Speaker 1: Everyone's heard the phrase fake it till you make it.
Speaker 1: Just act like you know what you're doing until you
Speaker 1: actually know what you're doing. But some of us keep
Speaker 1: feeling like we're faking it long after we've made it,
Speaker 1: and that feeling can haunt you for your whole career.
Speaker 1: And it's called impostor syndrome. This is a game plan. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm Francesco Levi and I'm Rebecca Greenfield, and today we're
Speaker 1: talking about impostor syndrome. Yeah, this is a phrase that
Speaker 1: gets used a lot in the how to Be a
Speaker 1: Woman in the workplace world that I spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time in. Yeah, it feels kind of recent and buzzwordy,
Speaker 1: but it's actually been around for some time. It was
Speaker 1: coined by some clinical psychologists in the late seventies, and
Speaker 1: it basically just describes this phenomenon of feeling like you're
Speaker 1: a fraud, uh, no matter how long you've been doing something,
Speaker 1: and spite all evidence to the contrary. So basically like
Speaker 1: nothing can convince you that you're not gonna one day
Speaker 1: get exposed as a complete fake. Yeah. I had an
Speaker 1: acute experience of impostor syndrome very recently. Yeah, you were
Speaker 1: telling me about this, and I think this is like
Speaker 1: the perfect example of impostor syndrome. I was asked to
Speaker 1: moderate a panel at the Tribeca Film Festival, and when
Speaker 1: the woman reached out to me, she said that she
Speaker 1: saw that I had written an article about Hetty Lamar
Speaker 1: and there was a biopic about her and they wanted
Speaker 1: me to moderate the panel on her. I had written
Speaker 1: this article in eleven so when she reached out to me,
Speaker 1: I said, I wrote this article five six years ago.
Speaker 1: I don't cover entertainment. I never moderated a panel, like
Speaker 1: can you you you've got the wrong person. You were
Speaker 1: literally like I, you made a mistake, you called up
Speaker 1: the wrong number. And I felt then we need to
Speaker 1: tell her that to be like, you gotta you gotta know,
Speaker 1: And she said, I googled you, like I know what
Speaker 1: you do now. And she assured me that analysts are
Speaker 1: good moderators and that you know, I would be great
Speaker 1: for this. But I still had this nagging sensation that
Speaker 1: I was just like baking it. Basically, yeah, you have
Speaker 1: you have felt the need to justify yourself or tell
Speaker 1: her you weren't qualified. Meanwhile, like she's the one who
Speaker 1: decides if you're qualified. She's picking the people to be
Speaker 1: on this panel, and she knew who you were and decided,
Speaker 1: Like that's all. That's all the qualification you need is
Speaker 1: that somebody decided you should be the moderator for this panel.
Speaker 1: But that's what impostor syndrome is about. It's like, even
Speaker 1: if other people think you're good at something, they must
Speaker 1: have it slightly wrong and they don't know the real
Speaker 1: they mean, the facts. Yea, they need your whole history.
Speaker 1: I've had similar experiences with this, and one of the
Speaker 1: things that came to mind when we were talking about
Speaker 1: impostor syndrome was how I've basically had a decent career
Speaker 1: in media. I've always had staff jobs at big media
Speaker 1: companies ever since I finished graduate school about ten years ago.
Speaker 1: And as you know, in our industry, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to get a staff job. A lot of
Speaker 1: people work freelance, either by choice or just because they
Speaker 1: can't get um salary jobs at sort of journalism outlets.
Speaker 1: And whenever people ask me about my career outcomes, I
Speaker 1: always describe myself as extremely lucky for having that, like
Speaker 1: those back to back staff jobs, and luck is this
Speaker 1: word that I think is associated with imposter syndrome, because
Speaker 1: when I say I'm lucky, I'm sort of referring to
Speaker 1: other people in my field who I know are also
Speaker 1: really good journalists and just haven't been able to land
Speaker 1: staff jobs. So I feel this need to point out that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I may be good enough to get a staff job,
Speaker 1: but lots of people are good enough to get staff
Speaker 1: jobs and didn't, and so I'm just a lucky one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're apologizing to those people, are like on behalf of them.
