The Jordan Harbinger Show - 23: The College Guide to Surviving Mean Girls | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: March 30, 2018

Jordan (@JordanHarbinger) and Jason (@jpdef) are back to banter every week and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday on The Jordan Harbinger Show! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now, let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: Having trouble listening to this podcast on Android or iOS? We recommend CastBox or PodcastOne. Tips for someone with little to no self-control who procrastinates and is easily distracted. Is it strange to take the last name of someone you're dating -- even if you're not in a hurry to get married? What's our secret to reading so many books over the course of a week -- and do we recommend it for most people? Tips for learning about a subject or topic in which you don't have a lot of experience. Mean Girls and Heathers exist in college, too. How should you deal with these bantamweight bullies? What's the best way to make plans with someone a few weeks after you've unintentionally blown them off? Is there a way to prevent stumbling over your own words during important meetings or being caught off guard by a hallway conversation when you're mentally exhausted? How can you add more self care to your self-imposed busy life? Recommendation of the Week: LA92 Shoutouts to Ethel in the Philippines and Premysl Ciompa! Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger, and check out Jason's (@jpdef) other show: Grumpy Old Geeks. You can also find him on Instagram at JPD. Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider leaving your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. Here on the Jordan Harbinger show, we love having conversations with our guests. But our primary focus is to pass along their wisdom and our experiences and insights along to you. In other words, the real purpose of the Jordan Harbinger show is to have conversations directly with you. In fact, these are our most popular episodes. A lot of people don't believe that. If you're new to the show, you're like, nah, but then it's going to grow on you. It's going to grow on you. And that's what we're going to do today here on Feedback Friday. we're going to grow on you a little bit. By answering your questions, you can reach us at Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com, and we've always got some fun ones and some dozies. But a lot of people have been asking, how do I listen to the show on Android? I used to have this other app or blah, blah, blah. I recommend CastBox.

It is a great app. We're also on Spotify, but it's not really set up for podcasts because you can't subscribe to anything. You just have to keep checking the app all the time for new episodes, which is not really ideal. So we recommend CastBox. It is for both iPhone and Android platforms. and there's also, of course, the podcast one app as well.

Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag? Hello, do you have any tips for someone with little to no self-control? Whenever I try to get things done, I find myself hours later not having done anything. Maybe there's a book on my desk I feel like reading or a notification pops up on my phone. Doesn't matter. It distracts me from any assignments I have and it's very hard to break away. As a rough estimate, I spend one and a half hours a day being unproductive. That needs to change. I'm worried that as I get older, school is only going to get tougher and I won't be able to cope. Are there any good tips you can recommend? Thanks for all you do. Sincerely, wandering mind.

So this is classic procrastination. This is not really distraction. You're allowing this, right? This isn't like, oh, God, there's so many things I have to do. Notifications pop up on your phone. All right, put it in airplane mode. You are not missing anything. You need to eliminate these distractions so that you can start to attack the real problem, which is procrastination. So put the phone in airplane mode, put it and do not disturb. You're not missing anything. If it's an emergency, the do not disturb thing will get handled. Delete social media from your phone and or turn off all notifications. Everyone is susceptible to this. You can't just out willpower this thing la Benjamin Hardy.

We talked about this earlier this week. You can't have notifications. You can't have the environment set up to make you fail. Schedule blocks of time to get things done in your calendar. If it's in the calendar, it gets done. If it's not in the calendar, It does not get done because the problem is a lot of people go, oh, great, all right, this is my study time. I'm generally going to study right now.

Oh, beat, beep, bloop, vibrate. Oh, check this. You don't want to do the studying. I get it. It's boring. You're not interested in it. You're in school. So you can't have other things that are interesting in your environment.

I also recommend you get up earlier to get more done. You can easily and totally guilt-free waste 90 minutes a day if you get up 90 minutes earlier because then you're back to zero. No problem. You waste 90 minutes a day, get up an hour and a half before you need to. Here's the truth on the ground. Your life will get more complex. It's not just school. Your life in general always will get more complex.

You will have more responsibility. The stakes will be higher at school, at work, with your family. You have to get this under control. There are a lot more things you can do to eliminate distraction, but this type of procrastination, when it comes down to it, it's a fear of failure combined with a lack of systems. So this isn't your mind wandering. It's your environment setting you up to fail, and in turn, you have set up your environment. So I recommend highly listening to the Ben Hardy episode for more on this.

