The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 179 - The Reading is the Work

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: A couple of weeks ago, you and I were on a tandem coaching call with one of our clients. And you said something that I can't stop thinking about. I realized since you've said it, that I already inherently believed it to be true and necessary, but hadn't put the words to it yet. And what you said was, "The reading is the work."

Pete: Oh, interesting. It's always nerve wracking when you're about to quote me back to myself...like, "What did I say?" "The reading is the work." Now, I recall that. I recall that. Okay, yeah, this is something I'm actually struggling with a little bit, even though I said it. So, let's dig in. This is The Long and the Short Of It.

Jen: Our client was sharing how they sometimes felt "guilty" for the time that they spent reading, or listening to podcasts, or whatever it might be, rather than working..."working". And you said, "The reading is the work," and went on to unpack that, but I can't stop thinking about it. So, can you...can you tell us all, what do you mean by that?

Pete: Well, in that context and I guess the context of this conversation, what I was referring to is that reading, I guess, a specific type of book...like the type of work that this particular client was doing was actually coaching and thought leadership. So we weren't talking about reading Harry Potter, necessarily. She was discussing making time to read books like we've mentioned on this podcast many times before, books like Steal Like an Artist, books like Start With Why, books like Dare to Lead, like these kinds of thought leadership style books. And I feel like I've known this, and I've said this for a few years now. And I think I admitted in the process of us having this conversation with the client that I still struggle with this, even though I like intellectually understand it to be true. What can be hard to get your head around is as a freelancer or an entrepreneur or someone working for themself as a coach, as a thought leader, as a creative individual, is reading books like that is going to hone your thinking, help create aha moments and connections that you might have, it's going to expand the stories that you might tell to clients or on stages. And so, of course, that is an invaluable part of "the work" that you do as a freelancer, or thought leader, entrepreneur. You are carving out time to intentionally expand your mind, I guess. And the fact that we, I guess, as a society, struggle to accept that that's part of the work is like a fascinating just kind of anecdote or sidebar. I grapple with it, too. But I was kind of realizing in that moment with her, and have thought about this a few times, if I spend an hour reading during the day, that's not me taking a break. That's the work. Like, I'm learning, which I'm going to then apply to the conversation that I have with Jen in an hour's time. Like, that is part of my practice, I guess, is what I'm trying to say.

Jen: Yeah, it's made me think a lot about our obsession with something I'd call "Cup o' Noodles productivity", where...you know, Cup o' Noodles, you just add water and suddenly you have a meal.

Pete: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two Minute Noodles. Two Minute Noodles, we call them.

Jen: Right. Exactly. So when it comes to productivity, like, if we don't see the immediate results of what we're working on, we forget that it's work. And what I loved about this motto, "The reading is the work," it's like a tool of permission to say, "I don't need the results from this right this second. I'm committing to planting a seed that has room to grow over time." And I just think that is so important, to get away from this Cup o' Noodles philosophy and more into the planting seeds philosophy.

Pete: Mmm. Oh, I'm obsessed with that. I mean, I think I've shared on this podcast before, I've had various experiences in my work where I might have a day where...I try and avoid these now. But you know, in the past, I've had days where you spend nine hours on Zoom, bouncing from one client call to another client call to another client call to another client call. And I remember at the end of some of those days thinking, "Ah, I didn't really do any work. I didn't get to the work." And then reminding myself of like, "Oh, no." I think actually my friend Mark Tompkins, who...I'm sure I've shared this story before. One time I was really lamenting and struggling with this idea that I wasn't doing enough, I wasn't doing appropriate amounts of work. And he said, "Oh, but showing up is the work." And I think it's the same philosophy. Like, reading is the work. Showing up on a call to serve a client, that's the work. And to tie this back to what you were saying, it's like we've been conditioned to thinking, the work is the thing that gives you immediate gratification.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like pinging someone on Slack or responding to an email, because you get that little dopamine rush of completion, of satisfaction, or whatever that is, or crossing something off your to-do list. And how much research is there now on how that is just like shallow work that doesn't actually necessarily create an impact? The thing that creates an impact, to your point, is planting seeds, reading books, showing up, serving people.

Jen: Yeah. Okay, sidebar, my meditation teacher, the amazing Mark Price...I should probably drop his info in the Box O' Goodies, because so I'm learning so much.

Pete: Also, you have a meditation teacher now. A meditation teacher.

Jen: I do. And we'll do a whole episode on that someday.

Pete: Yes, yes, yes.

Jen: But he was saying today that the average person in America (I don't know if it's true in Australia) spends two hours a day answering emails, responding to emails. And I had to laugh, because I'm like, "Jen spends two hours a month answering emails."

Pete: You know what's shocking? Is, I hear that and go, "Oh, I thought it would be more." I thought it would actually be more.

