#589 How to use the next 88 days at work wisely

0:00Hi, I'm Helen. And I'm Sarah. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, a weekly show where we borrow some brilliance from things we've been reading, watching, listening to, living, we'll come on to that in a minute, in order to create some insights that can support you with your squiggly career. and every one of our episodes always comes with a one page pod sheet. So this summarizes the ideas and the actions we talk about to make it really easy for you to turn the listening into useful things for your career. You can always find that on our website, which is just amazingif.com. And whilst you're there, if you subscribe to the Squiggly Careers newsletter, you'll get all of this sent to your inbox every Tuesday, which we hope just makes this easier for you.

0:42So this week, we're going to be borrowing brilliance from... Da-da-da!

0:48Helen:I wasn't ready for the drum roll We're going to borrow Brilliance from September A month It's fair to say we're not recording this in September because logistically that just doesn't work It's the first of September when this episode is coming out so we do have to record slightly in advance So we are imagining you and I are going to put ourselves in September mindset Generally how do you feel about September? Because I do think it's a certain vibe I'm being excited because my kids are back at school. I've survived the summer. But also like genuinely that is part of it for me. I'm like, oh, that was quite, there's always summer is always a bit of a juggle.

1:26So I think September I'm like, I can selfishly, I can kind of get a bit back to me and working in the way that works for me, not the way that works for my family, which is kind of what is a lot of summer for me. um so I'm always quite excited I feel like I'm back on I'm back on track I am very conscious that when September comes it feels like the end of year's in sight yeah I get definitely a bit more like oh here is a package of time for me to focus on to achieve the things that I want to do um also like it's kind of like my favorite time of year me too you know like just like seasonally yeah you feel like you get you just I like the seasons as you go out of September and into kind And I like the autumn phase.

2:06I'm just, it's my happy, it's my happy time. What about you?

2:10Helen:Yeah, I'm the same. So I do actually like the summer. I like the variety and the sort of unusualness that comes with sort of July and August. Our work often feels a bit different. I do go on holiday, which I do enjoy. I feel like you have a break. I work in quite a different way. I work in more, in different places, in different ways. But I do like the new pencil case effect, as I like to think of it. like how exciting is it well what is your new pencil case equivalent in september because i don't actually buy a pencil case now no i would have attempted i was like oh i still feel that i used to love doing that before starting school i love it too did you have a tin or a zippy uh no like a soft a soft one quite like a yeah but now my kids have like the same i feel like i feel like now there's just too much choice with pencil case that's me being like i'm back in my Friday.

3:03Helen:Yeah. Oh, my son has quite like a, I feel like it's not an exciting thing. He has quite a functional like see-through. Oh, because of school requirements. Yeah, just school. It's like, it's not a, there's no way he would be interested in a new pencil case. My children spoil their far too many pencil cases. They've lost that September feeling because they're too many all the time. Okay. What would you get though? What would give you the September pencil case feeling? um I think I mean this is really sad but you know inbox being clear it's really sad every so often I I know you probably shouldn't do this in the first place but you know where you save stuff on your laptop like the icons on your home page screen I then create fold a folder and I move everything into there so I have a clean like clean clean screensaver everything that's flagged in my inbox that sort of needs to get sorted is sorted and then I think I would be yeah like good to go probably like clear notes off my phone kind of like I feel like you've gone with the psychological pencil case yes whereas I was like maybe a new pen do you want to buy something I want to buy something maybe a new mug at my desk something nice I do need a new chair so I might think about that okay there you go we did work out so I was thinking I a lot of people Well, not everybody will obviously have a summer like we had.

4:19Helen:And when I was younger, September basically meant going on holiday. That's when I always used to go on holiday. But we did work out that from the 1st of September, we think if Claude has served as well, there are 88 days, 88 working days. Because Helen and I both did this calculation. It was really funny. We got different numbers and we were like, oh no, what have we done? But I did work days and Helen had done just days. And I was like, well, let's stick to work days. So if you've got 88 work days left, assuming you work a five day week, how are you going to use that time? So what we have done is come up with eight questions to answer to hopefully help you use those 88 days at work well and wisely.

