Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:04:58: Ideas for action…

00:05:10: … 1: deliberate rest

00:07:48: Coach-yourself questions and examples

00:12:33: … 2: goalsetting

00:14:08: Coach-yourself questions and examples

00:17:03: … 3: new radiators

00:18:32: Coach-yourself questions and examples

00:24:15: … 4: volunteering

00:25:59: Coach-yourself questions and examples

00:30:45: … 5: read, watch or listen

00:32:05: Coach-yourself questions and examples

00:35:39: 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, a weekly podcast where we talk about the ups and downs of work in order to give you a little bit more clarity, confidence and control over your Squiggly Career.  They're designed to be super-practical and hopefully quite relatable as well, because we are often going through lots of the things that we talk to you about. If you want some support beyond the episode, we've got loads of things available for you.  We've got PodSheets, so they're downloadable summaries; we've got PodNotes, so super-quick swipey summaries, if you just want a quick recap; and we've also got PodPlus, which is a 30-minute discussion, so you can join some likeminded listeners and dive a bit deeper into the topics we talk about.  All of the details of those, the links, the timing, everything, it's all free by the way, you can get in our show notes.  And if you ever can't find it, we're just helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com.

Sarah Ellis: So today, we're going to be talking about five ways to reenergise yourself to help you reenergise your work.  So, why are we talking about this topic?  Well, there are lots of different descriptions of how people are feeling at work at the moment.  So whether that is languishing, so we've talked before about Adam Grant's article that was very popular and was shared, and I think that's because it was relatable; lots of people felt like maybe they were languishing at work at some point during the past couple of years. 

There's definitely an increase of people talking about being bored at work at the moment. I don't necessarily personally relate to languishing or being bored, but I do relate to the third one, which is just about work feeling quite relentless over the past couple of years, because there has been a lot of stress and being busy and pressure, and I think that has been continual, and we've probably coped with that for quite a long time now.  So, loads of people have been talking about this need to feel like you've got to just almost rediscover and reset in some way, to feel like you're getting energy back in all of your life, so that you can bring that energy to the work that you do. You know when you get one of those moments that does make you press pause, and it's not because of something you do, but because of something someone else does?  I was running a programme, and actually I was seeing a group of people in person, so this was only a couple of months ago, and we were doing a career ask-me-anything, the final thing in this programme, and someone just said to me a really innocuous question, "Oh, Sarah, what do you do outside of work that makes you happy, and what else do you do?"  I honestly couldn't answer the question, I was like, "I don't know".

Helen Tupper: Collecting glass in the sea, that's what you said about this weekend.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, to be fair this weekend I was at the seaside collecting sea glass, so I did do a bit of that!  And obviously, you go, "Oh, you know, you've got family to look after and care for", and those kinds of things.  But I think the reason it prompted me to very consciously think about a bit of a reset and a bit of a rediscovery was that previously, I would have answered that question very differently.  Almost, I would have answered that question with a lot of energy and excitement for things that I do outside of work, that also give me that energy for the rest of my week, and I didn't have that same connection.

I feel that, you know when you sort of fluff an answer a bit?  I was like, "Oh, you know, I've got a kid and I like reading".  I really felt like I was clutching at straws, and you know when something just doesn't feel like you?  I was like, "That just doesn't feel like me".  So, it prompted me to go away and think, "What are these five ways that I could reenergise myself. A couple of months ago, I think my score on these five, I was scoring myself zero to five, would have actually been zero, and that was a good reminder when I started to explore these.  I was like, "Okay, what could I do; what could I explore?"  I realised that none of these things were in my weeks at the moment, and they're not that hard things to change, but I do think it takes conscious and intentional attention and effort.  It's almost like these things don't find their way back into your life; I think you then have to choose to do something about them.

So I think again, as Helen talked about at the start of the podcast, inevitably these podcasts are basically just about what we're doing at the moment.  And when we chatted about this idea, we both felt a sense of, "Oh, yeah, we're both trying to do this right now".  I think we've made some good progress that we both feel proud of, so we're like, "Okay, that's good to share, because it's kind of worked well".  And there are definitely still some gaps we've got as well.

