Sunday Pick: Unsolicited Advice: How to get your mojo back at work

Summary

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Podcast Summary: TED Talks Daily – "Sunday Pick: Unsolicited Advice: How to Get Your Mojo Back at Work"

Release Date: January 25, 2026
Featured Hosts: Anne Morris & Frances Fry (from the TED Audio Collective podcast, "Fixable")
Theme: Recovering your energy, engagement, and ambition at work—transitioning from “exhausted mediocrity” to a state of renewal and aliveness.

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Overview

This special episode offers "unsolicited advice" for anyone feeling drained or uninspired at work—what hosts Anne Morris and Frances Fry call the state of “exhausted mediocrity.” They break down, with humor and warmth, both the causes and solutions for workplace burnout and how we might revive our life force at work. Through personal stories, research references, and practical frameworks, they equip listeners to dial down what depletes them and dial up what ignites them, with clear, actionable strategies.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Identifying “Exhausted Mediocrity” (06:36)

• Definition: A state where individuals are both stressed and bored—overstimulated but under-inspired, leading to burnout with no sense of achievement.
• Notable Quote:

  "It almost feels criminal that we’re exhausted and we don’t even get excellence for it. If I was going to be mediocre, I’d like to be well rested."
  – Frances Fry [07:28]

• Reference: Cites Adam Grant’s term “languishing” and the concept of a nervous system on high alert with no meaningful reward.

2. Diagnosing the Root Causes of Exhaustion (08:25)

• Always-On Culture:
  • Referencing Leslie Perlow’s work ("Sleeping with Your Smartphone") showing that constantly being “on” drags everyone into mediocrity.
  • Solution: Schedule intentional time off. Teams should ensure the group, not each individual, is always available.
  • Quote:

    “You can, for a team, be always on, but it doesn’t mean each individual ... and what I know from Leslie’s beautiful work is that that is going to lead to exhausted mediocrity. That is no way to win.”
    – Frances Fry [08:40]

• Intentional Disconnection:
  • Practice “intentional disconnection”: set boundaries, turn off devices, create discipline for breaks.
  • Anecdote: Ariana Huffington’s habit of “putting her phone to bed” at night as a meaningful example.
  • Quote:

    “What allowed [elite athletes] to truly excel ... is they brought the same amount of discipline and obsession to their rest and recovery as they did to their training and nutrition.”
    – Anne Morris [11:23]

3. Emotional Contagion & Managing Interpersonal Drain (14:06)

• Absorbing Others’ Emotions:
  • Recognize if you’re a “sponge” for workplace emotions; being empathetic can lead to further exhaustion.
  • Two Strategies:
    • Reduce: Limit exposure to draining people or emotions (quarantine, restrict interaction).
    • Accommodate: Embrace the “Let Them” mantra (from Mel Robbins)—allow people their space, stop trying to manage others’ feelings, and own your response.
  • Quote:

    “I have to be disciplined about these kinds of boundaries... it’s less about control and more about feeling responsible, like co-responsible, for everyone’s pain. And ‘Let them’ is about giving myself permission to not have to be a part of the solution for everybody’s pain.”
    – Anne Morris [17:17]

4. The Power of Intention (18:29)

• Summary Mantra: Intention is the game-changer—be intentional about rest, boundaries, and emotional exposure.
• Quote:

  "If I had to pick a word. It’s intention. It’s bringing deep intention to breaks, to job design, to boundaries and really taking ownership and using the agency we have."
  – Anne Morris [18:29]

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Replacing Mediocrity with Energy & Engagement

5. Rediscovering Life Force: Passion, Purpose & Mission (20:22)

• Howard Thurman Quote:

  “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because the world needs people who have come alive.”
  – Shared by Anne Morris [20:22]

• Rehabilitating Passion:
  • Passion is essential, not frivolous; people who argue otherwise usually exemplify passion in action.
  • But: Purely self-focused passion can become toxic—your purpose or mission must be “bigger than you.”
• Tactical Framework for Discovery:
  • Observe yourself anthropologically—notice what topics you naturally dwell on, even if they seem “weird.”
  • Anecdote: Anne’s Starbucks cup story—her writing “on the down low” became a career spark [24:35–26:14].