Jen: That doesn't mean composing new emails. That means responding.

Pete: Right, responding. Yeah, yeah.

Jen: I mean, you know, my relationship with email is not one that people should model themselves after. It's like highly dysfunctional. And I'm really not exaggerating when I say I spend about two hours a month on email. I just pretend like it isn't there. But to your point, like we have this productivity crisis, where it's like, "I have to be doing something so I can check something off the list," rather than understanding that, "I can do things now that will pay off later."

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: Okay, I want to turn this toward something we've talked about in the past, that I hadn't fully connected the dots between this and, "The reading is the work." You know, in my calendar, I have these chunks of time scheduled. One called "Magic Time", and another called "White Space Time". And I realized, after thinking through this motto of, "The reading is the work," that my Magic Time is long-term seed planting, I have no idea what it's leading to, and my White Space Time is short-term seed planting, because it's project-specific. But in both cases, the reading is the work.

Pete: Hmm. That's interesting. And does reading come into any of those? Like, do you sometimes use Magic Time to read a chapter of a book?

Jen: That's right, I do. And you know, or listen to a podcast, or go on a walk, or go to a museum and look around, or take in some people watching.

Pete: Yeah. It's so wild that we trick ourselves into thinking that reading a book is like such a luxury, or a thing that is a guilty pleasure. You know? And I still think this. I still grapple with this every single day, where if I have an hour in an afternoon free, I still struggle with the idea of using that to read a book because I guess that's how society has conditioned me, even though I'm the one that said to you and this client, "The reading is the work. The reading is the work." So, I'm like...I'm going back to the well on this so many times.

Jen: It reminds me of another thing that I feel like maybe we've talked about on this podcast...I've definitely written a blog post about it, which I'll drop in the Box O' Goodies. That sometimes we can accidentally conflate reading, or listening to a podcast, or whatever it might be, with procrastinating. And I, in recent years, have tried to separate procrastination from curiosity. That what I do when I'm procrastinating doesn't really provide any value to my life or anybody else's life, but what I do when I'm curious, which is like going down these research rabbit holes, will ultimately offer some value to my life and someone else's life.

Pete: I love that. Is this an aha moment? I'm not sure. Is there a way to frame that almost as like, "If the reading is the work, then-" what I just heard from you is almost like, "-following your curiosity is the work."

Jen: Yes.

Pete: Yeah. Which could be...yeah, right. I mean, we're using this idea of reading, but yeah, it could be a podcast. I mean, it could be...another one I have is like a conversation with a friend.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: So I have a friend of mine, Josh, who...him and I walk. We've walked, you know, like an hour or two each week for the last couple of years. And sometimes I've caught myself being like, "Oh, I don't have time to have a walk, you know, invest. Because I've got so much work to do." And then I remind myself that so often, those conversations I have with Josh, I'll unlock some idea because he'll ask me a great question, and that will then make my work or my day a whole lot easier, or better, or different, because he's given me an idea, he sparked a thought. So there's all these like activities on the periphery, which, again, are not necessarily reading, but I think fall under the same umbrella of following one's curiosity, of investing in thinking, investing time in thinking, yeah.

Jen: I'm laughing because it's kind of reminding me of how we typically start these podcasts. "I was having a chat with a friend," or, you know, "I was listening to a podcast," or, "I was reading read this book." Right? But you know, we've never said, "I was playing this game of Candy Crush." And so maybe for us, you know, the barometer is like, "Could you make a podcast episode out of that?"

Pete: So true. Or we've never said, "I was replying to this email, and then I said...and then I thought...".

Jen: Seriously. Seriously, now. Well, I couldn't open that way, because I've never replied to an email.

Pete: "I was ignoring this email, and then...".

Jen: Listeners, just like side note, in the first year that we were recording The Long and The Short Of It, every couple of weeks, Pete and I would record a short snippet about Jen's email saga. And there was never an end in sight, so we just stopped doing it.

Pete: I think we have those raw recordings still, somewhere.

Jen: Maybe someday, we'll finish that episode.

Pete: It's true. It got a bit repetitive, because it was just like, "Nope, still a dysfunctional relationship. Still dysfunctional."

Jen: Right. Oh my gosh.

Pete: So I guess the, I mean, one clear takeaway I hear in the way that you shared about your process, I think is really awesome which I don't have, which is...I mean, you don't have to call it "Reading Time". But putting Magic Time or Curious Time...I love the idea of having like Curious Time in my calendar. And then, I have a journal that I look at each morning that has like a list of things that I consider to be healthy habits. And I try and do a couple of them, or three or four of them each day. I'm wondering now if I could have like a list of things that allow me to follow my curiosity, like reading or listening to a podcast or walking with Josh, and then trying to make time for, you know, one of those a day, or maybe two of them a week, or whatever the number ends up being. But yeah, I like that idea of like, "Here's a menu. You just have to pick a couple of them each week."

