Let Go and Haul: a day in the life
Week 47, 2018 – Brooklyn
Journey: where we’re at
Fam! Shit is coming together and it is really exciting. In this week’s retro (highlights, lowlights, learnings, help) nobody had any lowlights! Idk if we were all just in a good mood from so much productivity on Friday but I’ll take it.
We pushed another TestFlight this week because so many of you were on expired builds (eeep!) and got some really nice messages about it (aw!) though actually that was a bit of a diversion because we have something much bigger and exciting coming but cuz expired builds we needed to stop and fix that so yea, more soon. December is going to be a jam packed month I’m slightly nervous about getting all the things done but if last week was an indicator then we’ll keep killing it.
Journal: what I learned
All right, so: I try to answer questions in this email and one of the questions I get often is “what does your day to day look like?” which causes me to exhale quickly and say something like “oh geez I have no idea where to start!” On Tuesday I had what was a pretty typical founder day, so I decided to capture all that to share it with you since… people seem interested!? Idk this is slightly weird to share for me but here we go:
Rise, coffee, workout
Quick email slay
9am engineering call about data transfer for a deal we inked last week while I quickly throw on some makeup and eat breakfast (the art of eating peanut butter toast on mute and not letting it slide off the warm toast into, like, my eyeshadow in front of my bedroom mirror while actively listening and taking notes is a skill people, a real skill).
Shift to tech constraints on the call for designs I need to do the next day while walking out the door to the train (thank god for AirPods). Finish the call just as the M pulls up
Email on the train en route to the studio
Meeting with our marketing advisor about turning our proto-personas into market sizing/TAM while he’s in town from SF
People stuff while I eat lunch
Design revisions on the latest iOS build for user testing that aft
Silently yelling at Sketch, Googling things (did I mention founder life is a lot of Googling things?)
Pairing on fixing my dev environment since my computer went swimming a few months ago. Reinstalling all the things gah
Signing our trademark application (while I wait for npm to finally run on my machine)
Learning a small web codebase. Pushing some changes to fix some broken things, silently swearing at Sass, making some new pages of legal terms, styling up the type so it doesn’t suck, pushing those changes, handing the link off to the relevant human for some iOS integration
Quick coffee across the street and checking in with humans
Final QA on the build since the revisions of a few hours earlier
Installing the build on 3 phones, train to NYU
Got a compliment on my outfit despite how y’all know how I got dressed this morning (peanut butter eng call, right?) How nice
2h of user testing picking people out of the Starbucks line. Finalizing redline on a deal with our music advisor on my phone while I’m buying toasted white chocolate lattes and snowmen cookies for students. Live updates on the testing in Telegram to the team back at the studio
Test went well! Relief! No showstoppers! Lots of polish but our schedule won’t be jacked thank god
Train to BK to pick up my CSA box. Email.
8pm meeting with another founder in one of our investor's portfolios to talk shop (next door to the CSA pick up, tight)
Home, prep for tomorrow, final email slay, bed
This is an example of what I would call a “manager’s schedule”. Curve balls, context switching, just a million different things. Pretty hard to go deep on anything. It’s the opposite of a “maker’s schedule” which is long uninterrupted periods of silence to go deep.
Since we’ve been in heads down product mode recently I’ve managed to carve out Tuesday and Wednesday as pure maker’s schedule days with no meetings, just deep product and design work. Thursday is usually for external meetings (and kind of a swing day for whatever needs to happen). Monday and Friday are for setting up and finishing the week with the team. It’s taken a lot of discipline and saying no to things to keep meetings off my place on Tues and Wed but it’s one of the greatest things I’ve achieved these past few months. Just say no, easier said than done ;-)
Jams: what I’m into
IT’S PLAYLIST TIME! It’s technically December but shhhhh. I just added my November playlist to SISTERS!
For new subscribers: this is a monthly playlist of new releases, at least half are by people who identify as women (because that shit is important we are under represented in the music industry). I have “received feedback” that I know a thing or two about music so idk maybe it’s good, the best music recommendations come from friends. (It’s true, that’s what every single user I interviewed at Last.fm told me). I’d like to think that we’re friends by now if you’re willing to have me in your inbox.
In other playlist news, my roommate and I were having Sunday dinner with friends tonight (we do this sometimes, it is nice!) and similar to the all clavinet playlist I recently shared (did you know how amazing this instrument is!?!) I also have a steel drums playlist. They are a complicated instrument to integrate well, and this is a list of songs that use them Very Effectively.
Last but not least, over dinner Ian shared this Du Tonc video cut together with found footage. It’s great. Enjoy.
P.S. I’m obsessed with the copywriting in the Fader email and have been actively trying to figure out how to bring the pacing of this writer into my style. I love how the writer zips through the pop culture of each day.
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