One of my goals since I moved to Seattle has been to ride my bike all the way to work (it takes a while- you have to go around a lake. It’s about 28 miles).

This is the route you need to take- it goes up and around Lake Washington.

Today, I set out intending to bike to Woodinville (20 miles) and figured I wouldn’t even make that. I was pleasantly surprised. And decided to bike the rest of the way to work. I took the opportunity to take a touristy photo. Regardless, success!

I sent this email to three of my closest friends earlier to kick off this experiment. If anyone else wants to be involved in the next round, feel free to let me know by emailing me.

Hey guys,

I’ve been thinking a lot about habits and self improvement recently- particularly how to decide on what to work on. One thing I’ve been thinking about is executive coaching. Executives at company’s often use a coach, who does a 360-review of their actions. This is because people tend to have relatively poor self-perception about what they need to improve and why. Some of the most frequent questions on these surveys are (where I refers to the executive):

What should I start doing?
What should I continue doing?
What should I stop doing?

The goal of the survey is to find out how each person specifically perceives and works with the executive.

I’d like to think about how a similar technique could be used personally. People have a much harder time giving and receiving personal feedback than work feedback, because you aren’t being paid to hear it, it’s more about you as a person, and it’s too easy to argue back or get angry. It’s also much easier to write it off, because it tends to happen casually rather than in a big review.

So, I want to try this out. I’d appreciate if you guys, as some of my best friends, could answer the questions from your perspective. I’m happy to do likewise, if any of you are interested in trying out the experiment too. I want super honest answers about what you genuinely want me to stop, continue, and start doing. I really want them framed from your perspective. I.e. not “You should stop worrying,” but “You should stop worrying because it makes me feel anxious too.” Or, not “you should do less,” but, “You should do less because I feel like I don’t get quality time with you.” It’s really about how you all feel about me, and how you think I could make our friendships/relationships better. I want to focus on the things that are important to you.

This probably isn’t going to be one of the easiest things ever, or super pleasant to hear- because it contains some good things, but also some bad things. One of the ways executives “prepare” to receive such blunt feedback is by answering the questions for themselves, to prepare and see what they expect to hear back.

Once I see how this round goes/what I get out of it, I’ll probably try it with some more of our friends, or consider doing other questions. It’s mostly a research project to see if it would be valuable to build a tool around this for others, but hopefully it can help all of us too!

Feel free to take some time to think about it… I’ll check in sometime next weekend if I haven’t gotten anything back. I would really appreciate it though – so if you don’t want to let me know.

Thanks!
–Ellen

As you can tell, I didn’t manage to write one essay every single day. I’d like to claim I had less time than usual because of the holidays (isn’t that what adults always say?) but honestly, I had the time. So I wrote about one essay every other day.

What I Learned:

- The pre-thinking matters. Writing a good essay isn’t about the time when you sit down and say “I’m going to write an essay now!” It’s about all the time you’ve spent playing with the concepts in your head, reflecting, talking to others, and reforming your opinions. The first few essays came easily because I’d had them in the back of my head, knew the thesis, and just had to sit down and write it out. Some of them I’d been considering for years.

- Specific is better than general. When I ran out of essays I’d basically already written in my head, I had to spend more time thinking about the words to make my point. It got hardest when I got down to broad areas that I care about, like, “I want to write about gender.” I managed one essay on gender (made more specific through Jailbreak the Patriarchy), but i know I have far more thoughts on it. I just haven’t figured out how to take them down into distillable messages.

- Writing improves the quality of my thoughts. I like working with them and re-writing them to get to the right point. I could re-write any of the essays I’ve done so far and find out far more. It helps me think through the point, and figure out what I actually want to say.

- I like having an outlet to share my thoughts more broadly. I recently moved my domains away from GoDaddy to Bluehost, and decided to move my hosting there as well to make everything simple. In that process, I had a hard time getting my blog migrated (the XML file was too large to upload, splitting the file didn’t work, and I couldn’t just copy the directory because that didn’t generate the right databases). I was blog-less for about a week, and was surprised by how unsettled I felt. I had to ask myself “why?” because I’d gone months and months without writing in the blog before- why would a week be so bad? I’d already written a ton recently, it was Christmas, no one would miss it, etc. I never came to a strong conclusion on this- just that I felt uncomfortable not having a way to share my thoughts with the world.

- I also like having the essays to share with people I might not talk to – I was happy that my essay about the Awesome Foundation was read by other trustees, and that my one on 2+2 was read by people in the 2+2 (and hopefully some people considering it!) It’s much easier to send someone an essay than it is to request hours of their time.

- Practice helps! I feel like having spent a month trying to come up with good essays, I think about essays a lot more. I expect to be writing down my thoughts, and I try to be more tangible about my thoughts. I think I’ll be more likely to continue writing essays now that I have a good foundation. Writing has been part of my morning routine, and what I use my morning papers* for.

