Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to bow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: let's let's let's set the stage here. Okay, let's go
Speaker 1: to your cubicle. What does your cubicle look like? My cubicle, Julie.
Speaker 1: I think it's got probably all of the trappings of
Speaker 1: your typical office worker. It's got some personal photos, stacks
Speaker 1: of books and papers. But um, it does have a
Speaker 1: big sign that says cloaca av Yeah. Um, of course
Speaker 1: we can thank Cooper for that, and that that I
Speaker 1: think really telegraphed to people like, hey, this is my territory. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have some weird bits of art thrown in there.
Speaker 1: I have some fan art that's awesome. And then I
Speaker 1: have a tiger bearing its jaws like a little figurine.
Speaker 1: And again in I feel like the tiger and the
Speaker 1: sign and all of these little things are ways of
Speaker 1: saying this is my corner of the street, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know this is this is my area and my dwelling.
Speaker 1: And I should point out that our cubicles are really
Speaker 1: more like what half of a hexagon. Really, it's like
Speaker 1: it's the three walls, but there's they're a little more spacious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not too bad. They're gray, um, but but they
Speaker 1: don't look like the office space um TV movie cubicle
Speaker 1: type of thing. It's it's a little better than that.
Speaker 1: I think, Oh, you're saying this a little bit jazz here.
Speaker 1: I think it's jazz here. It's a little bit more angles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't look it's not as nearly as soul crushing,
Speaker 1: and it feels a little more open. We have a
Speaker 1: fair amount of death space, um. And I have my
Speaker 1: walls of my little area decorated with bits of art,
Speaker 1: you know. So I have like some you know, I
Speaker 1: think a Tibetan calendar up and some fantasy arts and
Speaker 1: various bits and pieces that that sort of allow my
Speaker 1: imagination to run wild. And most of it is is
Speaker 1: like a agreeable to the workplace. You've forgotten the best
Speaker 1: part of your cubicle the oh the sand Worm avenue,
Speaker 1: that was the one that the bookshelf that's next to
Speaker 1: the bookshelf, which is your fortress against the world. But
Speaker 1: in addition to that is the painting of Biscuit cat Yes,
Speaker 1: my sister Lucy, Lucy Lamb, she painted a picture of
Speaker 1: my cat Biscuit, and that's up there with the one eye.
Speaker 1: That's she doesn't really have one red eye. She has
Speaker 1: one bad eye, but in the in the painting it's
Speaker 1: it's red and kind of magical looking. So yeah, that's
Speaker 1: going to shoot. That's definitely one of the prize pieces
Speaker 1: that I have with me at work, you know, along
Speaker 1: with some other personal momentos. All right, Uh, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: you guys have guessed that today's topic is all about
Speaker 1: our workspaces are cubicles, how we dwell in them, what
Speaker 1: is dwelling in them, and perhaps even the future of
Speaker 1: office space. Yes, and I would I would have to
Speaker 1: advise anyone listening to this at their cubicle, at their
Speaker 1: their their workspace. UM, prepared to to feel a little
Speaker 1: weird about your work environment. Prepare to um perhaps run
Speaker 1: out to the store and buy some uh some sort
Speaker 1: of clean up wipes to scrub everything down, because we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into not only your human co workers here,
Speaker 1: but your microbial will coworkers and all the creepy Crawley's
Speaker 1: that invisibly make up your workspace. Yeah, because let's let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's be honest about it, that we have this whole
Speaker 1: microbial kingdom that is surrounding us, not just on our
Speaker 1: bodies and inside our bodies, but every single space that
Speaker 1: you touch, every single thing from that elevator button up
Speaker 1: to the floor that you work on. And indeed, we've
Speaker 1: talked before about just all the microbes that our body
Speaker 1: is carrying. I mean just our mouth again, five hundred
Speaker 1: with thousand different types of bacteria. Uh, only a hundred
Speaker 1: to two hundred live in a mouth at any given time,
Speaker 1: and we all have these different um bacterial, floral environments
Speaker 1: going on inside us. And then we bring these environments
Speaker 1: and a host of other things into these workspaces. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is a study called office space Bacterial Abundance and
Speaker 1: Diversity in three metropolitan areas. It's a study by Christie m.
Speaker 1: Hewitt and Charles Gerba at All and they found that
Speaker 1: most of the bacteria in an office originates from the
Speaker 1: workers themselves, right, which is I mean, of course we
Speaker 1: track everything in it's spread by coughing, sneezing, and shedding
Speaker 1: of the skin. And by the way, there are dust
Speaker 1: mites that are there waiting for these little skin flakes
Speaker 1: to fall so they can feast upon them. Yeah. One
Speaker 1: of the things that kept coming back to in researching
Speaker 1: this podcast and the other one that we're recording today,
Speaker 1: is that we really have this this false notion in
Speaker 1: our heads that I mean, it's it's largely a false
Speaker 1: notion that I feel like the more we learn about
Speaker 1: and the more educated we each of us individually are,
Speaker 1: the less we buy into this this false idea. But
Speaker 1: it's the sense that there's the outside world with all
Speaker 1: the things that live in it, all the things that
Speaker 1: can kill us, all the things that are gross and yucky,
Speaker 1: and then we're going to create these pristine indoor environments
Speaker 1: that are holy and uh. And in this space, I
Speaker 1: am the only thing that is living. I'm cut off
Speaker 1: from all this annoying nature and it's just me. I
Speaker 1: don't have to worry about mosquitoes swarming me. I don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about other parasites climbing up. I don't
Speaker 1: have to worry about things um swooping down off of
Speaker 1: dog poop. I don't know why they need to swoop down.
Speaker 1: Maybe the dogs are climbing trees now, But but still
Speaker 1: that the example still holds true that we think of
Speaker 1: our indoor environments as something special and something clean, and
Speaker 1: in reality we just created another equally occupied artificial environment.
