Often, my fingers remember how to play a song my brain has forgotten.

If I forget a section of a tune, the best way to remember is to start playing it again from the start, distract my conscious brain from thinking about it, and just let my fingers go about getting it done.

Actively trying to remember is unhelpful, but once my fingers have reloaded it back into my conscious brain, we’re all good. It’s like I get handed a reminder note from the person sitting next to me, except that person is my own hands. 

Mastery is often a confounding pursuit.

In this uncommon episode of The Fink Tank (I barely say a word*!) Col talks us through what he's learned about brains and mastery through his obsession with ultimate frisbee. 

How do you get really good at something, and then perform on the biggest stage?

Why are famous sporting chokes so fascinating?? What can we do to avoid the equivalent in our own professional lives?

I can CLEARLY remember the humiliation of an early public speaking appearance, where I lost not only the access to my knowledge, but also the ability to speak. I had definitely not practised enough.

Have you had a memorable “choke”?

* The main reason being I find it impossible to play guitar and talk at the same time. Can any of my fellow guitar players out there do this??

Col’s family is bottle feeding four sheep, and one of them is the clear favourite.

When Col finds himself deciding which sheep he wants to hang out with, he always chooses the one with the personality, the energy, the “spunk”.

If you’re running your own small business, you need enough clients to make it work. For the clients to choose you, you have to be their favourite. Even better, if you attract them by being you - by showing your energy, your personality, your “spunk” - you stand a much better chance of attracting people you'll like working with, and enjoying the work.

As Jay Acunzo says, you don’t have to be the best, you just have to be enough peoples' favourite.Go you good things.

Col and my relationship was once very fractured. Now it’s one of the most rewarding in our lives. What happened?

Repairing relationships is a critical part of life. We're all flawed humans, and sometimes we get things badly wrong. How good are you at owning your role in a rift?

We kick off this Fink Tank with two minutes of juvenile idiocy, before delving into a story of sibling reconciliation.

Warning: If you enter a puerile childhood idiom as a security question, you may one day have to say the answer out loud to a real person.

After many failed attempts over several years, Col finally quit smoking with 13 durries to go. 

Smoking killed our dad, but that wasn't enough to make him stop. And my strong condemnation actively worked *against* his intention to quit. What’s that about??

Decisions clouded with shame often feel like they happen in closed-off parts of our brain. And it’s not only habits like smoking that are addictive. Work routines, negative relationship patterns, self sabotage, imposter syndrome, procrastination. There are lots of ways to be an addict. They’re often destructive, and we wish we behaved differently. 

One day, Col DID quit smoking. With thirteen cigarettes still in the pack.

He smoked them. And never smoked another.

Why was this time different?

I’m often baffled by how my money behaves.

I can be convinced I want to spend money on something, which I can afford, which will make my life better. I then somehow just… don’t. My money has other ideas. 

Other times I can be repulsed by an inflated price tag or an unnecessary indulgence. And to my dismay, the cash can’t spend itself fast enough.

The surprises are the exception, but they happen across the board. Hobbies, travel, food, work expenses, professional development.

Trying to predict what my money will do is an uncertain science.

When you’re running a small business, you have to decode this mystery with OTHER people’s money. As Col says, people lie with their mouths, but they don’t lie with their wallet. And they’re often saying different things.

Your job is to listen to the truth of your customer's wallets, because their mouths might be misinformed.

Friend of the Fink Tank Ellen Rogin, CPA, actually interviews people’s money to help them better understand each other. I love the idea of treating money as a separate entity that you have to get to know and understand. Because it's got a mind of its own.

Our older brother Michael once addressed our full school assembly, and spoke in a false baritone so comical Col can’t think about it without squealing with laughter.

Pretty much everyone who’s spoken in front of an audience or gotten on camera has inadvertently used a weird Presenter Voice.

But really, the only thing weird about it is a hope or expectation that we’ll be able to speak normally.

You’ve spent your whole life having low-pressure conversations one-on-one or in small groups. Tens of thousands of hours of practice.

Speaking from stage or down the black hole of a camera lens is a totally different skill. You should EXPECT to be crap when you start out. 

