The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 366 - Momentum Mindset

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: So the other day, I needed a resource for a client. And I said, "Lucky you, we've recorded an episode about this very thing. Let me grab it for you." I went into the archive...and guess what, Pete?

Pete: There it was.

Jen: Nope, it was not there. We've never recorded this episode. So it's either a figment of my imagination or it's like an afterthought, that like, sometimes we say, "Oh, and we should record an episode about this someday in a different episode." And then, we never do.

Pete: We never do, yeah.

Jen: In any case, this imaginary episode, which we will now make real, is called Momentum Mindset.

Pete: It's a great alliteration. I do feel like I've heard you talk about this somewhere. So, let's learn more and hear more. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Now, why is this familiar to me?

Jen: I feel like I've talked about it, at some point. I've probably said, "Oh, and then, I use this thing called momentum mindset. We should record an episode about that in the future."

Pete: That sounds like something we would say, definitely.

Jen: And I had so much confidence when I went into our archive. I was like very certainly typing "Momentum Mindset". And I was like, "Bum, bum, bum. No! It's not there."

Pete: "Let me just Control-F, 'momentum'. Nope, there's nothing there."

Jen: So I use this tool all the time, and it really does deserve its own episode. So here we go, listeners. Here we go, Pete.

Pete: Tell me more. What does this mean, momentum mindset?

Jen: The reason this came up is, I am a couple weeks away from the end of my four-month-long coaching program that I run during the summers, the Reboot.

Pete: Gosh, that goes quick. Doesn't it?

Jen: Oh my gosh, it goes so quick. And this year's cohort was so incredible and amazing. Anyway, as happens every single year, we enter the final month of the Reboot, and people start to panic.

Pete: I was going to say, does everyone freak out?

Jen: Yeah, they feel the end coming. And it's like, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. What am I going to do after this? I can't believe this is ending." And there's something about knowing that this end date is coming that just raises lots of questions and concerns. And, "Do I even know what I know?" And, "Maybe I'm not ready to do this on my own," and all this stuff. And it's moments like these, when you're reaching the end of something, that momentum mindset really becomes very helpful. Because what we don't want to do, whether it's in my Reboot coaching program or in anything that we're doing where we're making progress and evolving, what we don't want to do is go, "And that's the end of my evolution."

Pete: Right.

Jen: "And that's the end of my growth."

Pete: "I'm evolved."

Jen: Right. "Check."

Pete: "This is my final form for the next sixty years."

Jen: So momentum mindset is basically a way of thinking, a commitment that one makes to oneself to always have somewhere new to go.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: And it works like this. I borrow the structure of a play, the dramatic arc. The plot emerges. The plot develops. The plot concludes. And then, what I do is, I take the conclusion and I make it the first act of the next play. So for example, we'll use my coaching program. I apply for the Reboot and get in. I participate in the Reboot. The Reboot ends. That's the arc. Right? And then, what we're going to do is start the next story with Act One: The Reboot ends.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: So, that's the plot emerges. Then, we go like, "Okay, so where are we going? How is this plot going to develop?" Let's say it's Act Two: I use my newly honed reach out skills to build new relationships. I make a new friend, that's Act Three.

Pete: Oh.

Jen: Okay. So then, let's take, "I make a new friend," and make that Act One. The plot emerges.

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: I make a new friend. We decide we want to write something together. We write a first draft.

Pete: Yes.

Jen: We write a first draft. We submit it to a festival. We get in. We get into a festival. We go to the festival. We get a new literary agent. Like, it just can keep going, as opposed to, "And it's over."

Pete: "And it's done." Oh my goodness, I don't think I've heard you expand on this just like you did now. Because I feel like I would have remembered this and used it a lot. Logistical question: Does one need to write the Second Act before it happens? So I get the like, "I take the Third Act, this is finishing, and I make that the First Act." Is that enough? And then, I stay open to what the Second Act is about to be? Or do I need to set an intention with what I want the Second Act to be? Or am I overthinking the nuts and bolts of this mindset?

