The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 267 - Sponge Mindset

Transcript:

Jen: Hi, Peter.

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: I recently realized that I had been soaking up so much information about a particular project I was working on, and I needed to squeeze the sponge, as it were.

Pete: I see. Soaking, and then squeezing.

Jen: Yeah, in order to get things moving forward. And it made me want to talk to you today about a term...maybe I'm coining it, maybe I stole it, I don't know. Can we talk about sponge mindset?

Pete: Ooh, sponge mindset. I mean, I love it when you/we make up words and terms. This one already invokes very specific images for me, so let's do it. The sponge mindset. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: I'm thinking of like one of those yellow stereotypical sponges, you know, that you wash the car with. Yeah. Yeah, great.

Jen: Yes, it starts out dry and sort of hard.

Pete: Yeah, it's like crusty, almost.

Jen: Yes. And then you put it in water, and it's soaks it up, and it expands. But if you lift it out of the water without squeezing it, it's just going to drip drip drip and make a mess. So you've got to squeeze that sponge, in order for it to soak up more. you're

Pete: You've got to squeeze it. But then at the end, when you finish, you feel like you're constantly squeezing and there's still water coming out of it. I'm like, "When are you ever going to be dry again, sponge? When?"

Jen: This is why maybe the sponge is the most fascinating item on the planet. Okay, maybe I took it too far. But so, I had written a note to myself that I wanted to talk to you about sponge mindset months ago. And at the moment that I wrote that down, I didn't have both halves of the mindset. I just wanted to talk to you at that point about adopting a sponge mindset, where it's like, "I just want to take in as much as I possibly can. I'm in learning mode. I'm in growing mode. I'm in expanding mode. I'm in dripping with information mode." And I'm really glad I hadn't brought this up as an episode at that point. Because what has happened since then is my sponge got so full, and I just kept filling it filling it filling it, until finally I was like, "I've got to do something with the information that I have learned. Time to squeeze the sponge."

Pete: Yeah. Okay, I feel like already I'm called out. I identify a lot with the sponge mindset. Like in my mind, that's a learning mindset, someone who is constantly seeking to learn and absorb and attain new contexts and information, and new skills, and new ideas. And I'm not as good, I would say, at always applying said learnings, i.e. squeezing the sponge. Also, I had a conversation (you just reminded me) with an executive here in Australia last week, who's going over to Harvard to do a course, like one of those one-week intensive courses at Harvard. And I was like, "A., that's really cool. But also B.," I said to her, "what does success look like for you?" And she goes, "Well, given it's a week, I just want to absorb as much as possible. And then, I'll process it on the flight home because I have a twenty-four hour flight home." And I'm realizing now, she kind of described the sponge mindset that you have coined. She wanted to be a sponge while she's there, and then start to squeeze when she's got time and space and permission to process after the fact.

Jen: Mmm. Yep, that pretty much sums it up. Well, a little context as to where this is coming from. So our listeners who have been with us for many years might remember that during the pandemic, I took my studio online. We were completely remote. It was amazing. And it was so much work. It was so much more work than the brick and mortar. It was a 24/7 commitment. And so when we went back in person, I closed the online studio. But about six months ago, I realized that we needed an online space to convene for career-centric conversations. And I was like, "I'm going to make a new online version of the studio. But I cannot do it the way I did it before. I need to learn everything I can about the different platforms that are available, automation, streamlining, minimizing." And so, I went on this journey for the last like really six months to find all the information I possibly could. Now, I am someone who suffers from analysis paralysis.

Pete: Welcome to the club.

Jen: There's never enough information for me. And at a certain point, I had set a deadline for myself of when I was going to launch this new online studio. And that deadline passed. And I realized it was because I had gotten locked into sponge mindset, and I was like, "There's more, there's more, there's more I have to learn." And then finally, I was like, "Squeeze the damn sponge." Which I've done, and more details on that coming soon, listeners. But it's actually happening, the sponge has been squeezed. But I could have honestly, Pete, I could have stayed in that soaking up all the information with the sponge, I could have stayed there for years.

