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Sep 23
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996: Tackling Work Stressors and Transitions with Dr. Tessa West

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Tessa West shares her method for making the necessary changes that lead to greater job satisfaction.

You’ll Learn

  1. How your body tells you when it’s time to change jobs
  2. How to not be overwhelmed by the stresses at work 
  3. The hidden curriculum that helps you succeed at work 

About Tessa

Tessa West is a Professor of Psychology at New York University and a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Her work focuses on questions such as, why is it so hard to give honest, critical feedback? and how do class, race, and cultural differences make communication in the workplace so difficult, and what can we do to improve it?

Tessa’s work has been covered by Scientific American, the New York Times, ABC World News, TIME, Harper’s Bazaar, the Financial Times, Forbes, CNBC, CNN, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Bloomberg, Strategy and Business, and the US Supreme Court. She has appeared on the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, CNN, and Good Morning America, and is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal. She is the author of the book Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What To Do About Them and the upcoming Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works For You. 

Resources Mentioned

Tessa West Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Tessa, welcome back.

Tessa West
Thank you so much for having me back. I’m super excited.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I am excited to talk about your book, Job Therapy, and I just think we’ve got to hear of a job story you had at a Hollywood Video. Lay it on us.

Tessa West
All right. When I was in high school, I worked at Hollywood Video, which for you, young people, is a place where you would actually physically go to rent a movie in VHS format, which I don’t think even exists anymore. And I had this amazing manager who was dealing coke from the back room.

Pete Mockaitis
Cocaine. Illegal drug.

Tessa West
Yeah, cocaine. Cocaine from the back room, and, also, was probably stealing from the cash register. And we all got fired one day, corporate came in and axed us all. And this was a little bit of a problem for me because when I went to college at UC Santa Barbara, I was just blacklisted from all Hollywood Videos, and that was kind of the only video rental store in the neighborhood where I lived. And so, I could never rent from them again. I not only lost my job because of the cocaine-dealing boss, but I also could never open an account in a Hollywood Video ever again, and that just totally cramped my style for, like, the four years I was in college.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now I’m imagining you like hanging out outside the Hollywood Video, it’s like, “Hey, hey, Mister, can you rent me a movie?”

Tessa West
Totally. I’m like, “I’ll pay you an extra dollar. You give me, like, the latest new release wall,” whatever came out. I think it was “The Negotiator” came out, and I was pretty bummed. Yeah, it was not great.

Pete Mockaitis
So, they thought you were involved in these illegal activities, but you were just around him.

Tessa West
I was 16. I mean, I knew some shady stuff was going on in the back room. There were times I wasn’t allowed back there. But it’s a minimum-wage teenager job, and it was just much easier for corporate to just come in, clean house, fire all of us, instead of sort of interrogating who was involved and who wasn’t.

And I think a lot of people kind of end up getting caught in these situations at work where there’s a baddie and they get sucked into all that drama, and it’s just much easier to fire all 20 employees and just start fresh than to figure out who’s guilty of dealing the cocaine, or aiding and abetting in the cocaine dealing, or whatever.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. You know, it’s amazing that last time we talked about bad bosses and toxic coworkers, and this didn’t even come up.

Tessa West
I know. This isn’t even my worst boss. This is like my 10th worst boss. The weird part was I didn’t even really care until I couldn’t rent there anymore. That’s when I got pissed.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, we’re talking now about your book Job Therapy: Finding Work That Works for You. So, I guess that’s one tip, avoid Hollywood Video and cocaine-dealing bosses as a first piece on the checklist. But you have much more wisdom, I know, than that to share with us. Could you kick us off with anything that’s particularly surprising that you’ve discovered here?

Tessa West
Yes, I think a lot of us have really mixed feelings about our jobs. I was surprised when I interviewed people for this book at how ambivalent people feel. It was a lot kind of in the air with people being really miserable at work, tons of Gallup polls, all that business of everyone wants to quit, no one’s happy. But when I actually sat down with people, they would talk out of both sides of their mouth, “I love this job.” “I hate this job.”

“I’m totally committed to this job. It’s what defines me. It’s my identity. But I fantasize about doing this other thing that’s completely different from that. But just to remind you, Tessa, during this interview, I really do love this job. I promise.” And so, you see kind of those mixed emotions you see when people are thinking about any kind of relationship they have, even if that’s with a parent that they have a fraught relationship with, or a romantic relationship.

It’s kind of this love, hate, back and forth, hot, cold business that I think a lot of us are actually struggling with, which is much more realistic than just people loving or hating something or wanting to quit. I think there’s just a lot of kind of ambivalence out there.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, that really resonates and hits home with regard to, it is a mixed bag, every job, every relationship. I’m reminded of a comedian who talked about the city of Chicago, which is like, “The long, cold, miserable winters,” and say, “What are you doing here? You should just leave. You should just leave,” like a bad relationship. He’s like, “No, you should see how Chicago treats me in the summer.”

Tessa West
Yeah, New Yorkers are the same, we’re like, “I hate this place but I really couldn’t live anywhere else because every other place I would hate even more, but I really do hate it here.”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, what a complicated relationship we have then with our jobs. How do we even begin to unpack then whether we are in our New York of a job or we really do need to get out of here?

Tessa West
I really think the only way to really unpack this is to measure your feelings for a while. I’m a scientist, so I’m a huge fan of collecting data on yourself, and really doing it, not just trying to recall how you feel, or how you felt over the past month, because I think a lot of us fall victim to some of the basic biases that we fall victim to when we’re falling out of love with a person.

So, we’re super sensitive to things like intermittent reinforcement. When we’re questioning our careers, if your boss is really nice to you, or maybe you just get an added bonus you didn’t expect. That actually makes you feel a hundred times better about your job than it probably should because you’re in this fragile place, and so you don’t actually realize that you’re falling victim to these kinds of things, that you’re overly-sensitive to reinforcement when you’re questioning your career, that you’re misremembering how you were treated or how you felt.

The only way to really get a handle on that is to look for consistency in how you feel and to measure yourself for a couple of weeks, or even up to a month, and really look for those patterns. And so, in this book, I just put a ton of questionnaires that have been vetted and created by psychologists, and really try to help people play scientists to their own experience so that they can understand it from almost like a third-party perspective, from an objective observer’s perspective, to kind of remove some of those biases that we’re all going to fall victim to when we start questioning something, when we start falling out of love with something.

Pete Mockaitis
Very intriguing. So then, as we measure things, well, I’m tempted to go into all kinds of detail about how we do that, and let’s do some of that. I’m thinking about dating again, in terms of, there are folks, it’s like, yes, they would love to date the super-rich, super brilliant, super gorgeous, super hilarious, super kind, whatever mythical human that doesn’t actually exist. And if that person did, they’d probably wouldn’t want to be with you. No offense. No offense, Tessa. You’re delightful.

But I mean, when I hear people, sometimes I’ve heard those who are single and not yet settled down, it’s like, “Well, you know, I just haven’t met the person.” “Well, what are you looking for?” It’s like, “Oh, well, I don’t think that person is real or exists.” I think, likewise, we can do that with our jobs, it’s like, “Oh, I guess I just haven’t really found the perfect job yet or the one of a job yet.”

So can you just maybe give us some very rough guidelines in terms of, “If you’re in this kind of zone, probably wrong job, get out of there. If you’re in this kind of zone, you got it pretty good, you know. And if you’re in if you’re looking for this kind of zone, I’m sorry that’s not real”? Can you just kindly orient us to reality for a bit?

Tessa West
Yes, I’m happy to do that. I studied dating and relationships, too, so you will hear all those metaphors come out of my mouth today. So, I think the first thing is, you need to really think seriously about what stresses you out at work, and how much you can anticipate those stressors. The number one reason why people are actually miserable at work is because they, (a), can’t anticipate stressors, or they’re doing a bad job at it. Most of the time, we actually can, if we write it down, see it coming.

And, (b), they’re very bad at bouncing back from how those stressful situations impact their productivity, their sleep, and their other relationships. And so, if you are in a job where, if you say in the morning, think about what’s going to stress you out, in the evening, write down what actually stressed you out, and you can’t predict that.

And those unanticipated stressors screw up your communication with your spouse, make you task-switch too much, make you self-interrupt, interfere with your ability to communicate, all these kinds of distal outcomes, you’re in a bad place. I don’t care how great the job is on paper, unanticipated stressors, and your inability to kind of put stopgaps in place and prevent the bleed from that stressful event to your productivity and to your other aspects of your life that you care about, you’re in trouble.

And that’s different for everyone. For some people, that’s being interrupted all the time. They can’t control the flow of work. For other people, it’s just being late. They can’t stand it when they can’t control how long it’s going to take them to drive to work and where they’re going to park. So, you have to figure out what those triggers are. And I think most of us don’t actually put enough weight on low-level daily stressors and how much they impact us, but they really can screw you up because they can affect your sleep, how often you get colds, your diet, and all of this other stuff that has nothing to do with work, that then feeds back into work.

So, I’d say measure those things. That’s kind of, you know, it really comes down to control over those things. I’d say the other dimension that really matters is how identified you want to be with your career, how much you want it to define you, and how much that career is loving you back. And if there’s a huge mismatch, if you are, like, in love with this career, it’s everything to you, when it’s going well, you feel good, when it’s going poorly, you feel terrible, and it’s just not giving you those signs that it’s loving you as much as you want to love it, it’s an unrequited love situation. That’s a bad place to be.

I think, and, again, all of us can be, we can find that match in different places. Anchoring just on income and things like that, I think is a mistake, as you talked about, you know, finding the model who’s funny and rich, there’s going to be a mismatch there because you’re going to fall in love with that person and they’re not going to love you back.

So, I’d say that identity match and control over your stressors, those are the main things. I think if you have those things in check, you can kind of play around with those other dimensions and find happiness at work. But those are really those things that are kind of deal breakers, I think, for most people.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, it’s really intriguing to zero in on these elements. Because it sounds like, is it fair to say, in your research, these trump the other things in terms of, I say, “Hey, you know what? I find my job meaningful. I find it challenging. I enjoy my co-workers. I feel like I’m learning and growing and attaining mastery. Like, I’ve got a lot of good things that make this job good”? But, if the stressor situation and the identity situation isn’t working for me, is that enough to just outweigh it and say, “I should probably get out of here”?

Tessa West
Definitely the stressors are. I think the things you just mentioned feed into the identity. So, if your colleagues love you, if you’re finding purpose in the work, the job is probably loving you back as much as you’re loving it. And so, I’d see those as sort of like an outcome of that identity match, “You know, I feel highly identified with this job and it’s bringing me satisfaction.” Both pieces of identity are important. You need to feel satisfied with that identity and also feel like you’re getting something from it.

And then when you have those pieces, you love your coworkers, you’re willing to kind of step in at 10:00 p.m. and do the extra thing because you feel like the job is loving you back, so those are outcomes of those things. Stressors are like throwing wrenches into all of those things, “I have great communication at work, but I never know how long it’s going to take me to get there. And some days I get there an hour early, and it’s great. Other times, I get there an hour late and I’m sweating and stressed the rest of the day.” Those things absolutely throw a wrench in the relationship with your career.

So, I think you just really have to pay attention to those things, and don’t let yourself be talked out of them because the income is good, because the comp package is good, and people do this with relationships, “I’m dating a rich guy. Who cares if he treats me like crap.” It does, it matters. You’re not going to care about the money when he’s yelling at you or calling you ugly. You’re just not. And the same is true at work.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, could you give us a rundown of some of these unanticipated stressors that pack a big punch and show up all the time for folks?

Tessa West
I think the main ones are things like your boss shows up and puts a meeting on your calendar that you didn’t plan for. Commute is another huge one that people can’t stand. Senior leadership showing up. Absorbing the roles of other people. So, I did a study for this book based on an NPR kind of short called “Nobody Told Me That,” where I asked people what are the biggest surprises they encountered at work.

And it’s almost always, “I was hired to do X and now I’m doing Y. I was hired to showcase art in a gallery but really all I do is lift 120-pound boxes of art, but no one told me that like lifting heavy objects was part of the job.” And those kinds of, like, tack-on tasks are super common at work. I think 80% of us are doing them, but they take away from your job. They often have nothing to do with what gets you promoted, and they’re super stressful because you don’t know how to fit them into your job.

And so, you have to do a lot of digging to kind of figure out if those are going to crop up. But those unanticipated extra roles or jobs of the person who called in sick, or they fire the person who’s in charge of that, those are huge, and they tend to be small asks, 10-, 20-minute asks, not heavy lifts, but they really eat into people’s wellbeing. And you can feel your blood pressure going up when you’re in the middle of something and someone comes and asks you to do one of these things, like lifting a heavy box for them that you did not sign up for.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, these are the kinds of stressors. And then, I’m curious, just how much is too much? I mean, it sounds like every job is going to have a little bit of ebb and flow and unpredictability. How do we make that determination?

Tessa West
The best way to do this isn’t to ask yourself, “Have I hit my wall?” It’s to actually map out what the outcomes of those stressors are. And so, our instinct is to think about the things that stress us out and then try to kind of reframe them in a positive way, “Yes, I had to lift that heavy box, but this is part of what it takes to climb up at work.”

I urge you not to try to do that kind of reframing exercise. Instead, measure how often you’re lifting those heavy boxes, and measure your sleep every night. If what you find is, if you have three days in a row of, say, an unexpected stressor, a late commute, a calendar invite with no notice, a heavy box, and then you can see that, say, for the next five days your sleep is screwed up, this is what happens to me, my unanticipated stressors are cumulative.

One, I’m fine; two or more, I don’t sleep for a week, that’s when you know you’re in trouble, and so you really have to see those associations. Don’t assume you know what they are because they’re often a little bit distal. The way stressors work is they tend to not impact us immediately. They tend to be cumulative and distal.

So, if you’re stressed out right now, you’re going to get a cold in two weeks. That’s how long it takes for your immune system to take the hit, for it to get down, for you to get infected with something, for you to be symptomatic. So, we often don’t see the connection between the stressor and the outcome. The only way to know is to measure it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, let’s talk about these measurings. So, one is sleep, and I’m sporting an Oura ring right now, and that’s cool. Or you could have a Fitbit or Apple Watch or something or just notice, “Hey, that sleep was short. I woke up at 5:00 a.m. against my will. What’s that about?” Or, “I went to bed at 11:00, and somehow didn’t end up actually falling asleep until much later.”

So, you just sort of, you notice. Sleep is worse, outside my control. It’s not like I was having the time of my life partying somewhere and I got to bed late. But rather, my body just did not comply with my sleep request. So, there’s one indicator. What are some of the other things we should be observing and tracking?

Tessa West
Weird diet, skipping meals, eating junk food, eating your feelings, drinking, those types of things. Low-level conflict is another one that we often see. So, if you have, say, two or three days of low-level stressors at work, you’re going to end up fighting more with your kids, with your spouse. You’re going to yell at your kid for watching too much iPad, those kinds of things, which in the moment, you have a reason, “My kid was really grinding me. He refused to put down the iPad, so I yelled at him.”

The real reason is, “You know, I had a fight with my boss this morning, and I never came down from that kind of cortisol boost, and now I’m exhausted. I have no ability to sort of cognitively override that,” so low-level conflict at home. And then the other kind of unanticipated one is self-interruptions at work. So, I have a chapter in my book called “The Torn Between Places,” where I figured out that most of the time when we are interrupted at work, we do it to ourselves.

