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- [00:00]
A
Hi, it's Helen from the Squiggly Careers Podcast. And before you listen to today's episode, I just wanted to let you know about some news that Sarah and I are very excited about, and that is that our new book, Learn Like a Lobster, is ready to pre order now. We really care about everybody learning and growing at work, but we know it is not easy to do, and so we're borrowing some brilliance from lobsters to help you to do it. The book takes three inspiring and surprising abilities of lobsters in terms of how they grow and and applies it to how we can learn at work. So if you want some inspiration and you need some practical insights to support your learning, growth and development, this is the book for you. And if you pre order now and send your Pre order to helloearnlikealobster.com you can join the Lobster Library where we have a community of lobster learners ready for you to learn with some live sessions. And this will all happen before the book arrives. So pre order the book now, send it to helloearnlikealobster.com and you can and get started with your learning straight away. Now let's get onto today's episode.
- [01:04]
B
Today is our first attempt to borrow brilliance from an object, and that object is maps. One of the really important component parts of a map that makes them particularly helpful is that they are visual. And actually, when you look at lots of examples of career maps, there's a real lack of visuals. Map number one is an energy map. Every day I would just ask myself, when did I have the most energy today and when did I have the least energy? The Give Gain map. You think about the people in your career that you support and who support you.
- [01:38]
A
Skills mapping. There are the skills that you want to stretch and the skills that maybe you want to invest more in. Career possibility mapping. Lots of people get sort of stuck in their career. So we're trying to encourage a little bit of curiosity here and use possibility mapping as a way to do that.
- [01:54]
B
Problem mapping. How could you use a map to sort of make sense of that problem so that you're not just going around in circles, you're actually doing something about it?
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A
What map is most useful for you right now is actually the. Hi, I'm Helen.
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B
And I'm Sarah.
- [02:11]
A
And you're listening to the Squiggly Careers podcast where every week we borrow a little bit of brilliance and turn that curiosity into action to help our Squiggly careers. And on a Thursday, we're going to give you some extra insights to Support your development with our Squiggly career shortcuts, which are super short, as the name implies, episodes to help you take action. So make sure that you are subscribed to the podcast that you don't miss out on those. So Sarah is leading the borrowed brilliance today. Sarah who? What are we borrowing brilliance from?
- [02:42]
B
So today is our first attempt to borrow brilliance from an object, and that object is maps. And this was actually prompted for me by reading somebody Substack. So loads of good content on substack. I'm sure lots of you already read or kind of follow different people's writing. I think what's always nice about Substack is you can tell it's people writing about things that they're often just really passionate about. And people kind of create their own communities around those things, like cooking or visualization or whatever it might be. And this is someone, I don't know, someone called Jurgen Apello. So I hope Juergen, I have pronounced your name correctly. And he wrote a post called I Started Drawing Maps. And I just read it and it was an interesting sort of reflection on both his career, but also kind of map drawing. So he was known. I think it popped up on my LinkedIn and I clicked through because I think I saw probably the visual stood out. And I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. That sounds interesting. I was probably connecting the dots. I do really like a book that I've got from Stanford Design School. I love their series. I've talked about that before. Really short, really visual books called the Secret Language of Maps. So I've looked at that before. I spent time with that, saw Jurgen's post, read it, and he has two really interesting thoughts. One of them actually is very related to Squiggly careers he talks about. He thought for a while he had to be really, really focused on just doing like one thing really well. And then he talks about this idea now of being more M shaped. And his thinking or his sort of provocation is I want to sort of get good at multiple things because it will open up more possibilities and also if one of those things becomes more redundant. So AI gets good enough to do that thing. Oh, do you know what? I've got a couple of other areas to kind of.
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A
So what's the M? Is the M the spikes.
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B
Yeah. So sort of go deep, you know, like the down bits of the.
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A
It was the down bit, the deep.
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B
I think that's how I've understood it. That was my.
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A
He can.