Speaker 1: It's just that the things that get to live there
Speaker 1: are the things that we bring in with us, so
Speaker 1: they become this kind of zoo, this kind of mutated
Speaker 1: we're not really mutated, but out of control zoo of
Speaker 1: human flora. Well, it is a bit of a zoo,
Speaker 1: and it is a bit of a mutation because when
Speaker 1: you are controlling your environment like that, then you have
Speaker 1: certain microbes that are going to subsist rather than other ones. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah mutated. I did. I just didn't want to
Speaker 1: make anybody think that these things were actually like a
Speaker 1: genetic level, but in terms of an environmental mutation, I
Speaker 1: think that would probably hold true. So of course this
Speaker 1: would lead you to begin to wonder, like, where would
Speaker 1: all of these germs in office building be hiding out?
Speaker 1: Um researchers at Kimberly Clart Professional they used a molecular
Speaker 1: detection method to gauge the germ count, and typical office
Speaker 1: spaces in the areas that garnered the highest amount of
Speaker 1: terms of them were dwelling in the brake room sink
Speaker 1: faucet handles, which we all touch without thinking about it
Speaker 1: and too much. No one will be surprised by this.
Speaker 1: Forty eight percent of those germs were hanging out on
Speaker 1: the microwave door handles, uh, keyboards, in refrigerator door handles,
Speaker 1: and then of course you've got water fountains at about
Speaker 1: the same rate in vending machine buttons, and so I
Speaker 1: don't think any of that is a surprise because I
Speaker 1: don't know about you guys out there, but if you're
Speaker 1: office has a microwave and people use it a lot,
Speaker 1: perhaps there's lots of evidence of that, and it's extremely
Speaker 1: dirty and corroded with food, you know the inside is
Speaker 1: going to be gross. But you did not have to
Speaker 1: think about the handle so much. I don't know, because
Speaker 1: I just think that's evidence of like it's getting used
Speaker 1: every day. It's probably gonna use twenty times a day,
Speaker 1: and then you know, right then, all the muck that's
Speaker 1: stuck up in there is is a good indication that
Speaker 1: this thing is getting a lot of play. Petrified tomato
Speaker 1: sauce and all that. Well, you know, I would have
Speaker 1: easily guessed keyboard because obviously we're touching our keyboards all
Speaker 1: the time, and used I don't really eat snack mix anymore,
Speaker 1: but I used to be like really into snack mix,
Speaker 1: and U and I would have that horrifying time when
Speaker 1: I realized like something had fallen through and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: I need to get that kernel of nut out of
Speaker 1: my keyboard. And then I turned it upside down and
Speaker 1: it's like just a rain of filth that comes out
Speaker 1: of it, and then I then I have to clean everything. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, any space that individuals throughout your office are
Speaker 1: coming into contact with on a daily basis, it's going
Speaker 1: to accumulate. Even though it looks clean. I mean it
Speaker 1: looks super smooth and polished because all those fingers are
Speaker 1: rubbing it with their oil. Well, the thing I was
Speaker 1: surprised about is that in your own personal space, that
Speaker 1: your chair is actually ripe with bacteria your phone That
Speaker 1: makes sense, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was reading that. Um,
Speaker 1: if you make a telephone call, about one twenty seven
Speaker 1: microbes per square inch are present, So that makes it
Speaker 1: one of the grimeer things just in your desk environment.
Speaker 1: Eavesdropping on your phone call. Well yeah maybe, and let's
Speaker 1: say bacteria. But back to chairs. UM studies pointed out
Speaker 1: that we're looking at that individuals do um fart in
Speaker 1: the chipping in their chairs apparently. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: it's a little rude, especially if you're you're seated next
Speaker 1: to people. But um, I mean that's that's where the
Speaker 1: business happens. So there's gonna be a certain amount of
Speaker 1: bacteria or at least that way. UM and uh. One
Speaker 1: of the studies that were looking at actually UM brought
Speaker 1: gender into this, which flows naturally from the farting discussion
Speaker 1: because we've talked before about possible gender biases regarding flatulens
Speaker 1: or flatus if you will, UM that that men are
Speaker 1: going to be more apt to just let it rip,
Speaker 1: and then females are gonna be more conservative and perhaps
Speaker 1: uh go somewhere else and do it in with some
Speaker 1: sense of decorum. But according to researchers at San Diego
Speaker 1: State University in the University of Arizona UM, the services
Speaker 1: in men's offices had ten to more germs than their
Speaker 1: female counterparts. So and the idea here is that maybe
Speaker 1: just men are a little more gross than women. Well,
Speaker 1: there was another idea that arting and also just clutter
Speaker 1: and eating gross things over the keyboard and everything. Well,
Speaker 1: it was a hygiene question where they're washing their hands
Speaker 1: as much. But the other question was could it be
Speaker 1: that on average, men have more surface area of skin
Speaker 1: and therefore more micro That's that's the other side of this.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just eager they have more skin. And again,
Speaker 1: most of the stuff is coming in on our skin,
Speaker 1: and our skin is constantly, let's face it, falling apart
Speaker 1: and shedding to tiny little pieces of dead skin and
Speaker 1: just leaving these flakes everywhere. So more skin, more awful
Speaker 1: stuff that you're bringing in and dropping all over the office.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to throw that in there because I
Speaker 1: feel like sometimes the guys that I were listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast, they're like, man, so not only am I'm
Speaker 1: more likely to get struck by lightning, but I have
Speaker 1: more germs on me and possibly my uh y chromosome
Speaker 1: is just gonna go EXTINCTOI. Yeah, and you're just a
Speaker 1: mutation necessary to the species as opposed to the female,
Speaker 1: which is the true um version of the Homo sapien,
Speaker 1: the cleaner version, or perhaps not. Alright, uh so let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we get back, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk a little bit about stick building syndrome, and
Speaker 1: then we are going to talk about the utopian vision
Speaker 1: of the cubicle. All right, we're back and uh yeah,
Speaker 1: we're gonna jump in a little more here. But first
Speaker 1: I want to just run through a couple of quick factoids.
Speaker 1: Some of these come from our our article about cube
Speaker 1: death and how stuffworks dot com. You check that out.
Speaker 1: Molly Edmonds, I believe wrote that one, yes, death by cubicle,
Speaker 1: death by cubicle, but restaurants with surfaces that contain more
Speaker 1: than seven hundred bacteria for square intra considered unsanitary. But
Speaker 1: the typical office workers hands come in contact with ten
Speaker 1: million bacteria a day. That also flows in nicely with
Speaker 1: the fact that the average kitchen table, uh it tends
Speaker 1: to be more clean than a desk because it's getting
Speaker 1: wiped down all the time. We're just you're supposed to
Speaker 1: after you eat their um, their crumbs, so you wipe
Speaker 1: it down. But the same thing is happening with your desk.
