Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction
00:00:21: Career cushioning explained
00:03:08: What career cushioning is not
00:04:55: Career cushioning actions…
00:05:16: …1: career conversations
00:07:14: Career canvas framework
00:08:10: Curious career conversations
00:09:29: …2: enhance your skills
00:10:02: Furthering you
00:15:30: Futureproofing you
00:18:44: …3: career community
00:21:01: Speed-dial supports
00:24:57: Connect with communities
00:28:10: …4: LinkedIn profile
00:29:51: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Helen Tupper: Hi, I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where each week we share ideas for action and some tools to try out that we hope will help you navigate your Squiggly Career with a bit more confidence, clarity and control.  And this week, we are taking on the topic of career cushioning, but what does it mean, Sarah?

Sarah Ellis: Well, career cushioning is one of those phrases that have emerged, a bit like quiet quitting, so there's lots of articles about it, and Helen and I even had a debate before this conversation; we were like, "We don't want to get drawn into career fads, we don't want to be like fash fashion for careers!" but I do think career cushioning, because people will be seeing it around, I want to make sure that people are clear about what it means and why it is useful, but also what it's not, because I do think career cushioning in lots of ways is sensible.

Career cushioning in summary is keeping your options open; it's recognising that your current job won't be your last job; and it's being proactive and almost taking this create-not-wait attitude when it comes to increasing your career resilience.  So, I think this is always important, but I do think the reason that career cushioning is having a mini moment, if you want to describe it like that, is that when there are tough times in the environment or economically, when recessions are happening or coming our way, the likelihood of those uncertain, unexpected, knotty moments in our Squiggly Careers coming our way does of course increase.

So, whether that looks like job changes or restructures or redundancies, or maybe your manager leaving, those sorts of things where we don't know they're happening until they happen, and so they are outside of our control so they can feel quite daunting when they do come our way, if you spend some time, take some action to cushion your career, it often means that is in your control, so you've sort of been proactive.  And I think the more I've thought about this and when we've been developing some ideas for action that we're going to talk to you about today, there is not sunk cost when it comes to increasing your career resilience, because this can only ever be a good thing.

Hopefully, none of those knotty moments do come your way but if they do, you'll be better prepared; and if they don't, maybe you'll just increase your opportunity.  So, I do think that some of the things we're going to talk about today all feel like something we should all be doing, even if you're in the safest job that you don't ever think will change.

Helen Tupper: Also, I think, credit to the lovely listeners, I think that taking time out of their busy working week to listen to the Squiggly Careers podcast --

Sarah Ellis: Is career cushioning!

Helen Tupper: -- it is career cushioning.  You're thinking about yourself and your development, and hopefully taking a bit of action with it, and that in and of itself is how you will become more resilient in all of the Squiggly stuff that's happening around you.  So, we're going to give you some more ideas for action, because that's what the podcast is all about, but you're already doing one.  So, probably just give yourself a little bit of credit, you're definitely not starting from scratch, because you've taken the time to listen to this today.

Also probably just worth spending a brief moment on what it's not.  So, it is not about giving up on your current role or jumping to something else because you think the grass is greener.  This is about considering yourself and how you can be resilient and what you might need to do differently with your development, but it's not leaping into a new job every six months.

It's also not about searching for new jobs.  This whole idea that it's always about looking for new jobs, starting or exploring them, that's not what we're talking about.  This is more about exploring you and what you can do and where you could do, than looking at other jobs or applying for other jobs.  So, I think just think about this very much you and your skillset, you and your development and you being proactive with it, rather than reactive to stuff that might be happening around you.

Sarah Ellis: And I do think being realistic, there are moments where we are all a bit more committed to our career development, and that might be because we want to make a career change, that might be because of progression, or it might be because you can anticipate, you have a sense, that some changes might be coming your way.  That has definitely happened to me in my career a few times, where I've been really enjoying the role that I was doing, the organisation that I was in; I was really motivated, I didn't necessarily want those things to change.  But you could maybe sense that something, whether it's just in terms of how your organisation is performing, or you can just read the signs sometimes, that you think, "I don't know what it's going to look like, but actually this feels like this would be a good moment to overcommit to my career development".

Some of those things might never happen, but there's no point spending time worrying about all of those things that could, might or might not happen, but much better to just invest your energy and efforts on you, that thing that you can always control.

