chapello's thoughts

Fringe Thoughts

Think back to the last time you had a revelation while doing something else. Maybe you were taking a shower, walking to the train, or otherwise occupied. Even so, this thought gripped you and seized you out of that moment and planted you firmly into a new way of thinking.

Has this happened to you? It happens to me a couple of times a week, and I used to never think too much of it because I usually forgot the big revelation by the time I was finished with my other task.

I like to call these little revelations “fringe thoughts.”

Lately I’ve been thinking that those revelations are pretty important. Articles like this one got me thinking that I should be more proactive about remembering these fringe thoughts.

What I’ve started to do to remedy my issue of not remembering these fringe thoughts is to immediately stop what I’m doing and write them down. Admittedly, this doesn’t work well when you’re im the shower or on a run, but in those cases I make surr to focus on thr thought and build it out so that I can come back to it later.

I’ve found that these fringe thoughtd help a lot in decision-making, generating ideas, smd keeping your thoughts straight. I’ve been recording mine in Evernote for a few months and it’s been very helpful. Give if a try, I think you’ll find these thiughts are very valuable. If you do, let me know how it goes.

Be In This Moment

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo gave a pretty great commencement speech at Michigan this weekend. You should watch it here.

One of the things that resonated with me was when Dick discussed his brief improv comedy career at Second City in Chicago. At one point, he attempted to plan out how he wanted a scene to unfold, and the results were disappointing. His director, Martin Demott, explained to him that in improv, trying to plan into the future limits the creativity and the possibility of the scene, and that was ultimately a recipe for disaster on stage. The director gave him the advice that the best thing that you can do is to be in the moment. He said, “If you try to plan what the next line is supposed to be, you’re just going to be disappointed…Be in this moment. Now be here in this moment. Now be here in this moment.”

Costolo went on to use this as a metaphor for his life. He said that he got where he is today through a fortuitous sequence of events that he could not have possibly planned when he was just starting out.

This part of the speech stuck with me in two different but related ways.

First, because focusing on the moment is something I’ve been trying to be better at. I found that I was constantly being pulled out of whatever I was doing by subtle but powerful distractions: the soft vibration of my cell phone, a glance at a TV in the distance, or the movement of someone walking by. I found that I was more and more being pulled out of important discussions, conversations, and presentations. I increasingly was lead off topic or had to ask the speaker to repeat themselves. This was not a good thing.

Second, because Dick’s words are directly applicable to my career path. If you would have told me 5 years ago that I would be working for a tech company in Silicon Valley, I would have laughed you out of the room. I was so sure that I had planned out the next 5 years and that I knew what was going to happen. I KNEW that I was going to be living in Chicago and working a variety of finance and accounting jobs. Instead, through a series of small decisions, I left that path behind, ended up in tech consulting, and eventually on the west coast.

I think that being present in the moment is incredibly powerful. It allows you to fully engage in what you are doing, and by not looking too far ahead or behind you’re able to follow a path that you might not have believed was possible. Give it a try - I think you might find that it works for you as well.

The 2013 Boston Marathon

I was in Boston yesterday to watch a few of my friends run the 2013 Boston Marathon. While I was not near the finish line when the explosions happened, I watched a majority of the race from the 40 Kilometer mark on Boston University’s campus and had many friends who ran and watched the race. When I heard about the blast, I was momentarily frozen as I thought about my friends. As I stood in the security line at Logan trying to get out of Boston, I am sure that my face was pale as I frantically took to my phone.

The first thing I did was text my parents to let them know that I was not hurt.

The second thing I did was call and text my friends who had been at the race to make sure that they were all right.

The third thing I did was post to Facebook and Twitter that I was all right.

The next two hours were a blur. I fielded calls, texts, Facebook messages, and emails making sure that I was unharmed. I talked with others at Boston Logan about the tragedy and made sure that their loved ones were unharmed. I read with fear the initial news reports which seemed to have wildly inaccurate and divergent messages. I reminded myself that preliminary reports are preliminary and not to believe everything that I read.

I sat on the tarmac at Logan wondering if my flight was going to be able to leave and take me back to San Francisco. I updated the flight attendants that Logan’s own Twitter feed was reporting that the airspace had been shut down by the FAA. They informed me that these reports were false and that we would be taking off only 20 minutes delayed. It turned out that the flight attendants were correct and the ground stop at Logan was partially inaccurate.

I am incredibly thankful that none of my friends were hurt. I am incredibly thankful that I was able to reach my family and friends and let them know I was all right. I am incredibly angry at whoever committed these crimes.

Given my experiences yesterday, I have a few thoughts on how the tragedy was handled and what could have been done better.

GOOD THINGS ABOUT THE RESPONSE:

- The first responders were, as usual, amazing. We owe all of the BPD and the spectators who helped out a debt of gratitude for handling the scene of the crime with courage and grace.

- The response on the Internet was amazing. Google used its Person Finder tool to let people know who had been accounted for (below is a screenshot that a friend took to check that I was alive). I saw messages on friends’ Twitter’s and Facebook walls letting their networks know that they were all right. This open line of communication is invaluable in times of tragedy. It has a dark side, though, which I will discuss below.

- The mayor of Boston, who had been in the hospital, checked himself out in order to be there for his city. I can’t overstate how courageous and unified he and the rest of the city officials were in their response.

