353: How to Reduce Stress & Regain Your Creativity

Bruce Daisley 0:04
Stress seems to kill our ability to be as inventive as we possibly can. And you might recognize that when you're on deadline, often it's all about just getting the stuff done. It's not about coming up with an imaginative new ideas, finding a way to feel less stress to that job, finding a way to sort of be more inventive seems to be a good career skill for us to develop right now.

Introduction 0:30
This is the Happen To Your Career podcast, with Scott Anthony Barlow. We help you stop doing work that doesn't fit you, figure out what does and make it happen. We help you define the work that's unapologetically you, and then go get it. If you're ready to make a change. Keep listening. Here's Scott. Here's, Scott. Here's Scott.

Scott Anthony Barlow 00:54
How do you end pointless meetings, hurry sickness and unfulfilling busyness? It's not easy, but it is possible.

Bruce Daisley 01:03
When we're all busy, things don't get done like imagination lives in the gaps between things. And when we're constantly busy, we have no time for thinking, dreaming or imagining give, sort of trying to sort of reinvent in our head and so what I would say, is that we're in a world that's filled with hurry sickness. Probably the more that we can try and find a way to overcome it will enable us to try and get back to enjoying some parts of our jobs.

Scott Anthony Barlow 01:33
That's Bruce Daisley, author of "Eat Sleep Work Repeat" and host of the eat, sleep, work, repeat podcast. We got to have an entertaining conversation on how you regain your ability to be creative, inventive, and imaginative. We also cover how stress is hindering your career growth and what to do about it. And we get into why you think your decisions about your career are rational, even though they're not, yep, stay tuned that might offend you but you're going to find that if it does offend you, even in the slightest is worth it to listen to this episode to find out what's really going on. Also, we'll talk about how rushing through everything actually slows you down and creates guilt on top of it, plus what to actually do about it, functionally. If you didn't already know, Bruce was the person who took YouTube from a fledgling startup to the giant that you now know today. And he was also VP for Twitter. So he's done and seen a lot. However, I want to go way back, before Twitter, and before Google to find out where his career star®®®ted and how he got where he was. Here's how he describes it.

Bruce Daisley 02:45
Yeah, the really interesting thing is if I took a step further back, the way I got my very first job was that I found myself graduating from college during the recession, and there's a really interesting field of evidence that looks and it's relevant, it’s I think forewarned is forearmed. And it's relevant for anyone who might be graduating this summer, that people who graduate in recession, normally their careers are less successful than those who graduate in boom years. And I graduated in a recession. And I found myself while I was doing, I've worked in McDonald’s, I’ve worked in bars, restaurants, hotels, and but while I found myself looking for work, and I was working in Bower, but I was applying for a lot of jobs, and I was getting nowhere with it. At the time, it felt like a crazy chance. But I drew a four page cartoon resume of my life. And it looked, I was go for entry level jobs. And I sent that out to people. And why was it a risk? Because I guess I thought these were jobs, I wanted to work in the record industry, I wanted to be a suit in the record industry, really. And I thought if I sent this out, maybe I would never get a second chance with these people. Anyway, I sent these cartoon resume out, I'd often written speculative applications for jobs at these places already and got no response. But I thought I'm gonna give this a go. And it was transformational. It changed my life. It was, I immediately started getting phone calls and the emails and letters from people, I was invited in to do work experience, a couple of these places, I ended up after one period of work experience being offered a job by one of them. I didn't get the job because it was conditional on me passing my driving test. They couldn't believe that I didn't have a driving license, and I failed my driving test.

Scott Anthony Barlow 04:31
Oh no.

