Speaker 1: When you turn on the news in the morning, or
Speaker 1: watch an online conference or join a work zoom meeting,
Speaker 1: it's become totally normal to be watching people present or
Speaker 1: be interviewed from their home office. The other thing we've
Speaker 1: become accustomed to watching is people's personal life spill out
Speaker 1: from the office door and into their room mid interview.
Speaker 1: I know that my daughter Frankie has definitely made some
Speaker 1: guest appearances in some of my meetings and presentations. My
Speaker 1: guest today, fellow Melbournite, Jamilla Risby, has definitely experienced that,
Speaker 1: having spent over two hundred and sixty days in lockdown,
Speaker 1: and indeed when we recorded this chat, we were both
Speaker 1: still in lockdown. Jamilla is the chief creative officer of
Speaker 1: nine's Future Women, a weekly columnist for the Sydney Morning
Speaker 1: Herald and The Age, the host of the Briefing podcast,
Speaker 1: and a recovering workaholic. In her early twenties, Jamilla was
Speaker 1: a political staffer for ex Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and
Speaker 1: someone who used to talk to her boss in the
Speaker 1: morning before saying.
Speaker 2: Hello to her husband.
Speaker 1: It took a brain tumor diagnosis years ago for Jamilla
Speaker 1: to reassess her priorities and make more space in her
Speaker 1: life for people, starting with her family. So how did
Speaker 1: Jimiller change her work routines to put family and her
Speaker 1: health front and center? And as a prolific writer, what
Speaker 1: did Jimilla's tips for drastically improving your writing and also
Speaker 1: for convincing your friends to edit your work? And what
Speaker 1: are Jamilla's tricks for building rapport super quickly with people
Speaker 1: that she interviews on her podcast for Future Women.
Speaker 2: My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist
Speaker 2: and the founder of behavioral science consultancy Inventium.
Speaker 1: And this is how I work, a show about how
Speaker 1: to help you do your best work. Jimiller is someone
Speaker 1: who has achieved so much in her career in a
Speaker 1: relatively short period of time.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to know is she a productivity nerd
Speaker 2: like me?
Speaker 1: Or did she just hit the go button when she
Speaker 1: was twenty and never look back.
Speaker 3: I definitely have kind of strategies and have got my
Speaker 3: own kind of hacks for things that work for me
Speaker 3: in terms of getting things done. But I've always been
Speaker 3: very busy, and my parents, when they're kind of asked
Speaker 3: to describe what I was like as a kid, They
Speaker 3: always say I was super enthusiastic, like it didn't matter
Speaker 3: if I was good at something or not. I just
Speaker 3: wanted to be involved in everything that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I had a boss once who said the thing that
Speaker 1: he looks for in job interviews doesn't care about skills
Speaker 1: or competencies. He looks for enthusiasm because everything else can
Speaker 1: be trayed.
Speaker 2: It just reminds me.
Speaker 1: About what are some of your go to hacks and
Speaker 1: rituals and strategies that you've picked up over the years.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: For me, it depends on the kind of work I'm
Speaker 3: doing and the headspace I need to be in for
Speaker 3: that work. So, for example, if I'm writing, if I'm
Speaker 3: writing a column, or if I'm working on a new book,
Speaker 3: I like to be somewhere that is not home, which
Speaker 3: is particularly difficult at the moment during the pandemic, but
Speaker 3: I prefer to be at a library or in a
Speaker 3: coffee shop is usually my go to. I like to
Speaker 3: be in a space where I don't have the responsibilities
Speaker 3: of home, and I also don't have the sort of
Speaker 3: emotional engagement of home. I find it useful to be
Speaker 3: able to disconnect from that when I'm writing. I also
Speaker 3: know that I am a morning person, and so I
Speaker 3: try my best to schedule the highest sort of intellectual
Speaker 3: workload in the morning because I know if I need
Speaker 3: to be really creative, if I'm writing a column, for example,
Speaker 3: I need my best possible brain space. I don't know
Speaker 3: why people clear their emails at nine am when they
Speaker 3: start work like that. For me, that's a waste of
Speaker 3: my best brain time on something that I can easily
Speaker 3: do at six or seven pm. Kind of chilled out
Speaker 3: at the end of the day. So I try to
Speaker 3: work and sort of hack my time to when I'm
Speaker 3: going to be most productive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting what you said about doing your best
Speaker 1: writing work from outside of home, and I can definitely
Speaker 1: relate to that.
Speaker 2: I used to be such a cafe worker.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious how you've adjusted to being in lockdown
Speaker 1: because you're in Melbourne, and I want to say where
Speaker 1: maybe on day two hundred and twenty something of lockdown
Speaker 1: over the last eighteen.
Speaker 2: Months, So what have you done instead?
Speaker 3: I have found being productive during lockdown challenging. I think
Speaker 3: everyone's had that experience in some way or another. I've
Speaker 3: got kind of extra competing demands with homeschooling my son,
Speaker 3: and having my husband working from home, which isn't the
Speaker 3: norm for him, so I do it hard to kind
Speaker 3: of shut out what's happening around me. One of the
Speaker 3: things that's been helpful more recently is that I've really
Speaker 3: carved out space in the house that is just mine
Speaker 3: for work. Previously, because I was the only one at
Speaker 3: home working, I didn't really need to do that. You know.
Speaker 3: I could be in the living room, I could be
Speaker 3: in the bedroom, I could be at the kitchen table,
Speaker 3: I could be in the study, I could be wherever
Speaker 3: I felt like it on that given day. Whereas I've
Speaker 3: realized I really need my own space that is always
Speaker 3: my space that other things don't creep into. I've needed
Speaker 3: to separate my workspace from where I go to sleep
Speaker 3: because otherwise that kind of causes and creates stress for me,
Speaker 3: and I need to be able to This sounds awful,
Speaker 3: but I need to be able to shut out my family.
