The Way We Work 2015: Andy Orin’s Gear and Productivity Tips
Every week we ask famous people how they do what they do, and now it’s our turn at the table. I’m Andy, and here are my slightly embarrassing work habits and living environment. This is how I work.
The funny thing is that I hardly follow any of the tips that we post every day, and I don’t use any of the productivity methods that are so often talked about, promoted and discussed, like Pomodoro or Zero Mailbox or whatever. … I don’t even have a to-do list. I want to be honest with you, because the look you use to describe your habits just diminishes the legitimacy of the thing, doesn’t it?
Anyway! It already sounds like I’m a disorganized mess – I won’t go so far as to say that I am a disorganized pile of blogger-shaped trash (blogger-shaped form is often someone who was skinny and lanky like a kid because spent their childhood and teenage years sipping Mountain Dew at the computer, manually coding Geocities websites about Dragon Ball, but with age it turned into a saggy, bloated scarecrow, a ripped plaid shirt and all this, in general, hidden under sweatshirt), I would not say that, but I will say that I am not very organized and I treat work as an act of improvisation.
Location: New York. Current job: Blogger with Lifehacker. That’s what I tell people; I don’t like to say that I am an assistant, writer, journalist or anything like that, and I like to own the term “blogger”, leaning towards derisive use of it by people like Aaron Sorkin. In any case, I do most of the interviews and guest articles on the site, and additionally make sure everything is going smoothly. One word that best describes how you work: clean, vibrant, and powerful . Current mobile device: iPhone 5s. I’m not exactly a fan of the progressive development of phones (although I’ll get 6 if I accidentally break this one). iOS is obviously better than Android in terms of usability. Current PC: Lenovo Yoga Pro 2 running Windows 8.1 and iMac. Lenovo is great; a hair thinner than the MacBook Air, good build quality, nice rubberized body, really beautiful Retina-eqsue QHD + 3200×1800 touchscreen, decent to mediocre battery life. I wish it had a little more power in the 3D graphics department, but that’s hardly surprising for a computer as thin as a pocket knife. I spilled beer on it last night. Everything is fine! A bit sticky.
What apps / programs / tools can’t you live without? Why?
Gmail, Google Docs, Kinja are about 75 percent of my day. I don’t use any email clients on my desktop, just a good old Gmail tab open all day, and I hardly use any Gmail settings other than a couple of UI preferences and the Undo Send widget (I’ve got twenty seconds set, and I use it all the time!). Adding Primary / Social / Promotions tabs saved my life. I use the Gmail iOS app for work mail and just the default Apple iOS app for personal mail.
Google Docs is just … never mind, it works. But actually I write this in Evernote … which I usually use when writing outside of work.
For instant messaging, I use Adium and Pidgin . Good old instant messaging clients with that AIM vibe.
Weakness . All Gawker Media sites now use Slack for internal communication. Basically, it’s no different than any other chat platform, but it’s pretty good. The iOS app is pretty good too.
TweetDeck . Oh TweetDeck, light of my life, fire of my lists, my sin, my soul. I think TweetDeck should be seen as a professional tool for people who need to view a wide variety of information on Twitter, not that the average Joe / Joanna has a real reason to explode. I say this as if it were a dangerous weapon that only trained professionals should handle – because it is! I have several different “lists” of sources, news agencies and journalists, divided into different columns, and the cascade of tweets in them is very absorbing for me. Very helpful, very distracting. Previously, I only opened it during business hours, but due to the addictive cascade, I looked at the deck at any time and on the days of the week. Twitter is the best and worst video game.
Instapaper is my preferred reading app and my preferred one . I read every day on the subway, just on my phone. The choice to use Instapaper instead of Pocket is arbitrary; I guess I like that it looks old-fashioned.
It has nothing to do with work, it’s part of my daily life – the Windows 8 Netflix app. The navigation is actually not that good and it can be frustrating in many ways, but here’s the fun part, it allows you to transfer a higher bitrate than you can get in a web browser. They call it “Super HD,” which is a somewhat meaningless term because it’s just 1080p HD, but with better quality. And I’m one of those people who like high bitrate. (Just finished The Fall , what should I watch next?)
How is your workplace arranged?
I spend most of my working days in the dark rooms of the Gawker Media office. It looks like a dull wine cellar – although sometimes it is so dim that it seems like we are working by candlelight. Personally, I like it. I am using an iMac (probably 2012 or so). I loved the Apple Wireless Keyboard; it has a nice tactile feel when you really shoot and are typing a million words per minute by clicking these Chiclet keys. I like the Magic Mouse too, but its battery life is pretty mediocre.
At home, it’s just a messy desk with my laptop.
What’s your best time-saving shortcut / life hack?
I plan as little as possible within reason. I can only tell you a few things that I will definitely publish on the site, because usually I do not think further than this. When I first started out, I anxiously tried to map out every post I could do days or weeks in advance, in fact, because I had no confidence that I could make sense of the timing, so planning things out was a safety net. But if you blog every day, think a few weeks ahead – this is too much information to deal with. (It’s not quite literal, because the interviews I give obviously require some foresight and coordination, but regardless … just come to the keyboard and work. )
Anyway, this is not so much a life hack as a symptom of mental degradation, but I can hardly remember what I posted last week. Blog, and then forget about it – maybe this is a life hack.
What’s your favorite to-do list manager?
