Ways We Work
Ways We Work
Disconnecting your identity from your job with Tom Creighton, designer, podcaster and builder of cool things
This episode I'm talking to Tom Creighton, he's currently a design lead at Delphia, a data-focused startup based out of Toronto. He previously made other cool things at companies like Wealthsimple and Shopify. He's passionate about growing the creative community through a variety of means, like through his two podcasts Framework, a podcast about the process of building and bringing a product to market and The Redesign, which is a fun podcast where he and a friend redesign everyday items with usually the end result being a poorly designed version of the original thing - Tom wouldn't mind me saying that. He also spends a good amount of his time speaking and mentoring others in the design community. In our chat we cover decision making, how to make good decisions and the process involved in that, disconnecting your identity from your role, the importance of communication amongst teams, the value of experiments and creating boundaries in both your work and side projects and Tom shares how deciding to work from home was the best the decision for his own work-life balance. This was a fun conversation and Tom has a ton of really thoughtful insights around all of these topics from his own personal experience.
I have more value than just the title that I hold. And that's something that is not reliant on me having a job or doing my own thing or whatever. That's just the, the person I am. And I think discovering that even though it felt horrible at the time, um, if nothing else came out of that six months, that discovery and that I think different kind of confidence about me as a person versus me as a person that works at company X. It's made even going back to having a job, which, I'm really happy about, it's made, it feel different for me and I think that's something that I didn't really expect to get from those six months.
Amandah Wood:Welcome to Ways We Work the podcast where every episode I interview at different guests at, but what they're currently putting work into an evolution on the Ways We Work website. It's a podcast about how we work in every sense of the word. I'm Amandah Wood and an each episode I chat with someone I admire about their career, where they feel they're growing or maybe how they're working to embrace new habits or perspectives. I talked to people about how they keep balance in their lives, how they stay curious and all the ways that putting in work can be uncomfortable and challenging but also really rewarding. If you love what you hear, please take just a few minutes to leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcast. This episode I'm talking to Tom Creighton. He's currently a design lead at Delphia, a data focus startup based out of Toronto. He previously made other cool things at companies like Wealthsimple and Shopify. He's passionate about growing the creative community through a variety of means like through his two podcasts framework, a podcast about the process of building and bringing a product to market and the redesign, which is a fun podcast where he and a friend redesign everyday items with usually the end result being a poorly designed version of the original thing. Tom wouldn't mind me saying that. He also spends a good amount of his time speaking and mentoring others in the design community. In our chat we cover decision making, how to make good decisions and the process involved in that disconnecting your identity from your role, the importance of communication amongst teams, the value of experiments and creating boundaries in both your work and your side projects and Tom Shares how deciding to work from home was the best decision for his own work life balance. This was a fun conversation and Tom has a ton of really thoughtful insights around all of these topics from his own personal experience. So with that, let's get into it. Hey Tom, welcome to the podcast and thanks so much for joining me today.
Tom Creighton:Thanks so much. I'm such a fan of the original site that I'm really thrilled to see a Ways We Work return in some format, so it's, it's great to be here.
Amandah Wood:Yeah, I'm excited to have you too because I was looking through the old interviews and I know you did the original format and that the written format of the website. So it's cool to like have you back on podcast form.
Tom Creighton:Yeah, it's, it's cool for me to have that continuity. It's so cool to, to see what it turns into and now it's turned into a podcast which was, which was really awesome.
Amandah Wood:Yeah, it's been a very cool learning experience so far. So, um, so maybe just a couple of warmup questions to get us started. I'm curious to know what is something that you're really curious about at the moment or something that you've been trying to learn a lot more about?