Helen Tupper: I think I just feel ready for it.  There are times when I know that I need to be relentless, like January, putting the book out and all the things with COVID.  You're like, "This is the time to be relentless".  Then, there are other times when you're like, "This is the time to reenergise, and I feel like we're coming into summer a little bit, and Sarah and I have been really conscious about what summer looks like for us, so we can create a bit of space.  And I just feel mentally and physically ready to reenergise; I need it and I'm ready for it. So, let's go through our different five ideas for action then, talk about what it is, why it matters, and then maybe bring it to life with a few examples for us, partly because that makes it really intentional in my mind; it gets me excited.  I'm like, "That's what I'm going to spend this time on!"  So, number one is all about deliberate rest.  There is a quote from Socrates who, didn't we mention Socrates recently in a podcast too?

Sarah Ellis: I don't know, I'm feeling very philosophical at the moment, Helen!  But actually this quote, we included it in You Coach You, so that's why we've put this in there.

Helen Tupper: I think recently, I feel like we're bringing a lot of stoicism.  I think he's one of the stoics, isn't he, Socrates?  Anyway, "Beware the barrenness of a busy life".  It's quite a powerful quote, I think, because we really put quite a focus on busyness.  It's almost like it's a bit of a badge of honour, how busy you are, how much you've got on all the time.  But just because you're busy, doesn't mean that work feels fulfilling.  You can be doing a lot of things, but you might not be doing the things that are meaningful and that matter to you.  I think that idea of barrenness, the idea that we're empty, that our time is full --

Sarah Ellis: It's quite bleak, isn't it?

Helen Tupper: Yeah, it is bleak.  Our time is full, but we are empty; gosh, that's low!  And this idea of deliberate rest is about, I think, bringing yourself back.  Rather than being busy, it's bringing yourself back to a moment of meaning for you.  And it's the idea of focusing all of your attention and all of your energy on being 100% present on something outside of work. I think about this as a spectrum, where on one end of the spectrum, you've got restlessness, so you're doing a lot, it's this busyness thing; and then on the other end of the spectrum, you've got restful, which is being asleep.  This is something in the middle, it's something intentional, it's something deliberate, so there is some effort involved in doing this, but it's something that consumes you, so that all of that busyness in your brain can just get switched off for a while, and that is so important for reenergising ourselves. The person who's written probably the most about this, is someone called Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, and he's been on our podcast and he's written a book called Rest.  He says that, "Deliberate rest helps you to recover from the stresses and exhaustion of the day, allows new experiences and lessons to settle in your memory, and gives your subconscious mind space to keep working", which I think, settling, space and new experiences; that sounds like the dream!

Sarah Ellis: That's the business case right there!

Helen Tupper: That's the dream, yeah, let's do that.

Sarah Ellis: And for each of the areas we're going to talk about across the podcast, we will include a link to some good research and a long read.  So, if you really want to dive into deliberate rest, for each of them we've gone and found hopefully a bit of a go-to resource.  There's a really brilliant blog all about rescuing time and deliberate rest that I read prior to this podcast, so I'd recommend having a look at that, if this is one of the five that you think, "I need this in my life right now". So, three coach-yourself questions for you, before we talk about our examples.  The first one: what does active rest look like for you?  The second: how can you make active rest part of your working week?  So often, I think we can be a bit guilty of leaving all of our active rest to our weekends and being like, "Well, there's no time for that in our week", but your working week will be better if you can also have some active rest in there as well.

