The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 377 - Relative Effort

Transcript:

Jen: Hello, Peter.

Pete: Hey, Jen.

Jen: I've been doing some thinking lately after several conversations with clients, and I've come up with something that maybe already exists as a phrase, but I'm going to pretend like I'm coining it right now.

Pete: Oh, I love it when you coin new terms.

Jen: All it would take, Jen, is a simple google. But I didn't do that. The phrase is: relative effort.

Pete: Relative effort. Okay, I have questions. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: So I've started talking about relative effort specifically in this circumstance, where a client comes to me and says that they're feeling a certain sort of way about hitting send on an email that they've taken a really long time to craft.

Pete: So, we're nervous. We're like, "Oh my god."

Jen: Yes. And like, "What's going to happen?" And, "Oh my gosh. Am I about to destroy something? What's going to happen?" And so, I say to them, "The effort you put in to writing it is not the same as the effort the reader puts in to reading it. It took you three hours of thinking to get the words right. It took the person you sent it to ten seconds to read it. The relative effort or the relative energy involved needs to be taken into consideration."

Pete: Right. Because that frees them of the fear of, "What might happen as a result of reading it?" Is that your idea?

Jen: Yes. Because the outsized amount of thinking they have done about getting this just right starts to be projected in their minds onto the person receiving the email. That like, how big a deal it was for them to send it starts to feel like how big a deal it's going to be for the person to receive it. And it is almost never the same size. It is all relative.

Pete: Yeah. I love this. So there's two ways I am immediately thinking about this, based on what you said. One is, I find it freeing and empowering to remind myself, if I'm sending an email like that, "Oh, it's just one of one-hundred-and-fifty emails they're going to get today, and it'll take them thirty seconds to read it. And in my mind, that relative effort to use your term like it helps me not spend two hours on it is what I'm trying to say to go, well, if it's only 30 seconds for them, then it's not that big a deal. Let's just bang it out. Get it done. Move on. Try not to overthink it." The other place I think about this actually is in the context of my own workshops. So when I'm running a workshop with a bunch of leaders in a company, what I've found helpful to remind myself...because I absolutely know it's true, because I've seen it played out thousands of times. Let's say, I'm running a two-hour workshop. I am but two hours in their day.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And most senior leaders in the companies that I'm working with are looking at maybe eight to ten hours of work that day, of which eight to ten hours of that work is in meetings. And so, you are just but a two-hour chunk in their day. That, they will have a meeting before and a meeting after. And they will have a bunch of other things that happen that day. They'll also receive emails. They'll also get messages on Slack. They also have maybe a family and a life outside of the context of their work. And you are just this small moment in their day. And I like that. Not to dismiss the importance of trying to help leaders be better leaders, because I believe in that. But I like that reminder of removing the stakes or lowering the stakes for yourself, to go, "Really, it's not that critical or important." That if you can open a door and turn on a light, if you can spark a little idea in that two-hour period, that's all you've got to do. You don't need to change someone's life. You don't need to have them, you know, say it was the most groundbreaking, unbelievable, constructive two hours of their entire existence. You just need to, like I said, open a door, turn on a light.

Jen: Hmm. Yeah, that does feel very freeing and like makes it easier to release. I'm also looking at this through another angle, which I encounter all the time. And I feel this so hard on behalf of all people out there creating work and putting it in front of people who either move it forward or who don't. I'm thinking right now specifically of the actors I work with. They will get sent like, I am not joking, forty pages of material to memorize. They will spend hours and hours and hours and hours on it. They will spend hundreds and hundreds, in some cases thousands of dollars on coaches preparing this material. And then, they go to their audition and they get to get through two pages of it. And the person behind the table is like, "Thanks so much. That's all we need today."

Pete: Oh my god.

Jen: The relative effort of preparing an audition versus receiving an audition is just, it's brutal. It's so brutal. And one of the very challenging parts of that is feeling like you didn't get to do what you came there to do or that somehow you were dismissed by the person who you needed something from. And so, I will often encourage people to give themselves a specific task to complete, so they will know that they actually completed the task instead of getting sort of cut off at the pass. For example, something as simple as, "My objective today is to go into the room, look someone in the eye, and make sure that we know each other's name."

Pete: Nice.

Jen: "And then, I'll do as much of the material as they need or don't need. But like, that's my goal."

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: So anyway, I can see how it can feel really, really, really hard and very disappointing. And I don't want to be flippant about it. But like, these are things that are going to happen in our world, where sometimes we work really, really hard and it isn't received the way we want it to be received. So like, what are the tools we have to make it through those challenging moments?