Tom Creighton:So this has nothing to do with, with my day job at all. I've, I've kind of been working on a, on a side project around music discovery. And the biggest thing for me I think has been figuring out how to, okay, dialed in on that sort of nugget. What is the, what is the core thing that I'm trying to get to? And I've done a lot of like research and looked at other other apps or or services in the space. But I think at some point there has to be a decision made and and that actually does dovetail with with the work that I'm doing right now professionally is how do you make decisions, how do you feel good about, about what you're working on and and the direction of it and how do you have confidence. And I think what I'm finding out both personally and professionally is that it's really hard. A lot of times I think you have to move with confidence and make those decisions and just forge forward without complete information. You're never really going to have complete information. So this is, this is a really interesting part of, of the product process for me is how you can make those decisions that you need to make to build the thing in sort of a low confidence environment. It's really critical I think to make a lot of decisions earlier than you think you need to and set the tone for what you're working on regardless of what kind of project it is. And this is something that I'm really thinking about a lot lately is how that works in a team situation or just by yourself, what are the inputs and what are the outputs and how do we not just make those decisions but make sure we're communicating them or, or just even making good ones.
Amandah Wood:Yeah. I'm really curious to know what you've learned so far about decision making and are you someone who likes to come to like a bit of an algorithm or like a system for making decisions or are you more like approaching it from a free flowing kind of way?
Tom Creighton:I think unfortunately I'm both but the worst parts of both. Like I really want to, I want to show up having all of the data and having drawn up this big matrix of pros and cons and have all of the factors in line that I need to make a really good decision. But at the same time I think there is an element of justice doing what feels like it's the right thing. And I think especially in building product and being in startups, a lot of the time we will have access to data. That's fantastic. Like making a more informed decision is always going to be better. But I think sometimes you just have to say, I think this is going to work in, in absence of knowing about all of the things that might make it not work. I feel like I'm getting better at at doing that, but it still makes me nervous.
Amandah Wood:Yeah. This is a topic that I'm also very curious about, so I'm glad that came up. I noticed, I guess I wasn't thinking about it as decision making, but as I've been doing this podcast, there's sort of this chicken before the egg problem where I'm someone who does really like to have a system and a process for doing things, but you can't really do that before. You know what the things are that need to be in the process and you can't really figure out what those things are before you do them. So I find myself constantly like doing something and then trying to figure out how it fits into a process and then being like, oh, but I don't know everything that fits into this process yet. And so then going back and doing things, and I don't know if that makes sense, but just is this very anxiety inducing way of doing it. I'm taking action and then wanting to build a system, but I don't have all the things yet. And just bouncing back and forth between,
Tom Creighton:this is exactly me too, you know? I want there to be the perfect system that allows you to make good decisions all the time and do the right thing. And I mean, unfortunately the, the leadership at my job is very cognizant and, and open to the fact that's, that's not a thing that's never going to be a thing and we're just going to have to adjust in flight all the time. And I think framing that as that's how it's going to be and we're all just going to be fine with it and do the best we can do I think has helped me a lot to be more professional about that. To come at decisions like, well here's as informed as I can be a for wrong, how reversible is this? How, how can we backtrack on this if we need to be in, it may be how can we make smaller choices that might turn out to be bad but have less of an impact. And so yeah, I think, I think a lot of it is having that willingness to maybe make bad choices and I love that as a, as kind of like a guiding principle for, for working on product and working on startups just like it's guaranteed you're not always going to be here.
Amandah Wood:Yeah. It helps me frame it as when I am getting stuck in that loop of okay, how easy would it be to like reverse this decision? And then that generally helps me, but I think there's a piece it's not talked about around like I liked what you said like adjusting and flight and I like that is terrifying for a lot of people. That concept, I dunno. I Dunno how you feel about that, how you've gotten more comfortable with that over the course of your career or where you're at with that now
Tom Creighton:it's, I think it became very much more a part of my thinking and becoming more comfortable in that space. Over this last year, pretty much exactly a year ago I left a job that I liked very much just to try it and I needed to change some things in my life and unfortunately the jobs sort of was, was a casualty of of those and we just went into freelance. I didn't really have a good idea of do I want to go back into having a job, don't want to go back to startups, do I want to do, you know, agency life again, didn't really have a great idea and decided to try stuff until I found something that clicked with me and I did. I was freelancing for half a year, not really knowing where it was going or if it was going anywhere until ultimately, you know, I rejoined the team that I was excited to work with. But I think that just sort of flailing around for six months trying to, trying to figure out what I was doing was really instructive. It was, it was certainly, you know, I lost the security of having a job and knowing what I was working on every day and having that path that I understood, but really nothing bad happened. I paid my bills, I got to eat food, you know. Uh, and I think that that's done a lot for me in terms of just perspective on, even if it feels like the worst thing is happening in terms of, of not knowing exactly what you're doing or what you're doing at all, it's still rescueable. Um, and I think for me that was been something very valuable to, to carry into the, into where I am.
