SPEAKER_00 0:00

Several times I had to come into work and just early and work through weekends. And you go, you know, was that really worth it? Was that it was just a compulsion on my part, I suspect, to overdeliver and overinvest. So the people around you, as well as the impact on yourself, on the one hand, you've got every right to do that. And I'm not sure that that will change. And in some ways, the right to do it is fair and kind. But doing it with your eyes wide open about the potential risks and the resources you would need to actually um come through that unscathed, that's that's more of a sort of important question to me.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome back to Slides of Pi, where the Pi is the psychologically informed environment and the mission is to understand it, whether it's sports, business, or any other field, how can we help support performance and well-being in the places that we work, compete, or perform? First of all, thank you to those who listened to last week's episode with Ms. DAFTA. Both of us have learned a huge amount from your feedback on Twitter LinkedIn. So a huge thank you for the support. Like most of you, I'm in lockdown at the moment, which on the one hand brings with it a host of challenges, but in the context of the podcast, it means I have quite a bit more time for editing. So through the lockdown period, I plan to release one of these per week every Monday lunchtime or so. So if you haven't done so already, hit the follow or subscribe button. Right, on to this week's episode, where I am very honoured to be joined by sports psychologist, author, speaker, and researcher Richard Keegan. Last year I was at a conference where I saw Richard give a really thought-provoking keynote on building careers. And whilst it focused on sport psychology, I remember at the time thinking just how applicable some of its insights are to anyone in any industry. Now before we get into it, just a couple of words of warning. Firstly, there are a few mysterious zoom clicks in the audio. I've managed to edit most of them out, but just to let you know they are technical gremlins, not figments of your imagination. And secondly, you'll notice that the conversation is quite heavy. We talk a lot about self-care and it gets quite philosophical in parts, which I love. However, what I've done just to make it a little more manageable is split the episode into two parts. So we'll go for about 30-ish minutes, then have a break to reflect a bit. You can pop the kettle on or take a breather, etc. And then we'll dive into part two. So without further ado, then let's get into it with Richard Keegan. Richard, how are we? I'm good, P. How are you? Very well, thanks. Very well. Glad to be on the same time zone as you this morning to uh helps a lot. Make things a bit easier.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

Yeah, that definitely helps really things. How's your week been so far? This has been one of the busy weeks where you have to flex and accommodate the world, but um it's going all right. I'm feeling strong and fresh, so that's where you want to be.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Oh, that sounds like a challenge mindset to me. Yeah, yeah. Look, well, thanks so much for for joining me today to to talk about some of your experiences and and insights. It's much appreciated you giving up your time. I wonder whether we could start by you just briefly describing your journey to where you've got to now.

SPEAKER_00 3:34

Yeah, yeah, I've got a little almost practice spill around this one, I think. Um so I started out um actually uh dead set on being an airline pilot. Uh, went off the unity to study avionic systems, and then in the middle of all of that, discovered that as I was about to become an airline pilot, I was actually uh colourblind, which was not a good thing. So uh went back and said, What else am I good at? Talking to people, solving problems, uh, drifted into psychology and had every intention of being a man in a white coat. And then uh that sort of I thought I'd just try sport for a year because it looks interesting, and I always played sport. And of course I was hooked, never looked back. The question around um, how good do you want to be and why is that hard, as opposed to what's wrong with this person, uh simplifying a bit too much. But that difference was was crucial and really helped me to um see the world differently and feel better in what I was doing. So uh I overlapped uh uh supervised practice with uh my PhD and masters, which is probably why I lost all my hair. Um because yes, uh Chris Harwood tried to explain to me it's like doing you know effectively two PhDs at once in terms of the level of qualifications they they expect. The PhD and supervised practice all got done um roughly the same sort of time towards the end of the noughties. So around about that time, uh I was just applying for jobs really, and it got my first job covering maternity, as we often do, and that led me to my sort of lecturer role at the University of Lincoln, which took me to senior lecturer, and then uh decided I wanted a change, looked around. Um, there was a job someone sent me from Australia, and uh that's what I applied for amongst some others. And uh when it came through and I moved out here briefly just to have a look, just got a plane to talk to them and see what it was like, you get this enormous blue sky, um you know, big open spaces, uh nice lifestyle, and then started to think, yeah, this will do for me actually. So that's where things have uh have stuck for a while.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

And you're based you're based in Canberra. That's right, yeah. So, what what does the the position in Canberra entail?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

So, even though I dearly love applied practice, um this is a sort of a classic academic role. So uh the deal that I moved out here for was the um American-style tenure track where you get um six or seven years to move from a kind of uh lecturer, senior lecturer kind of um level all the way through to um associate professor, which is kind of you know readership uh level. So it's kind of high pressure because if you don't make it through in that time period, you get you get the boot. But I th I was a bit arrogant. I always I often find myself reflecting on I've been arrogant at some point, and I would thought I backed myself very hard to get in, and eventually that worked. So it's um it's been hardcore, you know, lots of research, of course, um, you know, going for the research grants and um lots of teaching, probably I think probably higher numbers than we ever used to do in the UK, but um usually it's split so you you see them more frequently, so I get like half a year with them, and then a different lot for the other half of the year rather than seeing them all the time. Um, and of course, yeah, that that dominates. So I ended up um moving my consultancy into the university as a kind of business within the university, and that's just um means that they get the money, but I get to use it on useful stuff like going to conferences last year and things like that. So I keep it going, I love it to bits, but if someone says to me, you know, um, what are you being judged on in your job at the moment, it's actually not the consultancy. So I get a little bit of free reign to to do what um I love as opposed to doing it because it pays the bills.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Wow, I'm sure there'll be people listening to this thinking, geez, that's a nice, nice setup. I wouldn't I wouldn't mind having that. I suppose that I suppose there are some probably not so not so hidden taxes to that in terms of being quite busy and and have having uh your your time on a on a razor's edge.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

