The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant - Brené Brown on Brené Brown on Protecting our Attention, Time, and Humanity in a World that Won’t Slow Down
Episode Date: August 20, 2026In this solo episode of The Curiosity Shop, Brené Brown turns to questions and comments from her LinkedIn community to explore what it means to protect our humanity and attention in a world moving fa...ster than ever. She digs into where AI can support our work without replacing human discernment, why "work slop" costs leaders real cognitive bandwidth, and how leaders can tell the difference between polished output and actual understanding. Brené also unpacks Aiko Bethea's idea that transformation requires grief, reflects on what her conversation with Rebecca Lowe revealed about preparation and presence, and explores how pausing and active listening are essential parts of meaningful conversation. Along the way, she explains why she wears two watches and shares the story of getting fired from a house-cleaning job… and the unexpected lesson it taught her about why shiny can never replace mastery. Brené Brown — Brené Brown, LinkedIn (Profile) Adam Grant — Adam Grant, LinkedIn (Profile) AI, Commencement Speeches, and Why Human Thinking Still Matters — Brené Brown & Adam Grant, June 11, 2026, The Curiosity Shop (Podcast) The Rise, Fall, and Surprising Survival of WordPerfect — Jonathan Scott, January 15, 2023, Retro Tech Reads (Post) Why Do Podcasters Wear Headphones While Sitting Next To Each Other? — Ray Malik, January 25, 2025, How-To Geek (Article) AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity — Kate Niederhoffer et al., September 22, 2025, Harvard Business Review On Death and Dying — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, 1969, Macmillan (Book) Stages of Grief Portrayed on the Internet: A Systematic Analysis and Critical Appraisal — Kate Anne Avis et al., 2021, Frontiers in Psychology Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit — Brené Brown, 2025, Random House (Book) Multitasking: Switching Costs — American Psychological Association, 2006, APA Center for Humane Technology — Center for Humane Technology, humanetech.com Brené with Father Richard Rohr on Breathing Under Water, Falling Upward, and Unlearning Certainty, Part 1 of 2 — Brené Brown, 2022, Unlocking Us (Podcast) Brené with Father Richard Rohr on Breathing Under Water, Falling Upward, and Unlearning Certainty, Part 2 of 2 — Brené Brown, 2022, Unlocking Us (Podcast) The Two Halves of Life With Brené Brown — Center for Action and Contemplation, 2024, Everything Belongs (Podcast) Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life — Richard Rohr, 2024, John Wiley & Sons (Book) Kairos: The Right Moment or Occasion — Barbara Baert, Institute for Advanced Study The History of the Elgin National Watch Company — Times Ticking, timesticking.com Aiko Bethea — Aiko Bethea, aikobethea.com RARE Coaching & Consulting — Aiko Bethea, rarecoaching.net Brené with Aiko Bethea on Inclusivity at Work: The Heart of Hard Conversations — Brené Brown, 2020, Dare to Lead (Podcast) Stop Outsourcing Your Judgement: Brené Brown in Conversation with Leadership Coach Aiko Bethea — Brené Brown, April 21, 2026, Fast Company Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams — Amy C. Edmondson, 1999, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2) The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth — Amy C. Edmondson, 2018, Wiley (Book) Systems Thinking Resources (The Iceberg Model) — The Donella Meadows Project, Academy for Systems Change Rebecca Lowe Bio & Career Accomplishments — FOX Sports, FOX Sports Brené with President Barack Obama on Leadership, Family, and Service — Brené Brown, 2020, Dare to Lead (Podcast) Brené with Brandi Carlile on Music, Mysticism, and Broken Horses — Brené Brown, 2021, Unlocking Us (Podcast) Brené with Bono on Songs of Surrender and Carrying the Weight of Our Contradictions, Part 1 of 2 — Brené Brown, 2023, Unlocking Us (Podcast) Dare to Lead Hub — Brené Brown, brenebrown.com Brené with Barrett Guillen on The Hardest Feedback I've Ever Received, Part 1 of 2 — Brené Brown, 2021, Dare to Lead (Podcast) The Curiosity Shop with Brené Brown and Adam Grant — YouTube (Channel) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Support for this show comes from Odoo.
