Tag: systems

The Introvert’s Guide to Networking at a Conference

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

My friend was recently excited about a conference but terrified of going and getting overwhelmed.

He texted me:

“Help! do you have any good networking advice for introverts at conferences?” 

Conferences are a great way to meet people, and it’s one of the best ways I’ve used to reach out to new people, connect with peers, learn, and find friends.

However, conferences are also one of the scariest places to go as an introvert: all that talking, all that stimulation, and a loud, crowded set of rooms with people all day long? Call me exhausted, because all of that extroverted energy is draining and leaves me wanting to crawl into a sensory-deprivation tank for three days just to recover. 

 “Sitting and writing and talking to no one is how I wish I could spend the better part of every day.” — Amy Schumer 

As Amy Schumer explains, “If you’re a true introvert, other people are basically energy vampires. You don’t hate them; you just have to be strategic about when you expose yourself to them—like the sun.” (From her new book, which, while it has a few quotable good bits, I don’t recommend.) 

So if you’re an introvert, how do you make the best of a conference situation? 

Here are a few ways to manage a conference and make it work for you:

  1. Message 20 people in advance, and tell them you’ll be at the conference. Connect over the conference before you even get there — from the comfort of your PJ’s and the quiet of your own room. You don’t even actually have to meet them at the conference. You can just connect over the fact that you went to the same conference.
  2. Take introvert time plentifully. I know that I don’t enjoy a full day stacked with speakers, so I look at the agenda and pick out my top 50% – 75% of the day. I actively choose which session slots I will SKIP so that I can leave the conference, walk through a park, do some stretching, or take a nap. Rather than accidentally skipping the best stuff because I’m too tired to make it through a 14-hour day “on” in front of other people, I’ll plan ahead to take my own introverted break from, say, 2 to 5 PM, and then return refreshed for a dinner mixer and a night event.
  3. Plan to meet people at a food event the night before or the morning after. Research a venue in the area you like and make a reservation for 10 people. (A taco truck, a park, or a single line to-go cafe works well, too, provided it’s nice weather and you can find a place to sit). Tell people that you really want to connect with that you’re doing “X” at “Y,” and be an informal organizer. (“I’m going to get Tacos at 6PM after the first day, join then?”). Invite double the people that you actually want, and a handful will show up and you can create a smaller place to reconvene and have deeper conversations.
  4. Reach out to people afterwards, using the conference as the tool for connection.
  5. Bring cool business cards that say “We met at XYZ conference,” and reference the event itself.
  6. Live tweet the conference using the event’s hashtag and meet people online who are also at the event.
  7. Write a blog recap of the event and share it on social media with the conference hashtag. Bonus: write a blog roundup with the best posts you can find about the event, and comment on other blogger’s write-ups and reach out and meet them digitally.

Those are just a few of my conference-going tips for introverts or people who need slow space to think and connect!

What about you? What are some of your favorite tips for getting the most out of a loud, noisy, awesome, social event that is *maybe* a little too much for you?

 

Have A Point of View

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

In our fear of being wrong, or looking stupid, or losing out on opportunities — we waffle. We waver. We fail to make decisions.

We try to make decisions that leave all the options open. We’ll try it all, rather than pick a single dish. We’ll date as many people as possible, rather than cultivate deeper relationships. We’ll rack up followers and acquaintances and friends, rather than spend time with one person through the difficult and exciting times.

Action and decision-making requires having an opinion.

When you have an opinion, you say, “I believe THIS about the world,” and “I think that it works better when we do it like THIS.”

This requires you to take a stand, to think about the consequences of a decision, and make a choice even when all the information isn’t present.

Decision making isn’t easy to do, but waffling isn’t necessarily an easier answer. It may feel cozy for a while, until you realize that not making a decision costs you as well:

When you don’t make a decision to date one person, you date nobody.
When you don’t pick what food to eat, you end up without dinner.
When you try to give your customers everything you want, you fail to differentiate yourself as a business. 
When you don’t decide what to focus on, you’re 55 and still don’t know what to do with your life. 

Decision-making seems like it will hurt. But not making a decision doesn’t actually lessen the pain.

What’s your point of view? What do you think is important?

3 Writing Tools To Draft, Edit, and Publish Your Work

Posted on by Sarah K Peck

It Doesn’t Matter How You Do It

I should title this post “how to write every day” or “what tools I use to write every day” because the questions I get over and over again from so many different people are variations of the same questions:

“How do you start a daily writing habit?”

And:

“What tools do you use?”

If you’re struggling to decide between a notebook and a computer, the answer is yes.

Write it down.

Write on a computer when you’re near a computer and you have something to say. Write it on a paper when you have paper nearby.

Put it down in your notebook or on scratch pieces of paper or — heck I do this all of the time — borrow a pen from the waiter and write across napkins if you have to. Miranda July has some stories about how even pregnancy (and labor!) gave her so many ideas for stories and projects that she was searching for paper while bringing her child into the world.

