When Coley and I got engaged in late 2008, the first question people asked us was, of course,
Have you guys set a date yet?
We got to talking about dates and initially felt that 09/09/09 would be a good date. We’re not mathematicians nor numerologists but a date like 09/09/09 just has a good ring to it. With the Indian Summers that San Francisco has, a wedding in early September would be perfect. And though neither of us are superstitious, there was the added bonus that “9″ was considered by Chinese people to be a lucky number in weddings.
Alas, 09/09/09 also fell on a Wednesday.
So, at our friend Diana’s suggestion, we looked at 10/10/10 to see if that fell on a weekend. As it turned out, that was a Sunday. Then Diana suggested something which made both our geeky ears perk up:
You could have a binary themed wedding.
Indeed we could.
The next natural step was to determine what 101010 in binary equated to in decimal. Let’s see … 2 plus 8 plus 32 …
Last September, Coley and I spent nine days at Redwood Forest Ranch. The ranch, located 45 mins off a dirt road between Fort Bragg and Willits, CA, was owned by an architect named Charles.
The land includes three houses, all built by Charles with the help of his family. They are powered entirely by solar panels he installed in the sunniest places. Additional heat and light are powered by gas lamps and a gas stove. Charles provides food to his guests that he, himself, grows on his land. During our visit, the fresh produce he offered included corn, grapes, Asian pears, tomatoes, asparagus, and much, much more. This is a truly sustainable style of life.
Our stay there really reminded me of how little we truly need to have a content and serene lifestyle. It also created a heightened sense of awareness around life’s details which are easily overwhelmed and muted by our daily stresses and interactions.
This awareness lead me to discover a different mode of productivity.
Eschewing the Clock
Our trip wasn’t purely a vacation. It was also an opportunity for me to focus on finishing the first draft of my book. Despite this goal, one of the first things we did when we arrived at the ranch was to consciously remove all unnatural concepts of time. Luckily, none of the clocks in the cottage were working. We turned off the clock on the laptop and stored away our phones.
We had no real schedule and thus, no real need to know the time. But what I found every morning when I woke up, or every night when it first got dark, or when we felt tired, was that I had the urge to know the time. It took days to break this habit of associating wake/eat/sleep with time.
The Workday
Once I got over the time-checking reflex, I found that my mornings moved in a much more natural way.
On a typical day, I woke up whenever my body told me to, walked outside in my pajamas and stretched in the sun with the grass underfoot. I picked some grapes from the vines hanging from the back porch and maybe ate a pear or a bowl of cereal. Some days, Coley and I would go for a short forest walk before I returned to start my writing.
Then, whenever I was ready, I sat down in my “office” to begin my workday.
Contrast that day with a typical office one.
You wake up to an alarm clock. Groggy, you get dressed, maybe have something to eat (many skip this step), then drive into traffic or enter a crowded transit service. Within an hour or two of waking, you’re sitting at a desk and reading email (if you hadn’t already started going through your email on your phone or on the laptop next to your bed).
Being Ready
Although I worked for fewer hours on a daily basis, I found that I was able to enter flow almost immediately. I got a lot more done in a shorter period of time than I normally would have—so much so that I did finish my first draft during our stay at the redwood cottage.
Of course, I can’t discount the fact that being disconnected from phones and the internet drastically increases my ability to concentrate. However, I am also certain that part of my productivity was due to my mental readiness. Rather than waking up and jumping straight into work, I was in a mindset where I was ready.
The question is, how can this be applied to a regular day-to-day work schedule in San Francisco? In order to wake up when your body feels it should, setting aside 2-4 hours for stretching or walking to get into an optimal mental state before arriving on time to a 10am meeting, we’re talking about a 10pm bedtime the night before. I know some people actually do this, but I can’t picture it in my own life.
To find a solution, I looked to the most obvious example of morning readiness preparations that I know of: Japanese morning radio exercises.
They’re called rajio taisō or radio physical exercises in references to the NHK radio broadcasts that accompany the morning exercises. In this article about the practice, they pinpoint exactly why I felt there was a level of mental readiness lacking in my day-to-day:
According to the National Radio Exercise Federation, morning workouts have an awakening effect. It takes around three hours for someone to fully wake from sleep, but with the radio exercise, which airs at 6:30 a.m. daily, nerve functions are activated and the blood gets circulated to muscles and the brain.
I used to think corporate benefits like in-house yoga classes were excessive or unnecessary (just give employees gym membership benefits) but now I look at these in a new light. What would an office be like if, in place of the morning status meeting, the first thing everyone did were basic stretches or calisthenics?
This post is the second in my Project 52 series. Project 52 is group of people who have all signed up for the challenge of creating new content for their sites at least once a week. Read other articles in my P52 series.
This post is the first in my Project 52 series. Project 52 is group of people who have all signed up for the challenge of creating new content for their sites at least once a week.