Running a business is hard enough,
so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?
Introducing Odoo.
It's the only business software you'll ever need.
It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier,
CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more.
And the best part, Odu replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.
That's why over thousands of businesses have been,
made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Welcome to the
Curiosity Shop. A show from the Fox Media Podcast Network. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the curiosity shop.
I am solo today. As many of you might know, Adam and I both teach in MBA programs, and he is teaching his
MBA intensive at Wharton right now, and I'm starting mine actually tomorrow. I'm recording this
on the Monday before the podcast drops, and so I'll go into my intensive on Tuesday, so you
may see him also doing a solo episode, so we're covering for each other while we teach.
I thought I would use the podcast today to kind of do an AMA, take questions from LinkedIn
on the podcast. I have a great LinkedIn community, as does Adam. So,
always getting tons of comments, questions, really productive, helpful feedback on the curiosity shop.
So I thought I'd answer some questions today. We'll jump in. The first question is from Scott.
And I just thought this was really interesting. And he is referring to back to the episode that we did on AI, commencement speeches and why human thinking still matters.
And so Scott wrote on LinkedIn, I'd argue that writing,
isn't an exercise in thinking, but drafting is. I have found that when using AI to write a first
draft, it's hard to get away from sounding as if it were written by AI. The cognitive load of the
first draft has been lifted and you can't get that processing time back. That being said,
is it appropriate to turn to AI for proofreading and critique once a first, second, or third
draft has been completed. And I'm going to start here. I am not the czar of AI ethics,
the overlordess of what's right or wrong with AI. I think we're all navigating and finding
our own way. What I thought was interesting about this question and this idea that Scott poses
is I do think there's a difference between drafting and writing. And I do think drafting is more of an
exercise in thinking than sometimes polishing or making the draft pretty. I think you have to do
what works for you. And I think it's about developing self-awareness for each one of us about
at what point have I turned over my discernment to technology. And wherever that line is for
you, that's a line I don't think we should be crossing because
human discernment is so far superior to AI discernment. So to me, it's the discernment question.
And the reason why I think about that is sometimes I'll do one, two, or three drafts.
And if I turn over too early, the problem for me would be word selection. Sometimes I'm sitting
on a draft because I'm like, God, this is not the right word to describe.
what I heard from that research participant in terms of how they were feeling. And so that word
choice to me still belongs in discernment. Dangling modifiers, not so much. Most of us have been
using some kind of word processing, you know, whether it was Microsoft Word or I miss Word perfect,
but I'm old. I mean, as an academic, like it was literally one day you came
into the office and all of the word perfect was gone. It was a dark day. But for me, word selection is
really important. I think in terms of grammar, I think it's okay. But you have to decide for yourself.
I think the line is, where does responsibility and discernment in and where does passing it off start?
So thank you for that comment. I really love the distinction between drafting and writing. And at what point is it going
from thinking to polishing.
And one thing I would also be aware of is when I have put it a very beautifully,
I thought, crafted paragraph into AI just to see what would happen,
it changed it.
And I went back to what I wrote because I didn't like the level of frictionlessness.
Is that a word?
Frictionlessness?
I think it is.
Frictionlessness read as bullshit to.
me. It read as nothingness. It read as, you know, when you get a chocolate bar and you're excited
because it's supposed to be creamy in the inside and fluffy, but it's nothing. That's how it reads.
So just a thought. Okay, this is from Christy also on LinkedIn. Oh, I thought I'd share this.
