words & pictures

If you have read these posts regularly, you may have noticed there are a decent amount of sports analogies.  I have always enjoyed sports, even if I have never been the best athlete.  For me, sports have provided a plethora of lessons I have then used in other aspects of my life and work.

This got me thinking about exercise, working out, and the idea of one more repetition.  Like the goal that you want to end strong or run through the finish line, this is the idea of working hard and then pushing even harder during that last little bit.  Growth happens when you exceed what you thought were your limits.  Often this moment of breakthrough happens at the end.  Personal trainers use this a lot when working with clients.  They’ll keep you on track during the workout, slowly increasing what your resistance, and then push you a bit more at the end.  

So here’s the challenge of the day.  It’s Friday, the end of the work week.  Essentially it’s like the end of your workout.  You get the whole weekend to recover.  So find a moment when you are halfway through your day, and rather than coasting in, consciously kick it into a higher gear.  Push yourself a bit harder.  Actually try and make it so you feel a  bit spent by the time you get to the end of the day.  However you can make this happen, whether it’s closing your office door, putting on some headphones and a good song, or whatever method works for you, push yourself.  See what you can do.  At the end of the day, I’ll bet that push makes a difference.  It could be the thing that puts you over the top, or simply get’s you further along towards your goal.  You may feel exhausted from the effort, but it’s the good kind of tired.  It means you’re growing, and getting better.  And isn’t that what we’re shooting for?

I grew up in Sacramento, California.  The Sacramento Kings basketball team was the only professional sports team in the city.  From time to time, as many pro sports teams are known to do, they would have players speak in the community.    When I was in high school around the time of my senior year, a couple of Kings players came to speak at our school.  They talked about basketball, what it was like to play in the NBA, how we should try hard in school.  You know, the usual stuff one would imagine at an event like that.  But there was one thing one of the players said that has not only stuck with me all these years, but really influenced my outlook on things professionally.

The previous season, Jim Les, one of the visiting Kings players, had one of the highest percentages of made 3-point shots in the league, and came within a basket or so of winning the 3-point contest at the NBA All-Star Game.  What struck me about Mr. Les that day was how he described himself and his achievements as a professional basketball player.  Mr. Les was a six foot nothing white guy (his words) playing in the NBA.  He said there were probably a thousand guys out on playground courts all over the country who had more talent than he did.  But the difference between players down at the playground and the the thing that got him to the NBA was he was bound and determined to squeeze every bit of talent he had out of himself.  He was at his maximum potential, and it had him playing in the NBA.

As a young kid with dreams of becoming a professional artist, this was really applicable.  I could already tell there were people out there that could draw better than me.  It was the idea of really pushing yourself, of getting everything you could out of the talent you had that really stuck with me through all these years.

Truth be told, there is always going to be someone better than us, no matter what we do.  But we all have potential locked inside of us.  It takes a lot of hard work, filled with failures both big and small, to get to the successes.  Sometimes people come along that have both the drive and tenacity to draw out their best, and happen to be exceptionally talented (Michael Jordan).  But for a lot of us, you would be amazed at how far you can go simply by taking the talents you have and trying to maximize them.  That drive to be the best you can be is often the difference between doing something as a hobby or a profession.

When I was growing up, I played sports.  Wait, let me re-phrase that.  I participated in sports to the degree where I didn’t look awkward.  Let’s just say there was a reason I went to art school.  Regardless, it was a good experience.  After a pretty decent hiatus through college and my twenties, I signed up to run a marathon along with my wife when I was thirty-one.

(*note: After drinking several glasses of wine, don’t make bets about your ability to run a marathon.  Before you know it, you’ve signed up for one and are running at 6:00 am on a Sunday morning!)

I made it through the marathon, and a couple of years later, decided to start cycling.  Now, having both run and ride, I suddenly found myself wanting to do a triathlon.  I figured I already enjoyed running and riding, why not throw swimming in there as well.  It’s a slippery slope, this fitness thing (but that’s another story all together).  

The thing with swimming during a triathlon versus swimming in a pool is the open water aspect.  It’s fairly easy to get off course.  Swimming in a straight line would be fantastic, but there is a skill to that.  When I started swimming in open water for the first time, from the top down my line must have looked like a drunk driver, zig zagging back and forth, slowly headed towards my destination.  I would soon find out the key to open water swimming is spotting.  

