Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:00:21: 2024 Squiggly Career Calendar

00:01:38: About the topic

00:04:19: Some examples

00:09:24: Three starter questions

00:11:21: Three ideas for action…

00:11:24: … 1: minimum viable product

00:16:27: … 2: scratch stacking

00:19:02: … 3: smart copying

00:23:40: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah.

Helen Tupper: And I'm Helen.

Sarah Ellis: And this is the Squiggly Careers podcast, where every week we take a different topic to do with work and we talk about some ideas, some tools, some techniques, anything that we think will help you to just navigate your Squiggly Career with that bit more confidence, clarity and control.

Helen Tupper: And before we get started on today's episode, we want to let you know about a new tool we have created.  There are always new tools, everybody.  If this is the first time listening, welcome to the world of Squiggly Career tools.  The latest one we have created is a new Squiggly Career Calendar.  So, we've done a few of these, and in the past we've basically done a big pdf with a different theme for every month, and you kind of get it all at once.  But we think it's quite a lot to absorb to do it in that way.  So, our approach for 2024 is to send you, on the first of every month, an email which summarises all the ideas for action for that month linked to a particular theme.  So for example, in January, the theme is all about growth goals, and in the email you get a downloadable template which has got some ideas for action, some coach-yourself questions, there are some resources that we recommend as well, and it's all put together for you in a really simple way.

We do do a short summary on social.  So, if you're thinking, "Oh no, I might miss a newsletter", or, "I don't need another email in my life", you can get the abridged version, which will be on Amazing If on LinkedIn, so you can see it there.  But if you think, "Oh actually, that would be a useful email for me to get", then just sign up for it and we will send it your way.  The links for that you'll get in the show notes, so if you look at the show notes you'll be able to click on the link and then sign up.  If you can't find that, just email us.  We're helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com.

Sarah Ellis: So, on to today's topic, which has been suggested by a listener called Leanne, give Leanne a little squiggly shoutout, who heard us talking in a previous episode about the things that we enjoy and do well, and wanted to know more about how to work with a blank page, what to do when we start from scratch, so where there's no playbook to follow, where you're probably not doing something that you've done before. 

So, that can feel really daunting and overwhelming, and probably at the same time quite intriguing and interesting.  I think there's lots of ands when you're starting with a blank piece of paper.  And Leanne mentioned that she'd recognised just how much I love it, because I do.  My favourite thing is a blank piece of paper, I think for lots of different reasons.  But she asked us to break it down a bit, to sort of say, "Okay, well if I'm in that situation what, useful tools or ideas have you got that might help me to be even better," because I bet everybody's already more brilliant than they give themselves credit for, "at navigating that starting-from-scratch scenario".

Helen Tupper: And you don't have to wait for a starting-from-scratch scenario, so this doesn't have to be like, you've been given a new project to work on or you've started a new role.  There are actually quite a lot of ways you can create this for your career, and it is a useful thing to do because this ability to start from scratch can make quite a big difference to your development.  So, it's really useful if you find yourself feeling stuck, like if you know you're good at starting from scratch, it's a way that you can get yourself unstuck from those situations. 

If you know you're good at starting from scratch, it means that you are less likely to get old knowledge, like the way you've done things before, get in the way of new growth, because you're able to bring that beginner into the way of you working really easily. It also, I think, is an important way that other people take confidence in your ability to learn new things and actually unlearn things that you've done before, which is really useful.  People are more likely to come to you with those projects and those things that need new ways of thinking if they recognise that that's an ability that you've got.  So, this is something that we think is useful for everybody, not just for people who might be put in a position by somebody else where they have to do something for the first time.

Sarah Ellis: And I think this is closely linked to learning agility, which is something that we talked about on the podcast last year, because if learning agility is the ability to succeed in first-time situations, that is essentially starting from scratch.  And so, I think bringing these two topics together, that would be quite a good twin listen.  If this is something where you recognise you do a lot of this, or perhaps it's just a big part of the role that you do, or just something that is already a strength that you want to stretch, perhaps combining this with also thinking about learning agility, I think that they're complementary and have lots of overlap.

So, we thought it'd be useful to consider what are we both starting from scratch in January.  So, we're recording this on 3 January, and I was looking ahead to the next three or four months and just thinking, "What am I starting from scratch, and also what are we starting from scratch?"  So, I got a couple of things that we're working on together that are quite different things.  The first one is, we are starting from scratch writing a new book.  So, more about that probably another week but that's a really big starting from scratch.  That's one that even somebody like me who loves starting from scratch, I go, "Wow, deep breath".

