I’ve been a podcasting fiend lately, and if you have any I just have to try, please shout them out in the comments. (Perhaps I’ll do a post with the ones I regularly listen to.)
Warning about links in this post: They go to pages that play audio! So, if your audio is up on your computer, and you don’t want to hear something… you will.
When I first ran across Get-It-Done Guy’s (Stever Robbin’s (and how great is the name Stever?) podcast, I was a little skeptical at first.
I thought it seemed like maybe it’d be a little too “self-helpy” with kind of vague ideas. Or, I thought it might be common sense productivity tips that I don’t need to hear again.
But those were just pre-conceived notions. And all of us at work are filling hours and hours of our days with podcasts as we have to keep an eye on things that are copying/transcoding/etc., but need something to fill our ears in the meantime. So, why not give this guy a chance right?
After listening, I’ve found him to be pretty interesting, and I think some of the things he has to say are helpful and actionable, regarding specific little things in life. I’ve actually subscribed and downloaded all the past episodes (of which there are many).
I thought a recent episode was great: “How To Read Email For Sane Online Discussion” ‘Cause really, I think written communications very easily and quickly spirals out of control all too often. I just really liked the idea of if an email makes you angry, reading it over in a few different voices first.
First, what a fun time to just do a little personal fun acting. (Yay!) But second, yes, it’s nice to take the time to think of possibilities (and hopefully imagine the best one). It really is hard sometimes to understand what people mean when there is no tone of voice or body language. (Those can be hard to read sometimes too, but not nearly as hard.)
I do think overall, we probably need to try to do less written communication. But, if we are going to do it, changing the tone of voice you read emails, I think, is a great idea. (Or at least it is for me. I don’t know what the reading voice in your head is like.)
Another episode I listened to that I thought was pretty great was “How to Make a Request that Gets Fulfilled.” Again, I thought it was going to be some sort of empty advice that we’ve heard 100 times. (I don’t know why I’m so down on this guy when he hasn’t done anything to me or disappointed me at all!)
But really, I thought it had some nice actionable steps on how you really might not only get your request fulfilled, but get it fulfilled happily and easily by the other person. Also, it made me want to somehow have an assistant like the Kaitlin in the story. So, someday if I’m a big shot and you’re applying to be my assistant, I advise listening to that episode and dropping into the interview how you’re going to be like Kaitlin.
And now I’m off to see what else I can learn from the Get It Done Guy’s Podcast. (That last link actually links to the iTunes page for his podcast, and will not start audio immediately in case you want to download some episodes, or check it out later.)