One concept born from the original LifeCamp (2007/2008) was the idea of defining a year with a theme word. Rather than a laundry list of resolutions, the challenge was to distill the coming year and what you want to achieve into a single word.
2009 Recap: Realize
I looked back at 2008 and empirically defined 2008 with the theme word BEGINNINGS because it marked the beginning of many aspects of my life. My theme word for 2009 was REALIZE as it seemed like the year where many of these beginnings would really flourish to their full potential.
But as I look back, a lot of the potential seems to have blossomed but not quite bloomed. My brother Jamie’s first tweet of 2010 could just as easily be applied to me:
With our wedding date set for 10/10/10, my new position at Twitter, and the book finally nearing completion, I could easily say 2010 is the real year to REALIZE.
But that would be too easy.
When I was considering what theme word I’d pick for 2010, I toyed with words centered around success, achievements, and completion. For some reason, these words just didn’t quite seem to resonate as a theme. I started looking around me to see which theme words my friends were choosing. They’d always been a source of inspiration so why not look at their themes and goals and see if that might help inspire me?
Putting Myself Together
It was then that I realized: looking for ideas and growth around me is exactly what I wanted to do more of this year. I found that I could even identify individual traits and skills I’d learned—both explicitly and implicitly—from those close to me. Reflecting on these influences was like putting together a jigsaw puzzle of myself.
From my mom, I learned generosity. She is unquestionably the most giving person I know both in terms of attention and material goods. She also taught me what it’s like to be passionate about even the smallest things. That passion leads to an ability to express opinions and feelings without reservation—a trait that I knew I had but only recently recognized its origin.
From my dad, I learned to be an engineer. His summer holiday assignment when I was 12 was to write a program to find all the prime numbers between 1 and 100 in BASIC. He also taught levity, reason, and is probably the source of my analytical-mindedness.
My younger brother, Jamie, is married and has his own company. In many ways, though 5 years younger, he has acted as my stable anchor and a reminder of both personal and fiscal responsibility. At the same time, his audacious goals and drive push me to shoot for more.
I can’t even do justice to what I learn from Coley, my fiancée, on a daily basis. She’s given me a more macro consciousness and awareness of everything around me that I just didn’t have before. It’s almost like developing a superpower. With that awareness, I’ve also started to recognize drama for what it is and subsequently avoid it. Most of all, I’ve come to realize how much awareness one can have simply by communicating much, much more.
Communicating by Listening
Recognizing how much of a superpower communicating is, I decided that my theme word for 2010 would be LISTEN.
With my friends and family, I hope to not only learn from everyone but also pay attention to their needs. When one is truly listening, they can act rather than react.
Similarly, with my new role at Twitter, I’ll be aiming to listen and learn both from my colleagues and from the community and businesses who use Twitter.
Update: Contrary to reporting, I’m not “overseeing Twitter’s products”. I’ll be a product manager. One of many people contributing to Twitter’s future.
A couple of weeks ago, I announced that I had left Raptr to explore other options. Raptr was an incredible experience for me and I learned a lot there. I watched and helped the company grow from 8 people to the near 30 it is now. (They’re hiring for more, by the way.)
At Raptr, I took on more roles and responsibilities than I have ever had before in my professional life. The team that I left behind consists of some of the most talented people I know whom I hope to work with again in the future. I have a little bit of insight into what’s coming for Raptr and, believe me, if you play any videogames, the service is going to be even better than it already is.
But for me, it was time to take my newfound skills and apply them to new challenges.
Today, I signed an offer letter from Twitter. I’ll be a product manager there working primarily on the web client. As you might guess from my Twitter username (@k), I’m a pretty big fan of theirs and see a lot of potential for the medium next year—for that’s what it is; a medium, not a service.
So you’re thinking about being a designer? If I could tell you only *one thing* about going into the field, my advice would be ________.
I thought of a lot of different answers, many of them quite cynical. I imagine my time watching the industry’s discussions and throwing peanuts at it from OK/Cancel makes me think that way a lot. For example, I considered answering with, “don’t use convoluted phrases just to make yourself sound smarter.” In the end, I erred on the side of practicality:
I’ve always been a big fan of the work that Schulze and Webb do and the insights from everyone in that company. I wasn’t able to see this talk in person but definitely recommend checking out this talk by Matt Webb on macroscopes.
Please make sure you read updates below on how Virgin America resolved our issues with the help of Twitter. Great customer service there but the same couldn’t be said for their phone support at the time.
Ever since Virgin America launched, I’ve been eagerly waiting for the opportunity to fly with them. I’m a frequent traveler and while living in London, was exposed to a lot of Richard Branson and Virgin’s antics and marketing. They’re a fun company with a lot of character and personality. They’re irreverent, they buck trends, providing quality where none used to be expected.
Today, a simple error has caused us a lot of pain and cost VA a lot of good will.
It all started last week when Coley was booking flights for us for a trip we’re taking to LA. She went to virginamerica.com, looked up appropriate times, and booked the flights. However, when she was done, neither of us received a confirmation e-mail even though she’d entered both of our email addresses.