Speaker 1: It's like this all messed up thing. You feel the
Speaker 1: need to say that they too could have gotten the
Speaker 1: job or something. I don't know. Yeah, it's just the
Speaker 1: luck of the draw that I got it, and you know,
Speaker 1: I look back on it and no, there was plenty
Speaker 1: of hard work there. And it's not to say be
Speaker 1: hard working and qualified and someone else can be hard
Speaker 1: working and qualified and that person not get the job
Speaker 1: that you have. Yeah, And I want to talk about
Speaker 1: a related concept to this, which is the fake it
Speaker 1: till you make it idea, which is such a cliche,
Speaker 1: but it seems to me like this common advice that
Speaker 1: everybody in their career makes, just like act more competent
Speaker 1: than you are, and then you'll get this feedback, you know,
Speaker 1: because people will be impressed by your confidence and they'll
Speaker 1: treat you like you're better at your job and they'll
Speaker 1: give you better assignments and that will give you even
Speaker 1: more confidence. And then eventually, like the confidence becomes real
Speaker 1: and the skills become real and this sort of virtuous cycle,
Speaker 1: and it's like a career strategy I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people employ. But then it kind of feeds imposter
Speaker 1: syndrome because you worry. I think that you'll be discovered
Speaker 1: as a fake if you're going into a situation and
Speaker 1: consciously faking it. Yeah. I think the difference to me
Speaker 1: is the confidence in yourself. Like someone can be faking
Speaker 1: it until they make it, and they they know they're
Speaker 1: gonna make it, Like they have so much confidence they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can fake this until I make it. And then
Speaker 1: there's the person who's like, oh, I'm just faking it
Speaker 1: until I make it, and um, then when they make it,
Speaker 1: they still are going to have that lack of confidence
Speaker 1: in themselves. And I think that is impostor syndrome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of the in a lot of the reading
Speaker 1: that we've been doing about impostor syndrome. People who are
Speaker 1: hugely successful but talk about feeling this way UM have
Speaker 1: said that they've partly dealt with it by just kind
Speaker 1: of accepting everyone is faking some part of what they're
Speaker 1: doing at any given moment. You know, they're they're pretending
Speaker 1: or glossing over ways in which they might not be
Speaker 1: perfect at every single aspect of their job. And so
Speaker 1: it's actually not that productive to dwell on whether your
Speaker 1: confidence in something is real or not and fake it
Speaker 1: till you make it. Turns out to be a pretty
Speaker 1: use full strategy. UM. I found some cool research showing
Speaker 1: that it actually works. UM. There was a study where
Speaker 1: people were given a math quiz and one group was
Speaker 1: told that they had been flashed the answers on a
Speaker 1: screen so quickly that they couldn't register it consciously. Of course,
Speaker 1: they hadn't. They had just been shown like garbled whatever,
Speaker 1: and the other group hadn't. The group that thought that
Speaker 1: they knew the answers to the test did better on
Speaker 1: the test, so even though they didn't actually have any
Speaker 1: more knowledge, just thinking they had more knowledge helped them
Speaker 1: do better. There's another cool study where people were put
Speaker 1: in a flight simulator and given fighter pilot clothes and
Speaker 1: given all this feedback that was fighter pilot ishan they
Speaker 1: ended up doing better on a vision test than people
Speaker 1: who were just put in the flight simulator without all
Speaker 1: that feedback. So you adopt the costume and the posture
Speaker 1: of someone who's good at something, you get good at it.
Speaker 1: That kind of says to me that impostor syndrome can
Speaker 1: be really bad for you then, because if you think
Speaker 1: you have all the knowledge and tools even though you don't,
Speaker 1: that's not impostor syndrome, right, that's the right. Then you
Speaker 1: do well on the test or you're the pilot, you're
Speaker 1: the good pilot. But if you're constantly have self doubt
Speaker 1: that I must have some negative impact. Right. You're like
Speaker 1: rewarded for being ignorant about how bad you are at something,
Speaker 1: but you're punished if you're good at something. I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think everyone experiences impostors syndrome, and anybody who is
Speaker 1: more marginalized is going to feel more fraudulent. I think
Speaker 1: actually this is why UM women might have a stronger
Speaker 1: or different experience of imposter syndrome, because you get a
Speaker 1: lot of external validation for the idea that maybe you
Speaker 1: don't belong in the workplace if you're a woman, or,
Speaker 1: as you say, if you're a part of any marginalized group,
Speaker 1: if you're a person of color or a person with
Speaker 1: a disability. You're getting these external messages that other people
Speaker 1: don't value your work as much, and so that's only
Speaker 1: going to feed your insecurities about that. And somebody who
Speaker 1: described the difference between men and women and how they
Speaker 1: experience imposter syndrome really well is our guest Dr Suzanne Covin,
Speaker 1: who wrote an article called Letter to a Young Female Physician,
Speaker 1: and in it she said, I believe that women's fear
Speaker 1: of fraudulence is similar to men's, but with an added feature.
