Speaker 1: Let's face it, robots are going to take your job,
Speaker 1: that is, if they haven't already. Automation is taking over
Speaker 1: lots of different fields. We know this, but what exactly
Speaker 1: are we supposed to do about it? This is game plan. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Francesco Leavie and I'm Rebecca Greenfield, and this week
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about what it takes to do
Speaker 1: another job well with the skills you have. So we
Speaker 1: hear all the time about what what is it exactly
Speaker 1: that's threatening American jobs? This is something that's in the
Speaker 1: news a lot um. It's sort of a political football,
Speaker 1: but we know that a big factor in people losing
Speaker 1: jobs is automation. Robots can do a lot of things
Speaker 1: that they couldn't do before. And that's not just factory work.
Speaker 1: That's jobs even like yours and my Inbecca. Yes, they're
Speaker 1: are robots that can write news stories. And we even
Speaker 1: did a show on this back in December while you're
Speaker 1: out on leave and kind of talked about the state
Speaker 1: of automation now because as you said, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of scary talk about it. And I think there
Speaker 1: are two interesting statistics. So that one, there's this widely
Speaker 1: cited paper that says almost half of jobs can be automatable,
Speaker 1: and there's some debate if that's like parts of jobs
Speaker 1: or if that's actual jobs. But there are jobs that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect being automated away now. It's not just manufacturing.
Speaker 1: It's things like paralegals or even financial analysts and yes,
Speaker 1: even journalists. Um. And then another part of the episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about the jobs that are the most popular
Speaker 1: right now are the fastest scrowing jobs are jobs that
Speaker 1: are the least automatable. So it's things that have a
Speaker 1: lot of social skills and things that robots aren't very
Speaker 1: good at right now. Yes, so for those people who
Speaker 1: have had long careers doing something that now a robot
Speaker 1: can do, like certain types of manufacturing, say, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people talk about job retraining as this
Speaker 1: like catch all solution. Basically just send all those you know,
Speaker 1: coal miners or steel workers to coding boot camp and
Speaker 1: they'll figure it out. And I feel like that's an
Speaker 1: oversimplified solution. Yeah, I think it's one if you're in
Speaker 1: the middle of your career getting your head around this
Speaker 1: idea of learning a whole new skill for maybe not
Speaker 1: that many more years of your working life. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And if you have to change careers, that often goes
Speaker 1: along with doing retraining like what we just talked about,
Speaker 1: and probably taking a pay cut and just basically like
Speaker 1: taking a few steps back down the career ladder to
Speaker 1: get started again. So I think that there's another way
Speaker 1: of looking at it, which is not what other job
Speaker 1: or what other field could I enter that is kind
Speaker 1: of like the one I'm in now, But what other
Speaker 1: job could I do, even if it's nothing like the
Speaker 1: one I have now that requires the same skills I'm
Speaker 1: using for my current job, or the skills that I'm
Speaker 1: good at. And so the New York Times just did
Speaker 1: a deep dive into this. They built this really cool
Speaker 1: graphic where they took every skill that's required for every
Speaker 1: job according to the Department of Labor and mapped it
Speaker 1: on the scatter plot so that you can actually see
Speaker 1: what skills go to what jobs and see how close
Speaker 1: your job might be to another job that you don't
Speaker 1: even expect. So, like, my job editor is pretty close
Speaker 1: to elementary school teacher in terms of how the skills
Speaker 1: for that job line up. How do you feel about
Speaker 1: that career change? I would love to be an elementary teacher.
Speaker 1: I mean you get summers off and kids are cute. Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely you should go to the job and think about
Speaker 1: the times you won't be working. I think it would
Speaker 1: be fun to be aroun kids all day. Would probably
Speaker 1: be really stressful, but so as being an editor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're basically around children all day. They also excellent writers, yea.