So I view it as um all the time that I've been profoundly busy trying to do research, trying to do teaching, and there's a huge kind of um time cost in getting good at those things. I don't think anyone walks in naturally good at doing all different types of research, at teaching all different types of content. Um, so there's a lot of investment required. I always look back and go, I'm glad I was young when I did that. Um because I had the energy uh to eat into extra hours and to invest and to just sort of stay focused. And now I'm kind of soundly in my middle age. I think you know, I probably couldn't do that again, actually. There are moments where I was just working excessively hard and leaning on um friends and family to sort of just make sure I, you know, could be fed and have a house to go home to at night and stuff. So um that definitely was an enormous cost. And I think it, you know, if we're being kind of moralistic for a second, that expectation might actually prevent a whole bunch of people who might not have the same luxuries and privileges from from ever making it into this kind of setup where you can be a researcher, teacher, practitioner, and all the rest, um, because you just need such resources around you to lean on in those key moments. But we did it, and uh so my kind of talk with NISP last year was just that you know, if you have the time, either acutely with lots of resources or longer term with a slow burn, if you're able to invest that time and become this kind of very flexible um beast that can do lots of different jobs, then you eventually become kind of future-proof. Because even if someone said to me tomorrow, right, you'll never practice again, well, then I can do my academic job. If someone said to me, right, um, you're gonna be taken out of teaching for a while, I've got loads of other stuff that I get fulfillment from and that I'm good at, and that I could, you know, effectively pay my wages with. So I think that kind of 20 years between 20 and 40 for me has been this kind of uh period of becoming increasingly capable in lots of different areas, and I think that's probably you know close to the definition of resilience that I probably can cope with a whole bunch of different stuff and uh and still come out of it in decent shape.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

Just for those listening, NSP is the European Network of Young Specialists in sports psychology, which is a network that I've been involved with for the last five years, and and Richard came over and did a keynote in Trieste in Italy last year. And one of the reasons why why I was really keen to to speak to you was was some of the content in that talk, which you've just just touched upon a little bit there. Um, you mentioned that in your own journey you combined the the studies, the PhD, and supervised practice. When you look back, would you have done that again?

SPEAKER_00 10:24

Uh probably, yes. I think I probably would have gone in eyes wide open around the demands that it places uh on a person. Um, because there were these moments where I kind of just didn't realize that I was getting pretty burned out or um you know way overcommitted. And so I think there are moments where you go, look, you need to have really careful um sort of self-management and reflective abilities and maybe uh have some more discretion in what things you chase because I chased almost every opportunity, and there was an awful lot that never came through. So I would invest time and effort in stuff that almost predictably was never going to work. You look at some of these things and go, that team didn't really even know what they were asking me for. So I turned up and tried for a few months and then it didn't go anywhere, and I just was tired out by the commuting back and forth on top of my day job, and that sucked. So I think I would be much more um aware, reflexive, uh, I would have much more discretion. Uh, but the actual uh synergies and opportunities that you get by doing you know research at a university where loads of athletes are all the time, um, you know, where all the experts in that field are all the time, and then doing your applied practice around that, there was loads of gorgeous opportunities and synergies that came from that that I think uh you know couldn't have been guessed at, but actually made it much more worthwhile.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

It's interesting that you you kind of reflect back on a kind of a pinch point in your early career where you had to do two things at the the same time there, and yet it in in in retrospect, you'd still do that, but you'd obviously, in the benefit of hindsight and everything that you've learned, you might be slightly more reflective or aware in how you you do it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Yeah, so I probably wouldn't be rushing. I felt this enormous pressure to do supervised experience quickly, you know, within the three years, to do the PhD quickly within three years, and as those things started to slip, especially uh I went part-time on the PhD towards the end because uh supervised practice, because uh I met a wonderful lady who became my wife. Uh, and so I was trying to grow this life, and there's no way I could sort of do full-time, much more than full-time on the PhD in that period of my life, and it led to a better result because I didn't really understand what I'd found until a year later when it all kind of sunk in. So, my my thesis and publications were better, I was better as a result, but in that time of my life, I had that huge angst to get through and get qualified, which if you subtract that angst from what everything else that was happening, it would have been a much better experience, and I still would have had the same outcome.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Do you think there's a difference between a rush to get better or to improve versus a rush to get through certain milestones?

SPEAKER_00 13:16

I suppose both both could have their problems. The most harmful one for me is rushing to get through the milestones because you don't sort of actually appreciate uh what those milestones represent and what they're giving you in terms of the skills and capabilities. And actually, you know, when you're involved in the process of designing those um qualifications and accreditations, they're they're really carefully articulating the skills and capabilities they think they know are required to be good at the job. And that's from years of research and experience and uh borrowing from other regulatory bodies, they really you know look carefully at what they think you need. So to rush through that and say, just give me the badge so I can go and do my job is a very superficial, instrumental kind of approach, which might leave you actually exposed when you get to the end and you don't have the skills, you just did whatever you thought you had to do to get through. Um but even the other one, I think it it even just rushing to get those skills uh can still cause uh pinch points, pressure, anxiety. And you know, if we assume we're gonna have a 30-40-year career of adulting, then there probably isn't that much rush just to to dive into that and get started. I mean, and we often view that that point at the end of qualification as being the finished article, and most people five, ten years later, go, no, I learned most of my important lessons long after that. So we're always learning and improving. Like passing a driving test. Yeah, you know, and there's just these um kind of transitions where someone effectively signs off to say, you know what, you're probably okay to go and do it on your own now. That's pretty much the what it comes down to, which to a large extent may already have been what you were doing, just checking in with a supervisor. So I don't know if it changes the world that much to get the certificate or the badge. Um, but instead, what's happening is that constantly striving for um better practice, better outcomes, um, extracting learnings from it, uh, becoming more capable in different uh areas. That's probably more important, I suspect, looking back at that stage of my life.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Um I mean I'm I'm super interested in this this kind of the this nuance or this grey area or this balance between I think everyone nowadays can appreciate that we don't want to overload young people to to the extent that it's it's harming their their well-being. Um, but at the same time, I think there's a a kind of a social reality and maybe an economic reality that young people in most industries do want to overindex their time in something that they're excited in pursuing, just because they contextually that maybe they have a little wee bit more time to do that, maybe it's less likely they have kids or a partner or a mortgage or etc. etc. So they have got more time, but also because economically there are lots of other people pursuing that career, and and maybe there's a you know a um a reality of of trying to get ahead. There's an organisation that I'm um a member of in the UK called the APG.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:28

