The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 211 - Wrapping Up

Transcript:

Jen: Hi, Peter.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: We're sad.

Pete: We are.

Jen: This is our last episode we're going to record in the same room for a long time.

Pete: Yeah. It's weird to think.

Jen: I know. It's been so fun to have you here. So before we go back to Zoom land, I thought it might be appropriate to unpack how we think about closing a chapter or wrapping things up or tying a bow on an experience.

Pete: I'm not good at goodbyes, Jen.

Jen: Aww.

Pete: This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: We sound so sad.

Pete: We do. I mean, I'm happy for all of the amazing things that happened.

Jen: I know. It's great.

Pete: Yeah. But it is a strange feeling. It's a strange feeling. Like, I remember this...I joked about like not being good with goodbyes, I just find it hard to get my head around. I remember leaving my internship, which was at the Victorian Premier's department. And I remember they did a little goodbye for me, and I finished my internship, and I walked out the door and I was like, "It's so weird to think that I might never see these people again."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I like, I don't know what to do with it. I just find it a strange thought. Now, we're going to see each other again.

Jen: We better. What are you trying to tell me?

Pete: It's not you, it's me. But this whole notion of like goodbyes, closing chapters, I feel like it's a funny ol' thing, I guess is what I'm trying to say. There's an insight for you.

Jen: I feel enlightened. So I use this idea sometimes with clients, and I wonder if it might be helpful here. It is essentially borrowing the structure of a story, beginning/middle/end, and then moving the pieces. So, here's an example.

Pete: Alright.

Jen: Act One: Pete comes to New York.

Pete: Aww.

Jen: Act Two: Pete and Jen have so much fun together, record a million episodes, and accidentally go to Staten Island.

Pete: Right, which is a whole separate story.

Jen: Act Three: Pete goes to Australia. Sad finale, boo. Okay. So instead, Act One: Pete goes to Australia. Act Two: Pete and Jen continue to evolve these projects they decided to do while they were in New York.

Pete: Oh, right.

Jen: Act Three: They ship said projects.

Pete: Oh, that's nice.

Jen: Ending, sadness. Okay, Act One: Pete and Jen ship said project

Pete: Oh, I like it.

Jen: Act Two: Clients are soaring to never before seen heights, etc., etc. And just sometimes, remembering that the ending of something is actually the beginning of the next thing can be really helpful.

Pete: Yeah. "Beginnings always hide themselves in ends," which is a line from a great song that I'll put in the Box O' Goodies.

Jen: Who sings said song?

Pete: I can't remember off the top of my head. I've put it in the Box O' Goodies before because I really liked that, just that idea. "Beginnings always hide themselves in ends." So, that's interesting. So it's like you're closing one chapter, but within the book of life (not to get too philosophical) there are multiple chapters, right?

Jen: Right.

Pete: Like if you jumped a bit or if you turn the page, it's like, "Oh, here's another one."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "And we're building on what just happened."

Jen: That's right.

Pete: I like that. I like that. I also feel like it's nice to...I mean, we've done an episode on reflection scripts before. I do find it nice to, like I'll do this when I get to the airport later on, to sit down and think about, "Okay, what happened in those two weeks? What went well? What did we get done that we're proud of?" Because I find it hard to acknowledge in the moment.

Jen: I've noticed that in you this week.

Pete: We had this yesterday. We had this happen yesterday, where you were like, "Wow, today was a productive day," and I was like, "Was it? Did we get a lot done? I don't know. I'm questioning whether we did."

Jen: I know, I was like, "Look at the to-do list. Literally, everything has a check next to it."

Pete: Yeah. So I find it hard to, I don't know, I find it hard to appreciate progress in the moment.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: I need that space to reflect, to then, I guess, acknowledge and maybe pat myself and you on the back to be like, "You know what? You did a good job."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. Which is maybe a Pete quirk, but maybe others can resonate with that, failing to identify progress in the moment.

Jen: Mmm. Yeah, I resonate with that too. So digging back into this idea of a reflection script, which we did an episode about...

