#563 Finish Line Focus: How to Build Momentum Towards Goals That Matter

0:01Get the ice cream, love.

0:03Helen:Big freezer. Oh, it's stuck. It's by the peas. Some things are really best not to put off. Mike defrosting the freezer. Or, if you're a landlord, sending a copy of the new government information sheet to your existing tenants. You must do this by the 31st of May or risk a fine. Make sure you're up to date with the new laws. Find the information sheet at gov.uk slash renting is changing. I can't remember the last time I was this productive. You just don't really say statements like that. I've got loads of energy. I'm getting stuff done. I'm on fire. Which again, not a very Sarah statement. Fire.

0:43Helen:I was, honestly. I did get so much done, weren't we? We looked into it and there is something called the goal gradient effect. Or as we're calling it, the finish line focus. The nearer the finish line you are, the harder you push. and the progress itself becomes really motivating. You get to the centre of the maze every month rather than get to the centre of the maze at the end of a year. So you're more motivated to hit your targets because you know there's a bonus at the end of the month. I hate the idea of handling something in late. I still have those nightmares. Do you still have those nightmares ever?

1:17Yeah. I hate it. And I wake up and I'm like, no, no, you're in your 40s, you're fine. Oh my goodness.

1:26Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly podcast where we borrow some brilliance from things we've been reading, watching, inspired by in loads of different ways and bring it to you in a way that we hope is relevant and useful for your career.

1:42Helen:So today we are borrowing brilliance from essentially my brain. Great. I was also narcissistic. Oh, it sounds very narcissistic. I am brilliant and you can borrow from my brain. Well, I think what happened was an insight, which I shared with you. And then we went looking to see whether that insight was just me, which wouldn't be the first time, or whether it was actually a thing. So let's describe what happened. So I was in a week before I was going on holiday on a Friday. And I sort of made a throwaway comment to you where I was like, I can't remember the last time I was this productive. Which is something that you never, you just don't really say statements like that.

2:22Helen:No, and I don't really use that word because I'm always productive. I feel like you are, but you're anti the idea of it. Yeah, like anti the whole like fill every moment of your day with like productivity, definitely. But it also gave me loads of energy. So I was like, I've got loads of energy. I'm getting stuff done. I was like, you know, like I'm on fire, which again, not a very Sarah statement. I'm on fire. I was, honestly. I did get so much done, aren't we? and I was like oh it's so interesting is it like you know you're just going you're going on holiday anyway we looked into it and there is something called the goal gradient effect or as we're calling it the finish line focus yeah and that's that's our version which is essentially the nearer the finish line you are the harder you push and the progress itself becomes really motivating now we've talked before I talked to Katie Milkman on the podcast and we've we've referred to it quite a few times this idea of the fresh start effect so it's sort of the opposite to that like the fresh start effect can give you motivation and it's kind of a catalyst to be like oh i'm back from holiday or it's september and it feels like kind of back to school time um and that gives you kind of a surge a surge of like progress or i'm near the end and then that gives you a surge of progress i think that goal gradient effect and finish line focus outside of work it kind of makes sense right because i'm just thinking about marathon runners and i have to think about them because i'm so far away from ever being that new news for me london marathon very soon absolutely not not really but i believe you can do anything so if you want to do that i will support you like if i said i was going to just become like a new thing yes yeah i can imagine that it's not going to be a thing i don't i don't believe but i i do watch i do end up watching you know you're like doom scrolling on instagram and you get caught in some kind of loop i seem to i kind of watch quite a lot of i was watching this morning it was the boston marathon yeah um and there was a guy to write towards the end and basically he just couldn't do see and he couldn't and then uh i think like a british guy was nearly you know he was going to do a personal best and he saw this guy on the floor and he he picked him up and then another guy came and picked him up and the three of them got to the end together anyway i ended up watching lots of stuff about marathons but my point of saying that is like people speed up at the end don't they like that's when i guess that goal gradient thing they can see the end is in sight and that's often like the thing that then makes them speed up so i guess intuitively i do see this but i really hadn't thought about it in the same way i haven't really thought about the fresh start effect in the context of work and whether or not that could be helpful do you want to know where they first saw the goal gradient effect when it was in marathons no it was rats lovely i was like oh i'm ratty feels about right um and it was the closer the rats get to the cheese the faster they run Do you think they had wrapped cheese races?

