Afford Anything - How to Be Awesome at Your Job, with Pete Mockaitis

Episode Date: October 2, 2017

#97: How can you be awesome at your job? That's the question that today's guest, Pete Mockaitis, and I tackle on the latest Afford Anything podcast episode. Pete hosts one of iTunes' top 10 career podcasts, called -- appropriately -- How to Be Awesome at Your Job. In typical nerd fashion, I launch our interview by asking him: "What is the metric by which 'awesome' is determined?" Here are a few other questions that I hurl his way: How to Get a Raise: Imagine that you enjoy your job; you don't want to quit. But they're not paying you what you're worth. You've asked for a raise, several times, and they've said no. What do you do? Angle for a Promotion? Or Focus on a Side Hustle? Let's assume that you're employed full-time, and your goal is to make more money. What's more effective: [Option 1] Focus on your full-time profession, putting in the extra hours to angle for a promotion? -- OR - [Option 2] Be an average employee and focus your excess time and energy on building a side hustle? Tough it Out, Then Retire Early? Or Not?: You feel ambivalent about your job, but it pays well. Should you pivot to an alternate career path, even if this causes an income drop? Or should you milk the big paycheck for 10 years, save and invest like crazy during that time, and escape into an early retirement?   What nuggets of wisdom does Pete share in today's episode? Here are six takeaways: #1: If you want to be awesome at your job, focus on these six areas: 1. Be present. 2. Be deliberate about how you direct your time, energy and attention. 3. Be thoughtful. 4. Communicate well. 5. Build strong relationships. 6. Manage your career. (We dive deeper into these points -- especially number two! -- in this episode.) #2: Apply the 80/20 rule to your decisions. Ask yourself: - What are the 80 percent of great results coming from 20 percent of my efforts? - What are the 80 percent of negative things that I don't like? What focused 20 percent of efforts can get rid of 80 percent of the negative? #3: "Wastefulness comes from inefficient methods in pursuing things." #4: Invent what people want. Not what you think they should want. #5: Learn the 2 questions that improve every decision: What must be true for this to be a good decision? How can I test that? #6: How can you find happiness at work? You'll need to be satisfied with RED: rewards, experience and demands. Rewards - Your compensation, security, advancement potential, and your pride in the organization and its activities. Experience - Your day-to-day experience at work, appreciation from others, enriching and psychologically safe environment, compelling tasks, sense of purpose, learning and growth, and autonomy. Demands - What are total hours needed and the flexibility of those hours? Find more at http://affordanything.com/episode97 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else. Saying yes to something implicitly means that you're saying no to lots of other opportunities. And this is true not just of your money, but also your time, focus, energy, attention, anything in your life that's a scarce or limited resource. And so the questions are twofold. What's most important to you? And how do you align your behaviors to reflect those choices? Answering this is a lifetime practice.

And that's what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant, host of the Afford Anything podcast. Today, Pete McItis, the host of the podcast, How to Be Awesome at Your Job, joins me on the show to talk about, well, I think the topic is clear, about how to be awesome at your job. We also chat about early retirement, career changes, and whether you should focus on your primary job or focus on a side hustle. Here's Pete. Hey, Pete. Hey, Paula. How's it going?

Excellent. How are you doing? Oh, I am delighted. to be here. Delighted. Delighted is a word that I do not often hear used, and I think it should be used more. I agree. Delighted and other things that maybe just feel old-fashioned like, you know, good morrow or... Nifty? Nifty. Yes. Sometimes I find myself saying nifty or, by golly. It's like I'm in an old-fashioned cartoon or something. Nice. Well, speaking of words that are not old-fashioned, how's that for a terrible transition? I'll take it.

Your podcast is about how to be awesome at your job or how to be delightful at your job. Yeah. How do you determine, like by at the risk of sounding like a nerd, by what metric is awesome determined? Oh, you know, that's actually really like that question a lot, what metric is awesomeness determined. And I think, not to give you a cop-out answer, but it really does very, very much. very substantially by by job or a role or position, you know. And I think that that's one key step for being awesome is just getting very clear on what is winning mean here.

What does that look like? My favorite example is I had a buddy who was, and still is, a lawyer. And at fresh out of law school, he started doing his lawyer thing. And he thought being awesome at his job meant crafting the most beautifully composed, legally sound briefs and motions. And he quickly learned that, no, that's not what being awesome means. What being awesome means is satisfying the client, doing stuff that's good enough and a lot of it to drive more revenue for the firm.

It was a bit of a wake-up call. And was he happy with that once he had that revelation? Well, you know, it helps him delight, if you will, his colleagues more so. But it also made him think, maybe this isn't the firm that I want to be at. So he did make a switch and he was more pleased with the environment and value system operating at another law firm. Interesting. So trying to figure out how to be awesome at your job could end up, I mean, at least in his case, becoming a bit of a bigger soul searching activity that could lead you to a different job. It really was, yes.

But it pays to know what does winning mean here? And often we can have different perspectives than the manager or CEO. who's taking a look at people in their performance and evaluating them on those metrics. So it's great to get the sense of that. But to be more generalizable, I mean, that's kind of what the show is about is sharpening the universal skills required to flourish at work. And it started as a bit of a tagline, but it's really become the guiding light for why I reject 95 plus percent of pitches that come my way.

is like, I cannot see how you will do just that, sharpen universal skill. And so if you want to go there, I have six that I kind of think of as our content areas. And I think it's more or less, you know, me see mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive, of the set of skills that awesome professionals have. Wait, go back over that again, mutually exclusive and what was the next thing you said? Oh, collectively exhaustive. I have no idea what that means, please. Oh, sure. Sorry. Well, hey, my consultant jargon, it seems like you can take the man out of consulting. So pardon me. So, well, that's sort of like whenever you're trying to maybe categorize a set of things, you know, one good way to see if that's a robust categorization is to check and see if it has those two key qualities, you know, that it's both mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. So, for example, let's say I were organizing books on a shelf.