Jen: Ooh, I really like that. And especially if the options are kind of broad. I'm thinking right now of like...oh my gosh, it was so many years ago. Like, maybe...how old am I? I'm forty-six. So I was probably like, I don't know, in my early thirties when this happened. So a client of mine wanted to create a one-person show for himself. And I had never done it before, and I was going direct. And we were like, "Well, let's really see if we can understand this genre." So we would buy a hard copy of Time Out magazine, which basically was like listing all of the things that were happening in New York. And we'd open up to the cabaret page, literally close our eyes and drop our finger on the page. And whatever show we landed on, we would go see it.

Pete: Nice.

Jen: So we never picked anything based on our preference. It was just like trying to understand things within a certain genre. And it was so fun. We learned so many things that we would never have learned. And seen things, ooh, that...you know, sometimes in this life, you see things you don't want to see, but you learn from them. And that was really fun. So like on your list, it could be, "Go see a show. Not a particular show, but just randomly pick one."

Pete: Yes. And listeners that can't see (which is everyone listening), Jen has the look on her face of someone who has seen some things. You know, the look when someone is like, "Oof, I've seen some things. I've seen some things."

Jen: I do live in New York City, so I've seen it all at this point.

Pete: The point that you made is an important one, I think, to emphasize which is genre. Because I kind of joked at the start, of the client we were referring to and talking to at that moment was, we weren't saying, "Oh, go and read-" like I joked about, "-Harry Potter," because it wasn't necessarily within the same genre of what this person was working on. So whatever industry or field or curiosity you have, whether it's coding or thought leadership or cinematography or whatever, it's about, firstly, getting clear on what that is, and then getting curious about, "What are the things within that? Or what are the resources within that? What are the podcasts, the books, the shows, the movies that would help you hone your craft," I think. This is not just, yeah, listening to a podcast for the sake of listening to a podcast. It's actually like...I guess it's intentional, which is, you know, one of Pete's words for 2022. I'm just weaving it in to every single conversation I can. It's intentionally consuming, or spending time thinking about things that are, like you said, that you're curious about, which then benefit or feed the work that you're doing.

Jen: Yes. And there is something about curating your consumption that is very, very useful. And I think there's another layer here, or a different direction, which is something I've referenced in previous episodes, seeing the world through project-colored glasses. So let's say you are reading Harry Potter and you are a student of leadership, you could ask yourself, "What does leadership look like in Harry Potter? What does good leadership look like? Dumbledore."

Pete: Dumbledore.

Jen: "What does bad leadership look like?"

Pete: Umbridge.

Jen: Exactly. You know? And how could I actually draw some connections? Maybe I can pull some of those stories or some of those references, put them in my backpack of stories for when I'm writing a keynote or something like that. You know, there's Learning Time, which is I think what you're talking about, where you like intentionally curate what you are inputting to be topic-specific. And when you're just entertaining yourself, like reading Harry Potter or watching a show like Alone on the History Channel (one of Jen's favorites), that you could, on the heels of that, just say, "Is there anything that I just saw or read that I could find relevant to the work I'm doing?"

Pete: Mmm. Yes. And I just...I feel like it's worth saying, you just made my mum very happy (who's one of our number one fans of the show). Because she's constantly telling me and reminding me and nudging me to read more fiction, and think about how there are lessons within fiction that apply to your work, but also just to read fiction for the sake of switching off. Which, yeah, is...you know, it's another thing to intentionally do, is to read all this and consume something for the sake of, you know, exercising a different muscle, i.e. maybe just switching off from the non-fiction for a second, Pete.

Jen: You know, when we did our Favorite Things for 2021 episode, you and I both said, "We're going to read more fiction this year. Not just...for me, at least. Not just in the summertime." And I'm doing it.

Pete: Nice. Me too. Me too. I think I'm on to my second fiction book already this year.

Jen: Me too. It's exciting.

Pete: Oh my god, look at us. Look at us.

Jen: The reading is the work.

Pete: The reading is the work. Okay. So I'm learning from the way that you applied the very thing that I said to you, which is so ironic. You know that idea that like, "We should listen to our own advice?" You know, and here I am telling this client, "Don't worry, the reading is the work." And then it's also like, "Pete, you know, the reading is the work." I think I'm going to add to my calendar Curious Time, or something like that.

Jen: Love it.

Pete: And like I mentioned, write a list of things that I would do that are in line with, "The reading is the work," and then make space and make time for them. So, thank you for that little nugget.

Jen: Well, ultimately, the big thanks goes out to you, Mr. Shepherd. Because I truly have not been able to stop thinking about that simple, simple sentence, a motto that I intend to continue to live my life by, "The reading is the work."

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