Helen Tupper: That's a really big blank page!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, a really big blank page.

Helen Tupper: That's like many blank pages.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I don't think I've ever done anything as big as that will be in terms of starting from scratch.  Slightly smaller and slightly different, experimenting with how to use AI to support Squiggly Careers.  Again, I can tell you nothing about what that looks like and how we're going to experiment.  We are starting from scratch there.  So, that will be really interesting and quite different to something like writing a book. One that's a personal one for me is, I'm starting from scratch doing a daily sketch journal.  So, one of my values is variety.  So, I've never really done anything consistently or repeatedly because it never feels super motivating for me.  But I do like the idea of increasing the quality of my reflections and my self-awareness, and doing that in a different way and not only writing but maybe also drawing.  I mean, I'm on day three, so so far, so good.  But that does feel like something very different for me.  What about you Helen?

Helen Tupper: Well before we move on what have you sketched so far?

Sarah Ellis: Well, funny you should ask, I've got it right here.  So, I've sketched -- so, day one, there's little stories behind all of these which you can all second-guess what was happening in my life in these moments, so at the moment I'm writing a sentence and drawing a little picture underneath it, a sketch underneath it.  So, day one, so this was New Year's Day, "Small moments to yourself can make a big difference", and there's a picture of a book.

Helen Tupper: Is that your book-off?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, absolutely.  Oh yeah, maybe I'll add that little book-off next to it.  And then, day two, I actually got a little reference here from Cal Newport, because I read a Cal Newport newsletter that day, and he was talking about measuring intention and action because they're closely related, so don't just measure one or the other, measure both.  And so, I did a little sketch of measuring intention and measuring action and sort of showing the difference between the two.  So, two days in.

 Tupper: Lovely.  I mean, I'm just going to skip past the fact that if I was doing that and putting Cal Newport quotes on a daily thing, you would mock me a lot.

Sarah Ellis: That's a quote, an insight.

Helen Tupper: Oh, sorry.  Okay, it's an insight, everybody.  Is it directly attributable to his work, or a summary of some of the things?

Sarah Ellis: Well, I did write his name in brackets, because I just felt like if I wanted to refer back to it, I wanted to know where I got it from. Helen Tupper: You know the source, the source details.

Sarah Ellis: The reference.

Helen Tupper: The reference.  Well, I am also doing something daily, and my start from scratch with this is a new way of reading.  Sounds random, but if you are a regular listener, you'll know that one of the things that sort of was a mistake that I'd made, I think we called it in our review of the year, was that I was disappointed that I hadn't kept up my reading days.  So, these are days that I used to do relatively regularly, where all I would do is read and I found it a really good way to focus my attention on digesting new stuff and giving me new ideas.  And I hadn't prioritised it so it hadn't happened and I felt I was missing that insight into my work.  And I think that's partly because I hadn't prioritised it and also partly because the way that I work is, it's actually quite hard to take a day out. So, rather than just being dependent on that thing happening on a reading day, which I still want to do, I'm doing a daily chapter.  Now, I'm taking the pressure off a little bit of having to read the complete book, but just doing a daily chapter, and I'm doing it in the morning. 

You're really good at reading in the evening, but to be honest, when I go to bed I just want to go to sleep.  And so, I'm going to do it in the morning rather than scrolling on something I don't really need to see, and I'm just going to do one chapter.  So, the books I'm starting with, I've got two going in parallel.  Not sure that that's a good thing, I know.  I'll see if you've read these.  Philippa Perry, The Book You Want Everyone You Love to Read, have you read it?

Sarah Ellis: No, I've read her first one, The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read.

Helen Tupper: Yes, and so far, chapter one in to that one, she's sort of sharing useful models that she uses in her work to help people, psychology models, so that you can use them to increase your own self-awareness, I quite like that.  And then I'm also reading The Brain Fog Fix by Dr Mike Dow, because the subtitle, I was like, "Yes, please", Reclaim Your Focus Memory and Joy in Just 3 Weeks.

Sarah Ellis: I mean…!

Helen Tupper: I mean, that's a good promise.  I get focus, memory and joy in three weeks, Sarah, a chapter a day.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, talk to me in three weeks.

Helen Tupper: Okay, I'll let you know.  Well, I'll be too happy, I'll be full of joy.