Amandah Wood:No. Yeah. It sounds like I lost going through the decision to go freelance and then again finding a team that you were excited about. Making those decisions actually give you more confidence in your ability to make decisions and be more comfortable with the fact that like it could change later. You can pivot or go a different direction at any point.
Tom Creighton:A big part of it is is I tend to, and I think a lot of designers or start up folks in general tend to very much associate themselves with the position they have or the company they work at. And I'm very guilty of that and I think having that six months of sort of, who am I now, now that I go now that I don't do that thing anymore. Yeah, I think the, the perspective has helped a lot or not the job. I have more value than just the title that I hold and that's something that is not reliant on me having a job or doing my own thing or whatever. That's just the person I am. And I think discovering that even though it felt horrible at the time, if nothing else came out of that six months, that discovery and that I think different kind of confidence about me as a person versus me as a person that works at company X. It's made even going back to having a job, which I'm really happy about, uh, it's made it feel different for me. And I think that's something that I didn't really expect to get from those six months.
Amandah Wood:Yeah, for sure. I'd love to hear a little bit about what work does look like for you now and then have you been able to sort of keep that mindset even even joining a team?
Tom Creighton:Yeah, so I joined a really, really early stage startup cause this is really, this has been very interesting for me. I've never worked at anywhere that actually didn't have a product yet. Hmm. And so being involved from, from the jump and just, I think this, this goes to back to what we were talking about around decision making is that it's staggering to me the amount of decisions that go into getting something off the ground. I don't think I had any idea and it's been an absolutely wild ride and I, I've really been enjoying it. Yeah. It's, I think carrying that, that, that feeling forward for freelancing is that we all just have to do, you know what we're doing. I can, I, I can do work that I think is good and it might get blown up next week and that's fine. Like it's not a, it's not about me. And I think in a sort of previous, earlier stage of my life, it's, it's, I think it's easy to feel very attached to something if you become emotionally entangled with, with the work you're doing and think it's much easier for me now to not worry so much about that. Just know, like I'm on doing the best work I can right now and whether I'm at this company in a year from now or five years from now or, or not even next week. Like it's, I've, I've done my best and that's like the best I can do. And in a sense, this sounds bad, but like none of it matters. You know, it's just I'm, I'm, I'm bringing value to the table and the company is, is appreciative of that. And I love working with the folks who are there and that's great. I don't need it to be more than that. I don't need it to be part of my identity.
Amandah Wood:That's a, I'm just resonating with a lot of what you're saying. I am very much in the middle of a rural transition right now myself and it's gone a lot smoother than probably, I imagine it would have gone in the past for me. It's hard to have words for it when, when you're kind of going through it. But I think before it was, I think your career becomes entangled with your identity for so many reasons. Like it maybe it's just your personality type, but it's also like that's all anyone ever really asks you about. And so it's like, okay, well is that me? Is that the value that I bring is that the only value that I bring? And then also this idea that like you have to be in a certain type of career for a really long time instead of just like, okay, it's cool that I did marketing for a little bit and then I did web development and then I did my own thing and now I'm in HR and now I'm doing something totally different. And, and that used to terrify me but now it's like it's all just adding to your experience and you know, it's not like you can't go back to something or go to something new at any point in time. So I don't know, it just really resonate with what you're saying. So I would love to hear a little bit more about your, your role. So are you, you're leading a design team at the startup that you're at the moment.