Speaker 1: They also used the same data to build a fun
Speaker 1: little tool that tells you what your opposite job is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw this going around on Twitter, and the popular
Speaker 1: one was your opposite job model. Model is the opposite
Speaker 1: of editor. But which I don't I disagree? Okay, I
Speaker 1: think it's not mutually exclusive. I bet there are some
Speaker 1: editors who are models. I'd be surprised. But it's not
Speaker 1: to say that models don't have skills that couldn't necessarily
Speaker 1: transfer to other jobs. They might just not be using
Speaker 1: them and modeling. Or you're an editor, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you can't be a model. It's not like the skills
Speaker 1: to be an editor don't exclude you from modeling. Right.
Speaker 1: That's an important thing to think about when you're looking
Speaker 1: at charts like this, like it's going to tell you
Speaker 1: what other jobs have skills where they are like the
Speaker 1: skills you're currently using in your job. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that you don't have other skills you're not using
Speaker 1: in your job, or you couldn't be good at other
Speaker 1: things that you're just like not doing every day right now,
Speaker 1: that's right, I'm multitalented. Yeah, you could. You could probably
Speaker 1: be anything if you put your mind to Secca. That's right.
Speaker 1: That's what they told us millennials, and we're growing up.
Speaker 1: You can do anything you want. Well, to get a
Speaker 1: little bit more into what you actually can and should
Speaker 1: do if you want to change your career, I talked
Speaker 1: to the co author of that article, Claire Kane. Miller
Speaker 1: is a reporter for The Upshot at the New York Times,
Speaker 1: where she covers gender and work. Thanks for joining us, Claire,
Speaker 1: it's great to be here. So you recently wrote a
Speaker 1: piece looking at the skills that you need for different jobs,
Speaker 1: and you wrote that many of the skills needed to
Speaker 1: do fading jobs are applicable to growing jobs. Can you
Speaker 1: sort of explain what you mean by that? Sure, So
Speaker 1: there's this notion that if you lose your job, particularly
Speaker 1: in certain industries like those that require a lot of
Speaker 1: manual labor, but really across industries that it can be
Speaker 1: really really hard to find a new one, especially if
Speaker 1: the reason you lost your job is because that occupation
Speaker 1: is just shrinking because machines are doing more of the
Speaker 1: work there, UM, and they're just aren't as many jobs available,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of people who are just
Speaker 1: stuck and they're unemployed, and they feel like there's nowhere
Speaker 1: they can turn. And there's been a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about this. UM. The Trump administration has been talking about
Speaker 1: it a lot lately, and they've been calling it the
Speaker 1: skills gap and saying that they hear from c e
Speaker 1: o s that they have a ton of jobs available
Speaker 1: and they're empty, and the problem is that nobody, um,
Speaker 1: none of the employees who are looking for jobs have
Speaker 1: the right skills, the skills that the CEOs need. And
Speaker 1: we we took another look at it, and we found
Speaker 1: that sure, that's the case some of the time, UM,
Speaker 1: but it's also true that a lot of unemployed people
Speaker 1: do have a lot of skills that are applicable to
Speaker 1: other careers. But for a ton of different reasons, UM,
Speaker 1: related to the way that our labor force is set up.
Speaker 1: It's very very hard for them to switch careers, to
Speaker 1: even know that their skills are applicable to other jobs,
Speaker 1: and for hiring managers or CEOs um to be able
Speaker 1: to see their potential. Yeah, you created this really cool
Speaker 1: tool that lets you look at the skills that you
Speaker 1: have for your current job and what other jobs might
Speaker 1: be similar are different. Um, And before we get into that,
Speaker 1: just tell me a little bit about the research that
Speaker 1: you did and where you got the data, what you
Speaker 1: were kind of looking to find. So the Labor Department
Speaker 1: keeps this database called oh net and it breaks every
Speaker 1: single job that you can imagine down into the exact
Speaker 1: skills that are needed to do that job. And UM,
Speaker 1: so it is stuff like, um, I'm looking, for example
Speaker 1: right now, at museum curator. So a museum curator, you know,
Speaker 1: needs skills like history and knowledge of history and needs
Speaker 1: to manage material resources, but also needs to be good
Speaker 1: at communicating with other people and scheduling work and activities.