6. Micro-Needs & Day-to-Day Energy (28:34)

• Macro vs. Micro:
  • Big-picture purpose (macro), but also daily needs (micro): learning, variety, risk-taking, consistency, etc.
  • Each person has a unique “micro profile” – no shame, just own and honor your underlying needs.
  • Framework: “Top-down” (mission, purpose) plus “bottom-up” (daily drivers)—both must be addressed.
• Examples:
  • Anne craves variety and risk, Frances seeks mastery and consistency.
  • Exercise: List your top five needs from work—then assess how well they are being met.

7. Adding a Zero: The Case for Wild Ambition (34:32)

• “Add a Zero” Framework:
  • Don’t just aim for incremental progress—pick goals that are 10x bigger or timelines that are radically shorter.
  • Even if the path requires micro-steps, the destination needs to be bold and worthy.
• Quote:

  “The more ambitious you are, you will achieve more. Ambition is our friend. So adding a zero to a goal is a delicious way to thrive.”
  – Frances Fry [35:37]

• Challenge to Incrementalism:
  • Too much advice focuses on micro-steps—ambition is undervalued, especially for underrepresented groups.
  • Reference to Peter Drucker’s idea: "People overestimate what they can do in a year but underestimate what they can do in five." Frances argues this should be updated for the AI era—think even bigger, move faster.

8. Start Now: The Power of Immediate Action (40:02)

• Don’t Wait:
  • Many delay addressing workplace goals—act immediately for “gorgeous” early results.
  • Quote:

    “I just became known as ‘how about now?’... when we did the ‘how about now?’ it was gorgeous, often better than the three to five weeks."
    – Frances Fry [40:02]

• Summary Mantra for Engagement: "Get started on Dreaming Big."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Exhausted Mediocrity:

  “We are just in this state of activity without any return.”
  – Anne Morris [06:36]

• On Agency & Experimentation:

  “The world is also very open … there’s also an openness that I think is unprecedented to experiment and come up with solutions.”
  – Anne Morris [12:40]

• On Boundary Setting:

  “We need scheduled time off. Always-on for any source isn’t going to work.”
  – Frances Fry [10:53]

• On Personal Needs without Shame:

  “Naming, owning, solving for your micro needs at work...without self-judgment.”
  – Anne Morris [31:15]

• On Permission to Dream Big:

  “Let’s pick a destination that's worthy of you...what could happen, what could go right?”
  – Anne Morris [37:10]

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [06:36] – Introduction of “exhausted mediocrity” & burnout
• [08:25] – Causes: Always-on culture; study by Leslie Perlow, solutions for team-based on-call systems
• [11:23] – Rest & recovery lessons from elite athlete research
• [14:06] – Managing the emotional drain of others (“reduce or accommodate”)
• [18:29] – Summary: The centrality of intention & agency
• [20:22] – Reviving passion and mission; “coming alive” at work
• [24:35] – Finding clues to your interests: Anne’s Starbucks story
• [28:34] – Micro-needs: bottom-up energy
• [34:32] – "Add a zero" ambition; making goals worthy of you
• [40:02] – Moving from planning to immediate action

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Episode Tone & Style

Warm, candid, and conversational, Anne and Frances blend evidence-based advice with humor and real-world stories. Their chemistry as partners (and spouses) infuses the episode with intelligence and empathy, making complex ideas simple and actionable.

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Summary Takeaways

• Don’t settle for “exhausted mediocrity”—identify and address the sources.
• Be intentional about rest, boundaries, and what/who you engage with.
• Rediscover what makes you “come alive” at work—top down (mission) and bottom up (daily needs).
• Dream bigger: ambition is generative; it releases energy.
• Start now: immediate action beats endless planning.

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For Listeners Wanting More

• Anne and Frances host “Fixable” from the TED Audio Collective; listeners can send workplace questions to [e-mail] or call 234-FIXABLE.
• For more on these frameworks, check Leslie Perlow’s Sleeping with Your Smartphone and Jim Loehr & Tony Schwartz’s The Power of Full Engagement.

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This summary provides a comprehensive understanding of the episode’s key concepts, memorable moments, and practical strategies to get your mojo back at work—even if you’ve never listened.

Transcript

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[Anne Morris]

Frances. We are more than halfway through the year now, gearing up for a quick summer break. I feel like so far we've done what we came to do on the show.

[Frances Fry]

I completely agree. I have loved the Master Fixers, the Teach ins. I think we've done everything. I think it's been a good semester and, and you know, I might be most proud about the fact that we give just enough advice.