Speaker 1: Not only do we tend to perseverate over our inadequacies,
Speaker 1: we also often denigrate our strengths. To hear more about
Speaker 1: what she means by that and why she wrote a
Speaker 1: letter to young female physicians, we're happy to welcome Dr
Speaker 1: Suzanne Covin. Suzanne Covin is a primary care doctor at
Speaker 1: Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she is also a
Speaker 1: writer in residence, and she's on the faculty of Harvard
Speaker 1: Medical School. Welcome Suzanne, thanks for having me so start
Speaker 1: by telling us why you decided to frame the Vice
Speaker 1: article that you wrote about imposter syndrome as a letter
Speaker 1: to young female physicians. Well, what happened was last June,
Speaker 1: when the incoming interns were going through orientation at my hospital,
Speaker 1: I was invited to participate in this wonderful exercise where
Speaker 1: the interns were asked to write a letter to themselves,
Speaker 1: and the letters were then sealed and collected, and they
Speaker 1: were to be handed out to them at an intern
Speaker 1: retreat in January, so six months into their internship. And
Speaker 1: the idea of it was they would open these letters
Speaker 1: six months down the road and they would just see
Speaker 1: how far they had come. And as I sat there
Speaker 1: watching them, you know, hunched earnestly over these letters, I
Speaker 1: had this very powerful feeling of wanting to address my
Speaker 1: younger self when I was in their shoes thirty years earlier,
Speaker 1: and particularly as a woman, because in fact, I was
Speaker 1: delighted to see that more than half of the incoming
Speaker 1: interns in the room were women. Why did you decide
Speaker 1: to focus on impostor syndrome in particular, because what I
Speaker 1: realized as I was writing this letter to myself, you know,
Speaker 1: is that the thing I wished I had known starting
Speaker 1: out was that while I would experience some sexism as
Speaker 1: a woman in a male dominated profession, that the thing
Speaker 1: that would cause me the most conflict would be a
Speaker 1: voice in my head perpetually telling me that I wasn't
Speaker 1: good enough, that I wasn't as good as my peers,
Speaker 1: and that even and this was really the sort of
Speaker 1: the steps further, that the things I was good at
Speaker 1: didn't count particularly. Yeah, you write in your article that
Speaker 1: this feeling of being a fraud is more insidious than
Speaker 1: sexism itself. I'm wondering why you think female physicians in
Speaker 1: particular need to know about this imposter syndrome feeling. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to underplay the damage that overt sexism
Speaker 1: can do. I mean, we have to remember that even today,
Speaker 1: as I point out in the essay, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: women in medicine have not achieved pay equality with men.
Speaker 1: We are grossly underrepresented in leadership positions, even in fields
Speaker 1: where we represent the majority, like pediatrics and O. B. G. W. Anne.