The final coach-yourself question: how can you anticipate and prevent any barriers to active rest?  I don't think this is easy.  It's easier to think, at the end of the day, "Well, I'm going to sit and watch whatever I'm watching on Netflix right now, and it's easier for us to just, almost completely, as Helen says, be very, very restful; most of us need some of that in our day.  But deliberate rest, when you read about it, is actually often compared to deliberate practice; so this idea of where we keep coming back to something, we keep focusing on it, we want to keep getting better at it.  So, this won't just happen.  There's a time commitment here, there's an energy commitment, and often if can feel really hard, I think, to get restarted, because it's so much easier not to do these things, I think, than to do them. So, my example of active rest is, about six weeks ago, I re-joined a netball team for the first time in probably about six years. 

And the reason that works so well for me is it's on a Tuesday night, so it's towards the start of the week, so actually that seems to work; there's people relying on me, so I have to turn up; and it's something I knew I enjoyed.  So, there wasn't the risk of, "Will I enjoy this?" but it takes all of my focus, it's only 40 minutes on a Tuesday evening with people I've never met before, and it's relatively relaxed, it's quite close to where I live. But it's so interesting how, having not done that for a long time, how big a part of my week that has become.  It feels a really important part of, I come back and I always come back on a Tuesday evening feeling reenergised, almost smiling, like when you've got a smile in your face, even if I've lost the game, which does happen some of the time, annoying; even if I've lost, I still think, "I've been so in it and I've definitely completely forgotten about work, because I'm definitely not fit enough to do anything other than really focus on running up and down the netball court. I really like the fact actually I'm spending time with people who don't know me, don't know anything about the work that I do.  No one's very interested in that; we're all interested in what positions have we not got and who's going to play what.  It just feels like a very different moment in my week, and it has reminded me, because I played netball for years and then just stopped for the last six years, some of that due to having my little boy, but also some of it due to COVID, I think I would have restarted sooner; that has been a small difference in my week that has had a really big impact and it's probably my only example of active rest.

If we're thinking that active rest is this whole, you're 100% in it, and I know for some people it can be computer games, or cooking or gardening or painting, or those kinds of things, but I don't do any of those.  So, it's my one example at the moment, but I can see how having more than one example in a week would also be really good for me.

Helen Tupper: I think as well, reading probably is, for both of, active rest.  I know we read a lot for work, though I do find that so helpful, because when I'm really immersed in it, I know this isn't -- we're trying to think about how do you reenergise yourself outside of work; but for me, just getting deeply into a topic, and I do love reading about our work things in my own time too, helps me, like I'm not on my phone.  I know you go on your kindle, don't you, so you're still connected to a device?  But I'm quite retro.  I'll do it in a book with a highlighter, and just the commitment to turning those pages and reading, it helps me to shut out everything else that's going on, and I feel so good.  I feel a sense of achievement and the insight that you've gained from doing it.

So reading, for me, would go in there, but my other one would be the one that you mentioned; cooking.  I love cooking, because it is creative, I love food, I love bringing people together to eat food.  There's so much in that process for me that is energising and I don't do it enough.  And I can really see when work is getting in my way of that, because I squeeze every other moment with something else, and I'll just grab something quick out of the fridge, and food becomes functional, rather than this feeling of deliberate rest.  And when I have the time to do it, it makes me really happy!

Sarah Ellis: So, if you've not got some deliberate rest in your week, maybe think about what that looks like for you.  Or perhaps, if you have, is it the right amount of frequency.  Certainly, I think for both of us, we see that when we get this right, it makes a really big difference. Our idea for action two is to set yourself one goal outside of work to achieve before the end of the year.  So, we're recording this now in June, so that gives you about six or seven months. 

If you're listening at a different point in the year, just think, "A goal for the next six months", and it's one thing outside of work.  I think this is the connection between things outside of work and in work, we're really trying to keep outside of work here, but to help you in your day job. I found a really good quote from Tony Robbins on this, which is, "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible".  When I then started to think about this, I think that's how goals are really helpful.  And again, there's a really good article from Positive Psychology all about goals, in terms of how they give us focus, they hold us accountable, they improve our ability to prioritise.  And what's interesting is, just by having a goal, we increase our energy and then we put more effort in, and then you're much more likely to achieve the goal.