- [04:47]
B
Maybe he can get in touch with us and be like, my understanding was he was saying, like, yeah, the down bits of the M are like the things that you've kind of gone into and, like, got kind of stretched your strengths in, like, R words. Okay. And the reason he got to Maps is his story was that he always liked drawing, but then I think he ended up as like a sort of software engineer or something kind of more technical because he thought there's more jobs than that. And he was probably right. But he's sort of rediscovering that skill because actually, and he proves it in this post, AI is not that good at maps. It's not that good at, like. And actually he's played with it and he shows some of them and he was. He was saying, well, that's quite a useful thing. It's something I've always liked doing. And he's. He's quite intrigued by them.
- [05:28]
A
That's interesting, isn't it? You know, when you're thinking about what can we do better? I guess the ability to do maps is, you know, you're slightly conceptual and you're also creating connections in interesting ways. It's just quite interesting that that's an ability that we have that maybe AI didn't have. I mean, I have to caveat that.
- [05:48]
B
With yet, but, yeah, I mean, and he does actually. He puts, like, in brackets loads of time. He's like, well, it can't do that yet. And he's very kind of open to things, but it's a. It's just a really interesting read. So then, obviously I've dived into the world of maps and gotten way too far with maps, and I started to kind of connect the dots a little bit with mapping for your career and kind of. Is that useful? Is that not useful? So if you think about, like, maps that you use in everyday life, what do you reckon is the map you use the most? Helen, as somebody who, I wouldn't say has an amazing sense of direction, I.
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A
Mean, I have no sense of direction. Do I use any maps? Google Maps?
- [06:23]
B
Yeah. The most used map in the world.
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A
Okay, great. I'm following the masses with my maps.
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B
So I think when you read about maps, why people like maps is obviously they give you a sense of control and certainty and they help you when you don't know. So if you know, you're not going to use. Some people do use maps, I suppose, in their local area, but you're less likely to use them when you know an area well because you sort of don't need it. But when you're Somewhere new. And you're kind of not sure. A map helps you with, like, well, which direction to go in, how long is it going to take? But I was then going kind of back and forth. I'll be interested to hear what you think about. This is. I was thinking, well, in our squiggly careers, you can't just take a map off the shelf for your career because that's not. You can't like, unfold a map, you know, like, like, my dad used to do this, like a blueprint.
- [07:15]
A
It doesn't work. Yeah, yeah.
- [07:17]
B
You know, on holiday, like, I mean, this shows my age. He used to, like, get out the map and he would, you know, like an ordinance survey map with all, like. And he would open it all on whatever table of whatever cottage that we were staying in and he would study this map for, like, hours. And it would, you know, he'd be like, well, you then follow. Follow this map. But I think now that's. That's not going to help in our careers. It's not flexible enough. It doesn't give you enough freedom, obviously. You kind of want to change direction. At the same time, I think if you say to people, and I had a go at this, and even though I like a blank piece of paper, this is hard. Draw your own map. Just get started with a blank piece of paper and try and kind of create your own career map. It actually feels really difficult. So my conclusion was for mapping to be useful for our careers, we. We've got to give it a frame to make it. To make it useful. We've got to decide, well, what are we mapping? Like, why, why are we mapping this thing? And kind of how is that going to be helpful for us?
- [08:20]
A
So mapping for your career. I'm paraphrasing you a little bit, but mapping for your career is a process that can help you create clarity and give you a sense of direction, but it requires a framework to make it easier to do.
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B
Yeah. And I think one of the really important component parts of a map like, that makes them particularly helpful is that they are visual. And we know that most of us connect with visuals in a different way to words or even what you're listening to right now or watching right now. So visuals kind of engages in kind of new and interesting ways. And actually, when you look at lots of examples of career maps, there's a real lack of visuals. So I was like, looking for examples and lots of them still look like staircases, which made me sad. Still look like ladders. Oh, there's just Lots of copy, there's lots of text. And I was like, oh, that doesn't. The whole point of maps is that you're using kind of icons or images or kind of, you're bringing things to.