They're a membership body for marketing strategists and planners in the UK. And I was part of a meeting last year where something like 50 50 heads of planning from across the advertising agency world came together to talk about some of these issues. And the the results of some of this discussion is an initiative that they've started called the Right to Disconnect. And what I really like about that is it it has a kind of a choice embedded in it. Um, that you know, if you you know you work in an advertising agency or if we were talking about a a sports club or the emergency services or any environment, that there is a certain level that's expected of you. And if you want to do that level and then go home and have a you know have a life with your kids, etc., that's completely fine. But if you do want to over-index your time, then you have the right to do that. So you've got the right to disconnect if you want to, but if you want to just plow on and and get excited and get passionate and and uh you know progress, then that's also your right.

SPEAKER_00 17:37

I completely, yeah, I completely understand that. And I suppose that reminds me, wasn't there a law in France recently about this right to disconnect and uh asking employers to uh sort of discourage people from having their emails come to their phones and stuff like that? So there's kind of we can have a nice clean distinction between the right to disconnect and the right to overinvest, so to speak. But I mean, looking back at you know, 23-year-old me, uh that person would never have paused for a second to say, um, you know, I'm gonna take my time and be easy on myself, and and uh you know, even I did I didn't know the risks actually of um of doing that. And so, you know, 20 years later, if you look at some of the um, and I I'm let's not forget for a second, I'm profoundly privileged, you know, I'm all the almost all the things that you would want to be, apart from having you know been born extremely rich, I was very lucky, and yet I still um ended up suffering the consequences a few times of of pushing too hard and trying to do too much. Because it does, you know, I think it's and and let's not forget as well that it affects the people around you. So uh there's a family there uh where I've several times I've had to come into work and just early and work through weekends, uh, and you go, you know, was that really worth it? Was that uh it was just a compulsion on my part, I suspect, to over-deliver and overinvest. So there's people around you as well as the impacts on yourself. And um, so on the one hand, you've got every right to do that, uh, and I'm not sure that that will change. And in some ways, the right to do it is is fair and fine. But doing it with your eyes wide open about the potential risks and the resources you would need to actually um come through that unscathed, that's that's more of a sort of important question to me. Um and I'm not sure even it would take a pretty strong argument actually to persuade 23-year-old and me to be more cautious and careful and take my time. Um so that's where I'm currently sat because you see over and over again really high potential, really talented people with that economic reality, with um, you know, challenging processes like tenure tracks or competitive markets um in front of them. And the compulsion seems to be, you know, go hard or go home, uh, you know, really, really push. And then that definitely can have consequences that we don't talk about as much. So I think it's um informed consent, effectively, you know, if you're gonna do that, um really, really be aware. Uh and it I suppose my current push in life is to find the people a bit like I used to be and say, right, is there anything I can say that will just make you at least understand what you're committing to here and uh give you the skills to spot when you're getting a bit frazzled and burned out. Because that you know, that that level of kind of um awareness and empoweredness was was probably one of the hardest one lessons I picked up, and I still get it wrong.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

But one of the things that I I heard at a conference last year was I I think I'd just been reading Thrive. I don't know if you've read that by Ariana Huffington. So a lot of the themes in in her book revolve around you know, kind of burnout and um business environments that don't give people the the choice to work in in how they want to work, etc. etc. And the the unexpected response that I got to the person I got from the person I was talking to about this, they were I think in a kind of mid-twenties hungry sports psychologist, was well, yeah, well it's okay for her to say that because she's now got herself to a position of success. She can now she can now reflect on on that and be a you know, maybe a kind of a beacon or a spokesperson for for well-being, but she can do that from a place of comfort.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Which, you know, there are certain parts of that argument that I you know I I would disagree with and and would go further with. But I I thought I was surprised by that, but I thought there was also something strangely compelling in that that publication.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Oh, I'm uh definitely aware of that um that risk of of being hypocritical, and I have felt that people Who were sort of um mentoring me and guiding me in the past were being hypocritical in giving that advice. So I don't necessarily know a way around it. What I do think is that it would be uh easier to take that advice if the person uh was also taking steps to mitigate and make it, you know, make it easier rather than what seems to have happened in a in a very broad summary, is that a lot of the previous generations have kind of got to a position of comfort and it was described to me as putting up the ladder behind them kind of thing, like right, we're here now, tough. Um, and that was you know, an old senior professor told me that, and it kind of that was his reflection on what had happened. But um, you know, if we're actually using those positions of comfort and security to then look look around and go, right, how can we make this better and taking you know concrete actions or at least trying to, you know, for goodness sake, at least trying to do things that actually smooth uh the operations and take away some of the structural barriers that exclude people. Uh I think then it might make it easier to accept the advice, you know, hey, this can be harmful if you push this hard. But as long as we have this kind of uh late neoliberalism attitude of, you know, cutthroat competition, uh the forces of the market will fix everything, as long as that's actually what permeates our thinking, then we will encourage people to compete harder. And when decisions that we make and policies that we implement uh encourage that competition, we'll say, well, yes, this is right and proper. But uh that does make it extremely hypocritical to say, hey, Jill, take your time, relax, don't be too hard on yourself.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

A master's student that reached out to me recently and and came in came into the office a couple of weeks ago who who was the first first student that's that's reached out to me in the last couple of years that wasn't all about can I you know can I get some some work experience? It wasn't can I you know pick your brains, it was can I talk to you about what exactly this journey and this qualification entails? Yeah, and whoever's talked to them, they've got some good advice.

