Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction 00:03:15: Benefits of learning 00:06:06: Barriers to learning 00:08:50: How much time you devote to learning 00:13:08: Five learning questions on how to learn… 00:14:20: …1: with no spare time? 00:21:02: …2: with no available money? 00:26:44: …3 and 4: on a £50 budget or a £500 budget? 00:38:15: …5: if you don't want to learn alone? 00:42:27: 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 talk about a different topic to do with work, and share some ideas for action and tools to try out, that we hope will really help you to navigate your Squiggly Career with that bit more confidence, clarity and control. Helen Tupper: And if you're an early listener to the podcast, you might not know about the Squiggly Careers community that surrounds it, that we're very proud has developed with each episode.  So, we've got things like PodPlus, which happens every week.  So, if you want to talk and discuss the topics that we share on the podcast a bit further, then we do this live session, it's just 30 minutes, it's 9.00am every Thursday.  Either Sarah or myself are there, and about 80 to 100-odd people, who all share their perspectives, ask their questions, and we just dive a bit deeper.  It's a lovely learning community; it's quite a positive part of the week. So, we've got things like that, and then we've also got PodMail, which is a weekly email, which has all the links to our resources in there, things like the PodSheet, which is a downloadable summary of the episode, and also a PodNote, which is a swipeable summary.  So, whether you want to download, swipe or discuss, we have some stuff for you to support you with your Squiggly Career.  Or, you can just listen to this, and that can be it too. Sarah Ellis: And it's worth saying that it's all free and it will always be free, as part of our commitment to making careers better for everyone.  And we're also doing our best to design everything so that it's really shareable, so we know that increasingly people are sharing maybe things like the PodNote with their teams, or people are completing the PodSheets together with managers. So, if you ever have any ideas for how we can help you even further, if there's something that you need that you're not getting from us, or something that would be really helpful in your organisation, please always let us know, because we're always iterating learning; and loads of those ideas that we just talked about came from our community in the first place.  Please always let us know how you're getting on with them. Helen Tupper: And you can email us, we're just helen&sarah@squigglycareers.com, with any of those ideas, and we will do our best to act on them.  But this week, we are going to be talking about a topic close to our hearts, and close to our business as well, which is learning, because it is Learning at Work Week, when this will be going out, though I'm sure people will be listening to it outside of that week, and learning isn't just for Learning at Work Week, everybody! But we thought it might be useful to talk about some of the benefits of prioritising your learning; if it's not already obvious, there are some things specifically about Squiggly Careers that make it very important for us to prioritise.  But we also want to acknowledge some of the barriers that can get in the way.  Once we've talked through that, we then have lots of different ideas, so that you can invest in your learning at work. The way that we've structured this, I'm quite excited about this, we've got five different questions, everything from, "How could you learn if you want to learn with someone else?" or, "How could you learn if you've not got any money to invest in it?"  We've got five different questions, and Sarah and I have taken those questions away and have both come up with some ideas for action about what would we do, if that was the question that we were thinking about, and we haven't shared our answers with each other. So, you're going to get two very different perspectives on how we would respond those challenges, which means that you get double the ideas for action out of today's episode on ideas for your learning at work. Sarah Ellis: We'll do benefits and barriers pretty quickly, because I think the interesting part is probably part two, of what we're going to talk about today; but worth setting the scene, I think, for learning within Squiggly Careers, because we are doing quite a few programmes on everyday development and creating learning cultures, with lots of the organisations we work with.  It's so interesting I think particularly to talk to people about the practical barriers and the day-to-day reality of making learning part of how you work, and how much of an almost transformation that takes for a lot of people, because we just don't feel like we are learning as much as we need to. So, why is it important?  Well, I think the first thing is from a career resilience perspective, we want to keep our knowledge new.  And when we say new, we don't mean always adding new stuff, but it's really this idea of what are we unlearning, relearning and learning all of the time.  I think when there is the change and uncertainty that we are all very used to now, and we don't probably need to remind ourselves of, we don't want our skills or our strengths to stall or stand still. So, we always want to be thinking about, "How can we make our strengths stronger?  What are the new skills that might be really useful?  If I want to develop in new directions, what are some of the people I might want to learn from?"  So, we always want that work-in-progress mindset and mentality, when it comes to our learning, really getting away from learning equals going on a course, or feeling like you're sitting in a classroom, which is actually a harder thing to let go of than I think we sometimes give ourselves credit for, because most of us grew up thinking learning should look like going to school.  I still have to sometimes remind myself how much we broaden our horizons when we think about learning. We also know that learning is a really important part of staying curious, and making curious connections.  So, I think it helps you to build your relationships, it helps you to build relationships particularly beyond the ones that you need right now, so outside of your day-to-day.  And there's a great phrase that someone in our community shared with us, that's always really stuck with Helen and I; I'm sure we've talked about it before.  