Timestamps

00:00:00: Announcement!
00:04:00: Introduction
00:06:29: Lobsters are the answer
00:09:28: Never stop learning
00:10:39: Learn-as-you-go examples...
00:10:57: ... 1: out-loud vs quiet thinking
00:17:03: Idea: to-think lists
00:19:55: ... 2: learning in hard moments
00:23:53: Idea: fly-on-the-wall facts
00:34:22: ... 3: lead your own learning
00:34:30: Idea: be a beginner and find small firsts
00:41:27: 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.  And this week, we have big news.  Sound effect? 

Helen Tupper: Sound effect?  I'm trying to make a sound effect.  Not to give the big news away too soon, but what would a lobster sound effect be? 

Sarah Ellis: Like claws?  Our podcast is so unprofessional.  You know now, people's podcasts are so slick. 

Helen Tupper: And there's me clicking my claws like a lobster.  It's fine, it's authentic, Sarah, it's authentic. 

Sarah Ellis: Right, right.  Okay.  So, yeah, I mean there's absolutely no surprise, but pre-orders for our new book, Learn Like a Lobster, are now live, which is not exciting for anyone.  And we know that. 

Helen Tupper: It is exciting.  It is exciting. 

Sarah Ellis: Well, the first bit is not, because you have to wait for ages to get the book, but we're going to make it exciting, right? 

Helen Tupper: I know, but also some people, they bought the first two books and it's like a little library that they're building up of Squiggly learning. 

Sarah Ellis: I know, but the book doesn't come out until February. 

Helen Tupper: But we've got good stuff. 

Sarah Ellis: We have got good stuff.  So, this is why you should care.  You should care because hopefully it's a brilliant book that we do feel really proud of, but we know, you're like, "Okay, but I've got to wait till February to start learning Like a Lobster".  But you don't.  We have come up with a way where you can start learning with us straight away.  So, we're recording this in September.  If you pre-order the book now, you will be able to join our newly launched, and this is exciting, Learn Like a Lobster library.  Everything in the library is free, and if you pre-order between 23 September and 1 October, there is something extra-special coming your way that is awesome, that I love.  Yeah, it's very exciting. 

Three reasons why you might want to join the library.  First one, we're going to do three live learning workshops in October, November and December, and we'll give you a bit of a flavour for some of that content in the podcast today.  So, these are workshops with Helen and I, really interactive, informal, no pressure, just turn up and learn loads with, I can guarantee, a great group of people, because they always are, who turn up to our learning sessions.  So, you'll get all three of those for free. 

Helen Tupper: And they're virtual. 

Sarah Ellis: And they're virtual, yeah, anywhere in the world.  And if you do miss one, we will record them if you're in the library, so you can go back, but good to join live if you can.  As soon as you join the library, you will get a ten-minute Learn Like a Lobster tool that you can use for yourself and share with your teams, which is all about experimenting so you can learn more from meetings.  It is possible.  And then the last part, I think, is just the opportunity to be part of an amazing community, a community who will be curious, who will have brilliant ideas that we've not even thought about, who they will share generously, because our Squiggly Career community always do that.  So, I think you will be smarter, more able to navigate your Squiggly Career if you become part of that library.  And all you have to do is once you've pre-ordered, you just email that pre-order to hello@learnlikealobster.com, and then that's it.  We send you the link so you can get into the library, get all of the workshops to sign up and put those in your diary, you can download the tool straightaway.  And if you want to, we will have a WhatsApp group as well you can join, not mandatory.  I know some people already have too many WhatsApp groups in their life.  But if you want the learning one, it will be there and ready and waiting for you. 

Helen Tupper: I think if any of you've done the Sprint, you've probably had a little bit of a flavour for what it feels like to be part of the Sprint community, whether you've had one in your team or whether you maybe joined some of our LinkedIn Lives.  We had about 1,400 people join our LinkedIn Live to kick off the Sprint.  And I saw so much support in that community, like people buddying up to learn with each other, and I think that is what the members of the Learn Like a Lobster library will be like.  These are people that are committed to their learning, they want to grow, they want to develop, and they're willing to invest a bit of energy and give, I think, give a bit of energy to other people as well.  So, if that feels like you, we would love you to become a member. 

So, today's episode, as Sarah said, we want to give you a little bit of a flavour for what Learning Like a Lobster looked like, and also to just connect a few dots between Squiggly Careers and learning, and why we think this is such an important thing for people to focus on right now.  So, as you know, if you've been following Squiggly Careers for a while, we have a belief that the idea of ladder-like careers holds people back, because it's very determined by the level that you're at, it is all about life and work being very linear, and that doesn't really reflect our reality, and also, it doesn't give people the choice and control about the direction they want to develop in.  So, we don't think that's great.  We believe Squiggly Careers are a much better solution because they give people that choice and control, and they also result in careers that are much more resilient to all the changes we're experiencing. 