SPEAKER_04 24:13

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Because I think that that that that for me that was really interesting because I think it's quite easy for you to, you know, whether it's sports psychology, whether it's advertising, whether it's any career, be seduced early on by wow, this looks great, I want to do this. But very, very few people at that age are actually going, well, what does that actually entail? And is is this something that I want to to buy into at that at the start of the journey? And I by no means am I saying you know it's a uh you know it's an overly testing journey that people shouldn't get into, but um, I suppose there are going to be some contextual factors to to each person in terms of their ability to to go on that journey and and thrive in it.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

Um so for me, when I talk about um you know informed consent with clients, and I think in this conversation, informed consent with you know going into the profession and the expectations of the profession, the informed part is absolutely crucial and is often just kind of glossed over. It's not like this you know might go good or bad in a sign here. I think it should be, you know, do you have eyes wide open, a really good understanding of what you're committing to? And I also think it's quite a dynamic decision. It might be something which you know, weekly or monthly you return to and go now. I know what I know. Do I still want to persist with this? Because it's getting harder. And so I had um uh a female referee in soccer. We spent a big chunk of our work focusing on okay, there's more and more badness here, right? The the abuse is getting worse. Um, you know, you're not getting the support you wanted from your mentors and the organization right now, and sometimes they even stab you in the back, and it feels like it was just getting worse. And so every week almost it was like, okay, fresh decision, fresh informed consent. Do you still want to go back and do it again this weekend? And of course, actually, you know, inside I was thinking, run away, this is terrible. But uh, she stuck with it and is now sort of an absolute um you know champion in this space. Um, and it's led to some really good outcomes. But I think just even having the uh empowered sort of the power returned to her and the control returned to her to say, look, no one's making you do this. Uh, what are the pros, what are the cons? Do you want to stick with it? was crucial, even as the kind of the uh consequences and the implications became more and more severe each each time I reviewed it.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

The classic, I haven't tried to reframe the situation or put a put a positive spin on it. I I know the the reality and I know the the demands involved. Can I accept it and can I can I make any any steps to to make it better?

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, and so it's you know I I suppose I was drawing a parallel just between that that master's uh sports psychology practitioner, that person sort of engaging in an advertising career for the first time, or someone navigating difficult decisions around the training getting harder in adolescent swimming, or the the sort of realization of some cultural issues around attitudes to women in soccer still. Yeah, I just think there's a dynamic process whereby as long as you don't feel trapped, uh, and as long as you don't feel like um misled, then it's possible to navigate um this big sort of scary world of high demands, uh unexpected demands, uh, asking a lot of our time. But um, I think it's something we should do more explicitly and deliberately, reflectively, therefore.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Along this this journey, there's also if there's one seduction which might be to you know work incredibly hard and um to over-index your time, there's also another seduction which is around becoming a specialist in in one area, yes, yeah, um, and you know, being known for that, being the person that goes to conferences to that is the expert in in that area. Not to say that that isn't a viable career career choice, but I think what I I took from from your talk is sometimes that is almost feels like that's positioned as the only way, and there's this other, this kind of more diversified practitioner or diversified professional.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Yeah, absolutely. And that was where I kind of drew this distinction in the in the talk between um sort of a guru who's a specialist in one thing, and whenever you think of that one thing, you think of that person, uh, as opposed to the kind of um what I was calling the heartless mercenary in the talk, where you accumulate a diverse sort of suite of skills and and spend a lot of time just doing what pays the bills to keep you in the game or close to the game that you want to be in. And I sort of felt like uh there's a cultural assumption, like you conveyed there, that actually you want to become the guru, the specialist in just one thing, and that comes with a range of risks. Um sort of coming back down to a really sort of really simplistic metaphor. When I ask um people to build uh anything stable, anything that's strong, uh so we used sometimes uh Play-Doh and Lego in the in the workshop we did at the conference.

SPEAKER_01 29:28

Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_00 29:29

Yeah, people talk about building wide, stable foundations, um, and then sort of gradually layering that up. And that's one of the most stable structures in the world, a very wide, stable based uh you know, pyramid, basically. And yet, for some reason, we sort of have this compulsion to build just one thing, like to become uh a football psychologist, or even an elite football psychologist, and to think you know, or a cycling, or to be like an elite cycle, a road cycling psychologist, and something so specific. Uh, and I think the there's a couple of risks with that. First of all, going back to the pyramid metaphor, that's fragile, you know. Anything that's very, very tall and narrow, and this is why skyscrapers are so really hard to build, is because it's tall and narrow, and any sort of perturbation or threat to that can can lead to disaster quite quickly. And there's less chance to flex or accommodate or move slightly away from where you were just standing because you're off the edge if you've got a tall narrow structure. Uh and so I think the nicest example of that was we used to have a rower. I say we, it was you know, our country, Australia, used to have a rower who was one of the best in the world and you know, just rowed and would get that ore in the water perfectly, generate the most power, fantastic. Outside of that, one of the most uncoordinated people you'll ever meet, and picked up weird injuries, just you know, just twisting an ankle, getting into a boat, even just carrying the boat down to the water, just weird injuries that actually ended up costing them training time and therefore costing them performance at the big championships. And so that sort of being wonderfully specialist at one thing was having costs elsewhere, and of course, when it comes to retirement, when that one thing you're good at was stripped away, you're in enormous trouble straight away because everything else was actually down very, very low. Um speaking, flipping across to a career perspective, it requires you to pretty much know 10, 20 years in advance where to invest to become a guru. Now that's not been my experience of how the world works. Uh, some of my most brilliant, in retrospect, you know, most rewarding successful projects were things that uh I would never have known, I wouldn't have recognized them when they were put in front of me. Didn't even know what, you know, just pearls before swine, did not know what it was the opportunity was. But I stuck with it for some reason. You know, maybe there was some money attached to it or uh someone strategically important for the university. So I stuck with it, and before you know it, um I'm almost getting success and starting to be thought of as a guru in that in that thing. Uh, but I didn't know five years earlier or whatever that that's what I should do. So there's the fragility and there's the kind of uh just pure gambling. If you're gonna do that with a career, I think it's just almost impossible to know where to invest. So I argued that it's best to simply pay the bills, stay in the game, uh, you know, have some discretion around how hard you chase some things that clearly look a little bit um that they're not paying back or poorly thought through. But to be a bit open in accumulating skills across a wide range of areas, that leads to synergies where skills and projects kind of sometimes marry together in unexpected but beneficial ways. And so if you take that long-term view and spend time at the bottom of the pyramid, moving around, building a wide base, that's where you can actually have that firm foundation to build towards potentially being a guru. But even then, I'm not even sure you want to be a specialist in just one thing. I think that's an increasingly rare CV, and very few people have that CV anymore.