5:19Helen:What was this? I don't know, but it's really old. Like the research, it was like, I'm probably not going to get the year exactly right, but I remember thinking like 1934, like something, it was discovered quite a long time ago. Would you run faster for cheese? Maybe for chocolate. Okay. Chocolate more than cheese. I can't run that fast. So again, like you say, I might want to, but physically it'd probably be a challenge. a top tip here a bit of a recommendation for everybody that I have discovered if you don't follow sketch planations it is worth a look you know visuals are just always really helpful to bring together like bring to life new ideas so sketch planations have got the goal gradient effect as a visual and one of the most common examples of how this works is the coffee card, you know the stamps that you get on a coffee card and so what the sketch planation shows you these kind of cute little pencil figures is if you are let's say you've got like eight little stamps on your card yeah you really want to go for a coffee you're like oh I've got eight I'm like nearly at my free coffee you're not quite there yet but you're you're close so you're like yes let's get the coffee and if you're sitting next to someone who'd got one stamp they'd be like yeah I'm not that bothered about getting a coffee so it's actually not about almost like whether you want the coffee it's just like the card is kind of like the motivating factor and it's apparently why if you go into some coffee shops, they will, and you're getting your new card, they give you two stamps to get you started.

6:47Helen:Like blank coffee cards apparently just don't work. There's been quite a lot of research on it. You're much better off giving someone two and then you're almost like, you know, like adding two extra on the end. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. Didn't we kind of do that without knowing the psychology of it? I was thinking, you know, when we had Learn Like a Lobster and people who pre-ordered it got some, they got their little lobster library card and some stickers. didn't we say like stick your first one on as soon as it's come I'm sure we might have done yeah I think I think we're just that smart we're that smart that we do this stuff no I don't think we knew I think we were just like that's nice put a sticker on you've got some stickers use a sticker we're excited we could just make it work so yeah here's a sticker like uh how could you use it to get people learning more I like I like it so one company which I found fascinating um I was reading this on Farnham Street always a good place for inspiration everybody um so often if there is a concept they will have a blog on it yeah and I often find and they're sort of usually relatively related to work yeah um so I was reading a blog on there and there was an example of a company who pay people their bonuses every month rather than at the end of the year and so the sort of example is you get to the center of the maze every month rather than get to the center of the maze at the end of a year and you can actually you know almost like people the motivation that people get from bonuses they have found massively increases by going well here's a bit every month if you hit your targets so you're more motivated to hit your targets because you know there's a bonus at the end of the month yeah versus if i just get a bonus at the end of the year my yeah and it's actually nothing to do with how much it is so it's not like oh you can make the bonus at the end of the year like more or you make one of them less so it's not really about playing around with the money yeah it's much more like the motivation to be like oh we did what we need to do this month and i get my bonus this month and then great and then it's quite a hard thing to experiment i like i think it's really interesting but it's quite a hard thing to experiment with isn't it like say for a whole year we're just going to change the bonus structure yeah and see and see how it's quite an emotive topic for people and it links well to um so we have done an episode on marshmallows that that happened i actually really remember enjoying that episode a whole chapter of a book a whole section of that's true actually we did nearly do that as well i've forgotten about that um at the point of the marshmallow and the marshmallow test is delayed gratification which most of us even as adults i suppose struggle with you would rather have the two marshmallows now than wait no it's rather one marshmallow now than wait and get two at the end of the month and so it sort of links into that a little bit but we were chatting like do you i wonder whether people are slightly more a fresh start effect person or a finish line focus person what would you say well i've been going around this in my head i've been pondering me too i've just been thinking about like am i the same and i different because i remember when like sarah and i met at university many many moons ago we're actually going back to university soon together but i remember i used to for my assignments create a deadline that was a week in advance i did that too of the actual deadline and to which i think is what you're saying like because i was trying to kind of create more time a bit more urgency also i hate the idea of handling something in late like i still have those nightmares do you still have those nightmares ever yeah i hate it and i wake up and i'm like no no you're in your 40s you're fine well i don't even like at work though like not you know not meeting a deadline even though you know like deadlines are made up and they often don't like mean anything i know but at school they really they really did if you miss a assignment and then you've failed and your life was over or i don't know whatever happens to me have you ever missed a deadline I don't think I've ever missed a deadline that matters No I don't think I have Like you know have you ever asked for an extension?