That link is in the show notes. That just came out this week. So you're going to want to get in on that and set up your environment to help you win and focus. All right. Next up. Hi, Jordan and Jason. I want to take my boyfriend's last name, not Mariam, just change my last name to his. My current last name is not at all a family name. I had an abusive slash threatening father at a young

age, and when my family left town, my siblings and I were put into a witness protection program. We then received new social security numbers, and the family chose a new last name. I've spent much time processing the trauma of my past and have accepted and forgiven any harm that was my early history. But I have never been super close to my family, nuclear or extended, and while I love them all, I don't feel connected to my last name. There's no identity in it for me. I've long thought about changing my last name to something I get to choose, and it could be anything I want, but I would love for it to have some meaning to me. I've been dating my guy for over a year, met his family, and he always tells me how welcome I am in his family life. He has a unique last name, which flows well with my first and middle name, and I want to take it.

I'm not super eager to get married as I was married and divorced in my very early 20s, and no, it's not an adventure I need to take on again, yet certainly would if we both agreed it was right for us. My man is also not in a rush to be married, but is very committed, and we keep the conversation open. We've talked about me taking his name, and he blushes a little at the thought, but doesn't seem to take me seriously. I know it would ultimately be his choice, and I would even ask his family for permission if I can get to that step. I see the potential downside to this. If he and I don't stay together forever, the name could have some stigma with it. But if that's a risk I'm willing to take, what's the downside? Is it strange to let someone use your name who may or may not be forever in your life?

Am I asking too much from him? Thank you for your feedback and thanks so much for all you do and share with the world. Love you guys. Signed, identity upgrade. Well, this is unusual. To say the least. You know, I would say, yeah, I would say you should outline the pros and cons here. The pros, you get a new name.

It's a little bit more meaningful to you. The cons, you don't stay together with this guy. Now you've got this other person's last name. It's not the same as your family and so you've got to explain it forever. It's kind of like getting a tattoo of your significant other. when you're in your 20s and your husband's always like, why do you have Jared written on your butt? You know, it's just kind of weird.

You know, you don't necessarily want to do something like that. I would, well, look, it doesn't matter what I would do. Why not pick something that means something to you? You know, you can use any word or words. The sky's the limit here. And then when this guy commits to you, and I'm not saying he's not committed to you. When you guys commit to each other, you get married if that happens, then you can change your name to his and you'll have a really cool maiden name.

I don't really feel like you need to change your name to his. I understand the temptation. I understand your circumstances. I think it might also be a little bit like taking liberties. I mean, maybe he's laughing and blushing, but maybe he's not totally cool with it. You know, and it might cause a little rift or friction, and you just don't need that. Yeah, I really feel like it could put undue pressure on the relationship and actually cause it to collapse, which is not the intended outcome.

You know, if I was dating a girl who wanted to change her name to my last name, it would definitely kind of creep me out a little bit. Yeah, it's a little bit like the adult version of writing your first name and your crush's last name on a folder over and over and over and over again. Remember doing that in school? Everybody did that in school, right? Of course. Yeah, right guys? I did it on my trapper keeper, man. Yeah, exactly. Me too. Of course. Do they still have those things? They must. On eBay in the, you know, the vintage antique section. Right. It's like a saved by the bell, trapper keeper with Zach Morris's face on it and screech on the back. Oh, you're so young. Yes. How about the A team? That would be a cool trapper keeper.

I'd buy that. That's my generation. A team, I'm down. Or Magnum P.I. I'm in. Yeah. Yeah, with... All right.

We're just going down that rabbit hole. All right, next up. Hi, Jordan. Can't help but admire the rate that you go through books before you interview your guests. It sounds like you devour books in a whole day. Do you use any particular method that helps you with your accelerated reading slash learning, mind mapping, Cornell method, etc? The usual way I go and learn the content of a book is to read it once, then go through it again, and decoding it chapter by chapter.

Unfortunately, this takes an inordinate amount of time, and more often than not, I find myself shoving it to the side as I end up getting distracted by a new and shiny topic of interest. Signed, Library Larry. Nice, Library Larry. All right. So, yes, I do devour a book in a day or two. I often burn out on a book after a few hours of learning, so I don't necessarily just blow through the whole thing in one day. go. I'm not, I don't have that kind of stamina, but I know a lot of people do. I don't go through chapter by chapter because what I found from reading so many books over the last several years is

95% of books. They are 300 pages long and they could be 50 pages long, but the publisher didn't want that. They wanted a 300 page book. So every book pretty much beats to death the good concepts that I would need to get from that. And then I'm usually going over it with the author. in an interview. So if I blow through a book, I've heard those same concepts a handful of times. Then I do an interview with the author. I don't need to go through the book again. That's for damn sure. So what I do is I take audiobooks and I do those because I don't do well with paper. I get too distracted. It's too unfocus. My eyes get tired. I get headaches, whatever. I got a sit in an uncomfortable position. I don't like to do that. I do audiobooks. I block off time.