Pete: Well, and I feel like that is a place that a lot of people do spend years. So I feel like this mirrors some thinking around decision making.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: That, in order to make a really effective decision, it's almost like there's two parts. One is to acquire as much information as possible about said decision, so that you can make the most informed decision as possible. And Annie Duke has written about the fact that the decision that you make and the outcome that you get are actually two separate things. You can only choose to make a decision based on the information that you have. And the probability of getting said outcome will be a certain percentage, hopefully as close to 99.99% as possible. But it could never be 100%, because there's always things outside of our control. And so, the way that we often get stuck (we, being myself as well) is we spend so much time in information gathering, i.e. absorbing the sponge, and we fail to make a decision and procrastinate, almost, and then things don't get done. And so, I identify with that so much. I'm wondering how you've thought about, when do you know it's time to squeeze? Is it, you create a constraint for yourself around time or a deadline? Is there like a certain checkbox we can tick when I get to X-percent of knowledge I think I've acquired? (Which, is almost impossible to quantify.) Like, I feel like I need a rule...throwing back to the Rules episode we did recently...for how I should know when it's time to tilt into squeeze mode. Like, it's obvious to me when I wash the car because the car looks cleaner and I'm kind of fed up with washing the car, and I'm like, "It's time to squeeze the sponge and be done with this."

Jen: Yeah. Well, in this particular case, I was in creator mode. So, I was actually making something that I was ultimately going to share with other people. And the thing that got me out of this constant intake and into action was the same thing that I tell my clients all the time, I just had forgotten to tell myself, "Conduct an experiment with the information that you have." So I committed to doing a two-month run with a very small group of clients on this new platform, with all of the things that I want to try...

Pete: Oh, cool.

Jen: ...so that I give myself room to continue evolving there. And then, the actual launch date will be January 1st. So from November 1st to December 31st, I'm in an experiment mode with people who know that they are early adopters.

Pete: Hmm, nice.

Jen: And it doesn't feel like my entire life is sort of hanging on this decision. So that's what got me out of this, was to remind myself to experiment, have a beta period, and make adjustments.

Pete: Right. And also, for them to hopefully affirm to you that, yeah, this is ready to be squeezed, like, "The car is clean enough now, Jen. You're good. You're done here. Like, get it into the world."

Jen: But I'll tell you, Pete, I see this sponge mindset...actually, I would call it rock mindset. The other side of the sponge mindset is rock mindset, which I sometimes adopt when I'm feeling particularly stubborn. Like, I can become as rigid and as hard as a rock, and no information can get past this wall. And so, I see myself very much on both extreme ends of the spectrum, like needing more and more and more information, and then also denying myself the possibility of growth in certain situations.

Pete: Yeah, I relate to that. I feel like it's probably a continuum that we sometimes are rocks and sometimes are sponges, and how do we shift between the two and hopefully move more towards sponging? I feel like it also mirrors or echoes or reminds me of perfectionism in a way, where someone who has very high perfectionism tendencies might be more likely to have a rock mindset, i.e., "There is one set way for me to do this, one perfect way to get this done. And I'm unwilling or unable to see other alternative ways forward. Or I'm unwilling or unable to see that this is 95% done, and actually, that's good enough. That's better. That is progress." And I just feel like the sponge mindset feels related to prioritizing progress and prioritizing making things better, whereas the rock mindset feels a bit more like getting stuck in perfectionistic thinking...which is, you know, a whole separate episode I think, perfectionism, which we've done before.

Jen: Yeah. You know, when I'm working with clients and they have a big project they're trying to take through different phases, I will encourage them to set what I call a cut bait date, like the day where...

Pete: Cut bait date.

Jen: ...you have this much time to gather information, and then on this particular date, the information you have is the information you have. And then, we move into the next phase. And I just hadn't done that for myself this time, and had to eventually be like, "Okay, Jen. Let's go. Cut bait."

Pete: What is cut bait? Can you explain that to me? What do you mean by that, cut bait? Like, fishing?

Jen: Oh, yeah, it's a fishing term.

Pete: Okay, okay, okay, sorry. I wasn't sure if it was an industry term that I needed to be familiar with.

Jen: No. It's really just a fishing idea.

Pete: And okay, I feel like this is the thing I was trying to get to earlier, is like, how do you go from, "I'm absorbing. I'm the sponge," to, "I'm now squeezing." And part of the tension I feel with that, in my own context...I could think of probably seven examples off the top of my head where I'm still in a sponge mindset and I probably could move to a squeeze mindset. And part of the reason I can convince myself to keep being a sponge is I don't have a cut bait date. Like there's projects, creative projects, things I'm building for clients that some of them don't even know I'm building them. And so, I'm like, "Oh, I'll just keep working on it. And when it's ready, it'll be ready. And I'll let them know about it." But adding some tension, some accountability to myself...as an Upholder, that would work for me, to have my own cut bait date. But what you actually have also done, I think, is leveraged other people to help you keep accountable to that cut bait date, like, "If I've told Jen that by next Tuesday, this thing needs to be squeezed, then I've told Jen that it needs to be done, so I better do it."

