One of the biggest adjustments from being a student to being an intern has been how I think about my time. In school, every class hands you a syllabus with the deadlines already given to you. You know exactly when the midterm is or when the paper is due. Each percentage is laid out for you so you know exactly what is needed. At Divly, it works far differently. I am given a broad goal and its up to me to figure out how to break it down, how long it should take, and when it needs to be done. I have weekly meetings to see my progress, but throughout the week I am by myself. I enjoy the freedom, but it is sometimes difficult to start from scratch and do it completely myself.
The first habit I built is starting every day with reading the Wall Street Journal and drinking my cup of coffee. I then write out what I need to get done today before I even open my email. It has completely changed how I approach the day and my work. I get up to date information about whats going on in the world, markets, and politics so I am informed every morning. The list is very helpful to give me a sense of direction throughout the day. If I didn’t do that, I would do work in a random order and not be nearly as productive. With the list, I know that I am being productive and not just staying busy. When I was building a cost model comparing customer acquisition strategies using lifetime value and margins, it would have been easy to keep tweaking the small details forever. Having it written down made me have real progress.
The second thing I’ve practiced is prioritizing by impact instead of easiest. My natural thought process is to knock out the quick, easy tasks first. It felt productive because I would be able to check things off the list quickly, even though they weren’t that beneficial. The valuable work this summer was exactly the kind of task that is tempting to put off. An example would be taking my research on over 25 websites across our markets and turning it into a tiered, ranked outreach plan for the growth team. I had no template, and I had to decide which made on site more important than another. Since it was open ended, part of me wanted to keep doing a little more research before starting. I learned to catch myself trying to do that and start with what I thought would actually matter in the companies decision. Even if its the harder one, I start there now.
The third piece is communication. When everything starts feeling important, the best fix is to simply ask my supervisor what he would like done first. When I started, I was worried that I would be asking too many questions and bothering everyone. This would make me guess on the decisions in which I could have just asked him. I now realized that in such a small startup company, communication is very important here. Even though I am an intern, I am still included in all the meetings, and they take my insight as well. It is much different here then in the states, because I probably wouldn’t ever talk to the founder or CEO of a company, but here I work very closely with him and the team.
It is tough to get into a similar routine over here because I am living in a hotel a decent train ride from work. When I am home, I can fall into a simple routine everyday because it feels natural. Here I am going and exploring the city some days and others I just want to relax in my room. I hope to be able to start a routine before and after work that will keep me consistent throughout the program. Managing my time has taught me a lot of things over here. I am excited to bring these traits back to Pitt this fall, and hopefully into my career after that.