Sarah Ellis: You'll stop talking to me because you'll be too happy.  You'll be like, "I don't want to talk to her any more".

Helen Tupper: "Don't bring me down with your drawings, your cynical insights, or whatever it is!"

Sarah Ellis: It starts quite well until we do the three-week and you're like, "Hmm, really!"  Well, we'll find out, won't we?!

Helen Tupper: We'll report back, everybody!  So, three questions then to get you started, and these each follow each other in a bit of a sort of question waterfall.  Number one, "What's the problem I'm trying to solve?"  Something for example for me is, I want to become a better visual communicator.  We deliver lots of workshops, we draw all of them, or we're supposed to draw them.  Sarah draws, I just tend to write words and pretend it's drawing. 

And so, I want to draw because it means that I can communicate more consistently and clearly in our sessions.  So, I know it's important, that's the problem I'm trying to solve, but I always revert to words.  So, one to fix. "What do I already know?" is the question number two.  So for me, in my example, I already know the power officials.  I've seen a lot of research, so I have a lot of evidence that it's worth me putting the effort into starting from scratch with it.  I already know some people that are very good at it that I can learn from.  And I actually already know there are some good resources, like there are some good sort of drawing, and I've actually got some books.  I mean, I've tried this before, I just haven't committed to it, but this time might be different.  So, what do you already know?  The purpose of that one is to just sort of accumulate all the sort of reference points and resources that you've got that might help you sort of speedily start from scratch. Then the third question is, "What could I do first?"  So, the idea here is we're not trying to solve it all at once, we're just trying to make one small move forward.  So for me, for example, what could I do first?  I could take one of our most delivered sessions and probably sit down with one of those people that I know are good at this and ask them how they would draw it differently.  That would probably be a very useful thing for me to start that process with.

Sarah Ellis: So, I think just using questions, whether it's those questions or questions that you write yourself, you might have other ideas of questions that could be useful, I think just being able to answer some questions actually gives you momentum, it gives you momentum to move forward.  And then you can move on to our first idea for action, which is borrowing from what's called an MVP approach, Minimum Viable Product, which I'm sure lots of you have either done before or got experience of, but it's really useful for two reasons: they give you pace; and they mitigate risk at the same time.  So, they almost feel like contradictory things when you bring those things together, like you're going to move forward fast and you're going to make sure that you don't do things that are too risky, because actually when you go fast, it can feel quite risky. So, the way to do an MVP when you're starting from scratch is, one, create something that is good enough.  I always think if you're someone like me, this can potentially become a stumbling block. 

So, even though I'm somebody who likes a blank piece of paper, I don't love things that are good enough.  Helen does, Helen's really good at prototyping.  So, you have to be really careful that you don't here create a copout of going, "Oh, well my good-enough bar is so high that it's not an MVP at all", it's actually like a maximum viable product because you just keep working on it and working on it and working on it.  So, if you are like me, just watch out for that.  Figure out when you have to let it go to let it grow, is often what we would say there.  So, just be a bit careful on that one if you've got that tendency to hold on to things too tightly. Once you've got something that's good enough, the purpose of doing that is to then get feedback from the people that matter. 

So, that could be customers, that could be clients, that could be colleagues.  So, it has to be good enough that whoever those people are can understand it and can give you useful feedback.  And here, we would always recommend asking for feedback and framing that feedback with questions that are going to give you the insights that you need.  So for example, if I was going to come up with an idea for a new podcast format, I need to give Helen enough about that format and then I probably want to give her some questions that are actually then going to help me to figure out how useful is that format going to be, what does she think could be better, is that a podcast that she would like to listen to.  So, really think through what those questions are. 

Don't just give someone something and just go, "Can I have some feedback, please?" because you won't get the quality and response. Then the really important bit is, so what now?  So, what are you going to do with that feedback?  Do you swerve, so are you going to change direction?  So, maybe you're still heading for the same outcome, but you're going to get there in a different way.  Are you going to speed up?  You're like, "Wow, there's something here that's great that's gone really well, so let's go for it".  Are you going to slow down?  Has that feedback given you more questions?  Do you just need to press pause momentarily, or are you going to stop because something didn't work, it just doesn't feel like you're getting the response that you'd hoped for?  And none of those are right or wrong.  It's not about going, "Well, if I swerve or I stop, then I've failed.  And if I speed up, that's the only win here".  I think the win is going through the MVP approach, because actually what you've then done is you've started from scratch, you've made really good progress and then you've got something to work with. Then I think my only other bit of advice when you're doing this is whether you label it as an MVP, whether you label it as an experiment, whether you just say to people, "I'm just getting this to a good enough point so I can get some feedback"; make sure you tell people what you're doing, because if people think it's a finished product, then you probably will get a different response to if people know, "Oh, this is very much work in progress", which is probably how I would describe it.