Bruce Daisley 04:32
And anyway, but all of that is in service of me saying what I discovered pretty early on is that number one, it's much easier to get people's attention than we sometimes think. And number two, you just have to think about how you're going to do it in an inventive and different way. And that's not to say, be too in people's face, there's got to be a value exchange, they've got to feel like when they get your application, you entertained them, rather than they sort of had to endure something. But it made me re… from the word go, it made me empathize with the person hiring, rather than myself. It's so easy that, when we're writing PowerPoint slides, or when we're writing a job application letter, or when we're thinking about a resume, we think about us. And you know, it made me, from then on, always think about the person consuming it because I thought, what I did with this cartoon resume is I landed on someone's desk, and then made them smile. And immediately you know that the power of reciprocation, when you've made someone smile, they're more likely to do something for you in return. And so, you know, when I went to work at Google, I got approached by someone to work at Google. I wasn't actually that interested while, you know, an amazing company, but people had said to me, it was quite robotic in the commercial side, you know, I'd heard bad things. I immediately thought though I'm so charmed by YouTube, I love YouTube, it's, I still think it's just such a wonder of human inventiveness, like you'll find anything you want there. But even then, at the time, sort of 10, 12 years ago, you could find anything you want there. And I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna go work there. And I'll put my hand up to work at YouTube at Google, because YouTube had just been bought by Google. And actually, what I discovered was because it was seen as the sort of ugly sister and it wasn't making any money, and no one really knew why Google had bought it and everyone thought that the cost of running it would spiral out of control. I put my hand up and I said, I want you to work on it. Immediately, I worked now, I thought, I'm going to bring those things that I've learned from that cartoon resume to life. I'm going to try and get people's attention with this, I set about trying to do a job really thinking about the audience rather than about myself, really. So, you know, I feel incredibly lucky to have done these good jobs, I think more than anything, I've tried to think how can I bring some sense of freshness to the way that we're trying to tell the stories in the message, really.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:06
Bruce, two things I'm hearing from you and also a question here. But first of all, I think what you described about the cartoon resume, and it sounds like what you learned out of that is that it's so much easier to stand out in ways that don't have to be incredibly difficult. But I love what you're talking about in terms of the value exchange, I'm starting to hate the word value a little bit just because it's so overused.

Bruce Daisley 07:33
Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 07:33
However, I think one of the things that I'm taking away from that is, you know, whether you're entertaining or you're creating something that's really relevant in terms of value to whoever the reader is, or whoever the person on the other end is, then, that almost always works. The one caveat that we found again and again is it has to be valuable to them, not what you perceive is valuable to you. But here's the question I'm curious about, though. You mentioned when you went to Google, that you sort of said, hey, you know, nobody knew why Google had purchased this. And you raised your hand for this. What caused you to raise your hand? Because there must have been something there that you saw in terms of opportunity for yourself or what was the appeal there in your mind?

Bruce Daisley 08:26
So try and play back 12, 13 years, I think, you know, the reason why at the time, there was people running for the hills to get away from it because YouTube looked like something that was… it was the like the wild west. The… I was in a commercial role, a lot of the people I worked with thought there's no way we're ever gonna make money out of this. No one's ever gonna want to advertise on these and if you're tasked with the responsibility of generating, advertising, you're gonna fail because, you know, who's gonna want to give money? Actually putting your hand up to work on that it's a disaster steer clear. That was what the thinking was at the time. I thought, wow, I am just so in awe of what's on this. If I can create any sense of wonder in the people who might looking to advertise, maybe there's a chance. It wasn't an enviable job, a lot of people were thinking, this is going to be a job that can only go one direction. For me, I was thinking where what a gift it will be to work on something I believe in. And I think probably that's the critical thing. I thought, okay, failure is definitely a big option here. But if we set out trying to at least tell the story, I can see a version of this working. And of course, you know, YouTube is this immensely successful thing now. It creates personalities, it creates some of our favorite dancer on YouTube creates music. It wasn't that product at the time, you know, it's worth saying it wasn't that at the time. But I just thought, well, I feel like if I fail at this, well, everyone knew that failure was the likely option. Good, well, then I feel I've got more chance of failing then of not failing than failing. So I just, I was just keen to give it a go really.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:13
In some ways, I think there's a little element of how you do anything is how you do everything here, because it's sort of the same approach that you did with the cartoon resume, in some ways.

Bruce Daisley 10:25
Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:26
Yeah. Like you thought that there was a risk of failure there. But you felt strongly about it, and then you went for it. And in many ways since you went after it, and did so because you felt strongly about it, then it ended up paying off.

Bruce Daisley 10:39
Yeah, very much so very much. So I often go into schoolchildren, these their program in the UK called speakers for schools.

Scott Anthony Barlow 10:46
Yeah.