We self-distract. We check our phones. We minimize windows to open other windows. We shop on Zoom calls. And we often do this when we are cognitively depleted, meaning like we’re out of mental resources to not do it. And when you’re stressed, you tend to kind of eat away at those resources, and so you find yourself texting, checking your phone constantly at work. That’s another outcome of feeling kind of chronic low-level stress.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s really intriguing and good to flag because if we’re stressed, tired, out of cognitive resources, sometimes you might assume, “Well, the thing you’re going to do is immediately go to sleep.” And yet, it’s funny, it’s like the suppression power of being depleted means that, “No, what we do is just what we really want to do and have been suppressing.”

I remember back in the pandemic days, there was a time my wife was sick and it was all me. Full, 100% childcare, it’s Pete, the dad’s time to shine, and it’s like, “Okay.” And so, I thought it’s always kind of intense and kind of exhausting, and I always also try to keep a few things in the air, a little bit with work in terms of, like, respond to a few things and whatnot. Just not totally dropping the ball there.

And it was so funny, you would think that after those days, I’m like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m just going to just collapse immediately into bed.” And what I found myself doing, it was so weird, it was like, I went and played video games, and I don’t do much of that in general, but it’s just like, “This just really is what needs to happen right now.”

And so, you’re highlighting an interesting phenomenon in the human experience. I don’t think I’ve heard someone articulate quite this way before, is when that’s happening, that’s a sign that we are mentally depleted and/or stressed.

Tessa West
I think if you find yourself seeking out alone time at weird hours to do weird things that you never used to do, and you’re sort of justifying that as alone time, “I went through this as a new parent,” “I went through this in the pandemic,” and not because you really don’t get any alone time but because you’re too depleted to do any work, and your cortisol hasn’t dropped enough so you can’t fall asleep. So, there’s kind of this, like, bottom-up top-down problem of like physiologically your body can’t actually relax enough to sleep.

You know, things like cortisol, they peak in the morning, they peak in the afternoon, and then they’re supposed to go down, so that by the time you’re ready to go to sleep, you don’t have all this, like, adrenaline and all this cort in your body. But when you’ve been stressed, you break out of that cycle and so your brain can’t do anything, but it wants to play video games, it wants to watch Netflix, it wants to do something distracting that isn’t sleep but doesn’t involve social interaction, which is kind of depleting.

So, if you find yourself wanting to play video games at 2:00 o’clock in the morning or watching TV instead of sleep, that’s usually a sign that your body is too physiologically strained to sleep, but your mind is too exhausted to do anything real, and I think that’s just a red flag a lot of us aren’t really trained to look out for.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, thanks for flagging that one. Flag of the flag. Anything else we should be observing?

Tessa West
In terms of stress, I think anything with disrupted patterns. If you usually exercise and then, all of a sudden, you’re not motivated to. If you want to disengage socially, that’s a huge kind of red flag that you’re probably pretty stressed out. Social interactions tend to be depleting for most people in some way, even if they’re good, even if they’re engaging. Those are the kinds of things we tend to be a little bit withdrawing from.

And then I think the other thing you should be really attuned to is stress contagion. So, I do a lot of research on how the stress we feel spreads to other people, and how, when we’re really stressed, we’re actually hyper-attuned to the stress cues of others. So, if I’m stressed and then I interact with a co-worker whose voice is a little bit hyper, who’s really fidgety, who is avoiding eye contact, I’m going to be like super sensitive to those cues and even more susceptible to catching that person’s stress.

So, if you find yourself getting ramped up when you’re around a hyper or stressed-out colleague, you can feel your heart rate going up, you can feel your palms sweating, you’re probably already kind of at a disadvantage. You’re a little bit stressed out, and you’re going to be super susceptible to catching the stress of other people around you, and so you kind of have to regulate that and take yourself out of those social contexts.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And you’re also talking about some assessments and questions that you can ask yourself and record answers to regularly. What are some of the potentially insightful items on those assessments?

Tessa West
I think if you want to go at this really simply, the easiest thing you can do is, in the morning, ask yourself what you’re the most worried about going into the day, and how your sleep was that night. And in the evening, ask yourself was that thing that you were worried about actually that stressful and what unanticipated stressors you faced?

What I find in my book is that about 50% of the time, the things we’re the most worried about in the morning tend to not actually be that bad, mostly because we can put steps in place to make ourselves feel better, to prepare for them mentally so that we are challenged, we’re not threatened. But when we looked at people’s so-called unanticipated stressors, they were things that they actually encounter really regularly.

So, the irony is they’re not actually that unanticipated when they thought about it. They just didn’t anticipate them in the moment. And those are those things I talked about, like a commute running late, or that calendar invite, that in the moment you didn’t anticipate, but if I asked you, “How often has this happened?” most people say, “Oh, it actually happens pretty frequently.”

So, they’re not actually processing these things as frequent stressors. They’re processing them as unanticipated until I tell them to write them down, and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, actually, I actually deal with this like once a week.” So, I think that’s the simplest thing you can do is kind of measure those patterns.

And then I think the key reason why you should do this, not only just to learn about your own body, your own experiences, but if you are to look for a new job, if you’re to start networking with people, you know exactly sort of what to ask for, what red flags are going to spike your blood pressure. So, you can ask questions like, “How often does the boss put unanticipated meetings on the calendar?”

If you’ve identified that as something that really stresses you out, you want to avoid that in your next job. But you really have to be like very kind of systematic and learning your own triggers so that you know exactly what to ask and when during those networking conversations during those job interviews.

Pete Mockaitis
So, it sounds like merely identifying the patterns and anticipating the stressors prior to them occurring is useful and powerful for your own resilience in and of itself. So that’s cool. Great.

Tessa West
Yeah, absolutely. We got to learn what makes us not sleep, and, surprisingly, people don’t actually know. Scientists know. We can run statistics on you and tell you, but if I was to ask you, “Why didn’t you sleep last night?” You’re going to make up all kinds of things, from the room was too hot, to this or that, and it probably has very little to do with those things. You just don’t know because it’s something that happened three days ago that’s impacting your sleep.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, then I’m curious, one thing that’s in our control is to say, “Oh, this job has a ton of the things that trigger me. It’s time for another job.” So that’s one thing we could do, is make the switch. I’m curious about what are some of the things we might be able to do to, since you’re highlighting here, that stress can be a sneaky little bugger who has negative impacts days and weeks later than the actual inciting incident occurred? So that seems to suggest that it would be in our interest to proactively do some things about how we are handling stress so as to flourish all the better. So, lay it on us, what should we do there?

Tessa West
Yeah, I think here’s the good news. You have a lot more control over the impact of stress and how frequently you encounter these things than you realize. I think the good news is most of the stressors that are actually anticipated are things you can control to some degree. So, if you figure out, for instance, that your boss tends to put those unanticipated meetings on your calendar, once you sort of track the data, you realize it’s occurring every other Thursday or something like that, or you can figure out what that pattern is with your boss, then you can kind of put those blocks in your day.

I think one of the main things that stress people out is not getting their list of things done in the day, but if they actually figure out why, it’s through self-interruptions. There are things you can do to kind of prevent self-interruptions. If you’re being interrupted by other people, I talk in this book about how you can look around the environment and figure out sort of who’s interrupting you and when. Is it because their office is close? Is it because their office is not close, and they don’t know how to systematically interrupt you?

So, tracking these things, learning your own environment, and then putting stopgaps in place is huge. I think once I figured out what stressed me out, which was disappointing people, not getting them something done in time, and then I was thinking, “Okay, why am I disappointing them? Am I taking on too much? Sure, maybe I’m taking on too much,” but that wasn’t actually the reason. The real reason was, during my smart time every day, which was from 8:00 to 10:00 a.m., I was interrupting myself up to 15 times to check my LinkedIn to see who liked a post.

This is embarrassing, but I will admit that this happened. And once I started tracking my own behaviors, I realized I have this weird tick where I want to see how popular I am on LinkedIn, and it’s usually in the morning and that’s conflicting with my smart time, and when I don’t get my smart time, and I don’t get the thing done, that then leads me to disappoint people. So, if I’m 100% honest with myself, I have complete control over that daisy chain of events that’s leading to the stressor.

It took me a really long time to figure out what it was. But once I did, all I did was put away LinkedIn for those two hours, and it totally solved the problem. And that’s kind of a simple example, but I think, once you are honest with yourself about what you’re actually doing, what situations you’re putting yourself in to potentially exacerbate these triggers or allow them to happen, if you have a commute, you just have to plan for the max. You know, if it’s between 30 and 60 minutes, just always assume 60 minutes.

Things like that, I think we have a lot more control over, but you do have to play detective of your own behaviors, of your own triggers, of your own weaknesses, and admit that you have them, and then instead of band-aiding problems, my sleep deprivation, I bought all those cold sheets that they tell you, “Okay, well, it’s probably too warm in your room.” So, I bought those.

That wasn’t really the issue. It was conflict with someone at work that had happened like up to two days before that. Once I figured that out, I didn’t need the cold sheets and my sleep was fine. But you do have to do the homework and do the digging, but most people can actually figure it out.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And that’s really cool how sometimes, when you do the detective work, you’re on the case and you see, “Aha, it’s because of this, and I can make this shift. And then as a result, things will things be hunky-dory.” So that’s super. I’m curious, if you discover some stuff that is less in your control, sort of like no matter what you do, this colleague is going to critique your work.

And not that they’re being a total jerk about it, but they’re just going to be like, “Oh, you know, you should do this. Oh, why didn’t you do that? You know, and that’s just, okay.” That’s just kind of the way they are. Maybe you’ve even asked them, “Hey, you know, I’d really appreciate it. You know, I work best under these kinds of collaborative conditions.” Okay, whatever. You’ve done all you could do and still, stuff happens, and it’s being served at you. How do we best deal with those pieces?

Tessa West
Yeah, I think, you know, my first book is called Jerks at Work, and it’s like, try all those strategies, and if it doesn’t work, then you need to go into Job Therapy and learn how to network to find a new job. I do think, I don’t want to be Pollyannish and think you can solve all your problems. I do think controllability is a huge piece.

Once you figure out what needs to be controlled, what the problem is, if you can’t control that in much the same way that you can’t fix a marriage by yourself, if your partner is like, “Screw this, I’m not interested in therapy. I’m not interested in doing any reparative work,” that’s when you have to start exploring new things.

What I don’t want people to do is think that that means quit and then start applying. I think you need to start having those kind of 15-minute conversations with strangers while you’re still employed, because a lot of us have a grass-is-greener idea, and we don’t actually know whether we’re going to face the same thing in another job that we’re facing now.

And I think the easiest thing you can do is reach out to people who are in your organization or outside of it, or in your industry, and I know people don’t like networking, but I think of networking conversations more about information-seeking and asking them about their jobs and less about talking about yourself, just to get a feel for what the day-in-the-life is of other jobs, and that should be your only goal, “What is the day in the life like of this job, at this company, at this role?”

Really simple mundane questions about, “What do you do every day? What does it look like? How loud is it? Who are your colleagues? How much control do you have over how you see them?” Those kinds of low-level things. You want to reach out to as many people as you can to have those conversations to see what it’s like on the other side, instead of assuming that it’s going to be better because often it’s actually not so great on the other side, and you kind of have to bide your time a little bit before you start reaching out or you start applying for new things.

But I think that that very first step is just talking to people in those companies, and just saying, “Hey, can you tell me, like, what your day-to-day is? What do you do like from 9:00 to 5:00, from 9:00 to 10:00, 10:00 to 11:00? What’s that look like?”

Pete Mockaitis
I like that specificity there. And I’m curious, while we’re biding our time, we’re doing our research, we’re talking to some people, are there any sort of like first-aid strategies you recommend for, we’re getting blasted by work stressors all the time? How do we just kind of deal and cope better? You suggested not reframing, “Well, this is just part of what you have to do to get ahead.” So, if that’s something that we don’t want to do, what’s something we do want to do?

Tessa West
I think the easiest thing you can do to kind of regulate, and this, actually, this is going to sound like a weird connection, but it comes out of the “Intimate Partner Violence” literature. So, how do you get from ten to one on, like, that anger scale? Is just taking yourself out of the situation, going for a walk, or shutting yourself in your office for ten minutes alone? Don’t interact with anyone. Don’t go complain immediately to a colleague if you’re stressed.

Our instinct is to want to sort of, like, explode our negative emotions onto others in an effort to get them to regulate it for us, to get them to make us feel better, to complain. And I think that instinct is fine for maybe later on, but at first just take a couple minutes, I think, and go for a walk, or have a cup of coffee. I think the best emotion regulation strategy in the “Intimate Partner Violence” literature is count to 100 alone in a room. That’s the best predictor of getting people to, like, not want to punch someone because it actually helps downregulate emotions at the basic physiologic level.

So, your blood pressure goes down, your heart rate goes down. You need to do the things to get your body to change before your mind can. And I think for some people, they’re good at meditating, I’m not. But I can take 10 minutes to, like, listen to music or something like that. Just do that a couple of times, I think, is the easiest and the best strategy people can do.

And I think building your physical space in a way that’s comfortable is also really important. And temperature matters, sound matters, so as much control over your little environmental, you know, whatever kind of makes you happy in your environment, those creature comforts is really important.

Pete Mockaitis
You talk about “Intimate Partner Violence” literature, I guess I’m just thinking about, like, children and their emotional regulation pieces. It seems like many of these really do still apply to us.

Tessa West
Yeah, timeout, self-induced time out. It’s the same. When it comes to emotion regulation, there’s only so many ways to skin a cat, and you don’t actually need to be that complicated about it. It really just comes down to taking deep breaths and getting your heart rate down. Once your body is calm, then your mind will follow.

But I think we often want to do something immediately that feels good, that feels like a release, and that usually means word vomiting to our colleague. And that’s the thing I would avoid because that leads to stress contagion and all that kind of yucky business.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we’ve immediately managed our stresses, we’re doing some research. What are some of the other key steps you recommend that we undergo when we’ve determined, “Yep, it’s time to make a switch”?

Tessa West
I think that kind of the number one thing is talking to strangers. I think 15-minute conversations are key. In the book, I talk about how you can reach, how you can write a cold email to someone and get them to actually write you back. I had to do this for the book. I was shocked at how much people were willing to talk about themselves. What they weren’t willing to do is have a conversation where I sold myself to them for no reason, you know, like, “I’m on the job market, I’m looking for something, and I’m going to tell you how great I am.”

No one would reply to emails like that. Not that I was doing that, but people often reach out in an effort to impress. And I think, instead, you want to reach out and say, “I have these three questions about before you started this job, nobody told me that. How would you answer that?” I think little things like that. I think the job interview process is a place where we often have terrible communication. We don’t have honest interviews, like we don’t have first dates.

I think it’s really important to remind yourself that, during that early kind of sourcing stage where you’re learning about a job, you’re talking to a hiring manager, you need a little bit of tension in those conversations where you’re asking tough questions. People avoid that because they think it makes them look bad or ungrateful, but you can onlDy kind of build intimacy with some tension in close relationships, and I think that’s true with job interviews.