Jen: I don't know if there's a right answer to this. But I will tell you what I do with my Reboot cohort is, three days from now, we are working on our goals, our set of goals for the remainder of the year. So that, when the Reboot ends, they already know what they're working toward in the future. And then, my hope is that they'll continue on with me. And at the end of the year, we'll set our goals for the first quarter of the new year. And then, we'll keep kicking the can down the road, as they say.

Pete: But positively. I feel like I've heard that expression, I mean, I use that expression myself in a derogatory way, of like, "I'm just ignoring the problem that I know I need to address. And so, I'll kick it down the road." I just kick it down the road and deal with it later, as a negative. I like the idea of like kicking the can down the road as a positive way to continue the momentum. The can of progress gets punted down the road.

Jen: The can of progress gets kicked down the road. I've probably mentioned this on this podcast many times, but I have three more years of my daughter's high school experience. And then, she's going to college.

Pete: Oh my god, Cate is going to college. This is wild.

Jen: Yeah. And knowing that that is coming and having this momentum mindset framework and structure has given me so much space to kind of fantasize about what the next chapter of my life is, as opposed to like, "My daughter goes to college, my being a parent is over."

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: It's like, "Okay, Act One: Cate goes to college."

Pete: Right. Oh, I like this. So it's funny, I was going to say, "As many of our listeners know, I was the head coach of the altMBA." But what I discovered yesterday, I was running this workshop that, you know, someone had just started listening to our podcast like three weeks ago. And so, they're like, they don't know what our history is as much as we think people do, or at least our long-term listeners...which, we know there are plenty of you. Hey, long-term listeners.

Jen: Hey!

Pete: So, I guess I should set a little more context. I used to be involved in this online leadership workshop called the altMBA. It was designed and run by Seth Godin. It was a one-month sprint where you take one hundred people from around the world, throw them together into cohorts, and basically create a bunch of awesome change together. This is where you and I met. This is where I spent five years, I think, of my life, helping run this program. And that, ultimately, helped me create my own business, and a whole bunch of things around that. In any case, at the end of this program, the exact same thing would happen without fail, every single time. "This has been amazing. This is so great. I'm so excited. I'm so energized. Oh my god, it's going to end. What the hell do we do now?" And I didn't have the momentum mindset up my sleeve at the time. I wish I did. But one of the riffs that Seth used to do in the final call, which we called "Commencement" as a play on being at university...and I would absolutely butcher it because I'm not Seth. But he basically would point out to people that the thing that happens in Commencement is in the word itself, i.e. we commence. And so, what does it look like to think of this as the commencement of something new, as opposed to the end of something that was? And that small change, I've seen literally for thousands of people, totally reframes or rethinks how they approach the next two weeks after that online workshop, and hopefully beyond. And so, that was like another version, in a way, of going, "And now, you're back to Act One."

Jen: Right.

Pete: And it's so funny because it's in the word "commencement", but I'd never thought about it. I was like, "Commencement is what happens at the end of something," but it makes no sense. It makes no sense.

Jen: Right. So I think about this in not just the context of like experiences that we're having, like this coaching program I'm doing, these people are having an experience in community. Which is one of the reasons, and that's similar in the altMBA, it's one of the reasons why there's so much panic that ensues when you know the end is coming. But this same thing can happen when you're working on a project and you have a ship date, where it's like, "Okay, I have to deliver this on this date." And if you haven't thought about what happens after, that project can sort of like...I feel like I'm going to mix so many metaphors right now...but it can die on the vine. So I have a lot of clients who are working on solo shows right now, as an example. And I mentioned Shereen in a recent episode. When you have a one-night show situation, it can feel like everything you're doing is getting to that one-night show. And then, you do the show and it's over.

Pete: Right.

Jen: Pat yourself on the back, "I accomplished a thing." But if you think about that show as the beginning of something, there are all of these new creative ideas that spark. It's like, "Okay. Act One: I do the show. Act Two: I reach out to the people who attended it and thank them for coming."

Pete: Right. Yes.

Jen: Or, "I reach out to the people who weren't able to make it and say, 'Hey, here's a little snippet from the show, sorry you missed it.'"

Pete: Yeah.

Jen: And then, Act Three will happen because you didn't end at the ending. You began at the end.