Speaker 1: So it's like a whole host of of different skills
Speaker 1: and own it um breaks jobs down into those skills.
Speaker 1: And so we looked at that to try to answer
Speaker 1: the question is there really more skill overlap between jobs
Speaker 1: than we realize and what did you find. We found
Speaker 1: that there absolutely is there is a certain segment of jobs,
Speaker 1: and the are the jobs that are either very physical
Speaker 1: and very routine, like working in a warehouse or working
Speaker 1: in a factory. Those kind of jobs have been automated
Speaker 1: and there is not, in a lot of cases a
Speaker 1: lot of similarity UM to other jobs that are available
Speaker 1: right now. That is sort of the biggest gap in
Speaker 1: the labor market. So I'm not trying to say that
Speaker 1: there's not a group of people who really are suffering
Speaker 1: and whose occupations have gone away and they don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a lot of skills that are easily applicable. But
Speaker 1: even for them, and especially for other UM kinds of workers,
Speaker 1: there really is a lot more overlap. For example, our
Speaker 1: chart found that UM lawyers and clergy members do a
Speaker 1: lot of the same things. Kindergarten teachers, elementary school teachers,
Speaker 1: and editors do a lot of the same things. UM
Speaker 1: cooks and restaurants, and UM cashiers or ushers do a
Speaker 1: lot of the same things. So UM, there is you know,
Speaker 1: there is more overlap than people realize, and the problem
Speaker 1: comes down to how people actually search for jobs and
Speaker 1: how people hire for jobs. Yeah, how do you sort
Speaker 1: of find out what skills you have? Like I think
Speaker 1: most people have a general idea, but how do you
Speaker 1: start to map yourself to these skills that the Labor
Speaker 1: Department keeps track of. So oh net made by the
Speaker 1: Labor Department is supposed to be used by you know,
Speaker 1: not just data journalists but also uh, you know, average
Speaker 1: people who are looking up to find information about their
Speaker 1: career paths. So you can go there, but it's not
Speaker 1: the easiest thing to use, and frankly, the United States
Speaker 1: doesn't have a ton of great resources for job seekers.
Speaker 1: There are some new nonprofits that are working on this.
Speaker 1: One is called Opportunity at Work and another is called
Speaker 1: Skillful And what they're doing is basically trying to take
Speaker 1: people and say, here are your skills. Here are the
Speaker 1: skills that you have learned to do. And maybe you
Speaker 1: learn to do that in college, maybe you learn to
Speaker 1: do that as a volunteer. Maybe you worked in the
Speaker 1: mail room, but you worked they're long enough at the
Speaker 1: company that you learned and had to do other skills
Speaker 1: that might not show up on your resume. When someone
Speaker 1: just sees that you worked in the mail room, you
Speaker 1: know you learned. You could have learned these in a
Speaker 1: lot of different places, but here are your skills and
Speaker 1: will help coach you um to find a new job. Now.
Speaker 1: Of course, that kind of personal coaching that these nonprofits
Speaker 1: offer is great, and it's not necessarily accessible for everyone.
Speaker 1: And so another fix that people say needs to happen
Speaker 1: is for employers to think really hard about how they hire. Now.
Speaker 1: A lot of hiring has to do with credentials on
Speaker 1: a resume. As you know, a lot of resumes are
Speaker 1: just scanned now by software to weed out the ones
Speaker 1: that are not applicable, and so things people are looking
Speaker 1: for are a college degree. Definitely need a four year degree.
Speaker 1: Sometimes even where did you go to college? If it's
Speaker 1: not one of these twenty five schools, We're not even
Speaker 1: going to look at that resume those kind of things.
Speaker 1: And and the argument is, these are things from your
Speaker 1: past that you can't change. If you didn't go to college,
Speaker 1: you know, and you are forty years old with a
Speaker 1: mortgage and two kids, you might not be able to
Speaker 1: afford to go to college now, but you might have
Speaker 1: built up skills that would make you UM talented to
Speaker 1: do a certain job even if you didn't have that degree.
