255: Overproductive

Overtired 255

[00:00:00] Brett: Hey everybody. You’re listening to Overtired. You’re here with your very tired cohost. Me Brett Terpstra and Christina Warren. How are you, Christina?

[00:00:14] Christina: I’m also very tired. Uh, my insomnia, um, as reared its head again. So even though we’re recording this at like 7:00 AM, I got like two hours of sleep. So

[00:00:28] Brett: I like how you said insomnia with a Z. Like it was in Zambia.

[00:00:33] Christina: Yeah, exactly.

[00:00:34] Brett: Oh, Matt. Two hours of sleep for, is that too, like more than one night in a row or is that just one night?

[00:00:41] Christina: Uh, this is like more than one night. I mean, this was only two hours of sleep, like, so I went to, I fell asleep at like 5:00 AM and, um, so, but I. I don’t know the last time that I got like, as a stained, like [00:01:00] more than maybe like four hours at a time. It’s been days.

[00:01:04] Brett: yeah. That’ll wear you down. Hardcore.

[00:01:07] Christina: Yeah. I’m glad it’s the weekend.

[00:01:08] Brett: I, yeah, I hope you get some sleep. I’ll I’ll tell you again at the end of the show, but,

[00:01:14] Christina: Yeah.

[00:01:14] Brett: but yeah, like that, like I’ve had over the last couple of weeks of a few nights of bad sleep, but, uh, once I got through last, week’s kind of more intense manic episode. Uh, I got four, four nights in a row.

[00:01:30] Good. Eight hours sleep. And then last couple of nights have been more like five or six hours, but not nearly as bad as two to four hours a night for multiple days.

[00:01:41] Christina: Yeah.

[00:01:43] Mental Health Corner

[00:01:43] Brett: Yeah. So how’s your mental health?

[00:01:47] Christina: Well, the tiredness, you know, although I had this whole discussion. Shrink last week about the difference between, uh, being tired, being fatigued, being, uh, there’s like a, uh, [00:02:00] another, uh, thing like exhausted. I think there was there all these different types of, of sleep things. And we were trying to figure out like, which one I have. so he wrote me a script, um, for, uh, we’re going to try some sort of sleep medication and see if that helps

[00:02:17] Brett: so here’s the thing is the, I think they’re called Z class, like a Lunesta. And I can’t remember the other one. Um, like I took those for years and they do help me with sleep, but they fucked my memory.

[00:02:33] Christina: Yeah.

[00:02:34] Brett: I don’t have great memory as an ADHD person anyway, but this was like, I was forgetting yesterday entirely.

[00:02:41] I couldn’t keep track of things. Five minutes later. Uh, it was, it was scary. Like I thought it was early onset Alzheimer’s because, uh, you can only take those first so long before they destroy your memory. So be careful.

[00:02:55] Christina: Yeah.

[00:02:56] I will. There’s also like, whatever, I can’t remember which one I’m going to be [00:03:00] taking. Um, I may be testing it out. It’s, it’s, there’s a new one. That’s really experimental. That is incredibly expensive, like incredibly expensive that you often have to like appeal to your insurance companies and whatnot to let you take.

[00:03:15] Um, and, and it’s, uh, I mean, I can’t remember how much a month it would have cost, but it it’s something insane. So I’m not starting with that. I’m starting with one that is apparently. Apparently they’ve done stuff. They’ve done tests with it, where they take people who’ve been on it. They wake them up after a couple of hours and then put them on like a driving course test and they can still drive and it’s supposed to be good.

[00:03:40] But Yeah.

[00:03:41] if it has any sort of memory issues, then that’s a no-go for me, because I, I have a really good memory and I can’t lose.

[00:03:48] Brett: There are a bunch of, uh, like sleep meds that don’t have those Z class effects. So hopefully, hopefully your doctor’s aware of those side effects. [00:04:00] Um, I was on like it’s, I was on something that was also given to me in rehab, uh, for sleep. And that went back on it like 20 years later and it still worked great.

[00:04:15] It had very few side effects. Uh, I don’t know why it wasn’t just given to me to begin with. Um, I can’t remember the name of it, but I have the, I have the benefit of my current bipolar medication. Also just knocks me out unless if I’m already manic, it just makes me a little bit tired. But in normal circumstances, like 15 minutes, I’m out, down.

[00:04:41] Christina: that’s good.

[00:04:43] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, sleep is good.