Dearest Bray, your work means so much to me. Thank you. Given you a heart. Seeing your ears
filled with technology has me wondering how present you are really when you're chatting with your guests
on the podcast. I don't know if what you mean by that with my ears being filled with technology
means I have my AirPods in, but that's how I hear my guests. So it's not, we're not in a Serenow situation
where someone saying, pause, take a deep breath, look left and then repeat after me.
There was a man from Nantucket. Like, that's how I hear the guess. That's the only way I can hear
them so we can record the podcast. Okay, another LinkedIn from Peter. And this is going back to
the AI commencement. As you can imagine, lots of comments. Peter says, the hidden cost of work slop
is that it makes the receiver become the quality department for someone else's thinking.
AI can clean the sentence, but it can't prove the sender understood the problem. That's where discernment
shows up. In the gaps, the assumptions, the weak logic, the missing.
context. For leaders, this becomes a real operating issue. Polished work now needs a stronger
test. Did this move the task forward or just move the effort downstream? Oh, I love this.
I should have been like Peter, meet Scott, Scott meet Peter, share answers. Peter's going to
answer Scott's question. Polished work now needs a stronger test.
Did this move the task forward or just move the effort downstream?
Yeah, I have to say that I'll give you a very specific example.
I asked for a two-page brief on whether we should make a move or not.
And when the brief came back, it said, we should hesitate to make this move because this new
platform doesn't do X, Y, and Z.
it's limited to doing A, B, and C.
And the thing that was so distressing to me is the platform doesn't do X, Y, and Z, but neither do we.
The platform did not do something that we have never done, never been interested in doing.
And so there was no discernment about whether we should make the platform move by the people who wrote the piece,
clearly, because they also know that we don't do X, Y, Z. And I think for me, you know how Kubler-Ross has
kind of these stages of grief? What I want to say is the linear nature of those stages as first
presented has been very much called into question. It'd be so nice if we could sequentially go
through grief, but we cannot. There is a kind of Kubler-Ross effect that I have on the
receiving end of an AI work product that's missing discernment, which AKA also known as
Work Slop.
That's a hard word for me because I don't know how to use that term.
I don't know how to use that word giving feedback to someone without sending them straight
into a shame spiral.
Because if someone called anything that I did, if anyone used the word slop, it would be very
hard for me to stay in my prefrontal cortex and not go into fight, flight, freeze, or punch ya.
So when my stages around it are, I read it, and I go, I'm so mad, this is so crappy.
Then I go to do they even care about what we're trying to work on here?
Then I say, oh, they're not using AI well.
That's my fault.
I haven't trained my team on doing it well, which is true.
And then I go to maybe I can't trust this person because I actually turn to them for discernment and now there's no discernment.
It's a lot of bandwidth.
So one of the things I talk to leaders about all the time, especially around deliberate recovery,
there's a chapter in strong ground called locking in, locking through.
And the whole purpose of that chapter is, hey, we all know how to lock in, but do we know
how to lock through?
And locking through when we get home at night is really hard because we're not just context
shifting.
We're dimension shifting.
And so one of the things I say to senior leaders is you leave for work with $100 and
your pocket, 100 cognitive dollars. And every time there is cognitive switching, you're locked in,
you're working on something and someone comes up and asks you something that's completely
unrelated and you have to look up and say, hold on just a sec, no, no, no, okay, tell me,
okay, yes, that's a good question. I'm wondering if we need to look at this data first.
Okay, yeah, yeah, have a great one. No, no, no, no, that costs you five bucks.
we can sometimes control our spending by turning off messaging on Slack or teams that helps.
Most of us have our phones there because I'm looking for kid calls or Steve or when I was caregiving for my mom, caregiving calls.
But when a caregiving call came in that said, you know, I'm locked in, hey, your mom's refusing to go to physical therapy today.
oh, that's like a griefy, shitty, sad dimension shifting. That costs me 40 bucks. Because this thing I'm still
working on, now I've got to go here, now I'm in my feelings and they're hard and, you know,
and I have to make calls and kind of hand it off to my sister and it's going to cost them 40 bucks.