Half time reflection

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Okay, we'll take a break there, as there's so much I'd love to reflect on at this point. You guys deserve a break as well. It's quite a heavy, insightful episode, so why don't you put the kettle on, see what's happening on Twitter, check the WhatsApp, and reload for the second half. If you're keen to fly on, however, let's pause to think about some of Richard's points there. I suppose the key one for me is this notion of building a career through rushing towards milestones, putting pressure on yourself to get there as fast as possible and not necessarily appreciating what those milestones mean in terms of what they represent, what you're learning, the skills you're acquiring, the competencies you're building. In fact, I wonder whether we see this pattern across our lives more generally, always looking towards the next milestone, the first job, the promotion, the first apartment, the big first big raise, the first house, the director's job, always rushing towards these milestones in the future without taking time to appreciate what is happening in the here and now. I even find it with much smaller focuses personally, such as my book list. I have such a giant reading list that I often catch myself rushing through or skimming a book in order to get it finished. So Richard's words really resonated for me. Feel free to get in contact on either Twitter or LinkedIn if it's part of anything else for you. So I hope you've enjoyed your break, your cup of tea, a bit of a breather, whatever you decided to do. At the end of the first half there, we started to get into Richard's keynote at NISP last year, the wise guru versus the heartless mercenary, and that is where we'll pick it back up. There's a lot of trust you have to put in in building the pyramid there, isn't there? Because it seems like the all of the promises that are given to people around them, whether it's who is deemed successful on the front of Forbes magazine or who is getting the most likes on Twitter, etc., all tends to be people who are talking about you know specialist areas, whether you I suppose that you you need to put a little bit more kind of trust or or belief in building your career in a different way, that it's still going to lead you towards. Well, I suppose it depends what your definition of success is as well, but leads you towards a place that you want to go.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Uh I mean there is faith involved for sure, uh, and optimism, but uh certainly I think both experientially and I think actually in terms of research evidence around just the patterns of how talent develops, uh, generally a wider base uh is is better. Uh and one of the sort of themes I picked up when I delved into trying to do some resilience research, I had to teach a unit on resilience a couple of years ago, was that um diversity of of skills, of capabilities, of the makeup of whatever the thing is that you want to be resilient is is actually uh crucial. Um, and even this week, as a very fresh memory, I was talking with someone who um uh had a career as a bodybuilder, and they became you know profoundly uh refined in what it came down to really was how to look. So they would be on the stage, you know, looking extremely muscle-bound and cut to ribbons. But they said A, in that moment, because they hadn't eaten properly, they were actually weaker and couldn't lift what they were lift lifting before they got into the training. And B, uh any sort of shock to the system, any kind of unexpected stress or virus, and they were blown away completely in a bit. And so you think, okay, so I can develop this really narrowly defined, quite fragile uh profile, and that might let me do something quite specific. But if for any reason that's threatened uh or knocked slightly, if and it goes to pieces, all that investment's gone. I suppose the other thing I'll throw into the mix as well is that usually you get diminishing returns. So the first sort of period of time spent investing in something, you you grow and improve very quickly, and then as you get towards the top end of something, you actually can invest much, much time and effort and only get tiny returns by this point. And of course, you know, if you just want to be the best in the world at one thing, great, that's what you have to do, that's the only option. But if you just want to become broadly very capable, you'll probably get better return for effort, return for money and time, just building up pretty good skills in lots of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

That's interesting. Do you think do you think there's a an aspect there around patience? Do you think there's a more of a long-term patient view towards building the mountain range versus maybe the kind of the immediacy of gratification of being able to become an expert in something in a relatively short period of time and then and then being able to get some of the platitudes that involved with being being in that position?

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Well, yeah, uh, I do think that's that's the metaphor that I draw definitely. And and if we consider that you know the building material we're using actually what's it look like, if that if that material isn't um you know, sort of concrete and steel or it isn't uh duplo blocks like we used, if that material behaves more like kind of, I don't know, sand, then you've got much more chance of actually building a mountain range or a big pile than you do of building a narrow tower. So I think it's also a matter of trying to think about getting borderline into philosophy now, but you know, what are you building with? What is it? How does that thing you're actually building behave and how does it stick together? And then a final thought was just the pressure that leads to that impatience uh and that expectation, which I think is harming a lot of people, including myself actually, was yeah, as you're pushing to be the best or be very, very good at that one thing, we forget that there's already people in that space usually ahead of us, uh you know, taking up some of the bandwidth and space and air in that area. So you're kind of um trying to compete against that to get good at that, and it's it's a very kind of um unappealing bet when you think about it in those terms. Whereas you could kind of grow towards that, but with lots of capacity to grow around it by building around it. It's kind of a probably a safer bet rather than saying I'm not as good at that person at that one thing, but I'm gonna try and get there. Because the only time that happens is when you've got narrowly defined sport for which there's a medal and you want to be the best in the world and get that medal in a profession like this. That isn't how it works at all. You know, we're always using the wrong metrics to judge success. We don't get a gold medal for being the best psychologist in the world. In fact, we're judged very differently than that.

SPEAKER_01 40:15

Do you think then therefore building up your own internal metrics? As in, um, I suppose these are the types of things that we might even work with with athletes on. You know, how how much do I feel like I've tried in the you know in the last 12 months? How much do I feel like I've I've grown? Am I being kind to others, building up your own internal locus of of metrics that are independent of what other people are saying externally?