Speaker 1: But for me, uh, personally, the piece that was so
Speaker 1: damaging was this constant and nagging feeling of self doubt,
Speaker 1: and as to why it's more in women, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that what it has to do with is
Speaker 1: having internalized the overt sexism. So the two things aren't
Speaker 1: really different. You understand what I mean by that, They're
Speaker 1: not completely separate issues. And I've gotten so much male
Speaker 1: since this piece appeared, and from all around the world,
Speaker 1: and most of it is from women, though many men
Speaker 1: and many older women, and uh indeed many people not
Speaker 1: in medicine have at all have told me that it
Speaker 1: spoke to them. But the ones that I find most
Speaker 1: heartbreaking are from young women, particularly uh, young women of color,
Speaker 1: who tell me I don't feel I will ever be accepted,
Speaker 1: I will ever be good enough, and that, of course,
Speaker 1: is an internalization of not only sexism, but racism. The
Speaker 1: other piece of this, though, is not only self doubt,
Speaker 1: but this second part that I referred to, which is
Speaker 1: feeling that you know, it's a variation on the old
Speaker 1: gradual marks line. I wouldn't join a club that would
Speaker 1: have me for a member, which is, if I am
Speaker 1: good at something, it must not be worth much. I
Speaker 1: have a friend who calls this the syndrome of yeah,
Speaker 1: I got in, but that was the year they didn't
Speaker 1: have very many applicants or a sort of love. We
Speaker 1: might call it asterisk syndrome. Yeah, I got that position,
Speaker 1: but you know, there must have been some reason I
Speaker 1: got it, and not on my merit. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think, particularly for women in medicine, there is this
Speaker 1: long tradition of a false psychotomy between compassion and combat sense,
Speaker 1: and that is gendered. So uh many years ago, the
Speaker 1: way that played out was that the doctors were men
Speaker 1: and the nurses were women, and the doctors gave the
Speaker 1: orders and knew the stuff, and the nurses, who were women,
Speaker 1: provided the hands on compassionate care. Well, of course that
Speaker 1: was a sort of a stereotype, but it was never
Speaker 1: really true, and it still isn't true. I think there
Speaker 1: are a lot of women and this certainly has been
Speaker 1: a theme in my inner life during my long career.
Speaker 1: I think, well, you know, the reason I'm good at
Speaker 1: this is that I'm a good listener and I'm empathic.
Speaker 1: But anybody could do that. That's not really an important skill,
Speaker 1: except that it's a very important skill, and not everybody
Speaker 1: can do that. And so, as I said in the piece,
Speaker 1: my observation is that women not only focus on our
Speaker 1: deficiencies or our self perceived deficiencies. We also denigrate our
Speaker 1: own strengths. It sounds like now you have perspective to
Speaker 1: appreciate the skills that you do have, including some of
Speaker 1: these more empathic skills that maybe the labor force are
Speaker 1: people around us don't recognize as real work. But in
Speaker 1: your piece you also talk about how you overcompensated for
Speaker 1: this feeling, and you you did all these things that
Speaker 1: you tried to give yourself more experience, and that that
Speaker 1: didn't really work. At what point did you just stop
Speaker 1: doing that? I wish I could tell you that that
Speaker 1: it wasn't so recently, but it really is rather recent.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's funny, as I was writing this piece,
Speaker 1: this pattern that I really hadn't thought about as a
Speaker 1: pattern became clear to me just as I was writing it.
Speaker 1: This overcompensation. You know. One of the examples I give
Speaker 1: is that I decided I should specialize in gastronrology because
Speaker 1: guesst aronrologists do stuff, and if you do stuff, then
Speaker 1: your competency could never possibly be questioned. The only problem
Speaker 1: was I wasn't interested in guest rhonrology, so it took
Speaker 1: me a really, really long time to begin to be
Speaker 1: true to myself. And I think what ultimately I came
Speaker 1: to terms with is that, you know, in primary care,
Speaker 1: there are patients I've been you know, seeing and had
Speaker 1: a relationship with for twenty five years at this point,
Speaker 1: and I realized that the relationship that I build with
Speaker 1: them is not an insignificant part of their healing. You know, this,
Speaker 1: this empathy thing, this relationship building thing, this communication thing,
Speaker 1: this isn't just the warm, squishy, you know, extra stuff.
Speaker 1: This is really at the center of medicine. And I think,
Speaker 1: you know, once I came to terms with that, I
Speaker 1: sort of let go of some of the perfectionism which
Speaker 1: made me feel that I was supposed to be everything.