Pete: So long ago. We could probably do a refresh.

Jen: I know. Well, we'll pop the old episode into the Box O' Goodies.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: You and I love reflection scripts. And we ask ourselves...well, depending on the context, we might have different ones. But like our general template is, "What went well? What went less well?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And, "What are we going to do about it?" I think that third question is so important-

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: -to relight the fire of ambition, to set some new goals, to get some traction moving forward.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: It would be easy to just go, "What went well? What went less well?" Full stop.

Pete: Right.

Jen: But then asking, "And, so what?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "What's next?"

Pete: Yeah. Another way of getting at this I like, as well, which I think builds on that is, "What do I want to do more of? What do I want to do less of..."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: "...once you've done the reflection?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: It's like, "What were the great parts? What were the things I could improve? And then as a result, what do I want to do more and less of?"

Jen: Okay, so you and I did a whiteboarding session in my office.

Pete: We did.

Jen: And we did an exercise called Continue, Stop, Start, which is very much in this vein. But what was funny is, we realized we had a fourth category.

Pete: Oh, we had, yeah, an extra one.

Jen: We had Continue, Stop, Start, Spruik.

Pete: Oh yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah.

Jen: Because there were some things on the Continue list-

Pete: Right.

Jen: -where we were like, "Well, we could continue doing that kind of the way we've been doing it."

Pete: "But we should probably tell someone."

Jen: Or, "We can share it with more intention."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: "We can share it more broadly. We can share it more specifically. We can share with more intention."

Pete: Yes.

Jen: So, some of those Continue things got moved over to the Spruik category.

Pete: Yeah. Spruik has been a real theme over the last week.

Jen: It really has.

Pete: It's been a real theme, both for good spruiks that we've been doing, i.e. sharing ideas, but also the areas where we recognize we could do better.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: We could do better.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Okay, so you also mentioned tying a bow.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Do you mean that metaphorically? Do you think about how you do that? Or is it just a visual for what we're talking about, a reflection script?

Jen: Well, the thing that I like about tying a bow is that there's something tidy and neat about it.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: It's like, "Put everything in its place, and put the finishing touch on it." Like, finish the parts that can be finished.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, there's a finality to it.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Yeah. And like you mentioned, and then it's not final forever, we're never going to turn the page of the book. But it's like, yeah, don't leave loose threads...

Jen: Right.

Pete: ...hanging in your mind. Huh. Yeah, okay. Yeah, closure in a way.

Jen: Yeah. It's funny, this morning when I woke up and was packing...because listeners, Pete and I are both headed to the airport today to fly to different places.

Pete: In the opposite direction.

Jen: But we're traveling to the airport together and then we have to get on the terminal train to find our terminals, and we're not going to the same terminal. And I was thinking this morning, "I wonder if we should like really hug on the terminal train? Like, or is it one of those things where I should step out and wave? Like, what is the bow on this experience?"

Pete: "What's the appropriate goodbye? What's the appropriate bow?"

Jen: Yeah, because you don't usually see people saying goodbye on the terminal train.

Pete: Right.

Jen: So I was just thinking about like the discomfort of, that's not usually what people do on that train.

Pete: Also, I feel like this is the most hilariously human story, where you spend time thinking about something as bizarre as a goodbye, the morning of.

Jen: I know.

Pete: Like, "Oh, how am I going to say goodbye?" Like, I do this...I sometimes do this when going out for, I don't know, going out for dinner. I'm like, "I wonder how the waiter is going to approach us. And how am I going to order?" And like, I just spend time thinking about the most mundane random thing.

Jen: I know, I know.

Pete: Yeah, the distraction of the mind.

Jen: But I think it's because, at least in this scenario, I do want to put a bow on having had this week with you.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Instead of feeling like, "Oh, that was the most awkward goodbye. What was that?"

Pete: "Pete got stuck in the door. And a bag got left behind. And like, it was a mess." So, we're planning our goodbye.

Jen: We're planning our goodbye.

Pete: Yeah. Hmm. Okay. So I guess, is it worth unpacking what went well?