So, they're sort of a positive, self-fulfilling prophecy, albeit we do know with goals, it's worth doing the, "What's the gold and also, what's the obstacle?" at the same time.  We've seen that, when we've talked about this before.  We don't just want a goal that sits slightly randomly that you have no sense of, "How am I ever going to get there?" or, "What might get in my way?" so we do want to think of some of those things.  But I think just having that one goals that's a personal goal, could be a really helpful motivator to just start to make some positive progress on something new or something different.

Helen Tupper: So, a couple of coach-yourself questions then, for you to think this through: what would you like to get better at?  What would you like to try for the first time?  Who could help you to achieve that goal?  So, quite a lot of those, I think, are around learning.  Mine isn't around learning.  When I think about my goal, I was thinking, "What's one goal that I really want to achieve that has nothing to do with work?"  I want to re-love where I live, which I appreciate is really big. The reason why is, I feel like over the last couple of years, with the pandemic, I live in a really hold house, like 400-odd years old.  It has all kinds of issues. 

I mean, it's got bags of character and bags of issues, because it's an old house.  And the last two years, due to the pandemic and work and all kinds of things, I haven't given the house the love that it needs, and now it's really in need of it. But we've got plans in place, we're going to redo our garage, which has an asbestos roof; I told you there were problems in our house!  I feel like there are plans in place, and if by the end of the year I could re-love where I live, I feel like my home, it would be less a functional place and more a place where I feel really, really happy in.  Whereas, most of the time now, I'm like, "Oh, that still needs sorting" or, "That still needs doing".  So, it feels like if I can give that some time and attention, it would have a really positive impact on lots of different things, if I could re-love where I lived.

Sarah Ellis: So mine, this is where this process has been helpful/I was really reluctant to say this out loud, because this is something that scares me.  So, I think that's also an interesting thing with goals; you can pick something that scares you.  So, my goal before the end of the year is, I want to try cold-water swimming and snorkelling in the UK.

Helen Tupper: I'll do it with you!

Sarah Ellis: Oh, yeah, you do do it.  We stayed somewhere and you did go swimming in the lake, didn't you?  I couldn't believe it!

Helen Tupper: Yeah, in my bra and my pants, because I hadn't taken a swimming suit, yeah!

Sarah Ellis: I remember being really bemused by that; I'm going, "What is she doing?"  But yeah, you were fine.  Two people actually who've been on the podcast previously, Christine Armstrong and Viv Groskop, who both have tried it and loved it, really taken to cold-water swimming, and I know it has lots of benefits for things like mental health, it's meant to be good for you; so, I see that and I recognise that.

Helen Tupper: Oh my gosh, can I take this challenge on?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Sarah and I are going away for a night together.  When are we doing that?

Sarah Ellis: August, so a good time.

Helen Tupper: Right, I'm taking it on, I'm going to help you with this.

Sarah Ellis: So, yeah.  I think it's the snorkelling bit that gets me interested, because I'm interested -- I mean, we don't have the most colourful fish and coral in the UK coast, but I would be interested to see all the seaweed and the crabs and the fish and stuff.  So, I think I want that, that's the outcome I want; I just need to get over maybe some of the fears and the hassle factor, and maybe mental barriers I've got in my mind.  But that is my goal before the end of the year.

Helen Tupper: So, idea for action number three is to spend time with some new radiators.  So, these are people who are likely to reenergise you outside of the day jobs.  There's a really nice quote from Margaret Heffernan which says, "You're to build relationships beyond the ones that we need right now".  I think so often, because we are so busy, to use that word again, we spend a lot of time with people doing the job that we do today, and it's this idea of making space for some other people in your life.  And actually, the more different some of those people are that we make space for, the better it can be for us in all kinds of ways. So, Matthew Syed, author of Rebel Ideas, talks about this idea of cognitive diversity.  So, when you're mixing with different people, spending time in different places, you get more creative insights and ideas, and that leads to better performance.  So, there is a business/work benefit to you doing this outside of work.  And the other thing that we tend to do is, we spend time with people that already know us quite well, and that isn't always great for new opportunity.  So, it's brilliant for support, like me and Sarah spending time with each other is the most support I could ever wish for in my work. But actually, if I want to spend time in a new world or generate new ideas or possibilities for my career, actually our worlds aren't that dissimilar.  And it's when you get outside of your world and you build relationships with new people, what's called a "weak tie", that you can open up more opportunities.