SPEAKER_00 40:42

Well, ultimately that's what I think it comes down to. So I had a PhD student, master's student a couple of years ago, who was trying to work out um was being pushed before the masters to almost define perfect sport coaching. You know, what what are the what's the formula for an elite sports coach? And he quickly realized that that's not how you judge the quality of a coach. You actually look at the processes and they might react differently to each athlete and they might react differently to different competitions and stages of the season. And he was trying to talk about it's it's having the ability to do all these different um processes and working out which one's required for that moment in time. And I think in our jobs, it it tends to come down to having lots of capabilities and mapping it onto what's required in that moment. And if we let ourselves think there is a perfect way of doing it, and we all have to compete to just do that, and to be the best at that one way of doing it, it's probably harmful to the athletes we serve, uh, ourselves as practitioners because we compete with each other and tear ourselves to pieces, and for the wider profession because we aren't actually um giving a good account of ourselves as a profession. Is that too getting too preachy now, do you think?

SPEAKER_01 41:59

I was just thinking about a um career book that I read recently by the the guy who invented LinkedIn. Oh yeah, it's a bloke called Reed Hoffman, and he was he was also one of the founders of PayPal, along with Elon Musk, Peter Field, and a bunch of others. I think they call them the the PayPal Mafia because they all all went on to invent you know further enormous companies. And he wrote a career book called The Startup of You, which was all about treating yourself as your own startup and how you might invest in yourself as a a startup and and different skills and and stuff. And it's a really good book, and he makes a number of different um analogies, one of which I think is quite quite close to your mountain versus the mountain range, which is he says traditionally the career was a ladder. Yes. So, like you said, kind of thin and and scaling upwards into the clouds, whereas now he he says a career is a jungle gym. Pretty much, which I quite like because I think first of all, the jungle gym feels more kind of optimistic and inspiring, that you can kind of jump around, yeah, yeah, try try different things out, try and on the size, see what's right for you, see what you're passionate about, see what pays well. But also, like you say, it doesn't have that kind of that vulnerability of the ladder, you know, that could get kind of toppled over quite quickly.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

If you push that, and I think for me, it's about we need to consider the nature of the thing that we're trying to operate here. So we're trying to operate career paths in a messy, um, uncertain economic context. For the main part, that seems to be what's what plays out. And so we've gone away from uh there are clearly defined uh linear pathways to get to success, and that's kind of just it's persists in our thinking, but even in academia with defined um job grades, there really isn't a single pathway to success. And if you think about it more broadly, about especially self employment as a psychologist or a consultant in some capacity, I don't think the ladder's even close. I think we're dealing with something quite dynamic and organic and Constantly moving and growing, almost just like a tangled web of vines or trees or something, you know. And so some will sort of have little shoots upwards, and some will kind of get tangled and fall away. And if we can skip back and forth around that sort of whatever that tangled mess is, we're agile. It's almost like we can can get anywhere. So jungle gym is kind of um pretty neat. And I might even push it further and say, yeah, it's it's a forest.

SPEAKER_01 44:24

All right, okay. Yeah, that's the seeing the wood, wood for the trees now. Yeah, how many how many different analogies and metaphors can we can we pile on top?

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Some kind of bingo game.

SPEAKER_01 44:36

Interestingly, there was a campaign that we did for a large tech client a couple of years ago where someone in the in the insights team had found this statistic. And I'm not sure how robust it was, but it came from a relatively you know, relatively high profile business or technology magazine that had predicted that for people doing their GCSEs, that by the time they by the time they got to working age, 60, 60% of the jobs available to them weren't invented yet.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Correct. So you know, where's the data for that? Um there is no linear pathway to unknown, as far as I'm aware. Yeah, so I think one and that's why I in the end I I was comfortable talking about philosophy, even though it turns people off, because it's just the nature of the thing that I'm trying to operate. And it's does it have uh straight lines and sort of hold still, or is it very fluid and moving? And you don't run away from a fluid moving thing, you just need to engage with it very differently. And so that's probably the same for career paths, for you know, dealing with psychological issues, for organizational issues, most of those, in my experience at least, behave as dynamic, fluid things, not linear uh static things.

SPEAKER_01 45:49

No linear pathway to the unknown, fantastic sound bite. That that that feels like I could go straight on to a um an Instagram tile potentially on a mountain or a lake or something like that. But if I was if I was listening to this, I'd be going, well, geez, that you know, you you then have to kind of put your your kind of your your trust then in in the unknown. Do you kind of what bets do you do you start to make? And I think that's that's where some of the other stuff that that Hoffman talked about in his book is really useful. He talks about this ABZ planning. So just because you don't know what the future is going to entail doesn't mean that you can't take pause for breath every now and then to see where your journey is going. And he used he talked about having a plan A. So ideally, this is what I'm doing with my life, my career, relationships, a plan B, which is I could take it off in another direction if needed, and then a plan Z, which was, you know, if it all goes to crap, then I can always go back to do that, which I thought was a really pragmatic way of dealing with this, you know, slightly kind of you know unknown and uncertain career path, was to to have this ABZ model as you as you go through it. So it's still allows that flexibility to go and do stuff that might not be invented yet, but also has that maybe underlying security that you know, if it all if it all goes out the window, you're you're not you're not out on the streets.