Someone said to us, "You've got to make sure that you collect the dots so that you can connect the dots". When we're all trying to spot opportunities to add value, we're solving new problems or difficult, knotty problems, if you're doing lots of collecting the dots and lots of learning, you sometimes don't know how they're going to come together to be useful.  But it's almost one of those times where you need to trust the process.  That's often what I remind myself of with some of the learning that I do that is maybe less linked to my day-to-day, is trusting it will become useful, it might just be useful tomorrow.  Then, some of your learning, I think you have more of a direct link to, "Well, how can I put this into practice straightaway.  So, I think just the range of learning and designing our own development in a way that works for us, I think is so important. Helen Tupper: So now, let's think about some of the things that get in our way, and again I don't want to depress everybody, but I guess we just recognise these things and it would be wrong to ignore them.  I think one of the biggest barriers that we face when we talk to other people that always comes up is time.  It already feels like we're trying to fit a lot in, then we're trying to learn on top of it; and particularly when learning feels like going on a course, it feels like another thing we've got to fit into our days, rather than just seeing learning as about the way that we're working, it feels like this is an extra thing to fit in, and that can feel quite hard. The other thing is about budget.  So, sometimes when we think about what we might want to learn, one of the biggest barriers can be how much that thing might cost.  And again, that can be because we think about it being a course, or maybe it's a programme that you want to go on.  But I've definitely been in situations where there've been specific things that I've wanted to learn, that I couldn't afford to learn myself, but then I also couldn't get that investment from my company, because the learning was limited by level, or there was some hurdle I had to go through in order to access it. So, it feels quite frustrating that there's this thing that you want to do to learn and grow, but there's 101 hurdles that you have to go through in order to get it and it's like, "Why should learning feel this hard?"  I think that can also affect your motivation sometimes when there's something that you want to do. As well as time and budget, one of the other barriers can be a lack of belief, particularly if there's something that you want to learn that you're starting from scratch.  So, maybe you are becoming a manager for the first time, and suddenly you're learning a whole new set of skills about how to manage people, and that can feel really scary.  Or, maybe you've done a Squiggly move into a different part of the business, and you were actually really knowledgeable about the area you've come from, but now you don't know a lot about the area that you're in.  And admitting that you might not have all the answers, and asking people for help about what you could learning to improve, can feel quite scary, particularly if you've got some confidence gremlins that might be getting in the way of your learning. I think, one of the other things that does come up is when learning is important to you, but it doesn't necessarily feel important to the organisation you're in.  So, you've got the mindset of being a learn-it-all, but you're not necessarily in a place where learning feels like it's available or important to all, and that can feel quite a difficult thing for you to do.  Often when I'm talking, and Sarah, we're talking about whether you should stay in your organisation or go somewhere else, we often talk about, pick learning organisations.  If you're in a learning organisation, that's going to help you futureproof your career.  But if you're not in a learning organisation, there's a point at which that might hold you back, and that certainly won't feel great if that's one of your priorities. Sarah Ellis: So, a question that might be useful, just to start your thinking, as we're considering learning at work and what that looks like for you is, "What percentage of your week do you think you currently spend learning?" and I asked this question in a workshop last week with loads of different people, and I gave options, so I gave ranges like 0% to 10%, 10% to 30%, going up in different increments.  Most people said less than 15%. Then, when I dug a bit deeper to say, "Okay, so tell me how you got to that percentage, what were you thinking of?" partly it was because people were thinking, "I just don't get any time to learn, I do the same things in the same way every week", and part of it was also how we frame learning.  So, because we are very limited often in how we label learning, it was like, "But I don't do it --", those automatic labels of learning, like "workshops" and "courses", that feels like learning, so that's an easy thing to identify, and that adds up to my percentage.  But anything beyond that doesn't seem to count or feel like learning for people. So, I just think it's an interesting question to ask yourself, "What is your percentage at the moment?  What constitutes that percentage for you?  How much of that is about also you changing your mindset as to what learning looks like and how you label learning?  And also, how much is more about you thinking about what does learning look like; how are you going to design your own development?" Helen Tupper: I also think, in terms of those benefits and barriers, it's worth you personally reflecting on, "What is the biggest benefit for you for increasing your intentionality around your learning?"  So for me, for example, I think it would help me to increase my impact in my role, in lots of different ways actually, in my day-to-day job as being the CEO of the business that Sarah and I run together, Amazing If, but also in helping other people with their career development, I think I can increase my impact if I prioritise my learning. Then I think the biggest barrier for me, it's less about time, but it's more specifically about prioritising and protecting the time; that's the biggest barrier.  I don't prioritise it in my working week and even when I do, I don't always protect it.  And I think if you could just understand the benefit for you personally, I think that might increase your motivation to take action.  