10:36I asked for one on my MBA because I was having a baby I think I was probably alright

10:41Helen:That day Sorry guys a bit busy It's not that I was having a baby on that day But I was like in the process I think it was like the month of my daughter arriving into the world But you know some people I think hold deadlines quite lightly Yeah whereas I think I'll probably take them quite seriously but so I kind of and so then I go oh I think I must be a kind of finish line focus person but I but if you were saying to me which one are you more because I think I do have some evidence that that works for me but I think I am much more a fresh start effect person like I try to use fresh starts all the time like it's a quarter like even with my vision board I'll be like start a new quarter or even a notebook like there are so many ways that I will try to create myself a fresh start.

11:28Like new starts, yeah. I find that more motivating. What conclusion did you come to from your ponderings?

11:34Helen:Well, like you said, I don't think, I couldn't sort of definitely categorise myself as one versus the other. Some of it I think might be context or situational. So if I think about holidays, which I do think are just natural breaks, as in you're like away from work, I am definitely more motivated the week before a holiday than I am the week after. like when I come back it takes me a bit to get re like into it I don't come back on the Monday and I'm like right fresh start effect let's go I'm like nah like just you know like to warm up it takes that takes me like a bit to warm up I think and I don't have that need to create like the newness that you just described I like I'm like oh I don't recognize that okay um and yeah I think I might be more finish line focused but so when I think about like the wind watch that you and I use yeah um i like towards the end of a quarter i i look at that more regularly you do and then i'm like right how are we what's our progress versus that and i again i think it prompts action i'm like okay well we've we're amber on that one or we've not made any progress on that like why not what do we need to do a good pair maybe because if one of you's got yeah maybe maybe as a team if you are going to talk about this together yeah actually thinking about how could you pair up someone who loves a fresh start effect with someone who's got finish line focus it probably means like you're more likely to get stuff started and get stuff done and generally i think a bit of both is probably is probably quite useful um now what's quite interesting is when you then start to look into this um you know people start to talk about like what of three ways to increase your goal gradient motivation um and i don't really like the answer to these questions i can I can't imagine you reading it and we're like, absolutely not.

13:18Helen:And it was like, oh, gamification. I was like, not again. I mean, I've already done one podcast on gamification. Next one, activity trackers. I was like, oh, God's sake, visualise progress. I was like, things that I'm not interested in and don't want to talk about again on the podcast. Okay, moving on. We moved on from that. But we have talked about them on the podcast. Yeah. I was in charge of the research for this one, so I moved on. And I just kept reading about it. I was like, if they say gamification one more time, So instead I created Finish Line Fridays. Okay. Because I was like thinking, yes, you have a bit like with Fresh Start Effect.

