How to build community in an isolated job (w/ Curtis Sittenfeld) (Transcript)

[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
Well, hello, Frances.

[00:00:01] Frances Frei:
Hi beautiful.

[00:00:01] Anne Morriss:
I want to talk about all of the needs we meet at work because the list is longer than simply our financial needs.

[00:00:11] Frances Frei:
Oh, yeah. What are the needs? It's intellectual engagement, curiosity, creativity, learning how to be play well with others, being kind, all kinds of needs.

[00:00:23] Anne Morriss:
Novelty, connection. I think the list is actually quite long. And I think that one of the experiences when… we’ve all been having over the last couple years between pandemic living and new work-from-anywhere arrangements, do at any time. I think part of what's happening in all of this really interesting churn is that that list is getting revealed to us.

[00:00:53] Frances Frei:
Yeah. I used to casually interact with so many people, the water cooler, all, all of that.

[00:00:58] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:00:58] Frances Frei:
Like I couldn't go anywhere. In fact, I would sometimes take routes where I would be less likely to interact with people. There were so many. There were so many people, uh, around.

[00:01:08] Anne Morriss:
But even you, you know?

[00:01:10]. Frances Frei:
Even me.

[00:01:10] Anne Morriss:
A, a, a, a proud self described introvert. I think half of the stories you would bring home from work to me happened at the, at the, what's the, the lunch cart.

[00:01:22] Frances Frei:
Oh, the coffee cart downstairs, the place where you'll find out if you got fired when your I. D. Swipe no works.

[00:01:26] Anne Morriss:
The coffee cart. Yeah. Um, so what? I mean, I'm really excited to get into this with our next caller because of the specific experience of her life, which has been, uh, unambiguously extraordinary. I think she's in a really interesting place confronting this truth that there is a need of hers that cannot be met in the workplace as she's currently designed it.

[00:01:51] Frances Frei:
Awesome.

[00:02:00] Anne Morriss:
I’m Anne Morriss. I'm a company builder and leadership coach.

[00:02:04] Frances Frei:
And I’m Frances Frei. I'm a professor at the Harvard Business School. And I'm Anne's wife.

[00:02:08] Anne Morriss:
And this is Fixable from the TED Audio Collective. On this show, we believe that meaningful change happens fast, anything is fixable, and good solutions are usually just a single brave conversation away.

[00:02:21] Frances Frei:
Who are we talking to today Anne?

[00:02:22] Anne Morriss:
Oh, Frances, today we have a very special guest, a dear, dear friend of mine. I think my earliest friend, actually, who also happens to be the best selling novelist Curtis Sittenfeld.

[00:02:37] Frances Frei:
This sparks so much joy. Any Sittenfeld sparks joy, and this is gonna be so fun with Curtis.

[00:02:44] Anne Morriss:
Curtis and I grew up together in Cincinnati, right across the street from each other. And she is now the author of eight incredible books, including Rodham, Prep, her first one, which was a runaway bestseller, and her latest, out in 2023, which is Romantic Comedy.

[00:03:04] Frances Frei:
And my favorite thing about Curtis's books is that you often have an appearance in them.

[00:03:10] Anne Morriss:
Yes. Um, I like to think of myself as her, her first muse, uh, if not her best. And she's coming on today because despite her incredible success or, or maybe because of it, she's feeling some tension between what her work requires and what she wants to feel walking around the world as a fully integrated human. So I'm really excited to get into this with her. It's something I think about all the time, and we think about a lot of the time, surprisingly, even though our focus is squarely in the workplace.

[00:03:46] Frances Frei:
Yeah, I, and I love this “what do you feel”. There's so many emotions that, um, that when we feel and when we, when we think about how do we optimize on those emotions. So I look forward to finding which emotion it is that, uh, Curtis wants to feel more of.

[BREAK] [00:04:13] Anne Morriss:
Curtis Sittenfeld, welcome to Fixable.

[00:04:15] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Annie and Frances, thank you so much for having us. This is my dream come true.

[00:04:22] Anne Morriss:
I was trying to think of an efficient way to describe our friendship. W-what I came up with was that I literally can't remember my life before we were friends.

[00:04:35] Curtis Sittenfeld:
That’s true. Yeah. I think we met in the summer of 1978, when we were both two, about to turn three. So, you and your mother and your brothers moved from, from St. Louis to Cincinnati where your mother had grown up. Somehow your moving truck couldn't or wouldn't cross some bridge. So you get to your house, and there's no furniture, and there's no furniture for like a few days. And we have a fold-up bed. And so we, like, collectively, you, your mom, and your brothers, me, my mom, and my older sister, we all wheel the bed across the street, which I think that must have been one of the most exciting things that had ever happened in my life. Up to that point. Maybe still.

Um, and then I think we somehow all get the bed inside and I think that your brothers then kind of jump on it and I was like, “Those are very wild boys,” but I was like, “I think I want to be friends with that girl.” Does that, is this consistent with your…?