Speaker 3: I need to be able to close the door and
Speaker 3: say not right now, because for me, particularly if I'm
Speaker 3: writing about something that's traumatic or upsetting, I can't do
Speaker 3: that properly. I can't do that well. If there's the
Speaker 3: chance that my son's going to come bursting in at
Speaker 3: any moment asking me to fix a transformer.
Speaker 2: Even though that is really quite urgent.
Speaker 1: How have you gone about setting those boundaries, because I
Speaker 1: feel like that sounds good in theory that I feel
Speaker 1: like six year olds are not great at respecting boundaries.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, my son is pretty good at knowing
Speaker 3: if I'm on air, like he knows what television means
Speaker 3: and being on TV means, or if I'm recording radio.
Speaker 3: But you know, there are still times when I've been
Speaker 3: giving a speech to a large amount of people. There
Speaker 3: was a point last year when I was giving speech
Speaker 3: to the State Library in New South Wales, and Sydney
Speaker 3: was not in lockdown at the time, so there were
Speaker 3: hundreds of people there. But I was alone in my
Speaker 3: room and I was standing up in front of the
Speaker 3: computer because I speak better when i'm standing. And I'd
Speaker 3: done about forty minutes of the speech and we were
Speaker 3: up to the Q and A, and my son came
Speaker 3: in and it was an urgent lego problem and something
Speaker 3: needed to be fixed, and I couldn't fix it quickly
Speaker 3: while still looking at the camera. And he was five
Speaker 3: at the time, and he just refused to leap, like
Speaker 3: he flat out refused to leave, and I had to
Speaker 3: do the last ten minutes of the of the conversation
Speaker 3: just holding him in one arm while he talked about
Speaker 3: this lego character. I think one of the good things,
Speaker 3: and I'm not one for looking for silver linings in
Speaker 3: such an enormous tragedy, but one of the good things
Speaker 3: that has come out of the pandemic experience, I think
Speaker 3: has been not a blurring of but a greater understanding
Speaker 3: that the boundaries between work life and home life are
Speaker 3: false boundaries, that really you can't be your most efficient
Speaker 3: working self without being the same self that looks after
Speaker 3: a child or goes home to someone you love in
Speaker 3: the evenings and cooks dinner, or cleans the house or
Speaker 3: walks the dog, whatever it might be. That those two
Speaker 3: people are inextricably linked. And if you are feeling unwell
Speaker 3: or you've had tragic family news, we tend to be
Speaker 3: understanding of that that that will impact your work, but
Speaker 3: only for a very brief period of time. I think
Speaker 3: what the pandemic's done is it's given us this little
Speaker 3: zoom porthal into people's laune rooms and their lives at home,
Speaker 3: and I do think we're a little bit more understanding
Speaker 3: that it's not just great tragedies that impact your efficiency
Speaker 3: and your effectiveness at work, that your work self and
Speaker 3: your personal self are all the same self, and because
Speaker 3: they're indivisible, we have to be more understanding and accepting
Speaker 3: that people who are working people are also people outside.
Speaker 2: Of that workplace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely got I had this experience a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: I've got a seven year old who's with me half
Speaker 1: the time, and I've normally got help with the homeschooling.
Speaker 1: But this particular afternoon, I was doing a podcast interview,
Speaker 1: and Frankie decided that it was a great moment to
Speaker 1: sneak into my study where I record the interviews from
Speaker 1: and just hit under the desk and then was kind
Speaker 1: of like pulling at my leg, like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I can't even talk to her because I'm in the
Speaker 1: middle of an interview and I really don't want to
Speaker 1: put the guest off. And so I'll write her a
Speaker 1: note and I'll ask her a question that will take
Speaker 1: her a long time to do a handwritten response, but
Speaker 1: she was really quick, and so then I then started
Speaker 1: this little series of handwritten notes.
Speaker 2: That she was passing up to me trying to do
Speaker 2: the interview. So that was that was fun.
Speaker 1: Now I want to talk about writing, because you like
Speaker 1: a large part of your career has been about writing.
Speaker 1: But for listeners of the show, they're probably tenders are
Speaker 1: they're not paid writers, But everyone writes. I mean writing
Speaker 1: is so critical. I think in you know, whatever kind
Speaker 1: of job you do, because it's how we can communicate ideas.
Speaker 1: So I'm really curious about what are your routines around writing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I wish I had more routines than
Speaker 3: I do. So a big one is, as I've already mentioned,
Speaker 3: I like to write in the mornings. I like to
Speaker 3: have that physical separation from my home if I can.
Speaker 3: And then I suppose I put a bunch of strategies
Speaker 3: in place that mean I want to go back to writing.
Speaker 3: So this might sound counterintuitive, but I like to stop
Speaker 3: writing when I'm in a beautiful flow and feeling invigorated.
Speaker 3: So when I get that sense of okay, I'm romping
Speaker 3: towards the end of this chapter, this is flowing, this
Speaker 3: feels good. I love this sense of all the words
Speaker 3: are just coming out, I force myself to stop because
Speaker 3: that way, I don't stop thinking about that feeling, and
Speaker 3: I want that feeling back, and that sense of a
Speaker 3: chapter being unfinished or a thought being broken before I
Speaker 3: can get it all down on the page is so
Speaker 3: painful that I am itching to sit back down and
Speaker 3: write again. Whereas if I stop neatly at the conclusion
Speaker 3: of a chapter or the end of an opinion piece,
Speaker 3: the motivation for me to get back to writing isn't there,
Speaker 3: because I feel complete and I don't feel that that
Speaker 3: sort of unfinished self. So that really helps me. And
Speaker 3: I also try and remind myself not doing it very
Speaker 3: well at the moment, but I try and remind myself
Speaker 3: that writing is a muscle. And you know, Mia Friedman
Speaker 3: taught me this when I first started working at MoMA. Mia,
Speaker 3: that writing is a muscle and you've got to work it.