Put it into your phone, if it’s on you.

So the tools, if you must know the tools:

CAPTIO

I use Captio (an app) on my iPhone that allows for recording notes offline and then emails them to my gmail account. In gmail, I label them all automatically with a filter called “notes.”

Gmail-notes

MOLESKINE

I use a Moleskine to write in every day. (I prefer the black, large, hardcover versions that are plain on the inside, like this.) In my notebook, I write down who I meet, my main observations from a particularly delightful meeting, short memories, quotes, stories, and relevant notes. Sometimes I write longer form essays or journal entries when I need a space to write. I’ll often write in it when I sit at a coffee shop and brainstorm without my computer. Each one lasts me about 3-4 months, and has about 200 pages in each one. I label them on the front and keep a stack on my bookshelves.

EVERNOTE

I write in Evernote as well, when I write on my laptop. I prefer offline tools to online tools because I have some bad internet habits (I literally do not know how I end up with 47 tabs open on a new browser window when I get online…). In my Evernote files, I have what’s called a “stack” of notebooks; a notebook is a collection of documents, and then you can stack a collection of notebooks together. Essays move from one stack to the next.

Here’s how I organize my Evernote stack:

WRITING (Stack)

  • Ideas — any scribbling of an idea I have, ever.
  • Drafts — a workable idea that’s got actual sentences in it, paragraphs even, but still needs more work.
  • Pitches — list of places I’ve pitched stories and essays to. A more refined version of “Ideas.” I can move things from pitches to ideas (if they get denied) or from ideas to pitches if they look like things that will fit a particular editor or audience.
  • Finished — any note that works its way from idea to draft and gets published (like this very post here), will get dragged into ‘finished,’ so my ideas/drafts folders aren’t cluttered with already-used ideas.
  • Stories — a place for fiction and short-story writing, when I’m tired of narrative and non-fiction writing.
  • Archive — a place to clean out and dump any past ideas I want to throw away and won’t publish.

And actually publishing something:

When I sit down to write and publish, I start with one of my tools — either I sift through my paper notebook, I scroll through my Evernote stack, or I riff through my gmail folder of notes.

Side note: I usually leave the gmail notes until last, or perform this as a task-based item unrelated to my writing process, because the distraction temptation is so high. I’ll copy and paste out ideas from “notes” in my gmail and from my notes in my moleskine into my Evernote “ideas” folder so I keep an ever-growing list of ideas pouring into these folders.

I’ll review these notes and ideas until there’s something that pulls me and still feels vibrant, like I’m ready to tip and start talking or writing about it.

Some workdays I’ll work on two or three different essays, putting the meat and body into each of the essays. It involves researching, reading, writing out stories, and pouring as many words onto the page as possible. In this process, a 100- or 300-word idea stream can turn into 1500 or more words.

Here, in fact, are two unwritten, incomplete ideas that could turn into full blog posts if I pull them up and feel compelled to write about them:

Screenshot 2016-01-02 14.12.12 Screenshot 2016-01-02 14.12.02

This is actually what my first versions of essays often look like.

It’s highly productive and weirdly dissatisfying because usually there isn’t a single essay that gets finished. I still need another night’s sleep and a few more days to tidy it up. On a lazier day I’ll do polishing and editing of a final piece if I don’t feel like tackling a new subject.

When I do work to finish and publish an essay, I’ll find in my “drafts” folder something that’s nearly complete, like this essay was in here. I’ll move it into WordPress (or whatever platform I’m publishing through; sometimes it’s Medium, LinkedIn, sending a G-Doc to an editor, etc). Inside of WordPress, I’ll do a read-through and edit and polish with fresh eyes. Often I’ll add new material, shorten some paragraphs, and keep tightening up the introductory material.

I use the “preview” feature on many of the platforms to review the content in multiple forms. Once it’s ready to go, I’ll schedule it to publish.

But I’m diverting from the main point of this essay.

It’s sexier to talk about tools and process. It’s harder to talk about starting, doing, and persisting.

Not writing because you don’t have the tools is an excuse.

When you’re in the subway and you see the makings of a great story, and you have nothing on you, you still write a story. No pen, no notebook, no phone, no anything — you write the story by using words in your mind and telling the story. Play with it. Make it a sequence.

You practice the craft by practicing the craft.

The man lumbered over towards the station entrance, his walk punctuated by the jostling needed to keep his pants above knee height. His boxers had a cute heart shaped pattern across them, although the fact that she could see them at all wasn’t particularly endearing, she wanted to tell him to lift them up, tuck in his shirt, learn how to walk again. “That duck walk,” she thought, “will not look good anywhere but here…” 

Practice seeing stories all around you. Write them down, however you can.