A Million Times Yes!

...The less energy people expend on performance, the more they expend on appearances to compensate. More often than not, the energy they expend on seeming impressive makes their actual performance worse...

The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely wasted, but actually makes organizations less productive. Suits, for example, do not help people to think better. I bet most executives at big companies do their best thinking when they wake up on Sunday morning and go downstairs in their bathrobe to make a cup of coffee. That's when you have ideas. Just imagine what a company would be like if people could think that well at work.

- Paul Graham in Founders at Work

Given that the last topic I blogged about was the summer solstice and it is now autumn in most places around the country (except for San Francisco, which is in its annual bout of Indian Summer), you can tell it’s been a while since I last blogged. 

Which is not good for a blogger, right? That’s like the number one rule of blogging, you say: Update and update regularly. Who is going to read anything you write if you actually don’t write anything? 

Gah, OK, OK, I hear you. So now I have some thoughts about being prolific on personal social media.

For many of us, the struggle with updating our digital presences—i.e. Feeding The Monster—is practical: We are just busy. Away from our screens and keyboards, we have active lives full of work and people and houses to clean and pets to feed and if we have a spare hour outside of work, we would much rather be seeing the friend we haven’t seen in umpteen months or laying down. 

Recently I’ve realized that one of the keys to making sure we have time to update has to do with our lifestyles. I have a couple of ideas about what we can do in our lives to improve our prolificacy. 

It actually has to do with commute. Commutes, in general, are terrible for our happiness. Researchers found that people consistently cite it as the worst part of their lives. So, if commute majorly affects our lives in general, imagine how it impacts our productivity. 

So, for optimal social media, there are two good scenarios:

1. Find a job that’s close to work or where we can work from home. I used to have a job where I would have to drive 1.5 hours everyday to get to work—and then another 1.5 hours back. That was three hours a day. And aside from the fact of having no time for blogging or doing anything else—I was miserable from the commute. These days, I used to live a five-minute walk away from my work, but recently the office moved more than an hour’s drive away. Now I lose two to three hours every day—that’s fifteen hours a week or more than two full days of work (assuming an average of eight hours of work a day). Which basically means that if I weren’t commuting, I could essentially be blogging as a part-time job for two days a week. 

I contrast this to when I used to work from home—in particular, when I was running social media for a startup in DC. It meant I started really early because they were five hours ahead of where I was living. But it also meant that I put in way more hours because I didn’t have a commute. And I also had time to integrate updating my social media into my life. 

2. The even better way to make time for Feeding The Monster is to plan a commute during which you can work. After roughing such long driving commutes for some time, I told myself I would live by public transportation and company shuttle stops or bust. And you know what? It was awesome. I’d walk 20 minutes to the train and get my exercise for the day and then take a 40-minute train ride down to my job. It was the similar time spent as my more awful commutes. The difference was that I could work on the way down. On my way back up, I would take the company shuttle and do the same. 

I considered my day started when I sat down in my train seat, not when I got to my desk—which meant that my day started much earlier and I had the time and mental space to work on creative problems and also to blog, tweet, and find things that inspired me to post to my social channels. 

The third way, which I do not advocate, is to find a job that you hate because then you will find yourself forced to find inspiration and creativity in your outside life, which for some people means social media. Of course, then you have a much bigger problem on your hands. ;-)

What do you guys think? How do you guys make sure you post often?

- Noelle

San Francisco, 5:46 pm

“Do you ever wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it!" -The Great Gatsby

I think of that Great Gatsby quote every summer, as I await the Summer Solstice's arrival. There is something about savoring the sunniest day of the year, making sure that I am appreciating every moment of it before we slip into fall and then winter. In life, we don't always get to know when things are at their best or at their worst until the moment is past. In the Summer Soltice, we get that rare chance to know in the moment that this day is as long as it gets for the year. It's a gift.

Unusually, summer is here in San Francisco. I say unusually because these June and July months are typically filled with frigid fog. While the rest of the Bay Area is laying out in tank tops and slippers, San Francisco folks know it's time for jackets and socks. Someone once again attempts to quote Mark Twain ("The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" - not Mark Twain), and we wait it out until our warm days come in August, September, and October—Indian Summer, as they call it. 

But today we received a warm blessing on the Summer Soltice—a high of 74 degrees and broad, generous sunshine, hot enough for a tank top, skirt, and slippers. 

It is a day not to miss. :-)

From corporations to advertising firms to digital shops to startups, many marketers are realizing that changing hearts, minds, and actions is not merely about pushing people, shouting, or scaring folks to move. Great marketing is about good storytelling, an immersive experience that compels us in our fundamental humanity.