You want to ask those tough questions. People like it. It turns out it looks like you’re looking for long-term fit. So, I think asking some difficult questions to assess fit, to find red flags. My favorite question is, “What does it look like to fail at this job?” People always can answer that one because they’ve seen it a million times. It’s better than asking, “What does it look like to succeed?” because that tends to be vague. Failure tends to be specific. So, questions like that. I think you just have to be willing to have like super honest conversations and listen to people and not sell yourself. At least, that’s not your initial goal.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Any other tips as we’re all walking this journey?

Tessa West
Don’t feel afraid to get rejected when you’re reaching out to people you don’t know. People are very nervous these days about looking awkward. I study social awkwardness, and it largely lives in our heads more than how it manifests behaviorally. And we’re a little out of practice with talking to people we don’t know, and I think that’s why people aren’t dating as much. It’s why they are afraid to have coffee or a Zoom call with a stranger. But everyone’s in the same boat, so it’s okay.

Do not think that you can learn about a job by sitting on your couch and reading websites and Glassdoor stuff, or even and getting those LinkedIn certifications, or whatever. You really can only learn about it through interpersonal communication and talking to people. I’m convinced that websites and passive learning, video watching, can only get you so far. You need to get in there and learn about the hidden curriculum and all that juicy stuff that people don’t advertise about jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
When you say the hidden curriculum, what do you mean by this?

Tessa West
This is all the stuff that leads you to succeed at work that nobody talks about. Sometimes that means that company policies go against what it takes to actually succeed. The dark side is like taking maternity leave is a bad idea because someone else will take your job. That’s a piece of hidden curriculum. Sometimes it’s weird norms.

So I asked people, I did a study where I asked them about all the weird norms they encountered at work, and sometimes it’s like where you’re allowed to sit, who you can email to ask questions, whose orange juice you can drink from the office fridge, little things like that, but also things like knowledge transfer, which is a complex concept of, like, “If I know something from my old job, do people give a crap in my new job? Are they interested in learning about that? Or do they have their own set of rules here that contradict that?”

And I think a lot of us have a hard time getting over a newcomer hump at work because we assume the knowledge from our old job will carry over to a new one, when in reality there’s like a whole new set of norms and rules and even jargon. That’s another thing that we don’t like at work, but it’s super common. Everyone has their own terms, their own acronyms they use at work. They tend to be pretty idiosyncratic to companies. So, the ones you know now at your job now are going to be different than the ones that the new company uses.

So, just like, “How much of that do I have to learn? How steep is that hill to climb?” And what I think will I need to succeed, is that really what the people who’ve succeeded have? I’ll say one more thing which is job ads often have a list of requirements that are not the real requirements needed. And the reason why is because it’s for the sourcing for hiring managers. They want to cast a wide net so they tend to sort of underwrite ads, but what they’re really looking for is often not written in that ad.

And so, you have to do some digging to figure out, “Okay, they actually left out this really important thing that everyone who’s ever gotten this job had but it’s not in the ad because if they put it there, they’d only get three applicants,” or something like that. There’s lots of kind of mundane reasons but even at the level of the job ad, there’s a hidden curriculum of like what’s missing from that that you really do need to land the job and to succeed at it.

Pete Mockaitis
Thank you. That’s really nice, and it’s pretty substantial just how much is hidden, and just how skewed and inaccurate a picture we could get if we only rely on what’s published.

Tessa West
Yeah, think about it like a dating app. Imagine that you meet someone based on their app profile. Would you think that that app is 100% accurate and representative of the person? Most of us would laugh and say, “Of course not. That photo is 15 years old. They overestimated their height and their income and all this other stuff.” We know that, right? We intuitively know that our dating profile is not representative of us, so why do we think a job ad is representative of a job?

It’s the same kind of logic that I think you should apply. And when you meet someone on a first date, you want to do a little bit of digging to see how accurate that profile was. A lot of us are feeling catfished. We show up and we’re like, “That’s not you.” And I think that can happen with jobs, but we’re feeling much more vulnerable than when we’re dating, where we’re afraid to kind of dig for the truth because we want to get to the next stage.

So, we don’t ask those questions like, “Who wrote the ad?” and “Has my future boss even seen this ad?” Most of the time the answer is no. Some hiring manager wrote it, scraping from Indeed. And so, we have to treat it with that same level of kind of circumspect perspective that we would a dating app.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Tessa, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about your favorite things?

Tessa West
I’m a professor so I give you a lot of homework. It’s going to feel like a lot, but once you get the hang of kind of measuring yourself and learning about yourself by collecting these data, you’re going to be, hopefully, pleasantly surprised at the new things you’re going to uncover. And I think don’t be afraid to reach out to people and have those conversations. That’d be the one piece of advice I give people.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Tessa West
Probably “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is one of my favorite quotes. I think that it just kind of encompasses this idea that workplace vibes, culture, zeitgeist can really override anything that we do to plan. I think that is something that I kind of like live by. Don’t ask me who said it. I can’t remember.

Pete Mockaitis
I think Drucker.

Tessa West
Drucker, that’s right.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study.

Tessa West
Probably be something on morality and norms. I’m doing a lot of research these days on how we interact with people who make us incredibly uncomfortable. So, one of my favorite studies in this space is by Wendy Mendez on the brittle smiles effect.

So the more uncomfortable we are interacting with someone who’s different from us, the more likely we are to smile, be nice, engage in friendly overtures, let them win negotiations, but at the same time our physiology suggests we’re incredibly stressed out. And so, I love that because it’s this juxtaposition between what our bodies are saying, which is stress, and what our minds are trying to override, which is overt friendliness in an effort to compensate for that. And I think that can explain why we often suck at giving feedback because it’s uncomfortable.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Tessa West
I only read fantasy novels these days, “Shadow Daddies,” that kind of thing, Sarah J. Maas.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Tessa West
Noise-canceling headphones.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I love noise-canceling headphones. Which one are you working with?

Tessa West
These are not it but I use Bose headphones because my office is all glass walls, and I can hear everything around me all the time, and I’m one of those noise-sensitive people, so I can’t concentrate if I can hear a conversation going on. So, I live by the noise. Sometimes I layer them on with wireless headphones. I’m going to sound totally crazy. Wireless headphones underneath with a noise machine going on on my iPhone, like a fan, and then the noise-canceling headphones over those so I really can’t hear anything.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, you know, I love it. I would put earplugs in and then headphones over the earplugs.

Tessa West
I do that too, but it’s not enough. You got to get the fan sound on the earbuds, and then the noise cancelling over that.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit?

Tessa West
Getting a latte four times a day.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Tessa West
Keep it real. Just say the thing. At the end of the day, you’re going to get it out. It’s going to take you a while, so just say the thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Tessa West
You can check out TessaWestAuthor.com, which has all the quizzes for my book. There’s also going to be just a whole bunch of downloadable materials, little guides on how to do the stress test, how to measure yourself, how to network, all that fun business. If you’re interested in my research, you can check me out at TessaWestLab.com.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Tessa West
Yeah, reach out to five strangers this weekend and set up chats. Just cold reach out, follow the guide I give you, and just frame up three questions that you want to ask them, where you want to learn about their job. They can be completely outside of your industry. You’re just looking to learn new things.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Tessa, thank you. This is awesome.

Tessa West
Thank you so much.

Sep 19
0

995: Going From Overwhelmed to Unstoppable by Resetting your Mindset with Penny Zenker

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Penny Zenker shares her secret for enhanced productivity, peak performance, and unstoppable focus: the Reset Moment.

You’ll Learn

  1. How distractions lead to burnout
  2. The sneaky secret behind your zapped energy levels 
  3. Why productivity shouldn’t be your focus 

About Penny

Penny Zenker (AKA “The Focusologist”) is a sought-after speaker, bestselling author, and former C-Suite executive of a global top-five research company. Over the past three decades, she has built and sold multiple multimillion-dollar companies—including an award-winning tech firm she founded. 

Today, Penny helps leaders prioritize what’s most important, so they can achieve seemingly impossible goals -even in times of rapid change and growth. Penny has shared her expertise with industry giants like Deloitte, Pfizer, SAP, Samsung, and NASA, and been featured by NBC News, ESPN, FORBES, INC., and many more. 

She has written two best-selling books: The Reset Mindset and The Productivity Zone to help people stop their tug of war with time. Her popular TEDx talk, The Energy of Thought has surpassed one-million views worldwide. And her podcast, Take Back Time, ranks in the top 2% worldwide, reflecting her commitment to helping others regain control of their focus and achieve peak performance. 

Resources Mentioned

Penny Zenker Interview Transcript

Penny Zenker
It’s so good to be here. I’m excited.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited as well. I think you’re the first Focusologist that we’ve had on the show.

Penny Zenker
I can guarantee it since I made it up.

Pete Mockaitis
It’s like, “Yeah, the lawyers would have pursued them rigorously if anyone else came…” Well, that’s a really cool title. Tell us, where does that come from?

Penny Zenker
Well, it comes from, it’s as much for me as it is for everyone else, so, firstly, it comes from reminding me that the practice of controlling and directing our focus towards more meaningful results is a daily practice. An ologist is someone who practices and goes deep into the practice. So, it’s for me and my health and well-being, as well as for my success, but I realize we are in a focus crisis, so I really have it as well as a mission to help others to also make that a daily practice.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we’re going to dig into some of these practices, absolutely, because focusing better is a key thing listeners have asked for, and, yeah, there’s a real need for that, certainly. Could you share with us, what is the state of this crisis you mentioned?

Penny Zenker
Well, I think most people would agree. I’ve done a lot of research of my own, but there’s also a multitude of statistics out there, like, we tap, touch, swipe, and scroll on our phones 3,000 times a day. That’s incredible. And people go to bed with their phones. They go to the bathroom with their phones. And what my research has shown me, as I’ve done a lot of research to kind of give people a distraction profile, and the highest level is a time zombie. And I’m happy to share that link. It’s a free quiz that people can take just to get some perspective.

And we’re finding that people are just two rungs below a time zombie. If there’s six different possible profiles, people are at the second and the third to the highest is what we’re looking.

Pete Mockaitis
So, you mean, like, that’s the average or median level of…?

Penny Zenker
Yeah, that most people define themselves after they go through this as squirrels, meaning that they’re distracted by this, that, and everything, that they’re having a really hard time staying attentive and focusing on what matters most. And it’s not just our phones. It’s also all of the fast pace of we’ve got to be, stay up with AI and we’ve got so many different things going on, challenges in the workplace with toxicity or burnout, too much being given to us at any one time, or just the state of social affairs in the world.

Pete Mockaitis
And so, well, can you tell us then, what is the possibility, if we’ve truly mastered our focus, and what are we missing out on? If this is just sort of our normal, like this is water, this is air, this is just sort of what is, what’s really possible for us in a world where we have gained true mastery of this?

Penny Zenker
Well, I think the first thing is not to accept this distraction as our new normal, is we have to take back control of the things that we actually can control, and that’s what I’m on a mission to do for myself. But what’s possible is this distraction is causing a lot of mental health issues. They’re showing links to the level of distraction that we have with the level of anxiety, with the loneliness epidemic that they talk about, and other mental health issues.

So, we would see a lift in our mental health, we’d be able to have deeper, more meaningful relationships, we’d be able to experience more joy in the work that we do, and in the time that we spend because we’d be spending it more on the things that matter most and things that give us energy, versus things that take our energy away, or splinter our energy into lots of different directions. So, we would just be happier and be more fulfilled if we would take back our focus.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, can you share with us, Penny, just how harmful is this distractedness, smartphone stuff? Is it a boogeyman? Is it just sort of a minor point? Or is it transformational?

Penny Zenker

Well, I think it’s transformational, and I think it’s also, if we look at a particular study that was done in 2018 from the Journal of Behavioral Science, at that point in time, and that was a long time ago, they said that people who use their smartphones for more than five hours a day are twice as likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression compared to those who use it more frequently. And I can tell you that if we were to look at how many hours per day, if we’d looked up that study, we would see a very significant number of people using their phones more than five hours a day.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Yeah, this reminds me, I think it was a South Park episode about this, where people think the answer is more smartphone and it’s exactly the opposite that gets the job done. So, that’s a comedy show, but so we got some hard science there. And then tell us, what have you seen in terms of clients who have instituted some good practices and constraints around this stuff? What do they pull off in terms of being more awesome at their jobs?

Penny Zenker

Well, when they start to schedule themselves more effectively, well, let me put it this way first. The first thing that I have people do, and this kind of ties into some of the things I have in my new book, The Reset Mindset is I have them take reset moments, because stress is shown to compound, and so this stops stress from compounding, and stress can also come from distraction.

So, when people take these reset moments, they’re able to reflect more clearly on what’s working and what’s not working. They’re able to take time to schedule their day out so that their day is focused on the things that matter most. So, when they’re making time for these reset moments, and including what they’re going to do and how they’re going to use their phones, and when they’re going to block out those distractions, they’re finding, not just within themselves, that they’re more productive.

I have one CEO that I’ve worked with who said that he’s easily two times more productive because he now has these blocks where he’s not distracted because he has these practices of what I call gatekeepers, that he puts away his phone, and he directs and protects his time, and so, therefore, he’s able to get so much more done, and so much more of the right things because he’s really more intentional about it.

And not only that, but he says that his team is showing that they’re much more effective. They’re able to resolve problems quicker than they were in the past, and they’re able to be more creative in the solutions that they come up with, and so he’s really, really happy. Every time we meet, he says, “I’ve had yet another month that’s the best recorded month of revenue and profitability that we’ve ever experienced.” So, he’s been really seeing that in the bottom line.

Pete Mockaitis

Fantastic. Okay. So that sounds handy and wise. I’m curious, as you put together your book, The Reset Mindset and the revised edition here, any particularly surprising discoveries that made you go, “Wow, I didn’t expect to find that”?

Penny Zenker

I mean, I think that it’s the surprises that I’m hearing are about how I didn’t expect the language to be as sticky for people as it is, and really simplify their access to it. So, these words of reset moments is something that people are saying that now they’ve become sort of these professional noticers.

And they’re seeing these opportunities everywhere to take these reset moments, which I didn’t expect it to be as sticky and as impactful in the way that it is on a day-to-day basis and how people are putting it into practice, talking about it with each other, using it as a language within the organization. So those are some things that I didn’t expect.

And I think also what’s interesting is I didn’t expect this to be the book. I actually started writing a different book, and I started writing the book that was Living the 80/20 Rule, because, for me, that was one of the ways that we can block out those distractors and those things that are less important and focus on what really matters, is asking ourselves, “What’s the 20% that gives us 80% of the difference?”

And in every area, “How do I approach this conversation so that I’m focused on the most important thing? I don’t fight to be right. I remember that the most important thing is the relationship, so how can I interact with it?” So how could we sort of implement this 80/20 Rule in every area of our life? And as I started to dig in and write more about it, I realized that that’s just one of many practices that help us to reset, to rethink, to redirect our focus and reprioritize, to recharge ourselves, to help us to let go of the things that are less important.

And so, it became, “Oh, that’s a reset practice. So, what does that enable us to do? What is the overarching thinking practice that happens, the way of thinking?” And that’s where this reset practice was born in these reset moments. So that was a big surprise for me as well.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes. Well, I love the 80/20 Rule so much, and we had Perry Marshall on the show once talking about it, and I have found that often in the case in my own work and initiatives, like, sure enough, some things truly are 16 times as impactful as other things on a per hour basis of effort, so that’s huge. So, then your surprising discovery was that the reset moments are what enable folks to better deploy their energies into that vital few 20% of goodness? Is that right?