I think if you think about cognitive spend during the day and protecting our thinking, our deep
thinking, protecting our attention, which all the shitty algorithms are trying to steal.
When I get something that is kind of work sloppy, it's expensive for me because I'm paying $5
to notice the lack of discernment. Then I'm paying $5 to wonder if someone cares. And I'm paying
$10.50 to wonder if I'm a sucky leader because I haven't trained them how to use it well.
You know, so I think this question about, are you giving me something that's moving the task forward,
or have you just moved the effort downstream or back to me? This is the question.
Support from the show comes from Bowling Branch. Small discomforts when left unaddressed can compound into greater ones. That's true anywhere, but especially when it comes to getting a good night's sleep.
Maybe your bed sheets slip off, the corner's too much, or your pillow is far.
past its prime. Whatever the case, you can finally upgrade your bedding with Bowlin Branch.
They make everything your bed needs. Their signature organic cotton sheets are incredibly popular.
They also make pillows, blankets, and comforters. Everything is designed to be breathable, soft,
and to get better over time. You can start with two pairs of their signature sheets to rotate through.
I am, I'm a Bowling Branch user. I will admit, I've got one word for you. If you like really cold,
crispy sheets that stay cold, you know, if you're doing that flip your pillow over thing,
per cow. I'm a huge fan of their percal sheets. And they have like three beages and I love all of
them and I use all of them. Beeses, creams, you know, in that palette. You can upgrade your
sleep with Bowling Branch. Get 15% off your first order plus free shipping.
at Bowling Branch.com
slash the shop
with code the shop.
That's Boland Branch, B-O-L-L-L-A-N-D,
branch.com slash the shop.
Code the shop to unlock 15% off,
exclusions apply.
Support for the show comes from Mint Mobile.
When you were a kid,
summer meant freedom.
No homework, no teachers, no school.
And as an adult, summer can still mean freedom
thanks to Mint Mobile's summer sale.
Right now, all of Mint's plans are $15 per month.
even unlimited for new customers for their initial term.
You can free yourself from big wireless by switching to Mint.
No gotchas or gimmicks, just high-speed data and reliable coverage.
All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest
5G network.
Choose from three, six, or 12-month plans and say goodbye to an expensive monthly bill.
It's simple to switch, too.
You can sign up online and you can even bring your current phone and your number.
To get your new wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to MintMobil.com.
That's mintmobile.com slash shop.
Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash shop.
That's it.
There's no catch.
Up front payment of $45 for three month, $90 for six month, or $180 for 12 month, plan required, $15 per month equivalent.
Taxes and fees extra, initial plan term only.
Greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy.
Includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot, capable device required, availability, speech, and
coverage varies. See mintmobile.com.
Megan Rapino here. This week on Why Are You Like This? I got to sit down with legendary
Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve in Chicago during All-Star weekend. We get into her personal
style of activism, how she supports her players as people, and why she proudly considers
herself a dyke. Then we learn if she's more of a mommy, daddy, or baby. Check out the latest
episode of Why Are You Like This, wherever you get your podcast and on YouTube.
Okay, Julie, what's up with the two watches? Are you doing double time? Okay, I often wear two watches. I'm not keeping double time, but that's funny. I like it. I did a podcast with Richard Roar, and then I wrote the Ford to the republication of his book, falling upward about the second half of life, about midlife. And one of the things that,
is very true to me. Not only am I a word person and a spiritual person, I think about my life in both
chronos and chiros. And so chronos is clock time, sequential, quantitative, measured. This is my,
and I do, I have to say, I don't take any odd dollars from Apple, but I do love my Apple watch.
I like getting points, but mostly I love because I can find my phone with it.
And then I can record my workout times.
And I have most notifications turned off, but I really do love the chronos of it.
I like that it's quantitative.
It measures stuff for me.
It's sequential.