[00:04:46] Christina: I mean, that’s sort of the Genesis of the whole show, right?

[00:04:49] Brett: should do a podcast about that.

[00:04:51] Christina: we honestly, we should, I think that, that, uh, it could, and, and, and it could last for like seven years or something. So however many years [00:05:00] we’ve been doing this off and on

[00:05:01] Brett: But you know, us, it, it, it, would, it would, come and go.

[00:05:04] Christina: it would come and go.

[00:05:05] There’ll be like periods of time where we’d be really productive and then periods of time where we’d be like, wait, do we have a podcast? Yeah.

[00:05:11] Brett: long have we been doing season two now? I feel like we have only missed maybe two weeks out of the last, how many?

[00:05:19] Christina: At least a year.

[00:05:20] Brett: Yeah. God, we’re like we’re back.

[00:05:23] Christina: We are, we are like, we’ve been like work insistent. I think we’re for season two, then we maybe ever.

[00:05:30] Brett: Yeah, for sure. This is, this is our longest stretch. Well, we’re we have regular sponsors now.

[00:05:37] Christina: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:05:37] So, and, and, uh, yeah, so we like, we, we take it, not that we didn’t take it seriously before. Cause we did. And there was a period of time when, even when we didn’t have regular sponsors, we were still doing it, but we’re like back on like the, the committed, like train.

[00:05:52] Brett: we’re not getting rich, but

[00:05:54] Christina: No,

[00:05:54] Brett: get a little bit, we get a little bit for our efforts and it’s okay.

[00:05:59] Christina: it is it’s [00:06:00] good.

[00:06:00] Uh, and it was nice like before, um, you know, you, uh, you got all, uh, like a tech money. Rich. It was a nice, it was, it was, it was nice for you, so

[00:06:11] Brett: Yeah. It was actually a notable income. When, when we first started getting paid, let’s see, a year ago we were talking about, uh, Dawson’s Creek and, uh, uh, Taylor swift theme park. Is that? Yeah. Has it already been a year since.

[00:06:30] Christina: Oh, my God. It’s been a year since the, the, the, the, the adorable gay kid who did the very, very in-depth tailors with the impart a YouTube video.

[00:06:38] Brett: here’s what blows me away is I am completely time blind. Uh, like I thought that episode was maybe a couple months ago.

[00:06:51] Christina: Yeah.

[00:06:52] Brett: I find I’ve been living with my girlfriend for like five years.

[00:06:58] Christina: Yeah. I was going to say, you guys [00:07:00] have been together a really long time, which is awesome.

[00:07:02] Brett: But if, if, if I didn’t, if I wasn’t constantly told that I would think I moved in here a year ago. Like I have no concept of time, which is a common ADHD symptom.

[00:07:12] Christina: It is an, it’s a weird one because I have so many of the common ADHD symptoms. That’s strangely not one of them. However, pandemic ha. Fucked with everybody’s time since, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like there’s, I think that even if you have like, you’re completely neuro-typical I think that everybody’s time, uh, like a concept of time and, and so many other things have been just completely fucked up because of the last 20 months or whatever it is.

[00:07:43] So, uh, like, um, yeah, cause it’s been over a year because I’m trying to think back. I was like, yeah. Cause I think that it was yeah, like, yeah, again, I was like thinking like August, September, because I can see where I was sitting kind of in the same spot in my office, [00:08:00] you know, this time last year, but so much stuff has changed, but so much hasn’t changed.

[00:08:05] You know what I mean? Like the pandemic has been just a mind fuck on so many levels, so,

[00:08:10] Brett: I found our first episode, since we came back, it was, uh, August of 2020.

[00:08:17] Christina: yup.

[00:08:18] Brett: So just over a year

[00:08:19] Christina: just over a year Yeah.

[00:08:21] Brett: happy anniversary

[00:08:22] Christina: Happy anniversary. This is good. Does season two.

[00:08:26] Exactly know, I mean, but kind of like a renewed vigor cause before, um, two, it had been almost a year since we’d recorded before.

[00:08:34] Brett: We had like one episode randomly and, uh, yeah, we had, we had one episode in June of 2019, so it had been over a year.

[00:08:43] Christina: It’s been over a year. Exactly. So, so yeah. So happy anniversary to, to us bringing the show back consistently.