- [09:22]
A
Life like in a. I think that's where I find it hard. So I'm, I'm very open to learning from your. The like maps. I think I can map and create connections, but I think my preference is to use kind of word, word maps. If I was creating like a listening map to this episode, for example, I would probably be capturing quotes or insights recommendations and then sort of joining dots. But it would be, it probably would be arrows and words. So I'm very open to learning an alternative approach because I think that is my, my default to mapping at the moment.
- [09:54]
B
Well, arrows would be okay, but words I think we should challenge ourselves on.
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A
Okay, we're challenging.
- [09:59]
B
So what we're going to do today. So Helen and I sort of had this reflection on maps, so we thought to turn this sort of borrowed brilliance from maps into something useful. We've created or come up with ideas for five maps that we think would be useful for your squiggly career. And I think this list is probably way, way longer than this, but this might be a good place to get started. And we're going to talk about each map, how you might visualize it, maybe even without words. And then actually we're going to have a go at doing these as well. So we'll be able to share these online and in the show notes so you can actually see them to take some inspiration from them. So map number one is an energy map. And if I was going to do this, I would do it daily for one week. So I think that feels realistic. And it's a two minute task at the end of every day. And the way that I would make this visual is every day I get to, I get to the end of my just my work day. But you could do, you could do your whole day and I would just ask myself when questions. When did I have the most energy today? And when did I have the least energy today? And the way that I would visualize this I think is I would use a battery because I think that's when I think of energy, I think of a battery. And also you're always looking at battery on your phone or on your laptop when I've usually not charged it enough. And I think I would then have a code. So green battery would be most energy, red battery would be least energy. And I think I Would then kind of every day sort of have. And this is probably why I would use words my green battery. And then I would write, recording podcasts with Helen. My high energy moment for the day, red battery. I don't know, sorting out something, some admin that I'm meant to have done to run our company that I've not done, probably. So I think if you had that every day and you were visually the other thing you could do. See, I do like visuals. I might change the size of the battery. So, you know, there's like your high energy moment. I think if I was like, wow, it was really high energy, I think I'd want my green battery to be bigger. And if I was like, yeah, it was a good. It was my high energy moment, but it didn't feel. So I suppose I'm starting to make them. I'm starting to do a bit of comparison.
- [12:13]
A
I think I would do. I've got mine. So I would have a red battery and a green battery, like side by side. And anything towards the top of the green battery would be like high, you know, high energy. So I'd. Every day I'd write down, what are my green energy like, my green battery things and what. My red battery things. And then I would almost. Almost kind of rank them by.
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B
You prioritize everything, almost.
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A
Yeah. How high they were against the red or the green battery would indicate how much energy they were giving or taking from me.
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B
Oh, interesting.
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A
Interesting how? It's the same exercise, but we'd visualize a difference.
- [12:47]
B
And also, I think that's the point. This is like, this is really playful. I think you can have a play with this. I think the point is just you're asking the when questions and doing it when. Today is so much easier than if you try to do an energy map and you're just like, right, over the last month or over the last year, when have I had the most energy and the least energy? It's so hard. Our memories are patchy and inaccurate. Whereas if you're doing it for today, you're like, I can remember. I can remember today. Even. That usually takes a moment to just be like, what's everything that's kind of happened today? And then I think seeing that visual over a week. The point then is, and this is very good in the Language of Maps book, actually, they talk about data. What essentially maps do is they kind of give you data, but it takes a human to make meaning from that data. And so then once you've got that map, you can kind of turn that map into insights and those insights into action. I always think kind of that's the maps almost give you the awareness. And then you've got to keep asking yourself that, so what now? Question. So how do I have more of those high energy moments? How do I. You can't usually get rid of the low energy moments, but you can maybe think about when you do them or who can help you. Can you do them faster? There's still usually changes you can make.
- [14:03]
A
Do you think? I was just thinking, generally maps are understandable by other people, right? So you create a map. So do you think, you know, if I, if I did mine with my green and red batteries and my book and I showed that to you and I was like, oh, what do you think of my insights? Not so much my mapping ability, but just the insights. Could you and I have a conversation? You know, is a map like a conduit to a conversation? Because it makes my thinking easier for you to understand?