What you want to do is pick your destination, which is usually a buoy floating off some seemingly insurmountable distance ahead of you.  You swim several strokes with your head down, then lift your head up just enough to spot your destination.  If you are off course, make any adjustments, then put your head back down, swim several more strokes, look up, adjust, and repeat.  You do this until you reach the buoy.  The really good open water swimmers can both swim with their heads down for quite some time before needed to look, and when they do look to spot the buoy, it is an effortless motion, just enough to take note of how far they have strayed so they can make the necessary adjustments to get them back on course.  It’s a pretty sight to behold when done right.  For myself, let’s just say I look up at that buoy quite a bit.

But swimming out there with nothing to keep me company but my thoughts got me thinking.  Spotting during an open water swim isn’t that different than trying to achieve any other goal.  You pick a point, put your head down and work, work, work, then look up every so often to assess how far off you are on that line towards your goal.  You make adjustments, then repeat until you reach what you are aiming for.  The really experienced people are able to go from A to B in a much more straight line, often without having to look up or adjust as much as those just starting out.  But the thing is, with practice you get better.

So pick a goal.  Put your head down and start working towards it.  Every few strokes along the way pop your head up and assess.  Are you on line towards that goal?  Have you strayed too much?  Maybe look more often.  Maybe you’re holding a pretty good line.  The key is this combination of head down work, assess, adjust, and repeat.  Before you know it you’ll have reached that buoy, which feels so, so good.

It’s currently 5:30 am when I am writing this.  I’ve already been up for a half hour, returning emails, doing some work.  This is usually what I do most mornings during the week.  

THIS IS NOT BECAUSE I AM A MORNING PERSON!  

In fact, going back to my college days, I enjoyed working at night.  Our core classes at CalArts, which were taught by professionals working within the animation industry during the day, were usually held from 7:00-10:00 pm each evening.  After class went out, and a quick trip to get some coffee, the bulk of my work time would begin.  Most nights of work ended around the same time the bars closed down.

This work schedule followed me to Pixar.  The first couple of films I worked on took a lot of time.  I was learning, and because I wasn’t as tenured in my knowledge as the veterans, the best way for me to keep up was simply to work more.  During the production of Toy Story 2, my girlfriend at the time (who I am now happily married to!) made me promise that if I was working past 3:00 or 4:00 am and had to be back in the building for 8:00 am dailies, that I would simply sleep at work rather than try to make the drive back across the Bay Bridge into the city where I was living.  

But it was at Pixar during those first couple of films that I encountered an exception to this idea of working late every night.  Glenn McQueen, my first Supervising Animator, would get to work a little before 7:00 am.  As a twenty-two year old kid, I thought this was nuts.  Why not sleep in?  Dailies often didn’t start until 8:30 or 9:00.  Glenn told me that he got more work done in that first hour or two of the day before all the meetings started and people flowed in than during the rest of the  work day.  It was a quiet time when he was fresh, wasn’t distracted, and could really accomplish a lot.  Plus, he had time then at the end of the day to spend with his wife or other friends, rather than be stuck at work trying to get things done.  I still thought he was a bit crazy.

But after Toy Story 2 wrapped, and my girlfriend moved out to the Bay Area, I suddenly found a very real argument for not wanting to be stuck at work all hours of the night.  I remembered what Glenn had said, and started to attempt to get into work early one day a week.  I experimented with which day, and I landed on Mondays as being the best (insert record scratch here).  Yes, I said Mondays, which are usually the most dreaded day of the week.  

The thing is, not many people want to go into work early on a Monday morning, but the flip side to that is there aren’t many people around, which means a ton of undistracted work can be accomplished.  It is wide open cheap real estate.  I also found that Mondays were the perfect set up day.  I could wrap up anything left over from the previous week, plus set myself up for anything that I was working on for the week ahead.  It was like being my own sous-chef.  It made getting work done the rest of the week much easier.  The other benefit was because the night before was Sunday, I had time to lay out my clothes, pack my lunch, and do any other preparation needed so when the alarm went off on Monday morning, I was ready to get out of bed and head in without having to worry about that stuff.  Sunday gave me time to be a sous-chef to my sous-chef, if that makes sense.

But here’s the best part of this seemingly insane idea.  By claiming some time to work earlier in the day and week, I was freeing up time later.  I thought there was more to do with my girlfriend between 6:00-9:00 at night than between 6:00-9:00 in the morning.  Once we got married and had children, this became even more apparent.  I may miss one breakfast with the kids during the week, but I get to be home for dinner each evening.

When I stated this conversion to becoming a morning person, I didn’t start by getting up at 5:00 am.  That would have been too big of a shock to my routine.  I shot for one day a week, up by 6:00 or 6:30, and at my desk at work by 7:00.  That was doable.  Over the years, I have slowly shifted that time earlier and earlier.  I have also claimed other mornings during the week, one by one, to work early but from home.  Now when the alarm goes off just before 5:00 am during the work week, it has become part of my routine.  Yes, there are some mornings when I sleep in because of an occasional late night, but overall, I have come to look forward to this time of day and getting things done.  It not only has provided a way to insert a sustainable work/life balance, but it starts me off with a sense of accomplishment that helps fuel the rest of my day.

