Fighting Broke

This is the first of a series of expense reports summarizing my spending for the month. I’ll cover what happened quantitively, and then qualify those numbers with on-goings for the month. Finally, I’ll conclude with what I’ve learned this past month, and what I plan to do in the future. I’ll respond to any questions or comments you have. Thanks!

 

Important Going-Ons in October

• October meant Halloween! Which meant costumes, parties, drinking too much and passing out in the Uber until we were back in Culver City! Yay for being a responsible drinker! 
• Booked a flight to Albany, for the opening of my father’s third restaurant, Rain. 
• I cycled 16 out of 23 working days this month, for a total of 127 miles and 11.5 hours spent on the bike.

 

Fixed Expenses

• Rent: $688
• Internet: $30 [wireless + domain hosting]
• Gas (Utilities): $14
• Electric (Utilities): $26
• Renter’s Insurance: $10
• Car Insurance: $77.50
• Cell Phone: $25
• Netflix: $5

 

Variable Expenses

• Groceries: $125
• Gas: $65
• Drinks: $88 [“drinks” almost always means afterwork, with others who work in Hollywood]
• Lunches: $50 [again, work related lunches]
• Going Out: $170
• Miscellaneous: $60
• Travel: $380
• Business Expenses: $20

 

Total Expenses = $1,883.50

 

Breakdown

• Groceries: Amy and my goal has been to keep our combined grocery bill under $300 / month, which we did here, by $50.
• Gas: This may seem absurdly low for most Los Angelenos, but it’s high for me this month, considering how many miles I biked. I think it came from filling up my car before turning the car over to Amy to drive — a year long ordeal to write about later.
• Drinks: I budget $100 / month for drinks, so it looks like I did pretty well here. However, part of the reason is more than average of these drinks needed to be rescheduled, so I actually didn’t do as well as I would have like.
• Lunches: I budget about $80 / month for lunch, but again, had to reschedule one or two
• Miscellaneous: Most of this came from Halloween costs, and hosting our party
• Travel: my flight to Albany for the opening of my father’s third restaurant
• Business Expenses: I purchased a one-year license for Transcribe by wreally, to easily transcribe interviews and talks that I love. I realize this may not be a “business expense” per se, but I didn’t know where else to categorize it. 

 

What I Learned This Month

• Since I booked my flight to Albany, and with the holidays coming up, my mind’s been on travel: how much I love it, how much it costs, and different strategies to reduce those costs. We plan on driving to San Francisco for Thanksgiving, visiting Amy’s family in Ireland for Christmas, and making a few trips back east for weddings — and that’s only in the next 6 months! I learned a ton and will hopefully be able to share my thoughts after I’ve experimented with what works (and what doesn’t). 
• We threw our first party in our apartment, which was half Halloween themed / half board game night, and it was pretty awesome — something we definitely plan on doing again.
• I used Uber for the first time in October, passed out on the drive home, and since I it was my first time, got the ride for free. Check Uber out if you haven’t done so yet by clicking here (non-affiliate link).

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Photo Credit: Carlos Villela

You made it.

Maybe all your possessions in the world are still jammed into the backseat of your car, and you still don’t have a job, and your cash$ is diminishing quickly.

But you made it.

Now what?

Well — now lies before you the simple task of finding establishing headquarters to fight broke and create a career.

In other words: you need a place to live.

 

Where Do You Belong?

In case you didn’t notice, Los Angeles is a huge, sprawling city. Each neighborhood has it’s own feel, taste, and merits. Derek Sivers explains it so well in his post about Los Angeles:

“So if you go just understanding it’s a bunch of adjacent towns, each quite different in character, and don’t go expecting a city, then it won’t be so frustrating. When someone says they hate LA, you have to ask, “Which neighborhood?” Because Santa Monica is not like Silverlake is not like Van Nuys is not like Hollywood, but they’re all inside that circle called LA. It’s completely de-centralized. (And “downtown” is just another neighborhood. It’s not the center of things, like most cities. Most people have no need to go there.)”

The Bold Italic has this amazing and hilarious breakdown of Los Angeles neighborhoods by Jessica Gao you should read before forking over your first downpayment. It’s generalized and of course there are huge exceptions, but the post definitely captures the feel of various neighborhoods. (e.g., Hollywood – “And let’s just get this out of the way: The major movie studios are not in Hollywood proper (Paramount Studios sits on the border, so fine, that makes one). But what Hollywood does have are tourists, crackheads, and expensive clubs frequented by B- and C-list celebrities and the bridge-and-tunnel crowd who line up for said clubs.”)

And for a bird-eye-view on renting costs in Los Angeles, here’s onRadPad’s analysis of averages costs across Los Angeles — (I know it seems high — don’t let it intimidate you!)

Infographic by Owen Gatley, via RadPad.

The idea of picking the right neighborhood can be absolutely daunting when you first arrive in Los Angeles. Like, if you pick the wrong neighborhood, you’re going to be surrounded by people you hate, you’ll have the worst experience ever, and you’re going to be stuck there forever.

This never happens to anyone.

Yes, it’s a bit intimidating, but take a breath. I mean, jeez, you just packed all your belongings and moved to a new city to start your career. You’re tough. You can handle this. After all, let’s say you did make the wrong decision and hate where you’re living:

• Your neighbor plays the electric accordian at 2 a.m. every night
• The neighborhood pimps get busted in the alley outside your window every second Thursday
• You have to drive 15 minutes to find a decent cup of coffee (seriously, first world problems, guys)

 

You know what happens then?

You move again. 

Los Angeles is the never ceasing ebb and flow of transplants. New vacancies sprout like weeds, and the longer you’re in town, the more people you know. The more people you know, the higher chance you’ll hear about that “fantastic, cheap rental that literally just came on the market and it’s not listed yet but I know the guy why don’t I give you his number?” 

The process of finding your new home is a big step. But it’s far from permanent. So take a deep breath. 

Everything’s going to be okay.

 

The Wrong Approach To Find Your Apartment

This is an email I got from “Sarah,” who was looking for advice when moving out to Los Angeles:

I know your dad from singing/eating at his restaurant in Delmar.  I just got moved to California on Monday… I’m temporarily staying in an apartment in Glendale until I find a job either in Huntington Beach or in Los Angeles… 

I don’t exactly know how to describe the feel that I’m looking for, but I’m hoping to find somewhere that’s artsy, but also consists of young professionals in their mid-late 20s.  It would be a plus if there were a few families w/children around too.  It would also be a plus if I could get to the beach easily.  I’m hoping for a place that has access to nature b/c I’m a big nature girl, maybe someplace that has a big park to hike in.  I’m also looking for a safe place that I could get for under $1,000.  I’m willing to have a bachelor or a studio apartment.  I also don’t wanna get stuck in a pocket of people that are too snotty or not friendly at all.  Is there a place that fits these things or a place that has most of these things I’m looking for?

So… she’s looking for safe place with a lot of yuppies, a lot of families, neither of whom are snooty or unfriendly, where beaches and parks are easily accessible, for under $1,000 a month.