And if you can acknowledge the barrier, it can help you to be more specific about what you might need to do differently, so that it doesn't become the last thing on your to-do list, for example. Sarah Ellis: I think those are two really good questions, because I got to a very different answer for a benefit. Helen Tupper: Oh, tell me! Sarah Ellis: Very selfishly, my first thought was, "I just enjoy it"!  Then, I connected a few more dots and thought, well that's because learning is one of my values.  So, I know that if I have anything that feels like learning for me within a week, they're often the moments that give me the most energy.  Our values are what motivate and drive us, so I'm very motivated, selfishly very motivated by learning. I almost think I could often spend quite a lot of my week in a learning void, in quite an enjoyable, but not very practical or commercially successful way!  But I would enjoy it, I could design that, I think, quite easily.  So, that benefit question was a really good one for me, and I hadn't thought of that until you distilled it in that way. The barrier for me, I think, is sometimes about figuring out how do I learn best, so less about prioritising it as you say and then keeping that priority, but more about I think I sometimes attempt to learn in ways that don't work for me.  And when we answer some of the questions we're going to talk about later, I think I'll bring that to life a little bit more.  So for me, it's sometimes taking the ownership to design my own development that's the barrier, not the prioritising it. Helen Tupper: A little bit of feedback for you: I really see the benefit when you do.  Your energy and your ideas are both multiplied, and it's actually a different kind of energy you bring back when you've been learning; it's like a happy energy.  You're like, "I just love what I'm doing!" and it's a very happy Sarah, I see that in you. So, we have covered learning before.  As we said, it's a topic close to our heart and something we're both really, really passionate about.  And I think what we've covered more before has been the principles of how to be a learn-it-all, for example, which we did a podcast on, and we had some ideas for unlearn, learn and relearn in our first Harvard Business Review article that we did.  And we'll put the links to those in the PodSheet so you can access them. But what we wanted to do in this episode, for Learning at Work Week, is really give you some practical things that you could do to invest in your learning, like things that you could read and watch and listen to, or perhaps courses you can go on, but very much from mine and Sarah's perspectives.  So, we've got these five different questions.  Sarah and I have taken them, we don't know what each other's answers are.  It's either going to be really boring when I'm like, "Yeah, the same!" or actually it might be, "Oh, I didn't know about that!" Sarah Ellis: Well, you were looking weirdly excited about this.  I hope you're not going to be disappointed! Helen Tupper: It's because I've found an event that I want to go to. Sarah Ellis: Oh, okay.  I was like, "There's some reason why you've got a massive grin on your face", and I was thinking, "Is she just really excited about the podcast?" Helen Tupper: I did get really excited at first.  I was like, "I've got to remember to look at all these things", and then when I started taking these questions away, it really forced me to find new learning.  So, I guess that's the other prompt as well, that we are going to share some ideas with you, which you might want to just act on, because you're like, "I didn't know about that, I'm going to go and find that thing they talked about"; but also, answering these questions for yourself, or maybe in a team, could be really interesting, so that you could borrow some ideas from other people that you work closely with too.  So, Sarah, are you ready for some fun learning questions? Sarah Ellis: I've got my special separate notes so that you couldn't see them. Helen Tupper: Me too, it's on my phone! Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I'm ready. Helen Tupper: So, question number one, "How would you learn at work if you felt like you had no time to spare?" Sarah Ellis: So, I'd got three ideas.  My first idea was, "How can I experiment with what I'm already doing?"  So, I don't think learning always has to feel like an "and", as in, "… and I've got to add this to the end of my day".  I think often, that's one of the things that we hear from people is, "I feel like I almost have to do it in my own time".  I think your starting point should be to look at your week and think, "Where are my opportunities for learning this week?" So, even today, I wonder if I slightly had a bias because I knew we were doing this podcast, but I was doing a workshop where I experimented with a different tool in that workshop that I'd never done before, and it felt quite risky.  That was a bit about me learning about how to introduce a new idea that I'm not the expert in.  I didn't really know if it was going to work, I wasn't sure what the feedback was going to be.  When I've got no time, I don't always think time is the starting point; I think it is, look for the opportunities to learn in your week, and then think, "What are the small experiments in terms of what I could do differently that might just help me to learn some new skills, or to make some skills stronger?" My second thing, which does take a bit of time, but I think you can do this in five minutes at the end of a day, is ask yourself the same coach-yourself question every day for a week.  I think there is something useful about the same question every day for a week, and I think those questions could be something like, "When was I at my best today?" or, "What gave me the most energy today?" or, "What was I most proud of today?" or, "What was most difficult about my day?"  Essentially, they're self-awareness questions, and I think just by doing it for at least a week and doing the same question, just for five minutes, you might just do five minutes' thinking about that for yourself, or you might do a little five-minute mind map.  Interesting to see what trends and themes come from doing that. So, I think almost if you've got a question mark about one of those areas, or you just want to increase your self-awareness, I think you would learn by doing that.  