I really enjoyed doing this project. I’m not sure what my next writing-step will be. I’ll still be working on distilling the 50,000 words that I wrote in November. I’ll also probably keep writing essays when I have insight to share. I’ve been considering writing more letters to friends. I’ll happily take suggestions for writing projects that I can tackle next!

*Morning papers are a technique commonly used by writers to get their thoughts out. It’s usually 3 handwritten pages (or about 750words, which is the tool I use to do it).

I’m always surprised by how controversial New Years Resolutions (and goals in general) are. Some people love them, make them, and follow through (Kate). Some people make them and fail. Some people make changes throughout the year, and don’t consider New years the time for it (Erik). And some people seem to think making resolutions hurts (Leo).

I really like New Years resolutions. My approach is that if I’m trying to do something all year, I need to be able to remember it easily. So, I try to stick to one major resolution per year so I can remind myself of it as I go about my normal life. It’s more of a “habit for the year.” I also try to make ones I enjoy- If I said I was going running every day, that’d never happen. I like to give myself resolutions that I just need a little extra kick for.

2009 was “read an hour every day.” That’s been my most effective resolution so far. I actually did read an hour a day for at least the first two months, and definitely continued with the intent. I read more books in 2011 than I did in 2010 or 2009. Overall I read around one book every three days, which I think fulfills the intent well. It worked because I love reading, and I wanted to read, but usually didn’t set aside the time.

2010 was “be less flakey.” This has never been a problem for me with work. I can commit to getting things done and doing them. But socially, I have a much harder time. I don’t compulsively track my social plans, and frequently go “oh we should X this weekend” off-handedly. This often gets misinterpreted as “we’re doing X this weekend” when I usually was just making conversation. I think I’ve improved somewhat on this, but not to the extent that I should.

So in 2011 I had four, and I’ll highlight two. To be truthful, I had to look up what the 2011 ones were, and I think that’s because they weren’t as simple as 2009 and 2010.

2011 was “write 750 words every day.” I definitely didn’t do it every day, but I think on the whole I wrote a lot more than I ever have. I did many days of 750words, wrote 12 essays in December, and wrote over 50,000 words in November.

2011 also was “go to bed when I am tired.” I am better at this too! I definitely no longer stay up for no reason. If I am sleepy, I go to bed at 9pm. Last night I went to bed at 10pm, even though there were people doing things. I was tired.

So here’s to 2012.

For 2012 I want to “listen better.” I have a tendency to try to respond quickly in conversation. I tend to think about what the person said, and immediately provide another story, some advice, or something else that I want to help that. I want to spend 2012 making sure that I listen more deeply when other people talk. I want to make sure I understand and internalize their points, and look at it from their perspective (without trying to add from mine).

I think the best way to practice this is to have conversations with people – so if you’re interested in getting together for coffee with me, let me know. I’d love to talk to you, and if you want, you can tell me how well you think i’m doing at listening while you talk.

So a final bit on how my resolutions as being different from goals. I haven’t written much about goals, but if you want to learn more about those, please visit my friend Erik’s blog “the Bucket List society.”

The three big ones for me are:
- Habit – My resolutions are habits, or continuous. Goals are something that can be done in one day.
- “Finish-ability” – My resolutions are things I want to work on, and are never “done.” My life goals I can concretely check off as I achieve them.
- Desire – My resolutions are always things I want to do, to just give myself an extra kick. Sometimes goals are things that I think I should achieve, but I don’t have the day to day willpower/desire for them.

I’m excited to launch into a year of listening. Let me know if you want me to listen to you!

I’ve been having an impossible time writing essays since I’ve been in Michigan. I’ve also been having a remarkably hard time doing work for my job.  I’ve felt exhausted and unable to contribute. My leading theories were that I was tired from diving, or I was getting sick. Today I woke up alert, and still couldn’t focus.

This tends to happen every so often, because I’m not one of those well-organized, well-meaning people. I get busy; I throw things on the floor. I don’t put things away. I don’t clean things up. It doesn’t bother me at all, until all of a sudden it does. Then, when it does, there’s nothing I can do other than clean. I know I won’t get anything done until it stops bothering me, regardless of how important the work is. Most people try to address this by making lists, and then saying “I’ll remember it and deal with it later.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t work for me.

Why does this happen? I’m easily distracted, and I have a good memory. The more things around me in a room that are “out of place” the more distracted I get. I see the clothes on the floor, and make the mental note that I should put them away. I do the same thing four times in an hour.  Then I remember it another four times.  I see the books stacked up, and try to figure out who I should give them to. I see the boxes, and wonder what’s in them, and if I need it. Every visual piece keeps nagging me until I eventually go address it.