This is the wrong way to find your new home. 

It’s nice to think about all the trappings you’d “like to have:”

• By the beach
• Close to nature
• Friendly neighbors who preferably have a dog I can play with and also know how to cook Chinese food the way my father does

 

I would love to have these things. 

But in the grand scheme of things, those are not factors in play when it comes to finding your first apartment in Los Angeles.

 

The 3 Factors That Matter For Your First Apartment

1. Your Roommate
2. Where You Work 
3. Luck 

 

Let’s break into these:

Your Roomate 
If you are new to Los Angeles and strapped for cash, do yourself a favor and get a roommate. If you think, “ugh, I can’t live with a roommate! I need my own space!” seriously, get the fuck over it. When you’ve just moved to LA, the benefits of a roommate (whom you get along with — you don’t need to be BFF’s or anything, but you should be able to exchange pleasantries without too much aggravation) are ridiculously awesome:

• You cut rent in half
• Other costs of living: Internet, electricity, gas, etc — all cut in half 
• It’s safer
• Save time when you need someone home because the plumber or AT&T guy is stopping by 
• You double your network by association
• You double your rate of exposure to Los Angeles, by association 

 

If you find a roommate(s) you like and think you can live amicably with — that sort of makes your decision for you, doesn’t it? It no longer matters if the apartment doesn’t have all the trappings you initially said you wanted (central AC, close to the freeways, a walk-in closet, etc) — you’re going to take the place with good roommates.

Where You Work
If you have any inkling of an idea about where you’re going to work in Los Angeles, do yourself a favor: find an apartment close by. Even if you know the general area: west side, east side, downtown, the valley… you’re saving an immeasurable amount of time, money, and stress by living in the general vicinity.

I can’t stress this enough. If you can, (and for a lot of people, I know, you can’t) Live. Close. To. Work. 

I live and work on the West Side. It’s wonderful. I love it – I can bike to work three times a week. Because of traffic, sometimes my bike commute is faster than driving, and even at the worst of times, the commute is only 25 minutes. I manage to squeeze in a workout, enjoy the SoCal sun, save time, and prevent wear and tear on my car, all because home + work are so close.

Unfortunately, my girlfriend Amy doesn’t have it so good. Her place of work (which she loves and can’t imagine leaving) is in Orange County. It’s a 40-mile commute one-way, and can take anywhere from 45 minute to an hour and a hour. In one week, she travels 400 miles and spends 10 hours in her car.

• That’s 400 miles of wear and tear she puts on her vehicle.
• 400 miles worth of gas money.
• 400 miles of the headache and stress of Los Angeles traffic every morning and night.
• Most importantly, that’s 10 hours a week she could spent writing, reading, going to the gym, or just resting.

 

But she loves her company and does fulfilling work, so for now she’s determined to make it work. It doesn’t make it easy, though. You should, however, to the best of your ability, make your first work commute a short one.

Get Lucky
For all the gyration of planning, of trying to pick the perfect area and all the amenities we think we need, of having our checklist of must-haves, luck plays a large role in determining your first apartment. There’s a time constraint. You’re new to the area. To some extent, you’re gonna have to get lucky:

• You overhear someone at the coffee shop whine about not being able to find the right tenant
• A friend of a friend heard their cousin in the entertainment business is looking for a roommate
• The assistant at your internship is moving to NY and needs someone to take over their lease

 

When this happens, the list goes out the window. You hope you have a decent roommate, and the place is close to your work. And you take the apartment.

The thing about chance is you have to give it the opportunity to work for you. This means not just relying on different great online tools to find an apartment (we’ll get to that below) but also:

• Getting out there and hitting the pavement. In, like real-life, not just flicking through images on Flicker or exploring the neighborhood via Google Maps.
• Putting in the shoe leather is also when you’ll stumble on gems that never made it to the Internets (hard to believe, but true).
• Telling people you’re looking for an apartment, and seeing if they have leads. No, this doesn’t make a good conversation starter. Hopefully you’re able to connect with the person at a deeper level first. But the offhand referral can leads to awesome results.

 

How to Look for an Apartment

Here are the tools that’ll help you find your first apartment. First, though, you have to make sure you’re moving forward with:

The Right Mindset
Strike a balance between comfort and cost. Yes, this place is going to be your home, and I believe with every iota of my being that a huge part of happiness is making your home a refuge. It should be your sanctuary, your place to decompress, and a barrier between you and anything negative in your life. If you’re not comfortable in your own home, happiness is difficult to achieve.

With that said, besides your car, your home is your biggest fixed cost. Which is a bitch of a thing.

So finding the right balance between comfort and cost comes down to goals, which change year to year (and even month to month). When I first got to Los Angeles, I did not care how big or how nice my apartment was. It didn’t need to have character or hardwood floors or a dishwasher. I had three criteria: close to work, cheap, and relatively safe. (Pimps regularly conducted business outside my window, and there was a shooting once, but two out of three wasn’t bad.)

I nearly always worked on the west side, so my commute was never awful. I had two roommates, which cut my cost of living dramatically. (I was often between paying gigs, unsure of when I’d find steady employment, which made low rent a huge help.)

After two years of that, Amy and I decided to move in together. The goals had shifted a bit — I wanted a bit more comfort, and I was willing to pay for it. Understand where you are on the spectrum of comfort versus cost. Tactically, it helps when you:

• Know your price range. This includes a security deposit of one month’s rent (sometimes two: first month, last month, and security deposit).
• Can wait. Either you’re able to crash with friends, family, a motel, or Airbnb. Essentially, anything that isn’t sleeping in your car, parked in a Wal-Mart or next to the homeless in Venice Beach.

 

Apartment Search Tools
Here are the four best apartment search tools:

West Side Rentals 
People either swear by WSR or swear at it. It charges a $60 fee to use their service. If you can “borrow” someone’s account for a month, give it a try. Or, try it for a month and if you’re out $60, then so be it. The potential reward (e.g., finding a place you love) dramatically outweighs any cost.

Craigslist
The obvious choice – but did you know you can also create RSS feeds with your search criteria, so your reader of choice is automatically populated via a filtered search? I suggest doing general searches as well (so you don’t miss any diamonds in the rough) but CL RSS’ing can be a huge time saver if you’re having trouble sifting through all the crap that’s out there on CL.

Rent
I’ve found this engine to be a bit broader and not updated as frequently. However, it’s still useful to get a general feel for demand and prices in your area.

The Rental Girl
Fewer listings here, but they’re curated by a group of real estate women, by area.

Finally, if you’re going to be a renter from now into the unforeseeable future, you should really know your Renter’s Rights.

 

Conclusion

For all the sophisticated online tools available to help you in your apartment search, the best methods remain: walking around neighborhoods yourself and referrals.

Did I miss any online sources that should be here? Any specific concerns about renting in Los Angeles that I missed? Let me know in the comments.

Next week we’ll cover Part 6 – Transportation in LA.

