kelly.blog

Strava announced an MCP a few weeks ago and I was finally given access. A few things I’ve been able to do with it so far:

• Reviewed all my activities and gave me some useful (and fun!) insights.I think it helped that I tend to add a blurb in Strava after each ride, which helped add some color and additional detail.
• Gave me a training plan based on my past data and futures goals.
• Offered to and then created a cool one-page site of my mountain bike rides this year. I sort of turned it into a training plan for an upcoming race. Github is here, if you want to fork to make your own.
• Identified all duplicate entries. Sometimes I track with both Wahoo and my watch and forget to delete the dupes. It was able to give me a list of all dupes so I could go and delete them. I do wish I could tell it to delete these for me instead of having to do that part manually. (Especially since delete action is now reversible.) But now I have clean and accurate data to work with!
• It helpfully suggested I update my max heart rate to get better data going forward. (The max heart rate in Strava was set to a value lower than a number I regularly go over.)

Happy 20 years to Automattic! To celebrate, here are 20 reasons why I love working here:

1. Mission.
2. People. I love the people I work with everyday. The design team is especially awesome 🙂
3. Work. The work itself is challenging, impactful, and fun.
4. Life. This job allows me to live a wonderful life and I don’t take that for granted, even after nearly 12 years here.
5. Future. I’m excited about what is ahead and the positive effects we can continue to have on the internet and people’s livlihood.
6. Improvement. Automattic values continuous improvement and learning from successes and failures. This is also how I live my life.
7. Autonomy. I have the autonomy to work how, where, and when it best suits me in order to be most effective.
8. Output. Although we’re a much larger company now, we still are very much execution-focused. We value impact, not hours logged, meetings attended, or other performative metrics.
9. Design. Beautiful and thoughtful design is valued and prioritized across everything we build.
10. Growth. I’ve grown personally and professionally here in ways I never expected.
11. Mentorship. Amazing opportunities to both learn from others and help guide newer team members.
12. Freedom. The freedom to experiment, take risks, and pursue ideas that matter.
13. Flexibility. Work-life balance isn’t just a buzzword here—it’s actually practiced.
14. Travel. Meetups and conferences that bring our distributed team together in amazing places.
15. Perspective. World wide diversity of colleagues brings incredible insights and viewpoints.
16. Change. The company evolves and adapts, keeping things fresh and exciting.
17. Impact. Our work affects millions of people and websites across the globe.
18. WordPress. Being part of something that powers over 40% of the web is pretty amazing.
19. Open Source. Contributing to and believing in the power of open source software.
20. Intentionality. Every decision feels thoughtful and prioritizes the right thing over the thing right now.
21. Matt. I’ve only worked at founder-led companies and Matt’s vision continues to inspire me. I hope to work here for decades to come.

A script from a recent flash talk I gave:

I’ve seen close to 300 movies last year, much of those on Blue Rays and DVDs.  We are lucky to have one of the last remaining video rental stores relatively nearby our house in Seattle. We rent a few movies a week and there’s one that has stuck with me that I’d like to talk about for a few minutes. 

Its called Perfect Days. Its very much a vibes movie and I’ll leave out any major plot points so I’m not spoiling anything.

It follows a man in the daily routine of his life. You see him wake up, get ready, and head to work.

Its about the small moments in life. The wind in your face as you ride your bike. Sharing a ride and a view with a loved one. 

Noticing beauty above you. Taking photos with a camera.

Finding music. Listening to tapes. Connecting with people through a love of a song. 

Discovering and reading books. 

Its a beautiful movie about the small things in life. Routines. About finding meaning, enjoyment, and peace through the everyday. Its about the complexities and beauty of human relationships and finding your way.

Its had a profound effect on me. I had already been simplifying my life, slowing down, remembering to look up, and reducing screens in favor of physical objects.

Thanks for listening. Let me know if/when you’ve watched it, would love to chat more about it.

There’s a quote I often refer to when talking to new designers or anyone who makes things. That beginning phase, that sometimes last much longer than you think, when you know what you’re creating doesn’t match your taste.

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there is this gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good. It’s not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.

Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through years where they had really good taste and they could tell that what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that.