Speaker 1: So the idea is if hiring managers could change the
Speaker 1: way that they look at people and look at resumes
Speaker 1: um to test for skills as opposed to credentials. Of course,
Speaker 1: that that's a big problem to solving a big change
Speaker 1: in the way a lot of people hire. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that even if you do have a
Speaker 1: college degree, you can find another field that you might
Speaker 1: have really good skills for. But getting an employer, getting
Speaker 1: a hiring manager to take a risk on you, you know,
Speaker 1: hiring somebody who does a completely different type of job,
Speaker 1: that seems like a whole other can of worms, Like,
Speaker 1: is there any is there any way people can help
Speaker 1: sort of sell themselves to employers once they find out
Speaker 1: like I'd be really good at being a clergy you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a lawyer and I'd be really good at being
Speaker 1: a clergyman or whatever the example was you gave, Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's coming on employees obviously to try to sell
Speaker 1: themselves to think, you know, just to think outside the
Speaker 1: box in the first place about what other jobs that
Speaker 1: they might be um eligible for, qualified for, and then
Speaker 1: to convince employers. But I think the burden is often
Speaker 1: really unemployers. So one thing that employers can do is
Speaker 1: skills based interviews where instead of you know, screening resumes
Speaker 1: for credentials, they're actually asking people to come in and
Speaker 1: do part of the job. For an editor, it might
Speaker 1: be you know, doing an editing a story. Um that
Speaker 1: that is an actual part of the job, and then
Speaker 1: you can see if the person has those skills. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of those kind of um skills based
Speaker 1: interviews that people say takes a lot of bias out
Speaker 1: bias about your past credentials, and maybe other kinds of
Speaker 1: bias that might come in to the interview process. Another
Speaker 1: issue is, as you mentioned, employers have very little incentive
Speaker 1: to train people right now and to take risks on people.
Speaker 1: And if you think back, you know, fifty seventy five
Speaker 1: years bill joined a company and then they stayed there
Speaker 1: for the rest of their career, So there was loyalty
Speaker 1: from both sides, and both sides has had a lot
Speaker 1: of incentive to invest in the other. But now a
Speaker 1: company doesn't know if an employee is going to take
Speaker 1: the skills they learned on the job and just go
Speaker 1: to the competitor down the street. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: an employee doesn't know if they you know, go and
Speaker 1: invest in new skills or some sort of retraining, is
Speaker 1: the company just going to lay them off next year
Speaker 1: and that investment won't have been worthwhile. So um, there's
Speaker 1: not that same loyalty and people don't have the same
Speaker 1: incentive one. So one solution to that is apprenticeships, which
Speaker 1: is um something that Trump administration has talked about, as
Speaker 1: did the Obama administration. It's really a bipartisan approach and
Speaker 1: that's the idea of learning on the job. So someone
Speaker 1: is getting paid and they are doing the job UM
Speaker 1: while they're also you know, testing out their skills and
Speaker 1: learning um learning new skills. So so in that's in
Speaker 1: that sense the employer doesn't have to depend on a
Speaker 1: school UM to teach these skills. I can actually keep
Speaker 1: to these skills. But at the same time, it's getting
Speaker 1: work out of the person and the person is getting
Speaker 1: paid UM, so that the incentives are more aligned on
Speaker 1: both sides. Do you think people shut themselves off from
Speaker 1: career possibilities because they aren't aware of how their skills
Speaker 1: might transfer, like could a tool like this help them
Speaker 1: with that? They absolutely shut themselves off from other curse
Speaker 1: because they're not aware. I mean, I think when people
Speaker 1: I think, what's interesting to me about own itt is
Speaker 1: it includes these skills like communicating with people outside your company.