5:02Helen:And it's 88 days until the end of the year. Yes. Yes. Yeah. What did I say? Just 88 days. Oh, 88 days. Just 88 days. What is going to happen? Every 88 days is a new cycle. Yes. Yeah. Until the end of the year. and actually we've so we've seen the questions we've we've created the questions together but we haven't seen each other's answers to the questions um so it will be interesting because some of these answers should be very similar so if they're not and I feel like it's a very Sarah and Helen difference of approach and that I think you spent quite a lot of time considering your answers and I just quickly went through I was like yeah yeah yeah well I always spent quite a lot of time considering the questions of which you came back on them within about 30 seconds and I was like I've really thought about these um and yes I did I thought about them and then I wrote them down and then I thought about them again this morning um but that's okay so we've divided them into priorities two questions on priorities two questions on time two questions on people and two questions on skills yeah just to give us a little bit of a framework so priorities question one what's your number one priority at work between now and the end of the year and how is that reflected in your diary?

6:09Yes, this question made me a little bit uncomfortable, I'll be honest. So I thought my number one... Because you don't like having one priority. No, no. It's the second part of it. It was the diary bit. I was like, oh, I don't think actually. I think my biggest work priority is the programmes that we run with companies.

6:26Helen:Okay, at least I've got the same answer. Okay, yes. So I won't repeat that. I wrote the same thing down. So we're really excited. We've got some really big programmes. So outside of the podcast, for people that don't know, we spend most of our time in companies, supporting companies with career skills and career structures so that we can make Squiggly careers better for everybody. And we have some really big and important programs that we really care about that are happening. And I want to make sure that I'm really focused on making those as good as they can be. And then if I think about my diary, it's not that I don't think my diary reflects it.

6:58It's more that I don't, I haven't communicated that intent. I haven't gone what would that look like and what would I take out for that to be possible I think I'm just sort of assuming well it's going to take up time and it's gone in and so I feel like the priority is clear but the conscious management of my diary to reflect that priority hasn't happened which is what made me feel uncomfortable yeah I got to a similar reflection

