Episode 12
Six Lessons From Twelve Episodes of Unleashing Your Great Work | UYGW12
This week, I'm creating the 12th episode of "Unleashing Your Great Work". A dozen episodes are out there in the world, entertaining DOZENS of people.
Over the past 12 episodes, I've learned some things about great work. When I put the podcast together, I already had a lot of ideas about what great work is, how it works, what it looks like and how it feels. But I've been excited by how much I've learned from the guests.
For example:
◊ Even for the greatest among us, claiming your work as “Great Work” is HARD (Mike Ganino, episode 11)
◊ Great work is more like a best friend than a soulmate (Linda Ugelow, Episode 7)
◊ We all need reminders to STOP WORKING, because Great Work seems to go hand-in-hand with overworking (Alyssa Adams, Episode 3)
◊ Great Work needs to be enjoyable… otherwise, what’s the point? (Trish Blain, episode 5)
◊ Having a podcast is FUN! (All the episodes!)
Ready to hear the six lessons I've learned over the past 12 episodes?
Let's do it...
About the Host:
Dr. Amanda Crowell is a cognitive psychologist, speaker, author and coach changing our perspective on the world of work. It IS possible to do Great Work-- launch a successful business, make a scientific discovery, raise a tight-knit family, or manage a global remote team-- without sacrificing your health, happiness and relationships.
Amanda is the Author of the forthcoming book, Great Work: Do What Matter Most Without Sacrificing Everything Else, and the creator of the Great Work Journals. Amanda's TEDx talk has received more than a million views and has been featured on TED's Ideas blog and Ted Shorts.
Her ideas have also been featured on NPR, Al Jazeera, The Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and Thrive Global.
Sponsored By The Aligned Time Journal
The Unleashing Your Great Work podcast is sponsored by the Aligned Time Journal! The Aligned Time Journal is here to answer the question "But HOW?" How can we figure out what our Great Work is? How can we get started, stay with it, and finish our Great Work so it can go out in the world and have an impact?
Click here to learn more, and try it out for yourself!
For more information about the Unleashing YOUR Great Work podcast or to learn more about Dr. Amanda Crowell, check out my website: amandacrowell.com
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Transcript
I'm such an old person. I like to talk about
Dr Amanda Crowell:the weather and discuss how unbelievable it is that time
Dr Amanda Crowell:passes so quickly. So let's do a little bit of that together,
Dr Amanda Crowell:shall we? This week, I'm creating the 12th episode of
Dr Amanda Crowell:unleashing your great work. A dozen episodes are out there in
Dr Amanda Crowell:the world, entertaining dozens of people. Actually, according
Dr Amanda Crowell:to my statistics, I have 400 listeners, that's not nothing. I
Dr Amanda Crowell:have to tell you. Overall, having a podcast has been a
Dr Amanda Crowell:really fun experience. And I've become somewhat of an
Dr Amanda Crowell:evangelist, to all my blogger friends out there who don't want
Dr Amanda Crowell:to do video, podcasting is a truly great middle ground, it
Dr Amanda Crowell:gives people a chance to really know you without having to do
Dr Amanda Crowell:your makeup, which is when when, and maybe most importantly, over
Dr Amanda Crowell:the past 12 episodes, I've learned some things about great
Dr Amanda Crowell:work. When I put the podcast together, I already had a lot of
Dr Amanda Crowell:ideas about what great work is, how it works, what it looks like
Dr Amanda Crowell:and how it feels. But I've been excited by how much I've learned
Dr Amanda Crowell:from the guests. Today, I'd like to share six lessons I've
Dr Amanda Crowell:learned over the past 12 episodes of unleashing your
Dr Amanda Crowell:great work. Let's do it. The first one is it turns out that
Dr Amanda Crowell:great work is hard to claim. Even the greatest people among
Dr Amanda Crowell:us mere mortals stop a little when they're asked what is your
Dr Amanda Crowell:great work? And they wonder, is it great work? Am I doing great
Dr Amanda Crowell:work? I'm sure I could be doing more of it. But is what I'm
Dr Amanda Crowell:doing even great. Am i Great. So many of my guests have
Dr Amanda Crowell:explicitly said this to me, usually just before we get
Dr Amanda Crowell:started, some of them have said that preparing for their
Dr Amanda Crowell:interview really like threw them for a loop and made them stop
Dr Amanda Crowell:and consider who they were, what they wanted for their life. And
Dr Amanda Crowell:these are people that I admire, who I would go to the mattresses
Dr Amanda Crowell:over like declaring that their work is great work. And I think
Dr Amanda Crowell:it was thinking about this, that allowed our conversations to go
Dr Amanda Crowell:so deeply so quickly. And for that I'm really grateful. But
Dr Amanda Crowell:here's what I have to say to them and to you. And in my
Dr Amanda Crowell:moments of vulnerability to myself as well. We are already
Dr Amanda Crowell:doing great work we are. Our job is to do more of it, which is to
Dr Amanda Crowell:say, to do more of what excites us. And it comes from our
Dr Amanda Crowell:experiences and our insights, to do it in community with people
Dr Amanda Crowell:who value what we value. And to leave our world a little better
Dr Amanda Crowell:than we found it. Of course, we can do more of that every last
Dr Amanda Crowell:one of us could do more. And every last one of us is
Dr Amanda Crowell:absolutely doing some of that now, which is actually a great
Dr Amanda Crowell:segue to the second thing I've learned about great work doing
Dr Amanda Crowell:this podcast. And that's that great work has movement. Great
Dr Amanda Crowell:work, because it keeps us on our evolving edge changes. It was
Dr Amanda Crowell:great work in the beginning. And it's great work now. And yet.