[Anne Morris]

I feel like we have been holding back a little bit. I have to say. I think restraint has been a theme of the first half of this year.

[Frances Fry]

I think so. And it's unnatural for me, as you know, I think it, I say it is usually how I operate, but for our listeners, I'm trying to moderate a little bit.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, well, it's good news because our plan today is to practice no restraint at all. We had a lot more to say to Rosemary about recovery and how to get your mojo back at work. And we're gonna say all of it on this episode, which feels like the perfect way to help prepare our listeners for a proper summer season of rest and renewal.

[Frances Fry]

I love it. I love it so much.

[Anne Morris]

Welcome to Fixable, a podcast from ted. I'm your host, Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[Frances Fry]

And I'm your co host, Frances Fry. I'm a Harvard Business School professor and I'm Ann's wife.

[Anne Morris]

This is a show where we believe meaningful change happens fast, with some intentional rest and recovery along the way.

[Frances Fry]

There is a reason a week is followed by a weekend exactly Today on.

[Anne Morris]

The show, we're going to give unsolicited advice to anyone who is feeling stuck at work right now, both overwhelmed and under inspired. We're going to tackle both parts. How to get unstuck, but also how to create an experience of work that is worthy of you and your short time on this planet.

[Frances Fry]

Oh, I love your ambition.

[Anne Morris]

I want us to deal with the deficit of life force, the burnout part, the part of work that feels like, literally unsustainable. And then I want to talk about how you replace that mediocrity with something else, something bigger, that may even create a surplus of energy. If we're making this equation work, we want to dial down the negative parts, but we also have to dial up the positive ones. How does that sound as a plan?

[Frances Fry]

Well, from my math mind, we are nowhere near the frontier, so I'm optimistic.

[Anne Morris]

So we sometimes call this state, this experience of work exhausted mediocrity. And when we say that, it really hits some people hard. And it's this mix of feeling both stressed and bored at the same time. So our friend Adam Grant sometimes uses the word languishing to describe this. A variety of this experience. It's a beautiful word, but it's something beyond just feeling stuck or stagnant. It's also an experience where our nervous systems are jacked up, but we're not getting any payoff for it. We're never outrunning the lion. We're never bringing down the woolly mammoth. We are just in this state of activity without any return.

[Frances Fry]

It almost feels criminal that we're exhausted and we don't even get excellence for it. We're exhausted and mediocre. I mean, if I was going to be mediocre, I'd like to be well rested.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, totally something. And today we want to get after both of these parts, which I think of as almost a renewal equation. So there's part one, the exhaustion, which is this deficit of life force, the burnout, the part of work that is feeling unsustainable because we don't have enough energy holding us up. And then the second part is how to replace that deficiency with something else, something bigger, something more ambitious, something that's going to more reliably create, dare I say, a surplus of energy where we might even be jumping out of bed to get after it. In our experience of work, I feel.

[Frances Fry]

Like this is gonna be a gift that so many people are ready to receive.

[Anne Morris]

Okay, Frances, let's start with the cause of the problem here on the exhaustion side. So your Lovely colleague Leslie Perlow has done a lot of thinking on this. Why are we all so tired at work?

[Frances Fry]

Because we care so much. Is one part of the answer what Leslie's language would be? Because we are always on. And so she did just a breathtaking study which compared teams that everyone was always on. It was in professional services, where you really are like your client needs you to be always on. And she had teams that were always on, individuals were always on. And then teams that were collectively always on, but individually had scheduled a time off. Orders of magnitude better performance. No matter. So you can for a team be always on, but it doesn't mean each individual. Although what I see in practice is that if we're an always on culture, everyone is always on. And what I know from Leslie's beautiful work is that that is going to lead to exhausted mediocrity. That is no way to win. You are giving up performance if you're doing that. So that's the first one. Is that the scheduled time off for individuals?

[Anne Morris]

Yeah. I was gonna ask what's the remedy? So I'm in a culture, there's an implicit expectation that I'm always on. What's the remedy?

[Frances Fry]

I think make always on a group thing, even a duo thing. So one of us will be always on.

[Anne Morris]

Got it.

[Frances Fry]

That's I think the way. And that's how she designed the experiment. Cause we don't wanna give less service to the client, but we want our team to be able to deliver higher quality when they are on.