7:20Helen:so I had the same answer I looked at my diary and thought oh the the sort of big moments where we are like delivering learning or spending time with those companies that will that will just go in the diary but I was thinking what we need to be proactive about and take initiative to make happen is almost the time around the learning so given that we're both saying it's our number one priority okay time with each other time to reflect you know straight after you've done let's say we've done a day of a challenge and build session with a learning partner I think one of the things that sometimes you and I are guilty of is we then don't ever factor in any time the next day to be like right what went well even better if actions that might have come from those things never exist in isolation so I think we're good at the big moments that matter but it's sort of the surrounding time that I think that needs to get reflected in the diary so that's already useful second question who are the three most important people who will influence slash support you in achieving that priority and I think this question just comes from the reflection that nobody succeeds in their squiggly career by themselves and you can't ever get any projects done without other people you know like there are always interdependencies so I think acknowledging recognizing those and then thinking about like the so what is quite helpful was I in your list well well it's joy it's interesting is we had the same answer to the first one so I wonder whether we've got the same people which would be interesting so my three people um and for listeners i'll contextualize who these people are but the names are sarah sarah louise these are my three people um are these other than swapping you for me are they the same no two two are the same okay so i wrote you and louise okay and then i wrote our external i wrote the names of some of our external partners down okay so the difference to me is so i have sarah two sarahs sarah one the sarah that is here now um because we deliver those programs together we will feedback improve we build it all better together so always always Sarah the other Sarah is a Sarah that manages like my time really helps helps me to manage my time and so she can help me protect those boundaries push back when I say yes to things that I shouldn't I think we're coming off the boundaries and then Louise is responsible for the delivery with all of our partners and our programs and so I think those three relationships are critical for me delivering on that first one which again I think when I was thinking about these it made me think about you know the when we've talked before on the podcast about if it doesn't go in the diary it doesn't get done and if I think if you're listening to this now think about who are your highest influence and impact people these are the people in that high and high part of the matrix around relationship mapping and then just think about you know how maybe how strong is my relationship with that person have we talked about things like ways of working have we set up anything things like fast flags if things are going wrong so if this is like the number one priority let's say when we're working with Louise and Sarah we need them to be clear right let us know if something's not working make sure we say the hard thing whatever it might be so I think it's just good just to think about often we are clear on our priorities because we have to set objectives or we're having those conversations and then I just wonder whether we do that extra work around okay well if that is our priority like it's the so what and the now what isn't it and I think with all of these areas we're going to talk about today the questions get you to awareness but we were reflecting beforehand you then have got to turn that awareness into action into something um you know I see life in like frameworks diagrams yeah I do have like a Venn diagram in answer that question of well actually the first two like what are your priorities who are the people that enable those priorities and then what are the principles that you need to work with to bring those bring those things together but I wouldn't have got to that without that question I would have probably just done the work that I thought was important and assumed the right people would help me to do it yeah and I think our point here is almost it's just the questions are really useful we both found them useful but they're not enough yeah you've got to then do something because otherwise I think in 88 days you might say well i knew all those things and i think i just didn't do anything let's talk about time yeah i always think these ones are hard hard for people yes uh so question three what are you going to start or continue saying no to i i'm actively doing this i'm actively doing this which is um my evening i have said no to being part of quite a few evening related event things I actually do want to do like I do want to be at them and I do want to go and I do want to be with those people and it's really hard to say no to because people try to persuade you like quite I've got quite a lot of messages from people trying to persuade me to do things and the reason I'm saying no to it is because it's like a multitude of things I'm just recognizing that if I go back to the first question about the priorities in order for me to be at my best for those things I need to really manage my energy yeah and I if I give too much of it to two other things I just haven't got maybe it's an age thing I don't know but I just I honestly I feel like I'm working with a strong awareness of how much energy I've got and what gives and what takes and it's a bit of it's quite a delicate balance for us to do all the things that we do in our work and so I'm having in order to do that I'm having to say no to quite a lot of things that I would absolutely love to say yes to but and the thing that helps me is the things I say yes to are so exciting you know I'm so yeah I'm so excited I kind of go well it's okay you don't have to you don't have to go to that because you're going to Ibiza with your friends in September like just look forward to that thing you don't have to do it you know every week and that I'm going to continue to say no to that because I think the payoff of the no is worth it yeah back to manage your energy rather than your time yeah yeah what about you um freedom fridays so i think for me you're saying no to them oh no no um saying no to anything that kind of impacts on freedom fridays wherever i can i think you can't have but things are not binary right our work is never black and white so sometimes we have to do work with those partners on a friday and so you're obviously not going to say no to that but I think a bit like your point on evenings I find that the more energy I'm expending in a week the better able I am to kind of do that if I know I've got a freedom Friday and for me that just means having the space on a Friday where I can completely control my time and I look forward to it during the week I can give more during the week and I think it then sort of re-boosts me re-energizes me and I sort of have my own little routine of like what I like to do on those freedom Fridays like I go to a former class eight till nine so it makes me kind of get up and get out of the house which actually is good for me because I'm not necessarily a morning person and then I have my favorite coffee shop that I like going to and then then I like thinking well where will I go next will I go to somewhere where I might go for a walk and listen to a podcast or I want to go and read an article it might even be like last Friday I was working on a podcast script that we're going to talk about later today but I'd got the choice of like when I was doing that I don't like having everything I suppose like detailed in my diary I like I like that day um and I find that I struggle in a week if I feel like I haven't got that Friday I get I get a bit like antsy almost like with other people and with myself so that was my one uh and then number four what boundary do you want to protect so you can be at your best but this was your this was your question i know i know and i found out because quite a few i'm like oh honestly i was like oh there's quite a few things but i could say exercise and i could say like the the days i want to work from home to just your point but actually i think the boundary is i i really don't want to live in my inbox or in microsoft teams as much as i've and i sometimes feel that i'm dragged in there both actually by our team yeah and and i'd say whatsapp so you and me drag each other into whatsapp loads of messages our team drags us into teams because there's lots of communication in teams and then there's loads of kind of dragging me into my inbox and i could spend i could probably cycle almost continuously in a day and i find it so um it's not unproductive that's the thing because it can feel quite productive yeah reply to that sorted that sent that off cycle again it's unsatisfying because i feel like my brain hasn't had time time to think like to create and I mean thinking in a really reflective way I mean like oh but what would I do if I wasn't just responding to that and if I was just giving you my opinion on that and I kind of just actually like if I was to start from scratch and go well this is my thought process this is what I think we could do and so I want to be a bit bounded I can't I can't quite work out how I was gonna say what's the boundary gonna look like are you gonna do the whole I don't know being like well I'm not gonna be I'm gonna turn it off during certain times I I need to, I need, and it's probably with you and the team, it's probably something to talk through.