[00:05:34] Anne Morriss:
Yes, it lines up very well. I think what the moving truck couldn't cross was actually a picket line.

[00:05:41] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Oh, oh.

[00:05:41] Anne Morriss:
So I think there was a trucking strike happening at the time. So, my mother who had just lost her husband. My father had died in the, in the previous six months, showed up in this new house with three kids under the age of seven, and there was no furniture.

[00:06:01] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah.

[00:06:01] Anne Morriss:
And so I remember looking out the window. And from this empty house looking out the window, and this family was crossing the street and there was this little girl who looked like she might be my age trailing behind and, uh, destiny took hold from there.

[00:06:18] Curtis Sittenfeld:
And then we spent like, yeah.

[00:06:18] Anne Morriss:
But I do remember thinking like, okay, this is maybe not gonna be so bad in this scary new place.

[00:06:25] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Awww. Oh, that's so sweet.

[00:06:26] Frances Frei:
Day one you meet Curtis Sittenfeld. That's pretty good. Pretty good.

[00:06:31] Anne Morriss:
That’s pretty good.

[00:06:32] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Um, but, yeah, and then, you know, we proceeded to spend seven million hours, like, eating Cool Ranch Doritos in your attic.

[00:06:41] Anne Morriss:
We did eat a lot of Doritos. We watched a lot of Days of Our Lives.

[00:06:45] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

[00:06:47] Anne Morriss:
But pretty early on in the trajectory of the friendship, you started writing stories. And so, it was...

[00:06:55] Curtis Sittenfeld:
About you.

[00:06:56] Anne Morriss:
Oh. Well, I, you know, I wasn't gonna bring it up. Uh, but you started churning out stories at, I think, to my eight year old brain, at an astonishing pace. And so, this idea that you are now, a, like, world famous literary rock star makes a ton of sense, uh, to little Annie.

[00:07:17] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Ha!

[00:07:17] Anne Morriss:
Um, and... So just to, like, establish, uh, the fact pattern here, you're, like, five or six New York Times bestsellers in? Is, is… Am I counting correctly?

[00:07:31] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Um, that's an interesting thing to count. I have, I've written eight books. That's how I count.

[00:07:37] Anne Morriss:
Well, we're a little competitive on this, on this side of the screen.

[00:07:41] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:07:41] Anne Morriss:
Um, so this is a show about work, and I'm curious if you remember making a decision that writing was gonna be your life's work?

[00:07:53] Curtis Sittenfeld:
I mean, I don't think that I realistically anticipated that I would be a novelist and that that would be my job. I think I probably thought or hoped that writing fiction would be at the center of my life. And I went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and got an MFA. I mean, it is truly, like, a very privileged position to be a full time fiction writer, and most people are also, um, you know, maybe they teach creative writing at college, or they, or they're English teachers, or they're journalists, or I have many friends who have, like, successful, acclaimed books and do essentially more kind of like gig based, like maybe they help quote-unquote “coach” college applicants as they write their essays, or maybe they do tutoring, or maybe they…

[00:08:42] Anne Morriss:
Quote-unquote “Coach.” It’s, it’s a, it's a brutal marketplace.

[00:08:47] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so it's, so, um, I, I actually worked at a business magazine. I worked at Fast Company magazine in the late 90s, um, which I think kind of affirmed to me that, like, I was an English major. Like, like, I think they were like, “We’ll have you do the colorful profiles of wacky people.”

Um, but, but yeah, so I don't, it's like, I always knew that writing fiction was very central to my life. I don't know that I thought I could build a career or probably I didn’t. There was a long time when I didn't even know how, what that looked like.

[00:09:19] Anne Morriss:
So let's start here. And then I want to back up a little for more context. But Curtis, what's the problem you want to tackle today?

[00:09:29] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Um, okay. I’m, I’m so glad you asked.

[laughter] [00:09:32] Curtis Sittenfeld:
So… Really. So, so I feel really lucky. I feel very grateful. I, I do think. So in, in, um, early 2020, like late 2019, early 2020, I think I was like, you know, I, I’ve been working from home, you know, b-by myself full time since 2005. So it had been like 15 years at that point.

Um, and I was like, I'm getting a little bored and restless. Like, I think I'm gonna make some changes and go out into the world and, rub, like, you know, rub shoulders with other people, which, of course...

[00:10:12] Anne Morriss:
You timed that very well.

[00:10:13] Curtis Sittenfeld:
I know, I know, I know. And then, of course, you know, there's this stretch of thinking, like, oh my God, like, if I, if I go to the grocery store and, you know, like, don't get sick or something, that's like a victory.

Um... But I do, it, I think sometimes I think that it took me 20 years to feel the thing that some people felt after like four days in lockdown, which is kind of like, I'm really isolated. And it's kind of complicated because, um, you know, you, you sort of go into this parallel universe writing fiction. And I think the same thing that allows me to be productive and have this career that I really value isolates me, which is that I, I literally spend a lot of time by myself. It's not like I'm so chatty because, because you're the first people I've interacted with today.

