Learn Like a Lobster: How to Keep Growing in Your Career

0:00We have a belief that the idea of ladder-like careers holds people back because it's very determined by the level that you're at. It is all about life and work being very linear. So we don't think that's great. We believe squiggly careers are a much better solution because they give people that choice and control. And they also result in careers that are much more resilient. So lobsters are brilliant for three reasons. One, they never stop growing. Two, they grow the most in hard moments. And then finally, lobsters fuel their own growth. Learn as you go the difference between out loud and quiet thinking.

0:37Thinking better than others means that you'll have more free time and fewer problems. If you would like to learn more about learning like a lobster, then pre-order the book quickly, quickly, quickly, because it's limited by time. Hi, I'm Sarah. And I'm Helen. And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast. And this week we have big news. sound effect sound effect I'm trying to make a sound effect not to give the big news away too soon but what would a lobster sound effect be like claws our podcast is so unprofessional you know now people's podcasts are so slick and there's me clicking my claws like a lobster it's fine it's authentic Sarah it's authentic right okay so yeah I mean there's no absolutely no surprise but pre-orders for our new book Learn Like a Lobster are now live, which is not exciting for anyone.

1:31And we know that. It is exciting. It is exciting. The first bit is not because you have to wait for ages to get the book, but we're going to make it exciting, right? I know. But also some people have got like, they bought the first two books and it's like a little library that they're building up of squiggly learning. I know, but the book doesn't come out until February. But we've got good stuff. We have got good stuff. So this is why you should care. you should care because hopefully it'll be it's a brilliant book that we do feel really proud of but we know you're like okay but I've got to wait till February to start learning like a lobster but you don't we have come up with a way where you can start learning with us straight away so we're recording this in September if you pre-order the book now you will be able to join our newly launched and this is exciting learn like a lobster library yay everything in the library is free and if you pre-order between the 23rd of September and the 1st of October there is something extra special coming your way that is awesome that I love.

2:32Yeah it's very exciting and three reasons why you might want to join the library. First one we're going to do three live learning workshops in October, November and December and we'll give you a bit of a flavour for some of that content in the podcast today. So these are workshops with Helen and I, really interactive, informal no pressure just turn up and learn loads with like a i can guarantee a great group of people because they always are who turn up to our learning sessions so you'll get all three of those for free and they're virtual and they're virtual yeah anywhere anywhere in the world um and if you do miss one we will record them if you're in the library so you can go back but good to join live if you can as soon as you join the library you will get a 10 minute learn like a lobster tool that you can use for yourself and share with your teams, which is all about experimenting so you can learn more from meetings.

3:22It is possible. And then the last part, I think, is just the opportunity to be part of an amazing community, a community who will be curious, who will have brilliant ideas that we've not even thought about, who they will share generously, because our Squiggly Career community always do that. So I think you will be smarter, more able to navigate your Squiggly Career if you become part of that library. And all you have to do is once you've pre-ordered, you just email that pre-order to hello at learnlikealobster.com and then that's it. We send you the link so you can get into the library, get all of the workshops to kind of sign up and put those in your diary.

4:00You can download the tool straight away. And if you want to, we will have a WhatsApp group as well. You can join, not mandatory. I know some people already have too many WhatsApp groups in their life, but if you want the learning one, it will be there and ready and waiting for you. I think if any of you've done the sprint, you probably had a little bit of a flavor for what it feels like to be part of the sprint community, whether you've had one in your team or whether you maybe joined some of our LinkedIn lives. We had about 1400 people join our LinkedIn live to kick off the sprint. And I saw so much support in that community, like people buddying up to learn with each other.

4:33And I think that is what the members of the Learn Like a Lobster Library will be like. These are, you know, people that are committed to their learning. They want to grow. They want to develop. And they're willing to kind of invest a bit of energy and give, I think, give a bit of energy to other people as well. So if that feels like you, we would love you. Love you to become a member. So today's episode, as Sarah said, we want to give you a little bit of a flavour for what learning like a lobster look like. And also to just connect a few dots between squiggly careers and learning. And why, I think, why we think this is such an important thing for people to focus on right now.

5:06So as you know, if you've been following Squiggly Careers for a while, we have a belief that the idea of ladder-like careers holds people back because it's very determined by the level that you're at. It is all about life and work being very linear and that doesn't really reflect our reality. And also it doesn't give people the choice and control about the direction they want to develop in. So we don't think that's great. we believe squiggly careers are a much better solution because they give people that choice and control and they also result in careers that are much more resilient to all the changes we're experiencing.