16:26But I, cause I could, I know some people do the, I'll do like the nine to 10. You know, just basically if I can't process the comms that I need to process within these pockets of time in a day, then it's not, it's not going to get done. Yeah. And so you need to find a better way to work with me, which is quite a selfish thing to say. But I'm just trying to think about where will I add the most, how do I want to feel at work and where will I add the most value? And it doesn't make me feel good and it's not where I add the most value. so I just I haven't quite cracked it I might experiment I might say I might be more open about I find this hard I'm going to experiment so for one week maybe I will try the either end of the day like I'll do an a because it's what I do on holiday yeah on holiday I will say to the team I because I normally go to the gym in the morning while my kids are asleep and I normally do a little bit in the morning a little bit in the evening just to just to stay on top of things and I'm yeah maybe I'll experiment with that and maybe I'll maybe I'll ask the team for some ideas as well I haven't got the solution I just think if I spend the next 88 work days not protecting that boundary I'm not sure I'm going to feel like I've done the best that I can

17:34Helen:do by the end of the year and also I could hear it last week you and I were having a conversation and you were getting frustrated about oh I haven't I haven't read that yet or I've not done this and you were clearly like oh and it's it's kind of making me sad it's like I've not had the time I've not had the time to think but you are someone I guess because of your natural you know you want to be helpful you're pacey you're responsive you're techie you love your phone you know like all and you have loads of notifications all that kind of stuff you sort of have a I think it's an interesting tension for you because on one hand you definitely want to you want to read some of those books or you want to do some of those things to have ideas things like the podcast on the other hand you definitely get the dopamine hits from the instant productivity so it's probably like you said maybe i'll tell you one other thing i could do is for a week i'm not gonna reply to anything i do like that that'd be a dramatic one and let's see yeah did it need did it need you know if if i didn't reply to it would it get done yeah interesting because then you're also challenging the you know like have you created dependency yeah yeah like how much is real and how much is really important to me and you know like i don't it's an interesting thing like maybe maybe i'll experiment um but yeah i just know like if i think oh by the end of the year i still feel like that like and i hadn't you'd be disappointed i'd be disappointed i hadn't tried to do something about it it's probably my reflection from that question yeah what about yours oh i did go with um exercise actually not not the inbox thing um but that's not my not my challenge anyway but I think I think because I've seen the difference when I have protected being able to do some exercise and also I've worked really hard this year to have options for exercise so you know if your exercise always has to look and feel the same yeah in our work because there's so much variety it then falls down really fast yeah and so I've tried to be like right okay you'd flex exercise yeah you basically you basically do and not to make variety in our work an excuse for not exercising because that's really that's really easy so oh well we're away a few nights or in different places or it suddenly got busier and so I have and I'm way better with classes like I don't ever want to exercise at home and so I have multiple classes during a week that I know I'm like well I like that class I'm going I've got a class tonight on a Monday all the classes also you but I have to put beforehand and they cost money yeah I hate the idea of wasting money.

