This article originally appeared on The Well, Jopwell’s editorial hub.Â
Lizzy Divine
Campaigns Manager, DoSomething.org
New York City
Twitter: @LizzyDivine4
7:15am: Hit snooze on my phone once. OK, twice. Wake up and check my email (just check, not respond) so I know what the day has in store. After going through my inbox, I stay in bed to read a few pages on BuzzFeed’s news app and Feedly, my curated newsfeed about the environment.
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8:00am: Feed my dog, Hippopotamus Soul Child, a.k.a. Hippo. Then I take her on a walk around the block.
8:20am: Jump in the shower and diffuse my hair. I sleep like someone possessed by gremlins. After all of that tossing and turning in the night, I need to wet and reset my curls every morning.
9:00am: Leave my apartment and walk the five minutes to the train.
9:05am: Contort my body to fit into the last spot on the L train. During the 20-minute train ride, I read theSkimm and listen to one of my favorite podcasts. Right now, my faves include Another Round, Women of the Hour, and Living on Earth. All three feed my Black, feminist, climate-justice-advocate soul.
9:30am: Today is the Reaping! Every six months at DoSomething, we switch seats through a ritual called the Reaping. On the day of the Reaping, everyone drops their name in a hat to be picked out one by one. When your name is called, you have 15 seconds to choose a new seat out of the 50+ desks in our office. At the end of the Reaping, I hug my three old podmates goodbye. We have an open office plan, so I’ll still be able to see all of them from across the room. But after sitting next to the same people for eight hours a day, five days a week, for six months, you truly do bond.
We have all kinds of other fun traditions in the office. Twice a year, we have “Fail Fest,†where anyone who wants to can presents a failure — while wearing a pink boa … because nobody looks good in a pink boa. Fail Fest presentations involve discussing a major blunder that occurred during a project, as well as the lessons learned from that mistake. During our last Fail Fest, we heard presentations from three executive-level staff members, which was a wonderful reminder to all of us that sh*t happens and that you gotta own your mistakes, learn from them, and move on.
10:00am: Set up my new desk. I rip off a page on my daily animal cartoon calendar and share it with the coworkers, who are luckily as nerdy as I am and appreciate a good animal pun. I then head to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.
10:15am: Open my work computer, a Macbook Air, and begin responding to emails. As I respond, I also update my to-do lists for each of my projects on Trello, a platform to help you stay organized. If you don’t use Trello, you definitely should. It is a game-changer!
10:30am: On Trello, I pull tasks from each one of my projects to create one big to-do list for the day. I “eat the frog,†meaning I put the things that I’m the least excited to do on the top of the list so that I can get them over with right away. I tend to hate working through analytics. Data (and numbers in general) are not my strong suit, but I know metrics are important in order to make sure my campaigns are performing well and hitting our goals when it comes to sign-ups and impact (depending on the campaign, we might be measuring the total amount of clothes recycled, number of cigarette butts cleaned up, etc.).
11:00am: The data team has some ideas for how to increase the conversion rate on one of my campaigns. The goal is to have more young people signing up and taking action. With help from the marketing and social media teams, we strategize re: how to get the word out about the specific campaign and discuss the tweaks for the copy on the website in order to make the wording more actionable. Once the meeting is over, I immediately send out an email outlining each team’s next steps.
12:30pm: I run outside to grab food. I work in the Flatiron area, so there are tons of amazing and delicious options for lunch.
12:45pm: I bring my lunch back to the office. At DoSomething, we have a no-eating-at-your-desk policy. This is awesome because it forces everyone to take a break from work, sit in the kitchen, and be social, even if just for ten minutes. I genuinely love all of my coworkers and appreciate being able to chat with whomever happens to be eating at that time of the day.
1:30pm: I have a call with a corporate sponsor. Together, we are running a recycling campaign. I pull up the agenda that I sent out via Google Calendar the day before. We go through each item, and the sponsor is thrilled to hear that more than 78,000 DoSomething.org members have recycled 500,000+ pounds of material.
2:00pm: I check Zendesk (our customer service management platform) and answer emails from members who have questions about the campaigns I’m responsible for.
2:30pm: I head to the campaigns and product team sync, an interdepartmental meeting. It’s the perfect time to talk about any bugs on the site, new tools that the product and tech team are building, and ways to optimize our website to make the user experience even better for members. (We have “Fight For the User†painted on our office wall for a reason).
3:00pm: I prepare for a brainstorm on ways to get more young people thinking about how climate change disproportionately affects low-income communities. First, I research the topic myself and ask my intern to put together a full research brief. Once I have a solid understanding of the issue, I think of an impactful call to action that DoSomething.org members could take to solve the issue I’ve just identified. I then put a DoSomething.org twist on the call to action – making sure the campaign is something fun and bold that young people would actually enjoy doing. I usually find the spin by thinking about what young people are already doing, the places they are already going, and the content with which they are already interacting. I spit out as many ideas as I can, even the very worst ones, and then narrow it down to my top three. I’ll share these ideas with the rest of the campaign team in a couple of days. Then we’ll share them with the business development team, who then pitches them to a potential sponsor.
3:30pm: I have a call with a potential strategic partner, i.e. an organization who isn’t a good fit as a paid sponsor but has a unique expertise or resource that would be valuable to DoSomething. I hear about the incredible work they are doing around palm oil and deforestation, and we discuss ways that we can activate DoSomething’s membership around their mission.
4:00pm: My manager Slacks me (Slack is a real-time communication tool great for team collaboration) to ask if I want to speak at a youth and social good summit in San Francisco. I normally dread public speaking, but it’s really fun participating in humble-brag sessions about the badass work DoSomething does. Plus, apart from New York City, San Francisco is my favorite city in the U.S. I say yes!
5:00pm: Someone on staff sends out an email with the theme for this week’s “power hour.†Once a week, we create a staff-curated playlist to work/jam out to. This week’s theme is “Girl Power.†I add Beyoncé’s “Run the World†to the Sonos queue and get into a friendly debate with the other three people who sit at my pod about Queen Bey’s best song of all time. A few other colleagues at pods nearby hear our discussion and weigh in.
6:00pm: Leave the office and rush to a 6:30pm yoga class.
7:30pm: After yoga, I call my mom while walking to the train. I’m the youngest of five and incredibly close with my family. I tell my mom about the success of the clothing recycling campaign and the opportunity to travel to San Francisco for a conference. She is excited for me. My dad gets on the phone, and we talk about the election for a few minutes.
8:00pm: Arrive home to Hippo and my boyfriend, Jesse. We finished our leftovers last night, so we cook a new meal together.
8:30pm: While dinner is in the oven, I review some reportbacks. Reportbacks are the photos and captions that our members submit to prove that they have done a campaign with us. Through this member content, I get to see how passionate, creative, and proactive this next generation of leaders is.
9:00pm: Eat dinner and catch up with Jesse.
10:00pm: Check Twitter and Facebook to see if there is anything that should be on my radar before I call it a night.
11:00pm: Get in bed and read a book before I pass out from a long but rewarding day.
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