It may sound crazy, but mornings saved my nights.

When I was sixteen years old I attended a baseball day camp in Sacramento.  This was not  because I was a great and promising baseball player.  I enjoyed playing baseball, but there was a reason I ended up attending art school rather than fend off letters of inquiry from Major League Baseball teams.  I like to say I was good enough to not look awkward, but not good enough to start.  Regardless of my average talent levels, I ended up at this weeklong baseball day camp at Sacramento City College.  It was over the winter break, I was with friends, and it was taught by the coaches of the City College baseball team.  From that weeklong experience, I only remember one thing, and it as proven useful my entire career.  

The head coach was a man named Jerry Weinstein.  One day he was giving us a pep talk of sorts on something I have long forgotten, but somewhere buried in the middle of piles of athletic wisdom was something that was applicable to more than just baseball.  He was talking about meeting goals, working hard, and attempting to achieve our dreams.  Then he said this: If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.  

I was a sixteen year old kid with big dreams, just like those sitting around me that day.  The difference was that my aspirations had more to do with drawing giants and tigers than for playing for them.  But from the vantage point of a teenager with big dreams, the land of achieving those dreams seemed very far off.  This idea Coach Weinstein stressed was to not try to think about going from where we were all sitting as teenagers with some average level of talent to the grand success of the big leagues, because that was too large of a journey.  There would be no way for us to manage such a task.  If we tried to manage a task that big, we would fail.  Rather, break it down into smaller, more achievable goals.  

Over my career I’ve heard many versions of this idea, of breaking down any large task into smaller, more digestible pieces.  But it was when I was a teenager, with dreams in my eyes and a long road ahead of me, that this idea became clear for the first time.  We really could do anything, but the trick was breaking that journey up into smaller pieces.  Work on something you can measure.  Sometimes that task can seem ridiculously small, but it is the sum of all these little measurements, of these little parts that will add up to your ultimate goal.  

That day at a baseball camp where it was obvious I would never be a professional baseball player, I first realized I could be a professional artist.  Sometimes the best advice comes from places you would never expect.

When I was first a lead and needed to give direction to an artist, I would try to convey exact directions as to what they needed to do.  

“Do it exactly like I say.  Don’t stray.  OMG!  You did what?  That’s not how I would have done it!!!”

This often didn’t work out so well.  Yes, there are times when explicit direction and execution are needed, but that tends to be towards the very end of the task, and often deals with finish work and little details.  But the best way to lead someone to where you want them to end up is to give them the tools to get there: 

A map and a machete.  

What I mean by this is you want to kick someone off with a specific idea of where then need to end up and why.  ”We’re leaving from point A and you need to get to point B for these reasons.”  You many even give suggestions on how to best get there.  But to truly leverage the skills of the person you are working with, you want to let them find the way through the proverbial forest that works best for them.  This is where the machete comes in.  Let them know they can cut their own path.  The machete in this case is their own ideas and solutions.  What you have really given them is the authority to use their ideas to solve the problems they’ll encounter along the way.  If they get lost, or stray too far off the course, they still have the map of direction you provide.

They can always fallback and simply attempt to walk along the exact route you mapped out, but if you as a lead can encourage someone to utilize the skills they have to find their way, it will be more efficient, they will feel more in control of their success, and will end up at the destination feeling better about the route they took to get there.  

All you need to do is give them the map and the authority to use their machete.

I remember back in the day, when I was one of those young, hot shot kids who was fast at my job, worked all the time, and had more energy and enthusiasm than I knew what to do with.  But then something happened.  Not all at once, but slowly, little by little.  Someone came in and seemed to have a little more energy.  Someone else spent a little more time at work.  Was I slowing down, or were these new kids that were being hired that much faster?  I mean yes, I was now dating someone, and soon was married.  Maybe I didn’t have quite as much time to spend at work.  Then children came.  Oh, and I wanted to see sunlight every now and then.  But really, what was going on?

Oh, wait, life happened.  And it was a good thing.  But frequent comments I have heard over the years from veterans is that the new kids are just so fast, spend all their time at work, have so much energy that they just can’t keep up.  

Bullsh*t.  I think that is just an excuse.  Anyone who has done something for a while has experience, hopefully is more efficient, and has gained perspective.  This is a lethal combination that not many are born with, but is acquired over time.  I’m not saying it’s an easy thing to keep up with someone who seems to have boundless time to  work until 11:00 each night, and then go to some rockin’ party until dawn.  But with experience comes other tools and skills that are extremely valuable and shouldn’t be dismissed.  

