Late Nights with Trav and Los – Details, episodes & analysis

Google’s PILab identified psychological safety as the biggest differentiator between highly effective and less effective teams. Psychological safety is a general term for team members’ willingness to take interpersonal risk as they work together. Members of psychologically safe teams are more likely to feel included, accepted, respected, and to feel safe to take risks, to admit mistakes and to show vulnerability.

1. Include each team member in social activities, such as lunch or ping pong, especially when he or she is not part of the ‘in crowd’. In meetings, formal or informal, make sure they feel invited to contribute.

2. Accept others for who they are, even when there are things about them that you may not like. Keep in mind that they are people — not just co-workers who are instrumental in getting your job done.

3. Listen to what your team member has to say and make sure you’re on the same page; don’t simply wait for the end of their speech to continue your argument.

4. Recognize the contribution of others - acknowledge their contribution. You’ll discover that sharing the pie of credit with others makes the pie larger.

5. Show vulnerability and admit mistakes — recognizing your own imperfections and mistakes relieves you from the need to project the image of perfection.  It also makes room for others to do the same.

6. Make room for conflict — it is okay to strongly disagree. Having said that; focus on the conflicting ideas, not on the people who advocate them.

Travis wants to go back to school so he accepts a job at Google. On his first day he ends up getting on a bus to Apple, not Google.

The rest of the story is about how introspection into ones own strengths and weaknesses can lead you to companies like Google.

Music produced by Morqix: https://soundcloud.com/morqix/body-symmetry-chakra-collab

In this episode, we unravel a thread of an idea and watch it unravel into a fantastic walkthrough from Travis around some potential actions we could take to get started as a public speaker.

1. Everyone will think I’m a fraud

   Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved.

   A month before his death, he reportedly confided in a friend, saying “the exaggerated esteem in which my lifework is held makes me very ill at ease. I feel compelled to think of myself as an involuntary swindler.”

   Solution: Realize that Everyone else feels like that. Become okay with it.

   Psychological research done in the early 1980s estimated that two out of five successful people consider themselves frauds and other studies have found that 70 percent of all people feel like impostors at one time or another. So get over it.

2. I am a fraud, and everyone will find out soon

   This week I published a video in which I invited another developer to do a code review of my JS. So far 3K people have seen it. So now they know.

   Solution: Okay, now they know. So now I don’t have to worry that they will find out, because that already happened. What now? Keep moving.

3. I will run out of ideas

   This is kind of a new one for me. Now that I’ve been sharing ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for a while and sometimes I sit down to spit out a new piece of content and I feel like the well is dry.

   Solution: Sean McCabe of Seanwes suggests to “Don’t worry about repeating yourself. People need to hear things multiple times and there are always new people finding your show or blog.”

4. People will loose interest in what I’m doing

   I’ve always been afraid of getting old, But now I’m afraid of becoming irrelevant. My work relies on myself being able to have relevant ideas and being able to mold something meaningful from them.

   Solution: My value is not the work I did yesterday. My entire body of work speaks for itself.

   Solution: People only care about your work as long as it benefits themselves.

   I googled “people will loose interest in my work” and every result was about people struggling with their own work ethic. No one cares about you, relax. Then make something that helps someone.

5. It will never be this good again

   In economics and decision theory, loss aversion refers to people's tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains.

   Living like this is like driving while looking solely in the rear view mirror. It’s impossible to make good decisions.

   Solution: Maybe you are right. YOLO!

Have you ever read something or heard someone say something so wonderful and powerful that your heart starts beating almost right out of your chest? I love those moments. I live for those moments.

A few years ago I watched a series of lectures by Kirby Ferguson. The title of the series is called Everything Is A Remix. I've discussed these lectures before. They are paradigm shifting. I recommend them. Especially his TED talk called Embracing the Remix. In fact, if you want to stop listening to this just to go look them up on YouTube I think you would be glad you did.

Anyhow, in his lectures Kirby talks about the three key steps of creation. They are Copy, Transform, and Combine.

Copy

No one starts out original. We cannot create anything new until we have a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding in our line of work. Copying is how we learn.

Transform

Taking an idea and creating variations. Major advances are usually not original ideas, but the breaking point in a long history of progress by many different individuals.

Combine

The most dramatic results happen when various ideas are combined together. By connecting ideas together, creative leaps can be made.

As Kirby outlined the progression of a creative work, he led my attention from entertained to interested, from enthralled to moved and transformed.

I grew up in the post-industrial american school system. We are trained to obey, repeat, and memorize. There is nothing creative about the training I received as a child. In fact, creation — as outlined by Kirby to copy, transform, and combine — is looked down upon and smothered by threats and shameful labels. We have a strange obsession with being original, and often confuse that with being authentic.

Imagine the freedom and validation I felt when Kirby outlined my secret shame as a strength. I had, as a young and aspirational creative, been secretly copying the works of those I admired for years. I repurposed and recomposed their own ideas to meet my needs. I did it in the shadows. Hoping to never be discovered. Never wanting to be branded a plagiarist or unoriginal.

