our perfect match.
Even if this strategy led us to someone, I can’t help but think we’d probably find ourselves in the pool of people they had eliminated.
Anyway, I’m chucking out my list. I’m just going to be Cate. Go places that I like to go, do things that I like to do, and keep adventuring. I’m sure love will follow – possibly with a religious physicist (although it seems unlikely that I would meet one), but maybe just with life and the world. Which sounds a bit soppy for me, but let me off. I will be spending my birthday on a plane, afterall.
Abstract: In a world where computing power doubles roughly every two years, the goal is no longer efficiency, but effectiveness. The education system prepares students for efficiency, but to be successful when we go out into the world (or before!) we need rather to learn to be effective. In this workshop, we’ll discuss more useful things to excel at than email, helpful ways to fail, and the pursuit of an interesting life. It won’t improve your grades, but it’s often surprising what will help your career.
Excel at something Meaningful.
Credit: flickr / Tyson Cecka
When trying to change habits, people have more success with the things they decide to do, than things they vow not to. If you’ve ever tried to give anything up, you’ll know this. However, often the most important decisions you make are what not to do.
In the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris (Amazon) he advocates checking email only once a week. I did this for a while, and I definitely got a lot more done.
It’s easy to excel at email. You can just throw hours at it. Make it a priority and you’ll be great at it. It’s very safe to be “good” at things like that. Reply promptly and maintain inbox zero and you’re golden.
It’s scarier to be good at less tangible, measurable things. How do you measure the success of writing a blog, say? In visitors? Comments? Meaningful connections?
How do you measure the success of writing code? Lines? Features? Number of users?
Anything creative is hard to measure. But it’s much more helpful to do okay at something meaningful, than excel at something fundamentally mediocre.
No-one ever said, “Wow, X was so impressive. They maintained inbox zero.”, after all. Maybe they did <list of impressive things> and still maintained inbox zero. But inbox zero alone is not enough.
Email is my personal bugbear. I pity anyone who tried to communicate with me by it. Thinking about the state of my inbox… well I try not to, and whenever I try to tackle it people reply faster that I seem to get through things and so it gets no better. Email is something that I’ve deprioritized in order to do better at things I think are more worthwhile.
The point – don’t excel at something that’s easy to excel at. Spend your time doing something meaningful instead, even if you suck at it.
Discussion point: What’s something mediocre that you could replace with something with potential for awesome?
Have adventures.
Credit: flickr / B.K. Dewey
When I took off to China to live up a mountain and kickbox, a number of people thought I was insane. But when I look at my life now – living abroad, travelling a lot – my time as an international hobo was actually really helpful.
I don’t get phased in airports. I don’t stress out for long when faced with travel setbacks. I’m fine exploring alone.
In some ways teaching in French seemed like a pointless source of extreme stress. But now, somehow I’ve ended up giving a bunch of talks… and there is no doubt that it puts it all in perspective.
It’s hard to tell what will be useful down the line, and what will not. At some point it seemed like a very helpful skill to have beautiful handwriting. Before we had smart phones there were all kinds of things we learned that now we just look up.
If you do the things you find exciting, if you take advantage of the adventures on offer, there’s no guarantee that it will be helpful but I can tell you that everything I’ve done that has broadened my experience has been useful, whilst many things that seemed “useful” have been of little or no use to me.
Discussion point: What was something “crazy” that you did that was actually a useful learning or connecting opportunity?
Find your people. Share what you’re doing.
Credit: flickr / newwavegurly
In the book Being Geek (Amazon), there’s a section on “Your People” (blog post).
Let me tell you about my people. They do things. They support me when I do things. They don’t say “no, but…”, they say “yes, and…!”.
Everything cool that I’ve done and will do has at least one other person who I don’t think it could have happened without.
Periods that I’ve not been as happy or productive have been filled by people who were the antethesis of my people.
It’s so important, who you surround yourself with. In the wrong crowd, I’ve wasted all my energy on pointless drama. With my people, that doesn’t happen. When you’re trying to do something awesome you don’t want the people who you always have to chase around, you want the people who you can rely on. They are your people.
The internet is such an amazing way to find Your People.
Discussion point: Who are “Your People”? Why are they awesome? How did you find them?
Say yes! Fill gaps.
Credit: flickr / BuhSnarf
When I run into something where I think “this should be happening”, it’s a sign I’ve found an opportunity. It’s one that interests me, otherwise I wouldn’t have spotted it. This is why I started Girl Geek Dinners in KW, I went looking for it when I moved because I figured it would be a good way to meet people, and was disappointed to find there wasn’t one.