20:02Helen:Yeah. And I've done it once where I didn't go because I was still on a conversation with someone on our team and I got really mad at myself because I could have said, I'm going to need to go. And I didn't. And I was like, why? You know, you're like, why did I not do that? Anyway, I got mad at myself. And I would have always previously, I think, said three classes a week, but actually two is realistic. Three is like a win. Yeah, like cherry on top week. Yeah, cherry on top week. But if I do two, then I'm really happy. I end the week feeling well and I feel like it's realistic so I know I can do it and I just need to kind of just keep going I think um I mean all these questions actually probably quite useful to talk about as a team but that one in particular I think is a really useful team you know if you're just going to pick one question in fact you could go through all the eight questions and go which one are we going to talk about as a team but I do think that one because I think you get a bit of empathy like it's quite useful to hear what's going on and then I also think you kind of get how can I help because my first reaction was okay how how how can I help to you to protect those times that are in your diary so which is so and yours was the same for me you were like well how are you going to do that yeah and I was actually what was going through my head I was like thinking oh sometimes we probably over whatsapp when we don't need to or we could say should we have an evening off whatsapp which occasionally you will do you you actually more than me you will sometimes say i'm out i'm just gonna i'm out for a bit and i always think crikey what's happening with what must have happened given that she doesn't want to be on whatsapp but maybe we do that a bit more frequently rather than waiting till breaking point i feel like we get to breaking point and then say we need a break yeah versus intentionally oh on a monday and tuesday in the evenings or on tuesday and wednesday in the evenings we try not to watch it's tricky it's tricky being best friends with your business partner and our work being quiet i still want the puppy content to be clear it's tricky um people two questions on people yeah so question five uh what five minute favors are you going to do more of yes this is another one that made me ponder and i was like which which ones which one because i was trying to think like realistically in five minutes in five minutes what could you do that actually makes a difference to people and also like what do people ask you for people the main thing I get asked for um I either other than can you come to this thing in the evening which I'm having to say no to um I get asked for introductions yeah do you know anyone who yeah and I get asked for can you please share this on your LinkedIn profile for me I definitely get the joys of being a LinkedIn influencer I definitely get asked that and I kind of thought oh what I might do is I don't I think I'll just try and do one of those things a week like without waiting to people ask because I think it's a hard thing for someone to ask you that takes a bit of confidence and then a lot of the time I'm like well I've already I've already done my post this week and I can't do it now and I feel really awkward so I thought I might more proactively make those introductions and use my profile to promote someone else's work so like each week I might think you could do like a squiggly shout out that kind of a thing I thought I might maybe have a format well I try and do it a little bit in our newsletter as well if I see something I might be like oh yeah but I thought on my profile each week I could think about who's who's somebody's work that I could like shout out or you know put the spotlight on somebody and then also sort of more behind the scenes what is an introduction I can make so I thought realistically both of those they only take me five minutes to do yeah and I think that kind of hopefully has a kind of knock on positive impact on somebody else's work yeah it was um mine was an internal one rather than you've been quite external so i think in five minutes i'm quite good at a sarah scan yeah which is an email that someone's going to send to one of our partners and they're sort of checking it for tone or is this the right positioning or maybe we are saying no to something yeah um maybe it's a one slide maybe it's a document i think i can quickly look at the tone or the positioning of something know whether it feels spot on or needs some kind of even better ifing yeah and then quickly help someone with well what about this instead or here's an alternative or here's some fast feedback and I think I could do that more proactively so at the moment I probably just wait yeah I wait wait to be asked whereas actually if I said to the team I'm always really happy to look at a one-pager look at a like I like looking at proposals and things that almost it doesn't actually matter even if it's gone out yeah it does that doesn't worry me yeah this kind of the Sarah scan um and also I feel like you provide value very fast that I feel like I can very quickly go I saw one today actually do you want one today you sure actually to be fair Sarah and our team hasn't had this yet but I'm gonna say anyway so I was looking at our website for various reasons and I noticed we mixed up on a page sort of talking about ourselves in the third person versus the first person and I think we should talk about ourselves as like our yeah the you know what are things that we do or this is how we approach things like because we are us rather than being like squiggly or something separate to us and so that's a good example of where that's something that already exists I can do a quick Sarah scan and I can say, oh, I think this is why we would change this, A, to be consistent, but also...