So, that was my second idea.  I don't know how many ideas you wanted, but I've only got one more. Helen Tupper: I made one, but you keep going. Sarah Ellis: Oh okay, sorry!  Then, my third idea was to, if I really feel like I've got no time to spare, I still feel like I enjoy my days more if I have read, watched or listened to something short that has been a catalyst for my curiosity.  So, I read a really good article, called How to Become a Better Listener According to Science, and there was one statement in that that really stood out, which was, "Stepping outside our ego cocoon and making an effort to put ourselves in someone else's shoes will significantly improve our listening skills". So, I want to go back to that article and I want to spend some more time with it, and I went through it quite quickly, so I couldn't tell you loads about that.  I could tell you some key themes and I've save it in my to-come-back-to articles; but that statement, that ego cocoon, I just think that's a brilliant description and a really memorable way of describing it.  And, I felt like I'd learnt something there and collected some of those dots that we described.  So, that was three ideas, and you just said you only wanted one, so already I am not responding to your brief! Helen Tupper: Well no, because I've got three too! Sarah Ellis: You just told me off for having three, and you're like, "Well no, I've done three too!"  Okay. Helen Tupper: But one of them was the one that you had, so I also had the increasing the experiments one, so I think that's a really good way to fit learning into your day.  My different ones, one of them you'll hate, you'll be like, "Helen, that's so you", but this one I think you'll like: focusing on feedback.  So, I actually think one of the best ways you can learn is when you get lots of feedback.  And actually, if you're going to do experiments, getting feedback on what worked well in that session when I did that, what do you think would be even better if next time, they go together really nicely. But just generally, asking somebody, "How did I come across in that meeting?  When do you see me at my best?  How could I increase my impact if I was going to do that again?" those sorts of nice questions, I think they will help you to learn about yourself from other people's perspectives.  And again, I just think about that as data for your development; you don't have to respond and react to every piece of information you get when you ask those questions, you're just learning about your impact on other people and collecting data for your development.  So, focusing on feedback. Sarah Ellis: That's a good one.  And actually, Vivi in our team coined a phrase for that yesterday.  I was doing my Instagram takeover, which I committed to on this podcast, and then because I'd said it out loud, everybody remembered and they were like, "When are you doing that thing?" so I actually had to do it; and Vivi was giving me some feedback as I was doing my Instagram takeover, and she just called it "fast feedback".  And I felt like I learnt more yesterday, partly because I combined an experiment, times getting fast feedback. So, this idea of fast feedback, if time is your challenge, a bit of fast feedback, I did one thing where I probably hadn't appreciated that it was as useful as it was if she hadn't have told me, and one thing where she was like, "Could we maybe think about this for next time?"  So, I felt like I learnt more yesterday, because I got probably three bits of fast feedback from her in a very -- also quite focused.  It was focused, fast feedback.  So, yeah, I've seen that in action very recently. Helen Tupper: My third one I don't think you'll like. Sarah Ellis: That's all right, I don't have to do it. Helen Tupper: For me, it's learning in parallel.  So what I mean by that is, there are some tasks that I do that I can learn at the same time as I do them.  So, for example, commuting.  If I listen to a podcast while I commute, I'm learning in parallel, so I don't have to find extra time to learn, I just do it at the same time as I'm doing something else. So recently, I've started listening to audiobooks.  I'm currently listening to the Tribe of Mentors, with Tim Ferriss, which I'm loving, while getting ready in the morning.  So, that was previously dead time to me.  Sarah's like, "Oh gosh, just rest, Helen!"  But I'm brushing my teeth, I'm putting my makeup on, deciding what to wear, so I just take my phone, put my phone in my dressing-gown pocket, and I put the Tribe of Mentors audiobook on, and it's quite nice, because each chapter's quite short.  He just talks to -- well, there's just one mentor talking through a series of questions, and they're the same sort of questions. So, I can get through about three mentors and I'm like, "Oh, interesting", and sometimes I'll pause it and I'll write down a little comment in my Notes app on my phone.  But I feel like that was otherwise dead time that I've sort of repurposed as a bit of a learning moment.  What I would say makes that valuable is picking the thing that you're learning in quite an intentional way.  So, that audiobook works well for me, because each chapter, each mentor, is quite short.  If it was a really long book, like Thinking Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, I might get frustrated, because I might feel like I'm never really getting into a chapter for long enough during that time.  But that has worked well for me recently. Okay, so our next question is, "How would you learn at work if money wasn't available to you?" Sarah Ellis: Okay, so my first thought, because this has happened to me a lot, and I know it's happened to you, but we both wanted to do things in the past that cost a lot of money; and sometimes, your organisations can fund those things, but often they can't, or they can't straightaway.  So, my first thought is, "How do you respond to that when you basically get told no?" and this is where I think Adam Morgan's work on having a stubbornly adaptive mindset has worked wonders for me. I think I am stubborn, and so I don't let go of those things that are important to me, but I am good at thinking, "Well, not now doesn't mean not ever, and what are the other ways or opportunities that I could reach that same outcome, but it might be funded in a different way?"  