Productivity gurus everywhere would tell me this is terrible. That I should just write my list, and focus on the most important task at hand. That I shouldn’t worry about all the undone things. The problem is, I actually can’t get anything done. It (unfortunately) does tend to happen when other things get done, so I deal with it as quickly as possible. As Nikki describes the cleaning version, “you go into manic cleaning mode, and two hours later everything is miraculously clean. I just try to stay out of your way.”

I spent years trying to force myself out of this pattern, but it is how my brain works. At the end of the day, I’d rather be much happier, and a little less productive. I’ll keep dealing with things as they bother me (regardless of priority), to keep myself on track.

I’d highly recommend everyone try the Chrome extension “Jailbreak the Patriarchy” – which switches the gender pronouns in what you read on the internet. More simply explained, any article about “he” and “him” is suddenly about “she” and “her.”

I found out about the extension shortly after it came out, and turned it on for fun. I wasn’t expecting any great revelations from this. I already knew that everyone I read about was male, and I was accustomed to that. (As an engineer, I read a lot about the tech world. You can name the female people you see regularly from memory. Marissa Mayer. Sheryl Sandberg. Lately, Randy Zuckerberg. Carly Fiorina. Caterina Fake. Meg Whitman. I also tend to remember Alexia Tsotsis and Leena Rao, since they write a lot of what I read on TechCrunch). Anyway, I was sure I knew what was going to happen. It would flip the gender of the people I read about. So what?  I was smart enough to realize what was going on.

After I installed the extension, I got back to work, wrote documents, did email, went to meetings, did all those things I’m actually supposed to be doing at work. When I finally got back to browsing the internet, I’d forgotten all about the extension. I didn’t remember it until I was reading an article about Seattle’s top bartenders. Somewhat astoundingly, all three were women. I felt proud! Proud and excited and surprised. I have nothing to do with the cocktail industry, and I still felt like this was a great success. Several minutes later I thought “well isn’t it funny that they all have men’s names? I wonder what that means.” and realized I had the plugin enabled, and they were in fact all men.

At that moment, I realized that the way gender is portrayed in the media still impacts people. Yes, it is much better than it was for my mother, or my grandmother, but it isn’t totally gone for me.  I know, because having my normal news flipped made me feel far more comfortable in the world. I felt far less like I had to assert myself, or prove something. It was like everyone had already done everything I thought was cool, and I was just going to do it too. My path became far more obvious, and far less controversial. It made it not a big deal, or even commonplace, to be a woman and be ambitious.

This general pattern continued throughout the day. The places gender portrayal mattered to me wasn’t in tech articles. It was in the rest of the media.  Apparently almost everything I read is written by and about men. This shouldn’t have surprised me, as I later learned only 20% of media coverage is about women, and most of that coverage is about situations in which they are victims.*

Since I did this experiment, I’ve been encouraging people to turn on this extension. Most of my female friends are also in tech and say “eh, I know the truth already.” We may know the truth, but we don’t know what it’s like to read news that’s all about your gender.  It makes the burden to achieve feel much lighter, because so many others are achieving it with you.  Most of my male friends look at me like “why would I do that?” but I wish they would, to see what it’s like to be female and read the news every day.

We have a long way to go, but it’s getting harder and harder to see what we need to change. Jailbreak the patriarchy helps make it clearer.

*Miss Represented

Since 9^th grade (when I was 14), I’ve been going on vacation twice a year. My family does a summer trip, and a Christmas trip. The vast majority of these trips have been “trips without internet.”

At first, there really wasn’t internet on vacation, ever. No “wi-fi in the lobby only” or “slow internet” or “there’s one shared computer in the lobby.” We’d just go places that didn’t have internet at all. Going away was really difficult, because most of what I did at home was talk to my friends. I constantly felt like I was missing out on something at home. I never understood how the rest of my family wasn’t distressed by the disconnection. I actually called long-distance from Africa to find out my IB scores.

Of course, it was great to be able to sleep, and to see my family, and to play cards, but at the same time it was really hard to not be able to talk to anyone from home. I spent a lot of time actively missing the internet- not just missing friends- missing the internet as a concept with my email, and instant messenger, and browsing.

As time has gone on, internet access has become more and more prevalent on vacation, and I’ve wanted it less and less. Now, it’s usually at least “wifi in the lobby” (and occasionally wi-fi in the guest room).

I care less about it now because it feels more like an obligation. First, I talked to friends. Then I did things I wanted to do. Now I have a laundry list of things I “have” to do (ironically, as they’re all the same things wanted to do before).

It got to the point that by December 2009 I became upset if anyone reminded me that there was internet on a vacation. Greg tried to check his email using his iPod while we were in Hong Kong, and I (unfairly) flipped out, because it reminded me of everything I “should” be doing. I thought if I had internet, I had to do it.