- [14:32]
B
Yes, I suppose it gets things out of your head and makes it observable and something that you could also look at together. I think so. I'm just thinking about all of the different maps we're going to talk about. I think pretty much every one of these would be useful for a career conversation. And sometimes I don't think they have to be. You know, sometimes you might want to do these things for your own, for your own reasons. But all of these pretty much could also be team activities. You could all do the same activity for a week or the same map on a day. Be good thing to do in a team day. You know, when you're always looking for stuff to do on a team day that's like fun and a bit different. We've done it before, like where you get people getting people drawing, I think in any way always gets people sort of almost because everyone worries about the drawing more than they do the content. But it gets everybody sort of having, having a bit of fun. We often get people to draw the shape of their career so far at the start of a session when we're in a room with people and that is essentially a map that's like the shape of your kind of career so far, albeit probably not with enough detail to then be able to share with somebody. So that's our first map. So first map, energy map, second map, the Give gain map. So this is thinking a little bit about this idea of people helping people, which is how we talk about networking. And your give game map is about arrows. So arrows work really well here. And this Is something we have tried and tested quite a few times, kind of over the years. The idea is you put yourself at the centre of the map and you think about the people in your career that you support and who support you. So there might be some people where you've got an arrow going from you to them. So from me to Helen and then from Helen back to me. And the sort of width of those arrows might feel exactly the same. So I'm like, well, I feel like I give as much to Helen as I gain from Helen. That would probably be. That would be true for me if I was putting Helen on my map. There might be other people on that map where I just give. I'm like, oh, I'm useful and I'm helpful, but. But I don't. I don't gain, and that's okay. Not every relationship needs to be equal. We don't give to gain. You sometimes just give because you're like, I can be useful. And then there might be some people where you think, oh, crikey, I gain a lot from those people and maybe I give back a bit. So your arrow might be really narrow, but your give from them, that arrow might be really, really wide. And you think, well, they're. They're really supporting me at the moment in my career. I know sometimes people think that's often the case with mentors, though. Often if you talk to a mentor, they'll be like, I learn as. Just as much from them as they do from me. So it's always good, kind of to challenge yourself on that one. But I guess what's interesting about this is often when you do this, it just helps you to reflect on your career community. Have you got the right people around you? Are you thinking about the give and gain? And is there anything that doesn't feel like it's quite balanced? So Helen and I were saying, we both remember when our first editor for the Squiggly career had a go at this exercise. It was a real aha moment for her because she realized that she was giving a lot, but actually she had hardly any arrows kind of coming to her because she was naturally someone who just, you know, like, wanted to be useful, wanted to give to other people, which is brilliant. Having that giving mindset, giving without keeping score. Amazing. But also, you do also need to, you know, like, look after yourself and your own Squiggly career.