Penny Zenker

Yes, yes, exactly. Well said. Well said.

It also was an interesting discovery that that reset moment can be as little as 60 seconds to reset our brain that enables us to stop that compounding stress as well.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, this is exciting juicy stuff then. So, let’s kind of unpack the mechanism a little bit. So, we have compounding stress, and that is diminishing us. Can you maybe paint a picture of how that unfolds in practice perhaps over the course of a day?

Penny Zenker

Well, I think as much as I can go through an example, I think everybody can relate to that when they look at their own day. So, you start your day and the first diminishment happens when you hit the snooze button because you thought you were going to get up and you had plans to go to the gym, or to do something that was important, but you stayed up a little bit late and you feel tired, and so, therefore, you hit the snooze button.

There’s a small diminish that starts right there because we let go of something that we set the night before that was important to us, that now we’re putting, we’re procrastinating, or we’re going to say, “We’re not going to go to the gym today.” So, it’s all these times that we say we’re going to do something and then we don’t, that diminishes us in some ways, and it creates stress because we kind of, internally, it affects us when we say, “I’m going to do something,” and then we don’t follow through. It affects our confidence and our ability to follow through with things on a consistent basis.

And then we get a call that the meeting that we were supposed to have tomorrow was moved up to today, and now we need to prepare for that meeting because we don’t have that presentation prepared yet. So now everything gets thrown to the wind about what you might have planned for the day, and so these stresses, they build up as things change. We’re not as flexible or adaptable as we’d like to be, and so those stresses can come in a lot of different forms.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, so I get your point in terms of, like, the unexpected curveballs or disruptions, like sudden abrupt shifts of stuff are all forms of stressors, as is what you said is just not following through on our intentions creates a stress within us. And that’s really an intriguing perspective because, in some ways, it’s like we feel stressed and in need of additional rest in that world of, “I woke up and I hit the snooze button because I want to rest more.” You’re suggesting that extra rest is not going to diminish our stress as much as being true to our prior intention will bust stress. Is that accurate?

Penny Zenker

Yeah, I mean, sleep is important, and if you feel like you’re not getting enough sleep then you should decide the night before that you’re going to have a regular bedtime, for instance, and follow that so that you get enough sleep. But if you set an intention to do something, it’s kind of like how people, they set a New Year’s resolution, and the first couple of days they go to the gym and they feel good about it, but then they fall off and they don’t end up going, and they stop going. They feel bad about that. They feel bad that they set an intention and a goal and it affects people emotionally, even when you don’t realize it.

I think they call it cognitive dissidence when you’re failing to follow through on your commitments. It can create that. It’s sort of like this internal mental discomfort that we experience. It can impact our self-esteem. These impacts are like, they might not make sense to you. You might say, “Well, why should that do that?” It’s just that we’re emotional beings, and it does, right?

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, so then let’s hear about this mechanism a bit more. So, we had a number of disruptions. Maybe we didn’t follow through with an intention, something got shifted around on us, some unexpected stuff, some disappointments, some bad news. Okay, so we’ve got a number of things, stuff went down that is contributing to our stress, and it’s compounded over the course of a day.

So then, tell us if, that’s the state, does that mean we are then less able to, I don’t know, 3:00 p.m., 4:00 p.m. able to tackle a bit of vital few 80/20, a big work as a result of having been zapped by this compounded stress? Can you expand upon that principle?

Penny Zenker

Yeah, think about also the decision fatigue by the time you’re at 4:00 p.m., you’ve had all these competing priorities and things that had to change, and decisions that needed to be made. So, it’s kind of like, by the time the afternoon gets around, if you’ve done nothing to address the stressors that have been around for the day, you had to work through lunch.

All of these decisions that you made that weren’t supporting your energy, it’s like having a cup that’s full of water, like a Dixie Cup, but then you take it and you poke holes in it, you continue to poke holes in it with each time that you’re experiencing some stress, or a decision that needs to be made, or can’t follow through with something, all of these different things, they cause leaks in our energy and in our ability to forge forward and make good decisions.

And so, that’s why we need to take these little resets. It might even be just a difficult discussion that took place. Maybe a customer called and was dissatisfied in how I dealt with that, but I might’ve felt a little bit attacked and taken that personally. It’s those little moments, when you can take those reset moments throughout the day that can make all the difference to revitalize you.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, then if I am not revitalized – unvitalized, what’s the opposite of it – so, if I’m drained, zapped from that stuff, and I said, “Okay, 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. that’s the time I had scheduled to work on this super critical initiative. I even put it on my calendar, like, Pete’s guest said I’m supposed to but I’ve got that stress buildup,” when the moment comes to execute, I am less able to do so, is what I’m gathering from what you’ve shared here.

Penny Zenker

Well, even if you push it off, because if it’s not urgent, but it’s the 20% because it’s moving and creating impact, but maybe it’s really not critical that you do it today so you push it off and you push it off, and you get caught up in these false urgencies, or just in this state of overwhelm. So, the first thing that I would say is, is you always place the most important things first thing in the morning, and do those 20% items first, and then everything else can follow. Then you know that you’ve done the thing that has the greatest impact and you’ve done that first. You don’t wait until the end of the day because the likelihood is you’re not going to do it.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah.

Penny Zenker

You’re smiling. Why are you smiling? Has that happened to you?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’m smiling because it’s funny, you’re catching me in a good groove because I’ve observed the same phenomenon, Penny. And so, lately, I’ve had a nice little streak of within seconds of being aware that I am awake, I tell my phone, I’ve got a shortcut, I say “Marky Mark” and then it launches the Hallow app and Mark Wahlberg is praying the Rosary with me within seconds of waking up.

Now I’m not fully there with it yet, right, but it happens, and I like that it’s happening with perfect consistency. And so, I’m smiling because I am witnessing this principle in real time at the extreme. It’s, like, in the first seconds of consciousness, I trigger this, and, sure enough, it works with perfect consistency, and it’s like you’re gambling. The later something is scheduled in the day, the higher the probability of it, oopsie, accidentally, somehow perhaps not happening, even with the greatest of intentions and the most motivated and pure.

It’s like, “It’s on my calendar. This is really important to me. I really mean it. This is for real-sies, serious, no take-sies-back-sies,” and yet somehow, it’s like the forces of our environment and people and relationships somehow can manage to shove that off of there. In a way, it’s humbling in terms of our agency as humans, it’s like, “Shouldn’t I just be able to have the self-control or discipline to really hold firm to this 3:00 p.m. whatever appointment?”

And I’m learning “Kind of” is the answer, it’s like our capability here is somewhat limited, unless we’re just, like, brutal, like, “No, honey, I’m sorry that you feel sick and are vomiting everywhere, and are in no condition to take care of the kids, but I have an appointment with myself at 3:00 p.m. to think of some big-picture new product and services that I’m going to launch, so deal with it,” right? Like, I just can’t do that, and maybe that’s for the best as a human in the world with relationships that matter to me.

Penny Zenker

Well, absolutely. I mean, I think everybody is the same if their significant other needs them, they’re going to push it. But it’s not even just for that, that we’re pushing it. We’re pushing it for everything else. So, first, if you have a practice that you put into your calendar space to think, you’re already ahead of 90% of the people who don’t, who don’t plan that strategic thinking time. So, right there, that’s a reset moment to schedule in those moments to rethink and reconnect to what’s most important.

But if you do have the time, the best time to do it is in the morning. And there are some studies that also, and I don’t have the specifics in front of me, but I remember that you’re going to have fewer distractions in the morning because you’re just getting up, but they talk about some new science around flow. The best time of flow, because of the hormones that are activated from sleep that is in the morning, so you have the best concentration and you haven’t started to put holes in that cup, so your energy is full and you’re able to give better quality concentration in the morning.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. So, these mindset resets, we’ve got some, a few of them are popping up already in terms of try to do it in the morning, really schedule it in, that time to think. And then lay out on us, some additional ones. You said some can be done in just one minute to diffuse some of the effect of compounding stress that’s showing up for us.

Penny Zenker

So, Thrive Global, for instance, is working with different types of companies to embed these reset moments into the workflow. For instance, Synchrony is a company that handles credit cards, and so they work with their support team, who typically, when somebody’s picking up the phone and answering these support calls, are people calling to tell you how great you are? No. They’re calling to complain and say, “This is happening and this is happening.”

So, these people, you talked about “How does our energy, how do we get drained?” It’s they’re constantly listening to people who are unhappy, and they’re taking it in. So, this reset practice was brought into them and embedded into their workflow, that in between each call, there’s a 60-second app that’s launched with a breathing, simple breathing exercise that’s done, that walks them through that, and then will launch the next call.

And so, what they found through this is that the people who are the agents who are answering the phone, they’re much calmer in the next call because they’re not stacking those calls, and that negativity, they’re able to release it in that 60 seconds. So, they’re able to be more attentive. They’re able to handle the calls much quicker, and they, themselves, are happier. They feel happier and do a better job in bringing their best self. They’re more creative in their solutions.

And so, that’s the impact that it can have when you’re taking these reset moments, whether it’s to energize, or whether it’s to rethink things so that you’re working on the right thing. It just helps you to do your best work and be happier. And who doesn’t want that?

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, I love that. So, one minute of breathing. Well, Penny, you’re talking to a guy who pays for the Breathwrk app, so I’m going to ask you for the details. I imagine any number of slow, deep diaphragmatic breathing done for one minute will be great. But is there some magic prescription or formula you recommend for what goes down in that one minute of breathing?

Penny Zenker

No, I mean, their app is just a simple guided breathing app. So, “Take a deep breath in. Hold it.” You could do, the military uses the box breathing, which is four in, hold, four out, hold. So, you could do something like that. You could do, like, there’s a – I forget what they call it – like through your one nostril at a time, breathing in and out. Any type of focus on your breathing in that way will be incredibly grounding. So, I think if you’re not doing it to doing it, pick any one of the methods that are out there, find an app. I don’t know, what do you use? Do you use Wim Hof or any of those types of breathing?

Pete Mockaitis

Well, I’ve played with a lot of them, and Wim Hof is fun, although that’ll get you fired up. I mean, I don’t know if you want to do that in between customer service calls, maybe before battle.

Penny Zenker

Or holding your breath, that’s one part of his method is to hold your breath or to breathe in and out very quickly, so through your nose. When we breathe out through our nose, it’s activating the parasympathetic, which is helping us to calm the nervous system.

Pete Mockaitis

Certainly. So, okay, so simple breathing. That’s great. What else do you recommend for these resets?

Penny Zenker

Also, in that 60 seconds, our senses are our fastest way to our nervous system. So, it could also be just to get some essential oils, and maybe have a lemon, for instance, because that is energizing, or maybe lavender that is relaxing. And you can just take 60 seconds, taking a breath in of that scent; lighting a candle. It could also be something like taking a picture, and maybe it’s your favorite place to go.

Maybe you’re a beach person, it’s taking 60 seconds to just imagine yourself sitting on the beach and relaxing for that moment, putting yourself somewhere else. So, there’s lots of little techniques that you can use and that’s, if you have more time, great. But you can also do this in 60 seconds. Take off your shoes and feel your feet grounded on the floor.

Pete Mockaitis

That’s right. Or some decadent carpet.

Penny Zenker

Yeah, right? Feeling that fuzzy, nice carpet through your toes.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. So, 60 seconds of sensory stuff, deep breathing, that’s super. What are some other resets?

Penny Zenker

Well, some other resets are changing the types of questions that we ask. So, if we get caught, a totally different type of reset. Maybe we’re caught in self-doubt or getting lost in sort of a negative story that we might be telling ourselves after maybe an interaction with somebody, or maybe we made a mistake, or we didn’t get the result that we wanted, we didn’t get the job that we wanted, and we have this loop of “Why me?” or, “You’re so stupid” or whatever we may tell ourselves in our stories that are hurting us more than helping us.

We can also take a quick reset practice to change the question, is to say, “Okay, if I…” I use and I talk about in my book a question that I used to ask, like, when my father died in an accident, you know, “Why me? Why him?” And that just takes you down a terrible rabbit hole. And so, I realized over time that I shifted that question, since “Why?” was getting me nowhere, I shifted it to “What does this mean? And what else could this mean?” so that now I’m taking control of the meaning that I’m giving any interaction and choosing the best possible meaning for me to use because that’s going to influence everything.

It’s going to influence my attitude, my expectations, and my priorities, whatever meaning or perspective I choose to take. So just changing our questions, “What else could this mean? How else could I approach this? Who else could I contact?” Those types of things, they open up perspective and can, like I said, can just change and shift our mindset in the moment.

Pete Mockaitis

Absolutely. And it’s a tricky path when you have charged-up emotion, like in tragedy or extreme stress or difficulty, and then you add an unhelpful question onto that, and that can just start you down a trajectory into some places that are not so good for anybody. And so, a few of those questions certainly, right from the get-go, can start pointing you on to different pathways. So that’s really, really solid. Okay. So, we’ve got a number of these resets. Tell me, Penny, what are the other top practices we should utilize in order to focus truly on what matters most?

Penny Zenker

So, when you say top practices, what kind of context? Let’s get it so that somebody can see where and how they can apply it.

Pete Mockaitis

Let’s say someone is in their career, they want to advance and make a huge impact, and they want to get things fired up in a cool direction, such that they are generating a lot of cool results, folks are taking notice, and their career is energized and off to the races.

Penny Zenker

Okay, awesome. Great context. So, the first thing that I like to do is, “Are they clear of how they want to advance?” so that they know, like, the reset in itself is saying, “Okay, let me step back and make sure that I connect with the goal that I’m looking to achieve. And why do I have that goal?” Like, “I want to rise to the C-suite of this organization.” Okay, awesome. Why do you want that?

Like, get clear on what’s going to be different for you when you get there, so that you’re setting realistic expectations, and then you’re also able to connect to the fuel, because maybe you want to be there because you’re going to be able to really impact a great number of people and improve the leadership in the company, and take the company to new levels, and that company is supporting other individuals. So, whatever gives you the juice and the leverage is going to be really helpful.

And then when you’re stepping back to get some perspective on, “Okay. Well, who could help you to get there? Who are influencers in the organization that could speak for you when you’re not in the room?” You might also look at “What’s holding you back?” and these are all like, when I say, ways of thinking about things, these are resets in the way that you’re asking yourself those questions to challenge yourself to really rethink, a reset is to rethink, and maybe the approach that you’re currently taking to get ahead isn’t structured enough.

Maybe you’re not thinking of those people who could support you or what might be in your way. Have you had a discussion with your boss to find out what might be helpful? Like, what do they see as the next steps for you in getting to that next position? So, there’s conversations that can be had, there’s alliances that can be made, and seeing if there’s anything, like any limiting belief that you have about getting there. Like, do you see yourself as someone in that role? You could even visualize yourself as in that role.

And when you do that and visualize yourself, you might come ask yourself in that moment, when you see yourself four years, five years, three years down the road in that position, and just like really feel yourself in there, sitting in your office, having a conversation. And then ask yourself “What were the three things that made it even easier to get there?”

So, we have a lot of internal wisdom that we often don’t tap into, especially if we feel stressed or pressured, then we’re less intentional. And so, if we can really set up those things ahead of time, then we can be more intentional about how we go about getting to the next level.