[00:08:50] On the perils of success

[00:08:50] Brett: Yeah. All right. So I like last week we talked, I, I was coming off of a manic binge [00:09:00] and, uh, I had stayed up, excuse me. I had stayed up for a couple of nights and I had pulled off like some mad website magic at work. I had built this, uh, ver it was very good. It went over very well. Like I had done great work.

[00:09:18] Uh, I got complaints from coworkers who were like, you can’t set a precedent that we stay up all night and I’m like, oh God, no, I didn’t. I didn’t mean to do that because. I w I, like, I was not happy about it. The only reason I mentioned it at all was to explain why it was such a wreck in a zoom meeting. Um, but I didn’t mean to like, make other people feel like they had to stay up all night.

[00:09:44] Cause I wouldn’t push that on anybody. So, you know, I took that lesson. I, I I’ll deal with, if, if that happens again, I I’ll be more upfront with my manager and tell them what’s going on instead of like saying it in a zoom meeting, [00:10:00] but then. This week I’m like, I think I’m still a little manic, but not like sleepless manic.

[00:10:08] Um, but, uh, so Victor was out sick. I don’t know. Is that too personal? Should I not say that on our podcast,

[00:10:15] Christina: No, I think that’s okay.

[00:10:16] Brett: Victor, Victor had, uh, had to go get COVID tested, but, um, that’s medical information. I shouldn’t share that. Um, and then Aaron was also out for like the whole month and our manager says, Hey, we need to have a, we had, I’ll just say we had to meet this goal by Friday.

[00:10:37] And it, it was a goal for the entire team to publish a certain amount of content by Friday. The team right now is just me. And so I figure let’s just do it. Let’s, let’s refocus our energy. Let’s get this done and I kick ass at it. And I finished [00:11:00] all of it by the end of Wednesday and I hand it over and I mark off the JIRA tickets and immediately it dawns on me that I just set a precedent that I could get up a significant amount of work done in like a third of the time.

[00:11:22] It should have taken me and I should have slow walked it and I should have turned it in on Friday as requests. I was immediately, that was immediately validated when the next day they said, great job. Here’s twice as much more since you can clearly do this really well. And in addition to that, we need you to train new employees to do things as well as you do them.

[00:11:46] And like, once I hit depression, that precedent is going to be completely UN unattainable. So I have, I have screwed future me [00:12:00] pretty hard here.

[00:12:01] Christina: you have. It is not insurmountable. Do not do it again.

[00:12:06] Brett: Yeah,

[00:12:07] Christina: You honestly, by, by making it seem like it was a fluke is How is how you fix it. That, that, and that’s the only thing you can do because otherwise, unfortunately, and we’ve talked about this before, this is like the corporate America trap. And I don’t even want to say corporate America.

[00:12:21] I think even like startups, I think like just any job, this is a natural thing where. You think you’ll be rewarded for stuff like that. You won’t be like people who always are like, oh, I’ll if I work really hard and if I make this? like really terrible deadline, that is unfair work, I’ll be rewarded with more headcount or more resources.

[00:12:43] No, you won’t. So that means that next time you have an opportunity, like where you have one of these crazy deadlines, you have to walk it, you have to slow walk at meaning. Even if you’re done on Wednesday, you then just spend Thursday and, you know, [00:13:00] time period on Friday, literally doing nothing.

[00:13:03] And then you turn it in on Friday.

[00:13:05] Brett: Yeah. Yeah, no, I, it dawned on me immediately that that’s what I should do.

[00:13:11] Christina: Yep.

[00:13:11] Brett: So, yeah, in the future, I will be, uh, I will be working at a normal human pace and, and not doing impossible things cause you’re right. Like it just be in immediately becomes the new norm and you immediately get more work. And when you don’t finish that work, then you actually end up looking bad.

[00:13:30] Christina: exactly. They said it as the new standard, because I’ve run into this problem myself. I don’t have like the manic tendencies, but I’ve done. I’ve had the same thing where like I made the impossible happen and, and I, and it took me years to kind of figure this out. It’d be like, oh, I’m not going to be rewarded for this actually.

[00:13:46] Like, I’m not going to be rewarded for this. And, um, and you have to, and, and it feels weird, especially if you’re somebody who, you know, kind of takes pride in what you’re doing and, and wants to like, I’m a pleaser [00:14:00] and you want to get things done. It, it feels weird to me. Like instinctually kind of go after that, but you have to, because there, you’re not going to get those extra resources.