So, we're going to talk about three actions for how you can cushion your career, with a sneaky extra action at the end that Helen and I talked about, "Do we leave in; do we take out?" but a prompt, I think, a nice nudge at the end.  And we've also got a couple of really useful resources as we go through that we're going to link to in our free tool kit so they're there when you need them.

Helen Tupper: Idea for action number one is all about your career conversations.  Career conversations are really useful for you to get more data about your development; data about people's jobs, what does a day in the life look like, or the skills they might need, or how they squiggled their way there.  Each of those different interactions will give you some more insight that can inform you in your development.

The point we really want to make here with your career conversations is that you're really proactive about them.  So, one of the things that we notice is that when people decide they want to do something different, they suddenly start to think about career conversations; but we want you to have regular career conversations, regardless really of what you're doing, because you're never not needing data for your development, it's never not useful to get insight from somebody else.  So, think about how regularly are you have these discussions about your development with different people; and that regularity and the difference is really, really important. 

Another trap that we see people fall into is that they have a conversation with their manager and no one else.  Whilst your manager can offer quite a lot of that insight, they are not the guru of good advice.  So, make sure that you're thinking about different people that you can have that conversation with.

The other trap that we see people sometimes fall into is the nice chat trap.  Let's imagine I see Sarah and I think, "I'd love to find out how Sarah got to run her own business", so I have a nice chat with Sarah and then I go away from that.  It's really hard to think, "What would I do differently because of it?"  So, one of the things that I always try to do when I've had some kind of career conversation with somebody is I write down my reflections at the end.  I try to do it in three statements to summarise what they said and what was meaningful to me.  And I find it quite helpful to send that back to the person as well.  There's a sense of commitment in me having to do that that I find really useful and it creates clarity for myself, and I also think it's useful for the other person to know that that was an informative conversation they had with me.

Sarah Ellis: I think there are two types of career conversations for you to consider.  So, I think there are the career conversations that are about you and your career, and for that we have a career canvas framework for you.  So, this is on our free toolkit, we'll link to this, but it's just on our website, amazingif.com, and look for the free toolkit.  In the career canvas, we have suggested areas that you might want to talk about in a career conversation, so things like your strengths, your career community, your progression possibilities, and we've given you three coach-yourself questions for each area of the canvas.

So that would be like me having a conversation with Helen as my co-founder, and perhaps I'm talking about my values, or about how I increase my network, so it's very much about me and my career.  So, hopefully we've given you the tool there that will help you to get started with those.  Those might be conversations with managers or mentors, probably people who are relatively close to you.

Then I think the other types of career conversations are maybe where it's less about you and you're discovering and finding out more about somebody else's career, so the emphasis is more on you asking really good questions to get a window into their world.  These are the curious career conversations.  I think when you're thinking about career cushioning, you want to be doing both of those different kinds of conversations, because I think they have a different objective and a different purpose.

I think they both give you data for your development, but quite different sorts of data, because one is starting from you, like how you might make a strength stronger, or how you might explore transferring your talents in an organisation.  That's quite a different conversation to me chatting to Helen to understand what it's like to run her own company and how did that start and how did she make that transition from a very big organisation to a very small one.

So, just think about both of those kinds of career conversations, and really take ownership for the frequency.  They can be really informal, you don't have to wait for the next time your organisation says you should be having a career conversation.  I would be setting myself a goal of thinking, "Maybe I want to have one career conversation every month and maybe that's interchangeable; I swap between one that's more about me and one that's maybe learning more about somebody else's career".

Helen Tupper: Our second idea is all about your skills, and it's to further you and futureproof you, and these are two different things that you can do with your skills to support you with a bit of career cushioning.  So, Sarah and I will take this in turn to talk them through.  Do you want to go "further you" first?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.  The reason we've decided them up in this way is we both came up with different ideas!

Helen Tupper: This is such a copout!  We were agreed with each other, we'd keep both of them in!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, so I'd gone with "further you" and Helen had gone with "futureproof you", so basically we've got two things in one here, which we decided they were both useful.  So, "furthering you" is about setting a learning goal that relates to one of your existing transferable talents, and you consider how can you make that talent even better.  So, this is a strength that you've got that you want to make stronger, that particularly relates probably more to how you do your job rather than what you do in your job. 