Penny Zenker

So, one of the things that I also often talk about that is a lesson that I’ve learned over time, is that productivity isn’t the point. We spend so much time and effort trying to be more productive that sometimes what we don’t realize is that we’re being productive for productive sake. So, in a way, we’re just being busy.

I liken the quote from Confucius, that, “A person who chases two rabbits catches none,” and I changed that quote because I think, inherently, it may give us the wrong message because, when we chase the rabbits, and we get better at chasing the rabbits, we’re actually not accomplishing the goal, which is what? To catch the rabbit, right?

We can get better at the chase, but it doesn’t make us any more likely to catch one rabbit, let alone two. So, if we want to catch the rabbits, then we need to change that quote a little bit and say, “A person who chases rabbits catches none.”

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, yes. So, I’m hearing the emphasis. A person who chases rabbits catches none.

Penny Zenker

Not a person who chases two rabbits catches none, but a person who chases rabbits. So, the point isn’t what you might think, which is to chase only one rabbit and not two, and that way you’re more likely to catch it because you’re focused on one rabbit. But, actually, don’t chase at all because that’s not the point. The point is to catch the rabbits. So, build a trap.

But the point is that very often in work, this is what we do, is we get so focused on the task that we miss the entire point. If we’re more adaptable in recognizing and really connecting to what it is we’re looking to achieve, then we may find that spending more time doing that task is not productive, and that maybe we need to revamp the whole process. We have to be thinking about what we’re doing and how it connects to the big picture instead of just focused on the tasks.

Pete Mockaitis

But, yeah, it is easy to get caught up in it because it’s sort of fun. It’s like, “Oh, man, I am running way faster than I used to chasing these rabbits. Like, whew, that one evaded me by much less distance and time than before,” and it can be kind of seductive. Like, “I am cranking through more and more and more outputs over the course of a day. Go, me. I am such a winner. I feel productive.”

And yet, we may not actually be accomplishing the results that we’re after, but rather just getting seduced by the thrill of the chasing instead of just the maybe what sometimes is very simple, easy, boring catching. 

Penny Zenker

And look at it from also what we measure. So, we’re measuring that we get more productive in this chase. We talked earlier about call centers and help desks and things like that. So, if we take a call center and they’re tracking and measuring the amount of time that it takes to go through a call, then that’s what people are going to be focused on, and they’re going to be so focused on making sure that that call is as short as possible, that that’s going to be their focus, and they’re going to improve that and improve that, but they’re not really getting to the root cause of the problem.

And maybe that same problem comes up a hundred times, that if they just solved it at its root the first time and fixed it like that, then they wouldn’t have a hundred more calls. So, we have to be thinking about also what we’re setting as measures for people so that we’re driving the right focus as well.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah, from a broader holistic perspective, your goal is advance a prospect as far as you can, whenever you have the opportunity is the main thing you’re after, as opposed to handle those calls fast.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Thank you. Well, Penny, tell me any other critical things we should know before hearing about some of your favorite things?

Penny Zenker

So, the critical thing that, I think, is important for people to know is that this concept is incredibly simple, but also incredibly effective. We talked about the 80/20 Rule before and its compounding impact, and also the ability for reset moments to reduce stress from compounding, but at the same time, it has a positive compounding effect of us getting to our goals faster and more effectively.

The more that we get perspective and focus on the right things, focus on that 20%, we’re leveraging off of that 80/20 Rule and compounding each time we choose and stay in that direction. So, I think that’s really important. And today, with how fast things are changing, that having what I call this reset mindset it’s built one reset moment at a time as it compounds.

It makes us ready for change or challenge or uncertainty. It changes our relationship with how we approach the uncertainty that we might face in the future or the changes or the challenges. So, it’s that, that we just need to be more comfortable, and happy to engage and embrace change as a catalyst and not a constraint.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Cool. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Penny Zenker

I recently came across this quote from Richard Branson because, as I’m looking for different types of resets and successful people who embody this reset mindset, I love his quote that I recently came across, which is that, “Every success story is a tale of constant adaptation, revision, and change.” 

Pete Mockaitis

And how about a favorite book?

Penny Zenker

Well, I think one of the ones that really influenced my way of thinking is The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Penny Zenker

One of the things that I love and I use every day is a tool called TextExpander.

Pete Mockaitis

Yes, our first sponsor.

Penny Zenker

I’m sorry?

Pete Mockaitis

They were our first sponsor, and I use them every day, yeah.

Penny Zenker

Oh, there you go. I love TextExpander. So, I use it all the time. So, it’s basically a way to have little templates and little snippets of text that I can just say #gig, and then a whole proposal will come up that I normally send out, or different types of links that I’m looking to get. If somebody wants my social posts, I just say #social and all my posts are there.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with readers and listeners; they quote it back to you often?

Penny Zenker

I think it’s just in my make more reset moments that I hear people saying that back, or what other people have said that they say in the organization, like after I come in and do a talk, that they’re encouraging each other to reset and make more reset moments.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Penny Zenker

They can go to TheResetMindset.net or PennysKeynote.com, and, of course, all the regular social channels. They can just look me up by name, Penny Zenker.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Penny Zenker

I think the final thing that I’d like to bring is one of the principles that I talk about in The Reset Mindset and that’s assume positive intent, something my mom taught me when I was a teenager. And I would say that I think, because relationships are one of the key things that makes us happy in our workplace, and it makes us better leaders. So, I would say that, really, with every interaction, just assume positive intent and really look for the bigger picture of looking for what you’re trying to serve.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Penny, thank you. I wish you much fun and focus.

Penny Zenker

Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Sep 16
0

994: How to Embrace Uncertainty, Discover Opportunity, and Shape the Future with Frederik Pferdt

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Google Innovation Lab founder Frederik Pferdt discusses how to nurture the qualities that make you future ready.

You’ll Learn

  1. What matters more for your future than tech 
  2. Why to say “Fantastic!” when things don’t work out 
  3. A handy trick to inspire better followthrough 

About Frederik

As Google’s first Chief Innovation Evangelist, Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt helped shape one of the most fabled creative cultures in the world. He founded Google’s Innovation Lab, where he trained tens of thousands of Googlers to develop and experiment with cutting-edge ideas and taught ground-breaking classes on innovation and creativity at Stanford University for more than a decade.

He has also worked with dozens of international government agencies, organizations, and businesses ranging from the United Nations to NASA to the NBA. His work has been highlighted in Fast Company, Harvard Business Manager, Der Spiegel, and BBC news, among many other media outlets. Born in Germany, he lives with his family in Santa Cruz, California.

Resources Mentioned

Thank You, Sponsors!

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Frederik Pferdt Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Frederik, welcome!

Frederik Pferdt
Thank you so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
I’m excited to have you. I could tell that you are a big thinker, and you think about things a little bit differently, so no pressure, but I have a feeling we’re going to get into lots of fun, fresh perspectives from you.

Frederik Pferdt
Wonderful, yeah. But, you’re right, I hope to think differently about many things, and that gives many people, hopefully, a different perspective.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, could you kick us off with maybe an extra fascinating and surprising discovery you’ve made as you were researching and putting together your book, What’s Next is Now?

Frederik Pferdt
The one thing that I really took away is that the future is not something that happens to us, but the future is something that we create. And so, actually, the starting point of my book was that I left probably one of the best jobs that you can have in a very fascinating company and organization, to really dive into the unexpected and to the unknown.

And so, I wanted to actually practice myself, really, how to live future-ready and that whatever comes next is actually mostly in your control, and that you can choose what you’re going to engage in moving forward. And so, that was, for me, something I really try to focus on and that led me to some interesting discoveries.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s very intriguing. Let’s dig in. That’s kind of a provocative assertion there in terms of we have much control over what our future is. And so, some might say, “Well, hey, Frederick, I have no control over whether AI, robots, go and are marching in the streets and doing all kinds of activities, or whether we interact with 3D hologram future things instead of a platform like a Zoom or whatever right now.” So, what do you mean exactly in terms of we shape the future?

Frederik Pferdt
So, you’re absolutely right. All the things you just mentioned might happen or might not happen, but that’s a future that you just imagined. That has a lot to do with robots and AI and technology, and probably most of these things being out of your control. But what’s in your control is how you are going to be in that future. Are you going to be a Pete that is more curious, more kind, more open, more empathetic, more loving?

And we can go on using specific qualities that you probably want to see happening in your future, and that’s totally in your control. I can show up tomorrow, in my future, being more kind. I can show up the next year with my partner, my family, my community, my colleagues, whatever it is, be more open, more curious. And I think that’s what I feel is also the future, and it’s mostly your future. So, again, what I want to do is help people to move away from these descriptions of the future which is mostly the outside world.

That is trends or it’s events or it’s technologies, whatever that is, and moving towards the future that is inside us, which is the qualities that we actually want to see happening in our lives. Because there’s also one interesting thing is that, whenever our life will end, what will others remember about you, about the Pete they got to know? And it’s mostly probably these qualities that you’ve built over the years, over your life, and how you showed up every time with other people. So that’s the future I want to talk about.

Pete Mockaitis
And is it fair to say, with regard to these interior qualities and experiences, that in some ways, we will have and experience those things regardless of what technologies do or don’t proliferate in our midst?

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. So, if you show up more open and more curious and like to experiment tomorrow in regards to, let’s say, AI or a technology, then what I can guarantee is that you’re going to see more opportunities. You’re going to see an opportunity to find something out, to learn something, to grow in some form or some way. So that’s what I think is in your control. You’re not controlling the AI or the technology, right, that is built by a company or by a team of people or by someone else. That technology is, again, what I consider the outer world, and that is something you can respond to.

But you can respond in a way to these, let’s say, technologies, where you show up being curious, ask questions about it. You can show up and experiment with it, give it a try and see what you can learn from it, and that’s totally in your control. And I think that’s something where I want to help people to shift their focus on and think maybe differently about.

Pete Mockaitis
That sounds lovely. Well, tell us, is that how you would articulate the main idea or core thesis of your book What’s Next Is Now or is that but one facet of it?

Frederik Pferdt
It’s one facet of it, yes. And the general idea about What’s Next Is Now is that the future is not something that happens to us, it’s something we make happen. Where I want to argue that when we embrace qualities like optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, empathy, which are, for me, dimensions of a what I call a future-ready mind state, when we embrace these qualities, we can navigate uncertainty and turn it into an opportunity.

What it means that when we try to really approach the future in a way that we don’t ask “What will the future bring?” and have a passive stance, but have a more active stance and say, like, “What is the future that I want to create?” we can embrace those deeply human qualities, show up more optimistic, more open, more curious, and so forth, to really see more opportunities in the future as well. And what it does is it gives you more opportunities. And who doesn’t like more opportunities? And the second thing, what it gives you, a little bit more control over your future.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, let’s run through this lineup here, this mindset – optimistic, open, curious. What else composes this future-ready mindset?

Frederik Pferdt
The first thing is that it’s not a mindset, it’s a mind state, which is maybe for some, small, but for me it’s a big distinction. I love the work that has been done around mindsets. I think it’s a very important message that Carol Dweck and her team put out into the world around a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. I think we are mostly familiar with that. 

What’s interesting is that people refer to a mindset as something that is based on their belief system, on their values, on their past experiences, and it’s something deeply ingrained in us. But how often, to be honest, Pete, if I would ask you, “Hey, change your mindset to an entrepreneurial mindset, a success mindset, a future mindset,” whatever it is, how often could you actually change that mindset? It’s probably not that often because it’s really hard to change.

And so, I wanted to help people to have access to something that is more short-term, that is actually something they have control over, and that is more dynamic. That’s a mind state for me. So, it’s the moment-to-moment perception that you have around how you experience the present. And that is something that you totally can control and change and shift from time to time.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, a mind state is maybe more analogous to a mood or groove or headspace zone that you’re in in a given moment.

Frederik Pferdt
I like the words that you’re using to describe that, yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, within the mind state, what were those ingredients that you suggest are future-ready?

Frederik Pferdt
So, the dimensions that help you to see more opportunities in your future are optimism, openness, curiosity, experimentation, and empathy, and there’s a sixth dimension which is called dimension X. So, it’s not a framework and it’s not like a theory where you have to either apply those to your life one by one throughout the day. It’s more, like, what I want to help people to realize is that the good news is that we all have these deeply human qualities.

We are sometimes open, we are sometimes curious and ask questions, and, yeah, sometimes even we like to experiment with something new. What I want to help people to understand is, like, as soon as we dial those up, that we are radically optimistic, unreserved open, compulsive curious, that means that we actually see more opportunities, and we are able to, again, control that. We can train our minds to do those things more often, and that is something very powerful that really leads to what I would consider a better future for you.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, and that adds up and it really feels so right in terms of my own experience. Like, there are times and days and moments where I am all of those things. And there are times when I’m the opposite, and it’s like, “It’s all bull crap!” And it’s like, “What’s the use?” is just kind of the opposite of that mind state. And, sure enough, being in the former state is more conducive to identifying opportunities than being in the latter state.

So, tell us then, if that sounds nice, we would like to have more of these things. I mean, they just feel better anyway, it’s just a more enjoyable place to be, to have these things going on internally, how might we do a shift if we’re having one of those days where we’re not too curious, and we’re not too empathetic, we’re not too optimistic? How do we conjure or drum that up or get to that spot?

Frederik Pferdt
First of all, I like that you label them as being nice. It’s a nice to have.

Pete Mockaitis
It feels great, yeah.

Frederik Pferdt
And that they feel great. I think it’s more than that. It’s essential. It’s something that, really, when you are in that state and saying, like, you wake up and you feel like the future is out of your control, and you feel negative, and you even have fear or anxiety that sometimes show up because, again, our minds tend to dislike uncertainty, and the future by definition is uncertain.

So, our minds try to protect us and go towards finding all the reasons why you should not get out of bed in the first place, why you probably should make a plan, or be negative about something, or not pursue an opportunity or open a door to something new that you haven’t explored, or ask a question. All of those things are usually not what your mind recommends you.

But I think we can overcome that, and we can trick our mind to say, “Hey, what about if I’m now curious and just ask a question to my co-worker, my colleague, my CEO, whoever that might be, or even my partner or my children? And I follow that curiosity maybe with a practice around asking five whys to go to the root cause of something that I want to find out.” That also immediately opens up opportunities for you.

And there’s many more practices that we can do that really helps you to overcome this first initial reaction that we usually have to new situations or towards the future, which is being a little bit more negative, being a little bit more closed, not being curious, and definitely not experimenting with anything new. And then empathy, we’re just going to throw out of the window because we want to focus on ourselves first.

So, what I want to help people to do is overcome these to really, as you said, see more opportunities. And who doesn’t like to see more opportunities in their future so that we move away from this relationship that most people have now with a future that is, or it’s going to be decided by someone else, it’s not going to be great, and “I don’t have any control over it and I have fear or anxiety about the future”?

Which is, when you ask most people why they actually want to stay with the status quo or even bring the past back, and that is something fascinating that I had in so many conversations where people said like, “Yeah, Frederik, you’re talking just about the future, never about the past.” And I said, “Yeah, because the past is something you can’t change, it already happened. And I think, and I have a deep belief that the future is going to be better. And why not then focus purely on the future and trying to discover what you can actually control about it?”

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’d love to dig into some of the particulars of these practices, like the five whys. But maybe, first, could you share with us a story of someone who was able to make some of these shifts, they were feeling not so optimistic, open, curious, experiment-y, empathetic, and then they took some actions and saw something of a transformation?

