#55: Weak Ties and How To Build Your Own Challenge Network (Kyle Hagge 2/5)

Just a quick little lesson I learned during my piano lesson that's not at all about piano.

You're doing great. You are so much more than your worst mistake. You can become anything. Listen to more here: ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/3EK02OjRh3Gewms7GZTk9A⁠

This week in your life, take something that you normally do in a rush... and stop. Do it slowly instead. Do it smoothly. See what happens. Doing the dishes, completing a task at work, filling your car with gas. Do it slowly, smoothly, intentionally. See what happens. Listen to more here: https://open.spotify.com/show/3EK02OjRh3Gewms7GZTk9A

Welcome back. To a new episode of Bite-Sized Philosophy. Missed you.

The two skills are 1. Enjoying Time Alone and 2. Processing My Own Thoughts. Good luck and enjoy! Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts. For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday! Text me! 323-609-5262

Straight from How To Win Friends & Influence People, we have ways to handle people in ways that will make them like you and build relationships. These two techniques have been proven in scientific studies, they've been written about countless times, and they make sense. That's the big 3. Every Monday and Wednesday, I publish a bite-sized episode on fulfillment, living by design, working hard, career growth, and mental models. These episodes are less than 10 minutes so you can fit them in your daily routine, and they come from some of the wisest, most accomplished people throughout history. Subscribe to the show today wherever you get your podcasts. For more Bite-Sized Philosophy content, subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my email list for a fun story delivered right to your inbox every single Friday! Text me! 323-609-5262

This is the 5th and final episode with Kyle Hagge, episode 58 of this podcast, and 8 of the 24-episode series in 2022. You should write down your thoughts and theories, in a private journal, in a public blog, just somewhere. It forces you to reinforce your thoughts and refine your ideas. That's a part of why I started this podcast two years ago! This week has been fantastic, and such a great conversation for me to learn from and be able to listen back through with Kyle. Monday, we talked about building community in a pandemic, Tuesday we talked about weak ties and a challenge network, Wednesday was about New Years’ Resolutions and goal-setting, Yesterday, we talked about Range and Career Growth, and today is about The Process, and about writing down thoughts and theories. If you didn’t listen to the show throughout the week, these episodes are still up, they always will be, and I really recommend taking some time, whether that’s this evening, or this weekend, and listen through the entire conversation. Kyle really brought it, and there’s so much in these episodes that I’m learning from and applying, and I hope you get to learn something from these episodes, too. That’s why I do this, so I can learn and grow, and so you can learn and grow with me. This week on Bite-Sized Philosophy is an interview series with Kyle Hagge. Kyle has been a podcast producer, non-profit co-founder, and now is the lead community manager at Morning Brew. He is passionate about justice, community, and innovation. Not just the buzzwordy kinds of justice, community, and innovation, but about how people can actually implement these topics in our careers and in our lives and he’s living that out in his current role at Morning Brew. Find Kyle on Twitter or LinkedIn This week’s topics range from weak ties in relationships and finding community as an adult, to goal-setting and skill-building, all the way into ways we can tell more useful stories about our careers. As always on Bite-Sized Philosophy, this show is about conversation. Between Kyle and me, but also with you. To make that possible, here’s my phone number: 323-609-5262. Text me and let’s talk. Resources (from all week long):  Range, obviously. Kyle’s Conversation with Range author David Epstein Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day The Defining Decade - Meg Jay  LearningBrew: Business Education Without the BS  Why You Need A "Challenge Network"