I wake up early and get other things done and I go for a walk and I use headphones, AirPods, I use Google Docs for taking notes. I listen at 1.5 or 2x. I work my way up there from 1 or 1.5 because I don't want to start off, you know, with my brain trying to race. I got to catch it. I got to kind of warm up to it. And then I have that back 10 seconds button on speed press because I use it all of the time. I actually use it on my watch.

So I walk around my neighborhood outside to occupy my mind and I avoid that shiny object syndrome for things in my office. So I'm not sitting down reading and then going, let me look at this, let me look at my phone, let me look at this other thing. I'm walking around my neighborhood. You know, most of my energy and some of my cognitive resources are taken up. My default mode network, if you will, is just, you know, it's kind of like showering, right? Except you can't read audiobooks in the shower for very long, of course. I'm walking.

I'm taking care of my brain doesn't have that monkey mind going for the most part. And then I don't have my phone notifications on. I use my watch to control the audible app, so I'm not looking at my phone screen constantly. And then when I need something, I pause real quick, double tap, on the AirPods is what I do. I break my phone out. I've got Google Docs already open. I jot a note down and then I get back to it. That lets me read a book in about three to four hours, which is actually quite slow. I mean, Rob Fulton, who works with me here, I mean, that guy, he can read a book in like two hours and he remembers the whole damn thing and gets all the concepts and makes all these

connections. I can do it about three to four hours, which is, like I said, not that fast. Then again, I'm taking notes. You know, I was never a fast reader anyway, but that's what I, I do, and I get them done fast. Now, I don't recommend doing it the way that we do it, because I do it exactly like you do. I always, but I'm always at 2X, because I've been doing it longer than you have. But just taking notes and going through it super fast, I don't know if you're looking for a deep understanding, if that's exactly the way to do it, because if you want to spend more time with it and bring it in, when you're listening at 2X, you are getting it, but not really spending time with it to let it kind of sink in.

So if you have problems with short-term memory, it's going to come in and go out. unless you do take that note. So if you really want to get a deep understanding, I wouldn't do it the way that Jordan and I do it, unless you need to like crunch for a test or something. But if you're reading a book to get long-term benefit out of it, I would think that they would want to sit with it just a little bit longer. Even though I know he says, oh, shiny.

And he goes off to the next thing. Dedicate yourself to a book. Don't have another book on your desk or have one visible. That was one trick that I did. When I had so many books, I kept buying books and had this library. Every time I would walk by, I would get distracted. I'm like, oh, I want to take. try that book and I'd start that, then it'd be reading seven books. But one day I'm like, oh,

screw this. I put them all in a box, put them in the closet and had one book out. And that was my book until I was done. Then it would take the next book out, put the other one away and never be able to look at all the other books. That really helped me to focus on not getting distracted by the next shiny object that I bought like six months ago that I really want to dig into. Yeah, I don't read multiple books at the same time. I find that to be massively distracting. It's a huge pain. It somehow is slower than even. what it would take to read me one book and then the other. It's like, takes me three times as long somehow because of switching costs and being,

well, maybe the other one's more interesting, you know, that doesn't work for me. So I agree. This is not something you do with a textbook. This is not something you do when you're trying to get a handle on a certain type of topic that's a deep understanding. What I also do, and I'll explain this another time as well, I'm big on reading multiple books on the same topic. And if there's 60% overlap, fine.

I'm hearing concepts more than once from different author. That works for me just fine. But yeah, this isn't how to study for a college exam. This is how to get an overview of a topic so you can have an educated discussion with the author. That's kind of what we're doing here. We're not getting a deep dive into a topic. That, for me, would require multiple books. All right, next up.

Dear Jordan and Jason, I've just gone back to university and enrolled in some postgraduate studies. One of the papers I'm learning about is knowledge management, which is new and quite an abstract concept as I come from a science background. I'm finding it really hard to learn about a topic where everything is new, and I feel very out of my depth. I feel like I'm questioning myself a lot and finding it hard to understand what I read. I really admire your podcast for being able to read, digest complex content, then be able to have an in-depth conversation on the topic. Do you have any tips about learning about a subject or topic that I don't have a lot of experience in? Thanks in advance, determined but confused. Wow, that's pretty good timing on this because we just like where we left off with the other question.

