60 days, 60 things learned at DreamWorks

Published: March 17, 2015

Do you ever pause your day to write down lessons learned? If you do it consistently, the results can be pretty neat. Last summer, while interning at DreamWorks, I made an effort to write things down as I learned them. I pulled some lessons directly from workplace experiences. I plagiarized others from articles I read. I copied common wisdoms that felt relevant at the time. Some days I wrote 1 thing. Other days I wrote 20 things. I never wrote no things. When the summer and my internship came to an end, my list had grown to more than 200 learned things strong. In no particular order, here are my 60 favorites.

01. Getting your foot in the door is the hardest part. It’s way easier to make inroads during your first weeks and months on the job than during a 30 minute interview.

02. Wide eyes and an open mind are important when starting anything new.

03. Be proactive. It doesn’t help anyone for you to sit idle waiting for someone or something. Start doing. The worst that can happen is you throw your work away and start over. A failed attempt is more useful than no attempt.

04. You will always learn fastest by doing. Doing helps prioritize learning.

05. You don’t need to learn everything now. Focus on what’s in front of you. You don’t even need to learn everything in the first weeks or months. There’s a lot to learn. Learning is like a really long, really arduous event of some kind that takes perseverance to complete. Like a telethon! Or like a marathon. It’s like that too.

06. Never be afraid to ask questions, but don’t ask questions blindly. Seek help. Try not to waste anyone’s time.

07. With that said, don’t live in fear of wasting someone’s time. That fear will only handicap your learning.

08. A great internship is more about learning than it is about working.

09. In life, communication is super important. Be clear to respect other people’s inboxes and calendars.

10. Details matter if you want others to trust your work. Small details matter the most.

11. The moviemaking process is collaborative. Be opinionated!

12. If it takes longer than ten minutes to figure out, ask. Don’t suffer in silence.

13. Learn how your supervisor works, and organize your work so it’s compatible. At least for the first few months. Your supervisor will take notice, which is a good thing.

14. All internships are extended interviews. Have fun, but be mindful you are being evaluated.

15. Vocalize your concerns. Meaningful change is impossible otherwise.

16. Smile at people. Introduce yourself to everyone. It will feel uncomfortable, but the worst that can happen is you don’t make a contact you already didn’t have. The best that can happen is you make a lifelong friend or a career-spanning mentor.

17. Take advantage of your coworkers’ expertise. You can learn something from everyone.

18. My first impressions of people are often wrong. Yours may be too.

19. You connect with some people on first encounter. Others, you never make meaningful connections with. Focus on those you do connect with. Ignore the ones you don’t.

20. It’s easy to connect with someone if you have interests in common. It’s easy to find common interests if you’re eager to connect with someone.

21. Surround yourself with people who share your passions. You’ll never run out of things to talk about.

22. DreamWorks people feel like my people. Culture fit can be more than a buzzword.

23. This is the first job I worked that felt like it could become my career. Clarity is encouraging.

24. The salary difference between an entry-level technical director at DreamWorks and an entry-level software engineer at a big tech company like Apple is about $30,000 annually. Passion is my favorite way to describe willingly leaving $30,000 on the table.

25. Most DreamWorks employees get paid by the hour, even engineers. This is standard practice across the industry. Hourly pay means overtime compensation! Sweet, sweet overtime compensation.

26. There’s a lot of trust among the technical directors. I felt trusted to get my work done. I felt respected because I felt trusted.

27. I love not being micromanaged! This one should’ve been obvious. DreamWorks helped remind me.

28. I enjoy a little profanity in the workplace. A little profanity makes interactions feel more genuine.

29. A few trusted work friends make work magnitudes more enjoyable. Don’t take these friends for granted. If you don’t yet have a close work friend, find one. The effort is worth it.

30. The entertainment industry is small. The animation industry is smaller. Make connections wherever you can. They’ll benefit you your entire career.