[00:14:12] You’re just not, that’s not how, unfortunately how the world works. And, um, this is going to wind up being like, ultimately it could be bad.

[00:14:21] because if you can’t keep that pace up, even if you, for you, and if you don’t have the th th the cyclical kind of, you know, things coming, um, that becomes the new expectation and you just can’t let that happen.

[00:14:32] I think you can make this seem like this is a one-off and, and, and it was kind of a fluke, but honestly, as, as weird, and, and as pseudo guilty as you’ll feel, you just have to, when this sort of thing happens in the future, you just have to find a way to not turn it in and just wait, you know,

[00:14:53] Brett: Yeah. I, I proactively went ahead and scheduled myself a week off at the end of October, [00:15:00] or like, mid-October, I figured if they’re not, like I thought I would turn this shit in, uh, early, and then they’d be like, great job, you know, enjoy the rest of the week. Uh, Nope. Obviously that’s not what happens. So I just said, you know what, I’m just going to make my own reward.

[00:15:17] I have unlimited time off. Here you go. I took my time.

[00:15:21] Christina: No, I agree. Yeah. I think that’s actually a really smart thing. If you have a unlimited PTO, which is a scam, but if you have that, uh, take it and, and even if you don’t have unlimited PTO, um, you know, like if, if, because I have, I don’t have unlimited, but I have, um, like there’s only a certain amount that rolls over.

[00:15:40] So if I don’t take. my time.

[00:15:43] by the end of the year. Uh, and I haven’t taken the other stuff, which I never take all my time. So I usually have like, I’m, I’m stuck at this weird thing where in December I have to calculate how many hours of vacation I have to take. Otherwise I’ll lose. And in some cases what’s happened is that I’m [00:16:00] like, well, I’m still going to take meetings and work, but I’m technically taking the days off, you know, in the system so that I don’t lose them, but I’ll still show up at the meetings or whatever, but I’ll be less engaged.

[00:16:09] Um, but Yeah.

[00:16:11] like just make sure you take that time, you know?

[00:16:14] Brett: I just figured out the, uh, episode title over productive.

[00:16:19] Christina: Oh my God. That’s really funny. That’s good.

[00:16:22] Brett: Ah, it’s all right. All right. Let’s

[00:16:25] The Pop Culture Segment with Ted Lasso

[00:16:25] Christina: No, I like it. It’s no, it’s good. I like it. I like it. Um, I was, I was talking to a friend, uh, yesterday about the new Ted lasso, which I haven’t seen yet. Um, and, uh, and they were saying, um, that they had, they had a hot take about, uh, a music choice in, in a recent episode, not the most recent one.

[00:16:43] And, and they, they ended it by being like, uh, thank you for, uh, for, for listening to my Ted talk. And I giggled. I was like, that’s okay. That’s, that’s a dad joke, but that’s actually very funny.

[00:16:54] Brett: The soundtrack of Ted lasso always impresses me. Not because it’s like [00:17:00] blatantly here’s music you like, because it’s really well selected. Uh, well mixed. And like, there are times that I like it’ll Dawn on me halfway through a scene that this soundtrack is perfect for it, but I didn’t notice it until that point.

[00:17:16] Christina: Yeah, I agree with that. Um, and I don’t know if she’s involved with the music stuff, but I know that bill Lawrence cause his wife, uh, Christa Miller has like really good music taste. And she did a lot of the music picks on scrubs and scrubs had incredible music and a lot of people gave Zach Braff credit for that.

[00:17:33] And he, you know, had had some input, but, um, it was, it was actually his wife who is also an actress and has acted in a number of his series who had a bigger role in picking a lot of the, The tunes because she has really good music taste. And I don’t know if she’s involved in any of the music selection for Ted lasso, but I would not be surprised.

[00:17:54] So,

[00:17:55] Brett: last episode, you said you haven’t seen it?

[00:17:57] Christina: uh, the one that came out like six hours ago

[00:17:59] Brett: [00:18:00] Oh, no, no, no, no. The trippy one, the long, strange trip through London.

[00:18:06] Christina: Yeah.

[00:18:06] Brett: The soundtrack of that was amazing. I loved it. Everything about it fit the mood of the episode. And the episode was so weird. Like I love the episode. I kind of wanted like a standard Ted lasso in addition to it, like, I would’ve, I would’ve watched it as an extra, but it was still, it was very well done.

