Self-Aggrandizement: Joshua Bryce Newman

Now with 137% more unabashed egotism!

Doubtless one of the best sites on the internet, Self-Aggrandizement is the story of Joshua Bryce Newman, a 28-year old film mogul, entrepreneurial wunderkind, and general smart-ass, living in New York City. Learn more about Joshua (according to Forbes, "sharp and supremely confident, a veritable Doogie Howser"), or simply follow his mis-adventures as they unfold below.

Dear Mom,
Filed Sunday, May 11.

From childhood right through today, I couldn't have done it without your 'gentle' encouragement.

Happy Mother's Day, and all of my love,

xxx

joshua

Rule of Three
Filed Thursday, April 24.

Productivity guru Mark Forster points out in his excellent Do it Tomorrow that falling behind on work stems from three, and only three, possible problems:

Having too much work
Having too little time
Doing work inefficiently

This is, of course, blindingly obvious, yet also something I tend to forget.

Most time management seems to focus on that third category - efficient working - yet there's an upper limit to how much improved efficiency can help squeeze into a day. Sure, you can reduce the amount of time you spend replying to the average email from, say, three minutes to thirty seconds. But if, like me, you receive about 300 emails a day which warrant some kind of response, that thirty-second average still adds up to a full two-and-a-half hours of email time, with little chance of further whittling down.

The next cause of trouble, then, is simply having too much work. Time management systems try to skirt this through prioritization, but, as Forster points out, the idea of priorities is a bit of a red herring. If you're going to get something done today, it doesn't really matter if it gets done first or last. The order only starts to matter once you've tacitly agreed not to complete all of your work. At that point, order becomes crucial, because it's the latter items that don't get completed at all. The 'C' task today is usually still a 'C' tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that, and therefore never gets done. So, in short, the right place to prioritize isn't at the level of tasks, but at the level of commitments. You already fill 24 hours each day with something, so fitting in new obligations requires getting rid of an equal amount of time's worth of old.

But it's the third area - not enough time - that really gets short shrift in my own approach to managing time. I look at an open stretch of days on my calendar and think of them as 'empty'. But, of course, they aren't. The're full of all the work I have to do. Usually, that's fine; even with a few meetings and calls wedged in, I still have time to pack in the rest of my tasks. But, on weeks like this one, when my calendar spirals far out of control, and I'm left with only odd fifteen-minute chunks unbooked for days at a time, I find myself falling further and further behind on life, and feeling more and more stressed out as a result.

So, to combat that problem, a new policy, inspired by the trusty Roadie's Rule (no heavy drinking two nights in a row): no full days of meetings back to back. Or, in the simplest implementation of that I could figure out: no meetings, none, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. That way, no matter how bad my Monday, Wednesday, or Friday become, I'll always have at least one day in between to get back on top of life.

Disaster
Filed Sunday, April 20.

Some days you're the dog; other days, you're the hydrant.

Which is to say, while updating MovableType, the software that runs this blog, I somehow managed to blow the brains out of both self-aggrandizement.com and CrossFit NYC's highly trafficked blog.

Fortunately, I back up the actual entry content for both. But not the design or code, which I've spent much of today rebuilding from scratch.

So, in short, if you see anything strange on either site, please let me know.

True Story
Filed Tuesday, April 15.

During the second world war, a reconnaissance group of soldiers became lost in the Alps on a training mission. It was winter, they had no maps, and they seemed hopelessly lost.

They were preparing to die, when one soldier found a map crushed down at the bottom of his pack. With the map in hand, they regained their courage, bivouacked for the night, and proceeded out of the mountains the next day to rescue.

Only when they were recuperating in the main camp did someone notice that the map they had been using wasn't a map of the Alps at all; it was a map of the Pyrenees.

When you are lost, any map will do.

Fleas
Filed Monday, April 14.

It was only thanks to inclement weather that I yesterday avoided attending the new Brooklyn Flea Market.

Jess, who has an impeccable eye for all things fashion and furniture, and can quickly pick out gems hidden in long racks of crap, loves flea markets, thrift and vintage stores.

I, on the other hand, try as a general rule to avoid places that reek of mothballs and armpit. Walking down scented aisles, I can't help but think that whomever each vintage dress previously belonged to is probably now long since dead, and quite possibly from some terrible skin-borne affliction transmissible by their old clothing.

