The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 105 - Time Capsules

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, listeners. Before we get to this week's episode, Pete and I are here to remind you that the clock is ticking. Applications for the next round of the Big Ideas Lab are closing on October 1st, or when the lab is full, whichever happens sooner. So if you are ready to dive into our intensive six-week workshop for people with changemaking ideas, who are ready to learn the skills, tools, and techniques for creating and delivering high-impact content, well, Pete will tell you how to do that.

Pete: Of course, I will. Head on over to our website, friends, thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/bigideaslab. We already have a brilliant cohort of changemakers forming, and we hope that you might choose to join us as well. So head on over to the website, thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/bigideaslab, where we have a video, where we have a bonus episode that we recorded that unpacked a little bit more what on earth this thing is we're talking about. And with that, we hope you enjoy this week's episode.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: Hey, Pete.

Pete: I was doing a little scroll through my photo album on my phone just yesterday. And I started to get a little bit nostalgic. Because this time one year ago, I was on a plane, would you believe it? To New York City, would you believe it? To hang out with you in person, would you believe it?

Jen: Ugh, and the only reason I believe it is because I was there. I know it happened. It was not a figment of my imagination. But my goodness, Pete, so much has happened since then. Let's talk about it. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So it's funny, your comment was exactly what went through my brain. Which was like, "Oh, wow. That was a year ago. Wow. A lot has happened in a year."

Jen: Yes. It's so funny that you're bringing this up, because we're starting this next session of the Big Ideas Lab in October. So I've been listening to the audio from last year, one year ago session. And I was listening to the first day when everyone is introducing themselves. And I was so struck by how different they sounded that I actually double checked. And I was like, "Wait, maybe this wasn't one year ago. Maybe this was two years ago."

Pete: Wow.

Jen: But no, it was only one year. It's absolutely crazy. So I've been thinking a lot about how much can happen in such a short amount of time. And you don't even realize it's happening, while it's happening. It's like when you get to a point to look at it from a different perspective that you realize, "Oh, my goodness, so much change."

Pete: Mmm, yeah. Yeah, it's like we've talked about. Change happening drip by drip. We've talked about, you know, doing 1% at a time and eventually, over time, things get "better", or things progress, I guess is a better way of framing it. And you kind of can't see it in the moment. Like, in any given day, I can't really tell if things are changing. Or if, you know, progress is being made in my work, or in someone else's work, or in the world. But then you have a moment where you look back and you're like, "Woah, a lot has changed." So I guess that maybe the question or the idea to unpack a little bit is, you know, what do we do with that? How do we create pauses to think about the change that's being made? And you know, and recognize it, pat ourselves on the back, but then keep moving forward?

Jen: Well, here's the thing that's been in my noodle, is time capsules. Like, having these recordings. This is a time capsule. And so it's so obvious now listening to it, to hear how different people are. I actually, I spoke to one of those people today. And I was saying to her, "Oh my goodness, a year ago when you introduced yourself to everyone, you were speaking easily half an octave higher than your natural speaking voice." Like, you can hear the nerves in her voice. And then she was like, "Really?", in today's voice. And I'm like "Yes. Okay, you just proved my point." It's so interesting to have these time capsules. So like with that experience in mind, since both of us went through that together, you and I, we have these recordings. And then, what's really crazy to me is we have this exit survey at the end of the lab. We had people talk about how far they had come, and the things they felt like they got or didn't get. And they were very honest, and very in the moment. Well, we went back to those people a couple weeks ago to ask them the impact of that experience now, and you can't even believe it's the same person who on the last day of the lab was like, "I feel like I learned a lot of things. And it'll be interesting to see how this goes moving forward." And then now is like, "It was the most important experience of my entire life." Because they've had all of this time to sit with their learnings. And so what it got me thinking about is, "Where am I putting my own personal time capsules?" Like we have this podcast, but we know it's going to be released. Like, what are the things that we'll be surprised to go back to in a while?

Pete: Ooh, I like that. I mean, the podcast, it feels like an obvious one. Okay, I imagine...I mean, I haven't done it for a long, long time. But if we went back and listened to one of the first ten episodes or something.

Jen: Oh no.