Jen: This whole conversation, Pete, is reminding me of Seth Godin's amazing book, The ShipIt Journal.

Pete: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like a workbook.

Jen: Yeah, it's a workbook. I'm fairly certain he has a free PDF download somewhere on his website, and if that's true, I'll put a link to it in the Box O' Goodies. I, of course, bought the beautiful version where when you open it, the spine is exposed, like the spine of the book. It's so beautiful. But what's interesting is The ShipIt Journal is essentially Seth's process for getting from inception of an idea to actually putting it out into the world, and he has the equivalent of different cut bait dates along the way. For example, he has this concept in there called "thrash early", where you get all of the major stakeholders in this project together early in the project and you basically say to them, "You have until this date to thrash and make a mess of it. And after this date, I'm going off to make the thing. So if you have opinions, give them now. If you have notes, give them now. Because once we get to this date, I'm making what we've said I'm making, and you can't give me the notes when we're two days before ship date."

Pete: I love it. I feel like once again, constraints, especially time-based constraints are just so underrated in our process of building and creating and getting things into the world. And whether that constraint is, "You have by this date," or whether that constraint is, "I need to come up with, you know, twelve different ways that I could move from a sponge to a squeezed sponge," it's sort of like different flavors of using constraints and leveraging constraints. The never-ending information gathering, the never-ending soaking of water in my sponge is just so me, when I'm not doing my best creative work. The other thing about The ShipIt Journal, by the way, it's so beautiful that I like don't want to use it.

Jen: I know, I've never written in the hard copy that I have.

Pete: Oh my god, me too. I thought I was the only one. It's so nice. So, I print off the free one and use that one.

Jen: Yep. I definitely have a PDF stored somewhere on my computer, because I don't want to mess up that beautiful journal.

Pete: I know, which, I think in the start of the journal, it says, "Feel free to make a mess in this journal." And I'm like, "No. I don't want to."

Jen: I know, it's just so nice looking.

Pete: So something you mentioned there, I feel like it's just worth underlining for myself, hopefully maybe it's helpful for listeners, is, you can have cut bait dates for different parts of the process. I mean, if I go back to the car wash metaphor, I feel like what is true is you actually squeeze the sponge multiple times during the process of washing the car. And if we take the squeezing of the sponge to be, you know, different cut bait dates (love that term) that we are releasing something, then I think it's just worth reminding like you don't have to build everything, build everything, build everything and then release it all at once as this perfect released thing. What you're actually saying is keeping yourself accountable to different dates along the way, along the process, that's, you know, what you mentioned about the thrash early. I don't know, I just find that so helpful, to be like, "Get Lesson #1 done by next week, if you're doing a ten lesson course or something. And then, Lesson #2 done by the following day. And then, Lesson #3..." Like, it doesn't have to be, "Have all ten lessons done by next week."

Jen: Right. You know what's so funny? Is, the building of this new online platform for the studio, the reason it could have gone on forever, Pete, is I didn't tell anyone it was happening.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: So just like you were saying about, you know, you're building things for clients but they don't even know it. The second I told people, it became real. I said how long the beta phase was going to last, and now, the people who are participating have buy in, that like, "This is the amount of time that we have with the platform all to ourselves, before we bring it out into the world." So, this accountability piece just feels so so so important. I'm saying this out loud because this is a podcast, but mostly, I'm saying it for myself right now as a reminder, like, "Jen, stop keeping things to yourself if you need to be held accountable for getting them done."

Pete: Right. I totally agree. And I could think of an example that happened last week. I was doing some pre-recorded videos for a project I'm working on. And I spent, I don't know, three weeks, maybe two weeks trying to get the perfect backdrop set with the perfect lighting set with the perfect environment at the perfect time of day. And I sent a still to you and to Kirsty Stark, our mutual friend (who, by the way, is an Emmy Award-winning producer). And both of you said some version of, "I mean, it's not perfect, but it's like pretty much good enough. Just go. Just start recording. What are you doing?" And because I told you and Kirsty, that provided the accountability, the context, the cut bait date, almost, that made me, you know, have a bias to action. So, I think you're so right. It's almost annoyingly simple, how many times things come back to this idea of, share where you're stuck with other people, or share what you're working on with other people.

Jen: Mmm-hmm. Otherwise, that sponge is going to get real drippy.

Pete: Yeah, real drippy. And then it's going to take forever, if you ever get around to squeezing it. It's going to take a long, long time.

Jen: Have we taken this metaphor as far as it can go?

Pete: I feel like we have squeezed the sponge for all that it is worth. I've absorbed your metaphor and I've squeezed your metaphor, I think. Hopefully, our listeners agree.

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