[00:18:25] Christina: it was, Yeah. I liked it. I liked the beard kind of a, I think they call those like bottle episodes, you know, whereas

[00:18:31] Brett: Character studies.

[00:18:33] Christina: Yeah.

[00:18:33] You know, it’s all, it’s all, you know, just his stuff and it was, it was interesting. I wonder if. And this is me thinking too much about the business side of this stuff, but, but, but it’s, but that’s also very interesting to me.

[00:18:46] Um, they gave it an extra, they gave it like a couple extra episodes, I think, for the order than what they had last time. So that’s why they had the Christmas episode, which aired weirdly in like August. Um, but I also wonder if this [00:19:00] is one of those things where, especially for that actor, who’s really good, who they haven’t given a ton of time to, if they were like, okay, Hey, we’re going to give you your own episode where it’s just going to be you and a couple of the like, you know, bit background players.

[00:19:15] Exactly. And everybody else will get a week off basically. Right. So everybody else is going to get paid, but they get kind of a week off because we got this extra episode order. I wonder if that’s how that happened.

[00:19:26] Brett: Yeah. Who knows

[00:19:27] Christina: I mean, I liked it either way, but, but uh, I mean I’m with you. I would

[00:19:31] Brett: man? No spoilers, but those pants

[00:19:34] Christina: The past were really good. Um, the Emmys were on Sunday. Uh, no one watched them. Um, but, uh, but Ted lasso did like completely clean up at the Emmy’s, which was great.

[00:19:45] Brett: makes sense to me.

[00:19:46] Christina: Me too. me.

[00:19:47] too, but Brett Goldstein. Um, who’s Roy Kent one, um, the, uh, um, uh, um, Hannah what’s her face, um, uh, I can’t think of [00:20:00] the character’s first name right now.

[00:20:01] Uh, but, but, uh, um, she won for, uh, for best actress in a comedy, which was a very competitive category. Uh, and, um, w which was pretty great. Obviously, Jason Sudeikis won at won best comedy, so it, it, it cleaned up, which I was very, very happy about.

[00:20:20] Brett: Speaking of cleaning up. Well, not my best transition, but yeah, no, that was such a horrible segue. I, I got gotta, I’m going to put off the sponsor, read for another, another segment because I got to come up with a better segue. That just was not up to my standard.

[00:20:41] Christina: This wasn’t up to Bret standards and, and honestly that’s been kind of like a, a trademark of how good we are. Yeah. And I see, I see, uh, what the, who the sponsor is right now, and I see where you were going, but that didn’t quite work.

[00:20:54] Is there a name for that thing where there’s a camera in your face and you totally freeze?

[00:20:54] Brett: Nope. It was too much of a walk. So I, so I’m doing virtual Maxik, I’m a [00:21:00] speaker at virtual max doc. I think we talked about that.

[00:21:02] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. we talked about like, we talked, I think that.

[00:21:05] uh, cause you’re going to talk about button.

[00:21:06] Brett: Yeah. And I got all this new equipment for video recording at work, and I decided I would use my new setup to create my Mac stock talk. And in the process, like train myself on all this new heart.

[00:21:21] Christina: Right.

[00:21:22] Brett: It is hard. So a like, I’m, I’m pretty good at it. I’m pretty comfortable podcasting talking a whole different story.

[00:21:30] When I have a camera pointed at my face. Oh, it’s like when I first sat down to podcasts, as soon as the mic was in front of my face, I would get like frozen. And I worked through that. I’m good at that now, but it repeated when it was a camera, like, and I’m good behind the camera. I have a lot of experience filming.

[00:21:50] I’ve just not an, I don’t have experience being an on-camera personality that and figuring out like this [00:22:00] camera has it. Doesn’t once you hook up the HDMR out, the autofocus falls asleep.

[00:22:08] Christina: Oh, that sucks.

[00:22:10] Brett: unless if it’s recording, it has great autofocus with a whole bunch of different. But as soon as you hook it up to HTMI out and start capturing your computer, it stops autofocusing.

[00:22:22] And like, I, I don’t know yet how to solve it, but for just sitting, talking head stuff, I figured out how to just lock it.

[00:22:32] Christina: And this is, this is the El Gato, right?