5:39Sarah and I have now been working on squiggly careers for over 10 years, which is which is crazy. I think it's probably going to be nearly 15 soon. Yeah, we've been at this for a while. And I think we have seen universally in the organisations that we work in, the countries we work in, the people we work with, that there is like a super skill that helps people succeed in squiggly careers and that is learning it's people's openness to learn it's people's ability to learn but also it's their recognition that learning looks different in a squiggly career so this isn't about going on courses and acquiring qualifications and learning taking lots of time the best learners in squiggly careers see that learning is something that you add in to your work rather than it always being something you add on it's far more about curiosity than it is about courses and it's it's simple things like the quality of the questions you ask not the number of qualifications that you get and what we are trying to do with learn like a lobster for reasons that we will tell you about these very very amazing lobsters in a moment we are trying to use some of the brilliance of lobsters to help people reconnect with what learning looks like at work because we often say that you know you used to go to work to learn to do the job and now learning is the job we just need to look at how we do that job and we believe that lobsters are the answer so I'll let Sarah tell you why of course we do everyone everyone sort of looks at the book cover and the title and everyone's like oh yeah that's brilliant that's really surprising and playful and then everyone just says why lobsters why why um but why not is the question uh so So lobsters are brilliant for three reasons.

7:22One, they never stop growing. So there's no point where they kind of stop growing throughout their life. Two, they grow the most in hard moments. So they shed their hard outer shells. And in that moment, they get really jelly-like and vulnerable. And to be honest, having watched quite a lot of videos online of this process happening to make sure that we understood what it was, I mean, it looks so exhausting and energy zapping and difficult. and we all have shell-shedding moments right in our careers and in our weeks um having I'm having some fun ones of those this week which perhaps we'll talk about later um and so the lobster sort of doesn't have any choice that sort of happens to them and I think often that is the same for us with the amount of uncertainty and change in our careers there will be shell-shedding moments they're sort of inevitable but can we grow can we grow as a result and sort of in those moments as well and then finally and this is i think my favorite lobster facts um i never thought i would say that sentence lobsters fuel their own growth they are so resourceful and they're like a sustainable little system because those old shells that they shed they then eat because they are that's a really weird sound don't do that i'm banning that i'm vetoing that sound as part of our promotions for the book because those shells are full of calcium um so they eat them which is smart right so they don't have to wait for kind of food to come their way they've sort of created their own way of continuing to grow um and you know we we probably don't need to dive into lobsters any more than that but there will be lots of lobster puns coming your way because it is irresistible um but sometimes i think having a playful and surprising way to look at learning hopefully helps it to feel like something we can all just like have some fun with i think learning should always be something to look forward to and actually often when we talk to people um and we ask about the barriers it's not something to look forward to it's something that people feel frustrated by i haven't got i can't find any time to learn i never get to learn um or there's no money for me to learn there's lots of kind of these things that just feel difficult about learning oh i'm gonna wait to learn till this busy period is over and i think our worry is is if we wait if we try to find the time if we rely on other people you could end up getting left behind in your squiggly career and we want you to have as many opportunities and possibilities as possible and we think if you learn like a lobster you stand a really good chance of making that happen i just see this like big march of lobsters i'm like we're going to take over with like these learning lobsters surely ours do ours are like marching into companies and saying i demand learning i demand learning But I just want to make the parallels between lobsters that have these three traits that Sarah talked about with learning really clear.

10:15And that will be the structure of what Sarah and I share next. So if lobsters never stop growing, then what we are talking about is never stopping learning. We want everyone to learn as they go every day so that learning becomes continual. and if if lobsters grow most in these like hard moments when they're really really vulnerable then that's when we want to learn we want to learn the most in our hardest moments maybe when you feel like you're failing or you've made a mistake or maybe when you get feedback that feels really hard here and you really feel vulnerable that's when we want you to learn the most because yes you're a bit exposed but there is enormous learning in that moment if you just look at it slightly differently.

10:57And then the last thing about the lobster eating its shell, we don't want you to eat your shell. That would be weird. But what we do want you to do is fuel your own learning. So we want you to be really resourceful about how you create your own learning. And in the book, we cover loads of different ways that are in your control. So you don't have to ask for permission. You don't have to wait for someone else to say that it's okay to do it. We want you to create as much learning and fuel as much learning as you can. And that's how we structure the book. And that's how we're connecting the dots between the two.