25:34What's going on in my head is a five-minute favour versus five-minute feedback.

25:39Helen:So, yeah, basically I've come up with five-minute feedback. To be clear. A little bit of a mixture of the two. Here's a favour of some extra work for you to do. So how can you, I wonder whether you probably need... Is it a favour if it's five-minute feedback? I think I was trying to think, like, how can I be helpful? I think that's how I am helpful. I would maybe start with other people's priorities. so if there's something that you know somebody is working on that is important to them how can you use your saris scan in service of that rather than just randomly because it could be in service of us as a business but might not be in a favor to the person yeah just some framing just a mixture and question six who do you want to borrow brilliance from over the next 88 days and how will you make that happen?

26:24Yeah so I was Sarah and I recently got an award which is exciting.

26:30Helen:When you say award you mean certificate? Yes but we were awarded a position on by HR magazine as one of the top thought leaders and thinkers in the UK which was an award and I thought in we were in a room so we went to an event in London where the other people that were also receiving the award and there were some HR practitioners who were also awarded were in there and I thought oh I'd quite like to spend some more time with the people in this room learning about their work like specifically I saw Perry Timms who I haven't seen for ages you know I think is a really interesting thought leader in that space and in the context of us doing our PhD I just thought oh some of these people will have a slide they are not in they're not people that I day-to-day spend time with I don't often have curious career conversations the people that were in that room and I think they could have a really interesting perspective to the work that we're doing and who we're doing it with I also just like to learn a little bit more about their world yeah and I just thought as we are trying to build our impact and influence of squiggly careers and broaden the people that we talk to about our work I think I could spend some more time with people in that room to help that to happen nice I've gone for a similar theme but different group um people who have done a PhD to get their insights and perspectives who I don't already know so I've already had a couple of conversations with people like Anne Law who's been on the podcast uh Eliza Philby who's brilliant to follow on LinkedIn if you don't follow her already particularly on sort of intergenerational groups multi-generational groups um and that's been really helpful and also quite motivating you know to hear people who have gone through the process but there are some people who I would quite like to connect with where I think you know it's given me a reason to connect and borrow brilliance from them um and I'm never a cold connector so I'm never going to get in touch with that person just because I think they're interesting whereas actually I can say oh we're just getting started you've clearly like way way beyond that um just to get some like advice what's their you know what are their watchouts because i think because there's so many unknowns about phd and because it's over such a long period of time i actually am starting to think of the phd as like giving almost like there's lots of different opportunities that come from it at different points and i think one of the opportunities is to connect with new people and i don't want to sort of take that for granted i sort of don't want to get lost in the literature or the research and think well actually maybe there's like a new maybe there's some new communities here for us to to learn from interesting uh last two around skills so question seven what's one skill you want to get 10 better at i think questions you're already pretty good Well, I know.

29:28Why, thank you. But it's because I really believe in it. And obviously we wrote about it in Like a Lobster. And I really believe in the power of questions. And when I use them intentionally, I see how it makes people think.

29:43Helen:You can literally see someone's face, I think. When you ask them a good question, they pause. And I'm like, oh. And I think I'd like to just experiment, play with it a little bit more. and one of the reasons is I did um I use a transcript of one of a conversation I was having and I realized that I was still using some questions on autopilot like I asked the AI to analyze the transcript um with how many like what types of questions I'd asked and what questions I could have asked that I didn't ask and it just made me realize that I've there is there is still growth for me a question range maybe it's my question ranges but am I asking the same questions just what other questions could I have asked that I didn't ask and I think I probably need to set myself some parameters like ask one who question in every conversation or ask a why question once a week you know I need to set myself a few parameters or ask them clarifying questions or you know I need to kind of do that so it's not just like ask more questions I really it's a skill So I think I need to be specific about what questions when, but I think that everybody wins when you ask better questions because you help people think differently and you learn more.