Bruce Daisley 10:46
I often go and talk to school children, and I try and do a couple of things. So I often say to them, look, you know, more than anything, we need to think about, as we've said, sort of the now familiar sort of value exchange, we need to think about what's in it for your audience. Absolutely. But you also need to think about how you can stand out with the message you're giving. I often say to these kids who say, look, anyone you're trying to contact will probably receive 200 to 300 emails a day that receives slack messages, they'll receive SMS texts, they probably receive zero letters, they probably receive zero parcels, and I always say, and they definitely receive zero helium balloons. So if you're looking to get someone's attention, sending something that arrives in the mail for them, immediate and market personal, immediately gets in their hands. If you can then do something that makes them back you, route you, be interested in you, then you've just increased your chances by what, 10,000 times who said, look, the first thing that any of us do when we're trying to tell the story of who we are to a prospective employer is what we do when we go to a website, what website do we go to? We go to Google. What do we do? We search for resume. What link do we click on? We click on the first link. Is it any wonder that every job application looks exactly the same? Because, you know, we're not even thinking about how we can do something differently. And I think, you know, this was the critical lesson for me is, you know, let me tell you, the cartoon resume was I would give it four out of 10, you know, it's sort of it's not very good. If you look at it, it looks very homemade. The people who hired me said to me, we had three jobs. You definitely weren't in the top 10 people we interviewed, but your resume had gone around the office. And everyone said, you've got to hire cartoon boy. And you know, look, isn't that fascinating? None of them had ever met me. I promise you it wasn't that good, but what I done is had created an emotional element to my candidacy, that it just helped because every other candidate looked like you know, a resume on paper and then they'd met some of them of course some of them are good some of them were bad. Mine they said, look, you weren't great at the interview your… but just people like you, and I thought, wow, okay, that is such an interesting lesson. What I often tell the school kids is that, you know, I often say I created this cartoon resume I ended up doing work experience, ended up getting offered a job and I've failed my driving test and I lost that job. Because it's otherwise people can think well, I tried something interesting is my application or tried something to get someone’s attention, and it didn't work. And mine didn't work either. But I just picked myself up. I tried again, I tried somewhere else and eventually I got a job from it. So I think making sure that we don't think that these things are silver bullet. I think it's quite an important lesson for me.

Bruce Daisley 11:48
What caused you to decide that, that the time for me to change from YouTube to another organizations is simply, you know, Twitter in this case, what caused you to decide that, that was the time and that you were wanting to pursue a different cause? Clearly, something that is meaningful to you plays a factor here is what I'm gathering for just from chatting with you and reading your book and some of the research that I did but, what was behind that?

Bruce Daisley 14:24
My only competitive advantage in life, and I don't think it's much of a competitive advantage is I've got an immensely short attention span. And I recognize that I'm not alone in having that. And so what became my modus operandi YouTube was that there were actually by the time I'd been working on YouTube for three or four years, success was such, that there was now a lot of people trying to master lean in a big organization they were trying to sort of take part of what was doing. And I found a way that, oh, actually, I can still add value here by presenting a lot of conferences and sort of being seen as evangelizing the message. And I've turned up at a lot of enough conferences, I don't know if your audience would have been to these things where you turn up in a hotel in the outskirts of town and, you know, 200, 300, 400, sometimes even more people there, and you enter with such optimism when you turn up on a day at a conference, you often buy a new Notepad, you think you're gonna make 70 notes, and by two hours in, you're exhausted, you're over caffeinated, you’re a caffeine sag, and it's a bad thing to admit, but you're on your phone, you're answering emails from back at the office, you're inattentive. I thought, that's my audience. And so often you turn up at conferences, and the person who's doing the conference presentation is thinking, everyone there is leaning forward, ready to hear these pearls of wisdom that I'm about to impart. It's not that’s all. Everyone is sitting there so tired, so exhausted and bored. Your job is to make the message you're telling them seem like it matters to them. And like it's back to that resume. So my goal at every conference I went to, I always used to think what an honor, I used to think what lifelong honor to work on a product as good as YouTube. And I recognize that that's not something that happens to everyone. I considered YouTube as a 10 out of 10 product. It's my job to do a 10 out of 10 job, you know, it's so often when people work on really desirable things that they can get by with doing a three or four or five out of 10 job. Why? Because the product does the work. I thought my job is to do a 10 out of 10 job. So what does that mean? I need to present this in a really fresh way, a really original way. So you just used to set myself rules, every presentation I do it would have to be a brand new presentation. Really hard discipline because you start learning what works, what doesn't work. I realized was in the world of social media at the time, people will go into a lot of conferences, it was new. And when people used to tweet, post on LinkedIn and say, wow, I saw this guy present last week, he's presenting a completely new presentation. They respect that, in their eyes was really important to me. I would set that thinking, right, how could I do something which shares brand new insight, I just set myself high bars. And what happened was, Twitter contacted me so I wouldn't consider myself a naturally great presenter. I've just learned, I've worked hard, I've watched, you know, the people who I love watching the people who are conversational. So I used to record my presentations onto my iPhone, my iPad at the time, and I would listen to them on my daily commute and daily run. So I had sort of familiarity. I was conversational with them. And so I just used to do things and Twitter contacted me saying look, “would you be interested to come and work for Twitter?” And I, you know, I very much considered YouTube as my dream job, but I do adore Twitter. And look, the opportunity of meeting the chief executive Twitter. I thought, wow, just as a stamp in my passport, that what an honor. I thought, Yeah, absolutely. I'd love to meet him. And then I just fell in love with them. They were just the chief executive, the team that I met, were just the best people. And so I thought, well, you know, what a luxury to be in. I know what a luxury to be in that position where you choosing between, but I think probably it was because I'd always had that discipline of thinking my presentation needs to, it can't just be I'm the guy selling the market leading product or whatever. And I'm doing a safe presentation. It needs to feel imaginative, filled with emotion, feel like care about how well I'm presenting it. I think that's what Twitter were came on, really.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:36
I love the concept of doing a 10 out of 10 job.