11:29So today, back to normal podcast, to be honest, we're like, we're now going to be really practical. And we're going to talk about learn as you go, learn in hard moments, lead your own learning. And we're going to take one example that's in the book, and we're going to talk about it. So you get a bit of a flavour and a bit of a feel for the sorts of things that we'll be describing. So the first one, learn as you go, one of those chapters is about easy and everyday experiments back to hella's point about let's add experimenting in to what we already do rather than feeling like an add-on and the experiment we're going to talk about today is the difference between out loud and quiet thinking and i really like this quote from shane parish he says thinking better than others means that you'll have more free time and fewer problems and i'm like perfect i want i want the free time and i want fewer problems um and i think we all have a natural preference probably in terms of our thinking styles you're either more of an out loud thinker or you're more of a quiet thinker but when you experiment with different ways of thinking i think you you learn more but you're also sort of more agile and you're more adaptable in your uh creative thinking your ability to solve problems so if i describe like some of the examples of like what out loud thinking might look like and And Helen and I are going to talk about our natural preferences and then what we might experiment with to kind of see what we learn.

12:51Good question that we repeat actually a lot in the book is like, what will I learn? Keep asking yourself that. What will I learn? So if you're an out loud thinker, as the name suggests, you probably want to talk to other people. So you want to you want to sort of run your thoughts past somebody. So that might be a voice note to someone. Could be a walk and talk with someone saying, can I share my first thoughts with you? maybe it's talking through like a mind map but it probably involves having a conversation maybe with a group of people but could kind of be one-to-one quiet thinkers are much more likely to sort of hold the thinking and the ideas in their head so an out loud thinker would probably create a mind map to talk to somebody about a quiet thinker would just create a mind map for themselves they're much more likely to go for like a walk and just think for themselves rather than talk to somebody else um maybe people you even voice note to yourself you know people voice notes themselves and get that kind of they get like a transcript of like well what are they thinking and actually there's some really interesting research that we found um throughout the book we have these expert insights and one of the expert insights is in this section is around self-explaining and actually the skill of self-explaining is really helpful for creating clarity so if you're ever feeling confused or overwhelmed actually sort of talking to yourself this idea of sort of quiet thinking but just sort of with with yourself actually can help you to sort of make sense to make sense of your thoughts so Helen naturally more of an out loud thinker or more of a quiet thinker much more of an out loud thinker and um I yeah it's just like a way of process even the podcast I think the podcast a lot for me is me out loud thinking I will come up with ideas in conversation with you and it has its benefits and its drawbacks so its benefit is as a result of a conversation I often create ideas I didn't have when I went into it like super helpful but the downside is I'm very dependent on people like having time to have a conversation with me and and also like a particular kind of person who's willing to like just sit with me in that kind of weird ambiguous conversation space where I can come up with ideas so it's you know I can't do it on a train for example with a random person who sat next to me and so I with this one I actually did this yesterday I've been experimenting a lot more with the quiet thinking I did a mind map which is not I know you've done you like quite like a mind map it's not always the first thing that I I would do for my thoughts but I was thinking a little bit about my network and I'd reread some research on the importance of weak ties and all kinds of stuff basically it talks about weak ties and building your network and you don't want really far out weak ties are people that you really don't know very well and you don't want people that are really quite close to you want people basically in the middle so I was doing this like mind map of leapfrog leapfrog weak ties I was like who do I know who's the one that they know and I was trying to get and I was just sort of mind mapping I just sat there not long like five minutes and I didn't you know this is the first time I talked about it and I didn't talk about that idea or anything i just sat there and with my own thoughts for five minutes just drawing it out to see what it it came up with with no real expectation but i found it very useful so i think i might just build you know rather than my first point of call being i need to hold this thought until i have a meeting and i can talk to some talk it through my thoughts but i think actually i might try more often to use a mind map first and just see how much clarity that creates before I have the conversation.

16:23What about you? What's your default? So I think this is interesting because I think people might assume, certainly people you know as well, because I'm definitely more introverted. You're definitely much more extroverted. But I am also an out loud thinker. Like when I look at the majority of my thinking, it is done with somebody else. And I think that's often, like if I think about much more my best thinking, it's often in a room. Fire a voice note. Yeah, I mean, you have to. But weirdly, I only do that mainly to you. Thanks. And I do feel like sometimes I definitely do it to you. But I was thinking about, so when we were together over the summer and we were talking about Learn Like a Lobster, I was like, that's my happiest thinking space and place.