Okay, perfect. So whenever we get into a new field, we, the royal we, not the royal we, the collective way, sorry, the opposite of the royal we, everyone. Things always seem over our head, right? That's why I'm a big fan of immersion. That's just what I literally where I left off in the last answer here. Immersion, really doing deep dives into topics where I can get a background on everything. And my question to you would be, can you find other people there who can tutor or explain things

to you? This is how I got through law school. I'd go to class, I'd find myself zoning out, be like, damn it, look at notes, get other people's notes, not totally understand everything. And then what I found was that there were some really sharp guys who would give me their notes and I would go through the notes with them and ask them questions and they would teach things to me. And you're thinking, wow, that was lucky. And I agree. But the thing is they said, this is so useful. When can we meet again?

And so my study group was other people teaching me concepts because it was very helpful to them. So this is great, right? I basically had a bunch of free tutors that were in class with me all the time. So if you can work that out, highly recommended. If you can't, get background papers on these ideas, read those, write questions for professors and go to office hours every day until you feel up to speed. Ask tons and tons of questions. If you don't understand what you're reading, right in the margin.

What is this? I don't understand. Go to office hours, just monopolize their time. That's why they're there for you, honestly. Nobody goes to office. I went to a really good law school. Those office hours were freaking empty. Nobody went.

Professors were probably glad nobody went, but nobody went. Take advantage of that stuff. Now, when I was learning about blockchain, for example, I asked tons of friends questions until they'd say something like, well, if you really want to know how this works, you need to read this white paper or that book on the subject. You need to watch this set of talks by these two guys. And you can even do that for a weekend. I actually call these immersion weekends.

And this is going to be something I'm going to assign to you all later on. I'm going to do some stuff on my website to keep you guys immersed in this stuff. And you'll find that you will take huge leaps in your knowledge if you do these immersion things. Now, don't do this every weekend. You do need rest, maybe once or twice a month max. You can also do immersion days and do them more often. You know, like Saturday, I'm doing piano from nine to five. Done.

I'm going to learn piano. I'm going to practice piano. I want to burn out on piano. The other elephant in the room here, in the first. question is the imposter syndrome, which is really this is what's going on here. This is a trait of high performers, which it means it's a good sign because it shows that you're aware of what you don't know and that you're having this nagging drive to educate yourself and get up to speed so that you can compete with the rest of your classmates.

Now, that's great. This usually indicates that you're going to be totally fine. You're going to gain confidence over time. Imposter syndrome is weird because it seems like it's your intuition or something telling you, Oh, I'm not cut out for this. I can't understand this. I mean, over my head, and you're going to fail. But what imposter syndrome really is almost always saying is that you're currently operating at a lower level than your mind knows you can.

And that is causing some sort of discomfort, which will eventually go away as the gap between your perceived level of performance and your actual potential closes. So I'll repeat that. Your brain has this little, like, dissonance, right? There's this gap between, I know I can do better. but I'm not at that level yet. As that gap closes, you'll gain confidence and feel better. So in other words, as you feel these uncomfortable feelings, they spur you to work hard and get better,

and that eventually you are doing better, and then that feeling of imposter syndrome fades. So this is all a good thing. You're just worried because you're in a new subject, and you're not performing as well as you did in your old course of study, so you think, uh-oh, I can't do this instead of thinking, this is new for me and this is normal. And that's what I'm thinking is happening right now with you. Nailed it. All right. Next up. Jordan, my first semester of law school got off to a really rough start.

In undergrad, I really struggled with making and maintaining friends and dealt with a lot of social anxiety. I took a year off and spent that time as a server, which really challenged me to find ways to grow my social skills. My brother introduced me to your work, and when I began applying what I learned, I ended up getting promoted and had made a ton of friends before I moved off for school. I was optimistic things would be different and better this time around. Unfortunately, I was unprepared for how the competitiveness of school would impact my attempted relationships with my peers. I was made an outcast within the first two weeks by a group of what turned out to be the

highest ranked girls in our class. I remember calling my dad after meeting these girls excited and thinking we had a lot in common and that we would be great friends. Things quickly changed, though. One girl made herself a sort of ringleader and began doing little things that rubbed me the wrong way. For example, we had a group change. chat with the friends we met during orientation. Then one day she made a new chat, dropping another girl,

who I thought was really nice out of it. Oh, this is like a text message chat group or something, like a chat on a phone? Okay. Yeah. I asked her why. She got uncomfortable, and her excuse was, well, she has a boyfriend and can't do a lot, so I don't want to bug her with a bunch of messages. Hmm. And I replied with, I think even if she can't do everything, she might still want to feel included. The very next day, I stopped getting messages in the group text. A couple, yep. A couple days, a couple days later I saw them in the library at a pretty big table so I came up said hey and sat my stuff down I left to go to the bathroom and when I came back they all had moved to a different table across the library oh give me a break this is ridiculous this is law school I thought

yeah I was going to say I thought she was at law school not kindergarten seriously not I decided to try again the next day and I invited them to go try this taco place I heard about but they all had variations of the same excuse of being too busy after they'd all gone Another guy and his girlfriend ended up volunteering to go with me. And when we got there, they were all at a table already. I couldn't even eat. What is how? This is like a Lindsay Lowhan movie.