Speaker 1: That is an extremely valuable skill that not everyone is
Speaker 1: good at. If you're good at it, that could apply
Speaker 1: to a ton of different jobs. But my guess is
Speaker 1: that when you ask people about what they do day
Speaker 1: to day, they might say, you know, oh, I do
Speaker 1: these spreadsheets and I have these meetings, But they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily think I'm a really good communicator and that is
Speaker 1: a skill I have that is essential to my job
Speaker 1: and could be essential, um in a in a completely
Speaker 1: different career. So in that sense, I think these kind
Speaker 1: of tools that own it offers UM I hope that
Speaker 1: our chart offers, and also that these these nonprofits like
Speaker 1: Skillful and Opportunity at Work offer is being able to
Speaker 1: think of yourself a little bit differently. But it's also
Speaker 1: a challenge. One economist that I talked to, whose name
Speaker 1: is Lawrence Cats at Harvard, is a labor economist. He
Speaker 1: says it's often not a skills mismatch, but an identity mismatch.
Speaker 1: So even if you do have the skills to do
Speaker 1: another job, it can be very hard to make that
Speaker 1: leap and to think of yourself as something different. If
Speaker 1: you thought of yourself as a welder your whole life,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you could work in an automated factory
Speaker 1: behind a computer, but you thought of yourself as a welder.
Speaker 1: Your identity is that you work with your hands, and
Speaker 1: the idea of, you know, working behind a computer is
Speaker 1: just not your identity. So you might have skills that apply, um,
Speaker 1: but you also need to make that mental leap. That's
Speaker 1: really interesting. Yeah, you had a couple of examples of
Speaker 1: anecdotes in your story. One was a I think like
Speaker 1: a laid off oil rig worker who who was retrained
Speaker 1: to program machines for advanced manufacturing. And and you had
Speaker 1: a paralegal who who changed careers to become a duela UM.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if you talked to those people about
Speaker 1: making that mental leap and whether they did it out
Speaker 1: of necessity or kind of what sparked them to do that.
Speaker 1: So the oil rig worker did it purely out of necessity.
Speaker 1: He was unemployed, um, all the all all the mining
Speaker 1: plants in the area had been shut down, and he
Speaker 1: didn't think that he could get another job. He lived
Speaker 1: in Appalachia. This is all he knew how to do,
Speaker 1: and the work that he was doing simply no longer existed.
Speaker 1: And he found out about a training program to train
Speaker 1: out of work miners to do sort of computerized factory
Speaker 1: work essentially. And I talked to the person who runs
Speaker 1: that program, and she said, it's actually really similar skills.
Speaker 1: It's working with your hands, understanding how machinery works. But
Speaker 1: these people didn't think of themselves that way. But he
Speaker 1: signed up for the training program because he really had
Speaker 1: no other choice. And he said, actually, it is pretty
Speaker 1: similar to my old job in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: and it's different in some ways. And I learned those ways,
Speaker 1: but I was able to apply my old skip my
Speaker 1: old skills now. The parallegal I talked to, she decided
Speaker 1: to become a doula and then a midwife because she
Speaker 1: decided she was interested in something else. She did not
Speaker 1: quite realize how much those skills overlapped. But after being
Speaker 1: a paralegal for so many years and she became a midwife,
Speaker 1: and she said, actually, there is so much overlap here,
Speaker 1: so much more than I realized. For example, a lot
Speaker 1: of being a paralegal is you know, reading through a
Speaker 1: ton of documents and then making notes and writing in
Speaker 1: a really clear, concise way so that other lawyers working
Speaker 1: on the case can understand what that pile of documents
Speaker 1: is about and not have to read it themselves. Being
Speaker 1: a midwife requires seeing a patient and writing and communicating
Speaker 1: in a really clear and concise way. You know where
Speaker 1: they're at with their health and their pregnancy, so that
Speaker 1: when a different midwife or a doctor comes in, or
Speaker 1: when they show up at a hospital and delivery, someone
Speaker 1: can look at their chart and understand exactly where they're at. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a skill that you might not think of,
Speaker 1: and it's actually essential to both jobs. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: super interesting, and it stands to reason that if you
Speaker 1: are if you are interested in a career change, and
Speaker 1: you're passionate about doing something, even if it feels really different,
Speaker 1: you might be drawn to it for a lot of
Speaker 1: the same reasons that you're drawn to your current career,
Speaker 1: Like those skills might line up because those are both
Speaker 1: you know, because those careers are both well suited to
Speaker 1: you exactly, and you know, it's a shame that there
Speaker 1: is not an easier way right now to both see
Speaker 1: break down which skills you have and which skills might
Speaker 1: be accessible, and then you know, to convince employers that