So, in short, I'm not a huge fan. But, in my best attempt at being a good fiance, I come along. It's an effort only partially appreciated by Jess, who (correctly) accuses me of hovering over her the entire time. Not, as she thinks, because I'm trying to get her to leave, but instead because I'm trying to gain some safe harbor from proximity to the only person in the place for whose hygeine habits I can personally vouch.

Still, odds are good, once the weather warms, we'll be Brooklyn bound after all. I just hope that, in the weeks between, I'll find some good leads on a cheap Hazmat suit.

Updates
Filed Friday, April 11.

Still alive, still busy as f*ck, still essentially working two full-time jobs.

Latest bit of CFNYC news: the CrossFit hype continues, with cover stories the past two weeks in Men's Journal and Muscle & Fitness.

Latest bit of Cyan news: looks like we just locked worldwide distribution rights to the film adaptation of Interpreter of Maladies.

No sleep till Brooklyn.

Rough Week
Filed Wednesday, April 2.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."
- Winston Churchill

Suiting Up
Filed Monday, March 31.

Last Friday, with a lunch scheduled at the University Club, I came to Cyan's office in a suit. Which, in turn, prompted unexpected jealousy from my colleagues. Apparently, wearing a suit is actually fun, assuming you're not required to do it every day.

So, with consensus of the Cyan team, I've now re-instituted Anti-Casual Fridays, our old policy wherein we dress to the nines the one day each week that the rest of corporate New York (or, at least, the bankers with whom we've been dealing these days for our hedge fund) dresses down.

Of course, we're not a perfect converse of those bankers' schedule, as what qualifies as 'dressed down' in that world is something so Brooks Brothers catalog as to make even my CFO, a sailboat-owning WASP, cringe.

No, our casual still permits jeans and flip-flops. At least once the weather warms. But, even then, come the height of August, on Friday it should still be full-on Anti-Casual. Who doesn't love a khaki or seersucker suit?

Exactly
Filed Wednesday, March 26.

While press for CrossFit seems to be cropping up everywhere these days (cf., the NY Times Magazine, whose piece about how 'the superfit walk among us' has already given Jess endless opportunities to make fun of me), it's Gawker that deserves special recognition for summing things up way better than I can whenever people ask about the gym:

"CrossFit is an internet-based cult of fitness for psychos, itinerant preachers, ex-killers, and crazy people of all stripes."

Sounds about right.

Lest Ye Be Judged
Filed Thursday, March 20.

For the past month or so, I've been spending a lot of time reading first round applications for the First Cut Film Series, our competition to find the top five film students in the country, then to finance, produce and theatrically release each of their first feature films.

And, to be honest, I'd begun to have some doubts. Not because of any problems with the applications themselves, but because of how much they, in this first round, still leave to the imagination. A short synopsis, a couple of bios (director, writer, producer), and a few pages of screenplay isn't a lot to go on.

Of course, that was the point of the round: an attempt to initially separate the wheat from the chaff. Still, without any of the directors' work to screen until round two, I've had no real idea whether any of them can make movies that feel like real movies, rather than like student theses, and I'd started to fear the worst.

Today, however, I spent several hours screening graduate student shorts as one of the judges for NYU Film School's Wasserman Awards, their top honor for outstanding achievement in film*. And, in short, I was blown away. Sure, some of the stuff was exactly the sort of amateur-hour crap I'd feared. But at least two or three of the films were so astoundingly good that the judges actually clapped once they ended.

When the lights came up after one, another of the judges said, 'shit, somebody needs to give this guy a million bucks and tell him to just go make a feature.'

Which is good, considering that's basically what we're about to do.

*[Side story: as past Wasserman winners include Ang Lee and Spike Lee, I went in looking for any other Lee's who might have a leg up. There weren't any, though there was a Jennifer Li, and while I won't give away anything before NYU announces the awards, I will say her short was definitely in the top five.]

Craving further genius?

Check out the archives.

Now with 137% more unabashed egotism!

Dear Mom, Filed Sunday, May 11.

Rule of Three Filed Thursday, April 24.

Disaster Filed Sunday, April 20.

True Story Filed Tuesday, April 15.

Fleas Filed Monday, April 14.

Updates Filed Friday, April 11.

Rough Week Filed Wednesday, April 2.

Suiting Up Filed Monday, March 31.

Exactly Filed Wednesday, March 26.

Lest Ye Be Judged Filed Thursday, March 20.