This is ridiculous. It reminds me of Heather's. She made friends with a bunch of heathers. Oh, man. So not long after I ran into one of the girls at a bar and she was pretty drunk. She confirmed the girls' actions to exclude me were intentional. And she said she felt pretty bad about it. She told me when they renamed the group message after they made a new one without me,

they named it girls who don't curl their hair, in reference to me and a few other girls who tried to look polished during our first couple weeks. She went back to being a loyal lackey and ignoring me after that night. Luckily, I was able to join the soccer team at the school and met some high value people, but my confidence has been a bit shaken. I know it sounds like high school or middle school. I'm not proud I let it bother me so much, but I couldn't help but feel pretty rejected and hurt. Once we got our rankings after the fall semester ended, they made sure everyone knew they were in the top of the class. I, however, was not, not even close, and that hit me pretty hard. I started off this semester panicking, feeling like I wouldn't be able to find work for the summer because of my

grades on top of struggling with my finances. One day, though, I ran into a lady who'd done my hair previously, and we began talking and catching up. I expressed my concern about work, and she suggested that I make contacts and network. Yes. She does hair for a lot of people in the town, including some attorneys, judges, and representatives. She put me in contact with an attorney she knows very well who is an alum at my law school and who wanted to make plans to meet me for lunch. Unfortunately, though, the plans fell through because she forgot she had traffic court. She asked me to send her times when I could meet again, but I never got around to it. I really want to meet this woman in person just to have that connection and maybe get some insight

on school, but I have let several weeks pass without ever sending her my schedule. The thought of doing it now gives me a bit of anxiety. Now, is there a more effective way of dealing with these girls at school than just ignoring the pettiness, making other friends, and being nice whenever I'm forced to be in contact. And is there any way I can reconcile not having responded to this woman for weeks, or is it too late to try? I'd love to hear your take on either or both of these situations. Sincerely, girl who doesn't curl her hair anymore. Oh, well, I feel that, okay, this makes me angry to hear stuff like this. You and me both, brother, you and me both. So I'm looking at this message from an intelligent, friendly, successful future attorney who's being treated like absolute crap by a group of children. who are too weak to stand up to a bully that they've associated themselves with, this stupid ringleader chick, this awful sheep. This just brings it all back to school for me, too. I wasn't bullied much because I was too strong and I was aggressive, and I made friends with the big kids.

But, you know, in middle school and high school, of course, which is where this crap belongs. But this type of injustice has always really irked me. All right, what I want to point out here is this is a law student. These are adults who are acting like this. I can't believe this. But, you know, this also mirrors my law school experience. It's like high school all over again, smaller classes of people, more neurotic weirdos because of the performance requirements and the high stress environment.

It makes all these crazy quirks come out of people. But, you know, here's something I want to point out. Your nickname here is girl who doesn't curl her hair anymore. Why? Why listen to or be pressured to do anything these girls are trying to influence you to do? Imagine how miserable those people are trying to make. maintain control over their little tiny little fiefdom, this group of friends and a group of enemies now in that way.

These are people that have a lack of self-esteem, a lack of control over other parts of their lives, so they're just controlling what they can, which is their tiny little group of miserable wretches. I actually feel sorry for them. I feel sorry for them. Just imagine living like that every day knowing that everyone outside your group hates you and one false move gets you kicked out of the group and then you're not. You're an enemy after that, and you don't have anyone on the outside because you treat everyone like crap.

You're a prisoner if you're in that group. You are lucky these people aren't your friends anymore. You are lucky you found out quickly because otherwise you'd be having to apologize to all the people you mistreated because you were hanging out with them. Getting the boot from this group was a blessing and a cheap lesson that thankfully didn't waste a lot of your time. You know, these people were going to screw you over at some point. These are not real friends. These are not real relationships. So let's dispense with that garbage.