Tom Creighton:I think it's, it's really funny too to say that anyone is, is leading the design team as me and one other designer, neither of us is, is leading or were co leading perhaps. And I think that's really nice. It's a, it's a nice place to be. And I think that lack of structure, and maybe it's a, it's sort of a deliberate lack of structure is part just because we are such an early stage company, but also it's just, it's working for us. And I think not messing with things that are working is, is maybe part of the learning that I'm getting right now as well is we don't need more structure to make things work. We're both a seasoned designers. We both understand what the work looks like and what kind of things we need to do. And uh, the overhead for us to communicate that to each other I think is really low. And that's really interesting to me as, as you know, I mean I've worked at a whole bunch of different places and some of them have been gigantic and process and communication eight up, you know, a lot of, a lot of my time. And I think what's, what it feels like now is that it's just super lightweight and just enough to get good work done. And I think this is something that I've, I've talked about with, you know, in, in one on ones is like how can we preserve this? How can we keep this feeling where, where we know what's going on and everybody understands what everyone else is doing. And so I'm trying to very deliberately now I think figure out what are the elements that make it work that way and actually like record those things and figure out how do we carry this feeling into, you know, as the company becomes larger are twice as large or five times as large. No, it's, it's really, I think I jokingly saying no, but I do think like I've internalized a lot of those lessons without necessarily recording them. So it's, it's always, I think having an appreciation for where, for where the other person is coming from and this is something that's easy to do with just one other designer. We both are similar in, in mindset and personality and approach. So it works really well I think as, as the company itself grows larger, the overhead is always communication. I think a lot of my time when I was leading a team, instead of just, you know, doing the hands on work was spent on taking those decisions that happened very quickly within the team and just bringing them to the rest of the companies so everybody knew what we were doing. And so I think maybe part of the way to carry that forward in, in the trajectory of, of any company is to think about what that communication looks like at any stage. You know, right now I can just throw something into slack and everybody instantly knows what I'm working on. That doesn't winter and you're 20 people, no problem. When you're 200 people it doesn't scale. And so I think like thinking about what the artifact is that we're sharing and how we're providing context around those things is, is really important. And right now we can just say, hey, it's the thing. And everybody knows when it's, you know, 200 plus people. We can't just say, hey, it's the thing, because nobody knows what the thing is that we're specifically trying to move forward. And so I think this is, maybe this is the lesson for me right now is, is trying to be better about providing the correct amount of context so everyone understands not just here's the thing, but this is why
Amandah Wood:we decided to go this way. I never, it is really just as simple as communication and I hadn't really considered that before. But that in itself is like so complex and you know, different people want to know different things about the thing or different people have different levels of context about the thing. You have to sort of know and navigate all of those nuances. So I know you also do a ton outside of work and I'm sure I don't even know half of the things. So I'm just curious like what are other areas that you are investing like a lot of time and an energy into at the moment
Tom Creighton:a not inconsiderable amount of my time is spent, uh, ironically enough on podcasting and God, I call it my serious podcast on my non serious podcast. And they are, you know, both, both my children and I love them both equally. It's been interesting. I think contrast and one against the other because the non serious one is, is not at all scripted. I just jump on a microphone with a friend and we say dumb things for, you know, half an hour and that sort of it. And I love that as just a release of creativity. It, it forces me to sort of get outside of my day to day zone and just, you know, be, be sort of silly and allow myself to, to not self censor about what's a good idea because it's sort of specifically about terrible ideas,
Amandah Wood:but the redesign something that's already designed I guess. Right?
Tom Creighton:Yeah. I think the slant of it is maybe that it's intentionally worse than it,
Amandah Wood:but,
Tom Creighton:you know, I, I feel like maybe we've, we've had some triumphs, but the, uh, the, the more serious one, the one that sort of got resurrected earlier this year has a lot of overhead in terms of scripting and sourcing, guests and production. And this has been really interesting to me because I think as I'm moving further into my career and what my personal trajectory looks like as part of this industry, it's understanding what needs to be there. What are the ingredients to making something like this that is, you know, a piece of professional content. I think understanding that has made me realize like it's sort of both more and less than you think, but also it's something that I really, really enjoy doing. It's a way for me to talk about things that I find it super interesting. I mean I've been in this industry for a long time and I'm still really jazzed about all of this stuff and I, and I want to talk about it, but the reach that it has is much more than if I was just, you know, speaking to these people one on one and I think this is something that I'm really thinking about even as, as like another project that I might start later this year, it was like, what does a, another version of that thing? What is the thing that will allow me to have that outsize impact in terms of sharing ideas and answering questions and just sort of allowing me to interact with, with people at scale instead of just having a coffee with a, with a mentee every like three months or something, you know, speaking to 500 people or a thousand people or whatever all at once. That's really interesting to me. And I think there's, there's a number of designers and, and uh, industry folks that I know that are, that are exploring that same space and sort of like really playfulness within the space. Like we, I don't think anyone's sort of figured out what the format is podcast feel like they're kind of old now, but it's still really young comparatively and, and there's vlogs and, and all this other stuff emerging. And this is really, really interesting to me. I think, I mean, I tweeted about this maybe yesterday, like I've really, I think my, my future is going to be a lot more of this kind of thing and, and that's really exciting to me.