- [18:00]
A
There's another dimension as well that you can add into the map, which is the width of the arrows is how much support you are giving or gaining and then the length of the arrows can help you to see the frequency. So, for example, if it's a very short arrow, that means it's happening. It's high frequency, High frequency of support where there's a very long arrow. Maybe it's not happening very often. And when I've done this form of a map before, I've often seen that the help that I am giving to people is often very reactive. Like, people are like, can you help me? Problem? I need. I need you. Now. I'm getting a WhatsApp message. And it's very, you know, it's very, like, immediate reactive. Helen. Whereas the help that I'm getting from other people is kind of. It's just less frequent. And it just made me think, like, I'm. I'm. It's all looking one way for me. I'm not. I'm. If I could move out those people to sort of less frequent, then maybe I could help them unpick some of the problems. Whereas, because it's so frequent, all I'm doing is sort of solving it in that moment for them, rather than saying, well, why don't we meet once a quarter, talk about your most significant challenges, and try to get to the root causes? That would be a different way of supporting, but for a lot of people, I found that I was stuck in this sort of immediate support. So the third map that we think is useful is to do a form of skills mapping. And there are at least two, though as we talk about it, we might think three more. There are at least two dimensions to this skills map. So first of all, there are the skills that you want to stretch, and the second one are the skills that maybe you want to start to invest more in. So some might be quite established, and you might think, you know, I might say, okay, one of my skills is presenting, because Sarah and I get to do a lot of that at work. But actually, what I want to think about is how I could stretch that further. And so the first part of this map, you could maybe draw icons. So, you know, one of the ways that I could stretch that further is maybe I could create a how to on presenting, because then I'm gonna, you know, have to think through. We talked about this in the previous Borrowed Brilliance episode about Richard Feynman. I'd have to think through, well, how do I present in order to turn that into something that other people could learn from? Maybe I could. One way I could stretch that strength is I could join a new course or be part of a new community. Who are presenting in different ways. I actually think there's a really good guy that I'm trying to connect with the moment called Peps McCrae who talks about presenting very much like in academia, in teaching. And I could learn a lot from how he does it, like, because they really think about how they engage young people who are, you know, distractible and all that kind of stuff. He would be somebody that I could put on if I want to get better at it. So you might have people have a little people icon. You could have like courses, maybe you have a little icon for kind of more formal learning, sharing, you know, all that kind of stuff. So how do you stretch strengths? And then you would have this, the skills that you or the areas that you want to invest in. So these are more like starting and these could be, you know, little topics and things like that. So I would just. But this is where I need your help, Sarah, because I think what I would end up with here is sort of me in the middle and I would have arrows and ideas. So it's a bit arrow and wordy. So if you have ideas about how to make it more visual, I'm very open to it.
- [21:12]
B
Yeah. Well, I was also thinking with skills, I wonder whether is it easier to start with one skill? So, you know, rather than like skills, plural mapping, where you're like, well, I could do a bit of this and a bit of that. I was reflecting on when I ask people this question, which I do in workshops quite a lot, what's the one skill you want to learn or get better at or one thing you want to learn? At the moment, everybody's answer is pretty much AI. Some people go to other things like listening or empathy or whatever, but a lot of people say AI. And I wonder if you could do a skills map just on AI. And so you kind of start with AI at the center and then you start to kind of ask yourself more specific questions. Because I think the problem with AI, it's a bit like saying, I want to learn marketing or I want to learn finance. It's just too big. So I feel like you've got to break it down. And I'm wondering about one of the ideas that we had in you. Coach U takes you back is was this idea of action. It's and action it's are a really good way of mapping a kind of big challenge and making it bite sized. Make like breaking it down so you can make some progress. Because I think you could look at AI at the moment and be like overwhelmed. There's loads of stuff out there, but I don't know where to start. And then you don't actually end up doing anything. So I think if I was taking AI, I think this is where I would maybe use a Miro board or a mural board or if it was me, I'd probably use giant yellow post it notes. Let's be honest. Because I love a giant yellow post it note and I would, I almost wouldn't worry too much about is this right or is this not? But I think I would try and just come up with as many actions I try and map as many actions as I could. So to do these are things I could do. And then I think I would use my map as like a live visualization of moving from to do to done.
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A
Okay.
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B
Because we know that our brains love to visualize progress. We know that creates momentum for our learning. And I think that could work if you are. If you've got a skill, we feel a bit stuck and you just need to get started. I think maybe kind of going with like the action is. So I suppose my mapping here actually is. That's a bit more. It's very post it note based. Yeah, but it is more words. That's more words than it is kind of visuals.
- [23:30]
A
I like the physical thing. If you've got a map with like your learning list and move.
- [23:35]
B
A map that moves.
- [23:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, you've got that. And then that would help you see some momentum. As you were talking, just the version that I was talking about, which is.
- [23:42]
B
Definitely more mind mappy.