So a me-see set of categories, you know, could operate by topic. You know, it's about one topic and not another. And all the topic listings I have encompass all the books or by color. And so the idea is if you have that categorization in place, this becomes helpful, particularly when you're making sure you're thinking about. something very clearly and comprehensively and covering your bases and also have the opportunity to segment that for maybe different teammates, working on different parts of a question, or just that you have a tidy, non-confusing means of presenting something on a slide or in some

format. So folks aren't all puzzled like, wait, why is that they are not there? That kind of seems like it belongs in category A and B. I'm all confused. Okay. And, And you said that you had six measy ways of deriving awesomeness from your job, or that's not really that. Hold on. Let me rephrase that. Of being more awesome at your job. Yes, indeed. I think if I boil it down to sort of the six skills that I think people who are really awesome have, it goes a little something like this.

You know, first is that they're present. You know, they show up, energized, ready to rock and roll and and make it happen. Oh dear, I've just failed at that first metric. You know, and so this will things like sleep, you know, matter here. It's like not being bleary-eyed or exhausted. Second would be just productivity, you know, being wise about how you're applying your time, your energy, your attention to things that really matter, to the things that mean winning in your given role.

The third would be thinking, generating and selecting wise ideas and decisions. The fourth would be communicating in your individual emails or memos or speeches or presentations. Like you've got some real clarity and power there. The fifth would be relationships that you are developing and maintaining and cultivating, you know, meaningful colleagues and other partnerships in there. And then the six is finally just, you know, career management, you know, watching out for yourself and it's meaningful and satisfying for you. and if you need to make any adjustments or pivots, as Jenny Blake would say, great interview.

Oh, thank you. To get where you want to be. And so that's kind of my impressions is that any one of our guests, I think I can put them into one or maybe a couple of these categories. And those that I can't see any connection to any of these, I have a real hard time saying, yes, this guest makes sense for the show. Interesting. So I want to jump back to number two, which is being wise about how you apply your time, energy, and attention, which, as you know, is basically the theme of this show. It's making smarter decisions about exactly how to apply those limited resources. How do you do it? What's the – Oh, boy. Well, you know, it's so funny. I'm already tempted to just word vomit all these tactics. Like, do this and this and this and this.

Okay. I mean, go for it. Well, so I'm going to start macro first and foremost, and that is, have you, are you familiar with the one thing? Yes, by Gary Keller. Yes, Gary Keller and Jay Popas on. We had Jay on the show and it's so good. And I think that that is, is such, has been such a powerful concept for me. And the magic question there. And for the listeners who aren't familiar with it, can you briefly?

Yes. The key question that he proposes there is like, what is one thing? thing that I can do such that by doing it, all other things will become easier or unnecessary. It's kind of a heavy question, and you want to sit with that for a little bit. But it really just helps generate a whole lot of clarity real fast. It's that, you know, we all so often are scurrying to the next thing and we got to get it done. we have the pressure to perform and produce and hit the deadline, that it can be all too rare that we have the space and the time to take a breath and ponder, you know, critical questions

just like that one. What is the one thing I can do that would make everything else easier? And sure enough, I discovered many times in doing a podcast, right, that, oh, shucks, another episode, it needs to be out soon. And then relatively little time, which says, you know what? I could tweak my process in this way. That would save me a couple minutes every episode or five hours a year. That's huge.

You know, spend that one hour figuring out that thing and then communicating that. And there's just some huge returns there. So I'd say that's kind of the big organizing focus I'd put for the productivity and the wise use of resources is giving that thought to those critical questions. One thing that I loved about that book is how he recommends that you apply that question to all of these different verticals within your life. So when it comes to your health, what is the one thing that you can do such that everything else is easier or unnecessary? When it comes to your money, what's the one thing you can do? When it comes to your energy, when it comes to your work, in all these verticals, that question applies. And it's a fantastic question.

Absolutely. And I think that the more we ask it and give space for it, the better. How else? Okay. Well, I've got a whole lot more. Well, so I guess when it comes to the 80-20 principle to share with that, again, would be 80% of your results or outcomes or outputs tend to come from 20% of your inputs. Now, that's a rough rule of thumb that shows up in a lot of areas. But whether that number is precisely true or not, the majority of results come from a minority of causes.

And I think that really helps as well. It's sort of that same notion of zeroing in on on what are those things and you know, one of my favorite podcast interviews I had was with Matt Bodner who's just a very sharp guy, you know, Forbes 30 under 30, very impressive in a lot of ways. And we're just talking about decision making. So I think you'd like him to. We were going into this stuff and he says, recommends just periodically just making a list of what are the 80% of things. that are going very well and I seem very leveraged for the 20% of my efforts. And also, what are the 80% of things I don't like that are going on in my life, in my work, and in career, or again, any vertical that you assign to that. And so how can I eliminate that?

So I think that's really cool how he has the focus both on what's the 80% of the goodness that's coming and how can I amplify that? And what's the 80% of the badness that's coming and how can I, find some 20% style solutions to to hack into that and reduce the yuck that I've got going on. So I think that's a real handy perspective there, both in terms of the thinking. And so from there, I'd love to get tactical if you're down. Absolutely. Let's do it.