Dr Amanda Crowell:It's different. Its shifts and changes over time. And sometimes
Dr Amanda Crowell:it shifts and changes radically. Take Mike Canino from Episode
Dr Amanda Crowell:11, for example. He was a restaurant executive turned
Dr Amanda Crowell:speaker turned coach. Alyssa from Episode Three was a
Dr Amanda Crowell:bureaucrat running an integrative health clinic at the
Dr Amanda Crowell:VA. And then she turned to private practice therapist. And
Dr Amanda Crowell:then she turned into an intuitive business coach. Trish
Dr Amanda Crowell:from Episode Five ran a green energy store for 30 years before
Dr Amanda Crowell:doing the coaching and speaking and launching a movement that
Dr Amanda Crowell:she's doing now, Linda, you glow from Episode Seven was a farmer.
Dr Amanda Crowell:And yet none of these experiences were irrelevant.
Dr Amanda Crowell:Each and every one of those experiences are brought forward
Dr Amanda Crowell:into who we are now currently showing up in our great work.
Dr Amanda Crowell:This has been a wonderful realization for me, because I've
Dr Amanda Crowell:struggled at times to show up as my complete self because I know
Dr Amanda Crowell:that I confuse people. I am 100% committed to school change. I
Dr Amanda Crowell:have deep, wide and passionate opinions about education,
Dr Amanda Crowell:teacher preparation, school change, the epidemic of Math
Dr Amanda Crowell:Readiness, on and on it goes. And right alongside that I help
Dr Amanda Crowell:accidental entrepreneurs to acknowledge they have a business
Dr Amanda Crowell:and ease into the work of marketing and sales and I speak
Dr Amanda Crowell:to colleges and corporations about great work and I'm trying
Dr Amanda Crowell:to change our perception of the world of work and our place in
Dr Amanda Crowell:it to a lot of people all that sounds really desperate. To me
Dr Amanda Crowell:on the other hand,
Dr Amanda Crowell:it feels like home. I have cared I do care I will always care
Dr Amanda Crowell:about all of these things. And it works for me. Because great
Dr Amanda Crowell:work isn't like a soulmate, where everything is on the line
Dr Amanda Crowell:with this one commitment. And if you stray from this single
Dr Amanda Crowell:commitment, You are betraying your great work. It's not like
Dr Amanda Crowell:that. Instead, great work when it's done right is more like a
Dr Amanda Crowell:best friend. Your job is to show up for your great work. Bring
Dr Amanda Crowell:all your joy and your enthusiasm and your honest conversation.
Dr Amanda Crowell:And when great work says I want to go do that random thing. You
Dr Amanda Crowell:just update your damn LinkedIn, and you go do it. That, for me,
Dr Amanda Crowell:at least is what makes it fun. Now, of course, it means that
Dr Amanda Crowell:I'm struggling not to do a million things at once, which
Dr Amanda Crowell:actually brings me to the next thing I've learned about doing
Dr Amanda Crowell:great work. Great work really tends to involve overworking,
Dr Amanda Crowell:and we all need reminders to stop. This reminds me of a
Dr Amanda Crowell:moment in Ulisses interview in episode three, where she was
Dr Amanda Crowell:telling a story of someone who came to work with her in private
Dr Amanda Crowell:practice therapy, and asked her to help her be less tired. But
Dr Amanda Crowell:she wanted to be less tired without stopping her 100 hour
Dr Amanda Crowell:work week while still going to grad school and working out five
Dr Amanda Crowell:times a week and only sleeping four hours a night. She wanted
Dr Amanda Crowell:to do all of that, but also be less tired. So Alyssa said, so
Dr Amanda Crowell:you want me to help you be a robot? And yes, yes, we do. This
Dr Amanda Crowell:person with her ridiculous request is all of us. When you
Dr Amanda Crowell:are doing great work, you need help refocusing on the
Dr Amanda Crowell:competitive advantage of resilience. This has been a
Dr Amanda Crowell:really calming and quite galvanizing, for me to realize
Dr Amanda Crowell:how utterly widespread overworking in the name of great
Dr Amanda Crowell:work is I yammer on about this all day, every day, and I still
Dr Amanda Crowell:struggle with it. I handle it. I take I force myself to take
Dr Amanda Crowell:breaks, I force myself to stop working. I refuse to work on
Dr Amanda Crowell:weekends. And this is because I'm 100% convinced of my
Dr Amanda Crowell:argument. And I've seen the way that taking these breaks and
Dr Amanda Crowell:protecting my resilience changes the caliber and the speed of
Dr Amanda Crowell:migrate work. But oh, it's hard. And it's nice to know, I'm not
Dr Amanda Crowell:alone. And it makes me even more committed to helping myself and
Dr Amanda Crowell:others figure out how to do great work without sacrificing
Dr Amanda Crowell:everything else. Which brings us directly to the next lesson that
Dr Amanda Crowell:I've learned. Great work must be enjoyable, or it immediately
Dr Amanda Crowell:gets too serious. And that quickly gets old. When the work
Dr Amanda Crowell:we are doing feels really serious like it matters, it's
Dr Amanda Crowell:important and everyone needs to take it very seriously, we lose
Dr Amanda Crowell:track of why we're doing it in the first place. This can cause
Dr Amanda Crowell:us to subvert our work away from greatness towards guarantees,
Dr Amanda Crowell:focusing on doing it right.