31. Be kind to everyone. You never know who will help you land your next job or who you’ll partner with on your next project.

32. Focus on being competent. Don’t worry about becoming an expert. No one expects that of you. It’s okay to not expect it of yourself.

33. It’s okay to feel overwhelmed. If you feel overwhelmed often, then you’re probably not asking enough questions.

34. Never be ashamed of your enthusiasm. Be thankful your job generates any enthusiasm at all.

35. It’s okay to ask for what you want. Most never do.

36. Don’t choose your first job for the paycheck. When you’re young, life is cheap, and you can afford to take almost any job. As you age, your lifestyle will become more expensive, and money will become a limiting factor. Don’t make money a limiting factor until completely necessary.

37. When you move to a new city, your former social circle will immediately shrink to a quarter of what it was. You need to let this shrinking happen. You’ll never have enough energy to maintain every past friendship. Focus on the few that truly matter.

38. Keeping remote friendships alive is draining. In most cases, they’re not worth the energy. In a few cases, they’re worth all your energy.

39. I’m glad I decided to leave Omaha. It makes me sad that I’m glad.

40. Long work commutes are the worst. Consider this: a 50 minute, one-way commute done twice daily Monday-Friday results in more than 400 hours of commuting per year. I’m not comfortable throwing away such a huge chunk of my life. You shouldn’t be either.

41. The average adult reads 250 words per minute, and the average novel is 60,000 words. 400 hours spent reading instead of commuting could result in as many as 100 novels read per year. The person who reads 100 novels every year for a lifetime is the kind of person I want to talk to at a party. That’s the kind of person I want to be at parties.

42. If you make it a priority, it’s always possible to live closer to work.

43. If DreamWorks ever became a permanent gig for me, I would move out of San Francisco in a heartbeat to avoid a long commute. (RIP PDI)

44. Just because someone is short with you doesn’t mean they dislike you. At any given moment, every person has 100 things to contend with. You’re rarely the problem. You should stop overthinking things.

45. Inspiration is far from creation. Discipline is much closer.

46. If you’re constantly asking “What if…?”, then you’re probably spending more time in the past and future than in the present. This moment is important because it only happens once, and it’s the only thing happening now.

47. Hitting a wall can be hard, but walls aren’t tombs. Hitting a wall doesn’t mean standing still. It means picking a new direction.

48. Walk while your legs still work. Up a few flights of stairs. To a friend’s house. To the grocery store. Your legs will probably never work as good as they do today.

49. If you roll with the punches long enough, things always start to make sense.

50. All hail the mighty standing desk! Thou art a mystical and wonderful creation.

51. There’s a difference between an office building and a work campus.

52. A lot of animation work is light-sensitive. If you sit near a window, don’t take the light for granted. Cherish those beautiful rays.

53. Studio morale lives and dies by the box office. It’s scary when one number wields so much influence.

54. Experienced employees who don’t value their time above that of inexperienced employees are heroes in the workplace. Extol their selflessness whenever possible. Let’s create more of these heroes.

55. Most people working in computer animation are technical. Not everyone writes their own tools, but most probably could. Artists included. It’s fun when everyone speaks the same language.

56. Breaking stuff (code stuff, not furniture stuff or people stuff) is a right of passage. Use it as an excuse to become friends with the people whose day you just ruined.

57. Most stress stems from imagined outcomes rather than anything that’s actually physically happening. People are bad at predicting the future. Your stress is probably baseless.

58. Your time is sacred. Don’t agree to live by other people’s schedules without careful consideration.

59. Work is still work if you love it, but it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice of time. This is huge.

60. Watching a film while bumping elbows with the minds that made it is beyond inspiring. Such an experience can and did bring me to tears. Joyous “I have something in my eye” tears. Wonderful “it’s still in there, I know it’s been 30 minutes, but I can’t get it out” tears. Beautiful “it’s like my eyelashes are hugging my eyeballs” tears.

Cheers.

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Image credit: Patrik Goethe