Pete: Yeah. I was thinking about one tool that I might use, is to remind myself that you're there to serve the audience or serve the room, and that what you think that might look like prior to going in might actually end up being different. So for example, I was speaking at a conference three weeks ago, and the person before me spoke forty-five minutes over the allotted time.

Jen: Oh, yikes. That is a conference no-no, friends.

Pete: Which, is a whole separate conversation about perhaps someone who had memorized their forty page equivalent. Right? They'd memorized their keynote, and they thought, "I need to get this out." And maybe they didn't quite realize how long it was going to take them. Anyway, the point isn't that they went that long over. Well, it kind of is because what happened then is the conference organizers came up to me like, "We're so sorry. We really need to still finish at the same time. And so, we're going to cut lunch a little bit short." And so, in that moment, I had the choice of going, "But I've memorized this. I've got this talk that I prepared, that's forty-five minutes long," or, "Can I meet the room where it's at? Can I serve the audience?" So, I said, "Oh, that's easy. I'll take a breakout out. I'll make mine thirty minutes. No worries at all." And they were like, "That would be amazing. Great. Thank you so much." And so, one of the models or I guess the mental model I use is to be able to serve the room, which requires, I guess, a bit of flexibility. Because you don't know what's going to be happening in the room, until you actually get in it.

Jen: Right.

Pete: And I could walk out of there and go, "Wow, I didn't do exactly what I set out to do, because of the other fifteen minutes that I kind of had planned for some interactivity. But actually, I did do what I set out to do, which is to serve the people in the room." And so, I can tick that box in my head and move on.

Jen: You know, we recently did an episode about perspective taking, that was called The Perspectives Wheel. And this is just really pinging off of that for me. Because in your circumstance, you spent all this time preparing this keynote, and getting it ready, and you traveled to the place, and like that was a lot of effort. And so, the effort that the audience puts in to receive it is, you know, relative to the effort you put in to create it. It is a lot less. But then, you flip the perspective over to the event organizers, the weeks and months that have gone into planning this day to a T. And seeing the schedule fall apart for them, that must have felt so huge, to have to go up to you and be like, "Can you shorten your thing?" And then, on your end, it's like, "Yeah, I can shorten it. No problem."

Pete: Yeah, so true. The effort of me being like, "Yeah, no worries."

Jen: It's just making me wonder, like, if we should be doing any of this work ahead of time. Like knowing, as you were saying earlier, going in to write the email, it's like, "Okay, this is going to feel like a big lift for me and it's not going to feel like a big lift to the receiver. I just need to remember that, as I create it." Or like, "Preparing this audition is going to be a really heavy lift for me. For the person I'm auditioning for, this is just another audition in their day." And just going in with that.

Pete: Yeah. I use that as a tool to help me ship things quicker.

Jen: Ooh, say more.

Pete: So, I'll use an example. Yesterday, I finished recording a pre-recorded course on coaching for leaders, for a specific client that has asked to have a pre-recorded course on helping their leaders be better coaches. And I recorded, I think it was twelve videos. Each of them were shorter than three minutes, super practical, bite-sized chunks on how to help leaders be more effective coaches. And I got through the twelve videos. I then go back and start to watch them, which is a whole painful process that's separate. But in watching the videos, there were a couple of moments in like mid-way through video six, for example, I was like, "Oh, I wish I didn't say that word. I probably should have said this other word. Maybe I should go back, put the exact same shirt back on, set up the lighting in the exact same way, and redo this entire video so that it's perfect." And then, I thought, "If I'm the person watching this video, that's been sent this course because of this company that I work with, and I'm sitting through," what did I say, twelve by three, "thirty-six minutes of content, am I going to notice this one word in the middle of the sixth video? I would say 99% of the time, no, I'm not going to notice."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: So as the person that created it, can I let go of the fact that I need to go back and put all this extra effort into correcting one thing, to make me super comfortable? When the reality is, I don't actually think anyone's going to notice. So, it's not that I'm trying to lower my standards. It's that I'm trying to get away from delaying and redoing things in the pursuit of perfection. When actually, the bar that I need to clear isn't perfection, it's a high enough standard that delivers what I want to deliver. So, I find this a tool to help me ship things rather than constantly perfect. Because I could have re-recorded all those videos and set it up slightly differently, if I wanted to. But I chose not to, if that makes sense. Because I realized that, I mean, let's be honest, people have probably got these videos on in the background while they're typing emails. I get it. I've seen how people watch these things. Like, I've done it myself. So, people aren't really paying that close attention.

Jen: Woah, Pete, I feel like you just read me for filth. And I also know that many of my clients who are doing self-tapes all the time, that's putting themselves on tape for auditions all the time, also are feeling read for filth right now. So, thank you so much.

Pete: You know, I'll give you the example of a client...who might even listen to this. And I don't actually think she'll mind. I think she'll probably find it funny. In one of the videos, I was talking about you.