17:09It's almost like facilitating that conversation. I've done some thoughts beforehand, but we're creating and we're kind of thinking as a duo. But it's quite high intensity and quite high need. It's almost like you can't create that opportunity very often. And again, I think I was thinking for myself, like sometimes I think I sometimes share too soon, you know, almost because it's like probably the way that we work. Like we're not in an office. You don't even have random chats with people because you just we don't in the work that we do and how we work. and so I think sometimes my voice notes are that it's like thoughts just in my head that I should probably just write down in something like a to think list so one of the ideas that we've got in the book before out loud and quiet thinking is to think lists and this is the idea of not only having a to-do list but having a to think list to maybe write it down as a series of questions or things that you want to think more deeply about but again not holding it in your head and I've done that a bit but not consistently but again it's a bit it's a bit September cliche I bought a new notebook and I I very intentionally I haven't seen this new notebook it looks like so it's bright yellow right a4 yeah standard Sarah always has a massive notebook plain paper plain paper a3 notebook yeah once yeah yeah yeah and it's and it's plain because I don't like lines or dots I showed someone on our team and they looked almost angry about it they were like where are the lines and I was like no I like plane and they were like no you could you could just see that they were like that's absolutely not for me I feel like there's one on our team who values efficiency I feel like she might like lines on a page but I sort of showed a page of it and and it's like my writing and style of thing it is just messy but I've decided that I'm just going to embrace embrace that so I so for me my experiment at the moment is sort of connecting the dots with thinking is like actually what quiet thinking looks like for me is having a to think list and I'm going to do it like on a big heart like on a big page and I'll just keep coming back to keep adding to to the point where I'm like oh and now I need to do a new one and update it but I'm going to set myself the challenge of between September and Christmas I want to be able to look back at that notebook and very clearly see a series of to think lists and just to a sometimes I think I rely on you too much you know sometimes I think you can get over reliant on one person but you think I think I think I do overly rely on you am I being dumped for a notebook you are you are being dumped for a giant yellow notebook so that's gonna be my that's gonna be my that's gonna be my experiment I also think this is a great chat to have as a team you know we've we've talked before about like how do you work together as a team how do you think together as a team actually almost saying well how how do you think today which we've both described but then it's like how else how else could you do thinking how else could you experiment because I just think you're the more different approaches you have the more kind of creativity you'll have and also just the more options you give yourself just your point there about doing as a team activity I think learning like a lobster is even better when you do it together as a team because I think that creates a commitment and a shared understanding of what learning looks like so all these things that we're talking about I think however you can buddy up or do them together I think it'll be even better you'll learn more about yourself you'll learn more about them you'll create an environment that makes learning easier for everybody it's just it's just better so um please take talk about these ideas together as a team so our second thing yeah Sarah talks about That's shell shedding moments.

20:48In the book, we call this section learning in hard moments. And I mentioned earlier some obvious ones are like moments where I don't know you've made a mistake or you feel like something's kind of failing or it's more difficult than you expected. Or you've had some feedback that's maybe maybe jarred, jarred a bit with you and how you want to come across to people. I think, well, sometimes I think a hard moment is when it feels really overwhelming. You know, you're trying so hard. You're maybe not making the momentum that you've got. I think we've all experienced these moments. And the challenge for your learning, I think, when you're in the middle of one of these hard moments, is that you can potentially lose a bit of perspective.

21:27So either you just want to get it over and done with. So learning is not top of your list because you just want to get through it and get on with the next thing. And I'm rushing through the moment. Or maybe you kind of lose a little bit of perspective. I think sometimes emotions are higher in these moments. You get a bit like, oh, it's just awful. Everything's awful. It's all too hard. It's all too difficult. And that's not really putting our brain in the best space to extract the learning from that moment, of which there can be lots. There can be learning about the relationships you are building with other people.