SPEAKER_00 47:19

So I'm just um you reminded me in a way, I'm just thinking about um, I'm reading a book at the moment, uh, found it on a bookshelf in a very old bookshop, and I just thought, I'm gonna grab that. And I think it's the Tibetan philosophy of living and dying. So it's a little bit deeper meaningful, right? But it talks about um impermanence and how everything in the world, including you know things that we think are there for a long time, on the large scale are impermanent and will change. And how do you react to uh uncertainty, dynamic systems, impermanence? Again, I don't think you necessarily give up and go home, but you change uh your expectations and you change, I think, uh the way you engage. So um, sort of going to a different uh story a little bit, because that's that that belief system underpins kind of Buddhism, uh stoicism, a whole bunch of approaches. Loads of people are there ahead of us going, of course, everything's impermanent and fluid, and we like to sort of give ourselves security by building things that look static and reliable and dependable. Uh, but I had this very strong memory with a Kung Fu teacher when I was at university trying to learn all the martial arts and the super macho, and and she was probably 40 kilograms wet through and was very, very good at Kung Fu. And she would basically um engage once she was touching the other person, she could be blindfolded and and still fight because she could sense from your shift in balance what you were about to do, and you know, obviously she'd prepared very well for a dynamic, fluid interaction, and so I think becoming sensitive and agile and flexible and being able to sense what's around you and react to it accordingly is how you kind of respond when you realize you're up against something dynamic and fluid. So I think it's completely possible to learn to engage with that type of world, and of course, at that age I was too stupid to realize the brilliance of what I'd just observed, but but now looking back, you go, so you just engage differently, and once you there's two things there though, right? Actually, there's the differently part that I'm trying to push, but there's also the engage part, like that. What what she did um fighting blindfolded was only possible when she was in physical contact with you. The second, you're standing six feet away, she can't tell as well what you're doing. But once you're engaged, your arms are touching, maybe your legs are touching, that's it. Game over, you're gonna lose that fight. So you need to have different expectations, but I honestly think you very much need to definitely be engaged and doing stuff because that's where all the important information comes from.

SPEAKER_01 50:10

Love it. Getting quite close to the uh Bruce Lee be like water there with the um Kung Fu in martial arts. Yep. I think you've mentioned it a couple of times. This poor, stupid, younger Richard. Arrogant. I feel sorry for it in hindsight, he's picked up all of these labels.

SPEAKER_00 50:28

Um people did call him out of the time anyway.

unknown 50:31

Okay, right.

SPEAKER_01 50:33

Um I wonder whether we might be able to to to finish by by leaning into that a wee bit more. You know, what what the the kind of the key things would you you tell your your your younger self in embarking on on a you know a career that you're you're really passionate about?

SPEAKER_00 50:49

There's a few sort of thoughts forming off the back of this talk, and I think almost my advice to that person changes as I realize more and more what actually you might listen to. Because you know, there was people uh there at the time, especially at Loughborough, you know, full of wonderful people. I think trying to tell me, dude, chill out, um, you know, stop it. And it didn't necessarily work at the time, and I did um make some mistakes uh that affected other people, and I think definitely affected myself. So, you know, that they're the consequences of that. What would that person listen to? If I could persuade someone at that age, at that career stage, to redefine uh what will count as success. So rather than what am I being asked to do to get a badge or to get a qualification and focusing too hard on that, I would go completely the opposite way and say, you know what, what if that was taken away from you? What if there was nobody else? And this happens in some countries, right? They haven't got accreditation or registration yet in some countries. So it's still possible, but if if all of that were taken away from you, what would you gain um a deep sense of satisfaction from? Uh I think very quickly you get past um money, and I think very quickly you get past working with a world champion. And I think it starts to come down to um I know I know, and this is a profoundly hard thing to actually know, right? But I know I'm doing good work and helping people. So this is me trying to really channel what might get through to 23-year-old Richard. But if it came down to right, okay, at its core, I I don't suppose it's take it away, but just it doesn't matter. So you can have it or or take it away. There is no registration requirement, there is no w worry about money, let's just say that's fine. Let's say you've already worked with a world champion and you had that, yep, just take it off, put it on your CV, no problem. What does it come down to? And I suspect most of us want to know that we're actually having a positive impact in the thing that we love and care about. And that's uh where the the the conversation really gets going because you go, okay, well, how can I be sure about that? I can have a bunch of processes, I can build a bunch of capabilities, uh, I need to be able to kind of uh regulate all of that by being extremely increasingly aware and reflective and able to match what I think I need to do with what I'm seeing happening in front of me. And as the thing I'm dealing with flexes and moves and behaves differently, I can keep up with that and end up getting good results. And that's probably what we're trying to build as a practitioner. So someone who's kind of universally pretty capable, flexible, and able to adapt on purpose, not by accident, but actually, you know, see what's happening, adjust to it, and end up with a good outcome. Um and the thing is that that's gonna go wrong or suboptimally millions of times because it's a very, very hard problem. So what you're then left with is the uh compassion and forgiveness element that when you're striving to build this highly capable, highly flexible thing, you are soothed by the intent that you're doing the right thing. Even when it doesn't quite work, you engage you engage with the right intent and you were open to um learning from it and improving from it. So that what I've just tried to characterize is so many million miles away from some of the moments when I was just striving to get a badge, to tick a box, to get a client. So 20 years later, um I think I probably would have had a much more sort of uh better experience, been a better bloke, been a better friend, um, all of those things if I had engaged in the right way, appreciated the experiences and lessons that I was getting, kind of had that whole thing about gratitude and just appreciated this is what it is and this is how long it takes, knowing that I'm building something that eventually will be uh pretty good and flexible and give me the best chance of delivering all those things that I want to do.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

There's a lot in there that I'm hearing around kind of values-led living. So if regardless of whether an action results in a positive or negative outcome, a success or a failure, however you define that, if that that action comes from an intent and a kind of a value that you you hold dear, then that's always always going to be enriching.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

Yeah, I mean, so even sort of, I don't know, coming on for a year ago now, um, it was one of those moments again where I'm sat um sort of on my own and thinking that didn't go right. That moment, that last couple of minutes there isn't how I wanted it to go. And I was thinking I should know better by now. Look, you know, I'm grisly middle-aged, I should know better, I should, I should keep that coming. And um I still had that kind of I don't know, that response to myself to go, you idiot. And what helped in a way was to go back to um sort of philosophy and stoicism. And actually, in this case, I found the the idea I was after in an old uh Buddhist type religion. It was just saying, did you engage in the right spirit in the sort of with as with what you knew at the time to be as good as it could be? Um, you know, were you trying to do something good and helpful in the right way? And then maybe either you're fallible or you didn't see something coming unexpected, and therefore you shouldn't feel too bad, right? But it I had to you know almost find the same lesson again in some other book. Because I've learned that lesson millions of times, but it just took a particular picture of a particular monk this time to make me go, oh god, yeah, intention, spirit, do it in the right way. And if you get it wrong, that that's gonna happen. This is a very hard problem.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

I wonder whether um whether we can flip it a wee bit and give give 23-year-old Richard a um a a break for a sec. And um I wonder whether there's you know, because I really like what you what you've what you said there in terms of yeah, there's lots of things I would I would tell my younger self, but what might he actually you know listen to? And when when you said that, it made it made me immediately think so many times we asked this question, what would you tell your younger self? But is is there anything that that 23-year-old could still you could still learn from that 23-year-old the other the other way around?