Once I’d connected with a couple of other women who also wanted such a thing to exist (my people!) we were set.
Gaps are opportunities. Say yes to filling them.
I advocate saying yes in general. Even though I really need to learn to say no before I have some kind of breakdown… saying yes is such a source of adventure and opportunities.
Clearly, I have no idea how to find a balance here. But, I do think that being someone who says “no, but” is an limiting way to live. Many people could use some more “yes, and!” in their lives.
Discussion point: What is a gap you are thinking of filling? Discussion point: Share something that you said yes to that turned into an adventure.
Don’t be a control freak.
Credit: flickr / chooyutshing
When you start something, you have this vision of what you want it to become. That’s great – and important – you need to have an idea of what you’re working towards. But at some point, you face a choice. You can build a tiny, solid steel, structure, completely controlled by you. Or you can give up some control and plant the seeds for an organization that will grow bigger than you could do alone, do different things you could never have imagined. There’s a risk that it will die. But – that’s another tradeoff you can make, because giving up control allows you to move on to other projects that excite you.
I stepped down from things when I left Ottawa, and other people took over. I know that things are going to change as a result but I’m OK with that – I trust them to do a good job, I can mentor and encourage, but ultimately, this new person will have their own vision – and that’s a good thing. I don’t want to stay in grad school forever, running the same things!
With the Awesome Foundation, we have a very flat structure. As a co-conspirator go around getting excited about things, and do a little more organization stuff but every trustee puts in $100 and every trustee gets a vote. I can say “I think we should do this”, but if I’m outvoted, I’m outvoted. My role here is not really a leader, more of a facilitator. There’s an important distinction.
If you want other people to help you, you’ll probably have to ask them! Asking for things is hard. Asking someone to join the board of the Awesome Foundation was terrifying for me at first – “hey! How about you give $100 every month to some crazy idea that may or may not work?” – I’ve got better at it with practise (and I don’t say that!). But you need to learn to ask for things, for starters you’ll need to ask for help.
Last year I read this great book, Women Don’t Ask (Amazon). I highly recommend it. And I started asking for things, for instance one of the first things I asked for was a t-shirt.
I know, random. But last year at Grace Hopper the Yahoo! people had these awesome t-shirts that said “I code like a girl and I’m PROUD of it”, and I wanted one really badly! It happens that I know a guy who works for Yahoo!, in fact before he moved I would take care of his cat. So I asked him if he could get me one of these t-shirts and he did.
When uOttawa asked me to create a programming curriculum for a workshop we run for high-school students, I thought it sounded like a cool idea. But – I’d already created a proprietary curriculum and wasn’t really interested to do another proprietary one. So I asked if we could open source it. They agreed to my terms, and now anyone can use the materials I’ve created.
I’m still afraid to ask. But I’m getting better at it. So try it.
And, pro-tip, start being more attuned to people’s implicit asks. When someone you think is awesome talks about this new project they are starting, introduce the topic of how you can help them before they have to. And then follow through.
Because – the real secret I’ve found in asking, is that it’s easier to ask when people want to help you because they’ve seen you paying it forward already. Or – even better – they are also attuned to implicit asks, and you don’t need to.
Discussion point: What have you asked for recently? Did you get it?
Value execution over dreaming.
Credit: flickr / dullhunk
Who has an idea for a product, or web service, or piece of software?
As a programmer, I can tell you that there are lots of non-programmers out there who have some “genius idea” that they think a programmer should build, for “equity” – a stake in the eventual, hugely profitable company.
The reality is that the company is rarely profitable, if it even gets off the ground. And programmers have their own ideas, which if they want they could implement. This is why people – especially programmers – get angry about patents, because you can literally patent an idea and the person patenting it doesn’t actually need to know how to implement it. To a programmer, implementation is everything. Ideas are 10 a penny. What does this have to do with starting an organization (or anything)? It means that it doesn’t matter how amazing your idea is, it’s nothing until you actually implement it.
And if someone else gets there before you, the idea was good enough that someone actually did it – so be pleased! And either get on board with them, or come up with something else and move faster. It also means, that it can be hard to sell your idea until you start doing.
We were the first Awesome Foundation outside the US, but we weren’t the first period. The fact that we have a network of people to ask questions to and this model has been proven made it much easier to get going.
Discussion point: What’s your plan for implementing your current awesome idea?
Fail.
Think about how big your comfort zone is. What are you OK with doing? Introducing yourself to a stranger? Going to a foreign country by yourself? Standing up and talking in front of a bunch of people?