[Anne Morris]

So if it's a team of Ann and Frances, we can still be an always on culture. But Ann is on part of the time, Frances is on the other part of the time.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah. And I would say we have an always on value proposition to the customer. We don't have an always on culture. We have a scheduled time off culture.

[Anne Morris]

So Leslie's book is called Sleeping with your smartphone, which is super memorable. So there's also a piece of this that is not just about job design, which I think you're offering a beautiful remedy here. But what do I do if I've just been pulled in to the reality of being alive right now, which is an always on human experience.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah. So I always have Leslie Perlow sitting on my shoulder, which is I have to take scheduled times off. So I have to turn off the news. I have to turn off the. I don't think anything replaces that. We need scheduled time off. Always on for any source isn't going to work. But to be alive right now, usually a cause of exhaustion always on is one of them.

[Anne Morris]

So the phrase I like from her work is intentional disconnection.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

[Anne Morris]

Being deeply disciplined about, you know, putting the phone away. Ariana Huffington, who's done a lot of thinking on this in her thrive movement, has a little bed for your phone. She tucks her phone in at night. I think all of this stuff is really helpful and it's very aligned with the Jim Lair and Tony Schwartz's peak performance literature. Where they found that these elite athletes would allowed them to truly excel in a sustainable way over time is they brought the same amount of discipline and obsession to their rest and recovery as they did to their training and their nutrition and all these other things we associate with elite performance. And channeling Leslie's advice, I feel like everyone chasing this is honoring our human biology, which is that we were designed to rest and recover, rest and recover, rest and recover, not these marathon work lives that we're trying to live.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah, and it's both marathon work lives that other people are imposing on us perhaps, but we also do it ourselves, like we're taking our smartphone to bed. I gotta tell you, I don't think it's because anyone else is imposing anything on us. I think it's an inside job.

[Anne Morris]

That's I think, what we have to be accountable for. I think how much agency we actually do have to schedule, rest, set some boundaries. I think the world is also very open to this. I mean, the whole movement around four day work week, everyone is in a lot of pain, which is terrible. We feel it. I feel this acutely. But it does mean that there's also an openness that I think is unprecedented to experiment and come up with solutions both in our individual lives, but also inside teams and systems as large as organizations.

[Frances Fry]

It's a great.

[Anne Morris]

So I think we have to own it and then use the formal and informal power we have to try new things because this is not working.

[Frances Fry]

And it's a great time to experiment. To your point, the world seems very open. Everyone is palpably feeling the problem. Now's a great time to experiment with solutions.

[Anne Morris]

So, Francis, is there some kind of optimal schedule here?

[Frances Fry]

There is not so. Interestingly, intentionality gets the headline. You have to be intentional about the off time, but it doesn't say you have to do it between the hours of 9 and 5 and you have to do it from here to there. There was no evidence that one was universally better than the other. But the intentionality of the off, that was the key ingredient Beautiful.

[Anne Morris]

So let me poke at one other source of exhaustion that see a lot of which is the infectiousness of other people's emotion.

[Frances Fry]

Oh, goodness.

[Anne Morris]

So I'm coming at this as on the kind of empathetic scale, leaning more towards maybe than you being deeply aware of other people's emotions. But I want to say that you are very good at designing a life where you are limiting your exposure to emotions that you know are not going to serve you.

[Frances Fry]

Yes.

[Anne Morris]

So talk us through this because we just talked to Amanda Ripley and one of the lessons from her work is that other people's emotions are a huge variable in our experience as human beings. We know this is true for the emotions of leaders, which is this broadcast feature you have. So what do I do if that's part of my challenge at work?

[Frances Fry]

So my operations DNA will say that you have two tools. You can. If there's something that's like you need to not get the full strength of it, you either reduce it or you accommodate it. So I'll describe.

[Anne Morris]

Those are my only two choices.

[Frances Fry]

Those are your only two choices. So you either reduce or accommodate. So by reducing, I think that's what I do, which is I reduce the amount that I let other people's emotions influence me by limiting my interaction with other people. Like, I literally. I quarantine.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah.

[Frances Fry]

Either them or me. And that's reduced. And it's a great strategy. Not everyone can reduce in every context. If you can't, you have to figure out how to palatably accommodate. How to palatably accommodate it. As good as I am at reducing, that's how bad I am at accommodating, which is why I'm so good at reducing. So I want to be super clear about it. But let me give you the second option, because I do have degrees of freedom to reduce. So accommodating, you know, the popular version of it today would be Mel Robbins, Let them. That's a beautiful accommodation, the ultimate accommodation.