21:59There can be learning about what you bring to the situation. There can be learning about what you do differently next time you might be in it. And we lose all of that learning unless we find a way to sort of re-look at learning in that hard moment. yeah and one of the things actually we do um at the start of that chapter we talk about almost like how your kind of preferences and personality can mean that you miss out on the learning you lose it and so and this is i think a bit different for all of us so imagine you're in like a bit of a shell-shedding moment like things are really difficult helen is definitely someone who is so optimistic that she just moves on too fast right so you're you're like well it's done now and then you just you you talk yourself into the I'm fine we get lots of I'm fines and then you're like and but then you've moved on but then you kind of leave the learning behind so that kind of almost over optimism can kind of get in the way I get into sort of almost analysis paralysis so I'm like well why why has it gone wrong and and why and what and I dig and dig and dig and I'm really it's like sort of you're trying to get to root causes but in a way that is really unhelpful you know because you start to get into like too many details um and you want to understand absolutely everything about it um and again that stops you you don't look for the learning you're almost sort of more in the i'm trying to like overly explain and overly understand because that's my version of trying to make sense of it um but it's too it's too why like so i don't learn either i feel like i've got a visual now of like a squiggly career and mine has lots of little brains dropped along the way you know like I've dropped little bits of my brains that could have been learning at different knotty moments yeah and yours has these knotty moments where there's just a brain going around in circles and it's just like spinning a little bit yeah we want to bring the brain with us in our squiggly career and actually what's so interesting is when we were researching for this section and we had a book in beta group who we researched all the ideas with and we've tested everything that's in the book loads of times to make sure that it all practically works because obviously the thing we care most about is being useful everybody shared with us actually the time they think they have learned the most has always come from a hard moment.

24:09So we know it's there. We know the learning is there. But I suppose what we don't want to do is rely on a hard moment. But also I think there are like smaller hard moments and smaller hard sort of shell shedding situations where people are like, I just don't have the capacity to learn when that's happening. And so our challenge to ourself was like, let's use that constraint as a way to go oh but what if you could learn in those moments where people in that group were saying to us i just can't learn then we were like okay but what if you could like what would we need to come up with so that you could learn in those moments so that's what that's what we're trying to do so the idea that we've got here is called fly on the wall facts and what we want to imagine here is we're trying to create a little bit of distance between you and this situation that you're in so that you can be slightly more like in observer mode.

24:58You know, you're kind of flying at the edge of it and you are kind of questioning and curious about what you're seeing and what you're happening. You're gathering facts because facts are information. They can give us insight. We can learn from them. And they're a little bit more objective than the feelings that you might have in the situation, which might be distracting from the learning. And Sarah mentioned, we're going to, I think, maybe experiment with this live with you now, because Sarah mentioned that it doesn't all have to be like hard, knotty moments in our career. Like, I don't know, you're going through a restructure or you've got a manager that you're really struggling with.

25:31It doesn't really have to be the big, hard ones. This could be a bit of a small hard moment, which I would say Sarah and I are in right now. Like this week, we've definitely had a few WhatsApp messages which have been indicative of a, let's say, a hard week. It's a hard week. And that, I think, is a flag to say, ooh, but there could be a lot of learning in this. I think anytime you're in a hard moment, a hard week, a hard day, a hard meeting, just rather than going, oh, it's awful, just go, hmm. But if I looked for the learning, what would I see? And this is where fly on the wall facts come in.

26:04So would you like to lead us through our fly on the wall facts for this week? Yes. I mean, you say this week, it's like 10 o 'clock on a Tuesday. Yeah, I know. I didn't think that. So, I mean, there's definitely a things can only get better mindset that can come from this. But when we were thinking about the podcast, I was like, well, this is the turning point, I've decided, for the week. This is the learning point. Yeah, this is the learning point. Very good. Thanks. Very good. That's why you can write the lobster puns. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to ask Helen a series of questions. And we're just going to see what happens, see if she can kind of get some more learning from what's happened so far in the first day and a bit of the week.

26:44so Helen I want you to imagine now you're a fly buzzing around what's going on and what's gone wrong so far this week and because you're a fly you can only observe you can listen um but you don't know what anyone's feeling you can only really see actions and behaviors you know you can only see things that are observable you don't know what anyone's thinking or feelings you sort of have to imagine you don't know what I'm thinking or feeling which could be quite quite tricky but But you're sort of, yeah, you're like one of those really annoying flies that you can't kill buzzing around from like wall to wall, etc.