BAD THINGS ABOUT THE RESPONSE:

- Cell networks in the area of the blast were jammed with calls of those trying to reach their loved ones. This is unacceptable, there needs to be some sort of mechanism to open up traffic in times of emergencies. I was unable to reach one of my friends for 30 minutes, which made my heart stop, but it turned out she was just in an area that did not have cell service.

UPDATE: A colleague at Box has shared some technical thoughts on why my ask is not possible as I’ve phrased it. In his words: “Cell sites are limited in the frequencies they can handle & the number of channels (or simultaneous calls) that they can handle :(  It is not a policy constraining the calls so it can’t just be changed.  (This is a case where mobile networks are very similar to power grids and plumbing … too many people drawing power and you have black/brownouts.)”

I’d also like to counter my own point a bit…while making calls was difficult, texting worked like a charm. I was able to reach all of my friends near the finish line by text. I’ll chalk this point up to frustration in being able to reach my friends immediately by voice.

- The authorities seemed to be split in their message to people on the scene, telling some to stay where they were in restaurants, bars, and hotels, while others instructed people to “get to safety.” This lack of a unified message is harmful and frightening to all those involved.

- I appreciate the response of people saying that they will run the Boston Marathon next year in honor of the victims, but the Boston Marathon is the most elite big race in the world and is tremendously difficult to qualify for. The best thing that people can do is to give aid to those who were affected and pledge to support the race in the future.

- The videos and pictures of the blast became too much. The Boston Globe had a LOOPED graphic video on its website which spread terror and fear. Many news outlets showed pictures of victims who had lost their limbs. This is wildly inappropriate.

- The United flight that I boarded at 5 PM Eastern time did not offer WiFi. I almost did not get on the flight because I was scared of worrying friends and family. The flight was 6 hours long and that is an unacceptably long amount of time to be disconnected in times of tragedy. The feature to be connected to the Internet needs, at the very least, to be AVAILABLE in these times, if not made free. Hey United and other airlines, please fix this. I unnecessarily worried many people by being out of touch from 5 PM to 11 PM Eastern Time.

HORRIBLE, AWFUL, NEVER-TO-BE-REPEATED THINGS ABOUT THE RESPONSE:

- The 24-hour news cycle is disgusting in times like these. When news outlets have no new information they pursue every quasi-relevant lead, which leads to a tremendous amount of misinformation and irrelevant news stories being broadcast and published. This is extremely harmful. While it was clear that there was not going to be any new relevant information from the mayor’s office or the BPD until this morning, news outlets continued to pursue any possible witness to the crimes, which lead to dangerous speculation and so-called insider accounts that did nothing to advance the conversation or get any new information on the airwaves. This needs to change.

- While there is tremendous upside to social media in spreading information, the amount of inaccurate and downright false information on Twitter and Facebook yesterday terrifies me. The speed with which false information moves in times of tragedy is as amazing to me as anything about the digital age.

The most important and courageous thing we can do today is proceed with business as usual, so that’s what I am going to try to do. That shows whoever did this that we will not be intimidated and we will not be scared. It shows them that they have failed.

There will be many more thoughts about this tragedy as the events unfold. Until then, this piece sums up the rest of my thoughts about the tragedy: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

Lessons Learned: If Not Now, When?

I had a manager at Accenture who utilized a philosophy that I really liked and have tried to incorporate into my work. He was the manager of a large development team, which meant that he was constantly getting wind of all manner of issues, small and large. And yet, whenever I came to him with a problem and he wasn’t on the phone or in a meeting, he responded the same way.

“Tell me about the problem.”

I would describe the problem as quickly as possible because I knew that he had a lot on his plate.

“All right, let’s take care of it now.”

And then he would draw out a solution, or call someone who needed to be looped in on the discussion, or send an email to get a conversation started if it was a large problem.

The universal approach of “Let’s deal with this right now” really stuck with me. Here was a guy who got several hundred emails a day and spent at least four hours per work day on the phone, and his approach to problems was to take care of them as soon as possible. Most other managers that I worked with would suggest that I schedule a meeting to talk about my issue, no matter how large or small it was, and often times it was days or weeks or months before it was ever resolved.

What’s more, he didn’t just take this approach with issues that I brought to him, he used the same methodology for all of his work.

It has occurred to me that this is the most efficient way of dealing with problems. If he had let these issues slide for several days or weeks, many of them would go away but I would bet that more of them would grow and morph into larger and more unmanageable problems. By dealing with a large number of small issues as they came, as opposed to deferring them, he was able to reduce the number of large issues and mistakes that he eventually would have to deal with.

Given, this methodology isn’t perfect and doesn’t take into account all manner of problems or requests. The truly big and hairy issues still require a lot of time and brain power to solve and aren’t suitable to be solved in this way. It also may not mesh well with other managers who are not so proactive. 

And of course, you may be working on a big project that requires a large amount of uninterrupted time to complete and these types of requests may throw off your thought process. I know that this is an issue, and the way that this manager dealt with it was by working on these big projects in the evenings or blocking off several hours during a day and locking himself in a conference room. Not perfect, I realize, but they worked for him.

If you try things this way I think that you’ll find that it’s the most efficient way to deal with the never-ending onslaught of problems that come across your plate at work. At the very least, it has worked well for me, and I’d like to think that my co-workers appreciate that I’m always willing to discuss a difficult problem right away rather than to defer it to sometime in the future.