Personally I feel having a good work/life balance is extremely important.  Finding that balance, and sometimes even doing things that take you away from work can help make the time you are working more efficient, focused, and enjoyable.  For example, one of the first things to drop off many of our calendars is time for exercise.  You want to get more done, so rather than go for a run at lunch, you feel like you should work through it.  Ironically, breaking up your day with a bit of exercise can help give you more energy as you hit that afternoon lull.  Sometimes I get my best ideas while exercising.  I’m not focusing so closely on the task in front, and my mind has a chance to relax.  That little break can both clear my head, give me a little perspective.  It is good for me both physically and mentally.  

My point is, you may not be able to work all night and party ‘til dawn any more, but with a dose of experienced used in the right way, I bet some of those kids will be asking how you get so much done in the time you’re at work.

During my first year at CalArts (way back in the 20th century), my animation teacher, Kevin Johnson, sat our class down and proceeded to give us what would become my first bit of professional advice.  He had us look around the room at each other.  Don’t be a jerk, he told us. The people in that room, he assured us, would be people we would know in some capacity for the rest of our lives. 

We all snickered at this.  Really?  We had just met each other!  I was eighteen years old.  Did he really think I would be working with someone in that class in another eighteen years?  

Of course the answer was yes.  In fact I have worked with and continue to work with many people I met in college.  The Don’t be a jerk speech,  while it seemed like such a simple lecture when I was eighteen, became more meaningful as the years went by. Whether you work in animation, or some other industry, the truth of the matter is that you will probably run into many of the same people over and over again.  Sometimes you’ll work with them, sometimes for them, or sometimes they’ll work for you.  You may need to get hired by one of these people, or work together on some important project.  The point is your paths will probably cross many times.  

If you want to take the Don’t be a jerk speech as something to do for your own self interests, as in you shouldn’t be a jerk because you don’t want to make someone not want to work with you in the future, that’s great.  That is a good lesson, and will probably help you to navigate the waters of your professional career much more smoothly.  But more importantly, if you try not to be a jerk, I bet people won’t be a jerk towards you either.  We’re all out here trying to do our best.  Sometimes tasks (and people) are harder and more frustrating than others.  But if everyone tried to at least not be a jerk about it, I’ll bet it would make for a much more pleasant work, and life, experience.

For most of us, especially towards the beginning of our career, our skill set usually looks something like this.  You are really good at one or two things, you do an adequate if not stellar job at a bunch of things, and you have a nice little group of skills that you are just plain lacking.  The aspect you are best at is probably what you got hired for, and got your career going.  Often this ends up being what you naturally gravitate to in terms of interest and talent, and it’s the difference between doing something as a hobby or as a profession.

But as the years go by, having that one thing usually isn’t good enough to keep growing professionally (unless you’re the best in the world, in which case, congratulations, I love your work!)  This is where Michael Jordan comes in…

Michael Jordan is widely regarded by many as one the best NBA players to have played the game of basketball.  But he didn’t start that way.  This isn’t to say that Jordan (no one really calls him Michael, right) didn’t have a lot of talent when he entered the league as a scrawny kid.  He had skills.  MAD skills!  But he was known for his ability to drive to the basket and dunk the ball, do some crazy in-air acrobatics, and usually make defenders seem like they just escaped from the retirement home.  But he wasn’t thought of as a leader.  He wasn’t thought of as a passer, or someone who involved his other teammates.  He wasn’t known for his jump shot or his defense.  He was known for his core talent, which was so good it got him playing in the NBA.  How did he make the jump to becoming such a great all around player?

This is where something I read years ago comes in.  Each season Jordan would take one aspect of his game and work on it.  Let’s say it was defense.  All season, that would be a focus.  This doesn’t mean he would neglect his core talent.  That wouldn’t happen because it was already an ingrained part of him.  But by focusing on one aspect that he wasn’t known for throughout the course of a season, by the end of that period of time, that aspect had usually moved up a level.  After a season of just working on defense, he had put so much time and effort in, it became a more natural part of his every day game.  The next season, he would pick another aspect, and before long, you get, well, the Michael Jordan we all know.

For me, this was a huge help reading this many years back.  While I didn’t work in the structure of an NBA season, I did work within the structure of films.  For example, on A Bug’s Life, my goal was to master the computer.  I’m not talking about learning code here.  Having come from a traditional hand drawn animation background in school, I wanted to get to a place where the computer wasn’t a hindrance to what I wanted to do creatively.  I didn’t want to compromise my creative decisions because I didn’t know how to use the tool.  For Toy Story 2, my goal was to never let a shot go without it being the best I could make it, period.  It may not be the best animated shot in the film, but I would know I poured everything I had into it.  For Monsters, Inc, my goal switched to finding a better work/life balance without sacrificing anything (but that’s another post).

