The Fink Tank

The Fink Tank started in 2019. The first episode came out in 2023.

If you've got an idea sitting on the launch pad, this one's for you.

It wasn’t called The Fink Tank back then. I didn't even know what it was. I just knew I wanted to publish something fun with my brother Col.

On the day this was recorded I'd been producing a curriculum series for Jaquie Scammell in a rented filming space. Col dropped in to take advantage of the setup and record some work-related content. 

I seized the moment. Just before pack-down I jumped on camera with him and we made this playful video.

I posted it on Facebook in May 2019 and people loved it. Hundreds of likes and comments. I was delighted. The idea had legs!!

And then… nothing.

In 2020 and 2021 I produced over one hundred episodes of the video podcast What's on Your Mind for Digby and Alicia. It was hugely popular. People still talk about it.

I made a hundred episodes of a podcast. For someone else. And still didn't feel ready for my own.

In early 2023 Col and I finally recorded content for the first few Fink Tank episodes. It still took me FOUR MONTHS to get over my block and publish episode one.

Since then we've put out more than 120 episodes, a frankly astonishing and very un-Fink-like discipline and consistency.

It's built a small, engaged following. It feeds into our businesses. And, most importantly, it's a fun thing to do with my brother Col.

I look back sometimes and wonder what I was waiting for.

What are you waiting for?

When is it okay to break your own rules?

Picture this:

You’re the team manager of a social over 45s football team, where the mantra is every player gets a fair go.

Your team hasn’t won in two years. Your goal differential is a dismal -99.

Somehow, in the last game of another winless season, you’re 1-0 up at half time.

Your worst defender is sitting on the bench, due his 30 “fair go” minutes.

What do you do?

Every collective of people has rules. Families, social groups, sports teams, and organisations all have rules and norms about what is considered fair and reasonable.

When is it okay to break them?

I play crap level old-man football. The stakes are low, but feelings aren’t. 

At the other end of the spectrum, Col has coached ultimate frisbee for the Australian team at international level. Winning matters. It’s the explicit goal. Yet some concession is still made to opportunity and fairness. 

Whether at work or at home, I'm sure you've got rules that help ensure people are treated fairly. 

I'm also sure there are times when it feels right to break them.

If you’ve replaced your knees, your opinions, your wardrobe, your habits, and most of your cells since 2009…

Are you still you?

Welcome to The Fink Tank Chair of Theseus, a deeply sensible conversation between two men in the second half of their lives.

We move from ancient philosophy to identity, personal change, and why Dr Suess might have the answer. 

Col brings his usual insightful ideas, I reprise my role from undergraduate philosophy tutorials. But there is something useful in all this nonsense.

A lot of people feel trapped by old versions of themselves.

But if a Fink Tank chair can change piece by piece (and still be a Fink Tank chair), maybe so can you.

Here at The Fink Tank we usually aim for practical observations.

NOT TODAY.

Today we get our woo-woo on.

Col and I usually deal in useful ideas for solo pros, sibling dickheadery, and the occasional uncomfortable truth.

Today we ask a far less manageable question:

Who ARE you?

It gets pretty weird. 

Also, I learnt some new words.

Hands up (again) all our favourite “I think I might have ADHD” people 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♀️

For a lot of us, finding an explanation for things we’ve struggled with can be a huge relief. But a diagnosis doesn’t neatly absolve responsibility. 

In last years Fink Tank about ADHD, we talked about the subtle difference between an explanation and an excuse. 

It prompted more conversation, in the comments and real life, than perhaps any other episode last year. Clearly it’s a distinction people grapple with.

In today’s chat, Col opens with two magnificently simple questions he heard from Michael Port. 

Do you know what to do?

Are you doing it?

For those of us who were “gifted” children who now struggle to maintain focus or see things through, this is a disarmingly simple provocation. 

Because often, ADHD or not, we know what to do.

We’re just not doing it. 

Enter parts theory. 

I play the appropriately uninformed sounding board while Col talks us through a mental model which explains a lot of very human experience.

“Mate, I’m not here to be f*cken reasonable!”

- Some well-dressed guy at the football.

Being a parochial sports fan is one thing. Objecting to basic facts is another. 

The guy next to us was so one-eyed I eventually said something. His response was perfect.

Because in that moment he wasn’t trying to be fair. Or even coherent. 

He was being a rabid sports fan, and he was in exactly the right place. In his eyes, I was the unreasonable one. And he had a point!

We get to choose who we are depending on the context.

If we’re grounded in our values, we can match our behaviour to the moment.

You don’t need to be the same person everywhere. You just need to not be a fraud anywhere.

As Walt Whitman put it:

“I contain multitudes.”

PS. The guy at the end commentating on my shithouse plays is Dom Bareford. He’s a decent frisbee player and a LITERAL WORLD CHAMPION HOT AIR BALLOON PILOT.

“Cam, you’re smart enough to always be ‘right’, and I can’t be bothered anymore.”

Oof.

In our twenties, Col stopped talking to me for a few years. Fair enough.

Smart people aren’t less biased. They’re just better at explaining why they’re “right”.

That was me, and I was insufferable.

There’s a poster of fallacies and biases in Col’s toilet, and it prompted some terrible jokes and useful reflection:

If you’re always right, you’re definitely not.

I expressed my exasperation to Col’s 6-year-old son Deakin. His response was so funny it completely dissolved the tension.

Being funny is a great quality. Even if you’re not exactly sure what’s funny or why. In this Fink Tank, Col and I laugh about the nature of humour and why it matters in life and work.

Being stand-up-comedian level funny is beyond most people, for effort and talent reasons. But we think everyone is capable of adding a bit of humour to their repertoire.

Skip to 6:25 for some terrible jokes. Better yet, put your shit go-to jokes in the comments!

When I was 15, I stole an esky full of drinks from a random campsite.

Not exactly the heist of the century, but it felt huge in the context of my teenage attempts at rebellion.

I was fingered as the perp the next morning. I feared the worst, but the poor bastard whose beers I nicked had other ideas.

In this Friday Fink Tank I share a story Col had never heard. I definitely never told mum or dad!

My selfish teenage idiocy had wronged a good man. I was expecting humiliation and punishment.

Instead, he chose grace and forgiveness.

I don’t even know his name, but I’ve never forgotten him.

I came home to human poo in the driveway. Our fridge broke the same day.

Life will always have problems. Are they actually problems though?

In this Fink Tank Col Fink and I laugh about the human audacity to complain about things that were luxuries unavailable to even kings or queens only a hundred years ago.

In a great 2024 article about the quality of problems, Alicia McKay wrote:

Most of the problems I complain about are:

a) Entirely the result of my own choices

b) Actually a sign of progress and privilege.

Yours probably are too.

If you don't like your problems, get better ones.

If you already have good ones, but you forgot, this is your gentle reminder.

Well said Alicia, as usual.

What’s the poo in your driveway right now??