Okay, cool. I think one of the biggest pieces there is when it comes to wastefulness in what we pursue. It's because we pursue the wrong things to start with. and or we do inefficient methods by which we go after those things. So I think, first of all, when it comes to making great decisions, one of my favorite tools I use again and again. I learned it in consulting and I teach it to clients all the time. It has a fancy, fancy name, but it can really boils down much simpler.

It's called hypothesis-driven thinking, but I prefer to just say, you know, the two questions that improve every decision are, one, what must be true for this to be a good decision or move? And two, how could I test that? I started doing this in consulting and then I continue doing it for every major decision. And it's so helpful. So let me give you an example of how not to do it. Okay. I screwed this up.

It just made me laugh out loud. I had just written a book and I was trying to get it. It's old, you know. So I thought, okay, how do I promote it? I don't know. Mm-hmm. And I came across this publication, which is distributed to producers of radio and TV shows. And I thought, well, that's awesome.

I can get interviewed, you know, on shows that have an interest in these kinds of things. And then people will listen to that interview and I can sell some books. That's awesome. So that was the plan. But I thought, I don't know. It's a little bit expensive to pay for, you know, placement, you know, within this publication. Is it wise? I don't know. I did all this Excel modeling just based on random assumptions. I just made up basically. Oh, how many people will book me for an interview and how many people will listen to those shows and how many of those people will buy it? I have no idea of any of those things. I was like, well, this sounds kind of reasonable.

I see. So your spreadsheet was precise but not accurate. Yes, absolutely. And so as I went through all this and I pulled the trigger, I did it, you know, not perfectly sure. but hopeful and optimistic. And I got on a couple shows, but I also got in a couple shows that were, you know, kind of mean-spirited where they just like to prank people. And like the joke was on me as the guest. It was like, wow. And I thought, what a poor investment I made. And I failed to heed, you know, this perspective of hypothesis-driven thinking or asking

the questions, what must be true for this to be a good move and how can I test that? What must be true for this to be a good move is that I'll sell a bunch of books. How can I test that? It didn't really occur to me at the time. But some months later, I got a phone call and someone said, hey, Pete, I saw you in this magazine. And I just wrote a book. And I was thinking about putting an advertisement in this magazine. Can you tell me, was this worthwhile for you?

Hmm. Wow. I was like, it was sitting right in front of my face. I could have done that. I could have just picked up the phone and asked, hey, did this work for you? for some reason it didn't occur to me. And I guess because I didn't stop and ask that question. Because if I asked that question, you know, maybe one answer would be do an elaborate Excel, you know, exercise. Another answer could be ask people who did it and see what happened for them. Yes, absolutely. Although, follow up question of that, when you do ask people, in any circumstance, when you ask people who have done it, how do you differentiate whether or not what is true for them, How do you distinguish if what's true for them would also be true for you?

I know that's an excellent question. I mean, my hunch is, in this context, you would want to call multiple authors and multiple authors who are as similar, you know, to you know, with regard to, okay, it's nonfiction. It's in this kind of topic area. You have similar credentials in terms of, you know, not being someone on the Today Show left and right or something. So that's my hunch there is, one, you know, get multiple perspectives. And if it's unanimous in one way or another, you know, that has a high probability of it being applicable to you. And then two, I try to get sort of like the closest comparable as possible to your unique situation. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So in terms of how to make good decisions, we've talked about

hypothesis-driven thinking. We've talked about how wastefulness comes from inefficient methods. We've talked about the 80-20 principle. We've talked about the one thing. Before we move on, or do you have any other tips, tactics, recommendations on how to be wise about the application of your limited resources? Well, yeah, I think another key thing that comes up again and again is just our distractedness. Yeah. You know, if we talk about what our most precious resource, which is the quality time that you can invest into something, the impact of our sort of always on. digital beeps and buzzes and notifications everywhere is quite detrimental. And so I think that I am seeing more and more how essential it is for myself and the neuroscience and studies are bearing this

out to have some protection from that, you know, both in terms of one, turning off your phone, putting it on super silence. Even a buzz will distract you. Like, oh, what was that? Putting it in another room, closing down the email program and only checking it at certain times, or to get more on the offensive to conduct some mindfulness exercises, whether that's meditation or visualizations or focus just breathing and concentrating on the breath. I think it is kind of essential in 2017 and beyond the flood of information is getting more and more intense. There are more and more ways we can get distracted and sucked in. So I think this is a critical skill that we need sooner rather than later. Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a bit of attention residue that's left

behind every time you task switch or every time you get pulled off. Your focus gets pulled off of what you're doing. Oh yeah. There was a crazy study at Microsoft that showed every time folks check their email, it took them like a full 24 minutes, I believe, to really get back to doing what they were doing before. That's nuts. And I mean, it makes sense when you read about being in a state of flow. Yeah, that state of flow does not come from rampant task switching. Agreed. Yeah. Are you familiar with Cal Newport and Deep Work? Oh, I have listened to a number of Cal Newport podcast. I hope to have him on the show sometime shortly. But I'm a believer. Yeah. That that's an important skill and that it takes a bit of discipline and comfort.

with being bored at times in order to build those mental muscles, but the payoffs are huge. Absolutely. Absolutely. We had him on the show a while ago, and ever since then, one thing that he said during the interview was that if you are standing in line at the grocery store or if you're waiting for an elevator, those are the times when people typically take out their phones. Make it a habit to not take out your phone. Be comfortable with just being a little bit bored or observing what's around you. like be comfortable with not needing constant stimuli. And I've been practicing that ever since that interview. No, that is so perfect, Paula. It's so funny. I had an experience maybe about a year or two ago where we had just had a party and it was

just fun, you know, good times. Woo! In the next day, you know, there's some balloons hanging out. And so I'm with a couple buddies. And in our idleness, in our boredom, just chit-chatting, we ended up constructing a crossbow out of rubber bands and bamboo skewers and launching bamboo skewers at the balloons and popping them. And it was such incredible fun that no smartphone game can deliver. And it's like, this is what we're missing.