And then this is my grandmother's Elgin Watch from the 50s.
And this is Chiros.
This is another word for time.
Chronos means clock time.
Chiros means deep time, God time.
It's actually Homeric in origin, I think.
Vulnerable, vital openness is what chiros means.
An openness and a vulnerability to stay in receiving
for something that can only happen on spiritual time.
And so I wear both.
I also love watches and I just don't, I don't know.
not keeping devil time i'm keeping chronos and chiros deep time god time how many calories did i burn
and where the hell is my phone that's it and you know what i call this i call this my paraclocks
because it's a paradox okay all right that is not a dad joke that is a mom joke okay here's a question
from Lauren. This is on the episode where we shared a recording of Icobathia, friend, leadership,
senior leader, coach, thinker. She wrote a new book called Anchored Aligned Accountable,
and it's about self-leadership. The two of us did a talk together on a stage at a better up
event and we recorded it and shared the talk as a podcast. And if you've never listened to a coaching
session, IRL, like in real life or in real time, this is a coaching session. It was so hard. I was in
tears. I was so worn out after it. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, but it was such a
beautiful example of what a skilled coach like ICO looks like. So this is a question from that
episode. Iko said something I keep pondering, that transformative change requires grief,
a loss of innocence of community of how you once saw yourself. We talk a great deal about
psychological safety as a condition for inclusion, but almost never about grief as a requirement
for it. What strikes me is that children can move through exactly this kind of loss naturally
through play, conflict, repair, before the armor goes on and the calculus of self-protection takes
over. My question is whether you think organizations are capable of making space for that grief,
or whether the demand for productivity makes genuine transformation structurally impossible
in most workplaces. Damn, Lauren, this is such a beautiful question. So I'm going to kind of
play it back in different words so everyone's tracking. Icopathia said,
that transformation requires grief.
Lauren is asking, is there really space in organizations for grief?
And if there's not a space for grief, are transformations even possible?
I think this is a question of our time.
I think as someone who has led many deep transformations in organizations over the last
20 years. And I mean really hard transformations where we've taken, you know, entire organizations,
30,000 people through a process to change, to build new skills, to change mindsets, to examine
mental models, to change system sets, to bring in coaching. What I can say is if there's not
space for grief and loss, there is not space for change.
Ico is 100% right. And Iko and I do these transformations together. So you're not going to get a different answer from me and you're not going to, you know, she's, she's taught me so much about this. And I thought I'd give an example maybe, oh, this is hard. One of the things that differentiates in transformations, whether something's going to have to be, is it a full transformation? And a lot of times I think we have transformation fatigue in organizations because we call everything a transformation. Look, a strategic change.
change, an adaptive change, an incremental change, are not transformative changes. You're in a
transformative change when shit has to be broken. And then you have to rebuild new things and watch
every minute of their rebuilding so you don't rebuild exactly what you tore down. And it's in that
deconstruction, that breaking of old systems and then rebuilding new systems and fighting the human
urge to rebuild what we've just broken, that's where the grief comes. And the less you're willing
to grieve that loss, the more likely it is you'll just create new systems that replicate
what you broke. So very recently we were doing, I think, one of the hardest things that
would qualify. If I go into an organization and we have to change mental models, bam,
that is transformative work. Let me see if I can draw this. And I'll describe it to the people
listening. I'm going to draw this for us. You may have seen this, but I'll walk you through
kind of how I think about it. So you have this iceberg and you see a problem and the problem
is above the wave. So we see problems and they're above the water. If you're audio listening,
hey. So the problem is that we, is visual. We can see it. Underneath the water is the rest of the
iceberg, and that first strata is behaviors, then systems and structures, and then at the very
bottom mental models.
If the lower you make the change, the more leverage and the longer the change lasts.
So if you see a problem and you just address the problem but nothing underwater, good luck,
two weeks maybe.
If you see a problem address behaviors, you may get three months.