Speaker 1: People are eating at their desk. I eat at my
Speaker 1: desk and I don't wipe it down each time, so
Speaker 1: it's really horrible. From that same article, it turns out
Speaker 1: that toilets are actually cleaner the toilets in the offices
Speaker 1: because at least they're getting some level of cleaning. Well,
Speaker 1: and if it's like ours, they're probably getting clean twice
Speaker 1: a day, right, as opposed to your desk, which gets
Speaker 1: cleaned maybe once a year. Another study found that teachers
Speaker 1: or of course the grimiest profession because they have to
Speaker 1: come into contact with with the human but but a
Speaker 1: cubicalle dwelling accountants came in second because their desk racked
Speaker 1: up six thousand and thirty bacteria or square inch. So
Speaker 1: that's pretty pretty impressive. I saw on another list that
Speaker 1: lawyers were the lowest on the list. Uh why is
Speaker 1: that they just kicking back? They're not touching anything. I
Speaker 1: don't know. This is the create your own lawyer joke
Speaker 1: portion of the of the podcast. Have that guys right here?
Speaker 1: Okay they inserted in that that space. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: another thing to keep in mind too, about the all
Speaker 1: the junke that we bring into the office place. Uh
Speaker 1: the bottom of the feet And I think about this
Speaker 1: sometimes it really makes me pine for like a shoeless
Speaker 1: office place, kind of like Cooper's office on a Madman
Speaker 1: Eastern style approach when they enter his his office, because
Speaker 1: you know, obviously we're walking all over the place and
Speaker 1: these things stepping on horrible, horrible substances and and uh
Speaker 1: and bacteria and urine and bubble gum and food and
Speaker 1: your name it. Yeah, chemicals, horrible pathogens. And it's also
Speaker 1: worth pointing out that every time you step down, you
Speaker 1: pressurize the air that's in your shoes, So you can
Speaker 1: think of this as kind of like a shoe fart.
Speaker 1: You stopped down, you scored a little warm air, carrying
Speaker 1: a foot microbiology out. So just in the course of
Speaker 1: walking around the office, we're tracking in crud that we've
Speaker 1: been walking through, you know, on on the train, in
Speaker 1: the street, up while walking the dog, and then when
Speaker 1: we get in, we're shoe farting all this, uh, this
Speaker 1: microbiology all over the place. So think about that, well,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is what creates a nice, uh thick
Speaker 1: ecosystem of microbes to work in. I also wanted to
Speaker 1: mention that, in addition to to all these microbes, sometimes
Speaker 1: you will see references to sick building syndrome or occupational asthma.
Speaker 1: And this is experiencing asthmatic symptoms like t eyes or
Speaker 1: coughing while at work. And it makes up about ten
Speaker 1: percent of asthma cases in the US, and it is
Speaker 1: estimated to be responsible for twenty four point five millions
Speaker 1: sick days annually. Uh. This is according to Lisa Balcon,
Speaker 1: who's running for the New York Times. So there's this
Speaker 1: idea that when you create this microbialist in the office, uh,
Speaker 1: that you're creating conditions that can certainly weaken your health.
Speaker 1: Um cause asthmatic reactions. And there's also sick building syndrome,
Speaker 1: in which a moldy or a poorly ventilated office causes headaches, fatigue,
Speaker 1: and nausea, just to name a couple of symptoms. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you have this shut off environment, and to what
Speaker 1: degree you're actually ventilating it, bringing in clean air or
Speaker 1: are you just sort of cycling the whole sickness around. Well,
Speaker 1: as you say, we've shut out the outdoors, so we
Speaker 1: have limited our environment. We've really skewed it because at
Speaker 1: least when you're outdoors and maybe you live in a
Speaker 1: city that's fairly polluted, Um, you're still getting some movement
Speaker 1: there in those that cloud of microbes is dissipating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we're bringing in these uh, these toxic substances, often
Speaker 1: from carpet, furniture, paint, um, other items such as the
Speaker 1: You remember the war of the lavender um um air
Speaker 1: freshener here at work. Yes, it seemed the last months,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was a synthetic lavender air freshener
Speaker 1: and it was permeating the office. Yeah, because lavender, natural
Speaker 1: lavender is a beautiful smell. I love lavender, but this
Speaker 1: is that artificial chemical lavendar that you can just you
Speaker 1: feel killing your brain cells every every whiff you take.
Speaker 1: And it was there. There was there was a war
Speaker 1: just to keep it short between the air freshener and
Speaker 1: those of us who didn't. And that is a good
Speaker 1: example of some of the aggression that we see in
Speaker 1: these more open office concepts. And we'll talk about that
Speaker 1: in a moment, but yes, that's that's certainly something that
Speaker 1: you are introducing into the environment. Or why was why
Speaker 1: was the lavender airfrashner there? Because that particular office was
Speaker 1: haunted by Funk It had not Well, what I think
Speaker 1: is fascinating about all of this, because it's sort of
Speaker 1: sprouts from this whole cubicle culture, is that the cubicle
Speaker 1: was introduced as this sort of utopian idea of an office, uh,
Speaker 1: space that someone could really like cling to and spread
Speaker 1: out and and be as creative and productive as possible.