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Photo Credit: h.koppdelaney

Have you ever looked at the numbers in your bank account at the end of the month and wondered, “Hmm… where’d it all go?”

Then felt guilty because you think you saved enough… but you’re not sure.

This happened to me. All the time…

Despite reading way more personal finance books than could possibly be healthy by the age of 16, and creating a sophisticated, automated system.

The system I used automatically:

• Saved the max contribution in a Roth IRA
• Pulled monies into specific savings accounts
• Paid my bills
• Used email filters to sort through all those bank notifications

 

I had this great architecture in place… but at the end of the month, I couldn’t tell how much I spent on drinks, or on lunches, or if I even earned more than I spent that month. I sort of presumed I always did, because I’ve been doing this for years, and my net worth moved up and to the right more often than not.

This, I decided wasn’t good enough.

So I decided to make a change. I decided to overhaul my system, and focus less on “automatic” and more on “accountability.”

 

The Death of Automatic

I loved the idea of “automatic.” I loved the idea of “set it and forget it.” I thought it was the coolest thing.

My friends would be like, “Oh, I gotta go find a stamp to mail in my rent check” and I’d be all like, “You mail in your rent? Psh. I just automated that shit. I set it, and then I forget it.”

Super sexy right? I got a lot of dates with that one.

It’s why I had all the above systems. It’s why I used Mint.

But with automation, how well did I understand where my money actually went? With Mint, technically I tracked every cent, but what did I learn from this?

I could pull up fancy charts and bar graphs, but did any of it have any context?

Nope — it just looked awesome.

Tracking is useless unless its actionable. Meaning, you can look at data gathered and make adjustments. For me, the information gathered by Mint was not actionable: partly because of shared expenses that I didn’t properly split off, partly because the “search” function sucks.

(The same is true for information backups and stored information: the former is useless without ease of restoration, the latter, ease of retrieval. It’s what you do with data that makes it valuable, not the data itself.) 

 

My Process For Manually Tracking Earnings and Expenses

I decided to manually track all my expenses again.

I use an Google Speadsheet. It’s not perfect. I still tweak it every month – but it’s a lot more sophisticated now than 5 months ago, when I started.

In conjunction with Mint, I review my expenses and earnings once a week to account and categorize for my expenses.

Fixed expenses still get plugged in automatically, and unless I intercede, the bills get paid automatically.

By month’s end, all my spending / earning is accounted for. I see in what areas I met my budget, where I should tweak my expectation, and if I should move more money into my savings accounts.

I can’t create a beautiful pie chart (not automatically, anyway).

I can take action, though.

 

Should I Share This On Fighting Broke?

Shit — this was a scary decision.

Not because I didn’t think it’d be helpful. On the contrary, I think it’d be amazingly helpful to this audience.

Seriously: where else can you find data (I mean, any data at all) on how much a Hollywood Assistant spends on drinks, on lunches? Where can you find information about the spending habits of someone who makes an assistant salary, yet still manages to contribute to their Roth IRA and savings accounts (while others, with the same salary, have no clue where their money went at the end of the month?) Where is there real data on fixed costs of living in Los Angeles, accessible to anyone who’s living in LA and wants to save more, or anyone who wants to move here?

I think this information would be pretty goddamn useful.

Then, why am I so terrified of posting it?

 

There’s A Reason It’s Called “Personal” Finance

Money: how much we earn and how much we spend, is this hugely personal thing. It’s crazy personal for 99 percent of everyone I know.

Think about it: imagine asking one of your best friends (I mean, someone you’ve known for most of your life) their yearly salary. Imagine how that conversation would go?

Maybe they’d tell you… but that wasn’t comfortable, was it?

I know an executive who literally freaked the fuck out on his assistant because the assistant left his paycheck envelope sitting face up on his desk. Not that his wages were exposed, or was the envelope opened. But because if someone was curious (and nosy and a douchebag and ballsy as hell) they could open it up and see how much he made.

Money is used to build lives, homes, careers. It’s used to shape dreams and make the world a better place.

Money is also used to manipulate. To get people to stay in jobs they hate, unhealthy relationships and to make poor long term decisions.

Money is loaded with emotion and sentiment, so much so that it’s difficult for even two people who’ve sworn a lifelong partnership with one another, to discuss.

This idea, to put my monthly financial tracking up on this blog, is putting my money where my mouth is.

If you want to know what truly frightened me about this experiment, though, it’s this:

 

There’d Be No More Hiding Behind Perception

My career is in entertainment and in Hollywood. Those with any sort of success display a perception of control: over their personal lives, over their careers, and yes, over their finances.

To put my monthly tracking out there is to pull back the curtain on perception. It’s like revealing the soundstage of a multi-camera comedy: the stage is tiny, the laughter forced, and no one’s as beautiful as they appear on screen.

This is really scary.

It’s frightening to open myself up and say, “this is who I am. This is what I value. This is where I spend my money.” Especially when it may run counter to the perception of Hollywood.

I’ve realized this, though:

This is who I am.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t be anyone else.

When you follow the money, you’ll see what I value. That I care a whole lot about investing in my future and in my family. I don’t care much for shopping, or spending money on a set of 4-wheels and metal frame that depreciates on a daily basis.

Being myself, this openly, is difficult, but it’s all I got.

Transparency takes work. Six months ago, this would have been much harder for me to do.

It’s easier to hide behind our Facebook photos and our reality television and the “brand” we project, rather than be our imperfect, contradictory selves.

To that effect: some of what I share may seem contradictory. It probably is. I haven’t figured it all out. This is what I know right now. We’re all constantly learning here.

Starting next week…

 

Every Month I’ll Share My Monthly Expenses Tracking

Do you think this would be helpful, to HW Assistants or for future LA transplants?

Is being more transparent about your earnings and spendings something you could do?

Please let me know in the comments. Or, follow along by subscribing by email at the top of the sidebar. Thanks!

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Photo Credit: WilliamMarlow, Mint

Gary Vaynerchuk‘s story is pretty well known: he took over the family-run liquor store in New Jersey, which was making a few million dollars a year. Over a 7-year-period, he transformed the mom-and-pop store into a company that made over $50M a year.

Then, he says, “I turned 30, freaked out, and decided I wanted to do something else. I saw [Rocketboom], doing all that stuff, and I thought, ‘I could do that shit.’ That’s what I decided I wanted to do. I became 1 percent not happy selling wine, and that’s when I changed my life. ”

So he started WineLibraryTV, which launched the Gary Vaynerchuk brand we know today.

Around the same time Gary’s establishing WineLibraryTV, Nick Santora and his wife are packing their bags for a weeklong vacation. He’s been practicing law for six years, and desperately needs a break from this job he detests. As they’re loading their bags into the car, he stops. He turns to his wife.

“If instead of going on vacation for a week, what if we stayed home, and I wrote that screenplay I always wanted to write?”

She says yes.

After they unpacked, he bought books on how to properly format a screenplay. Then he wrote all week.

That script got him his agent, Ari Greenberg.