Amandah Wood:I'm really curious to know like what, what's so important and interesting to you about it? Is it kind of that like mentorship and knowledge sharing angle that that makes you so passionate about it?
Tom Creighton:Yeah, I think so. I think it's, you know, when, when I was coming up through the industry, when I came out of school and I had no idea what I was doing, none of these resources really existed. And a lot of this does feel like giving back in a way or giving people a headstart on where I was and when I started my career and I've certainly tried some things over the last, uh, year and a half or so that that didn't really pan out. There's definitely been personal projects for, I'm like, yeah, helping, you know, helping newcomers to the industry and realized, you know, a few months in like, oh, this is, this is way more work than I thought I was going to be. And like, you know, I also have a job and I also have to do all this other stuff. How am I going to support this? And I think considering all of these things, experiments and seeing what people latch onto as has allowed me to, I think, feel okay about letting things go. Um, you know, I'm, I'm really excited about both of the podcasts that I'm, that I'm doing right now and I think as far as I know right now they'll, they'll continue indefinitely. But I think part of my growth as, as whatever you want to called us a content producing person, is allowing, I think the same kind of dis attachment as we talked about with jobs. It's fine if something I make doesn't resonate or doesn't, doesn't click with people. I don't have to do it forever. Just because I started doing it. At some point, that viewpoint has freed me up to say, Hey, what if I just tried another podcast except it's, you know, really short and maybe on youtube or something like, I, I really don't know what, what shape this thing is even going to take yet if I even do it. And I think that's, that's part of the excitement too, is that there's still a lot of untrodden ground here in terms of the, the ideas that excite me and the things that I want to talk about. And having that space to, to just kind of explore I think helps me. I mean we, we, we talked about, you know, giving back and providing resources to the community. And yes, absolutely. But I think part of this is, is definitely for me, I feel enriched by, by doing this myself and being forced to think through these ideas and think about what it is that I'm actually trying to communicate. And that's the exciting part for me. I think I, you know, I love getting feedback when someone like, wow, that that latest episode of whatever was really good. That's it. That's an ego boost. I love that. But I think it's, it's thinking about the ideas and thinking about communication and thinking about putting ideas out there and seeing what happens is, is personally really, really exciting. And I think that's why I keep doing all of these things.
Amandah Wood:Yeah. And I love the year you talked about being okay with like, you know, letting something go or letting something just be an experiment because that's something I've experienced personally where when I put so much pressure on something, it can just immediately take the fun out of it. It's like, Oh God, like now I have to go and recorded another podcast episode or oh God I have to sit down and like edit for hours. And it's not to say like all of that does end up being work. Right. But I, I've realized the psychology behind it affects how I enjoy it and like way more than I ever expected. Yeah. I need to sit down and you know, edit or I need to sit down and reach out to people that I want to talk to you. But if I'm not like putting all of this insane pressure on top of those activities themselves, they end up feeling like a lot less work. So I don't know if you had like similar experiences or maybe it's different day to day.
Tom Creighton:Yeah, I think very similar. It's, it's not building up those, those expectations that something is immediately going to be a success or maybe ever be a success. And I'm like, admittedly I'm very bad at this. I want, I want everything that I do to be super great. Obviously there's, there's always that chance, certainly that it's just not gonna work. And I think this has been, this has been a big area of growth for me over this, this last year particularly is just, you know, it's fine. This is, this is something I thought was cool and other people don't think is cool. That's okay. I can still think it's cool. It doesn't take that away from me.