Sarah and I have now been working on Squiggly Careers for over ten years, which is crazy.  I think it's probably going to be nearly 15 soon.  We've been at this for a while.  And I think we have seen universally in the organisations that we work in, the countries we work in, the people we work with, that there is a super-skill that helps people succeed in Squiggly Careers, and that is learning.  It's people's openness to learn, it's people's ability to learn, but also it's their recognition that learning looks different in a Squiggly Career.  So, this isn't about going on courses and acquiring qualifications and learning taking lots of time.  The best learners in Squiggly Careers see that learning is something that you add in to your work, rather than it always being something you add on.  It's far more about curiosity than it is about courses.  And it's simple things, like the quality of the questions you ask, not the number of qualifications that you get. 

What we are trying to do with Learn Like a Lobster, for reasons that we will tell you about these very, very amazing lobsters in a moment, we are trying to use some of the brilliance of lobsters to help people reconnect with what learning looks like at work, because we often say that you used to go to work to learn to do the job, and now learning is the job.  We just need to look at how we do that job and we believe that lobsters are the answer.  So, I'll let Sarah tell you why. 

Sarah Ellis: Of course we do.  Everyone looks at the book cover and the title and everyone's like, "Oh yeah, that's brilliant, that's really surprising and playful".  And then everyone just says, "Why lobsters? 

Helen Tupper: "But why?"

Sarah Ellis: "Why?"  But 'why not' is the question.  So, lobsters are brilliant for three reasons.  One, they never stop growing, so there's no point where they stop growing throughout their life.  Two, they grow the most in hard moments, so they shed their hard outer shells.  And in that moment, they get really jelly-like and vulnerable.  And to be honest, having watched quite a lot of videos online of this process happening, to make sure that we understood what it was, I mean it looks so exhausting and energy-zapping and difficult.  And we all have shell-shedding moments, right, in our careers and in our weeks.  I'm having some fun ones of those this week, which perhaps we'll talk about later.  And so, the lobster doesn't have any choice, it sort of happens to them.  And I think often that is the same for us.  With the amount of uncertainty and change in our careers, there will be shell-shedding moments, they're sort of inevitable.  But can we grow, can we grow as a result, and in those moments as well? 

Then finally, and this is I think my favourite lobster fact, I never thought I would say that sentence, lobsters fuel their own growth.  They are so resourceful and they're like a sustainable little system because those old shells that they shed, they then eat, because they are -- that's a really weird sound.  Don't do that.  I'm banning that. 

Helen Tupper: "Never do that again!"

Sarah Ellis: I'm vetoing that sound as part of our promotions for the book.  Because their shells are full of calcium.  So, they eat them, which is smart, right?  So, they don't have to wait for food to come their way.  They've sort of created their own way of continuing to grow.  And we probably don't need to dive into lobsters any more than that.  But there will be lots of lobster puns coming your way, because it is irresistible.  But sometimes, I think having a playful and surprising way to look at learning hopefully helps it to feel like something we can all just have some fun with.  I think learning should always be something to look forward to.  And actually, often when we talk to people and we ask about the barriers, it's not something to look forward to.  It's something that people feel frustrated by, "I can't find any time to learn.  I never get to learn or there's no money for me to learn".  There's lots of these things that just feel difficult about learning, "Oh, I'm going to wait to learn until this busy period is over".  And I think our worry is, is if we wait, if we try to find the time, if we rely on other people, you could end up getting left behind in your career.  And we want you to have as many opportunities and possibilities as possible.  And we think if you learn like a lobster, you stand a really good chance of making that happen. 

Helen Tupper: I just see this like big march of lobsters.  I'm like, "We're going to take over with these learning lobsters". 

Sarah Ellis: Do lobsters march?

Helen Tupper: Ours do.  Ours are marching into companies and saying, "I demand learning!"  But I just want to make the parallels between lobsters that have these three sort of traits that Sarah talked about, with learning, really clear, and that'll be the structure of what Sarah and I share next.  So, if lobsters never stop growing, then what we are talking about is never stopping learning.  We want everyone to learn as they go, every day, so that learning becomes continual.  And if lobsters grow most in these hard moments when they're really, really vulnerable, then that's when we want to learn.  We want to learn the most in our hardest moments, maybe when you feel like you're failing or you've made a mistake, or maybe when you get feedback that feels really hard to hear and you really feel vulnerable, that's when we want you to learn the most, because, yes, you're a bit exposed, but there is enormous learning in that moment if you just look at it slightly differently. 

Then, the last thing about the lobster eating its shell, we don't want you to eat your shell, that would be weird.  But what we do want you to do is fuel your own learning.  So, we want you to be really resourceful about how you create your own learning.  And in the book, we cover loads of different ways that are in your control.  So, you don't have to ask for permission, you don't have to wait for someone else to say that it's okay to do it.  We want you to create as much learning and fuel as much learning as you can, and that's how we structured the book and that's how we're connecting the dots between the two. 