Pete: I'm so obsessed with this. It helps us with the what's next. I'm sure many people listening can relate to this, of the finishing a big milestone or the big thing. And you get this sense of relief, but then, this almost deflated sense of like, "Oh god. Well, that was exhausting. Now, what do I do?" And you kind of feel lost, a little bit. And so, I like this as a...not to go, "You now have to pick up another project just as big," because you need a break, and you need to take time, and you need to look at what your one-person show was, in this example, and pat yourself on the back. But also, to go, "Yeah, and what could I do with this? How do I think about what's next? To get it in the hearts and minds of more people? Or to thank the people that came? Or to give myself another little creative nudge that I need to move forward?" It's a helpful aid for that, what I think of as the deflating experience of like, "And it's done. And what now? Existential crisis ensuing."

Jen: And, you know, looking backwards at your life, it's easy to see that this just is true for every event of your entire life. But it can be hard to conceptualize it, moving forward. Right before we logged on, I just was going down the Hamilton rabbit hole and watching lots of Hamilton clips, because sometimes you just need to do that. And so, I'm thinking about like, okay, Lin-Manuel Miranda is like, "I close a show, Act One. I go on vacation, which is Act Two. I read a book about Alexander Hamilton, that's Act Three." And if that was the end, that would have been such a bummer. But, "Act One is, I read a book about Alexander Hamilton. Act Two, I thought it would make a good show. Act Three, I started writing."

Pete: Nice. Yeah. I mean, you kind of hinted at this in like, it's a useful coaching prompt for helping other people too.

Jen: Correct.

Pete: To go, "Okay, if that thing you feel stuck on or that thing you just solved or that thing that you're now working on is actually the beginning, not the end of the project, it's the start of a new thing. What does that look like? And how can you free yourself up to focus on the new thing or the next thing?"

Jen: I think it can also be motivating, to help you find the courage to do a scary thing, to know that the scary thing is not the end, but the scary thing is the start of something.

Pete: Yeah. It's just part of it, yeah. It's also the start of something else.

Jen: Right. Like, you're spinning out in your mind...I'm talking to the general you, but let's just bring this back to me. I'm spinning out, in my mind, about a challenging conversation that I have to have. And then, I imagine the end of the story is I have the conversation. But what if the beginning of the story is I have the conversation, we come to some sort of agreement, we move forward?

Pete: Right.

Jen: This feels very optimistic.

Pete: Yeah. Honestly, it feels like a big idea. This feels like revelatory for me right now. I don't know if maybe I just needed to hear this right now. But like, this feels so useful, practical. And, you know, the thing about momentum is it's hard to generate. And sometimes, you know, I feel like there's a tie in with inspiration. Sometimes, we sit around waiting for inspiration, so that we then create the momentum. But it's actually going, the inspiration isn't the thing that is the reason for you creating the momentum. The thing that creates the momentum is the decision to do something.

Jen: Right.

Pete: Mood follows action. Yeah. I wrote that down on my whiteboard. I think that was from James Clear. That is a similar thing, right? You can sit around waiting for the right mood or waiting for the inspiration, to then take action. But actually, what we find is if we take action on something, i.e. if we start the next play (metaphorically or literally), what we'll find is our mood will start to change as a result.

Jen: Right. See why I was so confused that we didn't have an episode on this?

Pete: Yeah. Jen Waldman, this is good.

Jen: I use this all the time.

Pete: Yeah. I know, I feel like you've been holding out on me. I don't think I knew about this.

Jen: What are we, like four hundred episodes in at this point? No, three hundred and seventy-ish.

Pete: So many. And here I was, thinking there's no way we have any ideas that we've never talked about before together.

Jen: And there you go.

Pete: And so, as we come to the closing act of this episode, it makes me think about how this applies in a meta way for us each time we record a podcast. Right? Like, the finish of each podcast is really hopefully the beginning of the next act or the next play, where someone gets to listen to it. Maybe someone reaches out to us about it and gives us some feedback. And then, we feel good about it and record another episode. I don't know. Like, it's a perpetual loop that we've been on for three hundred and fifty-odd episodes.

Jen: And hopefully three hundred and fifty more. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.