Is that crazy innovation that comes from being bored. It's so powerful. That's awesome. Oh, yeah. It was a blast. We'll come back to the show in just a second. but first, I have a question for all of the entrepreneurs and small business owners in this audience. What if hiring could be easier?

What if it could be more streamlined and less time-consuming? With ZipRecruiter, you can post your job to over 100 of the web's leading job boards with just one click. Then, ZipRecruiter puts its smart matching technology to work, actively notifying qualified candidates about your job within minutes of posting, so you receive the best possible match. matches. And that's why ZipRecruiter is different. Unlike other hiring sites, ZipRecruiter doesn't depend on the right candidates finding you. It finds them. No wonder 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate through the site in just one day. And the easy-to-use ZipRecruiter dashboard

lets you manage your hiring process from start to finish in one place. ZipRecruiter is the smartest way to hire. If you would like to give them a try, my listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, free. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash afford. That's ZIPZIPRecruiter.com slash afford. One more time, to try it for free, go to ZipRecruiter.com slash afford. and we'll keep that link in the show notes as well.

Hey, do you spend a whole bunch of time and money, either going to restaurants, ordering takeout, or trying to prepare these complicated grocery lists, only to find out that you don't even have the ingredients that you need for tonight's dinner? Well, here's an alternative that can save you a bunch of time, money, and stress. It's called Blue Apron. For less than $10 per person per meal, Blue Apron will deliver seasonal recipes along with pre-portioned ingredients to your doorstep

so that dinner comes to you, everything that you need in order to create a really fresh, high-quality meal for either a couple or for a family, will come to your doorstep for a super affordable price. I started using them recently, and they're amazing. I got the vegetarian option because I live with a vegetarian, but you can customize the meals that you want, just the way that you like it. Pick out the meals that you want and they will deliver everything right to your doorstep. I'm really glad that they've become a new partner to the Afford Anything podcast and you can check them out for free.

Check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free with free shipping by going to blue apron.com slash afford. That's blue apron. slash afford. You will love how good it feels, how good it tastes, how much time and hassle and energy you'll save. So check it out. That's blue apron. com slash afford, a f-f-O-R-D.

Got a couple of questions for the listeners who are still in W-2 jobs. Listeners out there who are employed. A couple of things. Number one, I want to ask you, since you have interviewed so many people and you've had so many conversations about career development and work, I thought you might be a good person to ask about this. So first of all, let's talk about how to get raises. And specifically, let's say that you like your job, but you're in a position where you don't want to quit, but they're just, they're not paying you what you're worth. And you've asked for a raise, but they say no. What should a person in that situation do? Oh, this is a really juicy one. Thank you for asking. Well, I think that you already nailed the first step is that they're not paying you what you're worth. I'm assuming you've done your research in terms of you figured out, you do all the resources in terms of, you know, Indeed and pay scale and glass door and all the things you've looked around and you've gotten a sense. You've talked to real people and to see, you know, what are the numbers that should be yours.

And so I think that's sort of step one is having real great clarity on that based on your, the value you've delivered based upon your experience and your degree and all that stuff. you have a real clear sense for what the going rate is. So I think that's step one. And then step two, I believe, is in having that conversation, you one, want to bring those data to bear. But also, you want to have just really a fantastic track record associated with those real results and winning in this, whatever your context happens to be. And so that's where it gets really interesting when you have those conversations around performance improvement, cycles and reviews and all of that. that I think you want to get really real about like, how am I doing? What does outstanding look like and really driving to that? Because sometimes performance reviews are total BS. And it's everybody's a three

or a meets expectations or whatever. And so there's very little leeway. It's so fascinating. We had a guest on the show and I asked to, and he was a lawyer, and I asked about some performance management things. And he said, what was fascinating is that in a wrongful termination lawsuit, never, never is the defense, the company being sued for wrongful termination bringing up the performance reviews as their defense. Like, as you could see, your honor and the jury, you know, this person was performing poorly. And this was well documented over a period of time. Never. In fact, it's quite frequent that the exact opposite occurs. The prosecution, the one who is allegedly wrongfully terminated, it says, see, year after year after year, this person was meeting expectations. And so,

so that's the first thing. I really want to zoom in on is, you know, if you're worth it and if you're high performing, your performance review process might not be telling you that at all. So you want to get a good sense for, do you have a performance review process that has meaningful, actionable, specific feedback that zeroes in on your strengths and development opportunities and gets you better, or do you have one of this BS compliance performance review processes that yields very little in the way of insight? And so I think you want to get clear on that and then have those conversations with your manager about, okay, what does winning really mean here? Who is doing amazing at that? Who's a role model I could follow? What's a specific time you saw

me do great versus not so great? What development opportunity should I pursue in order to to sharpen these skills and all of that stuff. And I think that the more that you can just get really real and candid about those conversations and see, you know, maybe you're not as awesome as you think, which is a bummer. But sometimes people do discover this, you know, when they get real about some of those things and to ask for honest feedback all the time. And one of the best ways you can do that is not simply say, do you have any feedback for me? but what's one thing you see me doing or not doing that I should change in order to be more

effective? And so that's a better way to ask that question to get more actionable stuff. So, oh, Paula, sorry, you got to be ranting here. To summarize, first, do your research on what the market rate is. Second, determine what is really winning mean here. Third, get true real feedback on your performance. and how that's going and see how you can really, you know, knock it out of the park so that you would be missed profoundly if you were to leave. And then four, don't be shy about leaving.