Frederik Pferdt
Yes, there’s many stories. I actually feature 14 people in the book, I call them future-readies. It’s people I’ve been able to coach, train, and work with at Google over the years, and those people have just built some remarkable futures for themselves, not in terms of materialistic. Most people think like, “Oh, it’s the billionaire,” or whatever it is. No, it’s people who live a happy life, who have impact in what they’re doing, who feel that they contribute to society in a very meaningful way. And I think those are things that we all can achieve.

So, I share stories about those people and how they show up more optimistic again and they live a very open life. For example, Adam Leonard, a wonderful human being, who practices something in his life that I think we can all draw some inspiration from. And he does what he calls improv hiking trips, and it’s inspired by improv theater. Improv theater is something where you basically, you know, you open up, and whatever is going to be thrown at you, you’re trying to accept and build on.

So, he goes on extended hiking trips, like three or four months without any plan, without any set schedule, any journey where he wants to go, he basically just starts, he starts somewhere. And what he reports back all the time is that, by being open and purely open, where he doesn’t have a plan, no reservations, just his pure curiosity and openness to whatever the journey brings, he comes back with wonderful stories and things that not just happened to him but, also, he could have made happen.

And I think that’s an approach that we all can use, not just in our life but in our work, in how we do vacations, and so forth. And inspired by that, I’m actually taking my family all the time on road trips where we don’t have a plan. There is only one rule that we couldn’t go back to the same place twice, and it’s really hard in the beginning to convince the family members to go on that trip because you don’t know where you’re going to end up. So, it’s really hard to sell.

But whenever we do it, whenever we come back, everybody is super happy and super satisfied because everybody discovered something new. Everybody was growing in a beautiful way. So that’s just one of the stories of a future-ready that I’d like to share.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. And so then, thinking about being awesome at your job, I mean, that sounds fun. We go on trips just to see what happens, and what do you know? We have some surprising, delightful things that unfolded as a result. Can you draw the link, the connection, from that to “And now we are flourishing in our careers as well”?

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. I think that’s an approach that you can also take into your work, being a little bit more open around perspectives other people are having or ideas that are presented to you. Instead of going with a clear no in the first place, and saying, like, “Whatever idea is going to be shared with me, I’m just going to say no because that’s the safest thing to do. I don’t have to get engaged. I don’t have to do something with that idea,” and so forth.

Try to go with a “Yes” or even a “Yes, and.” That helps you to engage in an idea or a perspective and helps you to build on it and make it bigger, better, faster, whatever it is, and give it a try and then see what happens. And most of the time what happens is that there’s a new opportunity actually arising in your work or in a project or in your job.

And so, to give you an example, when you consider how most organizations probably operate, is that there is a manager or a boss in some form or some way, who maybe sits in an office, and then the team or the employees, they sometimes have ideas, great ideas that they want to share with their boss or their manager to ask for permission to pursue this idea.

And then most of the time what happens immediately is that the manager’s brain starts to generate all these reasons why we should not pursue this idea, “It’s too expensive,” “We don’t have time,” “We don’t have the resources for it,” “We don’t know if it’s going to work out, if it’s going to get to the results that we want to see happening,” and so forth.

So, the manager will actually share as many reasons as possible to not pursue this idea, the safest thing to do, because then you don’t take any risk. What happens with the employee is that they are a little bit disappointed maybe, they leave the office, and what they do is they tell everybody else, like, “Don’t go into this office because your idea is going to be crushed. There’s going to be only arguments why your idea would not work.”

So, what you could do instead is try a “Yes” approach, a “Yes, and” approach. As a manager, whatever idea you’re listening to, accept it, build on it, make it bigger, better, and faster, and say like, “Fantastic! I like your idea. Here are some reasons why we should do it. Here are 30 days you have, some resources in terms of like another team member that might work with you on this idea. Go try it out.”

And what happens then is the employee leaves very happy, the office, tells everyone like, “In this office, the ideas will grow,” and, at the same time, they will try this idea and try to make it work to then maybe come back after 30 days with two options. The first one is they will report back and say, “Sorry, didn’t work out. Total failure.” Or they come back and say like, “Yeah, it worked out. We have a new technology, new process, new customer base,” whatever it is.

And the managers respond, should be in both scenarios, to say, “Fantastic! Thank you. What did you learn?” Because what just happened now is that they helped to learn something new, that the individual, the employee grew, the organization grew by these learnings and so forth. And I think that’s one of the examples where you can apply this principle of being open, saying yes, trying to build on other people’s ideas that really will drive towards more opportunities and to better results as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that perspective a lot. And I think that takes a little bit of a practice and discipline because our default reaction is, “Oh, no! What happened? Why? Ahh.” It’s not the most natural, intuitive response to say “Fantastic!” when the result is not that which you had hoped for.

Frederik Pferdt
Exactly, because the only result that we want to see is that people are learning and growing because that leads to whatever success you want to see happening, and it leads to progress. And so, it’s just a simple shift that you need to make from “No, but” to “Yes, and” from “Oh, no, this project screwed up,” or, “You screwed up the project,” to “Fantastic! What did you learn?” to that curiosity that really leads to understand what actually happened, and what others can learn from that, too.

And these are small shifts that everybody can, I think, apply and use not just in their work but also in their lives. And just imagine if you say yes to more ideas that are presented to you in your life, I think you’re going to see more and more opportunities that are happening.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we got the “Yes, and,” we’ve got the taking trips with no plan, seeing what happens, the “Fantastic! What did you learn?” response. Any other top practices that you think make a world of difference in becoming future-ready?

Frederik Pferdt
One of the biggest one for me, I think, is reframing. And reframing is such a powerful way to live your life. Where, to give you an example, like when the pandemic hit, I was tasked to lead a project called Project Reimagine for Google, where we try to reimagine how we work as an organization. And I gathered about 26 leaders for about six weeks, and what we tried to do is to reframe. How can we reframe, for example, that employees said that they now have to work from home, towards “I can work from home”?

That is a simple reframe that, for a lot of people, did something magical, because then they felt like, “Oh, I’m not forced because of the pandemic to work from home, but I see this as an opportunity now. I see this as an opportunity to be able to work from home.” And that slight reframe helps you to, again, see more opportunities in maybe working from home. And you can go beyond that where you say, like, “I can work from home, but I also can work from anywhere.”

This is another reframe that helps you to open up towards the possibilities that a pandemic might actually bring to you. Where in the first place, you only see the negative, you only see the constraints, you only see the things that you’re not able to do anymore, but with a reframe you turn towards the opportunities. And reframing is such a powerful way that, again, you can do with a reframe from a “No, but” to a “Yes, and”, but you also can do from a “I cannot” or “I have to work from home” towards “I can work from home,” which is a reframe around your work.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that is lovely because you see where that opens up for people. Some folks said, “Well, hey, guess what? Now I am doing my work on a boat and the family is on a boat. That’s what we’re doing.” Or, “Now we are in a little RV and we are camping all over the United States. Woo-hoo!” And it seems almost wild, like, “What?” It’s almost like it didn’t even occur to us that that was possible or allowed to do that. It’s like, “Oh, I guess we could all do that. Huh, how about it?”

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely, yeah.

Pete Mockaitis
I see. Okay, reframing. All right, keep them coming. Frederik, what else we got?

Frederik Pferdt
Let’s consider empathy, right, as something where we always thought like empathy is something that drains me. I have to put myself into other people’s shoes and really understand what they need, and sometimes that’s hard, absolutely. But what I’m arguing for is expansive empathy. For example, that you also can have empathy towards your future self, which for me is a fascinating concept.

If we imagine ourselves in the future, most of us would go to that picture of having a nicer car, a bigger house, a better relationship, being successful at work, whatever it is. But for me, empathizing with your future self means, first, that you’re trying to imagine how you want to be in the future, and then we’re coming back to these qualities around “Hey, I want to be more kind, for example, in the future.”

And if I am imagining myself being more kind in the workplace, in my family, with my friends and so forth, and you’re picturing that future, and you’re trying to make that visual really vivid and come alive every day, you’re guaranteed to actually move towards that future. And there’s some fascinating research going on at Stanford University where they actually showed some students pictures of their older versions of themselves.

So, they put VR headsets on the students, they projected their older versions of themselves, let’s say, like in 20 or 30 years from today, and they helped them to really empathize with their future selves, to really understand, “Hey, how do I feel in this future? How do I look? Who am I going to be surrounded by?” and so forth. And the more that people empathized with their future selves, the more they change their behavior in the right here and right now.

Which meant that most students reported back that they will actually put twice the amount into their retirement funds right now, plus they will start to live a more healthier lifestyle right now. Which means that, as soon as you create a clear vision of your future self, you actually change your behavior in the right here and right now. And, for me, that’s something very powerful when we think about empathy, not just about empathy for others, but empathy for our future selves.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, now you said the word “interact” and VR headsets, so I mean I’ve seen how you can sort of age, progress a photo. It’s like, “Oh, that’s what I might look like when I’m 70. Okay.” But when you say “interact” in VR headset, so it’s like is the age itself speaking back to me?

Frederik Pferdt
The beautiful thing is that we don’t need any technology for that. We have a mind that is capable of imagining, and if we’re using it in a way that we imagine our future selves, not just, again, in these ways that we’d say like, “Oh, I want to be more successful,” or, “I want to have more money or a bigger house,” whatever it is, but imagining your future selves as with these deeper human qualities, then doing that more often is a practice. It’s something we can train ourselves in.

And the research is very clear. The better we get at it, the more changes we will make to our life and lifestyle right here, right now. And I think that’s very compelling, because everybody wants probably to live a healthier lifestyle. They want to probably live a better life in the future and so forth. But don’t start with the materialistic things or the things that are out of your control. Start with what’s in your control, which is the deeply human qualities that you want to develop and grow towards.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s powerful. I’m also thinking about Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, in this context in which he says, “I’m training for the centenarian decathlon,” which is a lot of syllables, but just the notion of, “When I’m a hundred years old, or in the last years of my life, what would I like to still be able to do? And, oh, if that is what I want to still be able to do, then I better build some strength right now, knowing that some of it will fade in my final years.”

So, it’s intriguing. So just as imagining that leads to, “Oh, I better do some more retirement saving, okay” it may also lead to, “Oh, I better do some more exercising.” And then any number of positive things that need to unfold starting now for then.

Frederik Pferdt
Absolutely. So, what would be something for you, Pete?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking about, well, I was thinking about exercise in particular. And so, just thinking about, as I have some family who’s aging and experiencing some health things. It’s clear that this comes for all of us. And so, to the extent we want to have truly good mobility and functionality, like there’s just some physical stuff to be done in terms of strength and cardio stuff.

And so, that’s just very, in a way that’s a little bit shallow, it’s like, “Yep, that’s just biological reality, true.” But when you talk about kindness, you know, that’s intriguing because there’s not as clear or well-researched a path and protocol that I’m aware of that is like, “This is the tried-and-true means of getting kindness gains the way there is muscle gains.”

And so, we could do a loving-kindness meditation, we could engage in prayer and spiritual practices and connecting with a source of eternal, infinite love. That sounds like a winning move, but in some ways, it’s a big question that I was like, “How does one, in fact, cultivate these traits we would like our future selves to have?” And there’s many, many potential options, and perhaps less of a prescriptive “This is known science knowledge base to draw from.” Or maybe I’m underestimating what’s already available in the research base. Frederik, lay it on me.

Frederik Pferdt
Yes, I think there’s many things that we can learn from, and it could be simpler things around kindness practices that are not just leaving you on a path, or leading you on a path towards maybe happiness. But it’s also interesting that if you show up more kind to other people, you’re building your community of friends.

And there’s fascinating research now from Harvard around the longest study of happiness and longevity, which basically just tells you that the more friends and the better friends you have, the longer and the more happier life you have. So that means the quantity and the quality of your connections really matters.

And so, for me, it comes down to the question, “How do you build more relationships and better relationships?” And kindness is probably a great way to start. If you start with anger and, like, hatred, I’m not sure if that’s going to increase your friendships and if it’s going to be making your friendships even stronger. I think it’s the opposite.

So, starting with a couple of kind things that you can do to your friends or to strangers will actually increase your community. And so, the more friends you have and the better these relationships are, the longer you live and the happier life you live. And I think that’s very compelling research that is building on something you said, which is like we can physically train ourselves for the future to be physically fit, but we can also mentally train ourselves to be mentally fit for the future.

And then we can also train ourselves to be what’s probably like more towards the heart and spirit around the future. And I think all three are very important, but we sometimes just neglect all of those, and we are focusing on the futures that we think are going to be dictated by robots and technology and other things that are shared in the news, and mostly with dystopian future images that are shared around globally and widely.

And it’s fascinating for me that our brains just love to see those dystopian futures, again, like to protect us, and say like, “Oh, I don’t want to have that future happening.” I think it’s going to be a wonderful future. It’s going to be a better future if you’re going to engage in training your mind, training your body, but also training your soul for the future.

And there’s very easy things that we can all do moment by moment on a daily basis that really come back to these notions of being more optimistic, more open, more curious, experiment a little bit more with different approaches but also show empathy, not just for others but of ourselves as well.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, beautiful. Thank you, Frederik. Now tell me about some of your favorite things. Could you give us a favorite quote?

Frederik Pferdt
One I really find profound for myself that really influenced my thinking is from Anais Nin, who said, “We don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.”

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Frederik Pferdt
I don’t know if it’s a tool, but I found that meditation, for me, is a practice that is so fascinating because just experimenting with it and giving it a try has a profound impact on my life and who I am, and so I want that others explore that too.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a particular nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks?

Frederik Pferdt
The future is something that you create, and it starts with your choices, and it starts in your mind. So that’s one of the core principles that I want to help people to understand, that the future is not decided by something else or someone else.

It’s created by you in every moment, and it starts with the choices you make, and it starts in your mind. And you have influence over your choices and you have influence over your mind. And so, I think the powerful message here is that everybody has the ability to really shape the future they want to see happening.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Frederik Pferdt
Yeah, you can find me anywhere on your favorite platforms. I also have what I call a NextLetter that helps you to engage in experiments, and I share stories of individuals that live future-ready, and it comes every second Friday. It’s for free and you can sign up. You can find it with my name and NextLetter. Feel free to join that community.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome about their jobs?

Frederik Pferdt
The next time you feel like a “No” or a “Yes, but” to something that is an idea or perspective of someone, try to reframe that towards a “Yes” or a “Yes, and” and see what it does to you. 

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Frederik, thank you. This has been fun. I wish you much good stuff next.

Frederik Pferdt
Thank you so much, Pete. Yes, see you in the future.

Sep 12
0

993: How to Boost Your Focus by Streamlining Your Priorities with Marcey Rader

By | Podcasts | No Comments

 

Marcey Rader helps us discover how to declutter work and life to make time for the things that truly matter.

You’ll Learn

  1. A key belief that pushes us to burn out 
  2. Top tips that make achieving your goals easier 
  3. The magic number of priorities to stay on track 

About Marcey

Marcey Rader is an award-winning keynote speaker, trainer, coach, and author focused on health-powered™ productivity after a preventable medical diagnosis shifted her relentless pursuit of more.

As the founder of RaderCo, she’s inspired over 100,000 people across five continents. As a Certified Speaking Professional®, Virtual Master Presenter®, and TEDx speaker, Marcey helps individuals and companies discover what truly matters, fostering sustainable habits to work well and play more!