27:17And you're really thinking about like the facts of a situation. And a really useful prompt here is what do I know to be 100 % true about this situation? So you're really going for kind of those concrete observations. So tell me one thing that you kind of know to be true about this week so far. this is our busiest moment of the year in our business okay so this is the busiest moment of the year so far in our business so that's really helpful and actually you and i haven't said that out loud to each other what we've done is dived into like this is hard this is annoying or whatever so you're like okay so that's quite a good context point right so that's given you some distance some perspective this is the busiest week okay um let's do a what else question like what else do you know to be 100 % true about the last day and two hours?

28:08We have got new people working in our business that haven't worked in our business before and we've got existing people that worked in our business doing new things. Okay interesting so there's a quite a lot of there's newness on newness there there's new people and then there's kind of new new work so quite a lot of newness okay and then if i was to push you for one final observation that that fly has seen in the last day and a bit what else do you think the fly would say uh different working patterns mean that things don't get resolved as quickly in the moment okay so the fly might have seen our team were working because our team will work at different hours and different days so they would observe that and then they would have observed okay well then when you've got to fix something it takes a while because you have to sort of wait for all the stars to align kind of essentially okay so you having answered that question so three same question really just in three different ways kind of me prompting you how does that then make you kind of feel about like where where we are so actually kind of you're you're putting the fly down and kind of coming back to yourself um do you know it does make me honestly it does make me think differently because i think until i just said those things out loud i think i was doing a bit like you know like whack-a-mole with a problem like yeah that's annoying whack that problem ah that's annoying whack that problem and actually when i say it when i say it out loud to you i'm like hmm there is a bigger thing going on that will probably lead to lots of other problems unless it gets solved you know like the well actually we're all working at different times but we need a few core hours core meetings each week um otherwise we're not we're not kind of solving things quickly you know like solve it sessions or something yeah um or we maybe there's a bit like almost not onboarding feels a bit old school but i don't know maybe there's a you know the newness thing i'm like oh we need to kind of also check in with the people about how they're feeling about the newness rather than assumptions that we're making so it's just I think maybe it's made me think about the problems that I'm solving whether I I could be whacking a lot of moles rather than actually going well how do we more significantly address some of these things that we stop we stop creating the problems in the first place that's what has made me think also just like listening to you and then reflecting on what you just said you know there's the well if this is how we are feeling how is everybody else feeling question which I don't think you and I do always think about because we are so in it and often so trying to solve the problems or to get stuff sorted or to think about like what do we need to put in place you know just that kind of question or that checking in with people and actually I it's interesting like just listening to you there I did do that with somebody in our team who is new at the end of last week and I was I'm often kind of quite surprised by how people they're like I wasn't I was feeling a bit worried that I wasn't doing that well or um it's felt a bit hard but now I'm feeling much better and more focused and I know what needs to get done and that was quite a spontaneous conversation which is not a bad thing but it was a bit more of a happy accident rather than me sort of being intentional kind of about that and so I think what the fly often does as well is it encourages you to see to yes to zoom out but also to see things from other people's perspectives but then you do also start to get to some quite meaningful actions like i can hear you like getting to some without diving into loads of detail about our company but i can hear you starting to get to okay well as well as sometimes you do have to whack them all that does that does have to happen but actually what you don't want to do is keep doing that the whole time you know like that's not sustainable it's also not fun for anyone if that's what we're doing so then you get into like a bigger probably more useful learning question like well what do we need to do differently what are we not doing that we need to start doing um so it just helps you be calm yeah it does it does yeah and i honestly think i've got a little bit more empathy in in just talking because which i think of you know because like you said the fly is zooming out a little bit and seeing from other people's perspectives but i generally think the idea of solve it sessions i'm like we should just have those because it's inevitable if this is the busiest time of our year and people are doing things they've not done before it's inevitable there'll be problems that can't be fixed very quickly because people are working different patterns so we'll just put some solvice sessions in and if we don't need them amazing not only do you get time back we've not got stuff that we need to fix fantastic it's a double win and i think for me i was um i was reading this and thinking about this in a very different situation so um this week out of my control we've had some storms in the uk and my internet broke control the weather i know it's outrageous um yeah and my internet broke and our internet is particularly important for the jobs that we do it's important for most people but it's quite hard to do our jobs without the internet and if I actually answer these questions as a fly I actually feel very differently about what's happened over the last day or so because I was feeling obviously you get it's really frustrating I've had to find other places to work it's been really disruptive it's felt really stressful I felt really stressed um whereas actually if I just go if I'm just the fly and I'm ignoring all my own feelings what the fly would see is okay well I haven't disrupted any of our learning partners that we work with we've delivered all of the learning that we committed to and I still feel like I did a decent job of that like I got a good engagement and did some good sessions some good workshops um I have been able to quickly with some help from you sort myself out to be in other places so like I'm in a very random hotel room right now um but that the hotel room has got internet and right now team that's all we care about um and so you actually what the fly would be the fly would be like well it's fine you've you've sorted it all you were you were in the places you needed to be you've delivered everything you've needed to do and actually where you needed to make changes um so like you and I have had to change some things because because of it you have done that too and so actually in terms of outcomes and delivery what I know to be 100 true is I've done all the things I need to do it hasn't felt very fun but the fly doesn't care about that and so you know sometimes if you're just trying to make yourself feel a bit better about the last I don't I don't feel very good about the last 24 hours or certainly I didn't this morning but actually when I go when I look at it from the fly's point of view I actually almost start to feel I'm like oh but I am quite proud of the fact that we've sorted it and that we haven't let people down and that I have done the things that like the team or our partners need us to do and so if anything you just go okay well there's something quite good to be taken from that i've learned that actually when unexpected things come our way we will find a way i feel like that is our basically our mantra like we will find a way it's fine i like it yeah and the fly would say it's fine um so the last area we want to talk about then is going back to that idea that the lobster is fueling its own grace so we want you to lead your own learning and and the idea that we've got for you hear is all about being a beginner and finding small firsts in your work.