Speaker 1: actually I can do this job. And and that's why
Speaker 1: I do think it is part of the responsibility falls
Speaker 1: on employers to think a little bit differently about how
Speaker 1: they hire and take risks on more people. Before I
Speaker 1: let you go. There's just one more tool that you
Speaker 1: guys created at the Upshot that I wanted to chat
Speaker 1: with you about out and I'm not sure if you
Speaker 1: were directly involved in it, but it seems like it
Speaker 1: came from the same data set, which is a tool
Speaker 1: that lets you plug in your current job and find
Speaker 1: what job is your exact opposite. Did you work on
Speaker 1: that or was that just from the same data This
Speaker 1: was from the same data set that I've worked on
Speaker 1: with my colleague um Quattron Booie, who is also on
Speaker 1: the Upshot. He's a graphics editor. And yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really cool graphic that tells you things, Like
Speaker 1: you know, we've been talking about job similarities and where
Speaker 1: they overlap. This is this is the opposite what's most different,
Speaker 1: So like a kindergarten teachers opposite job as a physicist,
Speaker 1: and a writer's opposite job is a mobile home installer,
Speaker 1: for example. Is there any way a job seecret or
Speaker 1: somebody just like looking to improve themselves in their career,
Speaker 1: uh could use that tool as something constructive and not
Speaker 1: just sort of a fun a fun curiosity. I think
Speaker 1: so absolutely, because what it really does is help you
Speaker 1: focus on the nature of your job. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of us go to work every day and we
Speaker 1: do our job, and like I was saying earlier, we
Speaker 1: don't really realize which skills were using. Or maybe we
Speaker 1: realize the basic skills, but we don't understand the nitty
Speaker 1: gritty skills. And I think this tool of the opposite
Speaker 1: jobs tool helps you realize, um that your job is
Speaker 1: really broken down into a lot of different skills. And
Speaker 1: if you start thinking about it that way, and so
Speaker 1: instead of thinking, well, I am a teacher, or I
Speaker 1: am a librarian, or I am a physicist, you think, well,
Speaker 1: I really have to do a lot of creative thinking
Speaker 1: and a lot of communicating, or you know, I really
Speaker 1: need to have a lot of gross gross motor coordination
Speaker 1: and stamina or whatever it is that might help you
Speaker 1: think about future career paths. Differently. Well, Claire, this was
Speaker 1: really really fascinating stuff. Thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to chat with me. Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker 1: I think the kind of work that Claire did can
Speaker 1: give people a lot of hope who are in a
Speaker 1: position where they have to change careers and they just
Speaker 1: don't know where to start, like it can open up
Speaker 1: possibilities that they didn't even know we're there. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't exactly solve the retraining question. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: be an elementary school teacher, you'd still have to start
Speaker 1: from square one and go back and get a teaching
Speaker 1: certificate or a degree um which can still be a
Speaker 1: daunting task. Right, I'm not going to walk into an
Speaker 1: elementary school and tell the principle to hire me because
Speaker 1: I'm a really good journalist's New York Times that I
Speaker 1: could do it, what's the problem. But it does show
Speaker 1: me that that might be a career path that I'd
Speaker 1: be good at. So like, yes, you have to do
Speaker 1: the retraining. Even the people in Claire's article that she
Speaker 1: mentioned had to do some kind of retraining, but that
Speaker 1: retraining might not have been as hard as they would
Speaker 1: have expected because they had a lot of the skills
Speaker 1: and they didn't even realize it. So I think it's
Speaker 1: it's really always a great advice to take an inventory
Speaker 1: of your own skills. And I even, you know, I
Speaker 1: was a career changer myself there. This advice can be
Speaker 1: useful for people who just want to change careers, as
Speaker 1: opposed to having to change careers because the economy has
Speaker 1: forced them out of what they're doing. I used to
Speaker 1: be a researcher and I changed into journalism, not because
Speaker 1: my skills aligned so well, just because I really wanted
Speaker 1: to be a journalist, but looking back, like, of course,
Speaker 1: the skills I had as a researcher are really applicable
Speaker 1: to journalism. I basically asked people questions and wrote down
Speaker 1: what they said. And what's journalism journalism basically, And when
Speaker 1: the robots inevitably come for our journalism jobs, as they
Speaker 1: already are starting to do, we gotta we should take
Speaker 1: a look at our own skills. Yeah, what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? The ones we're using and the ones we
Speaker 1: might have but aren't using right now, Like my modeling skills, Yeah,
Speaker 1: get on it. Robots are never gonna be really good models,
Speaker 1: that's right, And now it's time for half bay takes,
Speaker 1: halfy fake takes. If you have a half big take
Speaker 1: you'd like to share with us, call our hotline at
Speaker 1: two and to six one seven zero one six six.