Amandah Wood:Yeah. And I think what you're talking about is, is really making a personal definition of success. And you could do that on a grand scale of like your life or what success looks like to you, but also for like each individual project. And so I am kind of curious if you do that when you're, when you're starting out, like do you think about what the goal is, whether it's just to have fun or whether it's to reach this many people. And, and I asked that question again coming from my own experience of people asking me like, what do you want this podcast to be? And then I'm like, well I'm, I'm just doing this for and I like, and then people will ask, well what if only like five people listened to it? And then it's made me had to start thinking, right? Like, well what if that happened? Like, would I be okay with that? Would I not be okay? You know? So I'm just curious if when you're first setting out on a project that, do you think about those things and kind of come up with like what success would look like for each thing that you're doing?
Tom Creighton:I definitely do. I think the, the measure of success, especially with personal projects has changed to be probably one that's not visible to the people consuming the, the, the end result. So for instance, if I'm, if I'm thinking about like this music discovery project that was just self initiated, it's something I'm interested in. And I said, okay, I'm going to get people on a mailing list if they think this is interesting, I'll put out a post whenever I have something interesting to say and you know, touted it as like, Hey I'm working on this specific project to do this. But I think my, my internal success metric for it was just like if I just put out a post at least like one a month and just get back into like writing and thinking about ideas and thinking about how I'm going to structure these communications and that's all I do all year. That's okay, that's a good results. That is a good outcome of this project. Even if I never build something. And so the, the exterior expectation and the interior expectation, it's super easy to make them the same thing but they certainly don't have to be. And I think framing it that way for myself has made me feel a lot better about weeks where I've just not done anything on this project. And sat on the couch and watch TV instead of like look looking at at layouts or whatever. That's fine. It's, it's more about, I think the, the goal still has to be about forward momentum, but it doesn't have to be defined in like the same units of, of outcome as like the thing that technically I'm trying to get to. Hmm.
Amandah Wood:Okay. Yeah, that's really interesting when you're thinking about it, it sounds like you have sort of worked through a lot of your own like thinking around hi, keep balance between work and side projects. But um, I'm curious like, areas that you feel like you are really stretching in right now and that are still like a big challenge that you're kind of currently developing and
Tom Creighton:yeah, I think, I mean you, you mentioned balance between work and, and side projects. And I think a big sea change for me this, this past year has actually been balanced between work and life. And I think this is something we talk about a lot in this, in this industry is, is how to get that work life balance. And for me, part of the, the change that I deliberately made last year was a working from home. Hmm. And not spending hours of my day commuting anymore. And this uh, you know, aside from recovering those hours and just having that time back I think has me a lot more chance to reflect on how that was making me feel and what matters to me and the stuff that I'm really interested in. And so during the hours that I would be commuting, I might, you know, be sleeping or whatever. I don't feel like that that time is being now used productively, even if it's just for relaxing and, and just thinking about stuff. And that's, that's been a really, maybe the most significant change I've made to my career in the last decade. And it's been so, so significant that when I was thinking about looking at jobs again towards the end of my, my freelance time last year, the ability to work remote was one of like my only non negotiable criteria. Right. No, I don't think I can, I can go back now like this is, this is what work looks like for me now. And, and knowing that about myself, I don't think I had any idea until, you know, people were like, are you okay? You, you're looking really tired and not great. You know, maybe you should think about not having that anymore. Yeah. I think it's really, really easy to overlook that. And I'm very, very cognizant of that in terms of, of side projects now is that I, my tendency is to say yes to everything and I want to help people out. And I love working with, with, with people on different kinds of things and it's all really exciting to me, but there's really only so much I can do. And I think that's how I draw that line now is I love to work with everyone and I probably will still say yes, but you know, it might be that we can't work together until like four months from now or something because I just don't have the bandwidth right now to, to do what you're asking of me. And in many ways I think that feels or could feel okay, like, you know, I'm missing out and there's all this exciting stuff happening and I want to be involved in all of these cool things. But the balance for me now is just I'm aware of, of how bad it can get and, and where my limits actually are. And, and knowing that I think has allowed me to be more judicious about what I'm actually engaged in.