- [23:44]
A
Mind mappy. More like capturing. What do I learn? One thing I think you probably could do with my version is you could do like map overlap. So if I did that as a team, if you gave a team 10 minutes each to kind of map, what skills do you want to stretch? What skills do you want to start to invest more in? And you just give 10 minutes for people to kind of write all that down. I think you could then share your maps and see where you've got map overlap. And then I could be like, oh, you want to stretch that one too? Let's do it together. You want to start to do that. And that could be, you know, quite an interesting team. I think yours is a very good. I think yours is really good for finding focus and very good for seeing your progress and quite a sort of solo mapping process. Whereas maybe this kind of slightly more broader learning map where my head went to with it is. Is a good kind of team exercise.
- [24:34]
B
Yeah. What's also really nice about the Team one is, you know, you can borrow brilliance from each other and you can see what other people have, and that's fine. You could be like, oh, Helen's come up with something I hadn't thought of, actually. I really want to learn that too. Yeah. And sometimes you just get inspired versus, I think mine is better. If you already know the skill you want to learn, then you can start to kind of break it down.
- [24:56]
A
So our fourth map is to do some career possibility mapping. And this is something that we have used for years in our sessions. We wrote about it in the Squiggly Career. We also talked about it recently on our Squiggly Skills Times AI Sprint, because this is one that I think AI can help you visualize, you know, And Sarah said, oh, it's not brilliant at mapping. Probably could be better. But it is actually one that you can use it to create maps. And the point of a career possibility map is to help you to see your development from different directions. Because lots of people get sort of stuck in their career because they kind of can't see what they can be. So we're trying to encourage a little bit of curiosity here and use possibility mapping as a way to do that. So we just recommend starting with four potential possibilities. So there's the obvious possibility, there's the ambitious one, something interesting, but a bit out of reach. There's a pivot possibility, sort of you using your talents in new ways rather than just over relying on what your job title says you can do. And then there's your dream possibility, which is the very unconstrained if you could do anything possibility. You could just make some notes and see where the energy is like, see where I've got the most ideas, see which one of those possibilities is most appealing. Or you could put this as a prompt into whatever AI tool that you like and it will create a map for you. And we had loads of people share on social the maps that AI had created for them. So what we'll do, in case. In case you kind of want to. Do you want to experiment a little bit with AI on this particular map. And we create a pod sheet for every episode. We'll do one for this. You can get it from our website, amazingif.com and we'll just cut and paste the prompt that we used in our AI sprints that you can try that out if you wanted to see what it could generate. You could also contrast and compare.
- [26:43]
B
Right?
- [26:43]
A
So you could use that prompt. You could do one just with your own. Your own thoughts and Just see if it's identified anything you hadn't thought of or how similar they are. Could be quite useful learning exercise.
- [26:55]
B
And just as a reminder, if you're like, oh, what's the skill sprint? You can go back and do all of that for free. You can do any of our previous skill sprints for free. So they're just always there if you need them. So if you want to go back and do the whole of the AI sprint, it's only five days. Probably takes you 10, 15 minutes a day. So check that out if that just feels useful. Our final map for the day is. Sounds a bit negative to finish with this, but actually we tested this one beforehand, so we know this is useful. So this is problem mapping. And I think this happens every week at work. I think every week at work, there's a new problem or a recurring problem or a. Or something that you just keep saying it's a familiar frustration. So Helen and I were saying today, we were like, we keep saying the same phrase. I was like, helen says this to me most days at the moment, and I think I say it every other day just to kind of keep topping it up. We keep saying we're holding loads of stuff in our head and we're not saying it in a positive way, we're saying it's feeling frustrating, et cetera. So we were like, right. How could you use a map to sort of make sense of that problem so that you're not just going around in circles, you're actually doing something about it? So our idea here is to do a facts versus feelings map just to see kind of what you notice. Like, what do you learn from doing that? And I think you could come up with icons here. I think your facts could have like a. You have like a fact. You like a key. Like, you get a key to a map. Yeah. And that could be one, and then kind of feelings could be another one. And so, Helen, if we were doing this, let's just have a go quickly, check it works. So we did do a little check on this one. We're holding loads of stuff in our heads.