30:56And if I just go back to the whole human skills, AI thing, we have to increase the quality of our conversations if we're going to compete with a world where AI is doing a lot of the work. so for me I just think it's such an important skill and one that I you know when you you build on your strengths it's quite exciting to do it's not that hard to do it's kind of it's an exciting

31:17Helen:thing what about you actually I was listening to an episode of our podcast in the car yesterday thinking oh I need to get better by asking questions do that one with me um no thank you I got a different one but I you know when you do listen to yourself and you think there were some questions that I asked that were that were good they were all thoughtful but sometimes I was like what's the questions and Sarah like what what are you actually asking I was getting annoyed at myself um my one was saying the hard thing so also in learn like a lobster and you and I doing quite a lot of work on this at the moment anyway so I think again it's a good one where I feel like there are opportunities to do this but also I'm always so keen to make sure that we are practicing what we preach so I never want to be talking to other people about things that I haven't tried myself um and so we've been talking a lot about things like noticing saying holding and hearing the hard thing and I'm good at noticing because I actually think that's the easy bit you know I notice something's not right or we need to get better at something I'm a natural critical thinker So thinking the hard thing is not hard for me.

32:29Helen:But I still don't say it. I say it to you. And like we have those conversations sometimes, but I often don't say it to other people because of all the fears that loads of us have. Like I don't want to hurt people's feelings. I probably question in my own mind, how useful is this to even share? And then, you know, you like talk. I definitely talk myself out of it. or I maybe wait but then you know like the waiting turns into waiting forever I'll be like waiting for the right moment so there's lots of reasons I think why I don't do this but I you talked um about asking questions I saw you do this recently where in a team conversation you asked the group and I just happened to be part of that group you said okay let's all like say the hard thing about where we are with this and I just saw firsthand how helpful it was for everyone to then say the hard thing um me included and I was like I learned things I wouldn't have learned from people saying that um so I just sort of want to get better at that skill and I think hold myself to account to try and do it more in a group situation but also do it one-to-one which I think is the hardest way to do it yeah no I'm listening I think it is so valuable I was also thinking we I mean I'm sure there's definitely ways that we could be better together but we're pretty good at it and how do you yeah how do you take why that works well and put it into yeah into a broad it's interesting because we will still get a little bit sensitive with each other but we're really good at kind of calling it and catching it and it's like oh how do you how do you expand that into a yeah because you can't have a 25 year friendship with everyone everybody because that'd be really weird really intense way of like building this skill and so i think actually you know we're talking earlier about experimenting i think we've got various different ways of doing this and i think i just want to just start experimenting with like what works i think even like naming something being like oh let's yeah saying the hard thing um let's take a moment to say the hard thing using that phrase stop and say like you know like in a meeting we're halfway through let's stop and say the hard thing about it before we kind of just carry on regardless it's these like little i do think like the phrases the language the little like interruptions yeah you sort of need to learn I think like teach myself some more of those habits yeah the other one that I really like that is part of the kind of model that we talk about in lobster which I think will help me because I feel comfortable with this I like being curious is you know always asking the question first like asking somebody if you were going to say the hard thing about this I don't know our website what would you say and just see where someone is first because then I think you can meet them where they are I do think when you ask those questions you're often surprised by what you hear back and I think that's a good it's a good way into the conversation for me when I don't know someone as well as I know you I feel like I don't need to say if we were to say the hard thing to you I just go well what's wrong yeah that's so true we shortcut we shortcut so much and last question yes uh what do you want the role of ai to be in your work between now and the end of the year um i actually want to as a squiggly shortcut on this um just make it an even better thought partner i'm really i'm really i'm already doing it i think there are probably ways that i could do it better maybe maybe at the moment i treat it as sort of a one-off conversational thought partner and maybe there's the opportunity to sort of reflect on the conversations we've had together over the last week and you know like almost sort of I don't know use the number of conversations I'm having with it to create me some insight that I've not got at the moment but I'm finding it a very use just talking out loud Sarah and I were having a conversation recently like um when we were at an event and I was just saying I'm quite an inefficient I'm quite an inefficient teammate because my thinking happens in conversation but that's really annoying for everyone else because they have to have some kind of meeting with me in order for me to think but actually thinking with AI where I just talk and I say play it back and then I go it's not quite what I meant it needs to be more like this and I just kind of go back and forth and it's not I'm not outsourcing my thinking at all I'm not saying I've got a meeting with Sarah come with an agenda I'm like going well these are this is what's on my mind at the moment I'm trying to work out what's the priority I'm just going to talk about it play it back so I can refine it and I just do that a little bit and it's really I think it's making me less reliant on meetings to get to some insights and ideas and I think it's helping me well hopefully communicate with a bit more clarity we'll we'll see but I just want to get better at that kind of me and AI as a thought partner I actually thought um we've talked a few times about creating a listening board or a board of some description so I wondered whether we could use AI whether that's an AI agent perhaps or or whether we just create something within something like Claude and you can obviously create different personas as part of that and then I what I don't ever do is sort of run my thinking past a range of AI personas to see what it would come back with and I am mindful that sometimes you know we all end up a little bit stuck in our silos spending time with quite similar people um and I think particularly having some personas in there that are very challenging think very differently to us maybe asking them to take on the persona even of I don't know well known personalities or just people who I think would give us a very different perspective I wondered whether that could be helpful and it doesn't replace that we might want to do that in real life as well but I've heard I've heard a few people say that they've started to do that and it's been really helpful um because like you said I'm I'm mindful of like yeah I use it in quite a sort of one and done way and I might be creating some ideas and I'm very mindful of I don't want it to take my critical thinking ability away so I sort of don't see that as a risk because I don't I just I'm just like well no yes yeah I still want to come up with my own ideas first but I do wonder I sort of want to just do that just to see like how how helpful is it yeah and does it prompt and provoke different questions or does it not?