So often, we can't help but see our current role in terms of what we do and how we do it, and often it's quite helpful to just think about, "What are your hows that you can imagine using elsewhere?  A really good question here that might just help you to get to some of the answers to this is, imagine you were coming to work for Amazing If on Monday.  Some of you might be an expert in career development, but imagine that you're not.  Imagine that you've not run a company before and you're suddenly coming to work with Helen and I, what are all the hows that you would bring with you?

Maybe you're an amazing problem-solver.  We interviewed somebody recently who I just got so much confidence that she could solve knotty problems.  She just described to me so many examples and situations where she could take something that was quite complicated that needed sorting, that probably people had shied away from, and you could tell that she could just do that brilliantly.  So, that's a really good example of a transferrable talent that she's already got, and she could think about, "How do I accelerate that even more?  Maybe that's about the range of situations where I use that talent; could I use it in lots of different ways?  Maybe that's about finding out about who is incredible at that", we sometimes call them those go-to gurus like, "Who am I learning from in that area; who could make me even better at that thing that I'm already really good at?

So, Helen, if you were thinking about one of your transferrable talents, let's imagine Amazing If dies tomorrow, that's pretty bleak, isn't it?

Helen Tupper: That's pretty bleak, but keep going, it might get better!

Sarah Ellis: Or you can see it coming; that's probably even more bleak!

Helen Tupper: Just move on!

Sarah Ellis: It's going to go down the drain in the next six months, "I'm going to have to get another job".

Helen Tupper: I totally get it!

Sarah Ellis: I like the nervous laughter that we both have there!  Which of your transferrable talents are you overinvesting in, because you're thinking, "Do you know what, it's not going to be Amazing If, so I'm going to have to get a job".  What are you taking with you; what would you set a learning goal around?

Helen Tupper: Probably something about relationship-building and prototyping.  If I could combine those two, it would be like, "I'm going to build a relationship with you, I've taken an idea, and I've got a proposal", you know those two things?  People and proposals, I think I'm probably quite good at, and I could apply that to loads of different industries and issues.  So, just thinking about, who are five people and five proposals that I could put together that I think I could create myself some new opportunities through that.  So, I'll be fine!

Sarah Ellis: Oh, I decided I definitely wouldn't be fine!  I was like, "Oh my God, I think I'm basically unemployable.  What's happened?"

Helen Tupper: This is not true, everyone, she's very employable.  Just don't employ her because she's mine; I'm territorial.

Sarah Ellis: I don't think this is that easy sometimes to take yourself away from where you are today; it's quite a tricky thing

Helen Tupper: Confidence is the root of it, right?  You've got to have the awareness of your skills and be confident enough to think about them, and I think the only reason I can do that is because I've had a lot of feedback and I've thought about it quite a lot, because it's how I can add value.  But if you haven't done that, so you can't do it as quickly or as confidently as I've done that, it doesn't mean you've not got the transferrable talents, it might mean you just need a bit more time to reflect upon it.  It almost might be worth getting some feedback into what other people think you do well if you can't see it for yourself.

Sarah Ellis: Well actually, thinking about this, because surprisingly we do actually really prepare for these podcasts sometimes; so for this one I was thinking, "The thing that I would do, or I'd be offering to other organisations, when Amazing If goes down the drain --"

Helen Tupper: Not when; if!

Sarah Ellis: Sorry, "if" Amazing If goes down the drain!  I was like, "Okay, I am great at creating, I am a really good blank piece of paper, we need to build something from scratch, we need to create something, or maybe we need to change something quite dramatically".  So actually, I was then reading a really interesting article about that that I was just going to read anyway.  And the author of this article then talked a bit about if you're a continual learner and creator, how much you can benefit from knowing more about Agile.

Agile is something that I've almost seen from a distance, I've worked alongside some people who understand Agile properly, they've almost done some more of the training in it, and I was thinking that's not a world that I've ever spent time in, but a few people in the past have signalled to me, "That idea for action you've just come up with, that could have come from the Agile world".  I think I just nod along and go, "Okay, great, I'm glad you've been able to connect those dots".  So I was like, "That's what I would do".  And I was like, "Maybe that is what I would do". 

So, just in case Amazing If doesn't go well, I could be like, I've spent time really almost deeply learning about Agile, because I think it's very connected to one of my transferrable talents, and I was like, "That would make me even more employable".  So then I felt a bit better about it.  I was like, "I feel quite good about it now if it all goes a bit wrong".

Helen Tupper: I'm glad you're investing in your career cushioning.

Sarah Ellis: I am!  I'm going to do it!