What I would do if I were you is write to the woman who you chickened out on contacting. To be honest, it's so tempting to lie here and say, like, oh, your male got caught in spam or really busy with exams. She's going to know that's BS. That's not a good first impression. I would say something like, hey, Janice, this is, of course, to the women that she, the attorney that had traffic court. You know, we're done with the mean girls now. I would write to her and say something like, hey, Janice, I know it's been a few weeks. I'm looking forward to meeting with you still.

Are you available at any of these times? Then, suggest a wide range of times when you can meet, offer to come to her office to meet her, suggest multiple times so that you don't go back and forth. Oh, that doesn't work. This does work. That doesn't work. Go to her office and meet her. Do not take her up on the offer to meet near you.

Look, she's all so busy. She likely won't care. It's been a couple of weeks. If it's really been a long time, then when you meet, what you can say in person is that you're glad you met up and you felt a bit shy about asking her to take time out of her busy schedule. This way, it doesn't look like you had better things to do in the meantime, or you're too lazy to get around to it. Everyone knows the feeling of what it's like to ask someone you don't know to meet. Everyone can empathize with that.

But in the future, do not let this happen again. You're doing all the right things here with your relationships, your networking, reaching out, asking for help. When people are for you connections, make them and help other people do the same. Because this hairdresser might be like, what the hell? You never reached out. You're making me look bad. You know, I set this up for you. If you start this good practice in law school now, you're going to have a massive network that helps you a lot in the future.

And last but not least, don't worry about your grades so much here. Yes, it's important to do as well as you can. But there are people from my law school who didn't do nearly as well as other people. And most of us, we ended up in the same places. Frankly, your network, your connections, those are going to take you a lot further than your grades. And as time after school passes, grades become irrelevant while your network, your relationship. and your reputation become everything. Best of luck out there.

All right. Next up. Hi, Jordan and Jason. Love the show, especially Feedback Friday. Last week, you discussed your technique for talking with a cork in the mouth. This reminded me of a problem that I often have in interpersonal communication, which is talking with someone when my brain is tired, especially in a workplace setting. I'm currently a PhD fellow at a well-regarded university. I cram information to my head throughout the day, which can be mentally exhausting.

I often find myself stumbling over my words when I'm trying to discuss research ideas or developments with colleagues and professors. Usually this is prominent in one-on-one meetings with research advisors. I think there's an element of insecurity or lack of confidence in my own work and ideas, but I also like to schedule meetings later in the day, which is when I tend to be less productive with other stuff. I also tend to think of things later after a meeting or encounter that I wish I would have said. It's the dreaded Les Prix de L'escalier. You know about that one, Jordan? No.

What is Les Pris de Scalié? It's a French term for the predicament of thinking of the perfect reply too late. They call it it it's the spirit of the stairwell is what it is. Because you know when you leave a place and you get in the stairwell and you're like, Oh, I wish I would have said that. Of course the French have a term for this, right? They always have those fears of terms of, I knew it. I should have said something.

Exactly. I'm wondering whether you have any advice or pointers on how to communicate effectively, intentionally, and confidently, especially when I'm exhausted mentally. I imagine that there are specific actions one can take in preparation for upcoming scheduled meetings. In addition, what can a person do to avoid being caught off guard by a hallway conversation? Anyway, I hope this question slash dilemma is manageable enough to address on your show. Thanks, afternoon mush brain. Yeah, I hear you, man.

Look, this is all about nerves, which are knocking you off balance. You're not able to think clearly. And some of this, some of this is being exhausted and tired, sure. Some of this also is a lack of experience talking to people who maybe outrank you academically or socially in a way that you perceive them outranking you that is. And it's making you nervous. I get it. Try these two things. First thing, improv.

You'll learn spontaneity. You'll learn free associating words and ideas. You'll learn performance. You'll learn to speak without overthinking it. That'll speed you up real quick. That is something I did early, early, early on when I was doing live satellite radio. You just can't go, well, you need to just keep talking. I mean, you need to go, go, go.

And that's why I'm good at that. It's practice, of course. The next thing is Toastmasters. This is a speech club. It's really cheap to join Toastmasters. Every college, every university, every freaking rotary club. There's a million of these in each city. It'll teach you to organize thoughts in your head.