So, whether that is things like, I've done sponsorships, I've applied for awards, I've looked for industry funding, basically been as creative as I possibly could in terms of thinking, "Well, if my organisation can't fund this, or can only fund part of it, could I fund some of it?"  Typically, often not, but occasionally there would have been bits that I could have funded. Sometimes, those programmes that I've wanted to do, or learning that I've wanted to do, I've had in my mind for two or three years before I've been able to make happen, but I haven't ever let go of it.  And there would have been a point where maybe if I'd not found a route, I think I would have found a different way, but I've always been able to find a way ultimately, and I think it's when I know it's the right thing; because I'm not just plucking something I want to learn out of thin air, it's something that I've really researched and probably talked to people who have already done it before. I've immersed myself in, "Does that learning look and feel right for me?  I'm really clear on why I want to do it and how I think it will help me", and then I really stick with it.  If you can't do that, or while you're waiting, I've always found it useful to think, "Well, who are the people that I could learn from, who either I could learn from directly, as in I could spend time with, or you don't necessarily need to know them; I could read, watch and listen to their work?"  So, I could get much, much closer to that world in that waiting time. So, let's say, to just bring it to life very specifically, I wanted to become qualified as a coach, and at the time the organisation I was in weren't quite sure what they were going to do with coaching; did they want people to qualify, or did they want people to do stuff internally; so, I'd got a waiting period, where they hadn't said not ever, but it was a not now.  So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to hold out for it". During that time when I was waiting, I read some books, I did some shorter programmes in alternative ways to just learn a bit more, not quite into the depth that I was ultimately hoping I was going to get, but did some things that I could just sort for myself.  I think it goes back to that mindset of creating, not waiting.  It was like, "What are all the things I can create, almost while I'm waiting, in the hope that I'm still going to be able to make that ultimate thing happen?"  But almost then, even if I don't, I've still learnt a lot and if anything, I think those things then mean you're in an even better position when you do then get to do hopefully the thing that comes your way. Learning from people, typically lots of people are prepared to share their learning with you, because it's quite a privilege to get to do that, and like I say, the access to that is so different now.  When we started out in our jobs, if I think about -- I mean, there was internet, but it's certainly not quite the same. Helen Tupper: We're not that old! Sarah Ellis: I know but I remember dial-up. Helen Tupper: I remember dial-up, the noise, yeah. Sarah Ellis: So, when I think about perhaps at the start of my career, just the access and the amount of free, good-quality learning that is out there now, I feel like if there's a will, there's a way, and that might just be me being overly optimistic, but I've found in my career pretty much every time I've wanted to learn something big, that's felt like a really big skill or a really big programme, I have always got there, but it's like, "Brackets, 'In the end'". Helen Tupper: The stubbornly adaptive approach.  So, mine is slightly different.  I have done a lot of what Sarah said, but that actually wasn't the answers that I'd written down, which is quite nice, we've got different ones.  I had got learning from other people, so I've gone with, if you haven't got money available, I'd gone, "Go get a mentor, because mentors are free". So, think about what you want to learn and who could help you to learn it.  So, rather than going on a course, go and have a conversation with somebody about that thing.  Mentors have been a big accelerator of my learning, so for example, in learning about how to improve the way that I run the business, going to talk to other people who run businesses has been a really good way of me learning, and that has generally been free, occasionally cost me a cup of coffee! The other thing that I had put on here was more about how to make learning last, was going in my mind a little bit. So, there's some really interesting research of how much learning we actually retain.  So, for example, if you read a book, only 8% of what you learn when you read a book is retained; but actually, when you discuss something with other people, then 50% of what you learnt is retained. So, I was thinking about, maybe I would start a podcast club, because most podcasts are free, like the Squiggly Careers podcast that you're listening to is a free podcast, and people could listen to that, and then you could have a discussion group around a topic, like curiosity or experimentation, for example.  Then, when you talk about that with other people, not only would that be a way to make the learning last longer, it also doesn't cost anybody anything.  So, I feel like you could have a little curiosity community, maybe using a resource like a podcast, for example, then that could be a good way that you could learn for free. So, questions three and four, we're going to put together, because really the variable is how much money have you got to invest? Sarah Ellis: I love spending fake money, I really enjoyed doing this. Helen Tupper: Me too, this is probably my favourite one.  So, the question is, "What would you learn at work if you had £50?" that's the first part of the question.  Then the second bit is, "What would you learn at work if you had £500?"  So, Sarah, you can't reel of 100 ideas, all right!  Give me your best ones, your £50 idea and your £500 idea. Sarah Ellis: So, if I had £50, I would buy a book, and then I would go to an online event from someone like How To Academy, DO Lectures, or 5x15.  I think I've got a few sources of go-to places, where if you go to their events, they're usually £25 to £35, I think, on average, and I would choose by topic or by speaker, and I trust the quality of the curation of those platforms.  Usually, it's quite doable in terms of, it's 45 minutes, or it's an hour, or something like that.  So, there's no newness in there.  That, for me, felt very tried and tested ways of spending £50. Helen Tupper: So similar, but different places.  