Two days later, we still hadn’t received any confirmation emails. We checked our spam folders to no avail. Coley logged into her VA account and the website said “no pending flights”. No charges had been made to the credit card, either.
As it was two weeks from when we needed to fly we needed to get tickets soon. We assumed the booking hadn’t completed and proceeded to book another set of flights. However, the original itinerary was no longer available as they were booked so we booked slightly different times to fly (but kept the same days).
Another two days pass, and we discover that Virgin America has charged us for both sets of flights. “No big deal,” we thought, “we didn’t receive any confirmations at all and the flight still doesn’t show up on the website. We’ll just call them up and they’ll fix it.”
As you might have guessed, it turns out that even Virgin America with all its irreverance and snarky humour has a Big Corporation side. Coley was on the customer service line for 2 hours, during which time she was subjected to two disconnections and multiple attempts to charge us $150 cancellation fee — again for a flight which we didn’t even know existed.
After the first 2 hours, Coley finally got through to a manager, David, who was reasonable but unable to give us a refund on the flight. Instead, he offered to waive the $150 but the ticket cost would have to stay as airline credit. We reminded him that they were keeping our money for a website error but after an additional hour of back and forth, it was clear he wasn’t empowered to do much else.
His proposed solution? Use the “contact us” link on the website—the website that broke and charged us $300 without telling us we had any flights booked.
This episode shows how a business must invest in more than just its core service. Virgin America may have created a stellar flying experience that outclasses most but that doesn’t mean they can compromise in their online experience and their customer service.
The most frustrating part of this entire episode is how it feels like we’ve been blamed and then penalized for an error on their part. All the good will garnered through their savvy multi-million dollar marketing, fancy mood lighting and in-air WiFi was washed away because of one website error they wouldn’t take responsibility for.
Update 11:00AM 18 May 2009:@VirginAmericaresponded to ourTwitters. It probably helped that others also retweeted us (thanks!). I’ve given them my email address and we’ll see where it goes from here. I’ll be happy to have this resolved but it really shouldn’t have needed this much of a fuss in the first place.
Update 02:41PM 03 June 2009:@VirginAmerica told us we should expect a refund within a week of the last update but it didn’t come through. It turns out that this may have been due to our end because the credit card we booked with was lost and replaced in that time. They have been incredibly quick and responsive in their Twitter responses. Our friend @ang also ran into the same issue yesterday where she booked a flight but it didn’t show any confirmation, didn’t send her an email, didn’t show up on her Elevate account and didn’t show any charge on her credit card. She’s also been in touch with VA because she Twittered about the issue.
I’m really glad Virgin America is coming through so well with the social media tools and customer service but I really hope they fix that web issues that are plaguing them. I also sincerely hope the phone support staff will be empowered and educated on not putting the blame on the customer when the company’s technology fails. I’ll give a final update when we do sort this out but it looks like it’s under control.
Update 05:38PM 07 June 2009: The money has been refunded to our account! Hooray for Twitter and companies using social media!
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I attended SxSW Interactive for the 6th consecutive year. At the same time, I also had the pleasure of attending the much more well known music portion of the festival for the first time.
The Music Festival features hundreds of bands across just about every genre. I thought figuring out which panels and parties to attend during the Interactive Festival was difficult but it pales in comparison to the musical selection — especially when they’re mostly up-and-comers. Thankfully, I was able to tag along with far more knowledgeablefriends.
A quick summary of the shows I saw:
Blitzen Trapper
DEVO — going just to say you did is never a good thing
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour — stumbled upon them because they played before The Little Ones and they’re great
The Little Ones
Nosaj Thing — great danceable set
The Phenomenal Handclap Band
Earlimart
Anchorsong
Camera Obscura
The Bird and the Bee
Janelle Monáe
Arc Attack
By far the best show in terms of performance and showmanship though, was Janelle Monáe. Thankfully, Leonard managed to catch some great footage of that concert.
Arc Attack was awesome for just being awesome. They make music with Tesla coils!
Of course, I couldn’t go to every show and I heard about a number of acts that I wish I could have caught. Here are some of the artists I hope to check out both live and recorded:
My first Danish movie. Contrary to what the American trailer would have you believe, The Celebration is much more a drama than a suspense thriller. I don’t even really know how to describe the movie without giving too much away. Suffice it to say that it’s a great examination into societal norms and pressures and how people will do anything to sweep things under the carpet rather than face realities. Thanks to Arshad for sharing this gem. [imdb link]
I’d heard so much about how charming and cute this movie was that I had rather high expectations for it. A movie with a title that involves “Infinite Playlist”, stars Michael Cera, and has Vampire Weekend in the opening credits should conjure up some kind of cross between Juno and High Fidelity. I’m pretty sure that’s what they were going for, too but sadly, it just fell just short of that potential and felt contrived instead. [imdb link]