[00:22:35] Brett: It’s no, no, no, no, no, no. It’s the, the Lumix, the Panasonic Lumix G seven,

[00:22:41] Christina: oh, got it. Okay. there, there, has to be a second. I don’t know on the Panasonics, but there has to be a setting. I would, I would search, um, I would,

[00:22:51] Brett: there,

[00:22:51] Christina: I would look at Twitch streamers. Yeah. I was going to say, I would try to figure out what Twitch streamers have done, because they’re the ones who you want to

[00:22:58] Brett: Yeah. If you, [00:23:00] if you look through YouTube for a continuous auto-focus while streaming with the , like you can find some tips. None of them are perfect. This is not as good as streaming camera. As the reviews led me to believe.

[00:23:16] Christina: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think that that’s the weird thing because there are, depending on, I mean, that’s one of the reasons I got the Sony, um, is, uh, Because those do work really well. At least the one that I have, and I think most of them in general, like the autofocus and it has really good. Autofocus where it actually, like you can set, like what figure you want it to track.

[00:23:41] And even if I moved behind something, like it’ll automatically, you know, focus in and, and, and, and change like the, the focal point and it could be Boca. So like, if I go behind my mic or whatever, it’s funny, um, it, you know, it’ll, it’ll sometimes like focus in on it’ll struggle a little bit, but, um, uh, the Sonys work well, but yeah.

[00:23:59] Um, I, I [00:24:00] would like figure out like, whatever, like the YouTubers are doing, but yeah, cause that’s, that’s going to be a challenge

[00:24:05] Brett: I figure out how to return this and try a different brand. Or I ask Oracle if I can sell it use and just buy my own camera. But.

[00:24:17] Christina: Yeah, no, I mean, that, that’s an option too. I would say if that this doesn’t seem like it’s going to be ideal for you. I would definitely say if, if the El Gato face camera, whatever is not sufficient, I would highly recommend a Sony camera. Uh, you could get like, um, cause you don’t need a 4k one, so you could get either a used or even like, like a new, um, like a, an a like, uh, like, like 5,000 series.

[00:24:40] And it would be very, very good and it would have you know, good autofocus stuff plus, um, you can, you know, um, like I use a cam link, but I think the Sony software now at this point even has a thing where you could just connect it over USB and, and like

[00:24:56] Brett: like cam link circle.

[00:24:58] Christina: Uh, Kelly’s are awesome. Yeah, exactly. I’m just [00:25:00] saying, I think that the now, because of the pandemic and stuff, uh, a number of the companies, Sony and Canon both, um, you know, had to introduce that stuff.

[00:25:07] I’m sure that Canon stuff is good too. I just, for this sort of stuff, I’ve had a lot of success with the Sony’s.

[00:25:14] Brett: So like the first day I sat down and I got my script all exported and into the pad caster and I had everything set up and I got it rolling. And I recorded a half an hour of video with a couple of retakes. At the end of the day, I finally looked at my dailies, like I didn’t, until that point and realized I didn’t turn the microphone on, on the

[00:25:38] Christina: Oh God.

[00:25:39] Brett: So I had a whole bunch of video with zero audio and I was done. Like I was too tired to like record. So the next day.

[00:25:48] Christina: at that point, you’re just pissed

[00:25:49] Brett: Yeah, the morale was, it was too much of a hit. So the next day I sit down fresh. I make sure everything’s working. I record a five minute test segment. Double-check my, my output. [00:26:00] And I get rolling.

[00:26:02] But the combination of just feeling like, oh my God, I’ve already done this. And, uh, and just being overall tired by about halfway through it, it became impossible for me to make like happy facial expressions. And like my face just went dead pen and I could not make myself smile. I could not like, I can’t imagine being an actor who has to just repeatedly do takes of a scene.

[00:26:31] Like I, I get so tired of it. I’m not, I’m not, I need practice. I, I can get better at this. I’m sure I can.

[00:26:39] Christina: No, you’re going to do great in, in, Yeah,

[00:26:40] You’re going to get practiced, but I’m actually really proud of you for figuring out that this is a difficult thing and like a different skill set, because there are so many people that I work with who it, it, it took, you know, some of the pandemic 17. Who honestly, sometimes they would.

[00:26:57] And I would hear them kind of make comments about [00:27:00] me, um, either see my face or, or, or behind my back and in ways that were, there were kind of like, I’m not, I’m not gonna lie. I kind of like half nagging, half kind of, kind of shitty, to be honest, where they would kind of make assumptions about how easy all the on-camera stuff that I do is.