If you see a problem address behaviors and structures and systems, maybe six
months, nine months, a year if you're super lucky. If you see a problem, think about the behaviors that
underpin the problem, the systems and structures that are built that feed the problem, reward the
problem, punish challenges to the problem, and then you talk about the mental models that
underlie everything, then that's transformative change. That's really breaking. It's excavating and
breaking. So recently we were excavating mental models in my own organization about just what are
some of the mental models that we're working off of that are no longer serving. And the excavation
of those was so painful. Oh my God, that's why people hate it and people hate it because
transformation requires a change in mental model. A mental model is the way I see the world and the way
that I make sense of the world.
And it's the way I make sense of the value that I contribute to our relationship or an
organization or my team.
So they're very protected.
We do not want to change them.
And there was a moment where I was looking at some post-it notes of mental models that
were no longer serving us.
And in that moment, what I saw was.
as the founder and the person that holds the most power and authority,
there had been moments when I was in pain or fear,
and I was under the line and I said something,
and that became a mental model off which people worked for two years.
And there's grief attached to that for me.
And as we start to,
excavate across my organization, there's grief attached to it. I'm not the only one that has
set mental models that are not helpful from a place of pain or fear or anxiety or scarcity.
Mine concretize faster because of my position. But there's this great quote that says
sometimes we have to let go of what we planned in order to really embrace what is.
And that's transformation, you know.
We had a plan.
The world changed.
We changed what we thought we needed to be able to do changed.
And so if you don't make room for grief and other emotions, hope, sometimes despair surfaces in the midst of transformation,
anxiety, fear, scarcity. If you don't make room for everything that we know that comes with change,
then call it something else, but don't call it a transformation. It's a beautiful question,
Lauren. Okay. Moving to the podcast with Rebecca Lowe, who led the largest soccer announcing effort in
American history. She was at the table with some of the biggest, most well-known players and
egos in soccer. And we interviewed her about what it took and what it takes to be, you know,
the face of announcing for Premier League soccer and for the World Cup that just ended. And we talked
a lot about preparation. And this is a comment from Carlos and a question. I mean, just for all of you,
I'm a LinkedIn.
I know people say that some people like it,
some people don't love it. I love any place where there's
accountability because your name's attached to your comments.
And I just, comments are open there
for me. And I comment there
all the time and engage with folks.
And I just want to say I really appreciate
in real time.
And both Kronos and Kairos,
I do, both clocks.
Really appreciate the thoughtfulness
and the productive challenge
and the pushes and that I disagree.
And every now and then someone's shitty to me or shitty to another person.
And, you know, that's life.
And that's what blocking is for.
But I do really appreciate the real debate and discourse.
And you can see they're thoughtful.
These are from LinkedIn.
Like they're just, I could put these together and it'd be a leadership manual.
So Carlos writes, oh, one thing we said in the, just to give you the context,
We said that more important than executive presence is preparation, and they're often not always combined,
and that while Rebecca has presence, you cannot underestimate her preparation.
I mean, I'm going to tell you, if you did a deep dive on her prep, it's insane.
And she does it, and she's done it for years, the Olympics, Premier League football, the World Cup.
She uses 10% of it, but she doesn't care because she feels grounded, and it gives her permission to have fun and let lose.
And so that's the context for this.
So Carlos writes,
the distinction between presence and preparation is important.
I have noticed that what looks effortless and strong leaders
is often the visible result of a great deal of invisible work.
Smart. It's beautiful.
Preparation does more than improve performance.
It reduces the mental noise it appears when the pressure rises.
When we know the material, the context in ourselves well enough,
and we have more attention available for the room,
the people, and what's unfolding in real,
time. That's where presence becomes more than confidence. It becomes capacity. Wow.
Preparation builds capacity, not just presence. Let's go. Cross asks, do you think the best
preparation ultimately creates the freedom to be less attached to the preparation itself?