Speaker 3: You've got to work it out the same way you
Speaker 3: work out your physical muscles. And if you don't lift
Speaker 3: weights for six months, if you don't write an opinion
Speaker 3: piece for six months, or you don't write part of
Speaker 3: your novel for six months, or you don't write for
Speaker 3: children for six months, and then you sit down to
Speaker 3: do that project, well, you're going to be out of shape.
Speaker 3: But the more you write, the easier it becomes. And
Speaker 3: I think that discipline is what gets me to my
Speaker 3: best writing. And I don't exhibit it all the time,
Speaker 3: but my best writing comes when I've been writing every
Speaker 3: day and I've been doing it for some time.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense.
Speaker 1: And when you are working on a project like a
Speaker 1: book or a chapter or something like that, how do
Speaker 1: you go about like pacing yourself or do you have
Speaker 1: systems in place to get you to reach the target
Speaker 1: or the deadline on time?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I do. I'm a real systems person, and I
Speaker 3: like mini deadlines because I'm motivated by getting a pat
Speaker 3: on the head regularly, not just a big pat on
Speaker 3: the head at the end. So at the moment, I'm
Speaker 3: working on a book where my publisher and I have
Speaker 3: set out a big Excel spreadsheet with due dates every
Speaker 3: fortnight for the next twelve months for different sections of chapters,
Speaker 3: and I do my best to hit them. So every
Speaker 3: second Monday she gets four thousand words or three thousand words,
Speaker 3: whatever it might be. And I hold myself to that
Speaker 3: because if I think about the deadline as a whole,
Speaker 3: I get quite overwhelmed with how much I have to do.
Speaker 3: But if I set the deadline in small chunks, they
Speaker 3: feel more achievable. I've been working on a podcast for
Speaker 3: Future Women recently, and that podcast is really complicated and
Speaker 3: has literally hundreds of guests who we've spoken to and
Speaker 3: so many bits and pieces. So we created this huge
Speaker 3: spreadsheet and we colored the whole spreadsheet red and slowly
Speaker 3: by bit, every day, another box goes green as we
Speaker 3: do another interview, or we edit something, or we script something,
Speaker 3: or we send that off for the next stage, or
Speaker 3: it gets checked through legal or approved by a client.
Speaker 3: And I get enormous satisfaction out of watching the red
Speaker 3: turn orange and the orange turned green. It gives me
Speaker 3: a sense of achievement.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, Yeah, that sounds wonderful. I'm imagining the
Speaker 1: picture in my head, and that is a lot of
Speaker 1: people to speak to or interviews to conduct. I'm curious
Speaker 1: with their volume. Do you have tricks that you use
Speaker 1: to build rapport really quickly with the people that you're
Speaker 1: having on the show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really great question. Yes it feels really manipulative,
Speaker 3: but yes I do. I not always, but I am
Speaker 3: often asking people when I interview them to make themselves
Speaker 3: quite vulnerable. I'm asking them to share something that's happened
Speaker 3: to them that is hard, or is difficult, or is upsetting.
Speaker 3: And I don't think you can ask a stranger to
Speaker 3: do that and to expose themselves in that way to
Speaker 3: you unless you're willing to do the same thing. So,
Speaker 3: whether it makes the final letit or not. I often
Speaker 3: speak about my own experiences, my own difficulties, and I
Speaker 3: think that shared vulnerability creates a level of connection and
Speaker 3: a level of warmth and a level of permissiveness to
Speaker 3: share things you might not otherwise have shared before. Just
Speaker 3: a few months ago, I was interviewing Danny Minogue for
Speaker 3: the Weekend Briefing. And I've met Danny once before, but
Speaker 3: you know, we certainly don't know each other well in
Speaker 3: any way, and we sat down for this interview, and
Speaker 3: she is someone who you know, is interviewed every day
Speaker 3: of a life. So it's one of the challenges with
Speaker 3: an interview like that, is, well, how do you get
Speaker 3: something new and something interesting that her fans haven't heard
Speaker 3: before because they can listen to her on so many
Speaker 3: platforms with so many different interviewers, And that particular day.
Speaker 3: We talked a lot about motherhood and the realization of
Speaker 3: knowing you're pregnant and the uncertainty that comes with that
Speaker 3: and the excitement at the same time, and she ended
Speaker 3: up sharing an experience that she'd had, which was during
Speaker 3: the UK phone hacking scandal, and because a story about
Speaker 3: her pregnancy was going to be splashed all over the
Speaker 3: front pages of the UK papers before she had even
Speaker 3: told her family, she had to call her family in
Speaker 3: Australia and wake them up and tell them she was
Speaker 3: pregnant in this horrible moment, and she, you know, she
Speaker 3: spoke about having that joyous moment stolen, that telling your
Speaker 3: mom and your dad and your sister and your brother
Speaker 3: that you're going to have a baby should be a glorious,
Speaker 3: warm family memory, but for her it had to be
Speaker 3: this rushed phone call where she was full of fear
Speaker 3: and she just had to get off the phone to
Speaker 3: get back to the lawyers. And we talked about how
Speaker 3: that felt like it had been stolen from her, and
Speaker 3: she spoke so beautifully and eloquently, and I didn't know
Speaker 3: at the time, but she hadn't spoken about that before publicly,
Speaker 3: and I think the reason she was willing to was
Speaker 3: that we'd shared that vulnerability of what it feels like
Speaker 3: to be a new mum and what it feels like
Speaker 3: to be pregnant and unsure and scared for the first time.