Bruce Daisley 18:40
Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 18:41
And challenging yourself to always do a 10 out of 10 job regardless of what role you're serving. That is fantastic. And I love how, it's such a simple concept but powerful behind it. I also am curious, one of the ways that we ended up connecting is because that you have recently published a book. It's called “Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat.” One of the ways that you organize the book is structured around 30 individual hacks for making, I'm gonna just call it making work better, or possibly, dare I say even, joyful and meaningful at a minimum less awful, right? So before we get into that, and I've got so many questions there, and I would love for you to share a few of the areas in the book in particular, but why do you think are some of the reasons that we have made work awful, and struggle to make it make it better because, you know, you pointed out in the book and I've seen many studies that have validated someplace between 73 to 87% of people are not in love with their work, to put it mildly. And are very dissatisfied to put it less mildly. So I'm curious, what do you believe just in your opinion are some of the reasons were in 2020 still we have the vast majority of people that are just don't love their work?

Bruce Daisley 20:08
When we start a new job we have filled with optimism and enthusiasm. It's very rare for most of us that day one at work, we're thinking we might be filled with anxiety and nerves at first day of work, but very few of us think I'm going to hate this job. Certainly the day we get given a job, we're normally filled with absolute delight. And so something happens along the way. And normally, I think in the evidence that I've seen, it tends to be related to us feeling like we don't have a voice or we don't necessarily agree with the decisions that are being made. We feel like we don't have any control over what's happening around us. So we often find if people are in eternal meetings that feel like they've got no point to them. And then they stumble back to their desk, and it's in an open office where they're constantly interrupted with the people around them. And then their boss says, “oh, you need to do this” and they think, “oh, I’m not sure that's a great idea.” These things in aggregate, add up to making us feel like, you know, this place, I’m not sure this is the best place for me, or I'm not sure that even if I did a great job, that I'd be respected for doing a great job. And I think that's an experience that a lot of us have. In addition, the one thing that definitely has happened over the course of the last few years is that we've ended up we've found ourselves working longer. What I mean by that is that since email has arrived on our cell phone, and let me tell you, you know, any of us who were around in work when email arrived on cell phone, it felt like a glorious day, it felt like this joyous occasion. You felt like finally we were going to be able to get emails done when we were, in previously unproductive times. Little did we realize how much it was going to consume working days. And now we're finding that we're working an extra two hours a day we're finding, if our company, if our employer expects us to stay connected, we're working weeks of up to 70 hours a week, it's wide, we find that our netflix session on the sofa is interrupted with email and slack messages and chats. And all those things in aggregate, mean that if you combine them with people feeling they can't get the job done in the way they would like to overall it just contributes to feeling helpless. So a lot this book and I've maybe probably made it sound more earnest than easy, it's actually quite entertaining and places people contacted me saying that it made them laugh three or four times. I'm convinced that hopefully I've tried to bring some of my learnings, like you say based on science, bring some of my learnings into quite an entertaining guidebook of how we can make work better.

Scott Anthony Barlow 23:03
And then on top of that, idiot bosses afterwards somehow expect us to work an additional five to six hours in order to get all of the work done. The suppose did work, I think it was in quotes. Anyhow, it made me laugh just because it's so true in so many different areas. And it's one of those funny but true things or true because it's funny maybe, either way. Then I appreciated the packaging that goes along with it. And maybe another example of how you do anything is how you do everything, I suppose. But here's what I am curious about. One of the things that you talked about in there specifically, is this idea of automation and AI and things along those lines. And if I remember correctly, specifically, you said something along the lines of we probably need to ask ourselves, which jobs have staying power? So I'm curious a little bit about one, explain what you meant by that. And then two, I am also curious what you believe the potential solutions are there.