We had a great interview recently with Josh Vesley, and he is the senior vice president of Talent Solutions at Ronstad, which is just an epically huge recruiting and talent delivery engine, I think the biggest in the world. So it was really cool to have his perspective. And right now, it is an employee's market. There are so many options in terms of hanging up your shingle, doing your own thing, even temporarily before the self-driving cars take over, go Uber or whatever to eke out a living. You have tons of options and flexibility. So I think there's if there's any sort of fear in your psyche, like, you know, I can't really leave. You probably can.

and because more and more companies are desperate, and this is sort of a mathematical fact, that they need great talent and are having a hard time getting it. And if you are that, your opportunities are bright. Interesting. I'm really glad you brought that up because that transitions perfectly to the next thing that I was going to ask you. All right. For a person who is employed with a W-2 job, whose goal is to make more money, how can that person make the decision as to whether they should either, like, option one, focus on their full-time profession and put in the extra hours, put in the extra effort in order to angle for a promotion or a raise? Or option two, if they should just be an average meets expectations employee and then focus their excess time and energy on a side hustle. Oh, that is a rich question. Thank you, Paula. And it's clear you're tuned in to what are the real issues on employees' minds right now. So I love it. So here's my take on that. I think with any decision, I recommend those two questions. What must be true in order for this to be a good move? And two, how could I test that? And I would sort of run this through, you know, these very perspectives and see which one is winning all the more. And so I'm thinking, in order for the first one to win, rock out as a more excellent full-time professional. I think a couple things need to be true. And one is

that opportunities for advancement exist. And so you want to make sure, are there roles that you could take on? Have you seen other people be promoted? Have you seen them get raises? Is the organization in a financially okay spot? So you want to check those things. And then another question is that how do I test that? Well, can I observe historically over time what has happened with regard to people. You know, can you actually acquire the financial records, you know, to the extent that they are public or transparent or available? And so you're going to have to prove that first, is that opportunities for advancement exist. Two, you're going to have to prove that there is some degree of meritocratic force at work in your organization. This should be a given, but it's not.

Like some organizations, it doesn't matter if you're good. They don't care. Nobody really cares about excellence in that organization and they're primarily there to hang out and collect a paycheck. I find this is not my style at all. I want to really be all in and the stuff that I choose to invest my life into. But it's good to know that in some workplaces, some organizations, some groups of folks are not into that. That they actually can find your drive for excellence irritating and would prefer that you just stop chafing their mellow vibe that they're enjoying. You're harshing my vibe, dude. Yeah, totally.

So that can happen. And I don't want to stereotype, but that could happen in some governmental organizations. It could happen to some organizations that are closely linked to or serving the government. It could happen in some organizations where there are some monopoly-like dynamics in terms that they don't really have to worry about competitors getting in their in their business and stealing it away or or things that have just very very loyal steady customers and cash flows like yeah there's no real need dfay broke don't fix it so that's the second thing is to be true is that your organization will care if you're an outstanding employee or not you know some actually

don't and so you want to you know take a hard look if that's the case and the third thing that you want to prove is that you can do more winning, you know, in terms of you see a real opportunity to make an improvement that people care about and that you can win on that. And so I'd say if you have if you have no ideas for improvement or nobody else cares about those ideas for improvement, then you're going to have a really hard time winning in a way that is impressive and ultimately yields more dollars for you. So that's kind of how I'd be thinking. about how I evaluate, you know, the first side of this either or option. The, should I go bigger into being a more awesome full-time professional?

I think it largely hinges on some of those factors. Hmm. And so, well, you can chime in any time because you get me going here. No, I'm loving it. I love it when you go on a roll because it's. Oh, thank you. Yeah, definitely, definitely. Well, then now on the side hustle front, I would again apply those two questions.

You know, what must be true for this to be wise? And two, how could I test that? And so it's funny, I remember thinking about when I left my job, I did not side hustle it, which is probably a more prudent way to go. I just sort of did it. And I thought, well, what must be true? And it was like, one, I have sufficient savings to survive and not be freaked out, you know, for leaving the job. And two, I would enjoy this more. Three, I have the capacity to to win at, you know, the speaking training. game that that world and so those are sort of things that i thought through as i did it and i would similarly assess you know those those very measures what must be true well one that you can find the time and energy to put forth to something two that ultimately the marketplace has a real interest in what you're up to so you may very well have a passion for making candles or or whatever that may be it's important to be able to bring some disciplined rigor to it and say that you know passion is enough to be successful in an entrepreneurial venture. It's fantastic. It keeps you motivated to energize and going after it when the going gets tough. So that's totally valuable. But it's insufficient.

Like some passions get you paid and some don't. So it's important to check out and validate the extent to which people are into what you're thinking about doing. And some folks, they're not too wed to a particular product or service. They're flexible. And I think that's awesome. The more you can do that validation, if anyone's read Lean Startup, I think that's the book to check out with regard to this, and then use some of those tools, whether you're interviewing folks to see if they're interested in it, or some of my favorites are Google Consumer Surveys, VoicePols.com, and SurveyMonkey, custom audience. I use all of those to validate whether anybody would listen to a job about being awesome, or a podcast about being awesome at your

job and the response was favorable in terms of folks being 10 out of 10 extremely interested in such a show and sure enough this has been the only business initiative I have undertaken that has exceeded my expectations with regard to you know growth and success and it's because I learned early on that folks could be into this right and I listened to the episode in which you talked about times in which you had not validated a business idea first. You told the story of cool notes as well as Tudor Trail. Oh, yeah. Yeah, break it up the past.