Speaker 3: And I'm not sure we would have gotten to that
Speaker 3: story if she hadn't felt safe.
Speaker 2: Now ed is she is a big part of what
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 1: And I love the book that you've just put out,
Speaker 1: work Love Body, which he edits it with Helen McCabe.
Speaker 1: And I feel like you know, and I think I
Speaker 1: don't know if like you know, people appreciate that.
Speaker 2: There's like editing is so different from writing. It's such
Speaker 2: a different craft.
Speaker 1: And I want to know, like, how did you become
Speaker 1: a better editor? How did you improve that skill set?
Speaker 3: I think you just got to keep doing it. I
Speaker 3: do think the best editors are people who are writers
Speaker 3: as well, because I think if you don't, if you're
Speaker 3: not practicing your writing and remembering the difficulties and the
Speaker 3: challenges of writing, you find it harder to edit at
Speaker 3: your best. For me, I am someone who's very focused
Speaker 3: on the audience. I think I am good at cutting
Speaker 3: away all the bullshit sorry that exists around the edge
Speaker 3: of writing the fear of or what if the media
Speaker 3: read it? Or what if my family read this? Or
Speaker 3: where what if people know that already? Or what if
Speaker 3: I need to use this word to impress people. I'm
Speaker 3: good at kind of pushing all of that away and
Speaker 3: working with someone and their writing, so we just think
Speaker 3: about who they're writing for, and we don't think about
Speaker 3: all the mess around it. We just think about their
Speaker 3: audience and what their audience might or might not know.
Speaker 3: We tried not to assume knowledge. We try not to
Speaker 3: approach the main point tentatively and slowly and in a
Speaker 3: roundabout fashion, but just get to it. Make the point,
Speaker 3: get in there, and get there quickly and effectively, and
Speaker 3: make the audience understand what we understand. I do think
Speaker 3: that no matter how good an editor you are, you
Speaker 3: can't edit yourself. And everyone needs an editor. And one
Speaker 3: of the tragedies of online publishing the last few years
Speaker 3: is that there's so little money and space for that now.
Speaker 3: So often I'll write a column for online and I
Speaker 3: just get an email back saying this is great, and
Speaker 3: then it's online ten minutes later. And that might feel
Speaker 3: good the first couple of times, but after a while
Speaker 3: you realize that it would be so much better if
Speaker 3: if someone had the time to spend with you to
Speaker 3: make it better.
Speaker 2: Gosh, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: Like I do a bit of writing, and one of
Speaker 1: the places I'm writing for quite regularly at the moment
Speaker 1: is Harvard Business Review, And unlike all the other places
Speaker 1: I write for, there'll be around three to four rounds
Speaker 1: of edits, and it is like it's so wonderful.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like it's sometimes slightly soul crushing.
Speaker 1: Because you just go, oh, it wasn't that bad, but
Speaker 1: you know, just sort of where it gets to after
Speaker 1: those three or four rounds of editing, it makes such
Speaker 1: a big difference.
Speaker 2: So you say that we.
Speaker 1: Can't edit our own work, Like, why why can't we?
Speaker 1: What do we do if we've written something, you know,
Speaker 1: whether that be an important report for work or speech or.
Speaker 2: Something like that. You know, is there anything that we can.
Speaker 1: Do to improve what we've done?
Speaker 3: I mean, you can always edit your own work to
Speaker 3: an extent. I think if you're a writer who doesn't,
Speaker 3: that's a problem. But the best editors are people who
Speaker 3: are external because they can see things that you can't see.
Speaker 3: We've all got our own blinkers, and there are things
Speaker 3: we miss when we're writing just for ourselves. I don't
Speaker 3: think the editor that you see has to be someone
Speaker 3: who's trained or who's a professional. I think it can
Speaker 3: be someone who cares and who's invested. I always get
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of people to read my books. I
Speaker 3: get my formal editors to read them, whether it's a
Speaker 3: Future Women book with Hachet or one of my own
Speaker 3: books with Penguin or Puffin. I always have my editors
Speaker 3: read them, of course, but I try to have friends,
Speaker 3: I have family read sections of them. I send things
Speaker 3: that are relevant to friends with legal backgrounds, friends who
Speaker 3: have gone through a similar emotional experience. I draw on
Speaker 3: their own interests and the things that have happened to
Speaker 3: them in their lives that mean that they can bring
Speaker 3: a perspective. My sister, who is a children's performer, is
Speaker 3: an extraordinary editor. She often sort of takes me out
Speaker 3: of the sort of writery, you know, the sort of
Speaker 3: esoteric stuff that we can get caught up with, and goes, sorry,
Speaker 3: what are you talking about? What does that work mean?
Speaker 3: Why are you saying that? And she's so good at that,
Speaker 3: she's such a clear communicator because she's used to communicating
Speaker 3: with little children. So I don't think an editor has
Speaker 3: to be a professional editor. I think there are so
Speaker 3: many people in your life you can draw on, and
Speaker 3: there are writers groups and writers' rooms you can join
Speaker 3: where you can get strangers who are interested in writing
Speaker 3: and who are good writers to comment on your work,
Speaker 3: and I think all of that commentary is what helps
Speaker 3: make it the best it can be.
Speaker 1: We will be back with Jamilla very soon talking about
Speaker 1: how being diagnosed with a brain tumor completely changed the
Speaker 1: way she approached her work.
Speaker 2: And now, if you're.