Since then, he’s written two novels, one comic book, and on a variety of TV shows (LAW & ORDER, BREAKOUT KINGS, THE GUARDIAN, THE SOPRANOS, LIE TO ME, and BEAUTY AND THE GEEK.)

 

Why Is Nick So Prolific?

Fear.

“The reason I write all the time is fear,” Santora says. “I felt what it was like to be in a job that I hated for six years… Now that I’m able to write, I feel that I’ve been given a reprieve by the governor. They had me strapped in; they had the needles to my forearm; and they were beginning to press down on the plunger. And then the governor called and said you don’t have to be a lawyer anymore. You can go write.” source

Last week I met a woman at a house party in Silver Lake, who’d been looking for work as an assistant editor. She told me she went far down the executive track: agency, broadcast network, assistant to a respected SVP  (at least, according to Deadline.)

“But I realized, I didn’t want to go down that path. I saw my Boss’s life. I saw exactly how unhappy she was. I didn’t want that for myself.

“I always liked editing,” she said. “So I went back to do that.”

 

Will You Change Everything?

That desire to make the hairpin career turn can come at any moment. It might spring up on you like those “Save the Children” fundraising hipsters lurking in Trader Joe’s parking lots.

Or it might have been tickling away at you for years, waiting for the right moment of inspiration to manifest itself into action.

You don’t need a pre-existing business to pursue it. Or even a wonderfully understanding spouse who’ll give up their vacation so you can write a screenplay.

However, hairpin turns are easiest when you’re light. When it’s just you and your ambition and your desire to create something in this world, unencumbered by the baggage we’re told marks a successful life:

• A mortgage
• A nice car
• Expensive clothes
• A lifestyle that prioritizes perception over value
• And consumer debt

Not all baggage is bad. If we determine what’s really important to us, then we make it fit in our lives.

But when we’re presented with an opportunity to change everything, will we be able to take it?

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Photo Credit: Steven Christenson

Last week we covered how to plan for your move to Los Angeles. Here, I’m covering the exact details of my trip:

The trip was completed in a 2006 Corolla-S sedan manual transmission. Two people were moving out to Los Angeles permanently, the third was traveling out with six weeks worth of belongings.

The fit was tight in the car, but not completely uncomfortable. Moving in one vehicle is a daunting proposition for folks who’ve been settled down for a few years, and own possessions like beds and dressers and brushed silver frames.

If you must bring these belongings, this wikiHow article explains different options – Step 11 gives an overview. None of the passengers have embarked on an extended road trip before.

Personally, before this trip, I’ve rarely popped my car’s hood, never changed a tire, and my idea of “camping” was renting a house with satellite television, dishwasher, and at least two working bathrooms.

 

Budget

If you’d like to budget and determine an approximate cost for your road trip, having a solid itinerary and seriously considering your lodging options will go a long way towards this. I’ve included our budgeted and actual costs for your reference.

The budgeted (not actual) is as follows:

Distance / Gas

• Total miles: 4,350
• 10 hours driving time/day
• Fill up every 10 gallons.
• The vehicle gets 27 miles to the gallon of gas. That’s 270 miles per fill-up; or about 16 tanks to get across the country. At $2.80 per gallon (or $28 per fill-up) it’ll cost $448 to cross the states.

 

Food
$20 per day, for 10 days. Plus the initial $20 for food, per person, we arrive at $220.

Lodging
We’ll visit and camp at three National Parks. Total cost of the national parks will be $20, per person. Calculated into lodging are two Holiday Inn stays, in case of an emergency, which comes out to $33 per person.

The total lodging cost is $53 per person.

Miscellaneous Emergency Funds
Total $100

 

Actual Costs

The actual total cost for the group was $597 versus budgeted of $888.

After divvying shared costs (not total costs) each person spent just under $200.

As an individual, each person’s costs landed somewhere around $350 – $400.

 

Miscellaneous

The road trip lasted 10 days. On our traveling days, an average of 8 hours was spent on road time. The “50 mph east of the Mississippi, 55 mph west of the Mississippi” rule will give you an accurate measure of time on the road.

We stayed the evening in the following cities: Baltimore, Maryland; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Chicago, Illinois; Kansas City, Missouri; Bonny Lake, Colorado; Moab, Utah; St. George’s, Utah; Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Angeles, California

The states passed through included: New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Colorado, Kansas, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California

The distance traveled (not including miles inside the towns) was 3,358 miles.

 

The Route – Albany to Los Angeles

Below are trip details: start and end locations, estimated miles and time traveled, and locations for sleeping. Two great resources to find campsites are About: Student Travel and Free Campgrounds.

Day 1 – Sunday, June 13

• Start: Albany, NY
• End: Baltimore, MD
• Miles: 330 m.
• Time: 6 hr. 30 min.

 

Day 2 – Monday, June 14

• Start: Baltimore, MD
• End: Fort Wayne, IN
• Miles: 563 m.
• Time: 11 hr. 15 min.

 

Day 3 – Tuesday, June 15

• Start: Fort Wayne, IN
• End: Chicago, IL
• Miles: 203 m.
• Time: 4 hr.

 

Day 4 – Wednesday, June 16

• Start: Chicago, IL
• End: Kansas City, MO
• Miles 526 m.
• Time: 10 hr. 30min.

 

Day 5 – Thursday, June 17

• Start: Kansas City, MO
• End: Colorado Springs, CO
• Miles 591 m.
• Time: 10 hr. 45 min.

 

Day 6 – Friday, June 18

• Start: Colorado Springs, CO
• End: Arches National Park (Moab, Utah)
• Miles: 7 hr. 25 min.
• Time: 406 m.

 

Day 7 – Saturday, June 19

• Start: Arches National Park
• End: Zion National Park (Utah)
• Miles: 355 m.
• Time: 6 hr.

 

Day 8 – Sunday, June 20

• Start: Zion National Park
• End: Las Vegas, NV
• Miles: 163 m.
• Time: 3 hr. 

 

Day 9 – Monday, June 21

• Stayed in Las Vegas

 

Day 10 – Tuesday June 22

• Start: Las Vegas, NV
• End: Los Angeles, CA
• Miles: 170 m.
• Time: 3 hr.

 

 

Post Road Trip Thoughts

If I were to do the trip again, I’d take a more “themed” approach to traveling across the states. One of the original themes I toyed around with was “Sushi Restaurants”: that’d involve visiting every famous sushi spot along the way, as well as the best restaurants in the town I’d stay in.

Such a theme presents several obstacles. First, traveling with others makes the sushi theme a difficult prospect. Unless they explicitly love the idea, the theme probably won’t excite them much.

Second, chasing sushi restaurants across America puts you at a disadvantage if you haven’t figured out your lodging logistics.

Finally, sushi isn’t a budget meal, and a road trip built on a sushi theme is not a bootstrapped trip.

If a road trip is in the future, touring more National Parks is a definite interest.

If you visit three or four national Parks, buy the National Parks Yearly Pass for $80, and many parks are switching over to the reservations system for camping – during peak season you may need to call a month ahead. 

