Producing things
Tiny stories about why I think it's important to produce stuff
When I lived and worked in Abu Dhabi for a little while I was stranded. I couldn’t drive, it was the start of a scorching summer, and I was staying in an Airbnb in the suburbs. I only found solace in my one friend who was in close proximity, a show that has honestly become a core part of my very being, and in writing.
The work itself was slow and monotonous and nothing at all happened quickly. But between stints of ‘research’ and experiments I sat at my desk and I wrote a story. It was a fiction and it wasn’t very good, but I worked on it probably 6 days a week for a summer. I ended up with over a hundred pages. I have a lot to say about that summer but this is the part I’m most personally proud of.
Over the course of my time working at Canonical I wrote a lot of words. On websites, in presentations, and in google docs. Most of the time those words were lent, or contributions to other things, or, actually no, most of them were meaningless scribbles known as ‘notes’ that are now lost to the void.
But when I look back at the things I did do, the articles and press releases I published, the user stories and requirements I wrote up, and the plans and pitch decks I spent hours and weekends on, the things I produced, I see progress, and I feel pride.
Recently-ish at South Pole I came up with and implemented a new ‘process’ (one I intend to write about here at some point) that I’m now getting several people asking how to replicate. This is nice, sure, it feels good (until I see them rip it off) but I’m more proud of the actual things that contributed to producing it. The dynamic google sheet templates I had to build, and the final presentation and how it works. These things aren’t particularly pretty and certainly not ground breaking, but I feel a lot of pride for them because they’re these things that I poured a lot of time and work into, that changed in small ways hundreds of times and represent a lot of work.
I didn’t do any of it alone, naturally, nothing good is done alone, I borrowed the smarts of much smarter people than me to make it happen. What I did do was facilitate contribution. And then we produced something really good.
I got some positive feedback today from a member of my team thanking me for pushing them out of their comfort zone a little to get them to produce something. For getting them to think something through properly, to put it into a medium, and for giving them a reason to make it good. And it was good! And we can see progress. And we can share it and build on it and it’ll live for ever as something they produced. I’m thinking about asking them to publish it here.
All of these things might seem a little silly or small but more and more recently I’m thinking about the importance and the value of producing things. How good it feels and how effective it is and getting things done. Not just writing stuff down or doing something you normally do, but taking the time and energy to produce something good.
Do me and yourself a favour; produce something. It could be written, like a story or an article, or it could be art, a picture or a painting, or it could be a video, or a photo, or something. Think about something that’s important to you right now and work out something you can produce in service of that. You don’t even have to share it with anyone, although I would like you to share it with me, but it’ll feel good.
Combine what you do with producing things and I bet you’ll feel better about whatever you’re trying to do.