Bruce Daisley 24:05
There's an interesting observation made by a former Google leader who sort of ran Google in China. And he's now an expert on AI. And he made a prediction. He said that he expected that about half of all jobs, as we know them now will automate in the next 15 years. Now, whether that's right or wrong, it's really interesting line in the sand. So he's saying, by 2035, the truck driver that we're familiar with that over long distance, the various things that we already know, at the moment will automate. And it begs the question, then, will there be jobs for humans? Well, almost always in history, when we've anticipated that jobs would disappear, actually more jobs have been created, that they to shift from us buying goods at the mall to us buying goods online has actually increased the amount of people who work in dispatching in delivery. So jobs evolve over time. They don't necessarily disappear. But all of us if we're thinking right now of what do I do with with my own career, which direction do I go in, we need to probably think about what the things are going to be most valued in the future. And it seems the evidence suggests that the things that are going to be most valued are the things that computers are less good at than humans. And that's things that involve inventiveness ingenuity, like imagination, I'm so scared to say creativity, because a lot of us believe that our jobs aren't creative. But those that the skills that are going to be most prized going forward. And I think the really interesting thing for us is then thinking, well, how can I develop those skills? How can I do those skills? And there's two elements to why it's important. Number one, it seems that stress seems to kill our ability to be as inventive as we possibly can in these significant evidence from neuroscience on almost by design, our brains are designed not to be creative, inventive, imaginative when we're stressed, our brains are designed to be in execution mode, just get stuff done when we're stressed. You might recognize that when you're on a deadline, often it's all about just getting this stuff done. It's not about coming up with an imaginative new idea, finding a way to feel less stressed in our job, finding a way to sort of be more inventive seems to be a good career skill for us to develop right now.

Scott Anthony Barlow 26:23
I was thinking, as you were describing, about the stress that goes up where you know, your levels of cortisol kicked in, and all of a sudden you're able to focus but it's terrible for creativity. I find again and again, that so many people believe that they're not creative people. However, you know, that goes against what I think you're alluding to, but also I think it goes against what a lot of evidence shows out there that all human beings to some degree, it's built into the way that we're wired built into the human spirit, whatever you want, whatever you want to categorize it as that we have some needs. To create, and if we're not creating in some way, then that is less fulfilling in many different ways. And there's a lot of both tight and loose links to that. However, I love the point that you are talking about, which that should cause us to question, What skills do we really want to work on in many different ways? And I'm curious what you've seen out there one of the questions that gets sent into us again and again, and when we're on the phone with people or on Skype with people or whatever, there's this misperception out there that you must at all costs go towards heart building hard skills.

Bruce Daisley 27:38
Yeah.

Scott Anthony Barlow 27:39
What is your opinion on that, first of all? And how do we separate that out? Because I think that you just made a really strong case for at least a heavy time and attention focused on those softer skills that are really to be more valuable in the future to not just one type of role, but many types of roles.

Bruce Daisley 27:58
It's a really interesting, important reminder there that, you know, so often when we look into the way that humans make decisions, almost certainly we tell ourselves that we make decisions rationally. And...

Scott Anthony Barlow 28:09
Ha!

Bruce Daisley 28:10
And almost every time we look at the evidence, there's some degree of emotion creep that that comes in, you know, we find ourselves post rationalizing decisions that we may have made emotionally with logical reasons to them. And I think look, these most definitely to acquire some good, hard skills is a good asset for all of us, but neglect at our peril. The fact that people buy people first and some of the ways that we can enhance our skills on the people side of things, are probably going to be more valuable than ever before. At the moment. A lot of us around the world, certainly us in London are on lockdown. And, you know, we can end up believing that the way that we navigate the world is through a screen and yet inevitably, the things that stand out those people who when we meet them in their presence, either by their gentle kindness or their thoughtfulness, or their empathy, or their physical and charismatic presence, but there's something about them that makes us buy into them. And it doesn't have to be about a celebration of extraversion Far from it. But you know, people who've developed soft skills quite often will find that those, learning those soft skills really pay off.