In a group road trip, your selection of travel mates is important. It is not like putting together a corporate team, or a committee to oversee the town; don’t look for balance and differences that provide a wide view. For a trip of short duration, focus is more important. The similarities between travel mates are more important than the differences.

Acquire travel mates who share the same standards (or lack thereof) of comfort, dining, and interest. For example, someone who doesn’t eat fish isn’t a good candidate for the “Sushi Restaurant” themed road trip.

 

Miscellaneous Tips

Before leaving on the trip, agree which costs will be split between travelers. For example, if the car breaks down, who contributes towards the repairs?

Driving from Colorado into Utah, for the first dozen exits, there are zero services: no gas, no telephone, no nothing. This is a fact they fail to mention at the last exit in Colorado. Make sure you fill up on gas and water.

Armed with an atlas, you can worry considerably less about exact locations to camp out for the evening. Just open the map and shoot for a spot.

 

One Final Story

There’s this image of my friend I can’t get out of my head.

Perched on a ledge, his legs and fashionably plaid shorts dangling over the edge; below them, a 12-foot drop into sand. His t-shirt is soaked, like he just pulled it from a bath drawn from his own sweat. Water beads dot his eyebrows. His hands quiver as they clutch rock.

He silently counts to himself, psyching himself up for the drop. “One, two, three…” But his butt doesn’t move. It remains rooted, still as stone, like any of the rock formations we’ve encountered in Zion. “So,” he said. “That didn’t work.”

Then he turned back to me.

“I can’t do it.”

The fact he was in this spot at all – not sipping water, patiently waiting for our return at the beginning of the trail, still shocked me. Getting here, 12-feet of gravity between him and the ground, required him to climb the distance a few hours ago, white knuckling, tip-toeing, and heel hooking his way up the red rock.

After that, the bouldering problems got real hard. Yet he traversed every barrier we traversed, slowly but relatively smoothly, until now.

I shrugged, and looked around. The sun was starting to duck behind the wall of rock behind him. We still hadn’t found a place to camp. If we were lucky, we’d pitch the tent with just the last snatches of light on our backs. If we were unlucky, we’d have to set up in the darkness.

“You don’t have much of a choice,” I told him. “It’s getting dark and we need to head back. We can’t stay here forever.”

Seeing him there reminded me of this scene from Gattaca, with Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. Hawke’s character needs to avoid the authorities, and behind him, he drags a reluctant Thurman, who’s ragged breathing can’t quite catch up to her physical activity. She suffers from a heart condition, and when they finally collapse behind a wall, she gasps, “Don’t you understand? I can’t do that.”

And Hawke replies, “You just did.”

As I planned this road trip I couldn’t help but feel relieved I was doing it with two friends. I’d never be able to road trip across the country, schlep all my belongings out west on my own, I reasoned to myself. How would I handle all the driving, or go camping by myself? Wasn’t it a safety issue? I truly believed I wasn’t capable of doing it.

And I was right.

You’re not capable of doing anything until you’ve done it.

If you’re reading this, it means you’ve probably moved out to Los Angeles already, or you’re thinking about making the move in the future. You might spend several months going over mental gyrations: “should I do it? Shouldn’t I do it? Can I do it?”

Abandoning a stable lifestyle to become destitute and fight broke.

You’re not capable of doing any of it — until you do, that is.

My friend wasn’t capable of shimmying through tight spaces, and conquering those bouldering problems… until he did.

Just as he wouldn’t be capable of taking that twelve foot drop. Until after a 20-minute psych-up session, I watched him slowly edge his butt off the ledge… stick one precarious leg out into the air, and let go.

He fell hard, air punching out of his lungs like wrenching a nail free from a tire. He collapsed to his knees with more force than he expected.

He rolled into the dirt and groaned, disbelief at the feat that just moments ago, he couldn’t do.

Next week in the Best Guide for Moving to Los Angeles, we’ll cover Part 5 – Find Your First Apartment.

#####

Photo Credit: Helgi Halldórsson/Freddi

It won’t require body hack, or elixirs hocked on video download sites next to pop-up banner ads for Russian brides and penis enhancement pills.

It won’t require a cocktail of vitamins and super foods, like the kind Ray Kurtzweil subscribes to, in a effort to cheat death completely.

In fact, living longer, thinking clearer, and having more energy … is much simpler than all of that.

But first, let me share what I found out by using this app called MapMyRide:

MapMyRide tracks workouts for you on your phone, if you carry it with you while running or cycling. The GPS tracks route, distance, time, and speed. I started cycling to work more than 7 months ago, but have only starting using it in September.

In the 2 months tracked, I’ve spent:

• 16 hours on the bike
• Rode 180 miles

Which is like, crazy “whoa.”

After 7 months of bike commuting, I don’t think about it much anymore. It’s part of my routine, like brushing my teeth. I don’t think about how fast these numbers add up.

However, where riding has made the most difference isn’t in counting the number of miles I’ve churned beneath rubber and asphalt. It’s something more difficult to quantify:

• I arrive to work with a clearer, more refreshed mind than the effects of 3 cups of coffee.
• I get home after work and dodge that lethargic “fall-onto-the-couch” feeling.
• Regular exercised has markedly improved my clarity of thought and given me more consistent energy.

 

The Benefits of Regular Exercise

Do we really need to go over all the benefits of exercise?

Or is there enough info out there on the interwebs and splashed across magazine covers, from AARP to Lucky to Oprah?

Let’s keep it simple: making time for exercise is important. At a high-level, you’ll:

• Live longer
• Feel better about your self-image
• Feel healthier
• Have better sex
• Bring more clarity to work
• Have more energy

We could discuss dopamine and serotonin levels, and how regular exercise creates a caloric burning furnace in your cells, but really, do you care about the science?

Since most of us here work in entertainment, it’s 50/50 if we even passed chemistry.

Let’s break it down to caveman logic: Exercise = Good. Sitting on our asses all day = Bad.

 

If We Don’t Start Now, When Will There Be Time?

Our jobs ingrain the habit of chaining ourselves to the desk all day, answering phones and replying to email, fingers flying to react, react, react.

Fact is, we’re going to have a variety of jobs and roles throughout our career. This behavior will continue for a long time.

On the other hand, we’ve got one body and one mind. Employers change but those we’re stuck with. If we treat them like shit, neither will last very long.

Yet that’s what we do.

• We spend way too much time sedentary, not moving anywhere, not using our wonderful, beautiful bodies at all
• As an assistant, we eat a lot of meals at our desks, so we don’t even get up for lunch
• Then after work, we go drink, usually sitting down again
• In short, we’re spending an awful lot of time doing nothing except feeling our asses grow

Of course, assistants and people in Hollywood are aware of the benefits of exercise (“of course we know! We saw it on Buzzfeed!”)

It’s not even a question of desire — 95 percent of the people I talk to do want to exercise more.