SPEAKER_00 57:31

Ah, I mean, so I've actually by coincidence, there's a picture I found in the back of a book next to me of that 23-year-old Richard with the early signs of male pattern hair loss. And um if you look at the passion and the energy that someone in that position has, and therefore the enormous potential, like if you just with that much potential and energy and capability and time ahead of you, all you've got to do is just keep turning up and engaging in the right spirit.

SPEAKER_01 58:06

Well, look, I think we're we've we're kind of reaching the end of our time. I just I would just want to pause quickly to to uh to ask you in terms of the future for you from now, what what what gets you optimistic and excited about the the linear or the jungle gym pathway into the unknown?

SPEAKER_00 58:27

So I'm currently having a phase in life where I keep accidentally discovering things um that I would never have expected. So I did some work a couple of years ago for the Sport Commission uh where we talked about physical literacy, and it sounded like that was a finished thing, there was a book about it, and it was you know all done. But the Australian government uh said we don't want to use that version, can you dream up another one? So some friends of mine persuaded me to stick with it, and it's become huge, and it's actually um in our country at least, it's doing a lot of good, it's being um used to evaluate um programs and grants, and it's switched the um the teaching of um kids sport from get all the skills to grow a whole person who um you know can play nicely, is happy, gets enjoyment from sport, doesn't have to worry about becoming an elite athlete, but just is likely to persist with it forever. And that was a really rewarding experience, which at the time I didn't even know what they were asking me to do. And they just contract came through and I said, Yeah, yeah, fine, I'll do it. And it was almost like they were just light years ahead of me. They wrote this genius contract that made us put together a brilliant product for them. Doing some work in the military recently, and they didn't I didn't know what I was being asked to do, but I persisted with it. And the product that's come out um is actually quite useful for them. It may even have some sort of academic um implications. So um I've accidentally, by being across a whole bunch of stuff and being that heartless mercenary, um, picking up things that just happen to bring any money and pay the bills. I've had the chance to sort of grow and flex and become more heartful as the end of the talk I was giving kind of alluded to. And I'm able to see ahead and go, those things are exciting, those things have not been done before, could be very rewarding. Um so it's stuff that I would never have anticipated being good at or being promising or rewarding, and I could never have discovered that um or predicted it, you know, when I was younger. So if I just had to invest when I was 23, I would only be a motivational researcher, I would only be doing probably some version of achievement goals. And instead, now by branching out, I found stuff which um has made me more capable and has um potentially at least found out, discovered where the next 20 years of my career could be going, which for a while there I was a bit lost about. I was going, well, what else have I got to do? I've published, I've been a psychologist, I've wrote a book about it, what's left? And now I've discovered a whole bunch of stuff is actually out there that could never have guessed.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:05

There's another forest just over the um just pretty much just over the horizon, wasn't there? You found your new forest. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Well, look, Richard, thanks so much for for sharing your insights and your experience and and spending your time um on this sunny, sunny morning. Well, it's sunny in Melbourne. I don't know what it's like in Canberra, yeah. Beautiful. Um, where can people find you on the internet if they want to learn more about some of the stuff you're doing?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

Uh so you can uh pretty quickly stalk with me on just Googling and coming through to the University of Canberra, but of course on Twitter and uh Instagram, I am at Sports PsychOz, or one word uh A-U-S. And they're the main spots. Obviously, I'm on LinkedIn like everybody is. Usually, you know, as long as I've got mentor bandwidth, I'll be happy to join the game and play along.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:57

Okay, well, look, thanks again, Richard, and uh best of luck with your your journey into the the the next thicket, the next uh next forest of of opportunity in your career. And uh yeah, thanks again. Have a have a good week. Pleasure, thanks, Pete.

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

Well, again, if you're still listening, a huge thanks for making it through the second part of my conversation with Richard Keegan. There was so much there to take away and reflect upon the trade-off between focusing all your eggs in one basket and becoming a guru in a niche versus a more distributed acquisition of skills. That trade-off of self-care and the mental health consequences in pushing so hard to progress and reach those milestones versus the economic reality of many industries where large numbers of hungry graduates are competing for a narrow field of jobs. Now, if you're not familiar with my journey, I won't bore you with it, but after almost a decade in marketing and advertising, I decided to train as a sports psychologist alongside my day job. That was five years ago, or 11 assignments, one published dissertation, one master's degree, 12 conferences, and two years in consultancy ago. I have to admit that at no time have I been sure where this is going to lead, whether I'll quit marketing and go full-time in sports psychology, whether I'll have a little sports psychology consultancy on the side for the rest of my life, or whether I'll get to one day bring these two worlds together. Personally, therefore, it's easy for me to buy into some of Richard's philosophies on building a career, to not be in too much of a rush, to focus less on the milestones and more on what skills I'm developing, to embrace the uncertainty of a career and how it might evolve. It reminds me of a Steve Jobs commencement speech I once taught on YouTube. He said that in life you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back. Therefore, in the present, you should just have to trust that putting energy into the things you are passionate about will lead you somewhere meaningful. And on that pensive note, I'll sign off until next week. Thanks so much again for listening to Spider Pie and have a great week.