Chances are, there is a whole world outside your comfort zone. I really recommend going to explore that, but it can be scary. Stuff outside your comfort zone is stuff you don’t know – and as you go off discovering it there’s a good chance that things won’t go to plan. You’ll fail.
You know in Harry Potter, how the bogart turns into Prof. McGonnagall for Hermione and tells her she failed everything – that’s her biggest fear. It’s no wonder Harry always saves the day, he’s OK with failing, and that makes him more able to take risks. Hermione might seem more successful, there’s no doubt that she is academically, but that’s within her comfort zone. For her to be successful in other ways, she had to learn how to fail. (It’s not quite that simple, here’s an interesting article: In praise of Joanne Rowling’s Hermione Granger series).
When we first started the Women in Science and engineering group back at uOttawa, we tried an event and people were really enthused about it… but then no-one turned up. I was mortified, and really questioned what I was doing. We didn’t run that kind of event again, but we ran different things that were successful. We learned what our members want, and that’s what we put on for them. It was a setback, but it didn’t stop us from achieving a lot of other things.
The Awesome Foundation is a great model and there’s a lot of enthusiasm for it, but getting enough submissions is a continual effort. Seriously, we’re giving away free money but people don’t fill out the application form! It was tough in Ottawa, because you get to this catch-22 – you don’t fund anything, and no-one hears about you. We persevered. In KW we work at it continually.
There’s this great lecture by Randy Pausch. It’s an hour – go watch it. In it, he talks about how when you hit a wall, have a set back. He says that walls are there to keep out the people who don’t really want it. So when you fail, and I hope you do because I think that a life without failure is a life where you didn’t push yourself – you look at your failure, you evaluate what you can learn from it. And then you keep going.
Discussion point: Tell us about a failure that you learned from.
Be likable, but don’t expect everyone to like you.
Credit: flickr / Jef Harris
Colin Powell said, “trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity”. Be likable – it’s important – but the reality is, if you want to stand out and do something extraordinary, there are people who will try and tear you down for it. People might not understand that ideas are cheap, and think that you “stole” theirs, because you got their first. If you do things, people might need to attack your success in order to excuse their own inaction – like “oh Cate, she just got lucky”.
I’m not going to lie – it sucks. Who’s had something bad said about them that they knew wasn’t true? Who was hurt by it?
A while ago now, I had someone I used to be friends with telling people (people I know!), basically that I was doing I terrible job with Awesome Ottawa. Of course it gets back to me, and of course I was upset by it. The way it all played out was interesting, because I tried to ignore it and just keep running around doing my thing, and in the face of my non-response, this woman managed to make a different story in which I played the villan.
It was difficult, but eventually it worked out for the best. But at the time? Horrible. And honestly, I could not comprehend why someone would behave like this, when they could have pinged me for a cup of coffee and got everything they wanted. I was talking to one of my mentors, and we talked about whether I could have done more. Of course I could – you can almost always do more to resolve situations, you can always try to reason with someone, no matter how determined they are to dislike you. But in the worst 2 week period of this, I went to New York to pitch to top IBM executives with my team. I interviewed at Google, and filed two patents (within IBM). I got on a plane, and went back to Europe. So the question is not, “could I have done more?” – it’s with these other priorities going on, should I have. I think I made the right call that time.
Haters will hate. I always take the time to consider if they have a reason for it, is there anything I can and should do to resolve it. But – if someone is determined to dislike you, they will find a reason to. Anything you do can, will, be used against you. So at some point, you have to say – No. I’m doing what I’m doing, and I refuse to let you distract me.
Discussion point: What strategies do you use to deal with conflict?
Know what you’re good at, delegate what you’re bad at.
Credit: xkcd
No-one is good at everything. It is totally natural that we have weaknesses. Often they are paired with a strength. For instance, I’m very logical so I struggle when people behave irrationally. When someone was being vile, I exclaimed to a friend that I didn’t understand why they would be so inefficient. The logical attitude that makes me good at programming means that I struggle with that kind of situation.
It’s really important to know what your strengths are. It’s even more important to know what you are bad at, so you can find ways to manage that.
For instance, I’m horrible at selling myself – so I hired someone to write my resume for me.
For Girl Geek Dinners and Awesome Foundation KW other people do the logistics. I would suck at that.
Discussion point: What’s something you are good at it’s associated weakness?
Strive for the love of it, not the adulation. (Be humble).
Credit: flickr / Hot Meteor
There are so many people who come home from work at 5 and spend the evening watching TV, that if you do anything, people will start telling you how awesome you are.
Appreciate that, but take it as a thank-you. Every moment you spend believing it is a moment that someone else is overtaking you.