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: A little RS?

Jen: Yeah, we could do a in-the-moment RS. Okay, what went well? I think what went well is that we did everything we said we were going to do.

Pete: This is true. Yeah, we have to be happy with that.

Jen: Right.

Pete: We had a list of things we'd like to get done while we were here, and we did.

Jen: The other thing that went well was our Live, was so fun.

Pete: It was so good, yeah.

Jen: It was so amazing to be in a room with people...I was saying to the audience, and I don't think that it was recorded when I said this, I'm in my studio all the time with people who are masked.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And during the summer hiatus, our COVID protocols changed just as COVID changed. So, our Live episode was the first time I have been in front of people who weren't wearing a mask since March 10th, 2020.

Pete: Wild. Did you like seeing smiles?

Jen: If you go back and listen to the Live episode, which was called Give More F*cks, I was like a lunatic.

Pete: Yeah, you were giddy. You were definitely giddy.

Jen: It was so exciting.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: That went well.

Pete: It really was. That did go well. Yeah, I appreciate that. What else went? Well, I mean, we did an episode recently on serendipity.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I, at times I had actually, personally, I had discomfort with how much space I'd created on this trip, which was part of my own quirk. However, as a result, I think I didn't pack a schedule so much that we didn't get to the things that we wanted to do. So, I feel like leaving enough space for the things we wanted to do. And we tried a few experiments, like recording a video.

Jen: And going to Staten Island.

Pete: And going to Staten Island, that didn't quite work. But because of having space in the schedule, I guess, yeah, I think that went well.

Jen: It didn't feel rushed.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Yeah. The other thing, just from a not business but a friendship perspective, we had deep talks.

Pete: Oh, we did.

Jen: Yeah, which was great.

Pete: It was good. Which is hard to do on Zoom, when I'm like, "We have to record an episode, Jen." And you're like, "I want to go to bed."

Jen: Having a constraint-free conversation with you, like a time constraint-free conversation with you, we just got to talk about things that we would never have time to talk about. So, that was really lovely.

Pete: Yeah, that was nice. Okay, what about things that...

Jen: Went less well?

Pete: Less well, yeah.

Jen: Something that you and I were lamenting yesterday as we were walking around is, we didn't do extra.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Like we did everything on our to-do list, but we didn't really have like a, "And let's do this random thing that just comes up, and make something brand new in this moment." We aren't exiting with an unexpected creation, which I think last time you were here, pre-COVID, we had a little more of that.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah.

Jen: Chalk it up to COVID, though.

Pete: Right. But also, like I can hear the high achiever in us being like, "Dammit, we didn't go above and beyond."

Jen: I know.

Pete: Right? Like...

Jen: So I guess what also went less well is the high achiever mindset, the productivity mindset, the, "Do, do, do, do, do," has come in.

Pete: I will give us some credit in that there was a realization related to a project, we realized we could solve the problem in a different way.

Jen: Yes, which will be a whole other episode where we talk about that.

Pete: I know we're talking in vague circles at the moment, listeners, but you'll find out.

Jen: What else went less well?

Pete: I mean, a few things got canceled that we were hoping to do.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Which was a little bit...I mean, a lot of it was outside our control.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: But it was, it was a bit of a bummer. We had a few things that we were meant to do, a few people we were meant to connect with, and we didn't. And so, that was bit like, "Damn it."

Jen: Yeah. Okay, so what are we going to do about what went well and what went less well?

Pete: Yeah. What do we want to do about all of this? Well, I'd like to build on the momentum of the progress that we made. Like, we have a can that is so big.

Jen: Can, meaning number of episodes already recorded.

Pete: Yes, the can. Everyone was like, "What? You're drinking a beer out of can? What are you talking about?" We have so many more episodes in the pile to be released than we've had since we started the podcast.

Jen: That's true.

Pete: So, I would like to continue to build on that and keep that surplus for as long as possible.

Jen: Can I double-click on that for a second?

Pete: Please, double-click.