Speaker 1: And when I'm talking about this utopian office vision, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about Robert Props. He was a director of research
Speaker 1: for Herman Miller, the furniture company, and he created something
Speaker 1: called the Action office. So think about think about cubicles now, right,
Speaker 1: just these squares essentially or our fancy like right angle ones,
Speaker 1: and uh, think about this vision that he had that
Speaker 1: he created, which was really more of like these half walls,
Speaker 1: but that was there so that you could pin up
Speaker 1: projects and then all these different and have a little
Speaker 1: privacy when you needed privacy. Yeah, and then um a
Speaker 1: lot of desk space with different components you could add
Speaker 1: on to it, like bookshelves and so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: so that the person who was working there could spread out, um,
Speaker 1: could have all the things that they needed at hand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: make it their own. You don't have to. You're not
Speaker 1: ruled by that in and out box. And you would
Speaker 1: have varying levels of workspace so that you can you
Speaker 1: can sit down and you can and you can also
Speaker 1: stand up and work. And of course that's growing more
Speaker 1: and more popular these days with the individuals who want
Speaker 1: to stand and work all day. Right. I mean it
Speaker 1: was very forward thinking, but now this is what used
Speaker 1: to exist before cubicles, and we're talking about those open
Speaker 1: bullpens where there were really small dusks like think about
Speaker 1: school desks that were just lined up one after that
Speaker 1: there with no privacy. So in a sense, this this
Speaker 1: utopian vision was a vast improvement. Sounds great, right, So
Speaker 1: what happened? Where did it all go wrong? Well, with
Speaker 1: the problem. The main problem here is that you're taking
Speaker 1: an ideal and you're you're going to work that into
Speaker 1: a business environment and into a business plan. You're going
Speaker 1: to deal with space constraints, you're gonna deal with budget constraints,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna end up with a product that looks
Speaker 1: significantly different. Right, because we're talking about the late sixties here,
Speaker 1: we're an increased workforce. We're talking about Uh, the real
Speaker 1: estate costs just skyrocketing too. So they had to solve
Speaker 1: that and they looked at this company, Herman Miller, a
Speaker 1: lot of corporations, and said, can I cherry pick that
Speaker 1: configuration to just choose what I want? Because if you do,
Speaker 1: you you run into not not an excellent means of
Speaker 1: creating an open workspace for your employee, but a way
Speaker 1: of cramming more people into a given space and while
Speaker 1: still providing them basically the workspace they needed to work.
Speaker 1: And that's where this lovely idea of this action office
Speaker 1: just was cherry picked to death and then eventually reconfigured
Speaker 1: so that it just got smaller and smaller and smaller
Speaker 1: until it became this corporate sardine can plan, these little
Speaker 1: gray cells that you you slide yourself into. I was
Speaker 1: looking at pictures of them because I sometimes forget what
Speaker 1: they look like because I don't I've never worked in
Speaker 1: a in a space that really had them. Um, because
Speaker 1: I was in news newsrooms before this. I was working
Speaker 1: for newspapers, and newspapers generally go with the open office.
Speaker 1: So environment, because you're all working together, you're yelling at
Speaker 1: each other, you're breaking into tears, um, you're collaborating on
Speaker 1: this project on a deadline, and there's you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of there's a certain amount of time wasting,
Speaker 1: but a lot of just let's get this done. It's
Speaker 1: so it's it's a cool environment, but it's not definitely
Speaker 1: not a cubical environment. And then here, of course we
Speaker 1: have this altered cubical environment we've described already. So uh
Speaker 1: but but looking at these images, it really is soul
Speaker 1: crushing some of these. I mean, it's just looks like
Speaker 1: a cell and it has dominated the office landscape for
Speaker 1: thirty years. That being said, now employers are going back
Speaker 1: to this more um open bullpen configuration. So that's where
Speaker 1: we begin to introduce a bunch of different problems, right
Speaker 1: because here we're talking about the open office open office.
Speaker 1: We've actually seen it parodied in recent TV shows like
Speaker 1: Arrested Development the most recent season they have like this
Speaker 1: basically a warehouse with this with like death spread out
Speaker 1: across these spaces. Um parks and wreck had had that
Speaker 1: business that John Ralphaeo and uh and disease open. That's
Speaker 1: a huge space with all you know, like a desk
Speaker 1: here and yeah, and it's become sort of a cliche
Speaker 1: of startups. It has, and you know, various companies handle
Speaker 1: things differently. There are some that will actually not have
Speaker 1: any assigned seatings, so when you show up, you just
Speaker 1: check out your laptop and then you go you go
Speaker 1: to a desk check out a laptop for the day,
Speaker 1: and then go find a place to sit. Yes, let's
Speaker 1: let's make the workspace as much like a middle school
Speaker 1: cafeteria as possible, because we all have fond memories of that.
Speaker 1: Right now, I think the reason why employers are going
Speaker 1: to this is one. It's really cheap. Right. You have
Speaker 1: no walls, you have no partitions, you don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about a ton of office furniture. Do the managers
Speaker 1: still have closed off offices? I assume they do because
Speaker 1: they have to have. Yeah, well not all, but there
Speaker 1: are some companies where managers are out there with everybody
Speaker 1: and there are no It just depends on So I
Speaker 1: can feel better about about it if if the managers
Speaker 1: rolling this out, Um, we're partaking of this new environment,
Speaker 1: because a lot of times it feels like I have
Speaker 1: this great idea for you guys. You're not gonna have
Speaker 1: offices or cubicles. You're just gonna sort of exists in
Speaker 1: a comfy space. If you need me, I'll be in
Speaker 1: my office. Yeah, but offices are necessary because you have
Speaker 1: to have some measure of privacy. Oh no, no, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in office because if you have.
Speaker 1: If someone's gonna be fired, it needs to happen in office.
Speaker 1: If someone's gonna be in you for a job, it
Speaker 1: probably needs to have an inside of an office, So
Speaker 1: off closed offices are necessary. Um And I think that
Speaker 1: the privacy afforded by the right kind of cubicle is
Speaker 1: is certainly necessary to my work environment. Like I can't
Speaker 1: imagine if we were all setting around on bean bags here,
Speaker 1: um and I was having to to try and work
Speaker 1: on a laptop while Jonathan Stricklan shoots basketball and tells
Speaker 1: me about his weekend, I would lose my mind. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think though, that this is a trend that is
Speaker 1: going to continue, because again it's a it comes down
Speaker 1: to money and the The other part of this is
Speaker 1: that so many companies are beginning to or have already
Speaker 1: adopted pretty robust teleworking policy. Why waste the money and
Speaker 1: the space on on on me having a designated office
Speaker 1: space or of a designated cubicle if I'm only in
Speaker 1: once a week, twice a week, three times a week,
Speaker 1: which is where you have an unassigned desk space, and
Speaker 1: it sort of makes sense because if you're only going
Speaker 1: to be in a couple of days a week. Well,
Speaker 1: then great, and it's sort of it is a fair
Speaker 1: trade up. I would feel. It's like it's hard to
Speaker 1: complain about about that if you were getting multiple telework
Speaker 1: days per week and they said, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: you don't really get to have your own office anymore, right, right,
Speaker 1: you really get to have your own designated space. Now,
Speaker 1: this is probably something that a lot of listeners are experiencing. Um.