Now, I’ve realized that isn’t the case. It took some reflection, but the twice-annual disconnecting proved to me that nothing has gone horribly awry when I’m away with no chance of getting to the internet.  Realizing this required a lot of (unintended) practice and (intended) reflection. I’ve extrapolated that even if I have access to the internet and just don’t use it, it has the same impact as if I didn’t have it at all.

I’m a firm believer in the 80-20 rule.  My version of the 80-20 is that 20% of the effort achieves 80% of the result. You just have to figure out which 20% you need to do. Once you do that, you’ll have achieved most of the result – be it a presentation, paper, specification, etc. Most of the time, the 80% is good enough. Most of the time, people won’t be looking at the work again, so the minute details don’t matter. I believe this is right.

On the other hand, there are people who say the final detail (the last 20% of the result that takes 80% of the time) is the most important. I’ve always been skeptical of those people, thinking they were just wasting time. Reading Steve Job’s biography this week has convinced me otherwise. Those people are right too.

How are both right?

Most work isn’t the final product. It’s merely an iteration to get you closer. It’s probably completely off base, and just exists to get feedback, to be able to take the next step. That work doesn’t need to be 100% done. You only need 100% perfect when you get to a final product.

For instance, there’s a huge difference between giving a small-scale presentation (even to your entire group) compared to giving a keynote presentation. In one, if you don’t prepare, it might be better. After all, in a presentation, you might end up having a completely different conversation than the one you intended. You want to welcome other points. Giving a keynote, you’re not going to have a discussion; you want a perfectly rehearsed performance.

The same is true for products. Is the product something you’re doing in the lab to investigate doing? The 80% is what matters. It’ll get you if people like the product or not, or if it’s even a good idea. Is it a product that’s so early in the stage that it might get cut? It’s still the 80%. Is it the product that you’re betting the company on? Then it has to be perfect.

This essay? Not perfect. If I wanted to write a book? It would have to be perfect.

The summer that I was 17, my then-boyfriend (Jeff) and I had a very important conversation.

Jeff- “Ellen, um, do you think we could ever eat something besides plain pasta for dinner?”
Me- “Huh? Like what?”
Jeff- “We could try putting sauce on the pasta.”

This conversation actually happened.  Given I was living at home, I wasn’t the one cooking. But as you can probably deduce from the conversation, my family didn’t cook. Well, we did, but we only cooked on Sundays. So the rest of the week we ate things like plain pasta, or what I used to refer as a “smorgasbord’ – a plate with coldcuts, cheese, pickles, and bread. We also had some interesting phases to fit my brother’s dietary preferences- like strawberries at every meal. Anyway, the idea is, cooking wasn’t a regular thing in my house, and when there was cooking, I wasn’t anywhere near it.*

Then, I went to Olin, where we never had to cook, because we were required to be on the meal plan. When I interned, my main food came from “I’ll buy some hummus and carrots.” Nikki and I actually had an argument when she moved in, that went about like this.

Nikki – “We need to go to the grocery store.”
Me – “No we don’t.”
Nikki- “Have you looked in the fridge?”
Me – “We still have hummus, right?”
Nikki – “We have hummus, carrots, Coors light, and bad wine.”
Me- “See! We have hummus!”
Nikki- “Shut up, put your shoes on, we’re going to the store.”

This is all just background to demonstrate that I thought making plain pasta and buying hummus to dip carrots in, counted as cooking.

Then, I learned how to cook. I learned by mistake. It turns out, Tom likes to cook. So, after work he’d frequently suggest that we’d cook. I’d acquiesce, and my main contribution was standing in the cooking drinking wine. Of course, I’d get bored, and need a job. I’d need an active job so I wouldn’t wander off, so I started out with chopping vegetables.

After a few weeks of just chopping vegetables, I got impatient. So then I learned how to sauté the vegetables.

After that, I learned how to cook the meat (alongside the vegetables) and eventually combine then.

Having perfected about two skills, I realized that most of (simple) cooking involves 1) chopping things and 2) sautéing things and a very simple 3) putting things in the oven. If you can do those three things halfway decently, you can make:

-          Eggs, or to be fancy, frittata

-          Bacon

-          Grilled cheese sandwiches

-          Grilled cheese and bacon, tomato, or apple (or combo!) sandwiches

-          Any kind of sandwich, really

-          Tacos

-          Burritos

-          Lasagna

-          Meatloaf

-          Chicken pot pie

-          Sweet potatoes

-          Mashed potatoes

-          Really any potatoes

-          Stir fry

-          Lemon chicken

And it goes on.

So, you too can probably cook. Start out really simple. Cut things up. Cut up vegetables for dip at first. Or cut up vegetables and ask someone else to cook them for you. Then work up to cooking them. And then you’ll probably be able to make most things.

You can cook, I promise.