Speaker 1: This week we have a listener half big take on
Speaker 1: that very resonant topic of taking photographs with your work friends. Hey, ladies,
Speaker 1: this is Virginia from Maryland, UM, and I'm calling to
Speaker 1: also tack onto the um picture half baked take. And
Speaker 1: I just want to say this is for all of
Speaker 1: the ladies out there. If you're taking a picture, a
Speaker 1: group picture for work, don't lean over. Don't lean over.
Speaker 1: You don't see guys doing that. Do you know? It
Speaker 1: makes you look weak, it looks it makes you look unprofessional.
Speaker 1: Don't do it. You can arrange yourselves that everyone can
Speaker 1: sit in the picture, So don't lean over. All right,
Speaker 1: that's my halfday take. Thanks guys, Love you fine. So
Speaker 1: do we think she means like, if you're on the
Speaker 1: edge of the picture, you shouldn't you shouldn't kind of
Speaker 1: angle your body so that you get into the frame.
Speaker 1: You should just sort of like make sure that you're
Speaker 1: not on the end. I think that's more like don't
Speaker 1: conform to the picture, right, make the picture work for you.
Speaker 1: That's right. It's reminds me of a story I wrote
Speaker 1: on power poses. Um, there is a big drama about
Speaker 1: researcher behind power poses, and there's there was a research
Speaker 1: argument that women are supposed to stand in certain ways
Speaker 1: to start themselves in the office. Like I've internalized that advice,
Speaker 1: like you're supposed to sit with your arms away from
Speaker 1: your body or something. It turned out to be false
Speaker 1: or that was what the scandal was about. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is kind of like the power pose of taking
Speaker 1: pictures with your coworkers. And ironically, uh, in this case,
Speaker 1: the power pose is not leaning in, right, m ladies,
Speaker 1: at least now when you're taking pictures, Becca, what is
Speaker 1: your brilliant thought that isn't quite brilliant enough to be
Speaker 1: its own story? This week, so I was on vacation
Speaker 1: and mine is related to coming back from vacation. No,
Speaker 1: we missed you, yea, I know. Um, it's about email
Speaker 1: maintenance while on vacation. I have strong opinions about this.
Speaker 1: I've even written about it. So I admit I half
Speaker 1: wrote my half baked take as a regular take. I'm sorry, um,
Speaker 1: but I think we all stress about coming back to
Speaker 1: our email after vacation. Yes, some people even say just
Speaker 1: delete all your emails, don't read them, just start fresh, right,
Speaker 1: which I do fall closer to that side of things.
Speaker 1: But I think the key to happiness on the day
Speaker 1: you get back is if you can while you're on
Speaker 1: vacation just scan your inbox every day, every other day
Speaker 1: and just star things that seem like they might be important.
Speaker 1: You can even open them and scan them, and then
Speaker 1: when you get back, you scroll through your inbox and
Speaker 1: you do ignore the things and just go to the
Speaker 1: starred things. You might miss some stuff, but it's okay.