Sarah Ellis: So, today, back to normal podcast to be honest, we're now going to be really practical and we're going to talk about learn as you go, learn in hard moments, lead your own learning.  And we're going to take one example that's in the book, and we're going to talk about it, so you get a bit of a flavour and a bit of a feel for the sorts of things that we'll be describing.  So, the first one, learn as you go, one of those chapters is about easy and everyday experiments.  Back to Helen's point about, "Let's add experimenting into what we already do, rather than feeling like an add-on".  And the experiment we're going to talk about today is the difference between out loud and quiet thinking.  And I really like this quote from Shane Parrish.  He says, "Thinking better than others means that you'll have more free time and fewer problems".  And I'm like, "Perfect.  I want the free time and I want fewer problems".  And I think we all have a natural preference probably in terms of our thinking styles.  You're either more of an out-loud thinker or you're more of a quiet thinker. 

But when you experiment with different ways of thinking, I think you learn more, but you're also more agile and you're more adaptable in your creative thinking, your ability to solve problems.  So, if I describe some of the examples of what out-loud thinking might look like and what quiet thinking might look like, then Helen and I are going to talk about our natural preferences and then what we might experiment with to see what we learn.  Good question that we repeat actually a lot in the book is like, "What will I learn?"  Keep asking yourself that, "What will I learn?" 

So, if you're an out-loud thinker, as the name suggests, you probably want to talk to other people.  So, you want to run your thoughts past somebody.  So, that might be a voice note to someone, could be a walk and talk with someone saying, "Can I share my first thoughts with you?"  Maybe it's talking through a mind map, but it probably involves having a conversation, maybe with a group of people, but could be one-to-one.  Quiet thinkers are much more likely to hold the thinking and the ideas in their head.  So, an out-loud thinker would probably create a mind map to talk to somebody about; a quiet thinker would just create a mind map for themselves.  They're much more likely to go for a walk and just think for themselves rather than talk to somebody else.  Maybe, you even voice note to yourself, you know, people voice note to themselves and get that transcript of, well, what are they thinking? 

Actually, there's some really interesting research that we found.  Throughout the book, we have these expert insights.  And one of the expert insights in this section is around self-explaining.  And actually, the skill of self-explaining is really helpful for creating clarity.  So, if you're ever feeling confused or overwhelmed, actually talking to yourself, this idea of quiet thinking but just sort of with yourself, actually can help you to make sense, to make sense of your thoughts.  So, Helen, naturally, more of an out-loud thinker or more of a quiet thinker? 

Helen Tupper: Much more of an out-loud thinker.  Yeah, it's just the way I process.  Even the podcast, I think the podcast a lot for me is me out-loud thinking.  I will come up with ideas in conversation with you.  And it has its benefits and its drawbacks.  So, its benefit is, as a result of a conversation, I often create ideas I didn't have when I went into it, like super-helpful.  But the downside is, I'm very dependent on people having time to have a conversation with me, and also a particular kind of person, who's willing to just sit with me in that kind of weird, ambiguous conversation space where I can come up with ideas.  So, I can't do it on a train, for example, with a random person sat next to me. 

So, with this one, I actually did this yesterday, I've been experimenting a lot more with the quiet thinking.  I did a mind map.  I know you quite like a mind map.  It's not always the first thing that I would do for my thoughts.  But I was thinking a little bit about my network, and I'd reread some research on the importance of weak ties and all kinds of stuff.  Basically, it talked about weak ties and building your network, and you don't want really far-out weak ties of people that you really don't know very well, and you don't want people that are really quite close to you.  You want people basically in the middle.  So, I was doing this mind map of leapfrog weak ties.  I was like, who do I know?  Who's the one that they know?  And I was just sort of mind-mapping.  I just sat there, not long, like five minutes, and this is the first time I've talked about it, and I didn't talk about that idea or anything.  I just sat there and with my own thoughts for five minutes, just drawing it out to see what it came up with, with no real expectation.  But I found it very useful. 

So, I think I might just build, you know, rather than my first point of call being, "I need to hold this thought until I have a meeting and I can talk it through", I think actually, I might try more often to use a mind map first and just see how much clarity that creates before I have the conversation.  What about you, what's your default? 

Sarah Ellis: So, I think this is interesting because I think people might assume, certainly people who know as well, because I'm definitely more introverted, you're definitely much more extroverted, but I am also an out-loud thinker.  When I look at the majority of my thinking, it is done with somebody else.  And I think that's often, if I think about much of my best thinking, it's often in a room. 

Helen Tupper: Via a voice note?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, but weirdly, I only do that mainly to you. 

Helen Tupper: Thanks.

Sarah Ellis: And I do feel like sometimes I definitely do it to you.  But I was thinking about, so when we were together over the summer and we were talking about Learn Like a Lobster, that's my happiest thinking space and place, is almost like facilitating that conversation.  I've done some thoughts beforehand, but we're creating and we're kind of thinking as a duo.  But it's quite high intensity and quite high need.  It's almost like, you can't create that opportunity very often.  And again, I think I was thinking for myself, like I think I sometimes share too soon, you know, almost because it's probably the way that we work, like we're not in an office.  You don't even have random chats with people because we don't in the work that we do and how we work.  And so, I think sometimes my voice notes are that.  It's thoughts just in my head that I should probably just write down in something like a to-think list. 