But what does it look like when you take some tips from working at one of the best contemporary storytellers, world class animation studio Pixar?

Earlier this month, Emma Coats, a storyboard artist at Pixar, generously tweeted out 22 great tips on "story basics." Now someone out there on the Internets has put them into a really cool graphic (Pro tip: Everything is more sharable as a jpg!). Unfortunately, the citation on the graphic is illegible, so I’m not sure who made it. (Pro tip 2: Always cite yourself as the source in the graphic!)

If you think these are just tips for creating great movies and books, I encourage you to widen your view. These are awesome insights to integrate into the discovery process for any campaign creation, content strategy, or digital planning.

Enjoy!

Today I read about a new app showcased at YCombinator's Demo Day called Pair—the beginning of a tool designed for those in long-distance relationships. 

To be totally upfront, I haven't tried this app at all. I am not in a long distance relationship. But as someone who has been in long distance relationships over what amounts to years, I am really surprised that a similar app has not been developed yet. 

After all, when you and your loved one are apart, money feels like no obstacle. In your most lonely moments, you would pay a lot of money to be closer. And often times, you'll factor into your cost of living expensive plane tickets so that you can see one another. I know I'm not the only one. I can recall countless conversations in which people have come to me or my friends asking for advice and for tools on maintaining a healthy relationship from afar.

I say this because there's money in it for the person who uses app technologies to bring us all closer together. People would pay for apps or services and spend a lot of time on these tools. I am very eager to see Pair—and whoever else jumps into that space—perfect that tool. Pair has already had 50,000 downloads in the last four days, according to All Things D. And I would really not be surprised if this is just the beginning. 

This should be a space to watch.

It really can't be said that San Francisco doesn't have seasons.

Sure, the city's east cost counterparts boast the full blusters of winter and dramatic fall displays of color and leaves. And even Midwest cities, like Chicago and Minneapolis, may claim seasons intense enough to freeze your tears and melt your skin and all of the earned bragging rights in leathered character.

But thin-skinned and soft-hearted San Franciscans may be, it cannot be said that the City on the Bay does not have seasons. You really only have to look to what San Francisco devotes so much of its pomp and circumstance: the food. In city that puts events like farmers markets at centerstage, eating with the seasons is an important part of San Francisco living. Home cooks and professional chefs kow-tow to fresh catches and seasonal harvests.

AQ Restaurant is the perfect example of this. The restaurant, which just opened in November to a flurry of accolades (including a nomination for the James Beard Award's best new restaurant), changes every aspect of its service with the seasons. The interior transforms from the warm colors of fall to stark winter white. The staff rotates its garb from flannels to pressed whites. And, of course, the food and drinks shift to reflect the particular season's bounty.

If the concept sounds quaint, it is. But it avoids becoming gimmicky simply because, well, the cocktails are good.

What's cool is that many of AQ's cocktails give a strong nod to the classics. In fact, a whole section of the drink menu is devoted to "seasonal classics," common drinks that are tweaked here and there to make it the restaurant's own.

AQ also features some of its own drinks, too. They're not cocktails you'll necessarily find in the gentlemen's companion—but they were definitely delicious enough to make up a modern cocktail book!

We went to AQ during its winter menu. I was particularly pleased with my Manhattan, which featured orange-peel-infused bourbon, sweet vermouth, winter bitters, and angostura bitters. It was a really lovely spicy take on the old classic. It managed to taste enough like the original but took on its own distinct mood—kind of like visiting the same place at different times of day.

Next I ordered a New Amsterdam Variant #2: raisin-infused bols genever gin, maple syrup, old fashioned bitters, topped with apple cider. It was a sweet drink that ran thick with the maple syrup. The taste of raisins and cider tasted familiar and made me feel warm on a cold winter's night. Completely appropriate drink for fall (apple season!), as well.

The drink somehow become reminiscent of raisins and of hot cider. It was the perfect spice to warm my insides on a cold winter's night.

Josh asked the bartender for a recommendation on a scotch drink, and she whipped up a super tasty Bobby Burns—a deep and smoky drink that usually includes scotch, vermouth, and Bendictine.

Our companion Kasey, on the other hand, ordered a Bison Rose, and it came in this really cool cup! (Standby for low-quality pictures in a dark, dark bar.)

Overall, we were most impressed by the drinks featured on the menu (opposed to ones whipped up off-menu), and the bar takes a really fresh take on well-loved cocktails. Drinks were really well-balanced and very accessible for food-minded folks looking for deep flavors in their cocktails. These are California cocktails at their best!