- [28:31]
A
Yeah.
- [28:32]
B
Give me three feelings. At least three feelings.
- [28:36]
A
Overwhelm, worry, tired.
- [28:42]
B
Okay, great. I was like, it's not going to be negative. But then you're like, I'm tired and I'm overwhelmed. But what do we know about feelings? Name them to tame them. So actually, by saying them out loud, that is. That is even a good thing. And so, you know, when we do talk about mapping, I do wonder whether, you know, you like you could create your map live with someone else. And this might be one where it is particularly useful to do it with someone if you've got a shared frustration. So I'm like, maybe you kind of, you're creating that map and one of you is creating icons or writing it down and it's kind of a shared map. So there's some feelings, three feelings. You could probably keep going, but let's limit it to three for today. Okay?
- [29:19]
A
Yeah.
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B
And can you give me three facts so we're sort of being balanced with our map here.
- [29:23]
A
Three facts. I mean I could, I haven't done, but I could factually count the number of messages and I could, because I could use data on teams, using Copilot or something. My, I think my overwhelmed feeling would be backed up by the fact that in the last month I reckon it's at least 50% more messaging going on. So I could, I could get that as a fact point to see whether that is good idea, true or not. So that'd be one. I think there are more messages flying about. Fact number two, there are more people in our team, so there are more people who are working on things which is sort of creating more conversations and probably has a relationship. So fact number two with the messages. So more people, more messages. And I think that there are, there, there, there is, there are like more high priority projects. I mean we are launching a book in the next four months that doesn't happen very often and that is, you know, factually that is a very big project and we've added that on to what is already a growing business. So they'd be my three facts, more messages. I would need to get the data to support it, more people. That is actually true. And one big, one very big project that is launching in four months time.
- [30:41]
B
And that's an add on versus, you know, it's like it's adding on to everything else. And so having just talked that through, what do you think you then do with that map? Like, so part of it, I think part of the usefulness is generally we know that writing creates clarity. So I think you probably just created a bit of clarity for yourself and like almost like rather than thinking about in your head that you're holding lots of stuff in your head you like, okay, you've got it down. You've kind of mapped out this problem in a way. And they're both valid, right? The facts are valid and the feelings are kind of valid. I'm then just wondering the kind of this, you know, if that's the what and the. So what? You kind of need to get to a now what? I think with problems, because otherwise the problem just sort of sticks around. Yes.
- [31:22]
A
Yeah, yeah. You're like, what's happening? Which is like the facts.
- [31:25]
B
So what?
- [31:25]
A
It's more like the feelings and then now what is like what you're going to do? I actually think my first reflection on it is to stop beating myself up.
- [31:32]
B
Because, you know, like, why am I so tired?
- [31:34]
A
Why am I so overwhelmed? This is. This is not like, oh, that. That would be why. That is factually. Factually why. So you stop beating yourself up a little bit. I also think you do naturally move into. Okay, it's very. It's much easier to go into now what? And I kind of go, okay, so now what? How do we reduce communications? Or how do I set more expectations about when I'm going to reply to them? Because it's not working. You know, I kind of. I almost want to go for each one of those things. Well, now, okay, now what? There are more people. Okay, so are we going to change how we're doing meetings? Are we going to change who is helping who so that things or just, you know, create new roles and relationships or micro teams or something? I kind of want to fix it by doing that. And then another one, the one big project, you. I kind of go, well, okay, well, now what you're going to stop because this is not going to get any better for the next four months.
- [32:23]
B
Yeah.
- [32:24]
A
So now what are you going to stop? And I think it does. Mapping it in that way does mean it is easier to solve some of those problems, I think.