Sarah Ellis: So, three coach-yourself questions to ask here: what would you like to learn more about?  The second one: what communities already exist that could help you to do that?  And third one: what could you say yes to that you might normally deprioritise?  The reason I started the coach-yourself questions here with learning, if you're an introvert like me, and maybe Helen will have a different point of view on this, but if you just said to me, "You need to spend some time with some new radiators", I think I'd find that difficult to know where to start; that kind of, "I don't know what I don't know", would be too big a barrier for me. Whereas, what has really helped me on this one, because this is one where I've made some very active progress on in the last couple of months, is thinking, "Well, I would really like to work more and spend time with people who run their own fast-growing companies, so maybe not people who are in big FTSE 100 or big PLC companies, and people probably who've been doing that for a bit longer than Helen and I have, so who just have interesting insights and perspectives; and not in our world, so not necessarily in career development or in learning, or people who do podcasts, but just people who maybe are quite entrepreneurial.

So, I found that a really helpful starting point to then answer coach-yourself questions two and three, so what communities already exist and then, what might I say yes to.  So, I've got three things that I've been doing, two bigger things that I've got coming up, and one thing that I've just started to make part of my months.  The two bigger things are, I'm going to Wales in a couple of weeks' time, to something called the DO Lectures, which I have been trying to go to for a couple of years, but because of COVID, I've been waiting, so that's a happy coincidence.

DO Lectures is about 100 people in a field, I think it is, for a couple of days, but all people, I think, who will be really interesting radiators, new people.  I think I might know one person there, so quite scary for an introvert, but I think there's a shared sense of, if you're going to go to DO Lectures and you like the work that David Hieatt and the team do, I suspect everyone loves to learn and they're just really interested and curious people.  So, though I'm nervous, I'm really looking forward to that. I'm also going to something in September, called The Happy Startup School, which is run in the south of the UK.  And again, it's something you can go to for a day or a couple of days, just to learn about some of those people who've started up lots of businesses, some of those people who are at the start; so again, just hanging out, spending time with some new people.  So, they're quite immersive things.

Then, the other thing I've been doing a lot more of in the past couple of months are curiosity coffees.  So, where I've had people introduce me to other people, just usually on a Friday, I find Fridays are quite a good day for them for me, just spending half an hour with someone new.  And even last week, I had a conversation with someone; we both turned up and we were like, "We're not really sure who each other are, or what we're talking about", but we'd been introduced by someone and we had a really brilliant conversation, just learning about each other, you know, getting a window into each other's world.

So, I described a bit about what we do at Amazing If, and she described a bit about her company, she's run a few companies.  We asked each other some questions, we found some common ground and connections, some things we do really differently, and it was just fascinating.  And that point about energy, reenergising; I came away from that conversation reenergised. So, whether it is those small moments, like a curiosity coffee, where you're spending time with a new radiator; or, whether they're more immersive moments to reenergise, I think again these things don't happen unless you choose to make them happen, because so often they're not part of your day job, and they'll never be a task on your to-do list.  But every time I've done one of those curiosities, I just come away going, "I feel great, I feel really inspired [or] interested [or] intrigued".

Helen Tupper: I have one, and I knew this is about new radiators, but I already do this thing, but there are always new radiators in the communities.  So, I'm part of this community Cabal, which meets every month, and different people go every month to this event, and there's always food, so I'm always happy on that front. But you always sit next to something new, and it is one of the most energising things that I do in a month, because I meet people that I don't work with, I have fun conversations with food, and it's always worth me fitting it in.  Sometimes it is hard to fit in, because I'll be like, "Where do I need to be to get there, and how do I get from there to here?" I have to have those considerations, but it is always worth the effort, because I always come away more energised. 