Helen Tupper: And I think that last process, the sort of swerve, speed up, slow down, or stop, is really important, because if you are a person like Sarah, and to some extent me to be honest, that is attracted to new things, like there's a lot of energy in the new, and you enjoy starting from scratch, then the danger is you start lots and lots of things from scratch and you get feedback and you do all those first pieces, but the problem is they're all sort of there in parallel and it gets a bit distracting and you don't know what you're doing with it, it's confusing for other people and you're not equally committed to things.  I don't think that's great just to continually start lots of things from scratch.  What you need to do is that last process, where you're sort of in control of what you're creating and people can see the status of those different things.  And then I think that gives people confidence that you're managing all of that newness.  Otherwise, I think there's this risk that people think maybe you just randomly created things that also create confusion at the same time for people.

Sarah Ellis: I think this is a really good example of where you can borrow brilliance from a different world.  MVPs I think probably typically come from tech world and where people are building products, and I was researching this before today and there are so many useful resources out there where you can read about MVPs, really good diagrams, really good summaries and it's not a hard kind of translation to then go, "Well, how would I then apply this to my world to start from scratch?"  And everything I was reading I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's useful.  I can see how that could help me, even as somebody who already enjoys doing this".  So, worth spending a bit of time on that if that feels useful for you.

Helen Tupper: So, idea for action number two is scratch stacking which is something I think we sort of borrowed and built on from James Clear who has this concept of habit stacking.  So, if you're trying to build a new habit, then actually attach it onto something that you already do.  So for example, if I'm trying to listen to more podcasts and what is something I do every day?  Brush my teeth, get ready, put my makeup on.  If I attach the new habit I'm trying to create, listen to podcasts, onto something I already do, then you're not trying to find extra time in your day to do it.  So, we've taken that concept and thought, "Well, how could that apply to starting something from scratch?" because this doesn't always mean you have to do something dramatically different.  You don't have to completely redo your working week or completely change how you're running a meeting or approaching a project, for example. 

What you can do is take something that you already do regularly and sort of add the new onto it. So for example, it might be that you always run your team meeting and it happens every week on a Monday.  You might say, "Why don't we try a standup meeting on a Wednesday?" because you've seen some new way of running meetings, which is supposed to improve the effectiveness of them.  Or maybe you create a lot of presentations and rather than never doing a presentation again, you might think, "Well, what I'm going to do is take the fact that I always do the presentation for the project meeting, and I'm going to use a brand-new bit of tech to improve how I do it and start from scratch with that bit of tech". 

So, often taking what I already do and adding something new to it is a good way to get a bit more comfortable with this sort of starting from scratch approach. Some ideas, I've tried to think about, "Well, what do lots of people do a lot of?" presentations being one of them, I found a new tool that I haven't tried out yet called Typeset, which is supposed to make beautiful presentations very quickly.  So, that's an example of doing a bit of tech stacking, something that you do, but adding a new bit of tech to it.  Vision boards, which you might want to do, I've recently done a LinkedIn post on how to create your vision board.  But vision boards, plus the starting from scratch thing is adding an accountability partner.  That is something that I am doing with a friend called Abby.  We're going to be doing a bit of accountability over WhatsApp.  So, that's adding people into it, starting from scratch with bringing somebody else into what you're working on or the way you're working.  And if you do a lot of workshops, a new tool that you could add in to the way that you do workshops is one called Crazy Eights, which Sarah and I have spoken about before.  It's sort of an innovation process really, to quickly generate new ideas without a lot of critique coming from other people that can kill them.  So, that's an example of adding a new process into the way you're working. They are not the only ones that you can do, but they are just some ideas to get you started with starting from scratch, if that makes sense.

Sarah Ellis: So, idea for action three, we're calling smart copying.  And we have had quite a long debate about the word "copy" and "copying", which I think I feel more comfortable with actually.

Helen Tupper: That's so weird.

Sarah Ellis: I know!

Helen Tupper: Sarah's normally super-sensitive about words and things and I'm like, "Oh no, I don't like the idea of copy".  It's like, "I'm quite comfortable with it".