The challenge is two fold:

• We don’t have the time
• Our busyness affects motivation (the opportunity cost feels too great)

But when is that ever going to change? If we don’t take the time now, why do we think we’d stumble upon more time in the future – when we have more responsibility in our careers and personal lives? Managing our time doesn’t get easier when you plug in loftier job titles and family, but more difficult.

The answer isn’t to put it off until you have more time, but to carve out time from what you already have.

If you don’t have the time today, what makes you think you’ll have it tomorrow?

 

How to Carve Out Time To Exercise

Here are ways to incorporate exercise into our already jam-packed schedules, in a way that keeps our motivation up:

1. Start ridiculously slow. How slow is “ridiculously” slow? These days I’m conservatively averaging 25 miles a week on the bike, but can you guess my first milestone towards this goal? 

It was “start to look for a bike to buy.” That goal took an entire week. 

The goal wasn’t “bike to work two weeks from now.”

It wasn’t even “buy a bike.” 

All I did for the entire week was research the best way to find a bike, which I did by using boolean modifiers in a query string on Craigslist, then loading that search into an RSS feed. 

The week after, the goal was, “make two offers on two different bikes,” then the week after, “go buy a bike.” I wanted to start so slow there was no way for me to miss my goal for the week.

Starting slow for another assistant may be noticing that hey, you haven’t bought a new pair of running shoes / workout shoes since high school P.E. The goal for the week could be: “go online and find a pair of shoes I like at a price I can afford.”

You don’t even need to click “buy” just yet — remember, we’re starting slow.

2. Start small. My first ride into work, I did on a Saturday. The objective? Make any unknown variables known: clocking the ride, learning the route, identifying how tired I was afterwards.

Starting slow is more about conquering emotional barriers than physical barriers.

Work gives us plenty to stress about: meetings that seem to grow legs and move all on their own, a never-ending stream of paperwork, finicky clients. All these little things take up cognitive energy (CE) — you know that lifeless, drained feeling you feel at the end of the day, when all you did was bang on a keyboard all day? That’s you, sucked dry of cognitive energy, sucka.

And the last thing I want to use my CE on is my commute, or my workout. Hence, why we start small.

If you’re not a cyclist, what might this look like for you?

Instead of swearing you’re going to run 2 miles when you get home, try walking for 20 minutes.

Instead of the banging out a circuit workout you found online, how about 20 push-ups?

A slow start is better than no start. It’s also better than the fast start that inevitably crashes and burns.

3. Take small steps forward. Keep every incremental step a small one. I didn’t go from hopping onto my bike for the first time to biking 80 miles in a week.

Aim for consistent small goals (e.g., in one month, increase cycling frequency from once a week to twice a week; increase 5 push-ups every week; add 3 minutes to your run) that you can succeed at. 

It’s all about momentum, and momentum is something we create — it’s not bestowed upon us like fairy dust by a our Fairy MomentumMother.

4. Keep friction low. Friction is anything that slows us down in accomplishing our goals. So what prevents us from working out?

Personally, I had two major friction points: one, the nagging opportunity cost that there was something better I could be doing with my time, and two, picking out my outfit to change into when I got to work (um, yeah, seriously. Embarrassingly, this has kept me from working out in the morning.)

To reduce friction, I started blocking out the time period I wanted to work out in my calendar. This way, it felt like I reserved this time in advance for myself, and since I already plugged all my work in around this, I could let go of that feeling that there was something else I should be doing.

To reduce the friction from having to choose what to wear in the morning, I made sure to set aside my clothes every evening. So in the morning, I’d have no excuse not to ride to work.

5. Set a time. Block out time in your calendar, as I mentioned above. The key to this is combining it with #2: Start Small.

Don’t feel like you can devote a whole hour to a workout? How about scheduling yourself 20 minutes during lunch to walk around your building? 

Or set an alarm to go off when you get home… before you’re ready to collapse onto your couch to start reading scripts, bust out those 20 push-ups you told yourself you’d do. 

Whatever you decide, book it with yourself.

#####

Photo Credit: Studio Tempura

Every two weeks, my mother and I drove down the 787 highway to the Greyhound bus terminal, located on the border of Albany and Rensselaer, aka the Saddest Little Place on Earth.

Which is where, every two weeks, we’d pick up my father.

This was not the most glamorous period of my family’s life. My father lived in a communal apartment in Chinatown. He worked in a textile factory, filled wall-to-wall with needles and machines that punched holed in things, but not a lot of light.

He got one day off a week. He saved these up until he had a total of two, and then would visit his family.

My mother worked full-time as a state employee, and also cooked for, dressed, and looked over the schoolwork of her four children. In her spare time, she chauffeured us around to dentist appointments, piano lessons, and soccer practices.

We got into this situation because we overextended ourselves financially on stupid bullshit that did not matter. The “Now-You-Know” I took from this was:

Don’t Do That

It was a pretty extreme life lesson: there’s a gulf of a difference between failing after a calculated business risk… and failing because you want to fill your life with bling bling and status and the lifestyle you think others have. 

 

10-Year Career Jump… Backwards

Eventually, my father moved back to Albany.

He decided to get back into the restaurant business. He pulled himself together, he reached out to his network, perfected his resume, and started getting interviews.

Then… Nothing.

Radio silence. For months.

He could have waited for the phone calls to come. He could have postured and preened and made a stink about any number of things: the economy, the job market, his ethnicity, that no one could get past his accent and see the value he offered.

Instead, he took all the experience he got from opening and running two restaurants (the first of which he opened when he was 24), he gathered all that knowledge and expertise and business acumen…

He put on his best shirt and tie…

He walked down Sand Creek Road, onto the strip called Wolf Road, littered with more restaurant chains than a Suburban Hell, and knocked on doors until he got a job…

Waiting tables.

He took a took a 10-year career step backwards.

That’s what he needed to do to help support his family.

As Tim Grahl put it in his interview with Srinivas Rao, you have to be “willing to dig ditches in the hot sun if that’s what it takes to provide for [the] family.”

 

When Clients Cry Poor

Today, when clients cry poor, it’s hard for me to sympathize.

When a Client emails, cajoling and begging for a loan against future royalties because the landlord is knocking on the door, it’s hard to sympathize.

When a Client asks that we don’t take a commission, because they need that ten percent or the 7.5% to keep the lights on, it’s hard to look at them the same way.

Especially when a Client has the the audacity to turn around and hide behind their family and say, “this is how I provide for my family! This is the only way! You’re taking food from my table!

You are a grown person.

 

STFU and Go Provide

The same type of client will blame their agent if they can’t line up jobs. Or if a book isn’t selling, they’ll blame the publisher. “Why aren’t you pushing my name harder? Why aren’t you marketing it more?”

Maybe the agent could. Maybe the publisher should.

But it’s this eagerness to shrug off any sense of responsibility over the current situation that’s infuriating.

If you’re a grown person, if you have a family to support, find a way to provide.

#####

Photo Credit: Chris JL

I covered how much cash$ you should save if you’re planning your move to Los Angeles.

I wrote about minimizing your lifestyle to make the move as simple as possible.

Now let’s cover how you’re physically going to get there:

 

Introduction

Train, plane, or taxicab?