13:55Helen:Sometimes they're created for you, but you can also create them for yourself. Yeah. And yes, there's a bit of a nice alliteration, but equally it is the end of a week. It's a natural finish line and it might be finish line Thursdays if you work to a Thursday. And I think you could go through this process and just help yourself to sort of almost experiment with, does this help you with your motivation do you move forward faster by doing what I'm going to describe so I'm going to give an example just to show how it would work and then Helen's going to actually talk through a real example for herself so firstly obviously you've got to pick a goal that you want to make progress on because interestingly when I did this I hadn't got a goal I think my goal was my goal actually probably was go on holiday and don't work okay which is a goal right that's a goal so it was so for me my without intentionally picking it but that's probably what was going through my head is like i like going on holiday and having a break so that was my goal but you could pick like make linkedin a useful place for curiosity and connection like that's my goal then each week choose an action that you want to finish by the by the friday but for week one important point choose an action you've already done okay so back to the coffee card stamp you see because you want to give yourself a stamp yeah so and we'll talk in a second about like you can obviously create a scorecard using ai but you want like a tick or something crossed off so i might be like you know picks me really easy like create a linkedin profile like done it brilliant or smug feeling good about myself and then what's interesting is part of the reason this works is when you get to the finish line it's really important you then know what comes next so what you could be tempted to do is get to the Friday being like done and then I'll pick my new like action for the week as part of the kind of big goal on Monday but you are way better to pick it on the Friday at the same moment that you're ticking off what you've done that week why is that do you know what's the is there some kind of psychology that you're like more you're more in like a goal zone or something it says because um yes you have the kind of the end is in sight like the friday but then your next beginning is already visible before almost like oh like as the end arrives yeah sort of knowing what comes next yeah and i was thinking about this because i've read quite a few times how people who write books will leave writing day to day mid-sentence and that's because they they kind of then know what they're coming back to so unsatisfying right they mid-sentence yeah yeah yeah especially when people are because some people write in a very disciplined way yeah and so they're like well I write until 3 p.m and an alarm goes off or I have to or I go for a walk or I go pick the kids up from school or whatever I do and like they just go wherever I get to I literally just shut the laptop I walk away or I get to the end of a paragraph can you imagine if meetings work like that you know like you're like they're like literally like the end of the meetings and then whatever you were you just stopped no one didn't finish the conversation just ended just walked away i did see something this week at an event i was at um where they did quite they were trying to do a different sort of panel because they were like well panels can be quite boring yeah and they did some quick fire questions where you had 30 seconds to answer and literally a tracker came on the screen on a massive screen behind them and they were like we have to stop talking when it goes off wow and yeah it was an interesting one to watch.

17:16Helen:Were you on that panel? No, no. Would you have liked that? No. But what was, I get the point because you're trying to make people concise, right? And you're like, sorry, stick to the point. But people were there mid-sentence and then they didn't get the chance to sometimes finish that sentence. And I was like, oh, I did want to know what they were going to say. So it is an interesting one. But I guess sometimes, I suppose because writing is hard, actually having something to pick up, you know, like a thread to pick up again could could be quite useful like what what do i it's a bit like you know when you do that story i don't even ever do this with you with max is sarah's little boy but you ever do that that that game where you pass on a sentence like yeah once upon a time there was a frog who and then you kind of it's sort of like it's there's a something in that yeah continuation so that's kind of how you would that's how you would do it and i was like oh i think if i was going to do this i might do it over a month right you pick a goal that you know is going to take because the goal has got to be bigger than a week so a goal that's going to take a month or if you've got a really big goal you could be like right I've got a goal for this year that I really want but it's feeling big and unwieldy maybe I'm not doing anything and it's getting a bit frustrating then I'm like oh maybe by doing your finish line Fridays does that just sort of give you some momentum I can't back to why I don't want to do activity trackers I can't imagine doing it every week but I can imagine doing it for like specific goals okay so we thought we'd try out with Helen and see if it works okay um so pick a goal that you want to make progress on what goal are you going to go for well I mentioned that we were going to go back to investing yeah we are it's very exciting um and that is because Sarah and I are both doing PhDs which is exciting um and I if I think about a goal that I would like for a month's time which at the moment feels quite unrealistic but I'll go with it and I'll use finish line focus to help me I would really like within a month to have like, so when we do our PhD, we have to read a lot, we have to do a literature review.