So, that to me is an absolute keeper. The other thing that I would like to do that these questions made me think more about is art and poetry, maybe not both, because I'm just trying to be realistic with time.  But I do really love poetry, and I read it as quite an individual endeavour.  But I wonder whether there are some fun communities, and probably would need to be fun for me, there's got to be an element of fun involved in it somewhere; but some fun communities where people connect and talk about poetry and they learn together and no one's too expert, everyone is more of their interpretation. The same thing with art really.  I really love looking about and talking and thinking about art, but I mainly do it with my children, which I do find brilliant, because they have such an interesting perspective on what they see.  But could I find a community of people who again aren't too expert, it's not too academic, for example, but it's more about interpretation and artistic styles and a conversation with people who are curious?  I feel if I could make a bit of space for that, I'd really enjoy it. So, our fourth idea for action is about volunteering, helping someone or a cause or a local community, outside of your day job. 

There's a great quote from Audrey Hepburn which says, "As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others".  There is a lot of research in that point around the benefit of helping others, which is that you actually get a helpers' high, so your brain feels better when you help other people.  It feels rewarding, you feel valuable, you feel useful, and it's also really good for building your connections, because perhaps you'll be helping people that you wouldn't do ordinarily when you do this really intentional, "Who could I help and how could I help?" It's shown to offset loneliness as well, because you get that connection, that meaning, from what you're doing.  So, there are so many benefits to be had from volunteering.

Sarah Ellis: And when you read about the research behind volunteering, and again we'll include the article if you'd like to, because there's actually some very good scientific data that connects volunteering with why it is so good for you, because it's not only good for your mental health; if you're feeling okay and feeling good, I would say at the moment Helen and I are feeling good, it helps you to feel even better, so you get this boost; but actually, if you're not feeling great, it also helps you. 

So you might be thinking, "I'm not feeling brilliant at the moment", then volunteering is really useful.  But also, if you're feeling brilliant, you'll feel even more brilliant. So, there's lots of evidence about why this is just so important, and you live longer, if you really want to dive into some of the overall wellbeing things to do with volunteers.  They've done some really significant studies with lots of people.  And people who keep helping other people throughout their lives, probably because I guess you have a more positive mindset and attitude, and you're out just helping other people, you're getting that warm glow, that helpers' high that Helen described. So, three coach-yourself questions for you.  One: what causes are you personally passionate about?  Two: what skills and strengths have you got that could be useful for other people?  And three: what positive difference would you love to feel proud of by the end of this year? So, this was one for me where I haven't really got an answer. 

I recognise I already knew that this is really good for you, but I don't really feel like I positively volunteer at the moment, and I think volunteering can just be helping one person.  You know sometimes I think you go, "Volunteering equals charity".  Now, of course it can, and that's a brilliant thing if that's what you already do, or if that's what you'd like to do, but I think you can volunteer to help an individual, or the local community in some way. There was one thing that I spotted over the weekend that I thought, maybe I could volunteer my time for that.  I think it might be slightly cheating, because it perhaps still feels too connected to what we do in our day job, so I'm not sure this is actually the answer; but I spotted that in London, they're doing something called a Careers Festival, but particularly for people who are basically still in education, so for either young kids, or I think quite a lot of 14- to 16-, and then 16- to 18-year-olds, and it's all free.  And the point is, it's just helping people with some of the skills that they might need for the future, help people to just think about what their careers might look like. I thought it all looked, I think, I was starting to look at it, it all looked like it was not-for-profit, or what's called a Community Interest Partnership.  So I was like, "Okay, well I could volunteer my time for that.  Maybe I could turn up, maybe I could record something, maybe there are some tools that we've already got that could be useful".  So, I think that's a start. 