[Anne Morris]

And what is Let Them for listeners who don't know and what Let Them is our wonderful work.

[Frances Fry]

It's like mystical if you ask me. But I'll tell you what it is, which is when, if someone else is doing something that feels negatively, emotionally contagious, let them. Let they're being passive aggressive, Let them. If they're being inconsiderate, let them. And she just goes through this mantra of instead of trying to control it, you let them. And then you do your own inside job of you get to choose how to respond to it, but you at all Costs do not try to control them. It's like the 100% accommodation strategy. Now this has worked so well for people. They're getting tattoos, say let them. But I'm not an accommodator in that regard. I'm a reducer.

[Anne Morris]

And what I find liberating about it because I'm a little bit of a sponge myself. So I have to be disciplined about these kinds of boundaries. I feel it's less about control and more about feeling responsible. Like co responsible.

[Frances Fry]

That's great.

[Anne Morris]

Like if you are upset, then I am co responsible for helping you feel better. And let them to me is also about giving myself permission to not have to be a part of the solution for everybody's pain. I think Mel, maybe I have signed up for your pain, Frances.

[Frances Fry]

Well, and I'm very grateful for it.

[Anne Morris]

Part of the contract. But you know, that does not scale to the rest of the world.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah, I think we should think about reduce and accommodate. I will go ahead and give it hierarchy. Reduce everywhere you can, which is quarantine, limit, contain and then when you can't.

[Anne Morris]

That's my.

[Frances Fry]

Let them.

[Anne Morris]

That's your. That's your. That's your introverted conclusion here.

[Frances Fry]

I might.

[Anne Morris]

Introverted wife might have to. Yes. Just limit your. Your exposure to other human beings. Problem solved. People.

[Frances Fry]

You're making my point for me.

[Anne Morris]

All right. The summary for a tactic to the energy. If I had to pick a word. It's intention. It's bringing deep intention to breaks, to job design, to boundaries and really taking ownership and using the agency we have. And it's, you know, it can be variable depending on the situation. But using the agency, we have to take this issue quite seriously.

[Frances Fry]

And even taking your intentionality all the way to how you emotionally respond to other people, as. As you just pointed out.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, yeah. You got to own it. You got to own it. Yeah, you're the problem. It's.

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[Anne Morris]

All right, Francis, Part two of the equation Energy sources A response to the mediocrity part of exhausted mediocrity. I'll start us off with another quote, which one that I love and we've shared with our listeners before, which is Howard Thurman, one of the great 20th century theologians. He said, don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because the world needs people who have come alive. So this is the question I want to ask. If I'm feeling a lack of aliveness in the workplace, how do I get in touch with that life force and find a way to dial it up?

[Frances Fry]

This is such a rich and I can't wait to hear from your perspective because you coach people on this all the time. I'll begin with a couple of thoughts. One is to come alive. It really helps to work on something you're passionate about. It is order of magnitudes helpful.

[Anne Morris]

The reason I love you saying that because I feel like passion has been beaten up as a variable in the last few years.

[Frances Fry]

It is like there it is now in vogue to say it is frivolous to follow your passion. And I now I can't help but saying I look at the demographics and if I just showed you the photos of the people that were saying it, there are very clear demographic tendencies of who's saying this. And I like the people very much, but I disagree on their point that passion is overrated. I think passion is underrated in the quest to alive. Where we will agree is that it's not sufficient. But where we disagree, is it it's.

[Anne Morris]

Not for serious people doing serious things.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah. And here's what's always funny to me. The people who claim that passion doesn't matter have come alive doing things they're passionate about.

[Anne Morris]

Oh yeah, the messengers are quite, quite passionate.

[Frances Fry]

Yes.

[Anne Morris]

And quite alive. So the word that's also activating for me is mission, because I think what it is is finding a purpose for your life that is bigger than you. But I want to say it does not have to be, you know, world peace, although if it is, we could use you out here. But it has to be a purpose that is noble to you and it can be taking care of your family. It can be it Just has to be bigger than you and your ego and identity for this to work.

[Frances Fry]

I do feel like totally internal focused passion is going to somehow turn into toxicity. If we're only thinking about ourselves, we have to end up being unpleasant to be around.