Speaker 1: Looking for more tips to improve the way that you work,
Speaker 1: I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains pretty cool
Speaker 1: things that I've discovered that helped me work better, which
Speaker 1: range from interesting research findings through to gadgets and software
Speaker 1: that I'm loving. So if you would like to receive that,
Speaker 1: you can sign up for that at Howiwork dot cod
Speaker 1: That's how I Work dot c O. Are there certain
Speaker 1: questions that you ask people when you're getting them to
Speaker 1: edit your work and they're not an editor per se, Like,
Speaker 1: are there specific things that you're asking your editors in
Speaker 1: inverted commas to do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so with future Women's new book, which is called Work,
Speaker 3: Love Body, and editing that one, but also contributing my
Speaker 3: own chapter for it. My first opening chapter is about
Speaker 3: the experience of Melbourne's second wave at the end of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, looking at women's experience of the pandemic. And
Speaker 3: I'm looking at that experience almost like if you can
Speaker 3: imagine holding up a little crystal that catches the light
Speaker 3: that looks different from every angle. You hold it up
Speaker 3: and you walk around it, and you're in exact from
Speaker 3: the top and from the bottom, and from the sides
Speaker 3: and diagonally, and then you do it again in case
Speaker 3: the sun's changed. That's what I was trying to do
Speaker 3: with my writing. I was trying to explore women's experiences
Speaker 3: of the pandemic from every angle and every facade, So
Speaker 3: considering what it was like for women who were nurses,
Speaker 3: who were nursing patients, but also at the same time
Speaker 3: considering the experience of that patient, and then what was
Speaker 3: the experience of that patient's sister, What was the experience
Speaker 3: of that patient's mother who lived on the other side
Speaker 3: of the country, What was the experience of the mother
Speaker 3: who perhaps lost work during that pandemic, or the mother
Speaker 3: who gave up work to stay at home with her
Speaker 3: kids and is missing it, or the woman who was
Speaker 3: doing IVF who had to stop her search for motherhood
Speaker 3: because it wasn't an option. So that was the kind
Speaker 3: of writing I was doing. And for me, I always
Speaker 3: try and make my writing inclusive, So I'll often ask
Speaker 3: people who've had different experiences, is where I've touched on
Speaker 3: your experienceerience? Does it feel authentic? If I haven't touched
Speaker 3: on your experience, where are the gaps that you see?
Speaker 3: Because all of us write read with our own prism
Speaker 3: of knowledge, and so we see gaps according to what
Speaker 3: we've lived, not according to what the writer has lived.
Speaker 3: I will often ask people where they stood up for
Speaker 3: the first time to get a drink of water or
Speaker 3: to do something else, like where did I lose them?
Speaker 3: I often ask them to underline passages that felt strongest,
Speaker 3: the lines that stayed with them, Particularly with big chunks
Speaker 3: of data or research, I often ask, tell me where
Speaker 3: you sort of stop taking this in, where it stopped
Speaker 3: being compelling or convincing. And one of the things I
Speaker 3: find when people write, and I'd certainly do it, is
Speaker 3: that we often take a little while to get started.
Speaker 3: So often when you're working with someone's work for yours,
Speaker 3: for example, working with someone who's writing maybe ay fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred two thousand words for a publication, you'll have a
Speaker 3: look at it and then you'll say, Okay, you really
Speaker 3: warmed up and you got started at about four hundred words.
Speaker 3: So why do we have the first four hundred Are
Speaker 3: they important? And if they're not, what does this essay
Speaker 3: or contribution or opinion piece look like if we just
Speaker 3: delete four hundred words, Why don't we just start at
Speaker 3: the most important bit rather than kind of go for
Speaker 3: a little walk around the garden before we get to
Speaker 3: the front door.
Speaker 1: It's interesting that reminds me of advice I got from
Speaker 1: Sarah Green Carmichael. I think she's at Bloomberg now, and
Speaker 1: she said, you know, stop the throat clearing. She'll often
Speaker 1: just delete the first two paragraphs of a piece.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, I know you talk about just the critical
Speaker 2: importance of that first paragraph.
Speaker 1: And I must say, the introduction that you wrote to
Speaker 1: work clove body like it hooked me in. It's so
Speaker 1: good at doing that with your writing. What are the
Speaker 1: things that you're thinking about when you're crafting that first paragraph,
Speaker 1: how can we be as.
Speaker 2: Hooky as you?
Speaker 3: That's really lovely, you know. Of course, it depends on
Speaker 3: the kind of writing and the kind of work you're doing.
Speaker 3: But I tend to follow a very rough model of
Speaker 3: micro macro micro again, so I try to start with
Speaker 3: the personal, whether it's my personal or someone else's. I
Speaker 3: try to speak to an experience that will feel like
Speaker 3: it could have been yours as the reader, So something
Speaker 3: that has an element of universality. So in workloff Body,
Speaker 3: for example, I talk about traveling to Camera for Christmas
Speaker 3: to see my family for the first time in almost
Speaker 3: nine months because of the pandemic, and the kind of
Speaker 3: the bits and pieces that happen at Christmas, you know,
Speaker 3: the past, the prawns and shall we have another slice
Speaker 3: of pie? Or should we do the crackers now or
Speaker 3: should we do them later? And that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: So what I'm doing there is trying to set a
Speaker 3: scene that is my scene. It's a personal scene, but
Speaker 3: it's a scene a lot of people can relate to,
Speaker 3: even if they didn't travel the same way I did
Speaker 3: to the same place or have Christmas with my family.
Speaker 3: You know, most Australians celebrate Christmas in some form, religious
Speaker 3: or otherwise. Even if they didn't, most people get together
Speaker 3: with family at the end of the year. Many of
Speaker 3: us were prevented from seeing our family during twenty twenty
Speaker 3: and that was this sense of reunion, but a somewhat
Speaker 3: dole in reunion because it wasn't quite as joyful as
Speaker 3: we would have wanted to be, because the pandemic wasn't over.