[For the interested, here are dark, dramatic photos of the AQ winter cocktail menu, which has since been swapped out for the spring menu.]

AQ Restaurant & Bar

1085 Mission St
San Francisco, CA 94103 415) 341-9000
http://aq-sf.com

I have this theory that you know a place is really good when you go twice—once, to try it out, and then second, to fulfill the craving the first visit left. This past weekend was a weekend of seconds. :-)

We returned to Plant Cafe on the Embarcadero with my visitng friend (and, incidentally, second cousin!) Crystal. It's a super healthy cafe on the Bay that specializes in organic foods. It's the perfect place to take any guest to San Francisco—they get a full Bay view and can satisfy their stereotype of healthy Californians. 

We all thought we'd try their fresh juices. You only need a little glass because it's so potent!

They also have a delicious breakfast bowl with cinammon, apples, young coconut, and pecans. 

We also returned to 15 Romolo. I had promised myself that I wouldn't get the skillet this time, even though it was so delicious last time. But this time they had pork belly in the skillet! What's a girl to do?

We also stopped for a drink at old favorite Heaven's Dog, where Trevor whipped up a lovely Trinidad Sour.

Cheers to the seconds!

Photo: Exploding Dog

Vulnerability is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently. It’s kind of an inevitable subject to ponder when you’re working in social media. Sure, there are a lot of corporate standards surfacing for transparency and social media (you can just look to the work of Charlene Li as one example). But the personal question is only one you can answer yourself—will people trust me if I share my personal struggles? Will it make me look lame? Weak? Self-pitying? Or worst: emo? And when you don't fit into the old boy's club in a corporate environment, it can sometimes feel that all of the world’s distrust will weigh your youth against your eagerness and smarts and come out judging you for just your babyface.

There are a lot of arguments for being vulnerable on social media, i.e. The Public. It makes it easier for people to relate to you, people say. It shows you’re a real person. It shows that you’re authentic.

But the truth is that a lot of people love gossip, too. And there is a reason why the human train wrecks that are reality TV shows do so dependably well on the networks. People love drama. And not always out of compassion. The spectacle can become self indulgent. You can make money off of it. You can gain fame. But you can also lose yourself and crash and burn.

So it’s our job to, yes, be authentic and to relate to others. But it doesn’t need to be meaningless or a target for internet rubberneckers.

And then I started to observe that there is a way to be very successful at being vulnerable on social media. And I think one of the people who embraces all these principles best is Penelope Trunk. 

Penelope Trunk is widely recognized for her popular blog about “the intersection of work and life.” She shares with graphic, almost embarrassing honesty about her struggle with Asperger syndrome, the trials and tribulations of her sex life and love life (if you’d like to distinguish the two), and the challenges of launching a startup. As a blogger, she is able to share facts and insights about herself that make many people squirm—but ultimately she still wins the trust of a large readership.

How can we embrace the same kind of vulnerability? I learned a few from reading Penelope Trunk's blog:

1. Tell a good personal story. When Penelope discusses her vulnerabilities, it’s more than a laundry list of insecurities, trips, and falls. She tells a personal story from her real life—and she does so with excruciating honesty. It’s an effective way to make her blog interesting instead of just emo. This is where the bulk of where she exposes herself and her vulnerability. The story is immersive and allows you to care about the author.
2. Give concrete tips on how to beat that vulnerability. This is the biggest principle I observed. Penelope might spend 1,000 words talking about how she feels terribly inadequate at something. But then she focuses the rest of the post on actionable ways she’s dealt with those feelings. Sometimes this part even comes below the fold. It’s still effective, though—the stories that she starts have a lot of traction.
3. Take a strong stance. Penelope’s advice is often extreme. She’ll frequently defy the conventional wisdom and stir up controversy. This not only makes her blog posts a good conversation starter. It makes her decisive and demonstrates her analytical skills. While most people focus on the actual conclusions, what builds credibility is the thinking process. In this way, we shouldn’t stress out as much about being right or wrong—we all change our minds in life. But we should focus on the quality of thinking and the efficacy of our writing to really say something.
4. Build credit. Following this formula actually builds her credibility with her readers. So, when she does occasionally share stories without advice to follow, she’s already established herself as a smart, thoughtful person who can share hardships without wallowing.

How much do you like to share about yourself online? Do you have certain safeguards?

For some reason this cupcake, from NYC Taught Me, just cracks me up. A meh cupcake is like a sad clown!

Happy weekend!