Range by David Epstein is a book about careers, re-framing how we get to success. Often, our careers don’t look like past generations. We don’t pick a career at 18, get hired as a junior employee, and work there for 47 years before we retire. That’s extremely rare. Instead, we move through many roles and positions in our career, accumulating skills and data points throughout. We learn what we like and don’t like, what we’re good at and what we hate. We get to be beginners in a lot of places, and experts in many more. And that meandering, winding pathway is the pathway to success, the journey to knowing what we really want to do. That sampling, the “collecting of dots” is crucial to being able to connect dots later in life and tell meaningful narratives about our career. This week on Bite-Sized Philosophy is an interview series with Kyle Hagge. Kyle has been a podcast producer, non-profit co-founder, and now is the lead community manager at Morning Brew. He is passionate about justice, community, and innovation. Not just the buzzwordy kinds of justice, community, and innovation, but about how people can actually implement these topics in our careers and in our lives and he’s living that out in his current role at Morning Brew. Find Kyle on Twitter or LinkedIn This week’s topics range from weak ties in relationships and finding community as an adult, to goal-setting and skill-building, all the way into ways we can tell more useful stories about our careers. As always on Bite-Sized Philosophy, this show is about conversation. Between Kyle and me, but also with you. To make that possible, here’s my phone number: 323-609-5262. Text me and let’s talk. Resources: Range, obviously. Kyle’s Conversation with Range author David Epstein

Today talks about The fresh start effect where your birthday, a new year, anything that's a new situation actually is more effective at changing habits than just a random Tuesday in June. With New Years’ just in the rear-view, how are you doing with your goals? How are you doing with your resolutions? Use this episode as a reminder and a boost for your resolutions to be able to jump-start the new year and make it as good as you can make it. This week on Bite-Sized Philosophy is an interview series with Kyle Hagge. Kyle has been a podcast producer, non-profit co-founder, and now is the lead community manager at Morning Brew. He is passionate about justice, community, and innovation. Not just the buzzwordy kinds of justice, community, and innovation, but about how people can actually implement these topics in our careers and in our lives and he’s living that out in his current role at Morning Brew. Find Kyle on Twitter or LinkedIn This week’s topics range from weak ties in relationships and finding community as an adult, to goal-setting and skill-building, all the way into ways we can tell more useful stories about our careers. As always on Bite-Sized Philosophy, this show is about conversation. Between Kyle and me, but also with you. To make that possible, here’s my phone number: 323-609-5262. Text me and let’s talk. Resources: Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

Today’s episode talks primarily about a “personal board room” or a “Challenge Network” and I want to explain some terms before we jump in. If you’re familiar with the idea, feel free to jump forward in this episode 90 seconds and jump straight to the intro and the content from Kyle. But otherwise, here’s a quick intro.  A challenge network is a group of people who can provide feedback and act as a sounding board for you in your career. Adam Grant famously uses his challenge network to edit all of his books, but it can be a group of people that help you think through work problems, make career decisions, or provide feedback into your career as you share vulnerably and honestly with them. It’s a group that’s not your closest friends but is definitely people you trust. These could be past co-workers or classmates, or just your second-tier friends that you don’t talk to as often. These people are your “weak ties” in life. You’re not looking for “yes-men” or people who just hype you up. You’re looking for help and perspectives that you might not have considered. Adam Grant says this: “The ideal members of a challenge network are disagreeable — critical and skeptical.” This is the case because: “We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions.” If nothing else, these people will help you to refine your ability to take feedback and criticism and you’ll grow in that skill.  This week on Bite-Sized Philosophy is an interview series with Kyle Hagge. Kyle has been a podcast producer, non-profit co-founder, and now is the lead community manager at Morning Brew. He is passionate about justice, community, and innovation. Not just the buzzwordy kinds of justice, community, and innovation, but about how people can actually implement these topics in our careers and in our lives and he’s living that out in his current role at Morning Brew. Find Kyle on Twitter or LinkedIn This week’s topics range from weak ties in relationships and finding community as an adult, to goal-setting and skill-building, all the way into ways we can tell more useful stories about our careers.  As always on Bite-Sized Philosophy, this show is about conversation. Between Kyle and me, but also with you. To make that possible, here’s my phone number: 323-609-5262. Text me and let’s talk. Resources: The Defining Decade - Meg Jay LearningBrew: Business Education Without the BS Why You Need A "Challenge Network"