Defining Self

I have been thinking a lot recently.

There's a lot to think about. I'm going through a ton of change in my life right now. I wrote earlier about how my life was so full of routine and I regret that that routine no longer seems to be present.

I certainly am doing better on the subject of mornings. Waking up earlier has been a lot easier for me recently, ever since WWDC (for the record: I woke up between 7:30 and 8:00 that week, an impressive hour for me -- while everyone else at Delicious Monster surfaced sometime in the afternoon). I seldom get up later than 10:00 these days, something I can't say I was even capable of during school (I was lucky enough to incidentally always have classes that took place later in the day). So that stands in stark contrast to the last handful of years in my life. Even though it's not really all that early, I'm not in an incredibly early rising crowd.

It's sort of depressing to be awake earlier than everyone you know consistently. It certainly is fulfilling to feel like I'm awake during the day, but it's frustrating to be alone in doing so. I wish very much that I wasn't alone in my endeavor for sleep normality.

But there's certainly more to write about than my rising hour. What's dominating my thought recently is how I want to live my life. I certainly want to spend my time working on something I enjoy. I very much enjoy my current work with software development, but it's hard for me to pin down exactly what I enjoy.

It's harder for me than the others I work with. Wil and Tim are clearly programmers (and they're excellent programmers at that). They enjoy innovating in code and creating clean and elegantly written software. Mike is Mr. User Interface, a job which I once considered my strength.

Mike is certainly nothing short of healthfully obsessed with all that he does. He is the best idea man and Photoshop expert I have personally known, bar none. He has an uncanny ability to see past all of the obvious solutions and find the illusive one that fits perfectly. He is not concerned at all with technical aspect of software -- and that's what makes him so good. It's a challenge to work on a design he's created because he sets no boundaries. Because he's not a programmer, he doesn't think like one. Where a programmer may pick a design with standard controls and in the mindset of implementation, Mike just thinks with his heart. It has amazing results.

What am I? I don't think I'm either a programmer or a designer. Certainly I've done both in my life, but neither is my strength. A lot of people ask me what I do at Delicious Monster, and it's a difficult thing to explain. Wil usually says I "answer emails for us" (so much of an under-exaggeration it's somewhat of a degrading insult) and Mike came up with my title of "Customer Relations," but neither really give my job justice. Here's what I do, in order of how much time I generally spend:

• Largely manage and influence day-to-day operations by discussing and prioritizing what to work on in terms of important bugs and agendas
• Completely run the beta program: manage when to do beta releases, put together release notes (analyzing and re-writing from programmer commits), build and upload the product, pick out and manage the list of testers, compose and distribute tester emails, and finally read and prioritize incoming bug reports
• Write and maintain the Help documentation, completely responsible for direction, layout, structure and original content, and contributing heavily to design and editing
• Write and maintain the FAQ, which is about to (hopefully this or next month) get an amazing facelift as part of a recent project I have been doing to catalog and create a troubleshooting guide with every common question we get
• Work closely with Mike to contribute to the look and feel of the application and address design problems and strategies
• Correspond with customers to address and troubleshoot problems (some of which become bugs to prioritize and present as agendas), resolve scanner problems (including facilitating exchanges, if necessary), handle any business proposals, press reviews, refunds, or any other correspondence outside of feature questions and suggestions (which we've contracted Michael Dunsmuir to handle - because there's a lot!)
• Have a presence on VersionTracker and MacUpdate
• Create small side programming projects for the company (contest installer application, menu extras, internal Dashboard store status widget, and recently a punch clock menu extra, although I am working on that on my own time)
• Fix small bugs and make relatively minor changes to the code myself on occasion
• Contribute to the company blog

That's what I do. So what's my title? I still haven't found the answer. "Customer Relations" is somewhat fitting, I suppose. But I still feel that it doesn't really explain what I do. Most people don't realize how much I actually do do. What I really spend most of my time with is usability, I guess. I enjoy making sure that things make sense and are easy for people to understand. I address issues that are confusing or concern bugs and become the collective voice of the customer to influence what we work on next. I measure demand for what features people want and turn how we spend our time into making sure it matches up.

Does someone know how to describe this job with a title? I'd love to hear your suggestion in the comments. I'm very much about self-definition and it's somewhat annoying that I can't express clearly what it is I spend my life doing.

It's sort of been an ongoing struggle in the world to take credit for the work you've done, I think. It's certainly humbling to watch the credits roll at the end of any major movie these days. A lot of people work on those things. A *LOT*! I can't even imagine how many hours each of them spends. It's hard to work behind-the-scenes lost in the grand scheme of a higher project. I'm glad that I work in a small four-person company so I feel like my work impacts the entire company tremendously. I would never want to be lost deep in the middle of nothing: if I could ever be replaced by someone else and the company would work exactly the same way, I wouldn't want to have the job I had.

Striving for perfection is the most important thing. Never accept "very good" when you could do better. If you worry tremendously about every detail, the overall result will be exceptional. So many people ask us "How are you guys so successful? What does Delicious Monster do to be so good?" And they're totally missing the boat. They don't understand: it's not one thing we do right that makes us effective, it's EVERYTHING we do right!

But possibly the biggest challenge is not letting it get to your head. No matter how great of a solution you reach, in a year you'll look back at it and laugh. The mind constantly changes and adjusts with new information. As you learn more, you become a better, more creative, and smarter person. One thing that I've picked up from a few people is asking the question "What did I learn today?" to yourself at the end of every day. There shouldn't be a day when there's nothing. Every day we gain something new and reach a solution that we had been previously struggling on. Being able to recognize that progress and realizing that there's always more ahead is key. Asking yourself "What can I take away from what I've learned today?" will only make you a better person.

Another similar thing that I've picked up on from a friend was that the longer you stay with a given task, the more you realize you know nothing about it. When you first start on a project (or often, in the days right after you start), you feel like you know everything about it and you've become a master. But as you continue to work on the challenges, you begin to pick up different facets and start to understand the complexity of the problem. It's so often that people who haven't worked on something completely naïvely assume it must be really easy. The grass is always greener.

So much of who we are is how we think of ourselves. If we spend our time doing the right things that we enjoy and focusing on the right message, we can't go wrong, right?

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