I actually don't think that's quite right, because as I said, I still think it's too close; we spend our days in careers, and it would make sense for us to probably do that, so I feel like it's on the periphery of what we're trying to talk about here.  But for me, this is a to-do, this is a gap that I've got, and something that I have done, I know I've talked about it before. I've done this much, much more in the past than I do today, and I do really miss this being part of my life, because I suppose I felt those positive benefits that we've just described first-hand and for loads or reasons, and we can't do all things all of the time, this just isn't actively there for me at the moment.  What about for you, Helen?

Helen Tupper: So, I think I've done the same thing as you, which is probably a bit of a career cop-out one, which is a thing that is a bit too close to work.  So, I've been thinking, I've not mentioned this to you yet, I've been thinking about future trustee stuff that I want to do.  So, currently I'm a Trustee for Working Families, and I've been thinking that those things tend to have a tenure, and I've been thinking, "What would I do if I wasn't being a Trustee for Working Families?" There's an organisation that I'm really passionate about, because it connects quite a lot of things I'm passionate about, which is Smart Works, the charity that helps put people into giving them the confidence basically to go to interviews by giving them some coaching and clothes that they might not have access to, so they feel really good when they're representing themselves.  I really like what that charity does, I like fashion --

Sarah Ellis: And we've had Kate on the podcast.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, we've had Kate on the podcast, I like the business, there's loads of good stuff.  I thought, "Actually, that could be, over the next couple of years, a trusteeship I'd like to work towards".  And in thinking about this, it made me think, "I wonder what I could volunteer for them for now; how could I get involved and support them earlier, so that I am closer to that charity, and so that I get to spend time helping people and in a way that I love anyway?  And it's quite connected to some things that I do".  But then I was like, "Oh, it's a cop-out".  It's exactly what you said; I should do that, but that's maybe too close to my current world. So then I thought, "Maybe the food thing.  I wonder whether there's something I could volunteer for that's connected to my love of food, but gives me the chance to help other people", like foodbanks or helping people?  There's obviously a lot of food poverty at the moment, and is there anything I could do, anything that I could get involved in that could help in that area, and then that might give me a way to connect my passion for food, but in a way that could also help people too.  Something to explore.

Sarah Ellis: And often, I think, if you are listening to this and you've got gaps across any of these five, which inevitably I would imagine most of us have at least a couple of gaps here; if all this does is make you start to look out for those opportunities, suddenly I think, even from having these conversations, you start to look for those things in a good way.  You get drawn towards -- you kind of create a pole for those things that feel relevant, because you suddenly have thought, "I would like to do that, and that's what it could look like", and then suddenly, things just seem to come your way.  But I think that's because then you're consciously looking for them.

Helen Tupper: Well also, I think if you talk to other people about it, like me talking to you about it, next time you had a conversation with someone or you're like, "Oh, Helen, that links with what you said", and people start to spot this for you.  So, it's a good thing to talk about in teams, I think, because you get to be able to help each other through it.

Sarah Ellis: So, our final idea for action is to read, watch or listen to three things that wouldn’t normally make it onto your playlist.  So, this is not about doing more of these things, it's about reading, watching, listening to different things.  Could be all reading, if that's particularly what you want to do, or you might be mixing it up. 

So, you can make your playlist, design your development in a way that works for you, but it's got to be things that you wouldn't normally spend time with. Great quote from Ken Robinson here, "Curiosity is the engine of achievement".  And the business case for curiosity is very easy to find.  So, there's a great HBR article that we'll link to; it makes us more adaptable, you view tough situations more creatively, and it reduces our confirmation bias. 

I found this one particularly interesting.  So, when we spend more time learning from different places, spaces, kind of widen and broaden our horizons, it improves our decision-making, because I guess if you get stuck, it avoids more the echo chamber trap of thinking in the same way, doing things in the same say.  It encourages you to engage, I guess, with different perspectives and points of view. Therefore, rather than always doing the same things, it encourages you to step back and just to think differently and look at different options.  So, there's lots you can read about why this would be a good thing to do, but not that easy, I don't think, to do and we'll come onto that.