You can buy a one-way plane ticket and arrive in LAX, ready to rock ‘n roll. That’s what Te-Erica Patterson did, with less than $200 in her pocket. I don’t believe this is exactly setting yourself up for success, though I know people who’ve met success doing precisely that. One friend moved from Chicago for an unpaid internship. He squatted at a hotel for a while and showed up everyday via the bus, until he left them no choice but to hire him. He’s been with the company three years now — buying a car and renting an apartment along the way.

Personally, I think the best way to get to Los Angeles is driving. Throw your life’s possessions into a 4-door sedan with +100K miles and do your version of the Great American Road trip on your way to Hollywood. Below I cover maps versus GPS, how to plan your itinerary, what to pack (from food to clothes to camping gear) and provide a host of other resources that you may want to consult.

 

Preparing For Your Drive to LA

The planning can feel overwhelming. I’ve broken down the process into digestible chunks. Take on one piece at a time, and don’t rush or stress. The process is supposed to be fun – if anxiety doesn’t overcome your enthusiasm.

First: buy a large, updated road atlas. Combined with online mapping services like Google Maps and Waze, you can spend a week tinkering the itinerary. Please, do not rely solely on the online maps! They help foresee day-to-day travel options, but an atlas makes big picture planning easier (like calculating miles and time between destinations.)

On that note, while a GPS can be a lifesaver, an atlas never runs out of batteries, requires a signal, or tell you it’s “calculating” every time it gets confused. The GPS is a luxury, the atlas is a necessity.

The Itinerary and Route
Creating a solid itinerary starts with the right questions:

• Where will you start and end your trip?
• What specific cities/towns do you want to see? Why? What’s your passion? Designing the itinerary around your passion immediately brings the trip into focus: national parks, music, breweries, sushi joints, etc.
• Who do you know along the way? Road tripping is a great opportunity to touch base with friends you haven’t seen in a long time.
• How many miles or hours can you spend on the road per day? As a rough guide, calculate 50 mph on roads east of the Mississippi, and 55 mph on roads west of the Mississippi. It’s conservative, and accounts for rest stops and light traffic.
• Lodging logistics – are you crashing with friends, at hotels, or camping? If it’s the latter, how close are your destinations to campground sites?

 

Spend the time on research. Wrangle in concrete answers to these questions, and the itinerary takes its own shape. Be honest about your comfort levels: when I moved out to Los Angeles, it was three people in a sedan with everything we owned in the world. We ate peanut butter sandwiches and apples for 10 days. To save money, we camped out in National Forests and in a field in Utah.  If you need things like a hot shower and food that requires utensils, plan accordingly.

Vehicle Prep
You’re about to take your car on a 3,000-plus mile journey: spend the time and money to ensure she’s up for it. Make sure the inspection is up-to-date, your insurance papers are intact, the tires have good treads, and the oil has been recently changed. A few other points to keep in mind:

• Do you know where your jack and spare tire are? Do you know how to change a tire? If not, learn, and learn how to do it quickly.
• Check your fluids: motor, transmission, coolant, brake, steering and windshield.
• Does your auto insurance provide roadside assistance? Do you have AAA membership?
• Other notes to remember: check your Entertainment Book for coupons on national motels and auto body shops, notify your insurance company and credit card company you’ll be traveling, and buy a National Parks Pass for $80 if you plan on touring the parks.
• Do you have the emergency contact numbers for everyone in your car in your wallet and on your phone? Do these contacts know the car’s make/model and license plate?
• It’s also a good idea to keep a copy of your medical insurance card and recent photos of you and your travel mates in the car as well.

 

Packing

You should have already dumped your excess baggage in Part 2 of The Best Guide for Moving to Los Angeles. Here are more specific ideas on what you should bring:

• Keep three sets of clothing and a jacket accessible for the drive. If you plan on going out, include a dress shirt and shoes. Anything else pack away deep into the trunk.
• If you don’t feel like making three dozen CD’s, buy an mp3 player and make sure you have a tape hook-up or auxiliary hook-up to your car’s stereo. If you don’t have one of these, consider making one yourself.
• Double-check you packed your camera.
• Also, cigarette lighter-to-outlet converter comes in handy.
• Generally, a laptop is pretty useless on the road unless you’re actively trying to write. A smart phone and data plan does come in handy, however.

 

Packing for Camping
Camping will save you money – whether it’s at National Parks, State Parks and Forests, or just pulled over on some side road in Utah. But you’ll need some things:

• A cooler – which can be a hard cooler, or a cooler bag, with a refreezeable ice pack.
• Extra plastic, zip-lock bags for leftover food and miscellaneous items.
• Buy a tent – the ALPS Mountaineering Zephyr 2 Tent 2-Person 3-Season Tent serves well and costs around $90.
• A sleeping bag.
• A sleeping mat is a nice addition to elevate yourself off cold, rock surfaces. Check out – the ALPS mountaineering lightweight pad.
• Other miscellaneous items: knife, matches, toiletries and toilet paper

 

Food
Spending 8 to 10 hours in a sedentary position, staring off into the void called Illinois or Kansas doesn’t burn many calories, so you’ll eat less.

If you don’t require much variety in your diet during the trip, you can really save money on food. We got away with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches per day per person, a few bags full of nuts, some fruit, and plenty of water and coffee.

Or, you can splurge and eat out every time you stop – with food you can really spend as much or as little as you want.

 

My Complete Packing List

Clothing

• (7) T-shirts
• (2) Hoodies
• (2) Long-sleeves
• (6) Button-up shirts
• (6) pairs of boxers
• (4) pairs of socks
• (2) pair of jeans
• (1) pair of leggings
• (5) Ties
• (3) pairs of athletic shorts
• (2) suits

 

Shoes

• Northface Trail Shoes
• Sandals
• Black Dress Shoes
• Puma Walking Shoes

 

Electronics

• iPod
• Laptop (w/ charger)
• Camera (w/ charger and spare battery)
• Spare Cell phone

 

Camping

• Cooler
• Extra, zip-lock bags
• Tent – (ALPS Mountaineering Zephyr 2 Tent 2-Person 3-Season Tent)
• (3) Sleeping bags
• Sleeping mat
• Knives

 

Food

• Peanut butter-Jelly sandwiches
• Fruit: apples, bananas, cherry tomatoes
• Mixed nuts
• Road Trip Snacks

 

Other

• Toiletries
• Toilet Paper
• Notebook
• (2) Skateboards

 

The Car

• Jumper cables
• Spare Fluids
• Spare tire and jack
• Map – Rand McNally 2010 US Map
• LA street map

 

Road Tripping Resources

I said at the beginning of this series that I curated all the best sources on moving to Los Angeles. My intention was that for moving to LA, I could show you the first post and say: “here you go, this is everything you need to know about this subject.” I think I’m close to meeting that objective. In case you disagree, here are nearly all the sources I curated in moving to Los Angeles and creating this guide:

Books

• Road Trip USA by Jamie Jensen – an excellent resource that offers a dozen pre-planned routes to choose, and memorable destinations along the way. Use these routes as a guideline while planning your trip – the more you invest in personalizing your journey, the more you’ll take away from the long stretches of pavement, besides asphalt and dust.
• Live Your Road Trip Dream by Phil and Carol White – this book is divided into two sections: the planning, and the trip. While “the trip” portion gets dry (think: daily journal, covering a year worth of traveling,) the former covers many areas of long-term road tripping: from telling your family, finances, packing, and what to do with your stuff. It requires scouring and skimming to find notes that you can apply to your trip, but proves well worth the time.