Jen: Because we have so many episodes now recorded, we might be able to have some less constrained conversations over the next couple of weeks.

Pete: Right. Right, right.

Jen: Because we won't have that like, "Oh my gosh, it was so nice to catch up with you. We have to record an episode today."

Pete: "We only have two left." Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that feels good. That feels good, so we're going to build on that. Okay. And the other thing I guess is, like I alluded to, we realize we can solve a problem. So, one of the things that we were noodling on is this idea of feedback loops.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And how some big projects...and I feel like listeners can relate to this. Big projects that require a lot of time and effort and maybe external people to help you move said projects forward, the feedback loop can be really long.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And that can be really frustrating. In, i.e., you might make something and ship it, but you don't get any feedback or you don't even get to see the fruits of that labor for a long time, which is frustrating. And it, we realized, is one of the things we love about our podcast.

Jen: Right.

Pete: You can have an idea, release it that week, and get some feedback on how people receive that idea, which is so exciting. So we realized there's a way to shorten the feedback loop of one of our big projects, which feels exciting.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: So, I'd like to do that.

Jen: Agreed, that was a very important realization. And I really do think we should do an episode about long and short feedback loops at some point because, yeah, I think for both of us, it was a huge aha moment to realize that that was something that was standing in our way.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Without having that face-to-face moment of looking at it and talking about it, I don't think we would have come to that.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So, yay for face-to-face.

Pete: So true. I mean, it's kind of wild. We wrote...it's funny, because when you said earlier, "We did some whiteboarding," I was like, "Did we?" Because there's, at one point, we did do some whiteboarding and then we rubbed it all out.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And we were like, "Let's do the next thing we're going to whiteboard." And we wrote one word on the whiteboard.

Jen: That's right.

Pete: And that's it. And that one word led to this conversation we're talking about, which led to a discussion about feedback loops, which we then made a discovery about, all because we were in-person. And we literally have one word still sitting on the whiteboard.

Jen: Yeah, it's still sitting there.

Pete: Like, is that whiteboarding? I guess so?

Jen: Yeah. Yeah. The other thing...you know, what are we going to do about the thing that went so well? The Live episode is...

Pete: Oh my god, they're so much fun.

Jen: We have talked about maybe fooling ourselves that a Live episode can only happen in-person, and we want to explore the possibilities of, "What does a Live episode actually mean?"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: Does mean it has to be both of us in the same room?

Pete: Right.

Jen: Or how else might that become a thing?

Pete: Yeah, just invite people to the Zoom call that we record on.

Jen: Right. So, oh my gosh, that energizes me because I had so much fun during that episode.

Pete: Me too.

Jen: And in regards to the things that went less well...out of our control, whether or not someone has to cancel because something important came up for them. But it does make me think that next time you're here, we could maybe schedule instead of two or three people, maybe we can schedule four or five.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. And have a stretch goal, maybe, in mind. Like we had our to-do list, and you said we didn't do any alpha on top of that.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: But we also didn't really know what the alpha would be. Like, can we set a little stretch goal for ourselves next time?

Jen: Yeah. It's funny, we should go back and listen to our own episodes, like episode number one about pre-mortems, our episode about brainstorming, our episode about 10x-ing something.

Pete: Uh-huh.

Jen: We didn't apply all of our frameworks to that to-do list, to sort of blow it up.

Pete: Ironic, yeah. Ironic.

Jen: Yeah. Isn't it ironic?

Pete: Yeah, don't you think? Okay, so we're tying a bow on the face-to-face.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: We've paused to reflect on what went well, what went less well, and what we might do about it, and we're excited to turn the page into a new chapter and build on the momentum of the previous chapter. We're looking forward with excitement and hope and possibility, and trying not to look backwards too much with sadness.

Jen: Yep, that about sums it up.

Pete: It still feels kind of somber at the moment.

Jen: It really does, it really does. But once you get stuck in the door of the AirTrain at JFK and we laugh about it, we'll feel a whole lot better.

Pete: And need a hug, yeah.

Jen: Yeah, that'll be the pretty bow on this experience. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.