It'll teach you to prepare what you're going to say. It'll help you with your vocal tonality, your projection, confidence speech. There are better ways and faster ways to get coaching, but I don't know. know if you have time to take a 20-day intensive Michael Port speaking class. So Toastmasters is a good place to start for some of the very, very basics here. And you don't have to do each of these every day or anything. But I would invest the time once a week each, at least, and be consistent. I know you're busy with your research. You're doing a PhD after all, but building strong relationships and making an impression on the people that can help you in your future career and in

your PhD. Now, this is an investment that will pay back huge. dividends. Also, it's going to give you a massive competitive advantage over those that do not build this skill set, which is pretty much all of your colleagues, right? Some people are going to go, well, I'm good at this. Other people will say, well, I'm not good at this. Very few people are going to actually work on these skills at the level you're at now. And look, you can also just tell yourself, I don't have time, I don't really know, I can't do it. It's expensive. It's far away. I don't know how to do it, whatever. But you're not immune to the consequences. You're just being willfully ignorant of the secret game being played around you.

if you do not fix this. Because if you think that you're kind of bumbling and not communicating confidently, I guarantee you other people are perceiving you that way. Especially given what you wrote in the letter here, it doesn't mean people think, oh, what a yutz? But if you're not feeling confident

about your communication, you're almost certainly not being perceived as such. All right, next up. Hey, Jordan and Jason. I would love some input on how to add more self-care to my self-imposed busy life. I own my own business that helps people have better relationships with their dogs.

What? It's my passion. That's a real thing? It's apparently a real thing. All righty. Okay. That being said, I tend to put other people, dogs in the business ahead of investing in myself. I see my clients get into this trap as well as other business owners who really enjoy what they do.

I realize I need to be careful not to burn out. I do have other interests and hobbies I could carve out time for, but by the time I have a break, my energy is zapped. What are some ways I can really put myself first without feeling guilty about it? Thank you for rebuilding from the old podcast. signed must learn balance. Oh, must learn balance. Look, I've had so many problems with this. I still struggle with this occasionally.

You never. Oh, yeah. No, me, of course not. Self-care, you got to treat it like a business meeting. I've got a nap scheduled after this. I can't wait. And this is relatively new for me, though, but I realize, look, you just cannot be at your best

if you're not taking care of yourself. For me, I have to perform here, right? I can't just go, look, all right, it's Feedback Friday. I'm pretty tired. You know, I'm just going to fight through it. That's not going to work. That's not going to work. I'm super guilty of the same thing myself.

Jason is too. We all are. This is a high performer thing. This is an entrepreneur thing. It's crucial that you plan ahead for self-care. You can't just, oh, I'm going to try to do it in a spare time because you will, if you're anything like me, fill the time with work. Yes, over and over and over again.

Over and over. Oh, well, I only have 20 minutes. So instead of taking a little nap, I'm just going to catch up on my tweets. Oh, I've got an hour, but, you know, I've got the reading to do. I'm just going to start that. This is, ugh, there's an abyss, a never-ending black hole of work you can fill your time with, especially if you own your business. You can, oh, I'm going to do social media for the next four hours instead of relaxing or

go on and chill in with a friend. There's always something else to do. Oh, always. The list is endless. You will never be caught up. Just accept that. A good way to take time for yourself is to do something with someone else. so you're working out with a trainer or you're going cycling with friends or you're hiking with a buddy

this way you're accountable you're screwing them up if you oh i've just got so much to do i can't make it right don't do that and you'll be less likely to cancel it's easy it's easy to cancel a gym session with yourself because nobody cares but you and then you rationalize it it's harder to say crap i paid 50 bucks and i didn't show up and this is the third time or my friend went cycling without me and they're annoyed now or my friend didn't get to go hiking because i didn't show up up that way you're going to be accountable or you're going to run out of friends but you're probably going to be accountable and it's interesting i did that my accountability buddy are my dogs which is funny because muscle and balance works with dogs my accountability buddies have to go pee a couple times a day so

my breaks are you know what i can add in another 15 or 20 minutes and go for a longer walk at the park take care of myself relax have a bit of time and do that and meet people at the park uh i i don't know if musselain balance owns a dog but for me having a dog was the was the best thing to break me out that cycle where I have to get out. And they turned into my accountability buddies because they're looking at me like, hey, dude, time to go. Right, exactly. They're not, you can't really go look. I know you have to pee, but I really want to wrap up a couple more things here. Yeah, I got a tweet. You got to hold it. Exactly. So create large blocks of time to do this if you can. And if you can't, then don't use that as an excuse, but do smaller things for yourself. So getting a

massage, that can be a 30-minute thing. And I mean start to finish, especially if they come to you. Right. You're just doing your stuff. They show up, boom, you're ready to go, and then they leave when they're done, and then you're right back to it. Watching something you've been wanting to see, that can be done in the morning when you get up early. I know it's weird to get up at 5, 6 a.m. and then go, all right, I got to relax. Because usually when I relax at the end of the day, maybe you can shift your day around a little bit, but you can also, you can Netflix early. You know, you can knock down some of those things. You can go to the gym early.