But now Kirby tells me its okay. Not only that, it's the correct path.
 

As I look back over my personal history I can see that these steps of creativity of (copy, transform, combine) are not just descriptive of a creations lifespan, but also that of the creator itself.

When I was a boy I would steal my Mom's tracing paper and trace my comic book pages for hours. I would get lost in the lines and curves. I didn't understand it at the time, but I was learning about scale and contrast, light and shadow, hierarchy and story telling. I was just trying to draw a cool superhero, but I was being trained by my generations masters.

Eventually I could draw the characters from memory, after a little while longer I could improvise their poses and create my own little silly stories. I would mix styles and place my favorite characters in scenes that I had seen in movies or read about in books.

Soon enough I was creating new characters made up of elements of my favorite heroes. Wings and claws, guns and katanas, glowing fists and belts with far too many pouches (it was the 90's after all.)

Only now I can look back and see own my personal progression through the stages of copying, transforming, and combining to make something new and personally valuable.

It might be fun to someday outline the various influences that combine to make the DevTips style of videos.
 

Recognize and celebrate the origin of your ideas. Be honest with yourself and your audience. Enable yourself to have a real conversation about your work, your passion, and your influences. 

Being aware of how creation comes about will make you more open to the things that you can draw upon and use to create something new.

Or as Kirby puts it:
 

Our creativity comes from without, not from within. We are not self-made, we are dependent on one another. Admitting this to ourselves isn’t an embrace of mediocrity and derivativeness — it’s a liberation from our misconceptions, and its an incentive to not expect so much from ourselves and to simply begin.

#The loss of thought

Most of us have problems or ideas that we want to solve or elaborate on and one of the hardest parts of these problems and ideas is finding the time to think about them. Have you noticed that most of the time when you are taking a shower or a bath, you somehow come up with something brilliant or insightful? Something actionable?

There are many things in our lives that require our attention some are important and some aren’t, either way, our time to think is lost and taken away from us.

So what is unique about the shower or bath that allows us to think?

It is one of the only moments that is built into our routine where we don’t have gadgets, internet, family, peers, or pets fighting for our attention. In the shower, you are still, contemplative, with yourself. You have, by accident, built in time to think.

Imagine if you had more time to think and reflect? How many more problems could you find solutions to? How many different and brilliant ideas could you uncover?

So for the next few minutes, Travis and I are going to get out of your way and give you the time you need to think. Reflect on how you are going to start your school or workday. Reflect on how your day ended. Reflect on what you can start doing, continue doing, and stop doing immediately.

Thank you for listening and enjoy the next few thoughtful minutes.

• How long have you been doing DevTea?

• What is the elevator pitch of DevTea?

• why did you start?

• What is the most popular episode about?

• What is your favorite episode about?

• How much time goes into an episode?

• What before that? Anything public?

• You have a very clear message on DevTea, What was involved in developing that unique voice for yourself?

• I've noticed that you've incorporated more hard skill based discussion into Devtea, what difficulties/ insights have you come across from trying new things?

• If you were to coach someone in gaining their own unique voice, where would you start?

• Where do you turn for content ideas?

• We were recently asked this: Once you make awesome content, how do you get people to notice it?

• You recently co-founded a podcast network, spec.fm. What is your goal there? Why start a network?

• What has been the outcome so far?

• What do you hope your listeners will take away from the work you do?

1. Focus on the people you meet.

   • the most valuable part of the conference is in the hallways between sessions.
   • Not your heroes
   • people looking at their phones / get off your phone
   • be brave
   • Don’t have agenda, other than being interested in people

2. Have an open schedule, go to all the parties and don’t be lame. Be in introvert when you get home.

3. Make yourself easy to connect to after the conf

   • having a card is basic
   • make a sticker, or something fun
   • have a reason that they should remember you
     • make a little project, have a giveaway, write a medium post or something.

4. have a system for recording who you meet.

   • note who they are AND WHAT YOU TALKED ABOUT - jog their memory later

5. Follow up with ppl you met after you get home

   • email
   • twitter
   • linked in
   • again, have a reason

Travis tell Los how to write an email. Sounds basic, but you'd be surprised. You should listen.

1. Write a concise, quickly actionable subject line.

2. Quickly introduce yourself and if appropriate what makes you worth a damn. Or pay a simple - yet well considered compliment.

3. Quickly to the point. Keep it focused.

4. Don't attach anything

5. Proofread. Omg proofread.

6. Make your request of the recipient quickly actionable.

   • what do you think of x, vs do you agree with x?
   • what can you donate, vs can you donate x?
   • would you like to have a call, vs can I give you a call Tuesday morning?

7. Design your email so that their response can be as quick and simple as possible.

8, End happy

SPECIAL EDITION: Trav and Los look at the reactions to Google's new logo, and then give their own.