DesuckiFive Friday - April 5, 2024
Happy Friday, everyone. It’s that time again… five bite-sized bits crafted to squeeze some of the suck out of your work life. Featuring André Martin, Josh Weiss, Irshad Manji, Don Miguel Ruiz and a celebration of dumb ideas.
Hope you enjoy. If you do, please feel free to share this with friends, family, coworkers, etc. If you don't enjoy it, please pass along to your mortal enemy.
1. DesuckifyWork™ Podcast
You’re not supposed to fit in everywhere.
If you did, the world would be flat, boring and sad. A monotonous bubble with no escape. Like cable news. Or LinkedIn. Kidding. Am I?
So why do we expect every job to be a perfect fit?
Let’s face it. You’re not everyone’s cup of tea. And most companies aren’t yours either. They don’t value what you value. They don’t work how you like to work. And they don’t appreciate the way you sign off every zoom call like Isaac from the Love Boat.
Their loss.
Finding the right fit at work is a topic André Martin—organizational psychologist, consultant, coach, speaker and author—knows all too well. He literally wrote the book on it—Wrong Fit, Right Fit. Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever. It’s a must read if you care about making work not suck. And we touch on a bunch of the book’s insights during this week’s episode of The DesuckifyWork™ Podcast.
2. Desuckifier Spotlight - Josh Weiss
Josh is an advertising creative. A very talented one, who has desuckified many a campaign over the years. But what makes him so much more than that is his integrity and his desire to make working in advertising worthy of the creative souls who pour themselves into the craft day after day. Follow him on LinkedIn and you’ll see firsthand how he’s grabbing the industry by the you know whats and challenging it to be better. We should all join him. Metaphorically, of course.
3. Desuckified Book Reco
Don't Label Me: An Incredible Conversation for Divided Times by Irshad Manji
We can hardly talk to each other anymore. That’s how it feels if you spend any time online or watching the news. And now, it’s an election year. Yay. Reading this beautiful book from Irshad Manji is like mainlining hope right into your soul. Using the charming construct of a conversation with her dog, Lily, Manji shows us how to engage with each other thoughtfully, respectfully and substantively. Want to make work suck less? Read this book. Those hard conversations we so desperately need to be having won’t seem quite so hard anymore.
4. Desuckified Tip of the Week
If you struggle with focus during the day because you’re mind is always chasing new and better ideas, give yourself a block of time to just think of cool shit. Spill your creative guts for an hour, let your mind go wherever it wants to go. Explore brilliant ideas until you decide they’re dumb. Explore dumb ideas until you realize they’re brilliant. Get it all out. Then, tell that part of your brain to take the afternoon off, ‘cause we’ve got a deadline and those 57 open tabs in our head aren’t helping.
5. Desuckified Learning from the Week
“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.”
A timely bit of wisdom from a 27-year-old book, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I’ve heard similar sentiments before but these particular words just nailed it for me when I stumbled over them a few days ago. I don’t expect any of us will ever stop taking things personally. But this quote is a helpful device to pull us out of the spiral when something touches a nerve.
Life’s too short to do work that sucks. Click below to set up a free 30-minute Desuckified Discovery Session.