Speaker 3: There was sort of almost this pause in Australia, is
Speaker 3: it going to be okay? Now? So we were almost
Speaker 3: pretending to do what we always did every year. And
Speaker 3: so for me, what I was trying to do there is, yes,
Speaker 3: capture the universal experience, but also without saying it, capture
Speaker 3: that thought that everyone's had, which is what a joyous,
Speaker 3: wonderful Christmas? But is it really the same? You know,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of us are thinking that right now.
Speaker 3: You know, we're all looking to the end of the
Speaker 3: year in twenty twenty one, is this sort of great
Speaker 3: day of everything's going to go back to normal now?
Speaker 3: The truth is we're all wondering in the back of
Speaker 3: our heads what is normal and are we ever going
Speaker 3: to get back to normal? So I think it's setting
Speaker 3: a scene. It's looking for that universality of the personal
Speaker 3: and tapping into that unspoken thought that hooks people in.
Speaker 3: I then go from that to the macro. So instead
Speaker 3: of talking about me and my Christmas, I go bigger.
Speaker 3: I talk about women's experience of the pandemic and how
Speaker 3: it impacted women differently at work, at home, with their families,
Speaker 3: their health, their mental health, whatever it might be. And
Speaker 3: then once I've made my broader point on that exploration,
Speaker 3: I try to come back. Sometimes it's to the same
Speaker 3: personal story, sometimes it's to a different personal story, but
Speaker 3: I come back to myself or the person I was
Speaker 3: talking about at the beginning, and I kind of go
Speaker 3: full circle with what's happened to them now.
Speaker 1: Something that I've heard you talk about and write about
Speaker 1: a bit is your experience with being diagnosed with a brainshumor, which,
Speaker 1: like I just kind of even begin to imagine what
Speaker 1: the last part of your life has been like with that,
Speaker 1: And I want to know how how did that experience
Speaker 1: change the way you approached work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it would be different for everybody. You know,
Speaker 3: there's that cliche of people having a life changing moment
Speaker 3: like I had being diagnosed and wanting to change their
Speaker 3: whole life, right going. If I live through this, I'm
Speaker 3: never going to do this again. I'm you know, I'm
Speaker 3: going to I'm going to sell everything I own and
Speaker 3: go travel around the world, or you know, I'm going
Speaker 3: to leave my partner and what you know, whatever it
Speaker 3: might be like a change like that, it becomes this reckoning.
Speaker 3: Right for me, it absolutely wasn't for me. It was
Speaker 3: a really stark realization of how desperately I wanted to
Speaker 3: be alive, to live the life I already had. I
Speaker 3: didn't any want to change things. I just wanted to
Speaker 3: be Jeremy's wife and to be rough his mum, and
Speaker 3: to be mims sister, And I wanted to keep being
Speaker 3: the life that I was living because it's such a meaningful, exciting,
Speaker 3: joyful one. And I have the privilege of this incredible
Speaker 3: job that gives me such freedom to do stuff I love.
Speaker 3: So for me, yeah, it had changed my approach to
Speaker 3: work because I think it made me realize how lucky
Speaker 3: I am to do what I do, not how lucky
Speaker 3: I am to have gotten here because I worked hard
Speaker 3: and I think I'm good at my job, but not
Speaker 3: everyone gets to do what they love to earn a living.
Speaker 3: And I think it also provided an impetus to slow
Speaker 3: down a little bit, to do the same work, but
Speaker 3: to cut myself some slack, to stop running at one
Speaker 3: hundred miles an hour, because the reality was that my
Speaker 3: body can't do that anymore. That I had to find
Speaker 3: ways to be efficient, to be effective, to do the
Speaker 3: work that matters to me, to do the good work,
Speaker 3: so to speak, but to do it in a way
Speaker 3: that is sustainable for a disabled body that isn't capable
Speaker 3: of doing what it used to.
Speaker 2: Was some of the habits that you had to unlearn,
Speaker 2: if you like.
Speaker 3: Trying to do too much all at once, traveling constantly,
Speaker 3: and look, the pandemics led to some of that down
Speaker 3: as well. But you know I now can't. You know,
Speaker 3: I can't do five cities in a week on a
Speaker 3: book tour anymore. You know, before that would make me exhausted, sure,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't going to put me in hospital. I
Speaker 3: can't do the physical exhaust exertion of like ten meetings
Speaker 3: in the city, go go, go all day, go from
Speaker 3: a speech to another presentation, to a meeting, to this
Speaker 3: to that, stay out for dinner and drinks, and party
Speaker 3: all night. My body's not up to that anymore. I
Speaker 3: have quite significant memory loss. So it means I also
Speaker 3: have some changes to my work around, just processes that
Speaker 3: make sure that I show up for this podcast conversation,
Speaker 3: you know. And those processes have to be more thorough
Speaker 3: and more intricate than they used to be, because for me,
Speaker 3: if it's not in my diary, it's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: If I don't take notes, then I'm not going to remember.
Speaker 3: I need to be more strict about how I use
Speaker 3: my time and energy.
Speaker 1: What other like, what do those systems look like like
Speaker 1: with you know, COVID with memory loss for someone I
Speaker 1: imagined had a very good memory prior, like, what are
Speaker 1: some of the things that you found most helpful?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I try very hard to make sure my
Speaker 3: meetings go for fifty five minutes instead of an hour.
Speaker 3: So I try not to do back to back meetings.
Speaker 3: I always try and give myself a couple of minutes
Speaker 3: where I can stand up, review the notes, go for
Speaker 3: a walk, clear my head, let the memories stick to
Speaker 3: the extent they're going to be able to stick before
Speaker 3: I come back to something. Just running meeting after meeting
Speaker 3: after meeting, I start to not take in the information.