It's weird to relax first thing in the morning, but it still feels damn good. Oh, so good. Dare I say Netflix in bed, I'm telling you, it's the new breakfast. So make sure you treat self-care like you'd treat car maintenance or a business meeting. It's not optional. It's not a last priority. This is mandatory or you're going to drive yourself nuts. And then you're going to burn out and then it's all downhill from there.

It's harder to recover from burnout than it is to prevent burnout in the first place. All right, recommendation of the week. I watched this. Jason, do you ever check out this documentary? It's called LA 92. No. It's about the riots. in the 90s. Oh, man. This looks good. Yeah, it's good. I didn't know that the riots in the 90s in

L.A. were the largest civil disturbance in American history. I did not know that. I didn't know that either. It doesn't surprise me knowing the scope and breadth of it, but I did not know that that was the biggest. Wow, I'm definitely going to check this. There's tons of footage that I had never seen. L.A. looks like a war zone, and it's insane how crazy it got. It is nuts. It was scary, and it made me think that if I went through that, I would move out of that city entirely, or I'd just be armed to the teeth. And it's really sad. I mean, there were people looting their own community. You're seeing people just lose their businesses.

And there's footage of these old, there's this old African-American guy. And he's like, why are you stealing from me? I grew up here. This is my livelihood. Why are you burning my story? And he's just crying in the street. And he's yelling at this crowd of people. And they're staring at him because they know he's right.

And they're just like, but free TVs. You know, it's just insane. And this old one thing that's, really stuck with me as well. There was this old Korean woman and she was stopping. There's this angry mob of just punk ghetto idiots and they're trying to go into her store and light it on fire, just for shits. They're trying to light it on fire and she's standing there with her arms and legs outstretched. And she goes, this is America. You don't do this. This is America. You don't do this. And they're mouthing off to her and this guy shoves her aside and goes in. She goes, no fires, no fires.

And he steals like a drink or something and comes back out. Because you could tell. she was just laying into him and he just went, you know, all joy I was going to get from burning this place down has just been taken away. You could see the shame on his face, but it really made me feel sad that this lady who had moved here from Korea is trying to protect her business. And you see all these people in Ktown, you know, crying because their cleaner has been ransacked and they stole the clothes. And it's just like, what are you doing? What is going on? So it was heartbreaking and super interesting at the same time. And most of the footage was as yet unreleased. So I thought that was really kind of cool. Because of course, I watched this when I was like 12 happen in real time, but you don't see all of the video because half of it that they show in here was taken by security cameras or people who had video cameras that just happened to be around and the news footage that never made the news because it's them running away and it's shaking. It's just nuts. L.A. 92. It's on Netflix. I'll check that out. I moved to L.A. in 1995 and there was just a giant psychic scar from these riots from everybody I met when I moved there.

And I didn't realize how bad it was until like I heard some of the stories. And people were just terrified the entire time. And a lot of them left. A lot of them did leave. So I really can't wait to see this. I didn't know this actually existed. This is very cool. Yeah, I think it's relatively new.

Anyway, hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this weekend. Don't forget, you can email us Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. That's Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com to get your questions answered on the air. We're happy to keep you anonymous, of course, and a link to the show notes for this episode can be found at Jordan Harbinger.com. Quick shout out to, and I know I'm going to get this wrong, because there's all kinds of weird characters in his name. It's like, Premisi Sionpra. No, sorry.

Premisi Sionpa. All right. He even said, you're not going to get my name. Forget it. He wrote me a nice letter about how the show helped him find his wife, form a better relationship. with his parents, his grandparents, he's doing great academically. Congratulations, man. I'm glad to help. We are glad to help. But you should know, this is all you. This is your hard work. He said, all the things you've done for me. Look, this is all you, man. I'm glad I could be a cheerleader

for you via the Jordan Harbinger Show. Me and Jason are always happy to do that. And I also want to shout out Ethel over in the Philippines, who offered us some help getting our social media stuff together during our reboot over here. This is what she does professionally, and she's just kind of helping us out making sure we got our stuff together. Speaking of social, media. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. I'm the one with the blue check marks. There's some other weirdos trying to like trick people. But I'm the one with the blue check marks. It's a great way to engage with the show at Jordan Harbinger. And Jason, tell them where to find you. I'm on Instagram at JPD and Twitter as JPDF. That's JPDDF. And you can check out my other podcast, grumpy old geeks. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. Share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got a lot more like this in the pipe. We're really excited to to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like Podcast. If you're looking for a new show to add to your rotation, something that'll

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