What the James Gandolfini rest stop taught me about data collection
You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself memorialized as a Montvale, NJ service area
Google’s AI overview shares that effective cognitive breaks include “distracting yourself” and “engaging in hobbies.” My favorite breaks that fall into these categories include (1) descaling every kitchen appliance and (2) capturing every data point possible. Maybe cleaning and taking note of everything is a way to give the illusion of control, Maybe I associate descaling via white vinegar with pickled turnips and shawarma (process and pickle recipe for another post). But mostly, I like keeping track of everything taking place around me.
In many ways and mediums, keeping track equals a way to memorialize my world: capturing how I spend my days, creative thoughts, and highlights of my personal life and career. Proving that, even if we do not go on to star in an American crime drama television series and have rest stop massage chairs installed in our honor, there are still ways to preserve and capture our data to leave our own legacies.
So how do we go about capturing said data??
Harvest: I live in Harvest. It’s digital time tracking where you log time spent on tasks and projects, either retroactively or in real-time using a built in timer. You can see how much time you’ve spent on each task, view aggregate reporting, and adjust accordingly (or not). Looking at this screenshot below against my own Substack’s branding, I wonder if I have become mildly obsessed.
I use this both at work and for personal projects. While there may never be an opportunity to present the pie chart of Time Wet Swiffering Under Kitchen Island 3x As a Percentage Of Other Weekend Activities, it's still very useful to see where I’m spending time & what is taking longer than anticipated so I can scope/plan properly in the future. E.g.: I carved out one hour to write this post, but according to my Harvest timer it was 3+ hours. Good info for better planning next time! I once told a hesitant teammate “It’s fun to see how much work you did today, and if you can be more efficient on the same task tomorrow!!” He responded that we have very different definitions of fun.
Draw Your Day: I’ve loved scrapbooking since I was a kid. On family vacations I would take everything from restaurant menus to beach passes and emerge from my room hours later proudly showcasing bejeweled Busch Gardens pass with “F U N” puffy stickers overlapping grainy photos. These days it feels like I live at the crossroads of ‘guilt that I am not remembering everything’ and ‘realization that there will never be an optimal time to retroactively decoupage New Orleans 2019 memories.’ What has worked amazingly, however (40 + days consecutively!) is “Draw Your Day.” This concept was introduced to me by the incredibly talented Samantha Dion Baker (check out the below to follow her and her beautiful work).
“Drawing my day” has become a ritual I look forward to every night. Whether it's the law of attraction or just not having the confidence to illustrate packed subway tracks to remember the F train delay, this has become a force function in looking for something positive to draw every day. There really are no boundaries here; I’ve sketched chocolate chip cookies, bags of almond flour and a literal google sheet bar chart. Not sure that a watercolor journal was ever intended to feature a sketch of a sales pipeline dashboard, but it happened.
Below is one entry following a trip to the aquarium. I happened to really enjoy my coffee that day and was later mesmerized at a music-playing electric nasal aspirator’s powers to soothe my son. (Shout out to GROWNSY!!) I drew it all.
Something that’s worked well for me to commit to this daily is time boxing. I give myself 30 minutes to finish the day’s page. It’s more important to stick to this every day than have a “perfect” entry. This means sometimes it’s ink with outlines of sketches. Sometimes we’re riding with completely black and white. If I have time to color, it’s an added bonus. For favorite tools: these Caran d'Ache watercolor pencils are excellent. And ideal pen is the erasable Pilot Frixion - the appearance of permanent but still erasable is incredible security (...this line says more about me than I originally thought)
“What I’m Proud of" Scrapbook: on the theme of scrapbooking, this amazing idea comes by way of First Round Review, written by Brie Wolfson: “This is exactly what it sounds like; a collection of things I’m proud of.”
I’ve kept a running google doc to accomplish this previously and encouraged others to do the same - it’s become a reference point for anything from imposter syndrome to a reminder that you are doing better than you think. What I like about Brie’s approach is the looser nature of screenshots and the additional insights it could provide. More from Brie’s piece:
It’s a running list and hodgepodge of formats (screenshots, emails, pings, feedback, etc.) with no real organizational structure, but over time, it will turn into a fantastic raw data set for the things that give you energy and make you tick. I dump things in this doc as they come.It helps me move through my career with true data and insight into what makes me happy and, therefore, what I want to do more of.
Huckleberry: my “emergency items from CVS” 72 hours postpartum were all from the photo department, including candid shots from the past 3 days to – yes you guessed it, scrapbook – and a glossy 8x10 print of a table: rows assigned to 30 minute increments, columns assigned to categories (wet diaper, poo diaper, nap time, feeding time). This was as exciting for my husband to update as it was useful to be printed on non-matte paper. We abandoned the workflow that afternoon. What has worked incredibly is the Huckleberry app. It includes everything we could think of tracking, and the paid version has super relevant, helpful articles and incredibly useful (and eerily accurate) wake windows.
This section features templates, systems & organization from people I admire. This week I’m featuring Elena Ciprietti: a creative consultant who has specialized in brand strategy and luxury marketing for 12+ years, leading Global Social Media at Maserati and managing social media for Belmond luxury hotel group.
Before this impressive resume, I knew Elena as My High School Best Friend Taking AP Classes, who – while the rest of us were still struggling after 6+ consecutive years of Spanish to conjugate irregular verbs – decided to pick up Italian and move to Italy a few years later.
She's navigated her creative work weaving the thread of cosmetics to luxury vehicles to hotel properties. More from Elena below on how to capture creativity so you reference it time and time again (enter: my 3am Pinterest save of “Persian Love Cake ” to later emerge as a color palette.)
On building a creative file…
What helps me is asking 'stupid questions’ whenever I’m learning something new. I also write EVERYTHING down otherwise I forget it. I have started creating 'dumps' now digitally where I group things by subject and just do a free flow of consciousness. Good creativity does not need to be thrown away if it's not used for a specific project, so I find myself often going back to my 'inspo dump' to collect ideas for new projects.
A big project was the launch of the Maserati Grecale SUV, which was my first launch at the company. We saw there was a lot of feedback from the community regarding the design, so I became obsessed with finding ways of elevating the perception of the car - showing design elements in common with the sports cars, roominess, and attention to detail. The sentiment skyrocketed after a few months of being very overt yet creative about the USPs.
On how it’s done…
I take screenshots, screen recording for videos, write in my notes app and also write with a pen and paper. I then create a folder together with all the different media by project so I have everything in one place. For an example like creating my podcast’s logo:
I started with Pinterest, then moved to Spotify, Apple, Instagram and other platforms etc and look for podcasts with logos that jump out.
PS - I started writing this draft when the James Gandolfini rest stop was under construction, a thinly veiled way of saying “sometime over the last 7 years.” Since that time the station has opened. It’s been awhile!
lol
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