Scott Anthony Barlow 29:31
It's really interesting right now, because as we're recording this, and as you and I are talking, we're in the midst of much social distancing, and all kinds of things like that. And I feel similar to some of the things that you have said, in many ways. Part of the reason I've gotten many opportunities in my career is because I have been able to have a positive association with people. I haven't done cartoon resumes. However, many of the reason I've got opportunities has been because it's able to build relationships, it's a lot of the soft skill type focus areas. So one of the really interesting challenges I think is gonna happen here is, as we have more things like remote work than ever before, which I think is a great opportunity. But as that happens, then there may potentially be less, you know, human to human, you know, coffee shop type interactions, or things like that, and building relationships, or creating more of that positive feel like you did with your resume way back when in a digital or non in person format. I think that's going to become a really, really valuable skill set. So I'm curious, just have you thought about that? What's your opinion on that? You know, how would you advise people to think about that, based on what you've seen.

Bruce Daisley 30:51
Probably the lesson of most of what I've said today really is my belief in the fact that these skills really pay off and probably going to be back to what I said previously, it was the when I advise kids that maybe what they need to do is they need to think about how they can communicate a message in a different way. And so I always say to them this, this are lane on the highway that's empty, and it's the Postal Service, you know, that people are receiving no letter, so do something that no one else is doing. And those soft skills, I think, will be while they might not be the things that we can learn in online classrooms, while they might not be the things that we can study late into the night with books, those soft skills truly are really important. I often say when I'm talking because I've worked in a couple of really big successful tech firms. People often say, is the future of work about technology. And I always say no for me, the future work is about humanity. That actually, you know, when we look into the evidence, the reason why the book is all about sort of team dynamics and how we can forge this sort of team bonding between us and specific ways that we can do it. The reason why is that when we talk to people, we were trying to explore their experience of work. It's always the human element that determinate, it might be that either they feel their boss doesn't trust them or doesn't like them human element, or they feel like some of their best friends in the world or their colleagues, that’s a human element. And these things that influence our experience of our jobs are so much interwoven with what we sometimes almost dismissively stylers as soft skills really.

Scott Anthony Barlow 32:34
Tell me about eliminating hurry sickness.

Bruce Daisley 32:38
For me, you know, that the world is beset with an uncertainty of whether we're getting anything done. And so as a result of that, you know, we often go home with our inboxes are still full, we haven't got back to people. Have I done much today? Have I done much or is replying to emails much and doing meetings much feel I've not done… got much done. And so we go home with this sense of guilt. And what it does is it forges a constant sense of breathlessness. If you ask people in a normal working week if you say to them, how are you? They'll say busy. They also, you know, there's almost no point asking questions.

Scott Anthony Barlow 33:17
Does not that drive you insane?

Bruce Daisley 33:18
Yeah, everyone will say busy. We're all busy. We know that that's now a given. You know, are we meant to ask how busy? Are we meant to ask what could you do to be less busy? But the problem maybe is that there's an altruism, which is beware the busy manager, because when we're all busy, things don't get done like imagination lives in the gaps between things. And when we're constantly busy, we have no time for thinking, dreaming or imagining give, sort of trying to sort of reinvent in our head and so what I would say, is that we're in a world that's filled with hurry sickness. Even just think about how we used to call the elevator, we used to call the elevator by pressing the elevator call button, and then would pause about two seconds, and then we press the button again. And then we'd jiggle the button and then we'd hold the button. Why? Because like, now we've just pulled out devices out of our pockets and trying to answer emails, and we're beset with this constant hurry sickness, probably the more that we can try and find a way to overcome it will enable us to try and get back to enjoying some parts of our jobs.

Scott Anthony Barlow 34:26
What do you think are some of the best ways that you found to overcome it or to remove it?

Bruce Daisley 34:33
I think number one, being aware of it. As soon as something has got a name, as soon as we're aware of something, it tends to transform our perspective on it. And so understanding how this hurry sickness is probably preventing us getting stuff done. I was really charmed with one story in particular. And it was this interesting thing that I think all of us can empathize that sometimes when we're trying to get something done, we're trying to all of us are required in our jobs, to think about what we did last time and do better, right? And that whether you give me a big capital letter title or not, that is creativity thinking what we did last time and doing it better is a form of creativity, incremental creativity. And I was really struck with the description of a very famous screenwriter called Aaron Sorkin and Aaron Sorkin talked about how his discovery of when he was the most productive creative, he shared, he realized he wasn't coming up with these his best ideas while he was frowning into his computer screen, which is where we often find ourselves trying to come up with a good idea. He realized he was coming up with his best ideas in the shower. Interesting. Ideas live in the gaps between things, in the shower is when he was coming up with these best ideas. He had a shower installed in the corner of his office, he says he has six to eight showers a day. And it's just right. It's a reminder that when we're in this constant hurry sickness thinking, I need to come up with something, I need to come up with something, dashing into a meeting, you know, dashing is getting emailed. And when we're in that state, we're not actually producing our best work, we need to think about, how can we be more like Aaron Sorkin? How can we find this space to allow our best ideas, our best daydreams to flourish?