[00:27:15] And I’m like, because most of the people that I work with are very, very good public speakers and it’s different speaking in public versus speaking on camera. It just is like, I’m a better on camera speaker than I am a live speaker, although I’ve gotten good at being live. Uh, I I’m, I just have more experience being on camera.

[00:27:34] So even if I’m live on camera, I’m better at that for a weird reason than I am in front of a crowd, but there, there are different experiences and people who would be really good in one context or would like you have experience with the audio would just be very awkward and not great. And.

[00:27:52] Brett: It’s weird too, because like, I’m actually a pretty good public speaker. Like I I’ve spoken on stage at [00:28:00] Macworld multiple or yeah. Macworld and max stock. And like I can in front of a crowd I’m okay. It’s when I’m in front of just the camera and nobody else is there that I freeze and I jump same with podcasting.

[00:28:15] Like, I don’t know if I get getting my head, like how many people are going to see this and then it, like, I get perfectionist about it. I think when I’m, when I’m talking about like right now, uh, like I can make mistakes, I can backtrack on stuff. I want my video though, to not be full of stutters and pauses and, and backtracking.

[00:28:37] So that gets in my head. And then I get scared to say anything.

[00:28:44] Christina: No in practice will do it for me. And obviously you. Do this, because it’s just not the way, uh, the world works. But for me, I have to say it was incredibly useful because I’m, I’m in an interesting situation where it’s [00:29:00] weird. I in live things, I will have my ums and setters and stuff like that. But if I see a camera on, I’m usually pretty good, even more than just a microphone or even being with somebody I’m usually like my mind goes into a certain frame and I’m usually much better about that stuff.

[00:29:16] Whether I have a script or not. Although a lot of times for things like this, I do try to have a script and try to do to teleprompter and whatnot. And I think it’s because of all the live TV hits I used to do, because that was a terrifying, especially when I started doing it. And B I early on, uh, mashville was very briefly, we had like a kind of a short-term contract with them, the PR agency.

[00:29:42] Because this was right when mashville was starting to kind of grow this before we raised money, but it was when the company was starting to grow. This was like 2011. I want to say. And, you know, hired like its own CTO and took all of our ad sales in house and was really making a push to be like, okay, we’re doing this thing.

[00:29:59] Like, [00:30:00] this is not just like, uh, you know, a teenager in Scotland’s blog anymore. Like this is a real fucking business. And I had just moved to New York and we had this, this Edelman contract. And so they brought some of us in for media training and they continue to do media training. But at That point it was then done by like the in-house people who are not like the 30 year vets, like one of the guys who did my media training used to be the comms person for Mario Cuomo, the, the, you know, um, deceased father, but, but you know, former, like three-time governor of New York, uh, you know, father of a, of Chris and. one. who just got impeached and Yeah,

[00:30:42] that one, you know, it was, but he, he was like his comms guy and, and then worked at Edelman for a long time. And I, it was honestly the most instructive thing in one of the most instructive days I’ve ever had in my life where they gave us a, a lot of really good, like as a [00:31:00] group, a lot of really good.

[00:31:02] I guess tips on how to be interviewed. And that was interesting because in that case, they were basically like telling us how to avoid answering difficult questions and how to phrase things the right way and whatnot. The reason that was so useful, not that I get asked that stuff that often, and although it is sometimes useful and in Microsoft contexts now, but because it’s a journalist, I then knew the tells to pick up on when people would want to evade questions.

[00:31:26] One would want to use weasel words and sentences. So I could reverse engineer how to interview people. And I was like, oh my God, you don’t even know what you’ve done. You’ve actually just made your job more difficult because now I know exactly what to listen for. And I would use it all the time. I could like totally pick up on the cues and be like, oh, okay, well, I know what they’re saying here, so I can rephrase this.

[00:31:44] Or I can come at this from a different angle and get them off their guard and get them to say stuff they don’t want to say. But then the most useful thing, because it was, I, I just moved to New York. And, um, I might’ve told this story before, but I’ll tell it again. So for [00:32:00] context, I lived in Atlanta my entire life, and I’ve been trying to break into the CNN on air rocket, and I hadn’t made any traction, which look fair.

[00:32:09] Right? Like they, there are lots of people, especially then, you know, I was, I was young and, and, you know, Mashable was hardly super well known at the time. It’s not like I was expecting to get punditry spots on TV. However, it would have been nice. But, uh, I, you know, I lived in Atlanta my whole life where CNN is, and I’d really wanted to break into that racket.