So, I would also do the events.  Some of mine, I was looking, "Where can I get to go in person?"  So, that's probably a bit of a difference, because I would always gravitate to, "Where would there be some people that I could meet at the same time?"  The RSA have some, and we'll make sure all these links are on the PodNote for you, but they have some really interesting events, one coming up on the Future of Venture Capitalism and Innovation, which is slightly different. Also, Tortoise are a really interesting media company.  They have quite curious sessions, that are around topical things.  And then the Idler Academy.  Daisy Buchanan was talking there, and it's £7.  So actually, for £50, you could get yourself a bit of a series of curiosity sessions that you could do one a month, and it could take you quite far.  And they have some really nice discussions.  I really like the Idler Academy, I would like this, but they tend to be in the evening and they really position it as, "Come listen and learn with a glass of wine".  I mean, it's BYO, so you're at your own at home with your glass of wine, but I quite like how they position it as a solo-social thing, but you can learn with others about the same thing. Interestingly though, when I was diving into what they're doing at the moment, I went on Tortoise to see what they were doing, and there is a new festival that they've got going on.  This is what got me really excited.  It's called the Kite Festival, and they have a £50 Saturday ticket, and a £50 Sunday ticket, and it's mixing learning and music.  I looked at who was on there, and I was like, "This is amazing". So they had artists that I really like; Tom Misch, I quite like him at the moment, he's heavily on my Spotify soundtrack.  But also, Elizabeth Day's speaking, Bimini Bon Boulash is on there, Richard Dawkins, Julia Hobsbawm on The Future of Work.  I mean, that is £50 well spent.  If I didn't have to take my children with me, which is the issue with that, then I would be all up for that Kite Festival.  It's the new Tortoise Learning Festival, and it's £50.  So, that would be my top idea. Right, so you've got £500 now, where are you going? Sarah Ellis: I would do something that felt far away from my day-to-day, so that was my starting point.  £500 to spend, I was like, I probably wouldn't want to do things that felt familiar; I would want to do something that feels new, maybe a tiny bit scary, some sort of unfamiliar territory, whether that's topic or people.  I think, in an ideal world, I actually would want to do something with people.  So, I'd want the topics to be away from the day-to-day, and I think I would want to be away from the day-to-day. I've always seen that whenever I've spent time just away and learning other things, it does open up my brain in new and different ways, you know like Helen described?  You know when I've done that, because I think it also just sparks new thoughts for me on my day-to-day by being way.  So, a few specific ones that I've looked at. So, I think I've talked about it on the podcast, but last year I did a course on Systems Thinking, with Leyla Acaroglu, who's been on the podcast, and she does lots of work on sustainability.  And her programmes are run by something called The UnSchool.  So, I would always do some learning with Leyla again, because she was interesting, small groups, so it suited me; very immersive, which I also liked; and I didn't know very much about Systems Thinking.  I say, "Not very much"; I didn't know anything about Systems Thinking when I turned up and two days later, I felt like I knew a lot more.   So, I think that's the sort of thing I would look for. Having done that last year, it feels really memorable.  I've not got a rubbish memory, but you know when you think, "What can I remember from last year?" I really remember those two days.  I remember the environment I was in, the people I met, how I felt, things that I learnt, just because you're so all-in, so I think I really enjoyed that.  And, one that I've got my eye on for this year, so there's something called The Happy Startup School, which is down in Brighton in the UK by the sea.  So, I could maybe do something like that. I am going to DO Lectures this year, which is something I've tried to do for three years, because of COVID.  So that's something, again, that's in Wales.  Or something like The School of Life.  We haven't mentioned The School of Life so far, and I've done a few courses at The School of Life over the last 10 or 15 years.  I've done the odd day course, the odd hour course.  I did a programme on, I think it was an introductory or beginners' guide to philosophy.  And again, I really remember that; that was six years ago now.  I remember going every week and it was half a day. I don't know that that was exactly £500, but those are the sorts of things that I would be searching for, where I'm going to meet some new people, learn some new things, be very immersed in it.  It actually wouldn't appeal to me that much to do, you know that two hours a week, every week?  I would much rather go and do two days, albeit that feels obviously hard from a time perspective.  But that's what I'd be spending, and I say will be, I actually will be spending my £500 on this year. Helen Tupper: So, mine are different.  I've got two ideas, they're both quite different things.  The first one comes from, "When do I think I've learnt the most?" Sarah Ellis: Good question. Helen Tupper: I think one of the things that helped me was getting a coach.  And I think you only need that at the right point in time.  So, if I had £500, particularly if I had a career conundrum, I think that would be £500 well spent if I had one or two sessions with a coach and I invested it in that, but that I also tried to invest in my self-coaching skills at the same time.  So, I think that's what makes it sustainable, and this is not to PR our own book, You Coach You. I mean, you could buy You Coach You and coach yourself; or, you could maybe go on a course, maybe a simpler course about how to become a coach, for example, which in doing that would probably teach you.  There are lots of one-day coaching courses which would teach you some of the basic tools for coaching, not to coach other people, but to apply to yourself. Sarah Ellis: I suppose, we do those.  I do realise, we've not actually mentioned any of ours, which partly feels like a bit of a miss! Helen Tupper: You can't!  