Pete: We'd be like, "Oh my god. We sound so young, and innocent, and ridiculous." I mean, we're still ridiculous. But, so a time capsule. So one that comes to mind for me...I can't actually remember if I've ever talked about this in the podcast, or just with you offline. Is, at the end of when I was a student in the altMBA (which is the online leadership workshop that Seth Godin designed)...so that was over three years ago. One of the things I did for my final like project was I recorded a video to myself from my future self. It was kind of meta. I was like, "Hey Pete, it's Pete in two years time. I've got a few messages for you. I know you just finished the altMBA. I want you to remember blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I went back and watched it. I think it was like, you know, three months later. And I went back and watched it like six months later. And it wasn't too, wasn't too painful to watch. And what was wild was after the six months, I was like, "Oh, the things that I'm talking about in two years time, I'm like doing now in six months. That's pretty cool." And then a month or so ago, a friend of mine...she's also taken the altMBA. We were talking about our experiences. And I was like, "I did a video to my future self, blah, blah, blah." And she's like, "Oh, could I see it?" And I was like, "Sure." And so, I went to find it to send it to her. And I was like, "I guess I'll watch it." And I watched probably the first ten seconds, and I had to stop. I was like, "Oh my. Oh my god. I sound so weird, and innocent, and young, and stupid, and ignorant...", and like all of those things. And so, it was like I'd created a time capsule. And now it felt weird to even listen to it.

Jen: Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Maybe you'll put it in the Box O' Goodies. [long pause] Based on your face, I'm guessing the answer to that is no. [laughter]

Pete: I mean, the internet didn't freeze then. That was me really pausing to think about that. [laughter] It goes through, I think we've talked about...we did actually talk about it. We've talked about future self as an episode before, right?

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: Which is, you know, in a way, it's kind of the inverse of a time capsule, I guess? Or is it?

Jen: I guess anything that you're capturing now, that you're going to take a look at later, is in some way a time capsule.

Pete: Hmm. So have you got a practice or a process, or have you got something that acts as a time capsule?

Jen: Well, as I'm sitting here thinking about this, I realized that I do capture a lot of my work now in recording form. Like, I do a lot of my writing by speaking into my phone, into Otter, an excellent app. We'll drop it in the Box O' Goodies. And so I have all of these recordings that I've never gone back and listened to, because I was dissatisfied with the quality of thinking I was doing. So I just like never went back to them. But it would be interesting to go back and hear what was important to me at that time, and then see if there are any new connections that could maybe breathe those ideas back to life.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: So, that feels like something I'm interested in doing. And then the other thing is during this COVID era, I'm recognizing, you know, I have my Five Minute Journal.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: But I probably could be doing a better job of creating a record of what is happening right now. What things I'm looking at, what things I'm learning. Like, big questions. Because not only will I want to look back at this time in the future and be like, "Woah, that was some crazy stuff." But it might also be cool for future generations of my family to go, "Oh, we heard of the great COVID pandemic of 2020. You know, great, great grandma was in that and this is what she had to say."

Pete: Okay, that sparks two really interesting thoughts. Well, I'll let you and the listeners determine if they're interesting. It sparks two thoughts. The first is, you're right. I hadn't actually thought about that. Like, I've been writing a page every morning and doing a Five Minute Journal for, I would say, over five years. Like, six years. And so, it's wild to think that they are time capsules. Every now and then I might go back and read them. But I don't do that often. And so I guess the question I have, which maybe we can explore in a second, is like, what are time capsules actually for? Like, are they useful? What could we use them for? What might we use them for? But every now and then I go back and read, and I have the same reaction to what you described with folks in the Big Ideas Lab, the same reaction to what I described in the video. Which was like, "Oh, wow. I feel like a different person than the person that wrote this." And yet, it was me. Like, it's the same person. Just, you know, with different contexts, different levels of development, and ideas, and all of that. So, that's interesting. And then, I guess the other thing that, the other thought it sparked, just to throw this out there, is...I've actually told you this. So, your idea of capturing things for future generations has been something I've observed. I don't know if this happens in the States, or in other families even, but in my family, it's like my dad, my mom, my aunties get to a certain age...and they're probably listening. So, hey aunties, and uncles, and dads, and moms. And all of a sudden, they really want to find out more about the family tree and the family history. And they go onto ancestry.com, and it's like a whole project. And there's a spreadsheet. And there's an A3 bit of paper. And it's like family mapping. And I sort of observe it and go, "Wow, that's kind of fascinating." Anyway, I was thinking about, like, a year or so ago, "What is my equivalent of that? How might I capture interesting stories, ideas from my parents, and aunties, and uncles, and family members so that future generations might be able to access it in an easier way?" Because I've seen the pain of like trying to find birth certificates, and death certificates, and all that. Anyway, I started a family podcast. Which is private, just for our family. And I've interviewed each member of our family once, so far.