Resources Mentioned

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Marcey Rader Interview Transcript

Pete Mockaitis
Marcey, welcome.

Marcey Rader
Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be on your podcast.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I’m excited to be chatting about stuff, productivity, feeling good, working well. That’s a lot of stuff we’d like to chat about here. I’d love to kick us off if we could, could you share any particularly extra surprising, fascinating discoveries you’ve made over your years of researching and teaching about this stuff?

Marcey Rader
I would say that the theme that I see among high achievers, high performers, and I would think that would be people that listen to your podcast, if you’re listening to a podcast called How to be Awesome at Your Job, then you’re trying to achieve something that we tend to think that we will always have time, and that if we get X promotion, then we’ll have time to focus on our health; if we make this amount of money, then we can relax; if we hit this milestone, then we’ll pay more attention to our family. Like, there’s always something that we’re striving for instead of just living in the present.

Pete Mockaitis
And that’s intriguing, this notion of “If this unfolds then Y will be the case.” Tell me, is that true?

Marcey Rader
Well, in my circumstances, I would say no. I’m almost 50, I’ll be 50 in September, and my 20s and 30s, I would say to early 40s, I was always chasing more and I actually have a TEDx Talk that I released in April called “The Relentless Pursuit of More” and I lived my whole life that way. It was always waiting for something. My husband and I had been married 26 years, and on our 25th anniversary, we went back and read all of our love letters that we had ever written to each other. And I could not believe that even starting in my 20s, I was always saying things like, “When I get my graduate degree, I’ll be home more,” “When I get this promotion…”

I mean, I was saying that back then and it was such a theme. And reading them all at once, I’m seeing that I had this notion throughout the years of always thinking that if I achieved something else, then I could actually focus on what should have been the most important thing to me, my health and my relationships, it really just hit me over the head. And it wasn’t the first thing to hit me over the head, but it might’ve been one of the last things to make me kind of wake up and smell the coffee.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, this is rich and juicy and I think worth lingering upon a bit in terms of like the thoughts we believe, the things we say to ourselves here before we get into your beautiful lineup of many swell tactics in your book, Work Well, Play More. So, yeah, this notion is, like, after this happens, then that will be how things will be different. Let’s see, I’m not even crystallizing this so well, but is there a shorthand version we would say to this lie we tell ourselves, like, “After this, after X, then Y”?

Marcey Rader
It’s almost like that app, If This Then That. And it’s just like that. And, as an example, a lot of people will think this as, I’ll give an example from a work perspective, an example from a health perspective. So, with work, if I throw myself into my work and I really prove myself now, I work late, I work weekends, I’m the fastest to respond to emails, and I show them that I can do this, I get the promotion, then everything in my life will be great, because I’ve gotten the promotion.

But I’ve now trained people that this is how I work. I’ve trained people that I work at night, I work on the weekends, I get to inbox zero, I’m there all the time and nothing’s really changed. I’m still on the hamster wheel. From a health perspective, and when you’re in your 20s and 30s, we’ve all heard this, like, “Oh, take care of yourself now. It’ll catch up with you,” but you’re never going to believe it. You’re never going to believe it.

And it absolutely caught up with me. I was probably looked at as one of the healthiest people in the room. I was a triathlete. I competed in over 100 ultra and endurance races throughout my 20s and 30s. I even have a degree in Exercise Science, a Master’s in Health and Exercise Management, but it’s hard to look at yourself with a discerning eye, and I actually triggered Hashimoto’s disease, which is an autoimmune disease.

I also put myself into what’s called hypothalamic amenorrhea, which is where you stop having a menstrual cycle, and affects about 1.6 million American women, and it took 12 years for my body to recover from it, 12 years. And I always thought I had time to fix it, to fix myself. And when I talk to anyone that is experiencing burnout or overwhelm, or they are just kind of pushing, pushing, pushing because they think, “If I get to this, then that will happen and everything will be okay,” there are no guarantees that the that that you’re looking for is going to turn out the way you think it will.

Pete Mockaitis
Wow, that’s a powerful story. So, these health conditions, you say you triggered it like. Is it just like the sheer intense effort of work and endurance, exercise feats, triggered these ill health effects inside your body?

Marcey Rader
Yes. So, I traveled 48 weeks a year for almost a decade, and so it was a very high-stress lifestyle traveling all the time, and never went to bed at night until I was at zero inbox, didn’t sleep well, exercised a lot, and it also took a real toll on my relationship with my husband. I’m fortunate that we are still together. And it’s funny, I love the book, The Power of Regret.

And he talks about how when people say things like, “No regrets. No regrets,” we really shouldn’t think about it that way because when we do things that we regret, it means that we have failed at something, that we pushed ourselves, we’ve gone outside of our comfort zone, and things like that. It doesn’t mean that you didn’t learn from something or that you wish you hadn’t even done it. But my biggest regret is pushing myself in those areas so much and losing the focus in my relationships with my friends and with my husband.

Pete Mockaitis
Yes, and it seems this foundational lie is something that gets in a lot of our heads, “If this, then that.” And I’d love, since you’re on the other side of this now, having gained some wisdom from having been there, how do we prudently discern if we’re fooling ourselves? Because some things are accurate, “If this, then that.” Like, “Hey, if I get a promotion and salary increase, we will be able to afford moving to a better neighborhood or a school district or whatever.”

Like, sometimes that’s really true, “This cause does lead to that effect,” and that’s made perhaps a sensible goal we could feel great about pursuing. But there’s other times we’re just chasing a ghost and it’s to our detriment, we’re like, “What have I been doing with my life here?”

Marcey Rader
Yeah, that is an excellent point, and you are right. If you make X amount of money, then maybe you can move to a better neighborhood, you can buy a different home, you can hire a house cleaner even to help take some of your daily tasks off your plate. You can hire a personal trainer, you can hire an assistant, whatever that is.

And one thing that I work on with my clients is reviewing those goals that we’ve set for ourselves because sometimes those goals are completely arbitrary, they’re not even our goals, and they may have been something that we always thought, like, when we were 25 years old, like, “I need to make six figures,” or, “I need to make this level. I need to make director level” and so on. And we get there, and then for some people, it’s like, “Well, that’s not enough. So, then I need to get more and more and more and more.”

And I’m not saying to not shoot for higher dreams or for higher goals, but it’s just really thinking about, are these your goals, and revisiting them regularly, and thinking through what those are going to get for you, or bring for you. Because, like, I had one client that I worked with that she had a director position, and she was offered a job at a smaller company, and she wouldn’t take it because it was a decrease in title, and she said, “My goal was always be, you know, I want to be a director, and this would be an associate director, maybe even a senior manager.”

And so, she didn’t take it. And two years later, that company had doubled in size, they were sold to another company. The person who she knew, she knew the person that took the job that she interviewed for, cashed out big time, and it was all because of the title that she didn’t want to lose, which was really just arbitrary in the end, and she would’ve gone much further in that smaller company if she would’ve really thought through and not just been stuck on, “I have to have that title.”

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, yeah, this is good. And you’re bringing me back to, I think, maybe high school is one of the first times I thought I had fallen for this myself. And I think I told myself that if I had six-pack abs then I could get the ladies I was interested in in high school.

Marcey Rader

Of course.

Pete Mockaitis
And it’s so off because, well, one, apparently, as I’ve kind of learned, most women there didn’t really care about men’s physiques as the selection criterion for their romantic boyfriends. So, there’s that. Just totally misguided.

But it’s funny, it’s sort of like we have a desire, we have some motivation, and there’s something I think natural in the human person, the human psyche, to want to achieve more, to do more, to have more, to be more, and winning. And I love my little competitive in some domains. Winning, in general, is just kind of fun, and in growing and improving just sort of feels good, and so we just kind of go after it. But somehow along the lines we get tricked into thinking that this is much more important and impactful than it truly is.

Marcey Rader
Yes. I had a business coach once that her mantra almost on all of the group coaching calls were, “You’re just not that special.” And it was really funny because her message to us was we’re thinking that people care about us so much more than they actually do. And so, are we doing something for ourselves or because we care about what people think about it so much, and about that title? Like, “What is it going to look like if I have now a title of senior manager instead of director?”

But one of the questions that was posed to me, and I use this all the time now with my clients, I use this in my TEDx, and I actually just released a podcast episode about just this very question, was, “If a journalist were to be following you around all day, writing a story about a day in the life of you, would they say that you are living in alignment with your priorities?” So, if you tell the journalist that, “Oh, my priority is that my health, that I exercise and eat healthy every day, that I’m present with my two young kids, and that I’m very present at work. And maybe I’m a manager, and that during my one-to-ones, I’m very focused on the person. Those are my priorities.”

And then this journalist is following you around, and they see that you sleep in, and you grab a Nutri-Grain bar on your way out the door, and you eat your lunch in front of a screen, you’re sitting there all day, during your one-to-one, you’re multitasking, and you’re also reading emails, or during your meetings, you’re also reading emails.

And then at the end of the day, during dinner, you’re also checking your phone every few minutes. That journalist would not be writing a story about your priorities. And so that’s something that I ask myself, that question, multiple times through the week, “If they’re writing about me right now, would they say I’m living what I say my priorities are?”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s a handy way to cut through it, indeed. 

So, it’s sort of like we assess the potential arbitrariness of a thing rather than just put the blinders on and chase after it full-steam my head. A title, it’s like, “Okay, that’s the goal,” and goals are fun. Pursuing them and growing and learning and improving and getting closer feels good. But, really, what does the title mean? What does it get you? What is its foundational relevance and importance in your life? And it sounds like when you said values, it sounds like that’s where the rubber meets the road. That’s how we, ultimately, assess the worthwhileness of anything.

Marcey Rader
Yes. And to be clear, I am not saying don’t have goals because I absolutely have goals and milestones. And if anybody out there has done StrengthsFinders, I’m number one, Learner, so I am always getting some kind of certification, and I’m reading books, and I’m learning about new things. It’s just I don’t feel like, in my experience with the people that I’ve worked with and then also with myself, that we can really define why we want some of those goals.

And when we look at what we think we’re going to get from them, is that really true? And then also, what do we need to sacrifice to get to those goals? Because sometimes we’re not thinking about that either. And for every yes, every time you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. But also, the reverse is true. If you say, “No, I’m not going to go to another party on Friday night because I need to get my sleep,” but you’re saying yes to going to bed early and waking up on Saturday feeling better. So, there’s always a yes and no, and give and take.

And knowing what you might have to sacrifice, and this is an easy one. A lot of people might say like, “I want to get up early and exercise every day, and that’s my goal,” but they’re not morning people, so they already have one strike against them. They’re getting up early, they’re exercising, but now they’re drinking coffee all day long, which is also not good, and they’re going to bed earlier, which means maybe less time with their partner. And so, really thinking through, “What are the sacrifices that I would need to make? And is it worth it for those changes that will come about from that?”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And any pro tips on how we can do a masterful job of making these considerations and evaluations?

Marcey Rader
Well, I’ve been doing something for the last 11 years, and I only have three priorities at a time from a work perspective and a health perspective. And I call them, like, spaceship view are my annual priorities, and airplane view are my quarterly, and then I have three for my monthly, that’s like my skyscraper view, and then I have my weekly three, and that’s what I call my treetop view, and then I have my daily, and that’s just the three total, and that’s where I’m in the weeds, like, in the daily types of tasks.

And I write them down. I actually have a playbook that I write them down in. And continually revisiting those, I’m actually looking at them on my whiteboard right now, I have my annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, keeps it top of mind for me. It’s like that journalist looking at me, writing that story, me making sure that I’m staying on track. But the biggest piece of that is I do reflections on these every, at the end of the week. I reflect on my week at the end of the month. I reflect on the month, quarter, and year.

But quarterly, I do this with three other people and I talk about my lessons earned, my smartest decisions, what worked well, what didn’t work well. I get feedback from them, they share theirs, and then I give them feedback. And so, I’m getting an outsider’s perspective, and that really helps me to kind of stay aligned with what I say my priorities are so that I don’t get kind of tunnel vision sometimes on what it is that I’m shooting for without seeing the big picture.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Thank you. All right. Well, so we spent some good time there. Now, tell us what’s the big idea behind your book, Work Well, Play More?

Marcey Rader
So, the subtitle is “Productive Clutter-Free, Healthy Living – One Step at a Time,” and it goes through the course of 12 months, and every month there is a behavior in the area of productivity, the area of clutter, which could include digital, physical, or mental clutter, and then health.

And in each of those categories, there are novice, pro, and master levels. So, if you think of something like James Clear’s Atomic Habits book, awesome book. It’s very conceptual and theory-based, and with a little bit of how. It’s a lot of why and a little bit of how, and mine is a little bit of why but a lot of how. And so, it’s really like a step-by-step and kind of a choose-your-own-adventure book. And I’ve had teams use it in book clubs. I’ve had several groups use it as book clubs, actually, and it’s just really fun.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, so why don’t we just get a taste there. Month one, productivity, is about notification distractions and handling those. And I love this because, well, I’ve seen research that suggests when people try this ever so briefly, they sometimes stick with it forever. So, lay it on us, Marcey, the why and the how.

Marcey Rader
The number one thing you can do to help with your focus and attention is to turn off your notifications as many as possible, because they are not on to help you be more productive. They’re on to get you to use the tool or the app more. So that is why they’re on as the default. And every time we get one, there is a dopamine response in our brain, and we start to get used to it, and we like it. And dopamine is that anticipation, and it’s the same one that gamblers get.

And so, by turning those off, one, I have never had anybody in over a decade turn them off and turn them back on again. If they did, I don’t know about it. And if you think about your email, like when you get the little pop-up in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, and you’re in the middle of another email, think about your emails like conversations. If I’m talking to you and somebody came up to me and poked me on the shoulder, and said one line and walked away, that would be really distracting, right? But that’s exactly what is happening when we let the notifications come through.

The other thing to think about is you’re not going to forget to check your email. Nobody forgets to check their email. And so, if you worry that you’re going to miss something, are you missing it for a minute, five minutes, an hour? There’s a difference between being reactive and being responsive. And what we want to be is responsive.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so then in practice, how do we deal with this, we just straight up get in our phones and say, “No, no, no, no,” on all of the apps and the notifications? Or what do you recommend?

Marcey Rader
I definitely recommend email notifications off, but for your phone, I recommend anything that, any kind of social media, we don’t need to see that somebody liked our post immediately.

Pete Mockaitis
“Oh, they liked your post, Marcey?”

Marcey Rader
They liked, and that’s dopamine, like, “Oh, somebody likes me. Somebody likes me.” And so, we don’t need to see that right away. You’re probably not going to forget to go to Instagram. Email, we don’t need. One thing you could, you know, you might want to consider it’s like keeping your phone notification, like your voicemail notification, maybe your text, something like that, but things like Target ads, Target sales, or ESPN or The Weather Channel, we don’t need all of those alerts and banners that come through.

And what a lot of people don’t realize is that you can set hours, focus modes, in your phone, and this is what I love about the iPhone because I actually don’t have badges on my phone, the little bubbles with the numbers even for text. I just check it every once in a while. For voicemail, I do. I do have the badge on because people don’t call anymore. And when somebody calls me, it’s usually important. But the thing with any kind of badge or banner coming across is that you could have it at focus mode that, only during certain times, those come through.