Speaker 3: My team are extraordinary. So the people I work with
Speaker 3: and the people who work for me are so good
Speaker 3: at catching me. All of the meetings that I attend
Speaker 3: at work, someone will be taking notes, Someone will summarize
Speaker 3: the meeting and email them afterwards, and I always attach
Speaker 3: that to the diary invite, so I can always go
Speaker 3: back and recall what happened. I get up in the morning,
Speaker 3: first thing, I look at my calendar for the day.
Speaker 3: I go and I make my son breakfast, I feed
Speaker 3: the dog, and then I look at my calendar for
Speaker 3: the day. I have a shower, and I look at
Speaker 3: my calendar for the day. So I keep looking at
Speaker 3: it until it's squarely in my mind. And I think
Speaker 3: the big one is I write everything down. I have
Speaker 3: a very intricate system of lists and notes and reminders
Speaker 3: and shared calendars, and that means that I can pretty
Speaker 3: much imitate how I used to be.
Speaker 2: I would imagine that your self taught probably had to
Speaker 2: change a lot from being someone it sounds like who
Speaker 2: was working crazy hours and you know, just having so
Speaker 2: many things on the go to really having to slow down,
Speaker 2: Like what, how did your self talk change to get
Speaker 2: comfortable with that huge shift.
Speaker 3: I think that's probably still a work in progress. I
Speaker 3: think I'm not as kind as I could be. I'm
Speaker 3: still working on that. But I think I don't know
Speaker 3: if you've heard of spoon theory, but that that has
Speaker 3: really helped me. The story is that there there was
Speaker 3: a woman who was at dinner. She had serious chronic
Speaker 3: illnesses with her friends one night and one of them
Speaker 3: said something, and she said, oh, it's hard to explain.
Speaker 3: It's hard to explain what it's like to be sick.
Speaker 3: And they said, try us, try us, like, try and
Speaker 3: try and teach us, try and show us what it
Speaker 3: is to be sick. You know, of course we can't
Speaker 3: know it, but we want to know the best we can.
Speaker 3: We're your friends. Anyway, she went to the kitchen and
Speaker 3: she pulled out all the spoons from the kitchen drawer
Speaker 3: and brought them back to the table and laid them out,
Speaker 3: and she said, okay, so which of you has twelve
Speaker 3: spoons for the day, and you've got twelve spoons, you
Speaker 3: might use one spoon up getting up in the morning,
Speaker 3: getting the kid's food, feeding the dog, getting dressed, having
Speaker 3: a shower, getting out the door and getting to work
Speaker 3: might take another spoon to get through the commute. You
Speaker 3: might need four spoons to get through your meetings in
Speaker 3: the morning, three spoons to get through the big presentation
Speaker 3: in the afternoon, another spoon to get home on the commute,
Speaker 3: two spoons to get through the evening being with your family,
Speaker 3: and you've got a couple of leftover when you go
Speaker 3: to bed. There are some days you might use up
Speaker 3: close to all the spoons. There are some days you
Speaker 3: might only use five or six of them, so you've
Speaker 3: got a lot left in the tank. There are days
Speaker 3: where I wake up and I've got three spoons, not twelve,
Speaker 3: And so when you've got three not twelve, you have
Speaker 3: to be judicious with how you use them. And on
Speaker 3: those days you have to make decisions that other people
Speaker 3: don't have to bake because energy is so precious, and
Speaker 3: what you can and can't do in the midst of
Speaker 3: pain or exhaustion or low blood pressure or whatever it
Speaker 3: might be, it's different. It's different to other people.
Speaker 2: And how do you make those decisions.
Speaker 3: I think it's a lot about prioritizing and coming back
Speaker 3: to your core priorities and letting them guide what you're
Speaker 3: going to do that day. So, for example, after my craniotomy,
Speaker 3: I had very very little energy, but it was my
Speaker 3: second brain surgery, and I knew that I wanted to
Speaker 3: prioritize my son during that period because after my first
Speaker 3: brain surgery, I sort of separated myself from him. I
Speaker 3: was worried about scaring him or not being up to
Speaker 3: looking after him, and I think that at the time
Speaker 3: probably damaged our relationship a little bit. So the second
Speaker 3: time around, after my craniotomy, I threw everything at him
Speaker 3: that was my priority. If I only had one spoon
Speaker 3: for the day, my one spoon was playing Transformers on
Speaker 3: the bed with my son, you know, and maybe that
Speaker 3: took priority over getting up out of that bed that day.
Speaker 3: So I came back to what my core priorities are,
Speaker 3: and they change over time, not hugely, but I think
Speaker 3: they do change. You know. At the moment, I'm really
Speaker 3: trying to prioritize my hunt's son's homeschooling, trying to prioritize
Speaker 3: my work at Future Women, which I love and it's
Speaker 3: so important, and I'm trying to prioritize my health. And
Speaker 3: I don't think those things are going to radically change
Speaker 3: anytime soon, but your priorities do change, and I think
Speaker 3: coming back to sorry what you do doesn't always reflect
Speaker 3: what the priorities are. And so I think coming back
Speaker 3: to them and going is it really worth expending my
Speaker 3: energy on this when I don't have unlimited amounts of
Speaker 3: it is a really good practice, whether you're unwell or well.
Speaker 1: Absolutely something I heard when I I don't think this
Speaker 1: was even just in the research that I was doing
Speaker 1: for this interview. I think I listened to it a
Speaker 1: couple of months ago, just coincidentally, was hearing you on
Speaker 1: Ladies We need to talk talking about the power of
Speaker 1: female friendships. And I really loved that episode and I
Speaker 1: loved what you had to say, and I was curious
Speaker 1: about how do you go about building new friendships as
Speaker 1: an adult?