Speaker 1: I was supposed to have an A plus in every
Speaker 1: every possible subject, and I realized that people have different strengths,
Speaker 1: and my particular strength is not an insignificant one. I
Speaker 1: wonder how much it actually helped to just get more experienced,
Speaker 1: to log more years in your career. You know, we
Speaker 1: rattled off your accomplishments at the top of the of
Speaker 1: the segment, but you are obviously very good and very
Speaker 1: experienced and have all the credentials. Now, how did that
Speaker 1: affect the feeling of imposter syndrome. Well, it's not so
Speaker 1: much accumulating accolades as accumulating years. And I think you know,
Speaker 1: as the years have gone by, I've been both less
Speaker 1: reticent about admitting my own imperfections uh and vulnerabilities, and
Speaker 1: also on the other side of the coin, I'm less
Speaker 1: reticent about tooting my own warrant, which women are not
Speaker 1: as good at as we should be um with regard
Speaker 1: to those accolades, I have to tell you, getting back
Speaker 1: to the very first question you asked me, which is
Speaker 1: why did I put this in letter form? It felt
Speaker 1: intuitively important to me to be able to sign this
Speaker 1: letter to hand COVID, m D, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard
Speaker 1: Medical School, and to say, hey, here I am, you know,
Speaker 1: at the Mecca, and I have had these thoughts. I've
Speaker 1: had them a lot. And the response I've gone to
Speaker 1: this piece tells me that, you know, that felt validating
Speaker 1: for people, and I feel good about that. I feel
Speaker 1: good about the response, but I also, of course feel
Speaker 1: a little sad that thirty years down the road, particularly
Speaker 1: young women are still struggling so mightily with this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of young women in all
Speaker 1: professions feel this. I feel this. I know Francesca has
Speaker 1: felt it, and I think, yeah, well it's impossible statistically, UM,
Speaker 1: naming it's really important, and knowing that other are really
Speaker 1: accomplished people and women experience it feels good to hear.
Speaker 1: But I'm wondering what is the advice for someone young
Speaker 1: who has these feelings but we don't really know how
Speaker 1: to overcome? Oh golly, well, it's money just to again. Um.
Speaker 1: I keep going back to these many, many emails I've received.
Speaker 1: I've just been so moved by them. What I'm hearing
Speaker 1: is a lot of isolation. I'm hearing a lot of
Speaker 1: I've never talked with anybody about this before, and yet
Speaker 1: there are so many people who feel this way that
Speaker 1: I've got to think that at least a partial remedy
Speaker 1: is for young women or young professionals of both genders
Speaker 1: to be gathering and talking openly about this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: I think that would help a lot. I mean, if
Speaker 1: ten of your young colleagues got together and have this conversation,
Speaker 1: don't you think that that would go a long way
Speaker 1: to sort of feeling less isolated, stigmatized? Torture it in
Speaker 1: your own head I saw only would have you know
Speaker 1: when I was starting out, of course, there was absolutely
Speaker 1: no outlet for that. Then, yeah, when we started talking
Speaker 1: about this episode we're working on to people, there were
Speaker 1: definitely a few people who thought who told us that
Speaker 1: they didn't even know there was a name for this feeling.
Speaker 1: So so talking about it, we often come to that
Speaker 1: traite conclusion that talking about talking about things more as
Speaker 1: the answer. But in this case, it really seems like
Speaker 1: putting a name on it is a big part of
Speaker 1: understanding how universal it is. And so I mean, we
Speaker 1: we we laughed before when I said, well, we can't,
Speaker 1: statistically speaking, we can't all be fraud But you know,
Speaker 1: I think, um as with anything you you ruminate over
Speaker 1: and don't discuss openly, uh, you know, it begins to
Speaker 1: sort of take on a life of its own in
Speaker 1: your head, and you you know, you don't get a
Speaker 1: reality check about it. And I think, you know, if
Speaker 1: everybody feels this way, and then you know, clearly it's
Speaker 1: a pretty normal way to feel. And of course what
Speaker 1: compounds feeling like an impostor is the shame of feeling
Speaker 1: that you're the only one who feels that way, which,
Speaker 1: of course you're not well. Thank you for helping us
Speaker 1: fight that shame and talk about it. You're open. You
Speaker 1: guys got to plan the party, impostor's syndrome party. We'll
Speaker 1: believe me, they'll they'll be standing room only. You're really