And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It takes awhile. It’s gonna take you a while. It’s normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through that.

—Ira Glass

One of the first things Claude asks you to do is to upload a writing sample so it can determine your writing style. I was skeptical but uploaded a recent blog post. It categorized my style as Design Philosopher.

Woah. Have to admit I was a bit flattered. The summary was pretty cool too:

Explore design concepts through contemplative, analytical, and deeply insightful reflection.

I do carefully consider each piece of writing, no matter if its a text message or an essay. I really want my voice to come through. I also think all the AI chatbots output horrible writing, so I’m intrigued by what I can do with these styles that are trained on my writing. I uploaded a bunch of blog posts and will be testing each to see how much time I can save on the initial drafts.

Small moments of wins, positive feedback, and delight add up. Time To First Win should be a metric for everything we build.

I love the work of Charles and Ray Eames. I recently re-watched The Architect & The Painter and paused it to jot some notes on their design process:

The Eames design process, is a process of learning by doing. When designing something, it is often this connection that provides the key to the solution.

“Never delegate understanding.”

This is the hallmark of Eames design, their secret ingredient. “First you have an idea, then you discard the idea, then you have 50 other ideas and you discard them, and then you do several models, and they don’t work, and you throw them out. And the secret is work and work and work and work and work.”

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‘Never delegating understanding’ is such a great principle. Both when leading others and when designing. I often need to delegate or assign work to others. Whenever I’ve also delegated understanding— of the problem, the greater context, status of the work, or the final product shipped— usually something goes off track. When I am doing the work myself, my best work happens when I fully understanding the problem, the greater context, and the best outcome by working through as many ideas as possible.

I am lucky enough to work at Automattic where I get three months off every five years. I wanted to take some time to recap as it was one of the best times of my life.

I went into it with some ideas, goals, and plans: I would go on One Big Trip each month (that included A Tough but Exciting Goal/Challenge) and spend the rest of the time at home, enjoying where I live, taking daily photos with my new camera, spending quality time with B, and making the most of each day. Some highlights, with links if you’d like to see pictures/read more:

• Brought my camera around with me pretty much everywhere and took photos each day.
• Relaxed in Mexico with B. Day trip to San Pancho.
• Took my 12 year old nephew to Whistler, where we spent 4 days at the bike park. My grandparents took each of us on a trip with them and I want to do the same with my sister’s kids. One at time. (There are six!)
• Visited family in CT. Quality time.
• Biked a bunch, including a Century for the first time. (100 miles in one ride)
• Walked much more than usual. I walk a fair bit usually thanks to Jojo, but I was walking upwards of 11 miles a day in the first few weeks. Wandering, taking photos, reading at coffee shops.
• Made some updates to this site and blogged a bunch. I missed it and its good to be back.
• Enjoyed everyday life. Not that I don’t usually, but every single day felt special.
• Biked 600 miles across the state of Washington. This was a massive trip and one of the harder, more awesome things I’ve done in life. It took 10 days and I got to experience and appreciate more the state I now call home.
• Watched a lot of movies. Too many to name, but we rented DVDs each week at a local video rental store. Fell in love with Ozu. And physical media in general.
• Journaled most days.
• Read Three Body Problem, Good Material, All Fours, M Train, Stoner, Demon Copperhead. Demon was favorite new book; M Train is one I’ve re-read several times.
• Ate well. Memorable meals in Mexico at Enrique Olvera’s restaurant and here in Seattle at Paju and Taneda.
• Lots of quality time with B, connecting, focusing on us, improving our relationship. More time in general to prioritize and spend time with the people in my life.
• Got Covid the last ~week of sabbatical and spent it pretty sick. A bit of a bummer to end things but such is life. Its still lingering and has made the return to week feel a bit extra challenging.

The time felt long in the best way. I remember the half way point and thinking, ‘Wow! this has been so long and I still have just as much to go!’ I loved how much I was able to do in a day. I’m trying not to lose that feeling as I get back to work. Wish me luck.

Lael Wilcox is 13 days into her bike ride around the world. She records a super short podcast each night with notes from that day’s ride. She’s long been my favorite bike pro to follow. I hope to catch her in a few months when she rides through here on her way back to Chicago.