Speaker 1: And I say that because, according to Susan Caine and
Speaker 1: her New York Times article The Rise of the New
Speaker 1: Group Think, virtually all American workers now spend time on teams.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a new thing, right, teams were you know,
Speaker 1: you're not just working individually anymore. And some seventy inhabit
Speaker 1: these open plan offices, which she says, no one has
Speaker 1: a room of their own. Well, you know, back to
Speaker 1: what I was talking about newsrooms and you if you
Speaker 1: worked their newsrooms, have you so so again? Like that's
Speaker 1: the type of operation where an open workspace makes perfect
Speaker 1: sense because it is a team effort to get this done.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a certain amount of leave me alone
Speaker 1: while I write my my paper, right righte? My article? Um,
Speaker 1: and the old days you used to go cigarette me
Speaker 1: and they would sick a cigarette in your mouth. That's
Speaker 1: what the old timing we're telling me. Um, I'm sure
Speaker 1: I can see it. And it's a very I like
Speaker 1: the I like the environment of the newsroom because I
Speaker 1: think that it's very intense and it gets it can
Speaker 1: get very loud. I can sort of like when the
Speaker 1: anxiety rises, so too does the volume of the voices.
Speaker 1: But I was very good at just blocking all that out.
Speaker 1: And because you know, when your heads down, your heads down. UM.
Speaker 1: I had a co worker by the name I'm going
Speaker 1: to go and outer Rachel Oswald because she's still a
Speaker 1: fabulous journalist out there in the world. Um. But she
Speaker 1: had this thing where she would be on deadline. She
Speaker 1: would be finishing the front page story that I needed
Speaker 1: to put in the paper that I was editing, and uh,
Speaker 1: and she everyone has their own way of getting work done.
Speaker 1: Her way was to put her headphones in and listen
Speaker 1: to show tunes and and seeing out loud, seeing the
Speaker 1: show tunes out loud that she was finishing the article.
Speaker 1: And so you know, it's like, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's night already, want to go home, and it's not
Speaker 1: the time to listen to your co workers sing show tunes.
Speaker 1: But you know this is how you're going to get there.
Speaker 1: You have to let Rachel singer show tunes and finish
Speaker 1: the front page story. Um I wanted to point out
Speaker 1: that if if you feel like your office space is shrinking,
Speaker 1: if you're in a cubicle, or if you're an open
Speaker 1: plan or even if you're in office with capital, it
Speaker 1: turns out that the average square foot or square feet
Speaker 1: per worker fell from two hundred to one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy six in This is in stark contrast to about
Speaker 1: five hundred square feet that were allotted for each office
Speaker 1: worker in the seventies, so you can see it's just
Speaker 1: like slowly being whittled down. And there's this idea that
Speaker 1: as a result of this lack of space and this
Speaker 1: bullpen sort of environment, that there is an increased amount
Speaker 1: of anxiety, aggression and poor health. And this is from
Speaker 1: researcher Dr venesh Omen from the Queensland University of Technologies
Speaker 1: Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation. He said that nine
Speaker 1: of the research, the outcome of working in an open
Speaker 1: plan office was seen as negative. With these types of
Speaker 1: offices causing stress and conflict and high blood pressure and
Speaker 1: high staff turnover. So you can begin to see this,
Speaker 1: like if you talk about the anxiety or aggression, you
Speaker 1: can see this in an open office plan, because if
Speaker 1: you're in the middle of that, you are very aware
Speaker 1: of your coworkers conversations of perhaps the glade lavender air
Speaker 1: freshener that they put up um or even like some
Speaker 1: of the little habits, maybe the clipping of their nails
Speaker 1: or toe nails at their desk. I really I could
Speaker 1: hear that all day and look at that all day. Um,
Speaker 1: So that begins to really sort of heighten what people
Speaker 1: are feeling our distractions and annoying and you get that
Speaker 1: that higher blood pressure and you get more stressed out.
Speaker 1: So it sort of makes sense that in these environments
Speaker 1: you're asking people to do very specific work, sometimes work
Speaker 1: that requires a lot of attention, and yet here all
Speaker 1: these different things going on all around you. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: end up putting headphones in to cut off the noise
Speaker 1: and try and concentrate more. But then with that comes
Speaker 1: to the added uh fright of someone trying to get
Speaker 1: your attention every now and then, and that just ups
Speaker 1: the anxiety again. The startle response. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: it comes out a lot of people enjoy. I mean,
Speaker 1: I enjoy the privacy and space in which to do
Speaker 1: my creative thing. And uh and really that to me,
Speaker 1: that's more valuable at this stage of my career than
Speaker 1: team work, because really, who's my team, Like, you're on
Speaker 1: my team. Noel's on my team once a week for
Speaker 1: a few hours, and then Tyler's on my team like
Speaker 1: a few hours a week. Tyler's our video producer, and
Speaker 1: nol is our podcast producer. And of course we're all
Speaker 1: wearing matching T shirts right now. Um, and we are
Speaker 1: a team. But you're right, I mean, what we all
Speaker 1: do is is largely very independent. And Susan Caine and
Speaker 1: the other article, The Rise of the New Group thinks
Speaker 1: so that this is really important for people who are
Speaker 1: creative but they're also introverts. They need to have that space.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this before. Um, they need to
Speaker 1: feel like they have privacy and freedom from interruption, And
Speaker 1: this is where it's really important that that that's another
Speaker 1: thing that bugs me about the potential of a of
Speaker 1: a manager with an office deciding things. Also the idea
Speaker 1: of an extrovert who's a manager with an office deciding
Speaker 1: how everyone else's space is gonna work, Like, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: let's just do this. That's a big old work party, NonStop,
Speaker 1: realizing that most of us do not want to attend,
Speaker 1: or some of us do not want to attend the
Speaker 1: work party, and the idea of the work party alone
Speaker 1: is enough to give us the shivers. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that there should be opportunity for informal collaborations, right that.
