Notes on process

Don't overthink it.

When I got my first day-rate gig at a very large agency a decade ago, I was blown away by the infrastructure that supported every project. There were productivity programs I’d never heard of. Huddles and check-ins and stand-ups. It was someone’s entire job, usually the project manager, to write down everything that happened, upload it to the program suite du jour, and then bother people, usually designers, who didn’t turn their work in on time. It was a specific and well-documented process.

It all felt a bit much. It was foreign! As a recovering reporter and former assistant, I was used to taking relevant notes and doing my job. I always knew my marching orders. So while I was taken aback by the minor nanny state because a bunch of adults (not me!) couldn’t meet a deadline or take their own notes, I kept reminding myself: “This is a new workplace and industry. They do things differently here. This is their process.” I got used to agency life.

One of the reasons Three Point Four Media has had success is because we don’t overthink this stuff (except, apparently, in our newsletter). We have ideas about how things should be run—and we’ll speak up when necessary—but we’re not militant about it. We let the project dictate the process. We move fast and strategically. We meet our clients where they are, and they like working with us us precisely because we’re not like everyone else.

Onto the links.

A documentary

Friend-of-the-newsletter Andrew Helms worked as a producer on Rafa, the fantastic new Netflix series about the Spanish tennis legend. Check it out. He talked to Noah last fall about life in the wide world of streaming documentaries:

It’s nice to work with people. I found writing to be pretty isolating and lonely. It’s nice that on these projects, it’s collaborative, and you get to work with a team of editors and producers to try to shape a story.

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A project

Me, working on v1.

We’re currently working with a client on an essay that will appear in a book this fall. Interviews, reporting, writing, editing. All of it! Back to our roots.

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A concert

I saw Kevin Morby at Saint Andrews Hall in Detroit last week. His partner Katie Crutchfield (aka Waxahatchee), who is very pregnant with their indie rock nepo baby, came out to sing a tune with him. They looked very happy.

Morby’s new record, Little Wide Open, is fantastic. I hadn’t listened to his solo music much until six or eight weeks ago, despite seeing both of his bands (Woods, The Babies) multiple times circa 2010-2012. The Kansas City songwriter is an avowed Dylan acolyte (a recent Pitchfork profile described him as “Dylan-pilled”), but the reason I like Little Wide Open so much is because he was blatantly trying to make a Tom Petty record. The entire thesis is basically: Imagine if an elder millennial who came up in early aughts Brooklyn indie used the same musical language and emotional register of Wildflowers.

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A TV show

Noah tapped in with our friends One Thing this week with a very nice piece and wholehearted recommendation of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins.

In an era of Ambient TV, Dinkins is something more powerful. It’s a comedy, yes, but it’s television that forces you to pay attention. Dinkins is not subtle; It is, after all, a Tracy Morgan experience. But the jokes unspool in surprising and varied ways, delivered across multiple senses.

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A perfect cutlet

I’ve been doing some recipe testing for [redacted forthcoming cookbook] this spring, and I have finally achieved nirvana via cooking a perfect chicken cutlet in the comfort of my own home without setting off the smoke alarm.

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A bike ride

We are back out riding Ann Arbor’s gravel roads. I truly miss my road bike, but it is increasingly unsafe around here. Gravel riding has everything I love about road riding (time and space for the mind to wander, low-level suffering, sun, open roads) with far fewer motorists. I’ve been throwing in five-minute surges on my solo rides lately just to wake the body up and feel alive.

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A Q&A