19:13And I would almost like to have a mind map of territories for the literature review. So we have our topic for the PhD in the middle. And I'd like to have like a mind map of like, well, here are like 10 areas that are relevant to this topic. And here are, you know, theorists and academics who've done work on them. I would really like to have that mind map because it would be like a skeleton for the work. So I'd love to do that within a month's time. So that means I need four finish line Fridays, right, to get me to that. And the first one needs to already be done. Yes. Okay.

19:46Helen:So the first one is already done. It's Friday tomorrow. So let's imagine that this was like the first week of you doing it. Yeah. So pick something you've already done. I have submitted the PhD proposal and I've had like the email back. Oh, yeah, that's nice. That was quite a nice email. I nearly screenshotted it. Oh, you should have done it. Yeah, I mean, it's in my inbox somewhere. Oh, okay, you've got it. You've still got it. It's somewhere in there. It was something that popped up and then disappeared. I didn't delete it. I was like, good luck. Bye. See you in four years. It's somewhere in my inbox.

20:15Helen:So, okay, well, I'll give myself a little, what do I do? Do I get a tick? So you get a tick. Yeah. And then at the same time, so let's imagine, well, you are getting the tick because you have done it. Yeah. But then you need to decide one thing for next week now. Okay. So I think I would like to, oh, one thing for next week. maybe like like literally have a piece of paper this is going to be paper this is I will do this on paper which is probably very retro but I'll do it on paper so have the paper and maybe have I'd like to have like two of the bubble like two of the territories okay so I'm gonna have to like do some reading around I want to feel confident in like two of the territories and so let's take this even further into like your practical week so now you've you're like okay I know what I want to be by next Friday.

21:03Helen:There's always a big difference between knowing and doing, right? So I know that you want to do that. What's most likely to get in your way next week? Well, probably the fact that I don't even know what I'm doing next week at the moment. Like I need to look in my diary and I need to find, that is a good three to four hours of researching, thinking, like reading in order for me to feel confident that they're two territories. so I need to find a chunk of time in my diary next week and without looking at my diary, that's not going to get done. So that would be the action for that. Okay. And so just listening to you, how likely do you think it is that you'll be able to find three to four hours next week when we're on Thursday?

21:50Potentially, because I'm quite up for doing this in the evening or on a Saturday. My daughter goes to like a class on Saturday morning and I can literally drop her and I can sit in a coffee shop and do it. But I need to, that needs to be very intentionally blocked out in my diary or it just gets eaten up by work or life or email or whatever else I'm doing.