In the state of Victoria you have to log 120 hours of driving as a Learner before you’re even allowed to take the test to get your full license.

120 hours is probably more than you’ll need to get passably good on camera or the stage, but it’s not a bad goal. Mastery takes time. 

And without at least ten hours under your belt, don’t judge yourself harshly for your Presenter Voice.

Just keep practising.

Col has been clearing his to-do list by ticking things off without actually doing them.

🙌 🎉  And then celebrating like he has. What a strategy. 

A trick for maximising your productivity is to actively avoid doing nearly everything.

Like most human beings, you're amazing. You're smart, talented, capable and adaptable. You could do almost anything!

This expansive possibility is both exciting and frustrating, because it's soon meet with the realisation that while you *could* do almost anything, you *can* do almost nothing... or at least, only a very limited number of the things in the near-infinite field of possibility stretching out before you.

Col and I have spent large portions of our lives frustrating ourselves and the people around us by overestimating what we can achieve, and are only now—in our mid-to-late forties!—coming to terms with the limits of our capabilities.

In this episode of The Fink Tank, we reflect on our limitations and gently laugh about things which our respective partners and colleagues have no doubt found utterly infuriating. Oops! Sorry!

Mid-episode my brain recalled a model from Alicia McKay’s excellent “Get Your Shit Sorted” workshop from 2020 lockdown times.

She has a habit of producing incredible work that gets used once and forgotten (the price of prolific output). Here are her (paraphrased) 4D’s for low-priority tasks:

Do the minimum – Half-arsing is often the right option.

Delegate – Outsource that sucker.

Delay – Not everything needs to be done now.

Delete – Many things don’t need to be done at all.

Col has been having an absolute party with number 4. 

Could you?

Well, you can, but people will probably still regard it as such.

It‘s more important that what you present to the world feels real. Especially on a social feed.

Col and I both enjoy content that feels a little raw. Stuff with honesty and personality. It should come with effort, curation, and care, but the focus should be connection and relatability, not a dodgy animated logo from fiverr.

In this Fink Tank we talk about the folly of trying to be something you‘re not, and how to use the appetite of the socials to your advantage.

The handwritten recommendation notes in Dan Murphy‘s carry a lot of weight. I like them as an analogy because they have a clear commercial purpose, but still feel honest and real.How could you be more like them?

There's this interesting—almost universal—characteristic of human life, whereby we are constantly disappointed by what we're able to achieve in a day, and amazed by what we can achieve in a year, or a decade.

It seems that perhaps a lot of our misery (related to work, at least) is actually the product of unrealistic expectations rather than an inability to get stuff done.In this Friday Fink Tank we discuss some practical habits and psychological shifts which can help improve our general levels of satisfaction on a daily basis.

My brother Col is a tightarse.

So am I, actually, because our parents were tightarses and these apples haven't fallen far from the tree.

Our dad was a speTACular tightarse, particularly where clothes were concerned. If you saw him wandering around a supermarket you'd assume he was on minimum wage, despite the fact that he owned a small chain of pharmacies, employed 30-50 people, and at one point owned a literal row of houses like he was playing monopoly. (This became what is now Bundoora Square shopping centre, for anyone reading who happens to be familiar with the northern suburbs of Melbourne).

He *never* bought a drink at a service station that would've been cheaper at the supermarket. He *never* bought a car with electric windows.

I clearly remember him saying air conditioners (at the time a ~$2000 option on new cars) were a complete waste of money because "There's only five days a year in Melbourne hot enough to even use it, just wind ya bloody window down!".

Saving money on unnecessary conveniences and creature comforts was part of dad's identity. Even when his business took off, his spending habits in this regard never changed, because that was part of what it meant to be Tony Fink.

Family holidays, on the other hand... they evolved from camping in the Victorian high country with baked beans for dinner, to ski trips in the USA! Spending time with his family was also part of being Tony Fink, and the cost of that never bothered him, so more money meant bigger holidays.

Anyway, this week's Friday Fink Tank is about Fink tightarsery, identity, and remaining true to yourself.

Enjoy.