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:23
Well, I think that's some of the same reason that so many people find that they get creativity or can get, you know, many things done on airplanes too, because it's uninterrupted, if I could say the word.

Bruce Daisley 36:34
Absolutely.

Scott Anthony Barlow 36:34
And those uninterrupted times are those that you can be more creative that if, as you said, finding the space to allow yourself to do that, it only requires us being able to think about that in advance and determine where that space is going to come from and actually have a plan to do that, whether it be a shower. I don't think I'm gonna install a shower in my office. However, there are many other ways like one of the ways that I personally do is I go out and take a walk, I work from home and you know, have a studio and sometimes I need to get out of the studio to be able to make that happen. And then that allows me to get that time and space. But I have so many questions and we have so little time I find that's the case for every conversation I get to have. However, one of the things that I am really curious about is just a little bit ago, you said something along the lines of one of the reasons that I structured this partially as a team based book or as a, I forget the exact word that you used, and when you read the book it is structured into, I'm going to call it thirds with some of the different acts that you described. Yeah, part of it is about interacting with team. I'm curious, can you share one or two of the ways that you believe we all have the opportunity to influence in how we interact with our teams that can improve our experience at work?

Bruce Daisley 37:55
Yeah, I was really taken with the first part of the book is about personal recharges, then it's about How to Build Team sync and the funny part is sort to get into something that is a more elevated to our bus state where there's a strong degree of trust, and people are well motivated, but I was really taken with one of the stories about how one team did that. And it was some work done by Amy Edmondson, you probably familiar with, maybe familiar with Amy Edmondson, she was sort of pioneered ideas of psychological safety. And she described how one new innovation that taken place in the world of surgery and cardiac surgery. So we're familiar now probably that the way that open heart surgery is done now is that a small incision is made in the chest, but the work that's done mainly goes through an artery in your leg. You might or might not know that, when that was first introduced, it was revolutionary because previously, the way that open heart surgery had been done is that quite gruesomely and graphically, your rib cage was cracked open, your ribs were spread apart, and they operated under the rib cage. And it was so injurious that the survival rate was was less than 50%. But the… even the people who had it were in such a state of disassembly and pain for months afterwards, it was a really sort of grievous operation to go through. The new operation was introduced. Now, when it was introduced, one of the differences was such a small incision, and the lead surgeon was the only person who'll be able to see what happened, a multiple teams set about trying to learn this practice. And what was discovered was the teams that succeeded were the ones where the surgeon would talk every day openly afterwards, about his uncertainties, the questions that he had, the questions that the team had, they would have brainstorming about what went well there, what went badly there and sort of modeling this sense of almost like, this is a problem we're solving together. And for me, it was such an eye opener, because so often in work, we find ourselves either listening to a boss telling us what to do, or thinking where the button we need to tell people what to do. And actually, in the Amy Edmondson work, what she discovered was that the surgeons who were these completely convinced leaders who told everyone it's my way or the highway. So they often find themselves after five or six of these new surgical practices, abandoning it saying it's too difficult. I don't know who came up with this, but it doesn't work. Those teams who modelled uncertainty, who modelled that they were learning something new, and they're all in this together. After about five or six operations, they started requesting more difficult patients from the list. They started saying, okay, and I wonder if we could do this differently. I wonder if we could, and they actually innovated the practice even more. So it's just a good reminder really that any of us might think that our job is different. In my work, I looked at military teams, I looked at teams in retail stores, I looked in hospital teams, there's so much that unites us when we're thinking about making work better. And for me, we're standing on the shoulder of giants if we look at the evidence of what people have already done.