So, one of the ideas that we've got in the book before out-loud and quiet thinking, is to-think lists.  And this is the idea of not only having a to-do list, but having a to-think list to maybe write it down as a series of questions, or things that you want to think more deeply about, but again, not holding it in your head.  And I've done that a bit but not consistently, but again, it's a bit September cliché; I bought a new notebook.  And I very intentionally…

Helen Tupper: I haven't seen this new notebook.  What does it look like? 

Sarah Ellis: So, it's bright yellow, A4, plain paper. 

Helen Tupper: Standard.  Sarah always has a massive notebook.  Didn't you have an A3 notebook once? 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, once, yeah.  And it's plain because I don't like lines or dots.  I showed someone on our team and they looked almost angry about it.  They were like, "Where are the lines?"  And I was like, "No, I like plain", and they were like, "No".  You could just see that they were like, "That's absolutely not for me". 

Helen Tupper: Was that Lucy?  I feel like there's someone on our team who values efficiency and I feel like she might like lines on a page. 

Sarah Ellis: No, it wasn't, but I showed a page of it, and my writing and style of thing, it is just messy.  But I've decided that I'm just going to embrace that.  So, for me, my experiment at the moment is sort of connecting the dots with thinking.  It's like, actually, what quiet thinking looks like for me is having a to-think list and I'm going to do it on a big page, and I'll just keep coming back to it, keep adding to it, to the point where I'm like, "Oh, and now I need to do a new one and update it".  But I'm going to set myself the challenge of between September and Christmas, I want to be able to look back at that notebook and very clearly see a series of to-think lists, and just -- sometimes, I think I rely on you too much.  You know sometimes I think you can get over-reliant on one person?  I think I do overly rely on you. 

Helen Tupper: Am I being dumped for a notebook? 

Sarah Ellis: You are.  You are being dumped for a giant yellow notebook. 

Helen Tupper: Great!

Sarah Ellis: So, that's going to be my experiment.  I also think this is a great chat to have as a team.  We've talked before about like, how do you work together as a team, how do you think together as a team?  Actually, almost saying, "Well, how do you think today?" which we've both described, but then it's like, "How else?"  How else could you do thinking?  How else could you experiment?  Because I just think the more different approaches you have, the more creativity you'll have, and also just the more options you give yourself. 

Helen Tupper: Just to your point there about doing it as a team activity, I think learning like a lobster is even better when you do it together as a team, because I think that creates a commitment and a shared understanding of what learning looks like.  So, all these things that we're talking about, I think however you can buddy up or do them together, I think it'd be even better.  You'll learn more about yourself, you'll learn more about them, you'll create an environment that makes learning easier for everybody, it's just better.  So, please talk about these ideas together as a team. 

So, our second thing, Sarah talks about shell-shedding moments.  In the book, we call this section learning in hard moments.  And I mentioned earlier, some obvious ones are like moments where, I don't know, you've made a mistake or you feel like something's failing or it's more difficult than you expected, or you've had some feedback that's maybe jarred a bit with you and how you want to come across to people.  Sometimes I think a hard moment is when it feels really overwhelming.  You're trying so hard, you're maybe not making the momentum that you've got.  I think we've all experienced these moments.  And the challenge for your learning, I think, when you're in the middle of one of these hard moments is that you can potentially lose a bit of perspective.  So, either you just want to get it over and done with, so learning is not top of your list because you just want to get through it and get on with the next thing, and I'm rushing through the moment.  Or maybe you lose a little bit of perspective. 

I think sometimes emotions are higher in these moments.  You get a bit like, "Oh, it's just awful.  Everything's awful.  It's all too hard.  It's all too difficult".  And that's not really putting our brain in the best space to extract the learning from that moment, of which there can be lots.  There can be learning about the relationships you are building with other people, there can be learning about what you bring to the situation, there can be learning about what you do differently next time you might be in it.  We lose all of that learning unless we find a way to re-look at learning in that hard moment. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and one of the things actually we do at the start of that chapter, we talk about almost how your preferences and personality can mean that you miss out on the learning, you lose it.  And this is, I think, a bit different for all of us.  So, imagine you're in a bit of a shell-shedding moment, like things are really difficult.  Helen is definitely someone who is so optimistic that she just moves on too fast, right?  So, you're like, "Well, it's done now".  And then you just talk yourself into the, "I'm fine", we get lots of, "I'm fine".  But then you've moved on, but then you leave the learning behind.  So, that kind of almost over-optimism can get in the way.  I get into almost analysis paralysis.  So, I'm like, "Well, why, why has it gone wrong?  And why, and what?" and I dig and dig and dig.  And it's like you're trying to get to root causes, but in a way that is really unhelpful, because you start to get into too many details, and you want to understand absolutely everything about it.  And again, that stops you.  You don't look for the learning, you're almost more in the trying to overly explain and overly understand, because that's my version of trying to make sense of it.  but it's too 'why' like, so I don't learn either. 