 

Websites

• John August’s series on Moving to Los Angeles is hands down the best you’ll find on the web.
• Squidoo’s Road Trip Lens by kimisoutback – a fantastic lens on every aspect of road trip planning
• Road Trip America – features a dedicated forum, articles on road tripping, and a Fuel Cost Calculator
• Road Trip USA by Jamie Jensen – Jensen’s blog to accompany his book (noted above.) He answers reader questions and discusses in-depth various aspects of the road.
• Free Campgrounds – the website includes a search feature for free (or inexpensive) campgrounds in any state.
• About: Student Travel provides more information about camping and camping grounds.
• Off Road Adventure by Paul Thompson – Thompson wrote a treasure chest’s worth of booty for other road trippers. Two posts of significant note: 10 Things Not To Leave Home Without and The 4X4 Gourmet
• Phillip Ryan Johnson – Johnson’s blog posts on his trip from New York to Los Angeles
• Road Brew by Teri Fahrendorf – Fahrendorf’s road trip across the country and back, visiting and brewing with professional brewers along the way.
• Travel Channel – use the Travel Channel website to create a “theme” to your itinerary.
• Taylor Davidson’s 79 Things is a great road trip packing resource.
• I’m Moving to LA — if you’re, uh, moving to Los Angeles

 

Next week in the Best Guide for Moving to Los Angeles, we’ll cover Part 4 – Road Trip.

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Photo Credit: x-ray delta one

As a Hollywood assistant, it feels like we’re at someone’s beck and call. It’s like indentured servitude, but less pay. We’re flooded with the minutia of daily tasks.

Unfortunately, this pulls us away from the important to-do items on your desk.

And the projects we actually care about. Versus, say, scheduling your Boss’s trip to New York six months from now.

So can we reclaim our time to work on what’s important, without telling your boss and their clients to shut the hell up, look it up themselves, or to leave us alone?

What steps can we take to free up time and take control of the high-impact activities that we can never seem to get to?

It’s simple really:

 

Pick Our High-Impact “To-Do’s”

That’s the first thing we do when we get in the office.

Easy, right?

Er… or not much. Why?

I noticed with myself and with most other assistants, it’s not that we don’t know what we have to do the next day. There’s a monster to-do list, along with our call lists, emails at various stages of appointments, submissions to make, and regular email correspondences to return.

We have all these “to-do’s” but we don’t prioritize them. 

We don’t assign value, or we assign value based on the needs of others, not ourselves. 

Part of why we do this is our environment. We get sucked into distractions because people expect answers instantaneously. And instant answers are easy to find, so we feel like we’re actually being productive.

However, we don’t learn anything valuable with easy answers. We don’t build any value for others.

We can’t turn off the distractions. They’re inherent in this industry. But we can temporarily shut it down, even if it’s only for certain portions of the day.

For me, these times are:

• The first hour I’m in the office
• At 5:30 p.m., when there’s consistently a lull in activity (the exact time can vary from office to office). 

 

Work and Distraction Are Conscious Decisions

This requires the conscious decision (writing it down if necessary): “this is what I’m going to do the moment I sit down.”

My work flow:

1. I already make it a point not to schedule anything before 10 a.m. for my Bosses
2. Scan emails for anything truly urgent. If no one’s going to get fired or die, I ignore it.
3. Then I get to work on what I said I’m going to do.

 

However, sometimes my Boss beats me into the office. By the time I’m ready to kick ass on my own tasks he is ready to roll calls and send submissions.

This doesn’t excuse me, however.

I take care of what he needed immediately, but queue up any other tasks that aren’t “this-minute-urgent.” Then I back to my plan of attack as soon as possible, and stick with it for as long as I can delay everything else.

I set a time and stick to it. Even it’s only 20 minutes – that’s 20 minutes to work on something meaningful, which is better than spending 100% of my day reacting to what everyone else is doing.

Here are other tips to carve out that “me” time so you can get to your one or two important “to-do’s”:

1. If I have interns coming in, their assignments are ready to be delegated before they get into the office, with clear instructions on what I expect, when, and at what point to check in regarding their status. I DON’T wait until they’re standing around playing ANGRY BIRDS on their phones before finding them something to do. Otherwise I’ve wasted my time and theirs.
2. When it’s time for the deep work, I must make the conscious choice TO NOT GET DISTRACTED.  I turn off the email notification, close out of Deadline, and put an “Away” auto-responder on AIM. I still have to actively remind myself to do these things each time I sit at the desk.
3. For all “minutia email” (confirming appointments and follow-up emails and submissions): if it’s not life-or-death (and it rarely is, contrary to what the whiny assistant may be moaning about), it can wait. Tougher than it sounds, I know — there’s that industry pressure to get things done fast fast fast. But I want to do the meaningful work, and make learning a priority, not my reaction speed.
4. Anything not pertinent to what I’m learning, I remove it from my desk or close it on my computer.
5. Before I leave for lunch, I’ve already decided what I’ll work on when I return.

 

How Do You Pick Your “To-Do’s”?

I have two criteria:

1. It must require deep thought.
2. By doing it, it improves my own hard skill set.

 

For the last year, my important “to-do’s” revolved around learning contracts.

If you’re in development, it might be a tricky section of notes and the difficult challenge of expressing in writing why an aspect of the story doesn’t work.

Why are these criteria so important?

This is where personal growth happens. In the things that are hard, that require thought and patience and deliberation. This work separates the people who come off a desk with tangible skills, and people who developed better soft skills everyone else already has (they schedule fast, they respond fast to emails, they’re good at moving around electronic bits of information.)

If everyone can do it, the skill isn’t in demand.

If you want to be in demand, you have to learn the hard stuff.

The harder the work, the deeper the thought required to solve a problem. The deeper the thought required, the easier it is to allow yourself to get distracted.

Remember, we allow ourselves to get distracted. You are not distracted, it’s not something that happens to us. We must take responsibility for what we do with our times. And when it comes to distraction, we let ourselves slip.

We give ourselves permission: “oh, I had to respond to that email! Oh, I had to handle that call right away.” Really? Did we really need to set that meeting that’s going to happen a month from now this very minute?

In the moment, it seems like an innocuous thing – to pause the hard work to handle the small minutia. We have to look at this over the life of our career, however.

Over 20 or 30 years, who do we want to be: the person who worked on skills of value every chance they got, or the person who’s really good at email?

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Photo Credit: State Farm