Speaker 1: That's I think why they say, hey, come in, make
Speaker 1: sure you're in the office X amount of time, or
Speaker 1: we're gonna have an actual meeting about this. But um,
Speaker 1: it turns out that if you have those sort of
Speaker 1: informal like hey, how's it going, you know, uh, and
Speaker 1: you share some ideas that you then take that inspiration
Speaker 1: from that conversation and you go away and you do
Speaker 1: the actual work. Right, So if you just sat around
Speaker 1: all day collaborating, nothing would get done. Yeah, it kind
Speaker 1: of comes back to what we're talking about the caffeine
Speaker 1: an episode, the idea that when you do you take
Speaker 1: your coffee, you caffeinate, Uh, then you're able to focus
Speaker 1: on a top on a given topic. But then you're
Speaker 1: not doing the free brain association activity that is the
Speaker 1: hallmark of creative endeavor. So you need a balance between
Speaker 1: the two. So we need to share spaces with our coworkers.
Speaker 1: We need to be able to collaborate. Uh. We need
Speaker 1: to shoot basketball, uh hoops with Jonathan strict but John,
Speaker 1: I don't know why Jonathan shooting basketball in this to
Speaker 1: my knowledge, he doesn't shoot basketball. But at any rate,
Speaker 1: you need to uh shoot some hoops with Jonathan every
Speaker 1: now and then. But then you also need to be
Speaker 1: able to to walk away from Jonathan and find a
Speaker 1: place of quiet. It's true, and the quiet is the
Speaker 1: big deal, right, I mean, this is the chief complaint
Speaker 1: that most people have in any kind of office setting
Speaker 1: is that it's just not quiet enough. There's too much
Speaker 1: going on. I can hear someone on the phone talking
Speaker 1: and I can't hear the other person on the other
Speaker 1: line or you know who they're talking to you, and
Speaker 1: that's maddening. We've discussed that in episodes. Hearing half of
Speaker 1: phone call is one of the most disturbing things possible,
Speaker 1: because your brain wants to loop everything up, even if
Speaker 1: that's not your primary activity, far from it. From the day,
Speaker 1: your brain wants to make sense of it. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: distracted because it's trying to make sense of that conversation
Speaker 1: and and um fill in those loops. But I did
Speaker 1: want to point out that there was a survey of
Speaker 1: sixty five thousand people over a decade. This was in
Speaker 1: North America, Europe, Africa, and Australia, Australia, Australia, and they
Speaker 1: did they said, this is the thing people. You know,
Speaker 1: half of these people say that they need privacy, and
Speaker 1: they need speech privacy. So they need to be able
Speaker 1: to make a phone call or have a conversation without
Speaker 1: everybody hearing it, and they also need not to hear
Speaker 1: everybody else. So I thought it was interesting that a
Speaker 1: software company called Autodesk, which was setting up a new office,
Speaker 1: they wanted to test out something called a pink noise system. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: this is described as a soft whoosh that's admitted over
Speaker 1: loud speakers and it sounds like a ventilation system, but
Speaker 1: it is specially formulated to match the frequencies and human voices. Okay,
Speaker 1: So unbeknown it's sort of an organic white noise. Thus
Speaker 1: the pink noise. It's like a fleshy white noise. I
Speaker 1: have to say the pink noise sounds kind of nice, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little dirty, but nice, like you know, like a
Speaker 1: ventilation lullaby. Really yeah, it makes me think of the
Speaker 1: ventilation system is alive and fleshy though, Like we're in
Speaker 1: a Cronenberg office and do you think of pink good
Speaker 1: dripping down from it? I have to say, But unbeknownst
Speaker 1: to the employees in that office, they had no idea
Speaker 1: this was running, and it was run for three months.
Speaker 1: They shut it off and boom, they immediately got complaints
Speaker 1: and everyone lost their minds. Well, they couldn't pinpoint it.
Speaker 1: They didn't know. They just kept saying like I can
Speaker 1: hear so and so and there's you know, like it
Speaker 1: was like that day that the power was knocked out
Speaker 1: and it turned out the lights were on, but they
Speaker 1: had to shut off all of the really high end
Speaker 1: stuff like the ventilation system, and it suddenly felt wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were like, what's going on in here? Well, the
Speaker 1: same thing happens I think around like six o'clock in
Speaker 1: the building and UM used to when I would stay
Speaker 1: to six, like that's when I knew it was time
Speaker 1: to go, Like, feels wrong in here, something weird? You
Speaker 1: have those cues, right. Uh. So it was interesting because
Speaker 1: apparently that that system was helping to muffle conversations, so
Speaker 1: all of a sudden people could hear conversations from sixty
Speaker 1: feet away as opposed to me. You know, it sort
Speaker 1: of deadening that sound for them. Well, I think we
Speaker 1: ought to introduce we can call it green noise, and
Speaker 1: it'll be um, just a constant like wishiness, but with
Speaker 1: kind of ghostly voices too, so that you're you're constantly
Speaker 1: a little bit on edge, Robert like that. Yeah, so like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like an ectoplasm based pink noise, I think.
Speaker 1: So it's sort of like the mathieson um novel. It's
Speaker 1: like come out no um oh I am legend, yes,
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, that's what we all need is is
Speaker 1: this promise of zombies behind the our office door. So
Speaker 1: it's hard to think about this open office concept in
Speaker 1: lack of privacy is running parallel with this other issue
Speaker 1: that we have in our lives of not having any
Speaker 1: privacy anywhere because of the Internet or the amount of
Speaker 1: information that we're giving out um. And it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of interesting, do you know, to to look at it
Speaker 1: that way and wonder if this is just us really
Speaker 1: fulfilling and adaption to what our current circumstances are. Is
Speaker 1: this really a big deal? Mm? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Like it does remind me one of the criticisms of
Speaker 1: the open office spaces that people going outside to take
Speaker 1: personal phone calls instead of having them at their desks,
Speaker 1: which doesn't sound like really that bad of a thing,
Speaker 1: but the idea is that supposedly you're losing some time
Speaker 1: and doing that. Um, but it's is it. It's not
Speaker 1: like that it would be any less private to have
Speaker 1: that conversation in the office space. You're just seeing people.
Speaker 1: Like so much of it is just our perceived privacy.