Speaker 3: Hey, you've just got to be open, right, Like I
Speaker 3: think little when you watch kids, they're so good, Like
Speaker 3: my son will just walk up to someone at the
Speaker 3: playground and say do you want to be friends? Do
Speaker 3: they say yeah, and they get on with it. I'm
Speaker 3: you know, when does an adult do that? I think
Speaker 3: we're so cautious and we're so careful about friendships, and
Speaker 3: it's almost like putting effort into it a new friendship
Speaker 3: is uncool. I don't think it's uncol I think it's
Speaker 3: really cool. I love people who are open and honest
Speaker 3: and follow up, and a number of my very good
Speaker 3: friends are friends I've made us adults friends who I've
Speaker 3: had a single work interaction with, but they followed it
Speaker 3: up with an email or I followed it up to say,
Speaker 3: let's hang out, let's go out to lunch, let's do
Speaker 3: something together, let's see where this relationship goes, rather than
Speaker 3: having a single work interaction and not speaking to one
Speaker 3: another again. I think when you have that moment with someone,
Speaker 3: it's the same as a romantic moment, you know when
Speaker 3: you've clicked with someone, when someone is someone, when someone
Speaker 3: is a person you want to spend more time with,
Speaker 3: who you're attracted to as a mate, who you are
Speaker 3: excited by his conversation makes you think in different ways
Speaker 3: and explore new horizons. I think that the pressure is on,
Speaker 3: and the pressure comes from feeling like you have to
Speaker 3: be restrained. I just recommend diving on in and trying
Speaker 3: to hang out with someone that you enjoy spending time with.
Speaker 1: I love that and being like your son. That's such
Speaker 1: a beautiful idea. That You've worked for some amazing leaders
Speaker 1: during your career, and i'd love to know what are
Speaker 1: the best pieces of advice that you've received that have
Speaker 1: stuck with you to this day.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of very industry specific and have
Speaker 3: a lot of swearing, and they're probably not appropriate to
Speaker 3: share right now, but I certainly learned a whole lot
Speaker 3: when I worked in politics from both Minister Kalis, who
Speaker 3: I worked for for many years, and Kevin Right who
Speaker 3: was Prime Minister, and particularly his team of advisors, who
Speaker 3: I had a lot more to do with because I
Speaker 3: was the junior baby on the team. And I think
Speaker 3: you know what I took away from working in politics
Speaker 3: was a sense of pragmatism, was a sense of not
Speaker 3: letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, of
Speaker 3: moving slowly in order to take people with you. I'm
Speaker 3: someone with a tendency to rush, but taking slow and
Speaker 3: deliberate steps towards a goal and biding your time will
Speaker 3: often make it more likely that you'll achieve it.
Speaker 2: Now, I imagine that you are a big, voracious reader, and
Speaker 2: I would love to know what what books.
Speaker 1: Have changed your thinking the most over the last few years.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, I think you know. Look, there's been a
Speaker 3: whole lot in different spheres of my life. Probably I
Speaker 3: read Louise urd Richard's The Roundhouse, which has a meditation
Speaker 3: on fear and the impact of fear on our lives
Speaker 3: that I think has really helped me get through multiple
Speaker 3: surgeries and sort of you know, being up front and
Speaker 3: close and personal with death a bunch of times. The
Speaker 3: work of Amani Hater here in Australia more recently, who
Speaker 3: wrote The Mother Wound that was about is about her
Speaker 3: experiences following the murder of her mother by her father
Speaker 3: and her adjustment of thinking and how she has dealt
Speaker 3: with grief and what that has meant for her life
Speaker 3: and the course of her life, and how she mothers
Speaker 3: have lost her mother in such a violent and deliberate
Speaker 3: and devastating act.
Speaker 1: Now, four people that are wanting to connect with you
Speaker 1: in some way and also get their hands on a
Speaker 1: copy of work, Love Body.
Speaker 2: What is the best way for people to do that?
Speaker 3: Well. One of the joys of having a somewhat unusual
Speaker 3: name means I'm very easy to find on social media,
Speaker 3: So I am Jamila Risbee on all the social channels
Speaker 3: except for Snapchat because I am not that cool. And
Speaker 3: then you can find Worklove Body from the sixteenth of
Speaker 3: September in all good bookstores and online via book Toopia,
Speaker 3: and it's got a beautiful pink cover. You can't miss it.
Speaker 3: And I think there are so many women who've lived
Speaker 3: through the last period of the pandemic and have found
Speaker 3: that it has changed them in a myriad of ways.
Speaker 3: The same is true for the women whose experiences are
Speaker 3: reflected in this book. And I think you'll find a
Speaker 3: lot of yourself and a lot of the women you
Speaker 3: know in this book, and I think ultimately it will
Speaker 3: be both comforting and uplifting.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 1: Jamilla, thank you so much for your time today. I've
Speaker 1: so loved this chat, having admired your work from afar
Speaker 1: for many years, so thank you.
Speaker 3: Well, that's very kind. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: I hope you liked my chat with Jamilla, And if
Speaker 1: you are not a subscriber or follower of How I Work,
Speaker 1: now might be the time to do so, because next
Speaker 1: week I'm so excited to share my interview with one
Speaker 1: of my heroes, Phil Libban, who is the co founder
Speaker 1: of ever note software that I use many many, many
Speaker 1: times a day, and I chat to Feel about a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of things, including talking about his process for
Speaker 1: growing a business and making tough decisions. How I Work
Speaker 1: is produced by Inventing with production support from Dead Sets.
Speaker 1: The producers for this episode were Jenna Koder and Liam Redon.
Speaker 1: And thank you to Matt Nimba, who does the audio
Speaker 1: mix for every episode and makes everything sound so.
Speaker 2: Much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.