Dr Amanda Crowell:Instead of following the call of great work. Trish Blaine says
Dr Amanda Crowell:that we have to be driven by original desire, and prioritize
Dr Amanda Crowell:what makes us feel alive. I think it keeps us from ruining
Dr Amanda Crowell:our lives and sacrificing every good thing in the name of our
Dr Amanda Crowell:great work. Either way, we win when we make sure that we're
Dr Amanda Crowell:doing things in a way that we enjoy. And listen to the meta
Dr Amanda Crowell:aspect of me saying that we all need to figure out how to not
Dr Amanda Crowell:overcomplicate things and make everything so serious is an
Dr Amanda Crowell:exact example of the next lesson. Great work often
Dr Amanda Crowell:involves teaching what we ourselves needed to learn. So
Dr Amanda Crowell:many of my guests have shared that their great work started
Dr Amanda Crowell:out as something they personally struggled with. They struggled
Dr Amanda Crowell:with speaking confidently and now they help others speak
Dr Amanda Crowell:confidently. They felt unseen as a minority student at school.
Dr Amanda Crowell:And so they've worked for decades, to bring the focus back
Dr Amanda Crowell:to student voice. They struggled when they first learned how to
Dr Amanda Crowell:manage teams. So they help others who are struggling with
Dr Amanda Crowell:the same things. And it makes a lot of sense from where I sit.
Dr Amanda Crowell:As I mentioned, I have worked for years in teacher
Dr Amanda Crowell:preparation, teaching aspiring teachers about psychology. And
Dr Amanda Crowell:I've noticed a huge difference and how effective teachers are
Dr Amanda Crowell:based on whether they have a natural affinity for what
Dr Amanda Crowell:they've learned. Because if you learn something quickly, and
Dr Amanda Crowell:without any struggle, you're not usually a great teacher. This is
Dr Amanda Crowell:because you have no idea what went into learning your craft.
Dr Amanda Crowell:When you struggle on the other hand and you work at it. And you
Dr Amanda Crowell:watch yourself overcome challenge. You can develop some
Dr Amanda Crowell:really solid theories about what's likely to go wrong and
Dr Amanda Crowell:how to get around those things. And it's that kind of knowledge,
Dr Amanda Crowell:what we call pedagogical content. knowledge in the
Dr Amanda Crowell:teacher prep field, or knowledge about what it takes to learn
Dr Amanda Crowell:something. It's that knowledge that makes you a great coach, a
Dr Amanda Crowell:great teacher and a better consultant and certainly a
Dr Amanda Crowell:better manager. The final lesson that I've learned about having a
Dr Amanda Crowell:podcast is that it's fun. You know, at first, when I was
Dr Amanda Crowell:thinking about starting a podcast, all I could think about
Dr Amanda Crowell:were the technical hurdles. I was consumed by thoughts like,
Dr Amanda Crowell:how does a podcast get from my computer to the internet? And
Dr Amanda Crowell:like, what is SEO for podcasts? And how do you get people to
Dr Amanda Crowell:listen to a podcast? So I was sort of taken by surprise that
Dr Amanda Crowell:it was so fun to do. The solo episodes like this one, are
Dr Amanda Crowell:quite a lot like writing a blog, something I've loved doing for
Dr Amanda Crowell:decades. But it has this added performative aspect of recording
Dr Amanda Crowell:it, which I didn't think would delight me, but it does. And
Dr Amanda Crowell:I've enjoyed adding like little bits and pieces two episodes to
Dr Amanda Crowell:see how they work like a sound effect in the first episode, or
Dr Amanda Crowell:doing voices in the episode on getting out of the box, and
Dr Amanda Crowell:trying interesting elements that just aren't there in a written
Dr Amanda Crowell:blog. Now, some of these elements like I think the
Dr Amanda Crowell:retrospective on Jim Henson from the second episode, I think it
Dr Amanda Crowell:really worked well. And there were other things that did not
Dr Amanda Crowell:work. Like there were these law and order like Klungkung style
Dr Amanda Crowell:chapter headers that I tried once, and they literally
Dr Amanda Crowell:startled me when I listened to it so I took them out
Dr Amanda Crowell:immediately. But even so was fun to play. All of this is to say
Dr Amanda Crowell:here at the end of my dozen episode retrospective that I
Dr Amanda Crowell:like having a podcast and I hope that you enjoy listening to it.