Helen Tupper: I feel like I've got a visual now of a Squiggly Career, and mine has lots of little brains dropped along the way.  You know like I've dropped little bits of my brains that could have been learning at different knotty moments?  And yours has these knotty moments where there's just a brain going round in circles and it's just spinning a little bit. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: We want to bring the brain with us in our Squiggly Career. 

Sarah Ellis: And actually, what's so interesting is when we were researching for this section and we had a book in beta group who we researched all the ideas with, and we've tested everything that's in the book loads of times to make sure that it all practically works, because obviously the thing we care most about is being useful, everybody shared with us, actually the time they think they have learned the most has always come from a hard moment.  So, we know it's there, we know the learning is there, but I suppose what we don't want to do is rely on a hard moment.  But also, I think there are smaller hard moments and smaller hard shell-shedding situations, where people are like, "Oh, I just don't have the capacity to learn when that's happening".  And so, our challenge to ourself was like, let's use that constraint as a way to go, "But what if you could learn?"  In those moments where people in that group were saying to us, "I just can't learn then", we were like, "Okay, but what if you could?  What would we need to come up with so that you could learn in those moments?"  So, that's what we're trying to do. 

Helen Tupper: So, the idea that we've got here is called fly on the wall facts.  And what we want to imagine here is we're trying to create a little bit of distance between you and the situation that you're in, so that you can be slightly more in observer mode.  You're flying at the edge of it, and you are questioning and curious about what you're seeing and what you're happening, you're gathering facts, because facts are information, they can give us insight, we can learn from them.  And they're a little bit more objective than the feelings that you might have in this situation, which might be distracting from the learning.  And Sarah mentioned, we're going to, I think, maybe experiment with this live with you now, because Sarah mentioned that It doesn't all have to be hard, knotty moments in our career, like, I don't know, you're going through a restructure or you've got a manager that you're really struggling with.  It doesn't really have to be the big hard ones.  This could be a bit of a small hard moment, which I would say Sarah and I are in right now.  Like this week, we've definitely had a few WhatsApp messages which have been indicative of, let's say, a hard week.  It's a hard week.  And that, I think, is a flag to say, "But there could be a lot of learning in this".  I think any time you're in a hard moment, a hard week, a hard day, a hard meeting, just rather than going, "Oh, it's awful", just go, "But if I looked for the learning, what would I see?"  And this is where fly-on-the-wall facts come in. 

Sarah, would you like to lead us through our fly-on-the-wall facts for this week? 

Sarah Ellis: Yes.  I mean, you say this week, it's like 10.00 on a Tuesday morning. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I know, I did think that. 

Sarah Ellis: So, I mean there's definitely a 'things can only get better' mindset that can come from this.  But when we were thinking about the podcast, I was like, "Well, this is the turning point", I've decided, for the week. 

Helen Tupper: This is the learning point.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, this is the learning point.  Very good. 

Helen Tupper: Thanks.

Sarah Ellis: That's why you can write the lobster puns.  So, what I'm going to do, I'm going to ask Helen a series of questions, and we're just going to see what happens, see if she can get some more learning from what's happened so far in the first day-and-a-bit of the week.  So, Helen, I want you to imagine now you're a fly buzzing around what's going on and what's gone wrong so far this week.  And because you're a fly, you can only observe, you can listen, but you don't know anyone's feeling, you can only really see actions and behaviours, you can only see things that are observable.  You don't know what anyone's thinking or feeling, so you have to imagine you don't know what I'm thinking or feeling, which could be quite tricky.  But yeah, you're like one of those really annoying flies that you can't kill, buzzing around from wall to wall, etc.  And you're really thinking about the facts of a situation. 

A really useful prompt here is, "What do I know to be 100% true about this situation.  So, you're really going for those concrete observations.  So, tell me one thing that you know to be true about this week so far. 

Helen Tupper: This is our busiest moment of the year in our business. 

Sarah Ellis: Okay.  So, this is the busiest moment of the year so far in our business.  So, that's really helpful.  And actually, you and I haven't said that out loud to each other.  What we've done is dived into like, "This is hard, this is annoying", or whatever.  So, okay, that's quite a good context point, right?  So, that's given you some distance and perspective.  This is the busiest week.  Okay.  Let's do a 'what else' question.  What else do you know to be 100% true about the last day and two hours? 

Helen Tupper: We have got new people working in our business that haven't worked in our business before, and we've got existing people that worked in our business doing new things. 

Sarah Ellis: Okay, interesting.  So, there's a quite a lot of newness on newness there.  There's new people and then there's new work, so quite a lot of newness.  Okay.  And then, if I was to push you for one final observation that that fly has seen in the last day and a bit, what else do you think the fly would say? 