Speaker 1: We need to have this agreed upon fiction of how
Speaker 1: private our workspace is. Like, for instance, working in a
Speaker 1: crowded coffee shop to me is great. I can I
Speaker 1: can really put in my headphones and and just barrel
Speaker 1: through a project. But I'm certainly not private. If anything,
Speaker 1: I'm visible by more people, but I don't really I
Speaker 1: don't tune not to know any of them, so it's
Speaker 1: almost like they're not there. So but it's all about
Speaker 1: just me creating this uh, this environment, uh, this this
Speaker 1: world view in which I have privacy. Well, that's right,
Speaker 1: because all those people around you are not saddled with uh,
Speaker 1: you know, biography that you know. So if you're in
Speaker 1: a coffee shop and someone next to you is yapping
Speaker 1: about something, then you're probably not You can probably just say, Okay,
Speaker 1: that person is yapping. I can crowd them out of
Speaker 1: my mind. But if you put a name to them
Speaker 1: and some instances are collaborations that you've had with them,
Speaker 1: perhaps then you start to feel like, oh, could you
Speaker 1: please quit talking. So it's interesting to see that we
Speaker 1: do have to create this illusion for ourselves, and I
Speaker 1: think that maybe that's that's ultimately what the answer is.
Speaker 1: You have to have an environment that allows people to
Speaker 1: have privacy, that allows people to work together, and throughout
Speaker 1: all of it create an illusion that they can accept
Speaker 1: that they have the privacy to work right. And part
Speaker 1: of that allusion too, is making these people feel like
Speaker 1: they have choices, like, for instance, we're gonna decorate our
Speaker 1: our cubicles and feel like it is ours, it's my
Speaker 1: corner of the street, right, yes, which makes you feel
Speaker 1: like you have a little bit more control over your environment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the freedom to put up a poster of a barbarian
Speaker 1: lady cutting off a monster's head like that is important.
Speaker 1: I fight for that absolutely, not only in this workplace,
Speaker 1: but the next in anyone else's workplace. I will write
Speaker 1: an email on your behalf to your boss about your
Speaker 1: right to put up that barbarian poster. There you go
Speaker 1: take them up on it, guys. All right, Well, on
Speaker 1: that note, let's call over the robot and do a
Speaker 1: little listener mail that all of this comes to us
Speaker 1: from Facebook. And uh, this first one comes from Brad,
Speaker 1: dear Robert and Julie. I just listened to a writer's
Speaker 1: letter about naming holidays for the seven Deadly sins. He
Speaker 1: could not come up with a holiday that matched envy.
Speaker 1: So I thought about it, and I came up with
Speaker 1: your birthday. It is the only holiday typically celebrated by
Speaker 1: one person at a time. On another note, I'm a
Speaker 1: late time subscriber to your podcast and have been trying
Speaker 1: to catch up furiously. I'm a truck driver and listen
Speaker 1: to about tin podcasts today, uh and possibly a day um,
Speaker 1: and I'll get to that in a second. Um. I
Speaker 1: should be caught up in no time. Sorry for the
Speaker 1: pronunciation and writing, I am using voice text to write
Speaker 1: this message keep up the great work. I like that,
Speaker 1: and I like how he's you know, trucking along and
Speaker 1: doing the safe thing here and using uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I knew that was possible because of all
Speaker 1: the serious stuff, But I think this is the first
Speaker 1: time that we've had a listener right in and actually
Speaker 1: told us that they were using a voice to tech
Speaker 1: software to write to us. It's kind of crazy and
Speaker 1: futuristic in its own way. I would be interested to
Speaker 1: know since he has sort of a mobile office of one,
Speaker 1: what sort of things in his office environment as a
Speaker 1: truck or you know, um work for him or don't
Speaker 1: work for him, And does he ever get into big
Speaker 1: arguments with himself? Yeah, the mobile workplaces, that's a whole
Speaker 1: another issue in and of itself because you get into
Speaker 1: you certainly get into issues of economics there because it's
Speaker 1: one there. And this is exploring in Molly Edmands article
Speaker 1: that we decided earlier about pubical death. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: there are a number of concerns about the posture and
Speaker 1: pete keyboard position and eyes train and all of this
Speaker 1: are related to a physical, non moving office. But then
Speaker 1: in a vehicle like if you have a keyboard to
Speaker 1: the side, um uh, such as in a you know,
Speaker 1: any kind of like a survey vehicle or a police car, etcetera.
Speaker 1: They're a whole host of new orgonomic problems that present themselves,
Speaker 1: such as constantly twisting over to use a keyboard at
Speaker 1: a weird angle. Um. So anyway, that's a whole another issue.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I'd be interested to hear about the
Speaker 1: passing of time too in that context, as we just
Speaker 1: did an episode about time. So if you're in that
Speaker 1: environment and you're on the road, how does that pass
Speaker 1: for you? Um? What sort of things make it pass
Speaker 1: quicker or slower? This one comes to us from Amanda
Speaker 1: in uh Saskatchewan ox Bow, um, Saskatchewan to be a specific.
Speaker 1: She writes and says, I thought i'd write in about
Speaker 1: your recent coffee episode. I am one of the super
Speaker 1: sensitive types. The coffee is reserved for very important times
Speaker 1: only I if I have to stay up all late,
Speaker 1: all night and most of the next day sort of
Speaker 1: reasons only. Hopefully my abstaining is keeping me extra creative
Speaker 1: three exclamation points. Uh So yeah, it sounds it sounds
Speaker 1: like uh, I've certainly talked to people like that who
Speaker 1: are just ultra sensitive to it and only use it
Speaker 1: if they really need to stay up like crazy. But yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: then we also heard from Bonnie listener. Bonnie writes in
Speaker 1: and says, I love coffee, So I really enjoyed the
Speaker 1: recent episode on coffee. My dad started giving me the
Speaker 1: extra little bit of his coffee and uh, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: fit in his work thermis when I was just a
Speaker 1: little kid, and then by junior high he was making
Speaker 1: enough for me to have a real cup of coffee
Speaker 1: before school. I never get the caffeine jitters, nor do
Speaker 1: I ever feel a jolt from drinking a cup of Joe.
Speaker 1: Guess I have built up quite a tolerance over the years.