Jen: What? This is genius.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. And so, we've done...so my immediate family, there's five of us, including me. So I interviewed the four others: my mom, my dad, my brother, and my sister. And then, my brother interviewed me. And we called it Season One. It was like the early days of, you know, when you were a child. And so, we all answered the questions. And then, we all went back and listened. And then we had this Zoom call where we were like, "What did you...like, what was it like listening to one another share the same memories, but from different angles?" And all of these things. Anyway, I'm talking a lot. But the point is, I realized what I did was I created a potential time capsule. I didn't even quite think of it like that.

Jen: Oh my goodness, I want to borrow this from you. This is such a brilliant idea. And I am fascinated by the notion that you would like pick an event that all the family members were at, and then interview them about that event, and get all the different stories. Because, of course, everybody's experience is totally different of what that event was, and what it meant. Oh my gosh, I love that.

Pete: Yeah, so my first question...not to go into it too much. The first question...I think I borrowed this slightly from Krista Tippett, On Being. On her podcast, she asks the same question at the start of every episode. So my first question to all the family members, and my brother asked me, was, "What are your memories of dinner? At like, what are your memories of the dinner table?" And everyone was like, "Oh, I remember the serviettes. And I remember, like, I used to sit in this chair. And I remember, dad used to say this." And it was like, but slightly different iterations of the same thing. And so, yeah, it's been, it's been fascinating.

Jen: Well, I love that. This just made my mind bounce to the greatest gift I ever received from my mother, my mom, as a gift to myself and my two sisters. This was...I'm going to say it was like maybe six or seven years ago. She digitized every single thing she had, in terms of photographs, and videos, everything. So we're talking home movies, back to when my family got their first camera. We're talking photographs of generations that we never even knew. She digitized the whole thing and then gave it to us for the holidays, for Hanukkah. And it was the most meaningful gift. It was so generous. I can't even imagine how much time went into that. But talk about like a multi-generational time capsule. But it's because of the way my computer syncs with my phone, all of those images ended up on my phone. So sometimes Cate and I will be scrolling through pictures of her as a baby or as a toddler, and we'll come across, you know, these thousands of pictures of family members I never knew. And it is so amazing because it really does remind you that you are establishing something right now, that future generations of your lineage will be able to name as their history. But that also you are existing only because of the people in those photos, and what they fought for, what they cared about, the fears that they overcame, and the dreams that they had, so that you could exist. It's sort of beautiful in that way.

Pete: It really is. It reminds me of something you've said to me many, many times. Which is, everything has storytelling value.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And often we go through a day, and we think that today was the same as yesterday. "I did a similar thing. I didn't collect any new stories, or anything like that." But to your point, everything we're doing in any given day is nudging forward a story, creating a new story, pulling on an existing story and adding another chapter to it. So that, you know, we can tell it. Someone else can go back and look at it. Or we can, at some point, sit down and look at the change that's been made through those stories.

Jen: Yeah. Okay, this is now pulling my brain over to this direction. On Monday...so, I don't know when this episode is going to be released. But on the Monday in question, our country was mourning the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She had passed away over the weekend. And she was one of our Supreme Court justices, the second woman ever to serve on the US Supreme Court, and a person who devoted her entire existence to justice, and equity, and freedom, and fighting for what's right. And so, there was a lot of sadness in the air when I got to digital work on Monday. And I sort of scrapped what I had planned for class that day. And instead, we did this deep dive into legacy. And not your own legacy, although that's important too. But to get specific about the ways in which you intend to carry someone else's legacy forward. And so, the exercise was really to identify someone whose legacy has had a positive impact on you (whether you know them or not), and then to tell a story that encapsulates (there's that capsule word again) encapsulates what that person stands or stood for, and then see if you can make a commitment to carrying the learnings from that lesson forward. So the, what this is all making me think about is not only can we create these very specific like digital recordings, photographs, voice memos, videos, etc., that are time capsules, but the stories that we tell also serve as time capsules. And they help us to see where we've been, where we are, and where we're headed.

Pete: Hmm. Well, I gotta say, the legacy that you have left on me, I think, is one that I will remember for generations to come, and probably pass down to many other generations.

Jen: Aww. Likewise. Thanks.

Pete: Whether that be twelve months ago, when we were hanging out in person. Or, you know, the last twelve months, where we've just been doing our thing digitally and remotely.

Jen: So, I feel like maybe the lesson here for us, and for the listeners, is to give yourself the gift of a time capsule moment. Whether it's like randomly scrolling to two years ago in the photo app in your phone, or looking at an old journal, or listening to...you probably have Inbox Zero voicemails, but I don't. Because we all know I'm a message hoarder. So I have, I've got really old voicemails that I could go and listen to, just as a time capsule to remind ourselves (especially in this moment, where day after day can start to feel a bit monotonous) of how far you have come, and that you're still moving forward right now.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.