Once I saw someone tweet something… I can’t bring myself to repeat it, but suffice to say the words “I’m so awesome” were used. I have no clue what this person does, but now I have zero interest in finding out. A couple of other people I know saw it and we laughed about it – her credibility was damaged by this gratuitously self-aggrandizing tweet.
The most impressive people don’t seem to need to talk about how gosh-darn impressive they are. They’re too busy getting on with things. At work, you need to document your achievements and put them forward to your manager for promotion. In the outside world, especially on the internet, if you’re awesome, people notice. Maybe not as fast as you’d like, but they do.
At my leaving party when I moved away from Ottawa, this guy showed up and said that he’d wanted to meet me before I left. That was really cool, it totally made my day. That kind of moment is worth more than a million people agreeing when I say how awesome I am. I’m taking it as a thank-you, and encouragement to keep going. But I don’t believe that I did anything special, which is perhaps key to doing things at all. If you only believe that someone extraordinary can start something, you’ve set the bar way higher than it needs to be. Anyone can do it. Honestly. I did. You can too.
Discussion point: What’s the most ridiculously self-promoting thing you’ve seen?
Discussion point: What act or comment from someone has made you feel most appreciated?
My first proper day on my new project, and our PM says to me – “Cate, you seem to like to travel. How about you spend time in New York?” – I’m tasked with helping another team out, and being the bridge between that team and my team here.
Initially I was a bit… thrown. Part of why I’d changed teams was because I didn’t want to need to go to California as often. Whilst I’d joked that it would be different if it was somewhere I’d actually chose to spend time, like New York, I’d also enjoyed my time staying still, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue making (typically – June was the first month since March 2010 that I didn’t go anywhere) a trip a month.
Once I’d got over the surprise, two things struck me. The first, that this guy had – in a matter of days – noticed what I was good at and was working with my non-eng strengths – being a connector, and something of a nomad.
The second, was that what I was going to spend my time doing, completely debunked a very depressing conversation I’d had with two (female) CS teachers. They’d talked about why their female students didn’t want to go into Engineering – and one of them, why she left industry for education. It was… somewhat stereotypical. Girls like to make things pretty. They’d prefer to market something than build it. Women are more interested in the big picture, how things fit together. They want to spend time with people, not machines.
About a year ago, someone asked me if I was interested in working on a compiler team. I said, “I think I’d enjoy it for about 6 months, and then I’d start to miss humans”. He was amused and replied that my response was what he’d expected me to say.
I suspect you have to be a particular kind of person to work on a compiler team. I am not that kind of person. In fact, many of the things these teachers saw in their female students are true of me, too. I like things to be pretty. I care not just about what something does from a technical perspective, but why it’s useful. I’m better at a system design level than at bit-twiddling. I’m obsessed with humans and how technology can improve things for them.
Yes, I love to write code, and that is a big part of my job. But – it’s not all that I do. To say that being a software engineer is like X, and girls won’t like it because they don’t like X is a mistake.
In this case, I think the thing about girls not liking X is a massive over-simplification and generalization. But my point – even if it is accurate – it doesn’t mean that being a software engineer isn’t a good fit. Being a software engineer is not “like X” – that’s far too simplistic. There’s so many different kinds of things you can work on, and they require different skill sets. I would be unhappy and not very good at compiler work, but the kind of person who would excel at working on compilers would likely be unhappy and not very good at the kind of work that I do.
I don’t just write code. I also think about user interaction – working on features, I will say, I think this flow is more consistent. I work on the design of components from a perspective of the overall system – and testability. I work with other people who have less experience on the codebase or in the language to get them up to speed. I write up patents, and get to explain what I’ve come up with to lawyers. I put myself in the perspective of the user and think about what will be most important to me as a user. And I’m a connector – sometimes the most useful thing I bring to a discussion isn’t what I know, but that I know who will know about it.
Of course, there are things that I’m terrible at. I can’t see pixel differences, in fact if you show me one UI and then another similar one I will be pushed to see the difference between them, and certainly not in a matter of pixels. I’m not great at convincing myself that something is programmatically correct – probably why I love testing. I can’t “hack”, it makes me nervous when I don’t know why something works. I can’t write assembly. When I need to optimize, my preferred plan is “write it in Haskell”.
To take a narrow view of what you need to be good at in order to enjoy being an engineer, is crazy to me. All over the world, software engineers are building an unimaginable number of wildly different things. I’m incredibly lucky, but I think if you work at it you can often create the flexibility to make it whatever you want.
So what if girls want to make things pretty. There’s too much ugly software out there, and I say – go for it. All I think matters is – do they want to solve problems? Build cool things? Can they think logically and break down a problem?