Helen Tupper: Different working patterns mean that things don't get resolved as quickly in the moment. 

Sarah Ellis: Okay, so the fly might have seen our team were working, because our team will work at different hours and different days, so they would observe that.  And then, they would have observed, okay, well then when you've got to fix something, it takes a while, because you have to wait for all the stars to align essentially. 

Helen Tupper: Okay.

Sarah Ellis: So, you having answered that question, so same question really, just in three different ways, me prompting you, how does that then make you feel about where we are?  So, actually, you're putting the fly down and coming back to yourself. 

Helen Tupper: There's a second sound effect I'm not allowed to make in the feature.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, kill the fly, yeah.

Helen Tupper: Do you know, honestly, it does make me think different, because I think until I just said those things out loud, I think I was doing a bit like Whac-A-Mole with a problem, like, "Oh, that's annoying, whack that problem.  That's annoying, whack that problem".  And actually, when I say it out loud to you, I'm like, "There is a bigger thing going on that will probably lead to lots of other problems unless it gets solved".  Like, actually, we're all working at different times, but we need a few core hours, core meetings each week, otherwise we're not solving things quickly, like solve-it sessions, or something. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: Maybe there's a bit, like, almost not onboarding feels a bit old school, but I don't know, maybe there's a, you know the newness thing?  I'm like, "Oh, we need to also check in with the people about how they're feeling about the newness, rather than assumptions that we're making".  So, I think maybe it's made me think about the problems that I'm solving, whether I could be whacking a lot of moles rather than actually going, "Well, how do we more significantly address some of these things that we stop creating the problems in the first place?"  That's what it's made me think. 

Sarah Ellis: Also, just listening to you and then reflecting on what you just said, there's the, "Well, if this is how we are feeling, how is everybody else feeling?" question, which I don't think you and I do always think about, because we are so in it and often so trying to solve the problems or to get stuff sorted or to think about what do we need to put in place, you know, just that question or that checking in with people.  And actually, it's interesting just listening to you there.  I did do that with somebody in our team who is new, at the end of last week.  And I'm often quite surprised by people, they were like, "Oh, I was feeling a bit worried that I wasn't doing that well, or it's felt a bit hard, but now I'm feeling much better and more focused and I know what needs to get done".  And that was quite a spontaneous conversation, which is not a bad thing.  But it was a bit more of a happy accident rather than me being intentional about that. 

So, I think what the fly often does as well is it encourages you, yes, to zoom out, but also to see things from other people's perspectives.  But then you do also start to get some quite meaningful actions.  Like, I can hear you like getting to some, without diving into loads of detail about our company, but I can hear you starting to get to, okay, well, as well as sometimes you do have to whack the mole, that does have to happen, but actually what you don't want to do is keep doing that the whole time.  That's not sustainable, it's also not fun for anyone, if that's what we're doing.  So, then you get into a bigger, probably more useful learning question like, "Well, what do we need to do differently?  What are we not doing that we need to start doing?"  So, it just helps you be calm.

Helen Tupper: Yeah, it does.  Yeah.  And I honestly think I've got a little bit more empathy in just talking, which I think because like you said, the fly's zooming out a little bit and seeing it from other people's perspectives.  But I definitely think the idea of solve-it sessions, I'm like, we should just have those because it's inevitable.  This is the busiest time of our year and people are doing things they've not done before.  It's inevitable there'll be problems that can't be fixed very quickly because people are working different patterns.  So, we'll just put some solve-it sessions in.  And if we don't need them, amazing.  Not only do you get time back, we've not got stuff that we need to fix.  Fantastic.  It's a double win. 

Sarah Ellis: And I think for me, I was reading this and thinking about this in a very different situation.  So, this week, out of my control, we've had some storms in the UK and my internet broke. 

Helen Tupper: You can't control the weather? 

Sarah Ellis: I know, it's outrageous.  Yeah, and my internet broke and our internet is particularly important for the jobs that we do.  It's important for most people, but it's quite hard to do our jobs without the internet.  And if I actually answer these questions as a fly, I actually feel very differently about what's happened over the last day or so, because I was feeling, obviously, it's really frustrating.  I've had to find other places to work.  It's been really disruptive, it's felt really stressful, I felt really stressed.  Whereas actually, if I'm just the fly and I'm ignoring all my own feelings, what the fly would see is, okay, well, I haven't disrupted any of our learning partners that we work with, we've delivered all of the learning that we committed to, and I still feel like I did a decent job of that.  Like, I got a good engagement and did some good sessions, some good workshops.  I have been able to quickly, with some help from you, sort myself out to be in other places.  So, I'm in a very random hotel room right now, but the hotel room has got internet, and right now, team, that's all we care about. 