Scott Anthony Barlow 41:11
Bruce, this is, I'm going to use the word fascinated. And I feel like I've said that a few times already. However, I mean it, truly. And you are a delight. I so appreciate you coming on taking the time making the time to have this discussion. I've read the book, I really enjoyed it. It's very simple, straightforward, entertaining, as we've talked about, as well. And so it's not just informative, but it is also entertaining, you're gonna get a whole lot of at the risk of using the word value, you're gonna get a whole lot of value out of it. But where can people get the book? And it's, by the way, it's called “Eat, Sleep, Work, Repeat.” Where can people get it? And for people that are interested in learning more about you, connecting up with you, getting the book, etc. Tell us all the places that they can go.

Bruce Daisley 41:58
It might just be somebody lists some of the HTYC is just want to get in touch and ask a question or they don't want to buy their book. They've got enough books next to their bed already. But all of your, my stuff you'll find my website which is eatsleepworkrepeat.com. And look, connect to me on LinkedIn asked me a question there. I'd much rather a dialogue. People shouldn't feel the need to necessarily have to buy the book, more I'm really interested in maybe it's just about an exchange of ideas, and I'd love to hear from your listeners.

Scott Anthony Barlow 42:27
All right, I'm guessing that if we're here talking, and you're listening right now, you probably already know that you're looking for something better in your life, in your career. And it's not that you have a bad job or anything along those lines. It's that you've realized that you want more, for one reason or another. You've probably been focused on things like stability, you've probably even moved up in your organization one way or another. And you have realized that you want something more and that's okay. And it's entirely possible, you've heard it on all of these episodes. By the way, if this is your first episode, by all means, go back and listen to 5, 7, 10 other different episodes, you'll hear people who have made the type of transition where they have leveraged their strengths, their skills, their experiences, to be able to move to work that is much more meaningful and much more fulfilling, and most importantly, still pays what they are used to or even more. Okay, so the reason why it hasn't been apparent that we showcase and we take the time for, geez, almost eight years now, to share stories like this with you is we've realized that one of the first stages to making it possible for yourself is realize that there are other people doing this out there in the world. And that's something that's really important. And we've realized that that type of exposure makes it more realistic for you. So that's that's literally why we do this. It is, it helps pave the way for everything else to come. And it doesn't mean that everything that comes after this is easy, you know, that's really the first step. And then step two is when you want to have your transferable skills, your transferable experiences and make a career change into something that is worth doing for you, worth spending your time on, not causing you ridiculous amounts of stress, but also still allowing you to add value and contribution to the world and challenge you in the right ways that are good for you and good for the organization, or people that you're working with. Okay. It might sound counterintuitive, but it actually starts with one single decision and a commitment that you're going to go forward and find work that you love doing. In addition to the exposure I talked about, that's really the next step that you make that, that commitment is what gets you ready for everything else to come. At some point, you have to decide. And I would encourage you to decide now. It's a decision that changed my life personally. And it's a decision we've seen, be the catalyst for so many other people. At this point, thousands of people that we've worked with over 2000 people that we've worked with now. And I want that for you too. And if you don't want to go through this change alone, we have some of the most knowledgeable coaches in the world that have a ton of expertise, and they can help lessen the risk for you. We're currently accepting applications for our Happen To Your Career signature coaching program. This is a custom coaching program that is different from our career change bootcamp because it's premium, it's very intentionally, every bit of it is tailored to you and your situation. So if you're a high performer who wants to make a career change that fits your values, fits with your financial need and is ready to go to work that you're enamored with, then you can absolutely apply here. Here's what I want you to do, I want you to pause this, send me an email right now, put 'Signature Coaching' in the subject line. And I'll connect you with Phillip on my team. And we'll make sure that you're getting custom tailored support and understanding everything you need, and will help from there. That's it. It's no obligation. It's what we do. It's what we love to do. And it is that very first step, we'll help you through it. And all the steps that come, if you want it. Alright, send me an email right now, scott@happentoyourcareer.com 'Signature Coaching' in the subject line. We'll see you later. Hey, by the way, on the very next episode, I'm sharing a training on how to transfer your skills so that you can keep your same salary. I think you're gonna love it. A bunch of questions were sent in to us, and so many in fact that we could only answer just a few during the session, but here's some of the questions that we cover and this will be aired next week, right here on the podcast. We cover, how do I make a career change with my skill set without taking a salary cut? Do I have other skills besides the current role I'm in? Will anyone take me seriously if I try a different path? How can I identify my transferable skills? How can I find a career change I want, I love and see myself being able to and willing to do for the long haul. That one's gonna really surprise you, by the way, the answer to that and then things like, how do I handle gaps in jobs history? Okay, all that and more next week right here on Happen To Your Career. I will see you then. Until then, I am out. Adios.