35:27So being a beginner means that we are able to start from scratch. We're not letting our existing knowledge and expertise get in the way of our learning. And it is a really helpful and healthy place to put your brain in that kind of beginner's approach to looking at a situation and sort of seeing it, seeing it for the first time, seeing it with fresh eyes. And sometimes we need to, I guess kind of look quite carefully to find those firsts it doesn't always come obviously to us because we're so used to working in the same patterns and you know picking up the same routines in our work so we might want to get a little bit creative about how we find some small firsts in our work that can help our brain to just be be a bit more of a beginner I also have a bit of a hypothesis that in a squiggly career there are just loads more beginner moments you know because of new skills new jobs uncertainty so I sort of go we we know already I think you can anticipate loads of beginner moments and so the more you practice being a beginner then you're like well they're the ones that you're in control of like I'm going to choose to be a beginner so that then also when you have no choice but to be a beginner because team changes or suddenly I've got a new skill or suddenly I need to use AI in a whole new way actually that doesn't feel quite as daunting because being a beginner always feels a bit daunting because you don't know what you don't know but if you've almost got used to the feeling you know like the uncomfortable feeling that comes with being a beginner the sort of slight sense of you get better quite quickly and then you usually get quite a lot worse I found and that's actually like they call it like the u-shaped learning curve of being a beginner and if that is only happening to you I just feel like you have a really different relationship to it versus if you are making it happen I had someone that got in touch with me yesterday on LinkedIn.