[Anne Morris]

Oh, yeah, I think we see that pattern all the time with people getting stuck in that place.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

So, I mean, tactically, how do I figure that out in your experience?

[Frances Fry]

Yeah. So when I used to coach MBA students who were thinking about, like, what did they want to do with, particularly the ones that came to hbs to transition from one field to another, and they were like, I knew I wanted to transition, but I don't know what I'm interested in. Like, let's say I could go anywhere, I don't know. And what I invited them to do is, was to be an anthropologist about themselves and just float around beside them and notice where do you stop and dwell? If you're reading the headlines of a newspaper, which articles do you read when you're looking at the magazine rack, which do you pick up when you're looking at YouTube, like, be judgment free. Observe where you are dwelling. That's a pretty good first order of what catches your interest. When I ask people to do that and they come back and tell me, it always begins with, I was super surprised to find that I. Yeah, I.

[Anne Morris]

Love that I'll sometimes phrase it with people. What makes you weird? You know, what makes you different? What made you weird as a kid? What did you do that the other kids weren't doing? Before I found my way to writing, one of the weird things I would do, which had nothing to do with my job or my identity, was to just to do these silly writing contests. And one of them that I won, which is still my greatest publishing achievement, was Starbucks. Starbucks was doing this. You know, they had a competition where you could send in quotes that they would put on the side of a cup. And I was like, I don't know, 22. And I was in a Star. I was in a Starbucks in New York. And I was like, oh, I can win that contest. So I sent in this quote. Well, six months later, I got a package in the mail from Starbucks with a pound of coffee and a tiny little single plunger coffee maker. And then like 60 cups with my quote on the side. This is what I want. They put it all over the world in the hands of millions of Starbucks customers. I know because a subset of those customers has tracked me down for the last 20 years. Because the quote starts, the irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating.

[Frances Fry]

There's my girl.

[Anne Morris]

And so. And so I still get messages like, I decided to propose to my wife or I decided to quit my job. So that was fucking weird.

[Frances Fry]

Right?

[Anne Morris]

And yes, I got a signal back that, okay, maybe there was something here. So that was useful. But the more useful data, in my experience and my experience coaching people is the fact that I was doing it in the first place.

[Frances Fry]

I love it. What do you do? That's weird. What are you doing on the down low?

[Anne Morris]

What are you doing on the down low? Yeah, that doesn't really fit with the Persona you have shared with the world.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah, it's really good. It's really good what I'm doing on the down low right now.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah. This is something I feel like I should ask my wife.

[Frances Fry]

Oh, I'm creating crazy shit all day long.

[Anne Morris]

All day long. And it is, if you look at the pattern, a clue to the things you're passionate about and the gifts you can share with the world. That's. This is another episode. But it is, to your point, absolutely legitimate place to start. And if you really are struggling, start here.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah. I do think it's just a beautiful way. And if that, if I anthropologically observed what I'm doing, I am experimenting like crazy with the art form of videos for teaching. Yeah. Because. And it reveals. I really want to democratize access to education like I really want to. And I don't know how, but I think videos are gonna be part of it. And so if you saw me on the down low when you're like, what are you doing? For sure, this is what I'm doing.

[Anne Morris]

No, in the middle of the night. That's what you're doing.

[Frances Fry]

That's what I'm doing.

[Anne Morris]

You know, early morning. That's what you're doing. And it absolutely connects back up to what you are most deeply passionate about, which is scaling access to learning and insight to everyone. I think that's how I would summarize your mission in the world.

[Podcast Sponsor Announcer]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

But here's the thing. This top down mission purpose, we're going to rehabilitate the word passion.

[Frances Fry]

Yes.

[Anne Morris]

God bless you, Scott Galloway.

[Frances Fry]

And Reid Hoffman.

[Anne Morris]

And Reid Hoffman. Scott's been on the show. Passionate about. We are so rooting for these beautiful emotional men. Build empires on top of their passion.

[Frances Fry]

And influence our boys.

[Anne Morris]

Please, please continue to. Okay, but that's not enough. We also need to think about this problem from the bottom up, which is what are the. Okay, we've dealt with the macro passion, purpose. But you Also have to deal with your micro needs.

[Frances Fry]

Oh, I like this.

[Anne Morris]

On a daily basis, this is where.

[Frances Fry]

You and I really, we just go. We go down different paths. This is a fork in the road.