Right. Yeah, a couple of your untested ideas that did not go so well. No, no, they didn't. But I think it was cool, though. I was like I was getting better in terms of Tudor Trail. That was low-cost online math tutoring, was the premise. us there. And I think it was cool is that we knew right up front that this might fail. And so we try to, you know, follow some of those lean startup practices of getting the minimum viable product

up and out quickly and then just getting a sense for, okay, are folks interested in this? Are they willing to pay real money for it? How are they feeling? And so I think that's fantastic, too, before you invest huge sums, you are thinking those questions, how do I test this? And how can I test this, you know, as inexpensively as possible before I go buck wild, pouring my life savings into something. Now, in terms of validating an idea and surveying an audience and seeing whether or not there's a market there, how do you do that while at the same time not succumbing to design by committee or cowtowing to the masses or losing all artistic and creative vision? Yeah, that's fun.

That's a really great question. And next I'm just going to ask you the meaning of life, right? Well, you know, I think that it's designed for the masses. I mean, my gut is, I guess you're finding this balance between your conviction of what should be and then the customer's real interests and what they care about. And so I think that the way I like to roll with it is that for the stronger my convictions, you know, the more robustly compelling data I need to see to overturn it. And then the weaker my convictions, like, oh, this would be pretty cool, the less amount of data I need to overturn it.

And that's my scoop. And so I think if you're trying to be all things to all people, that is a sure way to fail. It's true. But nonetheless, I think if you zero. in on, okay, I am trying to help these kinds of people with this kind of problem, with this kind of solution. You know, I think within those broad parameters, you have a lot of wiggle room to really adapt and do just what the customers are interested in to many extends.

And I think, at there are times, I don't know, I will reject feedback from my listeners, listeners, I mean that the nicest way. You know, when it just doesn't quite, you know, jive or square. So like if someone has, they said, oh, I'd like a guest about this super specific topic that is not really, you know, related to the core of sharpening the universal skills required to flourish at work, then, and I'm thinking, well, that just isn't going to fly here. You know, but if I hear other people say, I want to know about managing up, and then someone else says, I want to know about managing up, it's like, okay, that's all I need.

We got to get someone on managing up. And so that's how I think about that game is that if you're not super wedded to the particulars of your solution, but you are super wedded to particular points of differentiation and solving a problem for a real group of people that has that problem, then that's good. I see. So be choosy about what you give a shit about. Oh, I'm well said. basically. Is that what I'm hearing from you? Yeah, I think that's true. Yes. If folks, yeah, I don't know what the, you know, algorithmic or rule of thumb is for what you accept or reject other than one of my

favorite quotes. I think it was from the lean startup guy who talk about statistical significance or whatnot. And he says, if 10 of 10 people are not interested in your idea, that's pretty significant. And I thought that was very well said. So that's kind of my take there is, you know, you'll see where there's, there's broad consensus and then where there is murkiness. And then you just sort of a little bit of art, a little bit of science associated with, you know, sure enough, absolutely everybody hates this. I guess that's not really going to fly. You know, we're going to have to, we're going to have to tweak it a little bit versus, boy, I really love this. And 30 percent of people love this. It's like, well, maybe I can serve just those 30 percent. And maybe the

other 70 percent, they don't quite yet understand what I'm doing. And be careful there. You know, don't fall for the trap of you thinking you're smarter than everybody who gives you input. But that's how I'm thinking about it is you get a sense for, you know, how strong is how much of a consensus is there on my side versus the other side and then sort of negotiate a little bit of what you can. Nice. All right. And then final kind of topic that I want to ask you about before we wrap things up is early retirement.

So many of the people who are listening to this interview are interested in early retirement. Specifically in terms of how it relates to a job, here's one question that I hear from my audience with reasonable frequency. So let's say you're a W-2 employee and you feel ambivalent about your job. You're not really that into it, but it pays well. Is it better to pivot and to switch to an alternate career path, even if that requires an income drop? Or should you just milk the big paycheck for the next 10 or 15 years, save and invest like crazy during that time, and then cut the court after a decade? How do you make that determination? Oh, that's great, Paula.

You know, it's so funny. I'm thinking about making a whole course about, you know, this very question. Oh, really? Not so much about sticking with the job you hate, but it's like, when do you? Do I stay or do I go? You know, when is it time? And how do I make that call? I think it really does take a whole course of maybe six plus hours of, you know, thinking and reflecting on content and then doing research from there.

So it's hard to do a quick answer. But here's the ultimate guiding light, I think. And this is from the book Happier, Learned the Secrets of Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfilment by Tal bin Shahar, Ph.D. He taught this legendary happiness course at Harvard, which was super popular. It's pretty cool because at Harvard, you know, you got a lot of ambitious, successful, kind of huge opportunities available to you kinds of people. He says, and I totally resonate with it, happiness is the ultimate currency. And so if you're thinking about I want to earn more money, but I don't know, I think that that's really where the rubber meets the road is, you know, do I do, do, 10 to 15 years of banking this paycheck and retiring early or do I do something else? And I think that's

what it boils down to is, it's like, will you be happier in terms of if you have a job that pays you less and you're working more years in it, but you're having more fun, is that happier or is working fewer total years of your life and then retiring faster, you know, is that happier? And I think that it will vary for everybody. And I don't think that you can sort of offer a one size fits all answer. I think many people are tempted to say, no, follow your passion at all costs. And I think maybe, you know, that's probably sensible. But I think that that's really what you want to zero in on it.