You can't go, "We've got loads of courses that you could learn, let's recommend those"! Sarah Ellis: No, but we do have open courses that are very affordable for one hour at lunchtime, so we should probably include the link to some of those, and you could come and do a How to Coach Yourself for an hour for £30. Helen Tupper: Yeah, you could.  There you go, everyone, you could do that.  We obviously have the book, which is all about that, but I guess the bigger principle for me was, if I had £500 and knowing what has helped me learn at work, it would be invest it in a coach; but at the same time, think about how you could keep a bit back to invest in your own self-coaching skills in whatever way, going on a course of person, or coming to one of our virtual ones, or buying a book could help you to do that. To make sure that is money well spent, I would highly recommend doing some kind of chemistry meeting with a coach first of all, because the fit that you have with a coach, I think, is really important for you getting the most from that investment.  I've had some coaches where it just hasn't been a good fit, and I've had some where it's been really important.  It's called a "chemistry meeting", which is a short chat basically, to understand a coach's approach and get a feel of their fit for you.  And I think you do want to think, "Do I want a challenging coach?  Do I want a coach that's more about values or purpose?" or whatever it is.  Be specific about what you need and what your coaching challenge is, and I think it can help you to find a better fit from the coaches that you might talk to.  So, that would be my first one. The other one for me, with my £500, would be an event, so some all-day events.  I'm going to one this year with the Marketing Society.  I know what that agenda's going to be like, I know it's going to be fuel for my curiosity, I know that that fuel will go further, because I'll be talking to lots of people and I'll get excited about those conversations, so it's conversation curiosity and connection that I will get from that money. But I would say that I don't think all events are worth their money, so again I would say pick those events wisely, because some one-day events can seem quite expensive.  So, look at the agenda.  If with me, for example, are you going to get the opportunity to connect and converse with other people, if that's what's important to you?  Or, if it is just about fuelling your curiosity, are there people and topics on that agenda that you actually want to learn about?  But those would be my £500. Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and when you talked about coaching and the events, I think because you can feel, obviously whether it's your organisation's money or if it's your money, you want that to be money well spent.  So definitely ask for recommendations.  I'm in a few WhatsApp groups where I've seen people say, "I am looking for someone to do a bit of coaching, a couple of sessions.  Does anyone have any recommendations?" and a few people have really endorsed, "I had a incredibly positive experience with this person [or] that person, if you're looking for this kind of coach".  Or, within the networks or within your organisation, "Has anyone been to these events before?" and they can tell you what their experience was.  Did it feel like good value for money? I do think one of the things that has happened over the last couple of years is some events that have gone virtual that previously would have been unaffordable, have now become affordable, and you've got the same speakers.  Yes, you're not in a room, but those events, people are working increasingly hard to create the connections, you hear from really good-quality speakers, the tech is getting so much better.  So, I think where I think organisations have really invested in, "How do we create a brilliant experience online?" I think you could have a really good day at an online event. I think, just pick those ones again where you feel like they are investing in that, they've thought about how they're going to connect the different people who are coming along, look at those speakers.  The FT do some for women in business, that I actually think are quite affordable, given the people and the quality of people that they get.  We've been involved in a few of those doing a few workshops.  But I remember looking at the agenda going, you know what you look and think, "Oh, sounds fascinating.  I really want to be part of that", and it made me feel proud that we were.  And I think you've got to plan ahead, because sometimes if you just suddenly go, "Well, can I do this next Wednesday?" most of the time for all of us, we'll be, "No, because I've got meetings and I can't just get out of this project". So already, doing this podcast prompted me to think, for the rest of this year, and we're recording this in May, what does my learning look like; what are those learning immersion moments?  Am I doing enough as part of my day-to-day; am I doing enough with experiments?  And I think just having that monthly prompt to think about, "How can I increase that percentage?  What percentage of my week am I spending learning?" We're not talking about going from 10% to 80% overnight, but what would it take to get from 10% to 20%?  Maybe if you got to 20%, 20% to 30%, and you're just incrementally increasing that percentage, so you just feel like you're learning as you go, rather than thinking, you get to the end of the year and you're like, "I've done a lot", because everyone's always busy, "but I don't feel like I've learnt a lot".  I don't want anyone to feel like that at the end of the year. Helen Tupper: So, our last question then, "How would you learn at work if you didn't want to learn alone?" Sarah Ellis: So, I had Tortoise here, which is interesting, so I think we both -- I like Tortoise, I think they do a good job of putting interesting people, interesting communities, and Tortoise have an app.  So, you can pay to be part of that app and you go in that community, and I think it's relatively affordable every month. My other idea, which I'm really interested in, and someone in our team had done, is perhaps becoming part of a community that is being built intentionally as a community.  So, there's one called Stack World, for example; that one is specifically for women.  One of our friends, Lauren Currie, she has something called UPFRONT, which is all about building confidence for women.  