The thing is, once you’ve focused on a specific aspect for a set duration, it becomes part of your game.  I didn’t forget how to use the computer, or suddenly let subpar shots go out the door just because that wasn’t something I was focusing on for that film.  This process is additive.  Those aspects were now part of my regular skill set.  This is how amazing veterans build up their abilities to get, well, amazing! 

None of us are born fully formed with the ability to do everything.  There may be that rare case of someone with a natural talent that doesn’t need to be cultivated, but for the majority of the successful people out there, what it boils down to is hard work and a focus on getting better one piece at a time.  Doing that year after year is what makes good players truly great.

Several years ago at Pixar I was part of a group tasked with trying to improve how we made films.  We were presenting our thoughts to the people in charge of the studio, including John Lasseter, and something came up about being a director.  I’m paraphrasing now (it was over ten years ago, so you’ll have to forgive me), but this is the essence of the story John proceeded to tell.

Someone comes up to him and says, “I want to be a director.” So John would ask them how they would react in this scenario.  You kick an artist off on an assignment.  They take a first pass and show it to you.  It’s not what you want, so you give notes.  They come back with a second pass.  It’s still not what you want, so you give more notes.  They come back to show you for final, but it’s still not what you want.  Who’s fault is it?

(We all paused in the room at this point, wondering if this was a trick question.  My younger self thought the answer was obvious.  It was the artist’s fault for not executing the notes, right?)

John proceeded.  It’s not the artist’s fault.  It’s your fault as the director for not being able to give the artist notes in a way they could understand and then execute.

This story has stuck with me for all this time because of the essence of the lesson.  As a lead or director, you are going to work with a wide array of people.  This is part of working in a collaborative environment.  It is your job as a director to be able to explain what you want so the artist working with you (notice with you not for you) can understand the task and complete it using their unique skill set.  I’ve had the privilege of working with a bunch of really great directors and leads over the years, and this ability to taylor the way they explain what they want to the artists working with them is a trait they all share.  It’s not an easy thing to do as a lead, and often you just find yourself frustrated that someone doesn’t just get what you want, but it’s worth the work to explain yourself so others understand your direction.  It not only helps the artists working with you to achieve their goals, but it clarifies what your vision for the project is, and often the clearer your vision, the better it is for everyone working with you.

When an artist chooses to show their work, they’re asking for notes, right?  I mean, if they didn’t want notes, why would they be showing you?  In some cases, they are showing you because there are scheduled reviews, and they need to get their work approved.  Sometimes the case is more informal, where someone grabs a colleague to ask their opinion.  In any of these cases, you as the reviewer are responsible to answer this question when giving notes:  

Are your notes different to be different, or different to be better?

The easiest thing in the world when giving notes is to say how you might do it and leave it at that.  This doesn’t help.  First off, you’re not the one creating the work.  The artist is.  If you express how you would do something and expect them to then reproduce what you are describing, you have taken away the artist’s opinion as well as their sense of involvement in the process.  You have essentially made a Different to be Different note, where the difference is in how you would complete the task.  Furthermore, even if the artist tried to simply replicate what you are describing, the results won’t be the same as if you were doing the task yourself because they have a different skill set, history, and way of interpreting things.  

There’s nothing wrong with you as a lead or peer expressing how you may approach and solve the problem.  This type of relationship has been used for centuries with apprenticeships.  The key is to be able to explain what holes you are trying to fill with your personal solution, but leave the door open for the artist to fill those holes with their own solutions.  They may try to do things like you do.  Or they may take their own approach.  The key isn’t how you fill the whole, but pointing the hole out and letting the artist use their own resources to do the job.

One of the first things I would usually ask any artist when reviewing work is what they are trying to convey.  Often just the act of them having to explain what they are shooting for will help to clarify their intentions.  At this point, as a lead or director you can explain what the goal of the shot/art/piece is that you are reviewing, but from the larger thirty-thousand foot view.  Your notes should focus on how to the individual piece fits in the larger puzzle.  

By giving notes that explain how the individual piece fits into the greater whole, you not only clarify what is important from a larger viewpoint, but because the notes are working towards the larger goal of the project, they change from being Different to be Different to Different to be Better.

Your job as a lead or director isn’t to do the job of those working under you, it is to show them the path they should be working towards.  Isn’t that the definition of lead and direction?