The Blunder Years

I don’t know about you, but I’ve very infrequently been to a successful training as an adult professional. Most are entirely subpar: stale cookies in the back of the room, chart paper on the walls, maybe some trust falls. But, while people do get new context and information professionally from interactions with co-workers and general life, the fact is that we put a semi-religious importance on training to hand people new skills. If the world of work is truly shifted by COVID, training will seemingly be a bigger deal in late 2020 and into 2021. But we haven’t broadly done it that well for a while. So it begs a work question and a broader question: how can we, as adults, gain and retain knowledge better? And how can we focus more on individual learning needs, as opposed to flashy technology? My guest on Episode 39 is my friend Laura, a learning and development professional, and we’re going to discuss this in both work and personal contexts. Let’s roll.

I quit drinking for Lent 2020 and my girlfriend, Katie, quit sweets/desserts. So, as Lent 2020 ended, we sat down for about 18 minutes to discuss both experiences. If you are wondering who "Samson" is and cannot figure it out from context clues, that would be our dog. 

If you read some of the stuff I write or post, you may not think of me as a religious person. In some ways, I am not. I believe I was baptized Methodist, but as a kid I really only went to church on big events, or for weddings/funerals. It was not an active part of my life. I converted to Catholicism before marrying my ex. My mom was Catholic and my aunt is very Catholic so I had some context for it. That relationship did not long-term work out, and even after that conversion, I wouldn’t say we were very religious or church-going. Since late 2017, when I first met Katie, I’ve been going consistently to First United Methodist in downtown Fort Worth. I’ve been thinking about faith more in that process as well. So, what follows here is a conversation with one of the senior pastors at that church, Lance. He is the pastor of “The Gathering” service that I attend, along with a bunch of my church friends. We taped this right before Easter, and we’re actually going to start by talking about the repercussions of Easter not being in-person for most of us this year. There’s a lot of faith and work and spirituality “wokeness” in here, so enjoy it. I’ll say one final thing: a lot of times, I asked kinda three-part questions here and that might get irritating, but I promise you the conversation has some value. Let’s roll.

In summer 2013, I worked on a 12-week-or-so project with a big health care company. While I was there, one of my buds was this woman named Nikita. She’s since lived in a bunch of different places (me too), but we stayed connected digitally and taped this episode about 1.5-2 weeks ago. It’s primarily about raising kids, the flaws in diversity and inclusion arguments, and trying to determine what is and is not important as you move through your 20s, 30s, and 40s. Let’s get to it.

Feels like everyone is out there trying to hustle their widgets these days as opposed to like, I dunno, think about people dying and losing jobs? We don't want to constantly talk about the pandemic, no. We want to have some degree of normal conversation and figure out where everything stands. But at this moment, any marketing or sales email type deal -- or any post online, really -- can land as self-promotional and tone-deaf. But is that the reality, or is that just because our perception of that stuff is heightened in this moment? Plus: the role of the Internet. Plus: Calvin and Hobbes. Plus: some company in Montreal. Oh, and by the way, the guest is my friend David, who was also the guest on my first-ever episode, which was entitled "Existential Adriftness." Talk about a moment we are in now... 

Tim Sackett is one of those “HR Famous” dudes where you’ve mostly probably heard him in audio or video form discussing hiring and retention and those types of topics. Me and him have actually been friends / acquaintances for about 3-4 years now. I think we’ve met in person maybe twice, which underscores the weird digital world we all reside in -- and even moreso now with coronavirus. Speaking of actually, this interview begins with Tim’s estimates on corona timeline, although we taped this probably third week of March, so additional data has come to light since. We also talk about tone-deaf emails, lessons of your 30s and 40s, Boomer generalizations, and at the end we spend some time on Larry Nassar and Michigan State, as Tim is a big MSU guy and lives in East Lansing too. Alright, let’s get going.

I’m on a Twitter thread that we call Just Be Social, which is now about 35 people who talk throughout the day on different issues, usually current events, but sometimes it gets deep and heated on gender/sex, ecnomic models, etc. We’ve become pretty good “online friends,” I guess you would call it. It’s definitely helpful in this current moment of social distancing.

I have had other people from this thread on this podcast -- Mollie I think was Episode 2 and Brenda I think was Episode 14 -- and I plan to try and have more. This is an interview with my Just Be Social friend Theresa, who is a bad-ass mom, once lived in Japan, and is pursuing her MBA and working full-time in the general Portland area. We actually start this discussion with some USA vs. Japan comparisons, because I’ve never been to Japan and know nothing about it, really. (PS I think in Episode 23, my other friend talks about the idea of “sex robots” in Japan.) So we’re going to start there, but then we’ll get into motherhood and cuddles, gender equality and more. Let’s roll.

This is a conversation with my friend Ben from high school. Back then his nickname was “Big Red.” His nickname might still be that; I don’t know. We’ve been out of high school 20+ years at this point. Gimme a break, OK? He went off to Duke. I went off to Georgetown. We actually talk a little bit about that in the beginning -- we clearly came from an “elite” academic institution, but we still have mutual friends from back when who share the dumbest stuff possible on Facebook. We also went to HS with Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s sister, so there’s some on that. Also: men in therapy, losing your mom, adult relationships, Texas girls, partisanship, finding religion in your 30s, and just two dudes catching up after a couple of decades. It was fun to tape. Hopefully you listen to some of it! Let’s roll. I’m talking about the Jared Diamond book “Upheaval” as we get started.

With all the layoffs stuff going on globally right now -- there's a chance that 5M people in the USA have filed for unemployment in about the last 14-17 days -- I had a quick conversation with my friend Cathrine about the idea of "constructive discharge," which feels like something you'd read on Goop, but no ... it's a real thing around how companies treat employees, especially in times necessitating cost-cutting. 

This is a layoffs discussion with Schelley, who is a Florida-based technical writer. She actually got laid off from two different jobs one year apart, on May 16. One of the layoffs was within 48 hours of her divorce becoming final too. And in one of the layoffs, she was contacted by a person she’d never met to be laid off! She’s got some stories, and we get through them in about 12-13 minutes. It’s an interesting look at humanity. Let’s hit it.