Amandah Wood:No, it's coming up from what you're saying is it's almost like it's not, it's not so much the quantity of things that you have going on at one time necessarily. As long as you have good boundaries around each of them and you have a really clear idea of how much of yourself you're giving to each of them, which, you know, until you said that, I actually hadn't, hadn't considered that for me. I'm always like, okay, I've got like five things on the go right now, but I'm sort of thinking of them all as if they're like the same size, you know, and the same time commitment when usually they're not. So, um, that's, that's an interesting distinction.
Tom Creighton:I, I don't know if I really even had that distinction myself maybe a couple of months ago where I stuck a bunch of stickies up on, on the wall of my, my dining room, which is currently currently where I work and like basically just built myself like a Kanban board of things I had to do. And I also have all of those things where I've said yes to people and now I'm sort of, I'm deep in that process, but just having to sort of rate all of these things in relation to each other has made me realize that some things can be postponed for a while or aren't that much of a rush or maybe I never have to do them really. I think that sense of perspective has been so, so good for me. Like I still, I still feel guilty about not doing everything, but I can't, it's just not possible. And knowing what the things are that matter most to me and also I think could have the most impact or are the most rewarding for me and other people. I think figuring out what those, what those boundaries are or what those criteria are that I'm using to two rank. Everything in my life has helped me be at least a little bit smarter about it. Hmm.
Amandah Wood:Well, I'm kind of curious actually about the working from home piece because I think it's really interesting how you found that really truly works for you, especially in a role that I imagine could be really collaborative and needs to involve a lot of different people or, or maybe just having people around to like bounce ideas off of how, I guess, what is it about working from home that really works for you and how do you still get some of that like collaboration that is likely pretty important for, for what you're doing?
Tom Creighton:So I think I'm actually really fortunate in that I do work remotely, but I worked remotely for a company that's in Toronto, which is not that difficult to get to. Right. So I do have the ability to, to go in and talk to people face to face, uh, which I do at least once a week. And I think that it's sort of a best of both worlds for me. Like I also really didn't have a good idea of how working remotely it was going to work with a company that is for the most part not remote, although very supportive of it and it's, and it's worked out really well. And I think when I was talking earlier about uh, communication and context and how that works to, to carry forward to that same feeling around having a very small team and, and being really tightly knit, I think that's like the critical ingredient for good remote work as well. And that's, that's sort of what I've discovered, especially working with a team and not just working with myself is you almost have to go all day and on over communicating like everything. Even if it happens like in the office and, and you know, quote unquote in real life, you just have to have the expectation that either remote people are going to be there or that you will need to communicate outcomes or, or artifacts to people who weren't there. And I think that's true even in non remote teams is that there's always going to be people who weren't privy to certain decisions or who weren't in a meeting or didn't have input or whatever. But it's, it's sort of feels like the oversharing or too much information version when you're remote where everybody wants input on these stuff. Especially in a, in an early stage team, we're still so small that everybody kind of has ownership of everything, which is really exciting. But it means we need to work that much harder to make sure all of this stuff is disseminated and everybody knows, uh, here's where I can look to find out what was, what was talked about or what decisions were made. So I think it always sort of ladders back to communication for me.
Amandah Wood:So I'm curious because there is, um, it seems like there is a lot of trade offs to, to working from home, but there must be, what are the benefits for you that then make it so important to your work
Tom Creighton:as a very good question. Yeah. I obviously wouldn't be doing this if it, if I didn't think it was the best way to work for me. I know it's, it's definitely not for everyone. I think for me it's time to just sit and think and basically sort of make my own time as far as as scheduling and all of that goes, you know, as long as I get the work done, it doesn't matter. And for me this is, this is really important. Like I think working to the the nine to five schedule when I was commuting every day and it just becomes this routine that that you fall into and you're not really thinking about it and it's just the price you're paying for going to work to work on whatever and not having to do that. I think realizing that that we can have these relationships and work on this cool stuff without paying that price is a trade off I would happily make, even if it means that, you know, I have to work extra hard on communication and, and documentation, it feels like a really, really valuable trade off that I'm making. The, the net happiness of people not having to be commute has gone up and we can have amazing coworkers from all over the world working together instead of just one city. And I think that's something that's super cool. You know, I have coworkers that are in, uh, like Montreal and California and they feel just as much like part of the team that's in Toronto every day because we've made that investment in being a, a very supportive company around from remote, uh, workers. And even from the get go, I think that that has to be something that's baked into the company culture. I think it's really hard to back into a supporting remote people. So I'm glad that, that I found somewhere that had those values or that shared those, those values with.