Yes. Listen to this question. This is just, I heart people. Not always, but here.
Do you think the best preparation ultimately creates the freedom to be less attached to the preparation
itself?
Yes.
Because when I am only moderately prepared, I am white-necling the notes.
I am praying while people are talking.
I'm literally like, dear God, don't let them go into this area that was on page 7 of 7 of my
prep notes, and I only got to page 5.
You know, yes, it allows for active listening.
It allows to go off script.
It's fun.
I'm grounded from this place of strong ground.
I can go anywhere.
I feel stable enough to be explosive.
I feel tethered enough to reach.
This is it.
I'm going to read Carlos' line again.
The breast preparation ultimately creates the freedom to be less attached to the preparation itself.
Paradox.
Carlos winner.
Love it.
Get your tickets now for the dog stars.
It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear.
Go!
Out there, it's a killer be killed.
Jacob Alluredi.
There are people out there.
They need our help.
Josh Bruland.
Shoot first.
It's an inquire afterwards.
Margaret Quali.
Okay, tough guy.
And Guy Pearce.
Arm up!
The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott.
In theaters, August 28th.
Get tickets now.
Elon Musk and a lot of other very smart people.
think we're all going to have robots at our house any day now. But when you look at where the tech
is today and how far it has to go, you might reach a different conclusion. This idea that
humanoid robots are coming to live in our house and I went and explored that is just not true.
That's Joanna Stern, the tech journalist who spent a year outsourcing her life to AI and robots.
That's on channels, the show about tech and media and what happens when they collide, wherever
you listen to your favorite podcasts. We have two left, one cracks me up.
Okay. This is from Artie, referencing the Rebecca Lowe podcast. Preparation can create a kind of freedom in the moment because you're no longer using your attention to figure out what comes next. You can listen, respond, and stay present. How much what we call presence is actually the result of preparation. Okay, so I want to three P's here. I want to talk about presence. I want to talk about presence. I want to talk about.
preparation, and I want to talk about pausing.
I do think a lot of what we call presence is really the result of preparation.
I also think if I look back 40 years on my career, I have seen and felt in my bones, presence
in equal measure in both preparation, as someone who's been interviewed a lot and done a lot of
interviews, there is a connection that only happens as a result of the freedom that preparation
gives you. There is also of equal importance to preparation because you can't prepare for
everything. And if you work from the mindset that you need to be prepared for everything,
you lose, you actually lose chiros.
Remember that the definition of chiros is a vulnerable, volatile opening.
It's deep time and god time.
You can't prepare for it, and it's just something that unfolds at a different level,
a different spiritual level, and that it's about seizing that.
And so 50% of the presence I have felt an experience,
was prep, but 50% was pause. I'll add a fourth one to bat, a fourth P, which is maybe
playback. So I've been in interviews and I've been interviewing people where something just comes
up and we find ourselves down a rabbit hole that we didn't plan for. There was no way to prep for it.
It's a beautiful moment. I can think off the bat conversations with President Obama,
with Brandy Carlisle, with Richard Roar, with Bono.
I think about how ICO coaches in that moment in that podcast with me.
The pause as someone who is doing the interviewing, and I get a lot of shit for it.
I'm not going to, I'm not going to, I'm not going to kid you.
A lot of people called unlocking us and dare to lead the pause casts because people would say in the beginning, oh man, I thought my ears went out.
I thought I hit stop on my phone, but it was just you being doing nothing.
I'm thinking, folks, the pause is I need to think about this.
And what it really says to me is I don't want to be thinking about my response while you're talking.
I want to stay in deep active listening while you're talking.
Then I'm going to need a beat to think about what I want to say back.
and the pause is another form of presence, in my opinion.
And some people just edit the shit out of those on podcasts.
And I'm not for it because I am not interested in conversations that don't look and feel like human conversations.