[Anne Morris]

And we can't outrun these. And this was a hard lesson for me to learn. I started out in the not for profit world. The mission was deeply activating. The daily experience was so brutal for me in some of these organizations because I had a need for steep learning, variety, competition, risk taking. Like I have to have a certain amount of risk in my Life. And we're 20 years into the marriage, so if I'm not getting it at home.

[Frances Fry]

Yes. No, no, no, no. Get it at home, get it at home.

[Anne Morris]

I gotta go. I gotta take responsibility and go out in the world and do like stuff with stakes.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

You know, get on stages and build companies that might fail and all that stuff. I gotta go get those needs met. So what I'll say to people is, okay, mission great, beautiful. Let's figure it out. But now you wake up in the morning, you go into work. What happens next?

[Frances Fry]

Yeah, and here's how I like if I was going to take that beautiful thought and just put in five categories of bottom up needs. And I like to think about them because you and I, we're similar on a minority of them and the overlap is minimal.

[Anne Morris]

I think that's why we're good collaborators.

[Frances Fry]

I think it's really beautiful. But so variety, you need it in so many aspects of your life. You are like desperately seeking variety. I am desperately seeking the optimal way.

[Anne Morris]

Once I have optimal mastery. Optimal way, like it's a totally different.

[Frances Fry]

There is not a lot of variety in mastery. I mean, there's variety early on when you're learning, but as you get closer and closer.

[Anne Morris]

And so for example, like 10,000 hours. Do you know how much my throat closes whenever I hear. You're supposed to. You need to do something for 10,000 hours before you're good at it. Oh my God. It's my nightmare.

[Frances Fry]

And then for me, it also goes all the way down to, you know, what I eat. Like, I do not seek variety in what I eat. I think it's a really serious thing. Makes me neither a good or bad person. You seek a lot of variety in what you eat.

[Anne Morris]

Makes you coaching me to remove the judgment.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah, yeah. You come at me with a lot of judgment on this one. Variety is not superior.

[Anne Morris]

You're eating the same turkey sandwich you've had for 50 years.

[Frances Fry]

And there is. And your variety is not superior to my consistency not but here's what's really.

[Anne Morris]

Important about this conversation. We'll let the listeners decide. Here's what's really important about the conversation is it is about without judgment because this is another inside job without self judgment.

[Frances Fry]

Like I'd like a little other judgment but go ahead.

[Anne Morris]

Naming, naming, owning, solving for your micro needs at work.

[Frances Fry]

Your needs and yeah and I think it really is important and if you need variety, don't deny yourself variety and if you need consistency, don't deny yourself consistency. And I think those are on the variety and the mastery where you and I do overlap I think is that we both need steep learning curves. Boredom comes in fast and furious and hard for us and when we're bored nothing good happens and so we have to keep making things more challenging in order to be able to stick to it.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, often it's one of the places where I'll start coaching people is okay, let's come up with a list like what do you need most from work? Give me your top five and how well are you meeting these needs? You not this corporation that is doing this to you. How well are you meeting these needs right now? And and then how might we evolve this job so that it gets closer to what you need? And if you can't get it here, then let's plot an exit for where you can find it.

[Frances Fry]

I love the bottom up and the top down and the top down needs and the anthropologists judgment. Free perspective of ourselves.

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[Anne Morris]

One more I want to get in one more sandbox on this, Francis, and I'm going to describe this, this one as add a zero.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah, I love this.

[Anne Morris]

And there is a point. You and I talk to a lot of companies. We work with a lot of great teams. There is a point early on in every conversation we have with leaders and teams of leaders where you say some variation on oh, interesting. Those goals are terrific and what would happen if we added a 0? You also sometimes call this the magic dust question where if you could sprinkle magic dust, what would be different tomorrow than it is today? It is a totally electric moment when you give people license to really dream. So what does that look like for people listening on the scale of an individual life?

[Frances Fry]

Yeah. So I think in my experience, and this is quite counter to a lot of the popular advice that I hear. So I will tell you in my experience, but I'm right. But I will just tell you humbly in my experience that the more ambitious you are, you will achieve more. Ambition is our friend. So adding a zero to a goal is a delicious way to thrive. Cutting a timeline in half is a delicious way to experiment and find new creative ways of doing things. And I sometimes look at the advice the same way that I hear the advice that oh, passion is overrated. I often hear that from a lot of men in the in. You know what I hear from a lot of women without their saying it, it's you know what, just concentrate on the micro steps. Just do one small thing today, right? And it's so empathetic. But I couldn't disagree more. Yeah, don't start with a small thing. Add a zero. I actually think if you start with a small thing, you're gonna end up in a path that I can totally see the destination from here. And I don't wanna be able to see the destination. I want it to be that far away.