Amandah Wood:Yeah. And something I think that's really amazing about when you have someone who's your mode on the team or a really dispersed team, you kind of have to be good at those things that maybe other teams can take for granted. Like communication, like having good documentation, having good process because those are just necessary when you have team members all over the place and who aren't, you know, sitting beside one another all the time. So I feel like that's another kind of benefit that that's added as well. Uh, so I know we only have a few minutes so maybe I can do like a lightening round with you. Okay. All right. Um, they're going to be hard questions to maybe do lightning round, but we'll give it a go. Aye. Something I really would love to know is how do you personally discern when it's time to either like push or challenge yourself and when it's time to kind of like back off or rest.
Tom Creighton:I wish I knew. I think my tendency, this is something I was thinking about. MMM. When you, when you shared sort of the outline for this podcast is that, I don't know if I have a good sense of that, such an interesting question because I think my tendency as as a quote unquote senior designer is to always kind of understand problems that I'm facing in terms of like, uh, product development or thinking about features or any of the things that go into building a thing as problems that I've encountered before, you know, oh, this is just like that other thing that I did. Uh, so we can probably do the same thing. And I think that kind of thinking can be really detrimental. I'm not always pushing myself too dive super deeply into the possibility space of a problem. And I'm really, I think this is something I'm trying to work on. It's, it's, you know, it might be on the surface very similar, but I feel like every product problem has its own unique wrinkles. And trying to be more thoughtful about that is, is I think my challenge right now or, or maybe always my challenge,
Amandah Wood:we all know that you could do now that you couldn't do a year ago.
Tom Creighton:I mean technically rolled right out of bed and I'm at work, which is really nice. Um, I think maybe in a more, uh, in the, in the spirit in which you asked the question, I think I'm, I'm much more able now to, to think about work as something that I do rather than something that I am in a sense. I miss having that sense of association. I think it's really easy to treat, uh, the successes of a company as your successes and it feels really, really good. But at the end of the day, like the, the thing that I am doing is a job I'm getting paid to, to think about design for this company. And we're both very happy with this arrangement, but I, it's not me. And I think having that, that mindset has been a change for me over the last year for sure.
Amandah Wood:Yes. It seems like a super way to, to relate to work. So that's awesome. Is there anything else that you want to share that we didn't get a chance to touch on?
Tom Creighton:Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think the thing obviously, uh, that I've been thinking about as, as I've been working on my own, I would love for more people to, to experiment with things that are outside their wheelhouse. You know, the, I think there's so much interesting work to be done in terms of exploring ideas and, and just trying stuff. And it doesn't even have to be about your, your day to day work, but yeah, I'd love to see more designers and developers and pms just make interesting stuff and share it out and see what happens.
Amandah Wood:Yeah. That's great. Uh, and then if people want to get in contact with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Tom Creighton:Yeah. I'm basically, I just live on Twitter. That's probably the best way to find me. It's at and then my name. Okay.
Amandah Wood:Awesome. Yeah, I can plus one to following you on Twitter, your tweets different. Super entertaining. Thank you. Awesome. Well that's all my questions. Thanks again for taking the time to do this today. It was really, really great to get a chance to chat with you and um, really great conversation, so thanks.
Tom Creighton:Yeah, thank you. I'm so happy that we had a chance to do this and thank you for asking really thoughtful questions.
Amandah Wood:Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please take just a few minutes to rate and review on iTunes as a new podcast. This helps a lot and it would mean so much to me. As always, you can find Ways We Work on Twitter and Instagram at Ways We Work and you can find me at Amandah Bud. If you liked this interview, you'll probably love the 100 plus written interviews that you can find on Ways We Work.io and while you're there you can subscribe to the newsletter to make sure you know, whenever we release a new podcast or feature. In addition to these interviews, I'd love to do episodes where we take your questions about the things you're putting work into at the moment, and myself and a guest will do the best we can to answer them. You can send those to Amandah at ways[inaudible] work.io. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next episode.