As an example, I don’t get any notifications between 8:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. and that’s because in the morning I’m working out, that’s my time, I don’t want to be interrupted. After 8:00 p.m., that’s when I’m hanging out with my husband. I don’t want to be interrupted. So, you could have different zones for, like, maybe you see badges during work hours but not in the evenings so then you’re not tempted to look.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s super, and, yes, I live my life this way. I do not receive any beeps or buzzes whatsoever with text messages, unless I know, “Oh, I’m in a zone where I need to hear from people right away and reply to them right away.” So, it’s, like, I will shift out of “Do not disturb” ever so temporarily, and then shift right back into it.

And it’s really interesting when you talk about training other people, like people will know, they say, “Oh, hey, we haven’t heard from Pete yet. Oh, yeah, he doesn’t get buzzed on his text messages, so I’m actually going to call him twice so that we could get the update, ‘Hey, we changed the lunch location,’” because I would, I probably would drive to the old lunch location and then oopsies. But so that happens quite rarely, and other people are aware and adapt, and I’d say that the rareness that it does happen is so worth it in terms of what I’ve gained from my attention being reclaimed.

Marcey Rader
I’m so glad you said that, Pete, because when people are so worried that they’re going to miss something, I’m like, “So maybe you miss something once in three months, but you’ve had three months of not being interrupted, like daily, hourly, sometimes every 10 minutes or whatever.” And how you use it is exactly how I recommend using it. Like, when I’m out and I’m meeting friends or whatever, or I’m expecting a call, I will turn it off. Like, it’s so easy to toggle it on and off. It’s just a little tap with your fingers to turn that zone off and be able to get them.

Pete Mockaitis
And we talked about all the settings you can do, and there are so many. I’m still learning more and more about them and they keep updating them with each new version of the software. But I get a kick out of using the Screen Time app and the downtime feature, this is my new discovery, although it’s been around, like, forever, in terms of it’ll just say, “Hey, no, we’re shut down now because you should be sleeping,” basically, it just sort of says.

And you can override it if you want to but it’s kind of nice that, oh, you’re scrolling something, and then your phone is like, “Oh, no, now you’re on downtime.” It’s like, “Oh, yeah, you’re probably right, phone. All right. I guess we’re done.”

Marcey Rader
Yeah, it’s just a little reminder. It’s a good nudge. It’s a good nudge to remind you, like, “Yeah, all right. All right, do you really need to be scrolling right now?” And that is one thing, because we’re talking about phones. Really think hard about whether or not you want to take your company to bed with you. Because when you look at your email in bed, or if you wake up, and before you ever get out of bed, you’re looking at your emails, you’re sleeping with your manager, you’re sleeping with your coworkers.

Like, you’re taking them into your sacred space. Do you really want your company in bed with you? I don’t. I don’t. So, now that I’ve given that visual to all of your listeners, they’ll be like, “Eww!” throw their phone across the room.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, Marcey. So, removing notifications is one simple thing we can do that has just a tremendous outsized results for that effort. So, that’s the kind of stuff we love hearing about, Marcey. Could you lay on us another one or two things that’s pretty low amount of effort yet just exceptionally high levels of good benefits returned to us?

Marcey Rader
Yes. So, there is nothing magical about a 60-minute meeting, but that is the default and everybody schedules 60-minute meetings, but you can’t get off the meeting and on a meeting in the same minute. It’s very hard. And we all need biology breaks, right? We all go to the bathroom. We have to drink water. We have to step away. We have to take some notes. So, you can go into your settings, for Gmail it’s called Speedy Meetings; for Outlook, you can go into your File options, Calendar, and change all of your meetings to either be 50 minutes or 45 minutes or 25 minutes or 15 minutes, and then you don’t have to think about it.

Because I am all about systematizing everything and not having to think about too much. And so, if you do that, then any meeting you schedule is automatically going to be shorter. And you need that time for your brain especially if you are on back-to-back video meetings, because they actually have done brain scans and they show stress, how stress builds up in the brain with back-to-back meetings.

Because as that meeting that you’re on now is starting to get towards the end, you’re already starting to be stressed, “Am I going to get off in time to get on to my new meeting?” So that would be another one that I would say just make it simple for yourself. Go in, change your settings, and make your meeting shorter.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And tell me, if we do have five minutes in between meetings, do you have any pro tips on what are the best means to recover energy, de-stress, motivation boost in a jiffy?

Marcey Rader
Look away from your screen, get up if you can. And the reason why it’s important to look away from your screen is that it’s drying our eyes out, we blink less when we’re staring at a screen. If it’s a TV far on a wall, we tend not to do it. But when we’re staring up close to a monitor, we blink less so it makes our eyes dry. But also, when we’re staring at a screen that’s close, we can get what’s called screen apnea, like sleep apnea, but screen apnea, and we actually are breathing shallow.

And when you know this, I’ll have a lot of people say like, “Oh, my gosh, I caught myself breathing really shallow,” and you might find yourself even holding your breath. And people tend to do this even more when they’re doing things like social media or checking email. And so, when we’re breathing shallow, it creates tension in our shoulders, our neck. It can also cause headaches, but it even affects our digestion because we’re not taking deep breaths or our diaphragm isn’t moving up and down as it should.

So even though you might think, “Oh, I’m going to use these five minutes just to check my email real quick,” it’s best to actually get up and just move around a little bit and look away from the screen, and then come back to it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then so, each month, we got the productivity piece, we got the declutter piece, we got the health piece. Can you likewise share with us, what’s a top practice that you have found in yourself and your clients is just transformational in terms of the amount of energy, attention, focus, good moods that we can bring with us to everything we do?

Marcey Rader
It’s hard for me to narrow it down to one, but I’m going to just choose this one, and that is narrowing down your priorities to no more than three. And, Pete, most people now are just overloaded with work. I hear that everybody’s under-resourced and “I have eight priorities,” “I have ten priorities.” You can’t. I’m only going to give you three. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have eight tasks to do, but it is, you know, you have no more than three priorities.

And the way to think about, like, “Well, how do I choose which are my priorities?” There’s a couple of ways. One, if I were to go on vacation tomorrow, what would I absolutely have to get done today? Because that’s everyone’s most important or most productive day, the day before they go on vacation because you’re not going to mess around doing silly stuff. Or if you think about it, like, you took your laptop to a coffee shop, and you only have 30 minutes of juice, or an hour of juice because you forgot your cord, what would you work on? And thinking through it that way, and then prioritizing your day around those top tasks.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And when we prioritize our day around the top tasks, what does that look like in practice?

Marcey Rader
Well, for most people, doing at least one of those top tasks first before you hit your inbox is how I would say to start your day, because your inbox is another person’s agenda. And so, if you go there first, then your whole day can be derailed right then. And so, doing at least one of your priorities to at least feel accomplished and check the box for something that is just for you is really important to have that feeling that you’ve done something, and you’ve accomplished, and you’re more likely to stay on task the rest of the day.

The reason why I say for most people is that, if you are like a night person, like a night owl, then you actually need to warm up a little bit first, and doing more like admin type tasks in the first part of your day might be better for you. But because that’s a minority of people that are night owls, that’s why I say for most people.

The other thing about going to your inbox first is that so many people are remote, and if you start work at 8:00 or 8:30 or 7:30, most people don’t know exactly when you start work for the day. So, if you feel like, “I have to check my email first, I have to check my email first,” and it’s 8:00 o’clock, well, how are they going to know that you started at 8:00 if you end up processing your email at 8:30? So, spend that first 30 minutes on something for you instead of another person’s agenda.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Can you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Marcey Rader
I love the quote, “Talk doesn’t cook rice.” It’s a Chinese proverb, and I’ve had a T-shirt, I say it all the time, because I’m a very action person. If I say it, it’s going to happen. And so, “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Marcey Rader
This is something that I just learned from a neuroscientist, and I never knew why, so now I know the why, and it’s called the cathedral effect. So, if we want to be creative, or we’re trying to solve a problem, you want to go outside, that’s best. But if not, be somewhere with a very high ceiling in a big room. But if you want to get really focused on a certain project or just get stuff done, then you want to be in a room with low ceilings and more closed in.

I used to belong to a co-working space, and I would go and stand in the telephone booth for two, three hours there. But I would get so much done standing in this little tiny booth, and I didn’t know the words why, and it’s because of the cathedral effect. And that is something I just find fascinating.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, so what’s the neuroscience behind it? Like, I’m in a tiny room and then it’s, like, I just make it happen.

Marcey Rader

It’s something about, like, the low ceiling and the closed-in space makes you stay more on task and focused. And when we’re outside or in a room with really high ceilings, we’re more likely to come up with creative solutions.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think Walt Disney, allegedly, the legend goes, would have his people in different rooms based on the task. If they were dreaming big thoughts and stories, they’d be in one space versus if they were really editing down and drawing hundreds of images, then they were in a much less beautiful, more cramped contained space. I don’t know if that’s true but that is the legend.

Marcey Rader

Well, I want to look that up because that would be a good example for me to use.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite book?

Marcey Rader

Yeah, The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the False Promise of Self-Care. And Rina Raphael is a journalist, and she did such an amazing job. 

But she just debunks so many myths in the book from marketing of wellness products and so on, but also how marketing towards health, wellness, and cleaning products and different things like that, have affected women, and goes into like medical research and how women are.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite tool?

Marcey Rader

ClickUp. So, our company uses ClickUp project management system, and we hardly ever email each other internally. Every bit of communication is within ClickUp.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; you hear them quoted back to you often?

Marcey Rader

I talk a lot about movement opportunities and finding opportunities, or movement snacks during the day. And so, a lot of people will say, after they hear me speak, because I talk about movement opportunities from a productivity perspective, not just from a health perspective, but how it can affect your creativity and make you more alert in the afternoons and so on. And so, a lot of people will message me after presentations that I give, and talk about movement opportunities that they found.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Marcey Rader

HelloRaderCo.com, H-E-L-L-O-R-A-D-E-R-C-O.com, or the book website WorkWellPlayMore.com.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Marcey Rader

I have a gift.

Pete Mockaitis

Please.

Marcey Rader
If people want to go to HelloRaderCo.com/gift, the first chapter of the book, the whole month one, with the productivity and turning off notifications, the clutter, and also the health habits for novice, pro, and master are in there, and they can download that for free.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Perfect. Thank you. Well, Marcey, this has been lovely. I wish you much fun, work and play.

Marcey Rader
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Sep 09
0

Join our 1000th Episode Giveaway Special!

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Thank you for helping us reach 1000 episodes!


…and if you were wondering if we’re going to have a super special guest for the 1000th episode. The answer is yes. YOU! We want to hear from you for our 1000th episode.

We’ll be featuring the stories of fifteen lucky listeners. Plus, we’re giving away $1000 worth of prizes to celebrate!

Now’s your chance to be featured on How to be Awesome at Your Job…

Send in a 3- to 5-minute recording or 400- to 800-word story that answers the question: “How has listening to How to be Awesome at Your Job helped me flourish at work?” We want to hear about the great results you’ve achieved by applying what you learned from the show. The fifteen most inspiring and transformational stories will be aired as part of our 1000th episode. 

Three winners will receive the grand prize of a $200 Amazon gift card. We’ll also be selecting 12 runners-up to receive an exclusive How to be Awesome at Your Job t-shirt!

Submit your entries to our TypeForm.

We’ll be accepting submissions until SEPTEMBER 24, 12:00 AM Central Time. 

We want to hear your answer: How has listening to How to be Awesome at Your Job helped you flourish at work?

  • Which episode from How to be Awesome at Your Job helped you the most? What was the specific insight that motivated you to make a change?
  • What concrete steps did you take to achieve your desired results?
  • What advice and key learnings would you share with others in the same situation?

Contest Rules:

  1. All submissions must be in English.
  2. Submissions may be in audio or written format. You do not need to be the one reading your submission; however, please ensure that you have the permission to use the voice of the person who’s reading. Submissions that use A.I. text-to-voice technology will be disqualified.
  3. Submissions must be original and the listener’s own. Please be mindful of copyright and trademark laws, and do not include music, sound effects, or any other audio you do not own the rights to.
  4. Submissions must not contain any explicit content, including curse words or scenarios unsuitable for general audiences.
  5. Grand prize winners who reside outside the United States will receive the equivalent of a $200 gift card for their local Amazon. Winners whose countries don’t have a local Amazon will receive a gift card for Amazon US.

Criteria for Judging:

  • Clarity: Can we follow and imagine the events of your story? Is it clear how the podcast helped you transform your situation?
  • Impact: Was the result big and amazing? Do we feel inspired after hearing your story?
  • Creativity: Is your story compelling, engaging, and unique? Does your narration convey your thoughts and feelings at the time? 
  • Production Quality (for audio submissions): No need for fancy audio equipment, but is the recording clear and understandable? Did you add anything else to make your submission stand out?

Need Inspiration? Click below!

Need Inspiration? Click Me!

We recommend checking out these episodes for more storytelling inspiration:

Need a sample of what we’re looking for? Check out this sample story we’ve prepared. We’ve broken it down into the SPAR framework to give you an idea of how to structure yours!

SITUATION

About a year ago, I was assigned to my first big project. We were in a team of about 10 people, and our job was to come up with a marketing campaign for this new product our long-time partner was launching. Since it was my first project, I was all fired up and excited. I knew I had the skills to succeed

PROBLEM

—but it quickly became clear to me that one of the more senior members on the team wasn’t happy that I was there. It seemed like he thought I was still too junior to take on a project that big…

My ideas were often passed over; I never seemed to get a say in anything—and any time I did try to do something, the more senior members of my team would take over to do it their way. They even started to fuss over the emails I’d write for our clients. Needless to say, my confidence took a big hit.

ACTION

It was around this time a friend recommended I check out the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast. She had started listening to it in 2019 and thought that I might find something helpful from listening. I started with the episode that seemed closest to my situation: How to End Micromanagement Once and For All with Lia Garvin.

And the one thing that really struck me was when Lia suggested trying to be curious about why they were micromanaging. Her key phrase was, “I want to better understand.”

It took a lot of courage to have that conversation, but I knew that things weren’t going to get any better if I didn’t do it. I sat down with that senior member and one thing I said was, “I want to better understand why people are so particular about the emails I’m writing for this project.” It turned out that the important client we were dealing with was known to be a stickler. They wanted things done a certain way—and only that way. 

So then, I made a commitment to him: I would run things by him first and keep him updated on all my progress. I also told him that I’d appreciate his feedback, and that I was glad to be able to learn from him—because he really did have a lot of experience I could learn from. It did turn out that I wasn’t as ready as I thought I was.

He greatly appreciated my honesty, and in the process, our relationship transformed. It was still a difficult project, and it wasn’t pleasant at all to hear his critical feedback or do the extra work of giving him progress updates… but he became more open to my ideas now that I understood the bigger picture of the project. I wasn’t afraid to run my ideas by him, and even though he’d turn some of them down, I knew that he wasn’t doing it because he hated me. 

RESULT

As a result, by the end of the project, I felt comfortable turning to him for advice—and he even started asking me for my thoughts, which was something I never would’ve imagined happening. Since then, he’s become my biggest mentor and advocate. I can always count on him to build me up, coach me, and volunteer my name for the important projects at work. He even proactively advocated for me, such that he was one of the big reasons why received a big promotion this year.