So, actually, what the fly would be, the fly would be like, "Well, it's fine, you've sorted it all, you were in the places you needed to be, you've delivered everything you've needed to do.  And actually, where you needed to make changes", so you and I have had to change some things because of it, "you have done that too".  And so, actually in terms of outcomes and delivery, what I know to be 100% true is I've done all the things I needed to do.  It hasn't felt very fun, but the fly doesn't care about that.  And so, sometimes if you're just trying to make yourself feel a bit better about the last -- I don't feel very good about the last 24 hours, or certainly I didn't this morning.  But actually, when I look at it from the fly's point of view, I actually almost start to feel like, "Oh, but I am quite proud of the fact that we've sorted it and that we haven't let people down, and that I have done the things that the team or our partners need us to do".  And so, if anything, you just sort of go, "Okay, well, there's something quite good to be taken from that".  I've learned that actually, when unexpected things come our way, we will find a way.  I feel like that is basically our mantra.  We will find a way. 

Helen Tupper: "The fly would say it's fine".  I like it. 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, the fly would say it's fine. 

Helen Tupper: So, the last area I want to talk about then is going back to that idea that the lobster is fuelling its own growth, so we want you to lead your own learning.  And the idea that we've got for you here is all about being a beginner and finding small firsts in your work.  So, being a beginner means that we are able to start from scratch, we're not letting our existing knowledge and expertise get in the way of our learning.  And it is a really helpful and healthy place to put your brain in, that kind of beginner's approach to looking at a situation and seeing it for the first time, seeing it with fresh eyes.  And sometimes we need to, I guess, look quite carefully to find those firsts.  It doesn't always come obviously to us, because we're so used to working in the same patterns and picking up the same routines in our work.  So, we might want to get a little bit creative about how we find some small firsts in our work that can help our brain to just be a bit more of a beginner. 

Sarah Ellis: I also have a bit of a hypothesis that in a Squiggly Career, there are just loads more beginner moments, because of new skills, new jobs, uncertainty.  So, I sort of go, we know already, I think you can anticipate loads of beginner moments.  And so, the more you practise being a beginner, then you're like, "Well, they're the ones that you're in control of".  Like, I'm going to choose to be a beginner, so that then also when you have no choice but to be a beginner because team changes or suddenly I've got a new skill or suddenly I'll need to use AI in a whole new way, actually that doesn't feel quite as daunting.  Because being a beginner always feels a bit daunting, because you don't know what you don't know.  But if you've almost got used to the feeling, like the uncomfortable feeling that comes with being a beginner, the sort of slight sense of you get better quite quickly and then you usually get quite a lot worse, I've found.  And that's actually, they call it the U-shaped learning curve of being a beginner.  And if that is only happening to you, I just feel like you have a really different relationship to it versus if you are making it happen. 

Helen Tupper: I had someone that got in touch with me yesterday on LinkedIn.  So, we'd done a LinkedIn Live and they messaged me afterwards and they said, "Oh, what technology do you use to do your LinkedIn Lives?  It's different to the one that we do and I'd like to give it a go".  And I think that was that person, probably without knowing that that's what they're doing, but that was that person finding a small first, because they'd seen something they do done differently by us, and they were reaching out to try and be a beginner to learn in a new way.  And to your point, it is quite exposing, because that was a bit of tech.  But you're like, "Oh, I don't know what buttons to press, or I don't know how to do it and I'm probably going to make a mistake".  And being a beginner isn't easy, but the more that you do it, the more open you are to new learning, because it's all just less daunting. 

Sarah Ellis: So, we think this is one to have a bit of fun with and we've come up with Beginner Bingo.  So, we'll put this, I think we're going to create this as sort of a one-pager.  So, if you want a Beginner Bingo card to just use and cross off, because that feels quite fun and satisfying to do, we'll put that online.  Obviously, we'll do a link in the show notes with the usual good stuff. 

Helen Tupper: And we'll put it in the library as well.  So, you know earlier we mentioned people that pre-order the book, we will put this as a one-pager in the lobster library as well. 

Sarah Ellis: So, that's where we've created some ideas.  So, if you're like, "Oh, I could do with a bit of inspiration to get me started".  But obviously you can also just create your own Beginner Bingo.  Again, quite a fun one to do maybe with someone else or maybe to do as a team.  But the sorts of things that you might have on there could be things like, "I'm going to have a curious career conversation with someone outside of my organisation".  Maybe you've never done that before.  And I know that people get nervous about doing those things, because I get WhatsApps from people going, "Oh, I've got a curious career conversation with that person.  Do you know them?  Anything I can ask?"  You can sense the sort of nervous anticipation of that moment.  So, maybe it's something to do with conversations. 

It could equally be in a different team, if that felt like it'd be useful for you.  Maybe it could be about spending a day with a different team.  Like, could you spend a day shadowing?  Could you go to someone else's team meeting?  Could you take on a role that you don't do today, where you'd be a beginner?  So, that might be leading a team meeting.  Maybe that's leading a team away day, leading a session, a learning session on Learn Like a Lobster for your team the next time you're together.  Maybe it's mentoring, mentoring someone for the first time, or maybe being a mentee, either way.  Could you be brave and be a beginner around LinkedIn?  Maybe that's about starting to comment.  That's being a beginner.  You're just like, "I've not done that before".  And if you're anything like me, every time I write anything on LinkedIn, and this is the opposite to Helen, I'm always like, "Oh, does that make sense?" and I really overthink it. 