Speaker 1: People will email you back and then you can respond
Speaker 1: to those things and it's maybe like ten emails instead
Speaker 1: of one. I love this. I totally agree with this
Speaker 1: because I think people criticize you if you check email
Speaker 1: while you're on vacation because it's like, oh, you don't
Speaker 1: have work life balance. But you know what, if I'm
Speaker 1: on a two week vacation and I know in the
Speaker 1: back of my mind that there are emails piling up
Speaker 1: and one of them might be something kind of important,
Speaker 1: and I might miss it because it's like buried at
Speaker 1: the bottom of the pile. I'm just going to have
Speaker 1: like low level work anxiety about that while I'm on vacation,
Speaker 1: So like, what kind of work life balance is that
Speaker 1: when I could be every couple of days just taking
Speaker 1: a look and being like, Okay, I can prioritize that
Speaker 1: eymoe when I get back. Also, it doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 1: take that much time. It's not very stressful because you're
Speaker 1: not actually responding or even thinking about the thing it's about.
Speaker 1: You're just looking at it and scanning and meaning like, oh,
Speaker 1: that center or a subject line seems like maybe I
Speaker 1: should look at it, but I'm not going to think
Speaker 1: about it now. And it's, by the way, it's a
Speaker 1: total myth that you can just like forget that you
Speaker 1: have a job while you're on vacation. So let's just
Speaker 1: get rid of that. You're going to remember that you
Speaker 1: have a job you're going back to. So listen to
Speaker 1: me anyway, Francesca, what is your really important idea that
Speaker 1: you need to share. I want to talk about wireless headsets.
Speaker 1: These This is the worst thing to happen to corporate
Speaker 1: America since the Open office plan go on. So I
Speaker 1: guess the convenience of a wireless headset is that you
Speaker 1: don't have to deal with a piece of material connecting
Speaker 1: your phone headset to your phone, and you can get
Speaker 1: up and walk around and take phone calls. Let me
Speaker 1: tell you what this does. This annoys your co workers.
Speaker 1: I think it's the wireless headset coupled with the open
Speaker 1: office that's really bad, because if you had your own room,
Speaker 1: you could just pay some walk around. However, I thought
Speaker 1: about this. I thought about this. The only time a
Speaker 1: wireless headset is not going to annoy other people because
Speaker 1: random people are gonna hear your phone call is if
Speaker 1: you have your own office. But if you have your
Speaker 1: own office, you don't need a wireless headset because you
Speaker 1: could just put your call on speaker. So there's no
Speaker 1: good reason to use some wireless headset. If you want
Speaker 1: to walk around and stretch your legs and improve your
Speaker 1: blood circulation, or get your fitbit steps in or whatever,
Speaker 1: just I don't know, do it some other time. Do
Speaker 1: it on your own time. Don't bring your phone call
Speaker 1: over to my desk. If it's if you're doing it
Speaker 1: because the phone call was so personal that you didn't
Speaker 1: want your coworkers to hear it, then imagine how people
Speaker 1: who you don't even work with, who have no idea
Speaker 1: who you are or feel about it. Mandatory wired headsets
Speaker 1: for everyone. Yeah, let's chain ourselves to our desks so
Speaker 1: that we understand decorum. You heard it here and this
Speaker 1: has been half big takes, half baked takes. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening to this episode of Game Plan.
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at Francesca today and I'm at RZ
Speaker 1: Greenfield and you can call into our hotline and tell
Speaker 1: us anything you want at two on to six seven
Speaker 1: zero one six six. If you liked our show, please
Speaker 1: go to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and rate us,
Speaker 1: review us. Take a minute just to give us a
Speaker 1: shout out if you like us. The show is produced
Speaker 1: by Liz Smith and Magnus Henrickson. The head of podcast
Speaker 1: is Alec McCabe and we will see you next week. Hi. Anyway, Francesca,
Speaker 1: what is your really important idea that you need to share?
Speaker 1: You don't have one, good question, You don't have one. Sorry, sorry,