I am not using the to-do list manager. However, I have a Gmail “todo” shortcut that I apply to so many messages that it doesn’t make sense. I also create draft emails to remind myself that I need to reply to something, as a red ” draft ” of text in Gmail is an obvious indicator that something is left unfinished. Most of my drafts just say “lorem”. You can see how I use shortcuts in this censored mailbox:
What device, besides a phone and a computer, can you not live without and why?
Aeropress at home. No harshness in the French press, and I can’t afford to make pouring coffee, although I suppose it wouldn’t be work anymore.
I wear a Pebble smartwatch . I would not say that I cannot live without him, but it’s nice! It’s nice to receive notifications on the wrist. For example, it’s fun when you log into Facebook and see a red notification, right? This red dot means that someone has somehow acknowledged your existence, even if it’s an almost meaningless hint to update the joke’s status. Imagine this feeling – on your wrist! But I had to dial in the number of notifications my phone received to keep the watch from being a nasty vibrating annoyance. It would be great to have more control over which notifications are sent from my phone to my watch.
And my trusty Logitech M705 mouse . He will outlive us all, and I will pass him on to my children.
I carry a little something with me for a while – you can read more about it here.
What are some of your best everyday activities? What’s your secret?
I really do not know. Sometimes I’m a little troll. Just a polite troll, in this I like to confuse people. I love the idea that someone will follow me on Twitter because they think I’m going to offer tips and tricks for productivity and then find myself saying weird or strange things or doing a mediocre imitation of Vint . Being deliberately stupid on LinkedIn is fun too.
What do you listen to while you work?
Usually nothing. Although aftertheJenny Lewis album came out last year, I listened to him,all her albums andRilo Keely for several months. For months! TheSaint Vincent album too. I often put on “On a Plane Above the Sea” when I need to cheer up, focus and get into the right space above my head (usually called the blogging area ~ * ~ ~ * ~). Usually nothing at all though.
Sometimes music plays in the office. We have a Sonos speaker system that anyone can control, which is the source of a lot of random controversy among the residents of the shelter. I literally don’t care, and I generally love any music that plays in the background, and I also love it when people argue about it. I don’t usually manipulate him (or troll the office), except when I played Sophia Grace in a loop while eating fried chicken on the keyboard like the lovely blogging goblins.
At the moment, I am totallyobsessed with asthma .
What are you reading now?
I confess I haven’t read many books lately; The last book I read was Redeployment by Phil Clay, a collection of fiction about the war in Iraq, or rather the impact of war on soldiers.
By far, most of my reading consists of long articles that I save to Instapaper and read on the subway (you can see some of the things I heard on my public Instapaper page ). I eat a lot of Gawker Media’s own dog food, mostly with Jezebel , Gizmodo and Gawker in mind. And The Awl , Buzzfeed , Vice’s Motherboard are good, new verticals on Medium are often good. And New Yorker, NYT, of course, Vulture , Vergie , Wired. Oh, and the Nutcracker . Wipe out the rest – Clickhole is actually the only site worth reading.
Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
Introvert on the street, extrovert on tweets.
What is your sleep pattern?
Last year, I think I said how important it is for me to get a good night’s sleep, and indeed, sleep is good, but I’m lying to say that I’m consistent in this regard. I get up very often before 12:30 or 1:00 or later, wasting my time online or watching Netflix, and then get myself out of bed in the morning to work, drink too much coffee, and then repeat the cycle.
Fill in the blank: I would like _________ to answer these same questions.
I am especially interested in people who have a dark well of creativity that seems eerily bottomless, such as Hayao Miyazaki and Shigeru Miyamoto. At heart I’m just an old Japanese dude! Glen Keane (although we recently had a Disney animator ). Brad Bird. John Lasseter. Andrew Stanton. Lee Unkrich. Obviously I’m a Pixar and Disney fan.
The aforementioned Jenny Lewis would be great, wouldn’t it? And Annie Clarke (St. Vincent) is who I really wanted to reach out to but haven’t done yet. Paula Pell . Matthew Weiner . Vince Gilligan, Conan O’Brien, Abby and Illana . Stephen Colbert, but you can find out how Colbert worked by listening to this . John Oliver. George Saunders would be interesting. In part, I want to go back to Adam Savage and see what has changed. Maybe some SNL folks would be cool.
If you read regularly, you know that my current line of business is “How I Work,” so I obviously have a lot of feelings for those I would like to see; it mostly has to do with being interesting, practical, new, famous, scheduling, and the reality of someone I can and can’t get my hands on. Elon Musk, please write to me . And Taylor! I’m not kidding – what a weird and funny move it would be for Taylor Swift to tell us about her work habits.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Just don’t be a jerk. Everyone is dragging their whole story with them, and when they pounce and honk or shout at the barista, they are – maybe! – express dissatisfaction with something else in their life. Or whatever, I don’t know, some people are just shitty. My point is based on what I mentioned last year:
Be kind and work hard and amazing things will happen.
What else would you like to add that might be of interest to readers / fans?
I have no idea what I am doing. I try not to fall into this ” impostor syndrome ” feeling.
Being the so-called professional of something or another entails the expectation that you know what you are doing , when in reality you are traveling through a dark gray fog of ambiguous decisions. Ahead of the class, reading only one chapter forward in the textbook. My mood swings between arrogant overconfidence in editorial judgment and the phrase, ” Oh no, this is the week I’m going to irrevocably fail at everything.” So when I make a typo and you happily point it out as if it discredits everything I’ve ever done because I don’t know the difference between “breaks” and “brakes,” just don’t be a jerk. Anyway! I have fun at parties.