- [32:33]
B
Yeah. So I think you've gone very practical. I think I went to experiments, so one of the ways to almost explore problems is to design experiments. And I think we are starting. I think we are getting better at doing that. I think we have done that so much more this year. And if I think about that sort of, you know, like, rather than trying to solve everything forever, being like, we've got too many messages, we need a whole rewire and a whole rethink, which is often quite unrealistic. And it's unrealistic to do quickly because often you're like, well, these are problems right here, right now. So I can't. Because, you know what you. What I ideally want to do, I'm like, I want to sit in a room all day and luxuriate in this problem. And I think if we did that, we would come up with some really good stuff. And I don't Know you probably, you probably. That'd be kind of a nice thing to do. But I don't think you and I have a single day between now and the book coming out. Well, we could do that. You know, realistically I actually don't think, I don't think we do. So there's no, there's no luxuriating available. Instead what you can do, you can do easy everyday experiments. You can do small experiments. So one of the things that we are doing probably based on this a little bit is we are, we've sort of stopped one to ones in a more traditional way. And I think part of the reason that we are experimenting with that and is to try and make sure that everybody asks everybody across the team like who can help? Rather than it always being like Helen can help because you are naturally like, well, Helen can help. There's very few things where Helen couldn't help because she'll fix it. But I think we are trying to reduce the dependency on that and going, well, who else? And also you don't have the capacity to just have lots and lots of one to ones because we now fact have more people in the team. So if you had one to ones with everyone, you'd be like, well that would be all of your day. So you know, like those kind of small things. I think I can imagine in my map I'm almost now I want to fold a bit of paper in half and on one half I've got the problems with the facts and the feelings and then on the other half I want to draw an experiment icon. I want to draw experimenting and then I want to come up with three experiments. What happens if, you know, people do messaging where they just do, oh, we, we have like moments where we don't message. So there are no messages between, I don't know, 8 and 10am so that everyone can start their day with headspace. I'm trying to imagine us ever doing that. But let's, let's imagine, you know, those kind of things. I think you get to some quite interesting things to explore when you connect the dots between problems and experiments. I'm really into this. I really like mapping.
- [35:07]
A
I think for this because I mentioned quite a few maps. I think the best thing to do is to think about what map is most useful for you right now. Is it, you know, is actually the problem mapping useful because there's something that's really getting in the way or frustrating you. Is actually a possibilities map quite useful for you, do you think? I've never really thought about the energy gains and drains or do you feel a bit isolated? You might need some support. But I think they're all really useful and as we said, we'll, we'll create our versions of these and we'll share them on social so you can see them. But I think don't be limited by how we visualize them. Think if you know, if a key doesn't resonate or a battery doesn't resonate for you on the energy map, then use your own, use your own icons. But I think pick the map that feels most useful for you right now. Just give it a go and reflect on how has it created clarity for you. I think that's the point. This.
- [36:00]
B
So that's everything for this week. We hope you're enjoying the kind of slightly new format for the Squiggly Careers podcast. As a reminder, on Tuesdays, we always borrow brilliance from somewhere, someone or today, an object, something. But we are still trying to make them really useful. So let us know if we're kind of delivering on that promise for you. And then on a Thursday you can listen to the Squiggly Shortcuts. So these are five minute episodes on a very specific topic. They're all new. They're probably topics we have covered in the past, but we've covered them for half an hour, like how to get a pay rise. I just recorded one yesterday on Pay Rises, but in five minutes. If you do three things to help you with getting a pay rise, what are they? What would you do? So if that one feels useful for you, maybe, maybe go and have a look at that one. So we release those every Thursday. So hopefully you're getting a good mix of curiosity and exploring and getting smarter for your Squiggly career and then being incredibly practical on the Thursday.
- [36:58]
A
And we have a back catalogue of over 500 episodes, so you can find those on amazingif.com and if you sign up for Squiggly Careers in Action, we'll send you all the links you need.
- [37:06]
B
To learn each week to your inbox.
- [37:07]
A
So the details for that are in.
- [37:09]
B
The show notes, but that's everything for this week. Thank you as always for listening, for reviewing, rating, subscribing. That all makes a massive difference to our ability to do what we do. So thank you for that and we'll be back with you again next week. Bye for now. Bye everyone. Sa.