22:09Helen:So one of the things that we will often talk about is, you know, like if it doesn't go in your diary, it doesn't get done. Because I think when I was going through this, I was like the when. You know, you talk a lot about like the why, the what and the how. But I increasingly spend a lot of time talking about the when, like when will that work get done? so I think if you were using finish line Fridays I'm not sure it's enough to just be like well this is the you know this this is the action for my PhD or I don't think it's enough for me to go oh well I don't want to work when I go on holiday so I'll just work really hard this week I think you then need to almost be specific about well when is that work happening yeah so that then when you get to your Friday you've you kind of have got to the finish line I was also wondering this is all me just like making all this up now based on zero science you're like i'm not doing gamification i'm making some stuff up but i was thinking about the rats and the runners yeah getting faster at the end yes so i was like do you then factor that in right so potentially you would be at your slowest or you'd have less momentum let's say on a monday yeah versus a Thursday because on the Thursday like you know like the end is inside you're nearly at the finish line Friday of what creating your mind map with your kind of two territories so you could also factor in increasing your time each day so I was like oh it's day one if you've got a task day one could be 10 minutes yeah like day two could be 20 yeah day three could be 30 day four could be 40 um and I was like oh does that if you did it that way around versus the opposite way around do you get more done like that that would have to be the thing you'd have to try you'd have to try right I'd have to do a week where I just blocked a chunk versus a week where I had this sort of like incremental yeah like time yeah I really don't know because it's quite I always think it's quite I couldn't think of many examples of where I'd done that before you know almost where like I built and built and built yeah in a very conscious way almost being like oh well I know that actually being able to see the finish line will help me just talking that example through with you I definitely think what helps me is to kind of go where do I want to be in a month so you kind of go you've got to zoom out first yeah and then and mine is a particular visual because I can literally in my head I can see that mind map and then seeing it then helps me to go okay so I want it to look like that a week three that a week two and you know your thing might not be quite as visual as mine it could be something you want to do or relationships you want to build but I think if you can imagine in some way what it want what you want to look like in a month if that feels like the right time frame I think it then it's much easier to create your finish line Fridays whereas I think if you just try and do finish line Friday and then what would the next one be or the next one without that I don't know if it would get you where you really want to get to with the goal so you want to break it down first before you then yeah I want to zoom out want to go that's that's where I want to be that's the that's what the goal looks like for me in a month yeah and then I want to go what are the four finish line Fridays that are going to get me to that goal and what's interesting which you don't really read about if you read any of the articles that will um put in kind of the pod sheet and everything is what happens when it doesn't work you know because you don't it doesn't always work right so you might feel more motivated but stuff gets in the way is this like someone who's got the end in sight of the marathon or the rat can see the cheese and then goes yeah not today well I was thinking person who couldn't get to the marathon you're like well didn't happen for them right they obviously it was a tough time and they were struggling so I was thinking a bit about uh support and like the people around you so we're working on something this week which is involving lots of our team it's something for a learning partner that we work with um and we're responding to like a big brief that they've kind of sent our away and we actually have a finish line Friday because that is that is the deadline um and I was thinking if that had been and it's not just been this week right so that is a good example of something where you could be like we could have we didn't but we could have broken down responding to that in a finish line Friday way right and being like week one week two week three and but what has really helped us this week almost like because we have had a finish line Friday has been like okay almost working in pairs to the finish line so you're not it's not always an individual pursuit you know so many things and lots of so much research is done from such an individual perspective like does the rat run faster does the human run faster when they kind of see the finish line but then I was also thinking yeah but most time we're in teams most of the time the goals that you're working on like the one you just described you can make some progress on your PhD without me but only to a point like we're sort of also it's the quality of the progress right I can make progress but whether it's actually good yeah it's another thing so I was like oh what would it mean to share yeah to like share a finish line to be like okay well we've got a shared goal in every team you have shared goals and then we do exactly what you said we kind of we zoom out a bit and then we we have a fit almost like a shared finish line Friday my hypothesis is that it will also feel more satisfying you know it's always better to win together as a team than it is to sort of win by yourself like I might feel good but I get to go on holiday and and not work you're like fine but I think I will feel let's imagine we do an amazing job with this thing that we're working on at the moment I'm gonna imagine that's true Helen's crossing her fingers uh a lot of that you and I have done the bits that we have done you and I have done together so it feels very shared like the pursuit and the progress of that has felt very shared and i think i will feel prouder of it i'm more motivated by it because of that so i was like oh that's my that's my other build on something that isn't that's not a scientific that's my interesting reflection like how many of your finish lines are solo versus shared yeah like it's an interesting thing um so if you do want to have a go at it last thing from us is um i did go into claude and just got it to create me a scorecard um it's quite funny actually when I go into Claude now, I give it a lot of feedback on branding.