Jen: Me?

Pete: Yeah. And I referenced something you had said. And I said, "I'll put a link to this particular framework in the Box O' Goodies." And then, I continue on. And I'm watching my course and I go, "Wait, did I just say Box O' Goodies? What am I talking about? This is not a podcast." But somehow, I've triggered you. I've thought about resources. I've said "Box O' Goodies". So I'm like, "Goddammit, I've got to go back and say, "in the resources section," as opposed to, "in the Box O' Goodies." And then, I went, "No, I don't. I'm just going to rename the resources section in this course, 'Box O' Goodies'. And no one will even notice." And even if I didn't, I still don't even think anyone would notice that I said "Box O' Goodies". That like, it's such a minor, small thing, that it doesn't actually change the concept of what I was trying to talk about.

Jen: Oh my gosh, I love that so much. And also, listeners, if you're not subscribed to our Box O' Goodies, you could go to thelongandtheshortpodcast.com and subscribe. This is our email that goes out after each episode is released that contains some afterthoughts, some additional resources. They're not show notes, because they're not things we necessarily talk about during the episode. It's things that come to us after we have stopped recording. That's the Box O' Goodies.

Pete: Often correcting ourselves, yeah. So I find this, like I said, a useful tool to get me out of my own way and shipping more. Because I think so much of what holds myself back is a bunch of excuses as to why I can't send something out, why something's not ready, why someone doesn't want to receive something. And what I've found is getting things out the door is actually the way to create momentum. Not incomplete things that are absolutely, you know, non-desirable for anyone to see. But things that are...I don't love the term "good enough". But like it's kind of what I'm saying, things that are good enough to get the response that I want to get.

Jen: Yeah. I am thinking about a lot of projects I have stalled right now, Pete. And that may have given me the little nudge I need to just ship them as is, without doing the "final edit".

Pete: Right. Honestly, this is why I think the question, "Who's it for," is one of those questions. It's like a magic eye, where if you stare at it for long enough, something else appears. That, if I spend long enough thinking about and looking at the question of, "Who's it for," what I realize is so many things become easier, if you're clear on who it's for.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And not just, "Who it's for," but, "What's going on for them?" So like I said, if I'm a leader in a company that has thousands of things going on and I've been sent this course, what is my reality? My reality is, I put the course on. I hopefully get some value out of it. I like the fact that this guy is keeping the video short and punchy and engaging. (That's my intention. There are no slides.) So, that's cool. But also, I'm probably going to multitask. I'm probably going to do these other things. Like, I get that. That is the reality. That is who this video is for. And so, by getting so clear on that, I think what I can do is meet them where they're at, and release the need for it to be perfect and that they're going to be sitting there with me projected on their big TV and paying absolutely undivided attention to me, because they're not. And I know that.

Jen: Right. You know what I was just reminded of, Pete? Tim Ferriss' fear setting exercise, because this feels related to it. And the fear setting exercise is, essentially, naming for yourself what you stand to lose if the thing doesn't go well. So in the case of the email that someone has spent three hours crafting the exact right language and they're so afraid that everything is going to go terribly wrong, in the fear setting exercise, you'd ask yourself, "What do you lose if it does go terribly wrong?" You've lost three hours. But it's an email to someone you've never met before, so you haven't lost the relationship. You haven't lost any money. Maybe you lost a couple pieces of hair that you pulled out of your head. But at the end of the day, you actually didn't lose that much, if it goes terribly wrong. That might be another way to think about the relative effort on the other person's part.

Pete: Yeah. I love it. Like, "What's the worst that can happen?" And then, the extended part of that...which I don't even think it applies in the example of the email, because what could go wrong is so minimal. But the extended part of the fear setting exercise is, "And then, what could I do to get me back to where I was prior?" And in the example of, "Someone didn't reply to my email, and so I tore my hair out," I mean, what could you do to get back? Like, you're already kind of where you were prior. You know? You're in the same place. You can't get three hours back, so that's annoying. But you're still in the same place. You hadn't had a conversation with this person, and you still haven't had a conversation with this person. So, there's no real loss.

Jen: It's also making me wonder if we need to rethink the language of this. Because I've been calling it relative effort, but it's also relative risk. Like, the risk feels big on your end. There is no real risk in getting an email in your inbox.

Pete: Opening an email, yeah. What's the risk of opening this email?

Jen: Nothing that risky. And if I don't like it, delete.

Pete: Delete.

Jen: It's so easy, on the other person's end.

Pete: Yeah. Okay, so this feels like another Jen Waldman tool of permission to get out of my own way, to start putting things into the world, and to realize that the risk of doing so is likely a lot less than we think it is.

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