[00:32:30] Didn’t happen literally my second day in New York. I get a phone call from a four oh four number and it was CNN in Atlanta and they wanted somebody to talk about, uh, some sort of apple story. There was some sort of privacy thing going on and they needed somebody to talk about it. And I said, well, you know, I’m not in Atlanta anymore, but I am in New York.

[00:32:49] And they said, Okay.

[00:32:50] cool. So we’ll send a car, we’ll take you down to the state, to the studio and you’ll do your hit. I’d never done live TV before. So I do my hit. They were really impressed. And, and [00:33:00] I joked, I was like, if I knew I had to move, you know, uh, 800 miles away to talk via, you know, satellite to someone in Atlanta.

[00:33:07] Cause at the time they still had most of the anchors in Atlanta at this point, all the anchors are in New York, but at the time they still had a lot of the anchors in Atlanta. If I was like, if I knew this, you know, I, I would’ve moved ages ago, but the, that I did the hit, it went really well. And then they liked me so much.

[00:33:22] They called me back that same day to come back and do a segment on a different program. And then they called me back twice more that week. And so it was a week later, I’m in this, this, you know, day long media training thing. And we got a thing from Anderson Cooper and they wanted me to come on for prime time.

[00:33:43] And that was a big deal. Right? Like I went on like, you know, like Anderson Cooper, prime time, 8:00 PM. And so. In that case, like I had to buy a shirt from J crew because at the time CNN was in the time Warner center. Well, because I was wearing like, it was a nice hoodie, but I was [00:34:00] wearing a hoodie. I didn’t know I was going to be on TV that day.

[00:34:02] And, and they, the, the requests literally came in that day that they were doing the training. And so, uh, let’s say it was funny cause there was a J crew in the time Warner center, which is where CNN was at the time. Now they’re in, in Columbus circle now they’re on another location. Uh, but uh, I had to run into J crew and I like found a shirt that I thought was going to fit.

[00:34:19] And I was like, Hey, I need to wear this out. Cause I’m about to go on CNN. And, and, and the, the staff, they were, they couldn’t have been nicer, but it was really, it was really funny, but what they did, and this was the most helpful thing. And I don’t know if this will help you or not. It might be something that makes you go crazy.

[00:34:34] But it was so useful. We did mock interviews and they recorded me and then they played it back. And actually, even when we were doing the just test interview stuff, they would stop me every time I would pause or say, um, or anything. And they would interrupt me immediately, but they also recorded me and then made me watch back and would pause every time I did something that wasn’t right and pointed it out to me.[00:35:00]

[00:35:00] And it was incredibly painful, but it was the best fucking like experience I’ve ever had. I got so much out of

[00:35:07] Brett: There’s an episode of community where Pierce is trying to teach. What’s her name? The black woman. I’m trying to teach her surely trying to teach Shirley public speaking. And he, every time she says, um, I can’t remember what he does, but he does something like just uncomfortably mean. And it sounds a lot like what you’re describing, but if it’s effective, then it’s the only time in community that Pierce did something.

[00:35:35] Right.

[00:35:36] Christina: No, it totally is. And it’s funny because I’ve seen that episode. I know what you’re talking about and no, I mean, it is, and it, but it was incredibly, incredibly effective. And for me, somebody who tries to think about things, analytically like you do, it was just like, okay, now I can know how to hack this.

[00:35:52] Like, like my approach then becomes, okay, how can I make this better? But for whatever reason, I got into the sense and you know, [00:36:00] you’re the same way. Like we’re, we’re good public speakers and, and we, you know, can build up energy and people and whatnot. But I kind of go into this weird mode now where if I see a kid.

[00:36:11] A, my energy can come up, be I have like a different way of speaking and pasting. Like I know what to do. And I have like a different approach. Part of that though. A lot of that came from not just that first, you know, in, in, in depth, like hands-on media training thing, although that was really helpful. A lot of it was practice because I would know.

[00:36:31] After I did the hit usually, but went well over it. Didn’t and I would watch myself over and over and over and over again. And I still do. And I’m usually like completely aware of exactly how much I fucked up or didn’t fuck up. And, and that can be painful. But I spiced to say, I went on too long about this, but it’s as to say, you’ll get there and it just takes practice.

[00:36:51] And the one only thing I would say to you is don’t be too precious and too hard on yourself about having everything be perfect. [00:37:00] Obv