And when I talk to Lauren and I see the work that Lauren's doing and I look at Stack World, they very clearly are created to be communities, so communities of learning.  So, it's almost a community of learning feels as important as the content of the learning. So, I think those learning experiences that have been designed with community in mind, if I didn't want to learn alone, that's what I would be looking for.  Those ones both just happened to be for women, Tortoise absolutely isn't, but I feel like again, with Tortoise, they have always tried to design that to bring people together who maybe have a shared belief about, originally they started with slow journalism, challenging, constructively debating; I feel like that's their style and their vibe.  So, I would look at, where are these communities being created. Also, do you feel like that's a community that you would want to be part of, because I think every community has a slightly different purpose and starting point.  Is it a community where you want to be really active?  Do you want to get to know people at a one-to-one?  One-to-many, does that work really well for you?  I think the communities of learning that I've been part of, that have been the most effective for me, have always been smaller, but that's because I'm more introverted and I like to get to know people really well.  That's always my preferred approach, but I'm starting to see these communities that are much bigger and they seem to be doing a really good job of creating those connections. It's not something I've done loads of, but there were two examples that really sprung to mind, from Stack World and from Lauren, but I think probably something like Tortoise is where I would personally go. Helen Tupper: So, mine was slightly different, it's about Squiggly swaps.  So, if I didn't want to learn alone, I would start a series of Squiggly swaps.  So, I could help people to learn about how to, I don't know, set up a website on wix.com, or an online shop; or, I could help somebody to think about how they could transfer their talents into different organisations, or pivot their career across industries, all stuff that I'd done.  And I'm almost do a Squiggly swap thing. So, if I was to do a session on that, and I got people who wanted to learn that thing in there, so let's imagine five or six people came to that; then it would be like, "Okay, what can we learn next from somebody else who's got a skill to swap?"  I could imagine there's some experiment, isn't there, with a paperclip, like how far can you trade the paperclip?  I can almost see the same thing going on with the Squiggly swap.  So, if I helped you to learn about that, what could you help me to learn about.  And then we could go round, and basically build a community of people who were doing a lot of Squiggly skill swaps that I could learn through. I'd almost just be interested to see how far you could go with your learning if you just did Squiggly skill swaps.  You can't say. Sarah Ellis: Yeah, it's hard to say.  I was talking to an organisation today who have a skills market.  So, they actually have a marketplace internally set up, where everybody shares their skills, and the intention is exactly as you've described, so that it's very transparent about what you've got to give.  And then it's much, much easier in terms of thinking, "I need to gain that thing [or] I need to get good at that", and then you know who to go to.  It ends up being less about, you know sometimes you can get pigeonholed in your world, or just with who you know?  So, I suppose it opens it up and it's a big organisation. You might now know that someone in a very different team has got that skill or that strength that you would really like to learn or get better at, so yeah, that was a good idea.  It's funny, isn't it, when you talk about where your head goes when you're answering exactly the same question, and I think we've gone to quite different places there, which hopefully is useful. So, one of the reasons we actually wanted to do today, which we probably should have said at the start of the podcast, if anyone is still actually listening by this point, is that often we do get feedback that people have got learning budgets in organisations, that individually you can choose where to spend those, but people just need some ideas and some inspiration about where to go and how to almost approach almost curating your own learning and designing your development. So, I hope that what we've done today is, if you are in that fortunate position where your organisation does give you money to invest, we've given you loads of ideas about how you could spend it, or at least prompts for catalysts that you can go away and do some further research.  And if you don't, because I appreciate loads of people listening won't be in that position, maybe there are things that you can either do for free, or that you could fund for yourself, or that you might be able to go and request in a very personal way to your manager, because you never know; and I always take the approach with learning, if you don't ask, you'll never find out either way.  I'd much rather receive a no and decide that it's a "not yet", than to not know at all. Helen Tupper: So, what we'll do on the PodSheet is we'll summarise lots of those questions that we just asked and the resources that we have got as well.  Worth looking at Amazing If on Instagram, or following Amazing If on LinkedIn as well, because during Learning at Work Week, we're going to be posting lots of different resources for you to use that might be helpful for you in your teams as well. But thank you so much for listening to this this week.  Next week, we are going to be back, talking about friendship at work, which was a much commented-on episode on social media that people wanted a bit of support with.  So, that is what Sarah and I -- and thankfully, we are friends. Sarah Ellis: Still friends! Helen Tupper: Still friends, for a long time, so hopefully we'll have some perspective on that.  But we also do have some other friends connected to our work as well!  So, we'll surface some insights and give you some ideas for action if you feel that that might be useful for you in your career. Sarah Ellis: So, thank you so much for listening, everyone.  As always, we really appreciate you coming back and spending time with us, and we'll see you again soon.  Bye for now. Helen Tupper: Bye, everyone.