Speaker 1: thank you so much for talking to us, Susan Oh,
Speaker 1: it's my pleasure. So Dr Covin is at the end
Speaker 1: of her career, and she said, like basically last month
Speaker 1: she got over her impostors syndrome. You could feel kind
Speaker 1: of depressed by hearing somebody say that, you know, even
Speaker 1: with all that success, they still experience impostor syndrome. But
Speaker 1: I actually think that that's just proof that succe us
Speaker 1: itself isn't the cure to this thing. So it must
Speaker 1: not be about whether or not you're really a fake,
Speaker 1: and that actually, if you can look at somebody like
Speaker 1: that and say, Okay, they have all the credentials and
Speaker 1: they still have these worries, so there must be another
Speaker 1: reason for it. And to me, what I took away
Speaker 1: from everything she said was that it doesn't really matter
Speaker 1: where you are in your career or how good you
Speaker 1: are even at something um you probably are kind of
Speaker 1: you probably are worse at some things than some of
Speaker 1: your colleagues, you're probably also better at some things then
Speaker 1: you give yourself credit for. And the question of whether
Speaker 1: or not you're like for real is so unproductive and
Speaker 1: is not going to help you with the ultimate thing
Speaker 1: that you want, which is to get really good. So
Speaker 1: you may as well put it aside altogether and Impostor's syndrome,
Speaker 1: banish Impastor's dreme from brain. And it's hard, but it's hard,
Speaker 1: but I mean, yeah, knowing it exists, and then maybe
Speaker 1: every time the thought creeps into your brain you can say,
Speaker 1: this is not a real thing. Yeah, like it's it's
Speaker 1: easier send thing done, to stop thinking about something. But
Speaker 1: if you if you're armed with the knowledge that like
Speaker 1: people feel this way even when they're really experienced, that
Speaker 1: other people are all feeling the same way, and you
Speaker 1: know all this, then you can say, Okay, that feeling
Speaker 1: is there, let me put it aside and just do
Speaker 1: my job. I like this. It's a very like therapist
Speaker 1: thing to say, I feel like we really dug in
Speaker 1: the highly therapeutic episode. Um, let's do some non therapeutic
Speaker 1: half big takes, half fake takes. If you would like
Speaker 1: us to hear your half baked take. You can tweet
Speaker 1: it at us, or you can call and leave a
Speaker 1: message on our voicemail. It's two one to six seven
Speaker 1: zero one six six. This week, we found a half
Speaker 1: bag take in the wild. Becca, let's explain to our
Speaker 1: listeners what that is. So sometimes we'll be reading the
Speaker 1: internet and see what we think would make a great
Speaker 1: half bake take that somebody has tweeted, are they've written
Speaker 1: an article, and we share with each other, but you know,
Speaker 1: we don't have there's nowhere for it to live in
Speaker 1: our world. So I saw really great when this week
Speaker 1: on Jezebel that I thought would make a perfect half
Speaker 1: big take, and I just want to celebrate this great idea.
Speaker 1: It's called just give It seven seconds. It's by Leah Beckman,
Speaker 1: and she talks about that feeling when you do something
Speaker 1: that's socially awkward and you marinate over it for a
Speaker 1: really long time. Do you know the feeling? Yes, So
Speaker 1: her advice is to give yourself seven seconds to worry
Speaker 1: about whatever it is you did and then stop thinking
Speaker 1: about it. It's very related to our impostor syndrome advice.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say this is a perfectly practical application
Speaker 1: of our just stop thinking about it role for impostor syndrome.
Speaker 1: Maybe that should be our imposter syndrome advice. You get
Speaker 1: to think about it for seven seconds and then put
Speaker 1: it out of your mind. You get seven seconds to
Speaker 1: feel like a fraud, and then you have to be done. Great.
Speaker 1: Love this half bag take in the wild, Francesca, what
Speaker 1: is your half bag take for the week? I want
Speaker 1: people to know that when they do this particular passive
Speaker 1: aggressive power move I'm about to describe, I see them
Speaker 1: and I know what they're doing. It is um apologizing
Speaker 1: for being late or saying that you're coming in late
Speaker 1: when you're coming in at a perfectly acceptable time, Like
Speaker 1: you're going to be in the office at nine twenty
Speaker 1: and you send an email to like some of your
Speaker 1: most important colleagues and you say I'm gonna show up
Speaker 1: to work a little late this morning around. What you're
Speaker 1: really saying is normally I get to work at eight thirty,
Speaker 1: and I want you all to know it. I am
Speaker 1: the type of person who freaks out when I'm late.