Currently, I’m reading Tim Harford’s Adapt (Amazon). It’s a fascinating book, quite different from the Undercover Economist (Amazon) – which is also excellent. He writes about the importance of experimentation and feedback, and the insanity of centralized military planning – where an individual soldier can shoot to kill, but the General running the base can’t approve a few thousand dollars needed spending.
Seriously fascinating. And timely for me, because lately I’ve been thinking about how we see leadership as being in control, where in fact it’s the opposite.
When you are appointed, or step up, to lead other people, it’s because you’re trying to achieve more than one person can alone. Giving up control and trusting other people to get stuff done is crucial, otherwise you’re just a bottleneck. And it doesn’t matter how hard you work or how brilliant you are, ultimately you will be limited by the fact that there are only 24 hours in the day, and you are just one person. Maybe you trust one sidekick. Still doesn’t scale. Two people and 24 hours each is not double the control, unless you’ve mastered telepathy.
In which case, ignore me. Clearly we live in different worlds.
Aside from the time issue of micro-managing, it’s soul destroying to the people being micro-managed. Nothing seems to destroy someone’s ability to make decisions as much as the feeling that whatever decision they make, it will never be the right one.
Of course, as a leader, you need to know what’s going on. Being too hands-off won’t do either. Looking at people who I think are great leaders, it seems that their strategy is to be approachable, non-judgemental, and supportive. They don’t need to micro-manage because they create an environment and build relationships such that people will come to them if there is a problem.
This is hard work. And it takes time. There’s people who hate to seem less than perfect in any way, and it’s really, really tough to get them to trust you with their failings. And you have to learn to be open with your own, too. You need to be awesome enough to inspire respect, but not seem so awesome that someone feels that you would never understand screwing up.
There are the people who want to tell you how awesome they are. Can’t stand those people. Then there are those who will tell you how they’ve screwed up. They are the genuinely awesome, I think. They are the people who others feel they can turn to when they screw up.
The other day I spent some time talking to a new grad who was feeling inadequate. I told them about the myriad of ways I feel inadequate too – in this circumstance it was this, in this circumstance it was that, now it’s something new. My message – OK, you feel like you’re not doing great right now, but that’s normal. Now you need to figure out if you change your circumstances, will you just feel inadequate in a different way to how you do now?
The message of the book? You need to fail to figure out what works. As a leader, you need to allow for failure in order to build something bigger than yourself. Micro-managing and control-freakery might eliminate failure, but they also eliminate great success.
Last week, in California, I met the amazing Meggin who leaves such astute and beautiful comments here. It was great – or terrible timing – depending on how you look at it. Terrible timing, because, one of the first things I said to her was:
In a while I’ll spin this into a really positive sounding blog-post, but right now? I can’t do that because I’ve spent half this morning in tears.
Great timing because she gave me some good advice. So – rough week. I’m pretty chilled out travelling, but packing and timezone changes are still stressful, and I get claustrophobic in MTV. I spent the week jetlagged, came back, and I’m still jetlagged. I enjoyed the weather, wondering around San Francisco, and a day at MOMA. It was great to meet Meggin, and hang out with Maggie and John, and connect to other female engineers based in MTV who I had only seen on video chat.
Anyway, circumstances have meant that I’ve been figuring out what to do next. Stay on my current team with more travel, or move to a new team. I’ve been trying to work that out in the context of wanting to move back to Europe sooner rather than later, of enjoying what I work on currently, but being tempted by this other challenges, and not really wanting to spend so much time in California – it would be different, if I was going somewhere (a city!) where I’d actually enjoy spending time.
It’s been difficult – hence the tears, and the lack of blogging – I couldn’t write about this, but I was sufficiently absorbed by it to be unable to write about anything else.
Coming to a decision has really forced me to think about – what is most important to me? What compromises will I make? For the right project I could be willing to travel more, but the right project depends on a number of things, not just the project itself, but the people involved, and the potential for personal growth.
So I’ve been asking myself questions. What do I want to work on? What level of pressure can I live with? Who do I want to work with? How much will I compromise? How do I want to organize my schedule? What matters to me most? In the end, certain events made the decision was very clear, although still not easy.
I’m switching teams – I know, again. I’m going back to my original manager, and I’ll be working on docs. I’m excited about the project, the people on the team (50% women! Yay!) and I’m really happy – and lucky – to have this guy as my manager, because he’s awesome. They all are. The project is a really good fit for me, I hope. Social was too, and I am fortunate to have been part of that incredible experience, but – for a number of reasons – it’s time for me to move on from that, and this is, I’m completely sure, the right place for me to move to.
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