Sarah Ellis: I think it's because I have read quite a few books on idea generation and developing new things from scratch, and one of the points that you see really consistently is everyone sort of copies what's gone before but you're putting things together in a new way.

Helen Tupper: Well, that's why it's smart copying.

Sarah Ellis: There you go.

Helen Tupper: But I feel like copying in its own right goes against my fundamental belief that you should run your own race.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: I feel like there's a values deep conflict for me with the idea of copying.

Sarah Ellis: Well also, I think if you're just copying, the likelihood is you're not going to do a good job, because someone's already done that thing so you're losing your uniqueness and what makes you distinctive.  So, we're not saying just copy in a sort of -- we talked about actually we really don't want it to be like a cut and paste.  You're not just going, "Well, I look at Helen and I just cut and paste what Helen does", because for loads of reasons, very clearly that's never going to work really well for you. What we're suggesting here is, when you are starting from something from scratch, and it can feel really hard and quite overwhelming at that point, start by looking at what someone else does really well in that area. 

Then think, "How could that be useful for me?"  So at this point, almost you started off and you are going, "Well, if I was just going to copy them, what is it that they do well?"  You're trying to almost pick out what is it that makes them so good at what they do.  Then you start to go, "Actually, how can I smartly use this in a way that feels relevant for me, for my world, for the work that I'm doing, so how could this be useful for me?"  And then finally, "What would I do differently as a result?"  At that point, you've sort of adapted and you've applied.  So, we were then testing this out to make sure this works and that we're not just copying people. So, if we were thinking about our next book that we're going to start writing, so we're starting that from scratch, and we were like, "Right, who is the guru of business books, person we really admire?"  So, Adam Grant obviously sprung to mind for us; admire him and his work and the books that he writes.  So we were like, "What is one thing, for example, he does well?" Helen Tupper: He does more than one thing well, so we just picked one!

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, he does lots of things.  We were like, "I don't want to make it too lengthy"!  One thing he does really well is collects data from quite simple surveys so that his work lives beyond a book.  And we always talk about this idea of, we think all of our work should go beyond books because books are not for everyone, and we think he does a really good job using those surveys to bring insights to life.  So we're like, "Great, we've seen how he's done that".  But again, we wouldn't do it in exactly the same way but it's an interesting insight to start with.

How could that be useful for us?  Well, that gives you some data points to talk to, whether that might be media about, or maybe some of our clients about, when people are talking about impact or, "Can you give us some stats and facts?"  So, for people who like those, it gives you those things to be able to share.  I think it also means that your work feels really relevant beyond just a book coming out.  So, it gives you more reasons to keep talking about the work that you're doing.  Also, you can test your ideas to make sure they are relevant, and you can do it quite simply. 

So, we talked about, I think that word "simple surveys" is important.  You don't need to be a data scientist to be able to design these.  So, we were like, "Okay, we can have a go at this". Then, "What would we do differently as a result?"  Well, one of the things that we might do is, we don't have to wait for a book to start doing this.  So, we could start doing really simple career surveys, actually almost straightaway if we wanted to, to almost build up an evidence bank answering the question, "What matters to people in their Squiggly Career at the moment?"  And actually then suddenly you get to, that's even more useful than anything to do with a book.  Actually, that informs the workshops we run, how we help individuals, the podcast topics that we cover.  So, even just going through that smart copying process, suddenly starting from scratch doesn't feel daunting, it feels exciting.  And we've gone quite far away from where we started, but we needed that catalyst of almost copying a bit of a go-to guru to just get us started.

Helen Tupper: So, just to recap then on those three ideas for action: the first was to use the MVP approach; the second was to do some scratch stacking; and the third was to do some smart copying.  And we will summarise all of those ideas for action in the PodSheet, which if you are a regular listener you'll know that you can get that on our website and that the link is also in the show notes.  If you are new to the world of Squiggly Careers, welcome, Happy New Year to you.  But yeah, if you are new, then there is something we send out every week called PodMail.  You can sign up for it on our website on amazingif.com.  It comes out on a Tuesday and you basically get the PodSheet, the summary of the episode, and it's all there for you.  So, any one of those places, you'll be able to find the summary of those three ideas for action that we have just talked about.

Sarah Ellis: But that's all for this week, as always thank you so much for listening, we do really appreciate it and back with you again soon.  Bye for now.

Helen Tupper: Bye everyone.