Helen Tupper: But look how much people loved your last post.  Sarah did a very lovely post on LinkedIn, maybe like a week ago, about different people to follow to support your learning.  And it got a lot of love. 

Sarah Ellis: Did it?  I get a bit nervous about those things. 

Helen Tupper: It did get a lot of love.

Sarah Ellis: So, that's definitely a good example of me being a beginner and thinking, "That's not something I normally do.  How can I post in a way that works for me?"  Or it could be something like asking for a LinkedIn recommendation.  I think probably the best ones on your Beginner Bingo are ones where you can begin and then build, I think.  Because sometimes, it's more about the beginner mindset, so you're just doing something you've not done before.  And that's great, that's a good thing to do.  So, asking for a LinkedIn recommendation, great, because that takes a bit of bravery, so you're stretching that courage muscle.  I think probably even better if you're like, "Right, I'm going to be a beginner in terms of, maybe it's around networking".  And then, "Actually, I'm going to find a small first, curious career conversation with someone else at my team".  And maybe your whole Beginner Bingo card is actually themed around networking. 

So, I think you can do your Beginner Bingo card in lots of different ways.  So, I could do a whole Beginner Bingo card just around LinkedIn, like, "Oh, I'm going to start to post, but then I'm going to post at least once a week, I'm going to start commenting more", if I wanted to do that.  You could do a whole one around mentoring, you could do a whole one around AI.  AI would be a great one for Beginner Bingo.  Use our AI Skills Sprint as your starting point.  So, your first thing on your Beginner Bingo card could just be, "Complete the AI Skills Sprint".  That's free, just do that.  And then, you could build up that Beginner Bingo card all around AI.  I think you could have a lot of fun with this, actually. 

Helen Tupper: You can have a lot of fun.

Sarah Ellis: The more I talk about it, the more I'm like, "That would work, that would work". 

Helen Tupper: That was so funny because I was like, "Begin and build", I was like, "That is you thinking out loud". 

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, that is. 

Helen Tupper: It just goes right full circle. 

Sarah Ellis: That needs to go on the to-think list. 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, it needs to go on the to-think list, because we should definitely have some of those begin-and-build little bingo cards for people to play with. 

Sarah Ellis: I was also thinking then, "I need to create this to go on the library". 

Helen Tupper: Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.  We were thinking out loud and quietly together. 

Sarah Ellis: At the same time. 

Helen Tupper: At the same time.  Dear me, we're already lobsters.  We're like lobsters for life. 

Sarah Ellis: Lobster-like learners, that's our aim.

Helen Tupper: Lobster-like learners.  Hopefully, we have inspired you to be a lobster-like learner as well.  Hopefully you can hear in our voices that this is fun.  This is a fun way to learn, it's a fun way to train your brain to be more receptive to new knowledge, it's a really fun thing to do it together.  And whether that's like, as we said, as a buddy or as a team, I think this just makes it easier for everybody to do.  So, we will summarise all this for you so that you've got it, check out the show notes that you've got that.  But please, please, please, if you would like to learn more about learning like a lobster, If you want to do that together with other people, then pre-order the book from wherever you get your book.  And all you need to do is just send us the receipt for that.  It can be a, whatever, the email, just forward the email onto hello@learnlikealobster.com.  We will then reply, we will send you your link to the library.  And as Sarah said, if you do it by early October is it, like 1 October, I think?

Sarah Ellis: Yeah.

Helen Tupper: If you do it by then, there is a special thing for people who do it first, which may come in the post to you. 

Sarah Ellis: Don't give it away though, don't give it away.

Helen Tupper: So, if you would like a bit of lobster-mail, then get ordering quickly, quickly, quickly, because it's limited by time for our earliest pre-orderers. 

Sarah Ellis: And I would say if you're like, "I've not got the space for the library or that just doesn't feel right for me", pre-ordering books really helps us.  So, if you just want to pre-order the book, I promise it will pay off in February, and it is a great way that you can support us and Squiggly Careers and the work that we do.  So, please don't feel like you have to join the library.  If you're super up for it and you've got the kind of space and you're like, "Oh, yeah, I'd love to do that", great.  If you just pre-order it, we will be just as grateful whether we see you in the library or not.  But if you do, thank you.  We do really appreciate it.  We know that it's one of those funny things about publishing where it's really helpful for us if you pre-order, but then you do have a bit of a wait.  But hopefully, you can just keep learning with us through the podcast and the library.

Helen Tupper: And it will be worth the wait. 

Sarah Ellis: And it will be worth the wait.

Helen Tupper: Thank you so much for listening, everyone.  We'll be back with you next week for another episode. 

Sarah Ellis: Bye, everybody. 

Helen Tupper: Bye.