28:23Helen:I was like, oh, it's like someone in our team. Claude's starting to really hate me. I'm like, hmm, not happy with that Pantone. I literally said that to it this week. And I got it to do a squiggle. And do you know, oh, the squiggle said it started with Helen. I was like, oh dear, crikey. How optimum is the squiggle now? Well, now it's better. It's a wave rather than a squiggle, I think it's fair to say. But crikey, it's better than where we started. So we've improved. Well done, Claude. I hope Claude is learning about the squiggle. did you know you can put pantones into claude i would well i do now so as in we could put our pantones for our brand into claude and say yes but create the scorecard in our pantones if you're wondering if that made me happy yeah i can see that's joy um which no one else will care about but when you create your scorecard you can put your overall goal at the top which is which i did and then i wrote down all of the action so i did the same thing as you i was like i worked out what all of the finish line Fridays would be but you could also as you learn as you go you could change the order right you could be like oh actually um I've created my LinkedIn profile I'm now going to follow five people I find interesting on LinkedIn I'm going to update my summary write a recommendation for one person connect with three new people join one LinkedIn live and I put brackets with squiggly careers we have got some we have got some and so I wrote those and then I was like oh actually I did find it useful to have um something you know something visual that I could either print out or I could put in my notebook or I could add it into my I was like oh actually I'd probably add this into my diary so you could take that pdf yeah put it into the time when you were going to do some of the actions you know it's like a visual reminder and then kind of keep crossing it off and then the thing that I couldn't work out because I'm just not good at it I'm not it to be like live you know as in like something that then I could keep crossing off and it would like dynamically do it and that I could move them around basically I think I wanted to create like a little GPT or an app but I didn't I didn't get as good as that well I got a scorecard maybe that can be on your finish line Friday you know as in like I'd have to I'd literally have to physically cross it off at the moment so I didn't get as good as that okay okay well there's time there's time for you to work on this I like it I definitely I mean it even just talking about it has made me think about the thing I want to do with PhD so um that has definitely given me a bit of clarity I still think I'm quite a fresh starter but I would like to I would like to bring in a bit more of the finish line focus I think otherwise you just start loads of stuff you never finish right so so um I would like to sort of up my ability there so I'm willing to experiment with it um if that's been useful uh remember you can find everything on the pod sheet in terms of a summary some ideas I'm just trying to work out whether I want to put the scorecard on there or not Still not quite in our branding, everyone.

31:07Helen:So maybe, or maybe I'll put it on and write in brackets, not in our branding. So whether you are a fresh start effect or a finish line focus person, we hope you found the episode useful. Quick reminder, our pod sheets, our other podcast episodes, and lots of free tools like the 10-minute tools on Squiggly Careers are all on amazingif.com. So head there if you just want some extra inspiration and hopefully some useful summaries. and we have something different happening on the podcast next week. I've replaced Sarah. I was like, when you said something different, I was like, what are you doing? What's happening?

31:43Well, basically, I'm taking the podcast over for a week. You say for a week, we'll see. We'll see how long. This could be my last ever episode. No, it's not your last ever episode. It's just for a week. But it's for a really exciting reason. So we are working with LinkedIn to bring you their brand new book, which is called Open to Work. It's been written by the CEO of LinkedIn, Ryan Malansky, and also Anish Rahman, who is their Chief Economic Opportunity Officer. Very cool job title. Also used to be a Barmer speechwriter. It's very exciting. Oh, yeah, you said that. I know, he's a brilliant communicator.

32:12And what we're going to do is we're going to take that book open to work and we're going to do an episode a day over the week. Short episodes, like 10 minutes long. And we're going to bring the book to life to talk about, they have these things called the five C's, which are going to be really useful for careers like now and in the future. So if that sounds interesting, make sure you are subscribed to Squiggly Careers wherever you listen or wherever you watch so that you make sure you get those episodes.

32:34Helen:Maybe I'll listen in case you replace me. And then I increase the opportunities for my career from listening and then be like, oh, and then I went off and followed Helen's advice before she ousted me. I think you should just come back the following week. That would be my preference. But thank you so much for listening today, everybody. Thank you so much. We're back again for you soon.