Helen Tupper: So, a couple of coach-yourself questions then to think this through: who could you ask for recommendations who has different interests to you?  When will you read, watch or listen to your new playlists?  And, who could you learn along with?

Sarah Ellis: So, our idea to make this happen is, in August, we're going to do some slightly different podcasts, and you're all very welcome to learn along with us.  What we've done is, we've picked four different topics which we're describing at the moment as, "The ecosystem that we think helps to support your Squiggly Careers".  So, this is zooming out away from day-to-day work into four much bigger areas that we are not expert in, which is already making me a bit uncomfortable. 

I've already said to Helen I'm not sure about talking about some of these, but we're going to give it a go. So, we're going to look at sleep, health, relationships and money, so we've picked those four topics, and we are both going to read a book, a different book each, probably a book that neither of us would normally read, and we're going to then use the podcast to come together to talk about what we've both read, what we've learnt, what made sense to us, what didn't.  And for us I think, we've talked about before that it's helpful to have a bit of a forcing function, I think, to do this because this is you trying to break away from the mould of what you would normally do; and I think, if you can create a reason to do that, or some accountability for doing that, it just makes it much more likely to happen. If you're being realistic, "Would I read the four books that I'm going to read prior to those August podcasts if we weren't doing them?"  No, because I would just think I've got some other things I fancy doing that would already be the things that would be on my normal playlist.  So suddenly, by us almost creating this idea, it means that I've got a new playlist, and actually ours are all reads. 

So, we're both going to do four books each. Does that then mean it probably might prompt me to think, "Maybe I'll listen to that podcast on sleep?"  It probably will, but we've been quite focused to get us started.  And also, I think more generally, I do have a couple of people who are definitely on my "who" list in terms of asking for recommendations, who I know read, watch and listen to things that I would just never discover otherwise.  So, my sister is very good for this. I'm very fortunate to have a sister who's very curious, bought me a magazine on Friday that I think -- and she's highlighted a little paragraph in it that sort of describes Squiggly that I will share with everyone, because it is brilliant; I will share it on Instagram.  But again, she spends time in different worlds to me and so I always take her recommendations very seriously, because I just know, "That will be a new playlist for me.  That's not something that I'm going to discover otherwise".

Helen Tupper: I feel as well that, just for example, our August idea has liberated my learning a little bit.  It gives it a real forcing function to look outside the stuff that you would normally spend time reading, watching or listening to, and giving it an intention; so again, maybe do this as a team.  We are working with an organisation at the moment on a summer learning challenge, where they're setting some themes at the start of this particular month; and by the end of the month, they've all got to share some digestible learning for everyone else's development, and I think you could do something similar. You could take sleep, money, the sorts of things we're looking at, or it could be something else, but it's a forcing function for you to look outside of your normal world of learning.  And I'm really excited by it, I can't wait.  My husband's like, "What are all these random books that you've been buying?"  I'm like, "You wait, there's some great insights in here"!

Sarah Ellis: My partner did say that, he was like, "Are you sure you need new books?"  I was like, "Yeah, it's for work"!  So, let me just summarise those five ways to reenergise yourself to reenergise your work, so you've got them all neatly, because I appreciate we've kind of talked around them, clearly for ourselves, for the last half an hour or so! So, number one: deliberate rest; number two: set yourself one goal outside of work; number three: spend time with some new radiators; number four: find opportunities to volunteer; and number five: read, watch or listen to three things that wouldn't normally make it onto your playlist.

Helen Tupper: So, thank you so much for listening to today's episode.  We hope you find it helpful and you've taken away lots of different ideas for action.  We'd love to know what you do; or if you've got any feedback or suggestions for us on our ideas as well, just get in touch with us either by Instagram, where we're @amazingif, or just email us, helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com, and we'll be back with you next week for another Squiggly Careers episode.  Bye everyone.

Sarah Ellis: Bye everybody.