[Anne Morris]

And the path may be one step at the time, but what I hear you saying to people is let's pick a defin is let's pick a destination that's worthy of you. Like this is you're gonna get up every day and do something hard.

[Frances Fry]

So like what I need and I need it to feel. I want you to give it your all. I don't want it to be so possible as just do one micro thing tomorrow. Oh, that's your 10,000 hours. How your throat closes. My throat closes to this so much because I'm like, these people are not gonna live up to their potential if you let them do that.

[Anne Morris]

And people sometimes ask about timelines. I think a lot about Peter Drucker's observation that people often overestimate what they can do in a year, but they underestimate what they can do in five years. And so the timeline I'll sometimes push people on is three to five years. Let's start with the three to five years. If you want to dare to dream, and I suspect you're shorter, but if you want to dare to dream, like what your life could feel like in three to five years, what could happen? What could go right? As human beings, we wired to think so much about what could go wrong. Let's really bring some ambition to what could go right.

[Frances Fry]

And I don't know if it's the age of AI or now. I feel like we are just way underestimating what can happen in three to five years. I don't even know how to think about that. I mean, here's my reference point. Most people have annual development conversations and they talk about like, oh, well, you know, what am I going to do this year? When I, I'm like, that's obsolete. You should be having them quarterly and then monthly, some of your high performers weekly and maybe even daily. So this notion of like, even, even when you say three to five years, I'm like, oh goodness no. And I bet if Peter Drucker were alive today, he would update the time. But I'm just hypothesizing there.

[Anne Morris]

Yeah, I, I, he was in a sleepier time. I like dragging him into this against his will.

[Frances Fry]

Yeah.

[Anne Morris]

But I, I think that' provocative thought. I love it. In the age of AI, how would we update that observation? And I think point is very well taken. Here's what I'll also say is a lesson from our work is that a huge amount of energy gets released once you figure out what the ambition is. A huge amount of energy gets released from simply beginning. Oh yeah, like taking action, addressing problems, choosing to be in motion. It's not just an antidote to anxiety, which it is. Right. It also, you know, if you think about the emotional impact, the release of relief into the system and the license to dream about what could go right. As we start to move forward. There is just tremendous power to being in motion.

[Frances Fry]

You know, I would have these coaching conversations with people and we'd be halfway through and I got them in touch with their ambition and then they were like, all right, you know what? I'm gonna schedule a meeting with you in three to five weeks. I'm gonna go, really think about it, three to five weeks, and we'll have a planning session then. And I was like, or how about now? And I just became known as how about now? I'm sure people closed their doors when they saw me coming, but I have to tell you, when we did the how about now? It was gorgeous. Often better than the three to five weeks. Because in those three to five weeks, yes, you're planning, but you're also just finding creative ways to say no and to limit your ambition.

[Anne Morris]

I love that As a summary mantra bumper sticker for this second part of the equation, which is to get started on Dreaming Big. Thank you for listening to this episode. Your participation helps us make great shows like this. Please keep reaching out to us. If you want to figure out a question about your own workplace problem together, send us a message, email, call or text [e-mail] or 234- FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253.

[Frances Fry]

We hope you all take a great break this summer. Our team at Fixable will definitely be doing so. We'll have a lot of intentional recovery in the next few weeks. We're going share episodes from other shows that we love and we hope that you'll enjoy them.

[Anne Morris]

Fixable is a podcast brought to you by Ted and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris and me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Rahima Nassa. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Daniela Baloriso and Roxanne Hylash.

[Frances Fry]

Our show is mixed by Louie at Storyard.

[Anne Morris]

New products to launch new people to develop new goals to crush. Workday Go is designed for small and midsize businesses. By bringing HR and finance together on one AI platform, you'll have everything you need to think big, go big and grow big. And activation is fast. It takes just 30 to 60 business days to get you up and running. Simplify your SMB on an AI platform, you'll never outgrow Workday Go.

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[Anne Morris]

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[Anne Morris]

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