I think the playback is also a tool.
we teach when we do dare to lead transformation. So Barrett might say, hey, look, I'm really curious
about the all hands that you want to have today at 430. And, you know, one of my really big concerns
is we need to have some very strategic communications with individuals before this all hands. And do you
think we're going to have time? Because here's what I'm worried about. And I'm thinking about it.
And then I say, can I play back what I think you're asking?
And she'll say, yeah.
I say, we've got this meeting scheduled at 430.
We're going to make some announcements.
The ethos for how we work is no one ever learns something new that affects them directly in a group setting.
So we want to reach out to some individuals and have one-on-one conversations with them,
answer questions that we can answer before we have a group meeting where we share information.
And she'll say, yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking.
I'm like, okay, that's helpful.
And then we'll think about it.
Maybe this brings us full circle to ICO, AI and discernment, my pair of clocks.
Maybe it just comes back to what's best about us and what's best about the human spirit
is our own discernment, our own pause, our own deep thinking and our own deep time.
Those are the things I think we need to protect above all else.
Yeah.
Okay, our last question is from Penny.
And Penny asks, have you ever been fired?
If so, what did you learn?
Yes, I have been fired.
So I worked my way through school, and I had a lot of weird jobs.
Barton and weighed tables for a decade.
I worked at drugstores, retail stores. I didn't have a car. So however I could get the, in San Antonio,
it's called, the bus is called the Via Via, wherever I could get the Via Via via. So I had a lot of jobs.
I picked up a last-minute job cleaning houses because tuition was due and I was either going
to make some money and pay tuition. I was going to get kicked out of school. And I thought I would do a really
above and beyond job. So this person had hardwood floors, and I pledged them all. I went through an
entire can of pledge and pledged all the hardwood floors. She came home and bruised her tailbone.
She fell, and it wasn't just a fall. She said she slid for 10 to 12 feet, which I think is
exaggerating because I don't know that she had 10 or 12 feet a runway, that she slid for 10 to 12
feet and then did a gainer, which again I questioned and landed on her ass. And then I was fired
from cleaning houses. And so, yes, I have been fired. And what did I learn? Actually, I did
learn something from this, which is shiny can never replace mastery. You can make something really
shiny, but sometimes shiny is really dangerous, and shiny often hides a lack of actually
knowing what you're doing.
And I actually had no idea what I was doing because I grew up in a house that had like
linoleum floors and carpet.
And so I had never really been anywhere that had hardwood floors.
And so instead of like calling my mom and asking or I don't know what I would have done back
then, there's no Google or anything, I don't think there was a, I don't even know if it was
internet. So, yep, had a lot of weird jobs. And I do remember going home that day on the via via
bus thinking to myself, crushed it. I literally crushed it. I could see her tailbone,
shut up, Aaron, I could see myself in that floor when I left. Like, I'm going to get so many
jobs cleaning houses that I maybe quit my other jobs, but the answer was, that's not what I
crushed. All right. Well, on that note, thanks for joining the solo episode of the Curiosity Shop. I'm going
into my teaching intensive. Adams finishing his up. I think he may do a solo episode. We'll see.
I appreciate it. And all of these old episodes will be linked on YouTube. You can go back and
watch any of them. Again, thank you for the great challenge, pushback, debate, discourse,
love everything you're putting on LinkedIn and appreciate it. Makes me better. Makes us better.
The Curiosity Shop is produced by Brunei Brown Education and Research Group and granted productions.
You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app.
We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
Discover more award-winning shows at podcast.com.
Hey, y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair.
Ever order furniture online and wonder what if?
Like, what if it doesn't hold up?
That sofa was four days old.
You should have ordered from Wayfair.
With Wayfair, there's no what-if.
Just style you love and quality you can trust.
Visit Wayfair.ca.
Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level. This is Fidelity Connects, your daily edge in the markets.
Get deep insights on real-time market topics that may impact your investment portfolio.
Listen to Fidelity Connects on Spotify today and power your next move tomorrow.