Helen Tupper: That's something we should all do, but I also hope that Amazing If stays as strong!

Sarah Ellis: Imagine the podcast episode, how bleak that would be!

Helen Tupper: Moving swiftly on to the second part of this, which is the "futureproofing you".  So, Sarah's talked about how you further you with your skills; the futureproofing one is simply about looking at the skills that are becoming increasingly important for everyone.  Luckily for us, there are lots of organisations that determine what these skills are.  I mean, you can google them, "What are the future skills that I need?" and look for a credible source. 

We have looked at the World Economic Forum, who have got a list of the skills that they think are most important by 2025.  They include things like analytical thinking, active learning, complex problem-solving, critical thinking.  We'll put all these, by the way, in the PodSheet so that you can see them, but they are the skills that they are signposting that are going to be important for everyone in the not-too-near future.

So, what you really want to do here is almost look at that list of skills, and I would almost score them and think, "High, medium, low, what do I think my current competency is?"  And then, it's where you've got gaps that you might want to grow them.  "Might" is important because for example, on the World Economic Forum list, one of them is technology design and programming.  You might score yourself low on that, but that might be not a priority for you to grow.  Again, these are all choices that you make about your development.  You can just use this as an input really into what you might want to prioritise.

But when I look at the list, I think creativity, originality and initiative, that's something on there and I think, "I might do that in an ad hoc way, but is that a skill that I could futureproof further; could I invest in it; are there some things that I could read, some things I could watch, some deeper ways that I could invest in that for my development so that it is a skill that I can use to self-support myself?" and that's what you're really trying to do here.  All it is is a list for you to look through and prioritise in terms of the skills that are important to everyone in the not-too-near future.

Sarah Ellis: I do think caveat, these lists are sort of macro skills.  So, when you look at it, I think it can feel a bit daunting or overwhelming, because one of them just says leadership and social influence and you're like, "That's a big area".  I would use it as a starting point, as Helen has described, and then almost connect the dots with your future possibilities with the things that you're interested in doing in your Squiggly Career.  And then, exactly as Helen's done, she's gone, "Creativity, originality and initiative feels useful and relevant for me, and it feels useful and relevant to futureproof me". 

If you can connect those two things, I think it gives you a really good starting point, and then you could ask yourself, "So what?"  "So, what does that mean in terms of what I'm learning, how I spend my time, who I'm spending my time with?" and in January, we're actually going to use this list to do a special series on some future skills; so, critical thinking, originality and learning strategies, may be one more, we're going to do specific podcast episodes on. 

Helen and I are both, as we speak, beginning to read the books that are relevant for those skills, so a bit like we did in the summer series; we're both going to read a book about the topic, so critical thinking, and then when it comes to the podcast having read the book, what have we learnt and how has it helped us?  So hopefully, we will also help you a bit with that futureproofing come January.

Helen Tupper: So, our third idea for action is about increasing the strength of your career community.  When we often think about career communities, the simplest starting place for this is to think about some distinct roles and the different things they can offer you.  So for example, four distinct roles: a mentor, so that's somebody who is there to give you advice, you benefit from their wisdom because they've done some things that you might want to do, and they offer that advice freely to you.  You don't always have to take it, but they're quite helpful to have.

Sponsors, that's the second role that's really important in your career community, so these are people, I always think of them if they've got access and influence into an area that's interesting for your development, and what's really useful about a sponsor is they're willing to advocate for you.  So, that area that you might not have access to, they can open a door for your development and they want to do it for you because they're advocating you.

The third role is a peer, often one that I think people don't prioritise because they just assume that they've got these relationships.  Actually, if you actively manage your peer relationships, it can be very powerful for your career, because what peers can do is accelerate your growth.  If you think about the mentor, that's someone who's done something you want to do; a peer is someone who's going through what you're going through, whether that's something you're experiencing in your company or the stage you are at in your career, or maybe you're doing a side project at the same time and they are too, they're really helpful for navigating through knotty moments and accelerating your learning.  Sarah has been amazing at being a peer for me in my career.

The fourth role that's distinct is a coach.  So, a coach is somebody is much more in asking mode, they unlock your thinking and we've talked about this a little bit before, that you don't always have to have qualified coach status to be one of those people that can unlock your thinking.  So, in your career community, if you know one of those people that are really good at asking you questions that force you to think a bit differently, they can often play that role of a coach for you. 