Speaker 1: I can't. I think you are someone who, like, just
Speaker 1: let me know. Are you someone who is late to
Speaker 1: hang out with your friends all the time, Francesca, I
Speaker 1: have occasionally been late, but there are people who being
Speaker 1: late and it doesn't bother them. For me, like eats,
Speaker 1: it's like impostorsyndrome. Either way, at my soul, it bothers me,
Speaker 1: but that's okay. Being late to hang out with your
Speaker 1: friends is different because everyone has agreed on an on
Speaker 1: an appointed time, and there are some workplaces where everyone
Speaker 1: just has to be at work at the same time.
Speaker 1: Ours is not like that. Like some people, you kind
Speaker 1: of show up at whatever time makes sense for your job.
Speaker 1: So some people do show up at eight or earlier.
Speaker 1: Some people show up at nine thirty. And it's so
Speaker 1: you're only late if you're like late for a meeting,
Speaker 1: or you're late by your own standards. So I should
Speaker 1: have specified that this This is really a thing people
Speaker 1: do in flex time offices. It's it's basically the equivalent
Speaker 1: of what like inviting somebody into your home and apologizing
Speaker 1: for it being a total mess when it's perfectly clean
Speaker 1: and you know it's perfectly Maybe I'm just one of
Speaker 1: those people. How how messy is your apartment right now?
Speaker 1: It could do some cleaning, Liar, Becca, what is your
Speaker 1: half by take. So I've discovered this great new soundtrack
Speaker 1: Hamilton's Okay, which I know I'm almost two years late,
Speaker 1: but I think it's really fun. Here's my half pic take.
Speaker 1: I think it's really fun to get into cultural phenomena
Speaker 1: years late. Okay, do you have an explanation or is
Speaker 1: at the end? I think it's like you don't have
Speaker 1: to be involved in like the take economy. You can
Speaker 1: really let your opinion be your opinion. It's also fun.
Speaker 1: There's like a whole thing I get to do now
Speaker 1: that I know everyone really liked. I do this a
Speaker 1: lot with TV shows. I like binging, as many people do,
Speaker 1: and it's nice to have like six seasons of mad
Speaker 1: Men three years after it's off air, and then you
Speaker 1: can go back and find the thing pieces that you
Speaker 1: like and kind of I have like a little conversations
Speaker 1: with the critics. I like you have to experience it
Speaker 1: in real time, or like worry about spoilers because you
Speaker 1: have to look pretty hard to find the spoilers, and
Speaker 1: it kind of like you can get overloaded. I think
Speaker 1: in the time there are things I've been up on
Speaker 1: in real time and you just get sick of it.
Speaker 1: It's just a nicer time scale. So I think you should,
Speaker 1: you know, find something that people were into that you
Speaker 1: weren't into, and just dig in. Yep. I'm totally with
Speaker 1: you on this, and I experienced this over the weekend
Speaker 1: because I just started the HBO show West World, which
Speaker 1: people were like very into circa seven or eight months ago,
Speaker 1: and it's perfect. I can enjoy it without the like
Speaker 1: I don't, you know, I only have vague memories of
Speaker 1: the critical reception. And yeah, and I don't have to.
Speaker 1: I don't have to experience any undercurrent of zeitgeist around it.
Speaker 1: I can just watch it for what it is. And
Speaker 1: this has been half big takes, half bag takes. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to game Plan. You can find me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at francesco Today, and you can find me at
Speaker 1: RZ Greenfield. You should check out another Bloomberg podcast called Benchmark.
Speaker 1: It examines the inner workings of the global economy. Very cool.
Speaker 1: If you like our show, please go to Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen and rate, subscribe, and especially review us.
Speaker 1: We always go on and on about reviews. You know
Speaker 1: you're sick of hearing it, but please review us if
Speaker 1: you like us, because it will really help spread the
Speaker 1: word about our show. The show was produced by Liz
Speaker 1: Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. The hat of podcast says Alec McCabe,
Speaker 1: and we'll see you next week. Goodbye, got it. We
Speaker 1: will do well.