38:49Helen:Or like you said, I had this as well when I was doing some research yesterday. You know, when it does hallucinate or like it comes up with the wrong answer. And I was like, I'm just going to check some, and I checked it and went back and said, oh no, you've got that wrong. It was an episode number for a podcast. Sorry about that. And it just went, sorry, you're completely right. And I was like, well, okay, sure. But I could have - I'm really glad I'm not basing my entire business decision on this. So there we go. There are eight questions for today for the next 88 days. My reflections on the questions are, I think it is a very useful process to go through them.

39:20Even better if doing it with someone else. Like I think it's useful because you kind of learn and listen at the same time. Always useful skills to practice. But I would say you need to pick and prioritise. Because each one of those has its own associated actions. And if I tried to do all of them, I think that might be too much to do. So having answered everything, I would probably take five, ten minutes to go. And for those 88 days out of all those eight questions. Maybe which set? because they're all in pairs aren't they which ones for you do you think um so we've got priorities

39:49Helen:time people and skills priorities yeah same um yeah priorities um probably priorities and people yeah probably those those ones what about you priorities and time yeah but priorities still i mean that's probably the clues in the title right because it's your priority but also i think that's probably reflective where we are right now and obviously we work together and this where what our business needs right now but if it was the 88 days from the 1st of January we might we might end up in a different place but it's just I think it's good to have that focus and it's helpful that questions can get you there and don't forget if you want to read all the questions if you want to share them they'll all be on the pod sheet for you to use and reflect on thank you so much for listening we hope it's useful you can always send your feedback to us we're Helen and Sarah at squigglycareers.com bye for now

40:43Thank you.