So, before we get into some other ideas for action to help you increase the strength of your career community, a really good starting place is to think about mentors, sponsors, peers and coaches and think where would you put a tick against those in terms of where you've got strong relationships at the moment, and where might you put a bit of a question mark because there's a bit of a gap.  Gaps are fine, they're just areas for us to go after.

Sarah Ellis: So, the first idea for action is almost anticipating a potential knotty moment in your Squiggly Career and thinking, "Who would be on my support speed dial?"  Now, I know speed dial doesn't exist anymore and it's a very 1990s reference, but it sort of works, I think, in my head as a way of imagining what I'm trying to achieve, because I think if the answer to that is, "No one", I hope everybody would have friends and family; but if you're thinking just in a work context, who are those support speed dial, where let's say something completely unexpected happens on a day, who are the three, four, five people that you're sending an email to going, "Have you got 15 minutes for a chat?" or that you could literally just call up out of the blue, and you know that they would prioritise and take your call?

We sometimes ask a question along these lines in workshops, and I have noticed that sometimes people say, "I really feel like that's a gap I've got.  I don't have people on that support speed dial".  So, if you're thinking about career cushioning, you want to be able to name those three to five people.  It might be a case that you can name those people but perhaps you want to increase your closeness to those people; perhaps you need to reconnect with them, you've just not chatted to them for a while; you want to say thank you for the impact that they've made in your career so far. 

So, if you've got people already, you might want to consider closeness, "Am I spending enough time with them?  Would now be a good time to increase how much I speak to those people, or how often I spend time with them?"  Again, it can be super-informal, it can be quick, 15-minute chats, we don't need to make a big deal of it, but keep your support speed dial close though, keep those people close if you've already got them.  If you haven't got anyone, you might want just want to think about, "Where could I go and spend time that is a naturally supportive place to hang out?" 

So, there are things like open mentoring programmes that anyone can join, there are often things across industries or across your area of expertise, where they're designed to support you to succeed.  For example, one of the things that I do as part of a community that I'm part of, I do something called a Coffee Roulette, where you just put your name in and it pops up that you're going to meet with somebody.  Now, those people are not necessarily going to be in my support speed dial from day one, because I'm meeting them for the first time, but I do know that I've got something in common with all of those people, in that they are all running their own companies.  So, they have the potential to be on my support speed dial.

Even last week, I spoke to a guy who has probably been running companies for most of his career, I would guess, listening to him, and he's a good 10 or 15 years further into his career than me in terms of how long he's been working for.  And even just one conversation with him, I was thinking, "Do you know what, he's not a million miles away from somebody I now feel confident enough giving a quick call to in that moment when Amazing If goes down the drain!" just to come back to that for a second!

Helen Tupper: Are you all right?  Do we need to talk about the future of our business?!

Sarah Ellis: No, but I'm trying to do career cushioning and think about it realistically!  So, if I felt like I was struggling, I feel like he's seen businesses come and go, and he's found his way through those knotty moments, and quite a few people on my support speed dial haven't had that experience.  So, that felt like a useful connection to make.  So, spending time in places and with people where you think you've got something in common with them already, and also it's just intended to be supportive, I think is a really good place to start if you feel a bit like you're starting from scratch.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I agree.  I was trying to think about communities that I'm a part of that are very like that and they feel very like a really safe place to spend time. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, "safe" is a good word.

Helen Tupper: Yeah.  I could definitely think of a community where I just think it's very comfortable and the more that you go, the more that you get from it, I would say as well, because those relationships benefit from being with each other regularly, because you know more about what's going on in each other's lives.

The second idea for action on increasing the strength in your career community is to connect with communities.  So, there are often pre-existing communities that exist around professions or passions.  So, let's say one of my passions is writing, there will be groups of people that like writing or poetry, for example.  I've had a look actually, because I really like poetry; I've had a look at communities that exist.  I'm not confident enough to join them yet.

Sarah Ellis: Oh, you should.

Helen Tupper: I know.  Also, just fitting stuff in, but maybe one for next year; but also the professional ones that exist as well.  For example, I think I associate more with marketing communities, or maybe I'm just more confident about them because I've been to them for a while, but I'm still connected to quite a lot of them from a prior Squiggly Career phase that I was in.  They are so amazing for me to spend time in because I always find that 50% of the people in those communities, if you've been part of them for a while, you kind of know, which is nice; but then 50% I've never met before and you have these different conversations and you find out more about people's worlds.