Speaker 1: What I really wanted to ask, though, is which of
Speaker 1: your co workers do you think would have a jar
Speaker 1: of urine in their office? In their office? And are
Speaker 1: you and are they fellow podcasters that we the public
Speaker 1: might be familiar with, And if we guessed which ones
Speaker 1: they were, would you tell us if we were right?
Speaker 1: Do you want to feel that one? Um? Now, I
Speaker 1: will say, the coworker that has the most um liquid
Speaker 1: receptacles on their desk at any given time has to
Speaker 1: be Holly of stuffy miss in history class. I just
Speaker 1: noticed there will be numerous cups and and cans. I
Speaker 1: believe they're empty, but they could conceivably be filled with urine.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying she's doing it, but I'm saying the
Speaker 1: ultimate like lady like person in this building, you know that, right?
Speaker 1: Like she's not. I mean, if you went, if I
Speaker 1: tell her what you just said, we actually I will,
Speaker 1: and we'll stand there and let's register the horror on
Speaker 1: her face. So I would not. I would not say
Speaker 1: that that Holly would be the YearIn. No, No, no,
Speaker 1: she wouldn't. But I have someone in mind. Are they
Speaker 1: a podcaster? H But I think I feel like I
Speaker 1: kind of need to ask. I feel like I kind
Speaker 1: of need to ask that person if this arrangement is
Speaker 1: okay before agreeing to it. I'm very intrigued by this.
Speaker 1: I would love for you guys to guess who I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: But you know that person has to be a willing
Speaker 1: participant in this's okay? Alright, Bonnie, well you heard that.
Speaker 1: Tune in later for more details. All right. We also
Speaker 1: heard from Meg. Meg writes and it says I was
Speaker 1: just listening to the coffee podcast popular with a lot
Speaker 1: of people and wanted to chime in since you wanted
Speaker 1: to hear from creative coffee drinkers. Um. As I've written before,
Speaker 1: I'm a professional miniatures painter and have been for the
Speaker 1: last five years. I'm an avid coffee drinker, especially before painting.
Speaker 1: I find it really increases me my creativity and productivity.
Speaker 1: I also have experiences with hand jitters like Robert mentioned,
Speaker 1: uh he gets before he paints minis. Painting is a
Speaker 1: very zen activity and helps keep calm and centered throughout
Speaker 1: my day. One question I have for you guys is
Speaker 1: how does caffeine affect people with a d h D.
Speaker 1: I am a d D and I know others who
Speaker 1: are too, and we all swear by drinking caffeine eated
Speaker 1: beverages on days we forget our Riddlin or other stimulant
Speaker 1: medications at home. We have found it acts like Riddlin
Speaker 1: in a pinch, and caffeine actually helps our brains to focus,
Speaker 1: says Robert. Anytime you come to Seattle, let me know
Speaker 1: and maybe we can get a paint jam in sometime.
Speaker 1: All right, that's uh okay, I think I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: put that in the file for future h D episode
Speaker 1: because we've talked about this and we've had another request
Speaker 1: for it in terms of creativity a d D and
Speaker 1: a d h D and how it may or may
Speaker 1: not affect creativity, so we'll have to explore that. And
Speaker 1: just as far as miniatures go, I was really intrigued
Speaker 1: that that Meg, even though she has experienced apparently some
Speaker 1: of the hand jitters before, that she makes a regular
Speaker 1: point of drinking coffee before she she paints. But maybe
Speaker 1: she has naturally steady your hands than I do, so
Speaker 1: she doesn't suffer as much. Well, And then there is
Speaker 1: that level of sensitivity to Indeed, everybody has kind of
Speaker 1: a different cocktail in their body, reacting differently to it.
Speaker 1: And finally we heard from Matthew. Matthew retz Inus is high.
Speaker 1: Robert and Juley love listening to your podcasts, and I
Speaker 1: often find myself imagining your recording set up for some reason.
Speaker 1: I picture a dark room, devoid of any distracting pictures, etcetera,
Speaker 1: simply two stools, a table, and two mics. Any chance
Speaker 1: you would post a picture of your actual recording set up, well,
Speaker 1: I would say that we don't really have to, because
Speaker 1: if you watch the stuff you should know TV show.
Speaker 1: The setup they have in that show is fake but
Speaker 1: looks sort of like a clean TV version of what
Speaker 1: we actually have. Well, you're talking about the red um
Speaker 1: batting that serves as installation, right or two actually deaden
Speaker 1: the sound vibrations so that you don't hear the traffic
Speaker 1: too much there on Peachtree Street. But we also have
Speaker 1: pictures of bats um and I would think we've mentioned
Speaker 1: this before. Picasso in his underpants, Yes, Tesla over there,
Speaker 1: and a book on Santa Fe design and the wit
Speaker 1: and wisdom of fishing. Yes, if this gives people a
Speaker 1: better idea of this sort of clutter that we have
Speaker 1: around us. We also have a terrarium with a homunculous
Speaker 1: in it. We have we have a necronomicon in a
Speaker 1: vacuum sealed chamber, and UH a collection of various potions,
Speaker 1: some of which have been tested on our interns, some
Speaker 1: of which have not. I will not confirm or deny.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, if you have something you would like
Speaker 1: to share with us, um and particularly about today's episode,
Speaker 1: about the workspace. What's your workspace like and how does
Speaker 1: it affect your creativity? About your your ability to to
Speaker 1: jam and brainstorm, arm with your your coworkers. Do you
Speaker 1: have a mobile uh working environment? If so, how do
Speaker 1: you how do you remain creative in that? How do
Speaker 1: you remain comfortable in that? UM? Let us know all
Speaker 1: this stuff is game. You can find us in a
Speaker 1: number of places. Stuff to Blew Your Mind dot com
Speaker 1: is the mothership. That's where all our blog posts go,
Speaker 1: the videos, the audio, you name it, pictures of us.
Speaker 1: If you don't know what we look like and you're
Speaker 1: trying to figure that out, well that's where you need
Speaker 1: to go to find it. You can also find us
Speaker 1: on social media. While we're on Facebook, we're stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind there on tumbler as well. And also
Speaker 1: you can find us unclear where handle is blows in Mind.
Speaker 1: Oh and then YouTube mind stuff show. That's right, And
Speaker 1: you can also send us an email at blow of
Speaker 1: the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com