37:18So we'd done a LinkedIn Live and they messaged me afterwards and they said, oh, you know, what technology do you use to do your LinkedIn Lives? It's different to the one that we do and I'd like to give it a go. And I think that was that person, probably without knowing that that's what they're doing, but that was that person finding a small first because they'd seen something they do done differently by us and they were reaching out to try and, you know, be a beginner to learn in a new way. And to your point, it is quite exposing because that was like a bit of tech but you're like oh I don't know what buttons to press or I don't know how to do it and I'm probably going to make a mistake and it is you know being a beginner isn't easy but the more that you do it like the the more open you are to new learning because it's just it's all just less daunting so we think this is one to have a bit of fun with and we've come up with beginner bingo um so we'll put this I think we're going to create this as sort of a one pager so if you want a kind of beginner bingo card to just use um and sort of cross off because that feels quite fun and satisfying to do um we'll put that online we'll obviously we'll do a link in the show notes and we'll put it in the library as well so you know earlier we mentioned people that pre-order the book we will put this as a one pager in the lobster library as well so that's where we've created some ideas so if you're like oh i could do with a bit of inspiration to get me started but obviously you can also just create your own beginner bingo uh again quite a fun one to do with maybe with someone else or maybe to do as a team but the sorts of things that you might have on there could be things like I'm going to have a curious career conversation with someone outside of my organization maybe you've never done that before and I know I know that people get nervous about doing those things because I get whatsapps from people going oh I've got a curious career conversation with that person and do you know them anything I can ask you know you can sense the sort of the oh sort of nervous anticipation of like of that kind of moment so maybe it's something to do with kind of conversations could equally be in a different team if that if that felt like it'd be useful for you maybe it could be about spending a day with a different team like could you spend a day shadowing could you go to someone else's team meeting could you take on a role that you don't do today where you'd be you'd be a beginner so that might be leading a team meeting maybe that's leading a team away day leading a session a learning session on learn like a lobster um for your team the next time you're together maybe it's mentoring mentoring someone for the first time or maybe being a mentee like either way could you be brave and be a beginner around linkedin maybe that's about uh starting to comment that's being a beginner you're just like i've not done that before and if you're anything like me every time I write anything on LinkedIn I'm like and this is the opposite to Helen I'm always like oh does that make sense and I'd like really overthink it but look how much people loved your last post Sarah did a very lovely post on LinkedIn maybe like a week ago about different people to follow to support your learning and it got a lot of love it did it I get a bit nervous about this so that's definitely like that's a good example of me being a beginner of thinking that's not something I normally do like how can I post in a way that works for me or it could be something like asking for a LinkedIn recommendation I think probably the best ones on your beginner bingo are ones where you can begin and then build I think because sometimes you're being it's more about kind of the beginner mindset so you're just doing something you've not done before and that's great that's like that is a good thing to do so asking for a LinkedIn recommendation great because you like that takes a bit of bravery so you're kind of stretching that courage muscle I think probably even better if you're like right I'm going to be a beginner in terms of maybe is around like networking and then actually I'm going to find a small first curious career conversation with someone else at my team and maybe your whole beginner bingo card is actually themed around networking so I think you can do your beginner bingo card in lots of different ways so I could do a whole beginner bingo card just around LinkedIn like oh I'm going to start to post oh but then I'm going to post at least once a week i'm going to start commenting more if i if i wanted to do that you could do a whole one around mentoring you could do a whole one around ai ai would be a great one for beginner bingo um use our ai sprint our ai skill sprint as your starting point so your first thing on your beginner bingo card could just be complete the ai skill sprint that's free just do that and then you could kind of build up that beginner bingo card all around ai i think you'll have a lot of fun with this actually the more i'm like that would work that was so funny because i was like begin and build i was like that is you thinking out loud you know you're like yeah that is actually yeah it just goes that needs to go on the think list yeah it needs to go on the think list because we should definitely have some of those begin and build little bingo cards for people to play i was also thinking then i need to create this to go on the library that was why i was thinking the same thing we were thinking out loud and quietly together at the same time at the same time oh dear me we're already lobsters we're like we're lobsters lobsters like learners and hopefully that we have inspired you to be a lobster like learner as well hopefully you can hear in our voices that this is fun this is it's a fun way to learn it's a fun way to train your brain to be more receptive to new knowledge it's a really fun thing to do it together and whether that's like you said as a buddy or as a team i think this just makes it easier for everybody to do.

42:39So we will summarize all this for you so that you've got it and you check out, check out the show notes that you've got that. But please, please, please, if you would like to learn more about learning like a lobster, if you want to do that together with other people, then pre-order the book from wherever you get your book. And all you need to do is just send us the receipt for that can be a, you know, whatever the email, just forward the email onto hello at learn like a lobster.com we will then reply we will send you your link to the library and as sarah said if you do it by like early october is it like the first of october i think yeah you do it by then there is a special thing for people who do it first which may come in the post to you don't give it away though you like a bit of lobster mail then um get ordering quickly quickly quickly because it's limited by time for our earliest pre-orderers and i would say if you're like a doll you know I've not got the space for the library or that just doesn't feel right for me.

43:35Pre-ordering books really helps us. So if you just want to pre-order the book, I promise it will pay off in February. And it is a great way that you can support us and Squiggly Careers and the work that we do. So please don't feel like you have to join the library. If you're super up for it and you've got the kind of space and you're like, oh, yeah, I'd love to do that. Great. If you just pre-order it, we will be just as grateful whether we see you in the library or not. but if you do thank you we do really appreciate it um we know that it's one of those funny things about publishing where it's really helpful for us if you pre-order but then you have you do have a bit of a wait but hopefully you can just keep learning with us through the podcast and the library and it will be worth the wait thank you so much for listening everyone we'll be back with you next week for another episode bye everybody bye

44:31Thank you.