Last week for example, I sent time with three different communities.  One was The Chartered Management Institute, one was a marketing society and one was a community that I'm part of, called Cabal.  In each of those communities, something has happened as a result of me spending time in them.  I'm going for lunch with someone in January; I'm supporting somebody's Squiggly Career skills for their company; and somebody else has come to me with an opportunity that I'm going to explore.  I don't know what those things will do, they might just be nice ways of me helping people, but they're all ways in which I can help my career cushioning, because it just takes me to a different place than I was before I went to those particular communities last week.

Sarah Ellis: And if that does feel hard for you, because I appreciate listening to an extrovert say she's been to three different communities in one week --

Helen Tupper: It was a pretty big week for me!

Sarah Ellis: Even Helen said, "It was a lot in one week, but they just happened to all be in one week"; but next week on the podcast, we've got an Ask The Expert with a lady called Sharmadean Reid, and Sharmadean is the Founder of a company called Stack World.  Stack World is all about creating community, bringing people together.  And having very recently had that conversation with her, she is so great on the difference between community and network and how to go about it and what it looks like, and just how important it is for your career.

So, if this idea for action feels like the one for you, the one you really want to dive a bit deeper into and make some progress on, also definitely make sure you listen to that episode with Sharmadean because firstly, she is brilliant and shares some great stories and has lived and breathed everything that she talks about herself, so she is just fascinating herself, her own Squiggly Career story is fascinating; but she's also got some really good, practical advice.

Helen Tupper: So, maybe I'll just summarise those three areas that we talked about to help you with your career cushioning, and then Sarah will do our final nice nudge.  So, the first thing we talked about was all about career conversations, making sure you're having them with more than one person.  Don't forget to look up our career canvas on our website as well if that could be helpful.  The second one was about skills, furthering you and futureproofing you.  And the third one we just talked about was about increasing the strength of your career community.

Sarah Ellis: And our nice nudge, just to add it in, and we have done it in other podcasts, so we're always trying to make sure we've got lots of newness every time we talk to you, is just make sure your LinkedIn profile is in good shape.  So, get those recommendations, make sure your summary looks good, sort yourself out with a banner.  We've talked about it before, we've got other episodes on LinkedIn specifically, and it doesn't have to be your LinkedIn.  I appreciate for some people listening, maybe it's your website, maybe you're happy to use your Instagram for work, or it's your Dots profile. 

But in those knotty moments, I think if you've got this career cushion of showing up externally in a way that you feel good about, I always think a good coach-yourself question is, "If someone's introduction to me was looking at my LinkedIn profile, what would their impression be?"  If you feel that LinkedIn is the right place for your profession, which I know for lots of people listening I know it will be, I always like to imagine, "If that's the first time someone found me, what would they think?  Would it help to attract interesting opportunities and possibilities and learning towards me?" because again, it's just about career cushioning, it's just about putting yourself in a really good position and being proactive, keeping your options open; and you're limiting your options if you're not in the right places where people can find you and come to you with, "I've noticed you're really interested in this.  Have you ever considered…?" or, "There's this community you can join". 

It goes way beyond applying for a job; I think it also just helps you to learn, to grow, to connect with people.  And again, that could be in lots of different ways.  But whatever that looks like for you, just don't forget that too.

Helen Tupper: I suppose it's, "How can my LinkedIn profile be a better magnet for me?" is the question just to have a think about.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: So, hopefully you found that useful.  Do not forget, everyone, that it's all summarised in the PodSheet, so that is a one-page downloadable form, tool, I don't know, PDF that you can fill in; but basically it's the practical thing that you can do after today to help your learning last longer.  We know lots of people that use that with mentors, they use it with teams, even coaches that use it with people.  It's there for you and we will link to it on PodSheet notes, so if you're on Apple, that's always the easiest one to find it.

But if you're ever like, "Where is this stuff?" go to our website, amazingif.com, and if you go on the podcast page and click on this episode, you'll be able to find it.  And if ever you can't, just email us if that's easier; we're helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com. 

Sarah Ellis: I hope that's been helpful and as we said at the start, I think it is the smart thing for all of us to do, to spend a bit of time doing career cushioning.  If you've got any other ideas or topics that you'd really like us to cover, please get in touch at any time, we're helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com, but that's everything for this week.  Thank you so much for listening and we're back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye, everyone.