Because I think some people aren't super fired up about doing any job. I've met a couple of them. So, I mean, if that's you, you know, then you might be. only be getting a marginal gain in your, you know, daily career satisfaction experience for a major pay cut. If that's where you are, I'd say, well, the early retirement pathway, you know, probably makes some great sense. However, I think there are others, and I'm probably more in this camp, that will have a massive, you know, like three, four, five X increase in happiness by doing something that really resonates with my core. And then I would be willing to receive fewer dollars

for that. And with some creativity, you know, hopefully you can hit that magical place where you're having more fun to make it more money at the same time. But I think it's absolutely worth doing the digging and the soul searching to get after that answer for what's optimal for you. But to your, to the two questions that you posed within your hypothesis driven thinking, you know, how can I test that? Aren't humans pretty bad at predicting what will make us happy in the future? Hmm. You know, that sounds right. I actually don't know. Are we? Yeah, that was a bit of a, you know, one of those questions that I know the answer to. Yes, we are. This book called Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is all about that topic. It's about how we are. The human mind is just absolutely crap at figuring out what will make us happy. Well, my hunch, though, well, so I would love to read that book. It sounds really juicy and right at my house.

And I think that certainly there are many things that can fall short in terms of we visualize one thing and it's and it's quite another. But I guess if I'm thinking about, here's the example that comes to mind for me is someone thinks, oh, I should be a lawyer. That'll make me happy. You know, and I've seen people go through this. What they have failed to do is do ample research on what is the actual lived daily experience of being a lawyer like. What does that job really consist of? what are my responsibilities? What are the pros, cons, the daily experience, you know, talking to several lawyers, interviewing them, getting a sense for how they live their life, doing a little,

you know, work sample. I think the vast majority of us, you know, don't do that kind of testing, if you will, like how would I test what will make me happy, is by gathering that information and taking those steps. So I'm sure even if you do that, you're going to fall a bit short of a perfect prediction for your future happiness levels. But that's my hunch is that I would imagine a large proportion of our badness at predicting our future happiness is due to an incomplete appraisal of what this future world really means and looks like for you. You know, we just bought a house.

And it's a multifamily house, by the way. Talk about affording anything. That's an awesome move. I really recommend it. Awesome. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. So that happened and it was cool.

And we thought, well, this is great because the numbers are just so much better in this way. If we compare this and we rent out those units and then here we are doing great. But then, sure enough, what we're experiencing right now is, oh, we have to fix a number of things. And we have to deal with a lot of contractors and some of them don't show up. And some things cost some real money. We didn't think we'd have to pay. And so all those kinds of things. And so these are not fun.

And you might say they are decreasing my happiness a smidge at the moment. But the more you can get a little bit of a realistic preview of that in advance, the more you will have greater predictive powers as to how happy you'll be. So I'm sure Daniel Gilbert knows better than I on this question. But I'm thinking, you know, we've got to base this decision on something. I think happiness is indeed the ultimate currency. And though our prediction about happiness is imprecise, I think, by being proactive about testing and investigating it, we can get the best darn guess that we can and just work from there. Interesting. Okay. Final question then.

What are some of the key factors that lead to happiness at work? Oh, sure thing. You know, I think that there are really a number of things that make the difference. And so I would put them into three categories. I call it the red framework. It's not trademarked yet, but it will be. You know, the first is rewards. The second is experience. And the third is demands. And I think that that's a good way to frame up any number of job opportunities because there are real tradeoffs for anything that you could go after. And each of us has different levels of. of a value or priority that we place upon each of these. So under the rewards column, you know, I put things like the total monetary value of your compensation, you know, how reliable and secure is that ongoing compensation? What's your advancement potential?

And then to what extent do you feel, you know, proud of, you know, this organization, the results, the culture, you know, what you stand for? And those are the rewards immediately that are associated with a position. So you've got those. And then there's the experience you have day in, day out, doing the stuff. And some of the hugest drivers for what makes it experience a good or a lame one are, you know, one appreciation to what extent to folks care about you and the efforts you put forth. The other is just warmth, sort of enriching psychologically safe interactions and people environment. Another is compelling tasks that, you know, align to your strengths and engage you.

another is a sense of purpose that you think your work is actually matters and making a positive difference to people another is learning you're growing and improving and feeling it and another is autonomy just the ability to to choose the sequencing approach that you like and then after all this you got the demands in terms of like the total hours you got to invest in your job to get or done and the flexibility you have of those hours so so that's a number of things but it's wild how Different elements here just are massively more important to some than to others. Like some folks will say, hey, if I have a real sense of purpose and learning, I will spend 70 hours a week rocking and rolling at this job and feeling great about it because that's really

what matters to me at this phase of my career. And there could be another time, you don't say young parents, you know, got new babies in the mix where it's a completely different game. They're like, what's most important to me is that I have. have, you know, sort of the smallest number of hours away from my child and the maximum about a flexibility to do the stuff that is going to allow me to be present for those important moments. So that's sort of how I think about the work satisfaction game, is that there are a number of variables, how important something is to you at a given moment will vary. And you want to be

prudent about making the right tradeoffs to maximize not just cash money, dollar currency, but the ultimate currency of being happiest. Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Pete. We will leave it at that. Where can the listeners find you if they want more of you? Oh, sure. Thank you.

Well, my podcast is called How to Be Awesome at Your Job. You can find that anywhere there are podcasts, and the website is awesomeatyourjob.com. So it'd be fun to hear from you. Great. Well, thank you so much, Pete. Oh, thank you, Paula. This has been a blast. Well, that was delightfully nifty, to borrow a phrase from Pete.

What are some of the key takeaways that we got from this interview? Here are a few that I took away personally. Number one, as he said at the beginning of the interview, if you want to be awesome at your job, focus on the following six areas. First, be fully present. Second, be deliberate about how you direct your time, energy, and attention. Third, be thoughtful. Four, communicate well. Five, build strong relationships.

And six, manage your career at the high level. at the 30,000 foot level. What's interesting to me about these takeaways is that these are modes of being. They're not tactics. They're not apps that you can use to shave 10 minutes off of your day. They're not strategies for how to give a better presentation. There's nothing either tactical or strategic about this. These six points that he made are deeply internalized ways of being and interacting with the world.

Be present. Be deliberate. Be thoughtful. You know, one of the things that I love about business and career development is that I have learned over the years that my personal development is hand in hand with the growth of my business. I cannot have one without the other. And so my desire to be a better business leader, a better entrepreneur, forces me to become a better person. So that's one takeaway that I got from this conversation with Pete. Those modes of being are integral to being awesome at your job. Here's another takeaway that I received. Pete mentioned that you should apply the 80-20 rule to your decision-making. So ask yourself, what are the 80% of great results that come from 20% of my efforts? And conversely, what are the 80% of negative things that I don't like? And what focused 20% of effort could get rid of this 80% of the negative?

And when we talk about the 80-20 rule, what we're really talking about is letting go of a lot of the minutiaeusals. letting go of the trivialities and the small stuff so that we can focus on the few things that truly matter. In the world of personal finance, that's like the difference between clipping coupons to save $10 a month versus refinancing your mortgage to save $700 or $800 a month. You know, so many people obsess over trivialities at the expense of the few big things that will really move the ball down the...

What's the expression, move the ball down the court, move the ball down the lane? You know what I'm saying. I guess if it were a basketball, you'd be moving it further down the court, but if it's a bowling ball, you'd be moving it further down the lane. Anyway, sports analogies were never really my thing. A few more takeaways. Another is when Pete mentioned that wastefulness comes from inefficient methods of pursuing things. I thought that was an excellent definition of wastefulness.

Another takeaway? He mentioned that you should invent what people. want, not what you think they should want. And again, of course, that does get a little tricky because, you know, you don't want to yield to design by consensus. This is a concept I've been thinking about a lot lately. I'm going to be making speech about this topic in a few weeks at a finance blogger conference in Dallas. So the distinction between serving your customers or serving your audience versus creating in a way that is authentic and true. This is really a topic that I've been grappling with a lot.

But to Pete's point, don't make assumptions about what you think that your customers or your audience should want, and strike the balance between creating something that's inspired, something that's high quality, and also something that is desired by others. As he mentioned, if 10 out of 10 people say that they're not interested, that's pretty statistically significant. So that's another takeaway that came from this conversation. An additional takeaway is when he mentioned that we should learn the two questions that improve every decision. What must be true for this to be a good decision?

And how can I test that? In other words, what outcome do I want? And what's my likelihood of getting that outcome? And if you apply that mode of thinking to every decision that you make, you will, over the long term, probably end up making better decisions. The final takeaway that I'll mention is when he talked about how to find happiness at work. And in order to find that happiness at the workplace, you will probably need rewards, experience, and demand. So rewards are your compensation, your security, your advancement potential, your pride in the organization and its activities.

All of those are under the umbrella of rewards. And you need good rewards in order to be satisfied at your job. in addition to that, you need a good day-to-day experience. You need appreciation from others. You need an enriching and psychologically safe work environment. You need a strong sense of purpose. You need learning, growth, autonomy, compelling tasks, things that really engage with your skill set. That all goes into the experience, the daily experience that you have at the workplace.

And the demands, what are the total hours needed and what is the flexibility of those hours? So when you have that trifecta in place, good rewards and enriching day-to-day experience and reasonable demands, under that set of circumstances, you are likely to be happy at work. But if those things are not in place, well, then your work life might kind of suck. And if that's the case, then it's time to make some tough decisions about whether or not you want to stay there. and if you do intend on hatching an escape route, how are you going to do that? Are you going to make a career change? Are you going to move to a different job? Are you going to start a side hustle and then try to grow that into a full-time job? Are you going to shoot for an early retirement? You know, what's your strategy? So those are some of the takeaways and some of the concepts that I got from this conversation. If you would like a written record of that, head to Afford Anything.com slash episode. 97. Again, that's afford anything.com slash episode 97. I can't believe we're 97 episodes in. That kind of blows my mind. But that's where you'll find the show notes, where I have written down pretty much everything that I've said in this outro. I've written down all of those key takeaways. So head to the show notes if you would like a copy of that that you can keep on file and sort of reference back to from time to time.

Coming up, we have interviews with Robin Dreek, a former counterintelligence official, who talks about how to build trust both at work and at home. We have an interview with Joshua Dorkin from Bigger Pockets, in which we don't talk about real estate. Instead, we talk about the realities of building an online business. And on Christmas Day, I'll be airing an interview with Will Bowen, who started a huge worldwide movement about how to create a complaint-free world and why that matters. So I hope you tune in for all of that. We have a YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash Afforda Anything, where you can get the audio-only version of this podcast, and we have

also got a couple of videos there as well. Check them out. And last but not least, you can follow me on Instagram at Paula Pan. My name is Paula Pan. If you hadn't already guessed, I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you like this podcast, please share it with a friend, and I'll catch you next week. You're harsh and my vibe. dude. Yeah, totally.