[00:11:15] Anne Morriss:
Great. So the target here is to resolve some of the tension around the isolation you're experiencing at work, and it does seem like the core activities of writing a novel are a solo sport. Are there any aspects of it that are less isolating, like working with your editor or sharing pages with your fellow writers?

[00:11:38] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yes, but for me, actually, let's say I write a 300 page book, show it. I might show like four pages to my editor to give her the flavor, but I probably wouldn't show it to her until the entire thing existed. I like to take it as far as I can take it before showing it to other people. So, so there is, that is a really valuable part of the process, but it's close to the end. And, and I could go two years without it.

[00:12:04] Anne Morriss:
And what about, uh, I just want to underscore you could go two years before that part of your work becomes a collective experience in any way.

[00:12:15] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah. I could go two years and I have friends, I have one friend who spent like 10 years writing a novel, I have another who spent 18 years writing a novel.

[00:12:23 Anne Morriss:
Oh my god.

[00:12:23] Curtis Sittenfeld:
So two years is nothing.

[00:12:24] Anne Morriss:
Alright, so this is not where we're gonna find community. Uh, um, and then what about kind of the writing adjacent aspects of your job where you are promoting the book? You are potentially, you know, responding to fans or mentoring other writers. Do those activities naturally bring you into contact with other humans? And are those activities energizing, uh, or meaningful to you?

[00:12:55] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yes. I mean, there's, I guess there's a few, those are sort of different categories. So I am, um, kind of in a few programs formally as a mentor. Um, and I do find that, you know, gratifying and interesting, and as with other workplaces, like I, I meet someone I wouldn't otherwise have met. I, and I can have that feeling, which I assume… I, I like that. I mean, that's, it's not like a daily thing. I think, I think my isolation and boredom are daily and, and not not daily.

Like, act—you know, the being a mentor is not daily. It's interesting. So if I do a book event that, that I am either wearing pajama-ish clothing during the work day and, and I'm like, you know, like to the naked eye, it would, it would look like I'm like having a sick day or whatever.

[00:13:50] Anne Morriss:
Right.

[00:13:50] Curtis Sittenfeld:
And then even though it's like a standard work day for me, or I'm in this very public professional mode and like, it's not like there's, there's something kind of strange about either, you know, like, being by myself, like, looking into the existential void, or being treated, you know, like a quasi-celebrity at events, it's like, it's like a kind of feast or famine situation that I think creates maybe a little, like, psychological imbalance or something.

[00:14:25] Anne Morriss:
Right. And that, that psychological imbalance that you feel on a regular basis… Um, is there an emotion that you associate with that?

[00:14:37] Curtis Sittenfeld:
I mean, maybe it's, it's like being on or being off, and I want some middle ground, like, I don't want to either be performing my, my, what I hope to be my most charismatic self, or I don't know, just like having super dirty hair—

[00:14:55] Anne Morriss:
Yeah,

[00:14:55] Curtis Sittenfeld:
And, you know, like eating salad with my hands.

[00:14:58] Anne Morris:
Yeah.

[00:14:58] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Like… Hypothetically.

[00:15:02] Anne Morriss:
Hypothetically. No, I feel the tension. It's super vivid. I feel the tension. Um, and what, what's the language you associate with the tension? It feels... bad. What else? How else would you describe that tension?

[00:15:14] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Um, like it just, it just feel, it feels sort of like, um, like I can manage both, but it feels like being overly visible or invisible.

[00:15:28] Frances Frei:
Yeah, that's nice.

[00:15:29] Anne Morriss:
Mm-hm. Which doesn't feel great. Um, I, I wanna, you know, I think this conversation is really, well, potentially interesting to our listeners, because in some ways, I feel like you are a messenger from the future because you've been thinking about this tension between work and isolation and community for decades. And the rest of us are like a couple years in as the workplace now evolves and we're all gonna be doing a lot more of wor—of our work separated, at least technically, from other human beings.

[00:16:05] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Well, so there, there is one, I think, major step that I have taken, um, which is in early 2023, three other writer friends and I started meeting every Monday at one o'clock for lunch.

And we t—we actually said we're gonna, we're gonna do a Google doc where we talk about, like, essentially our writing goals for the next month. It's really a joy, and it's not a writing group. It's not like, it's not—

[00:16:38] Frances Frei:
It’s a group of writers.

[00:16:39] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yes, exactly. We might show our writing to each other at some point, but in this moment, it might be like, somebody might even say, like, “I haven't been able to work because I'm switching, like, my bedroom and my home office, and I need to paint, then, the office, and then, but, but my goal is to be writing by next Thursday,” or something like that. So, and I, I actually think that has been a wonderful thing, sort of, professionally, socially. There is some form of light accountability, like, it's not, it's not like a deadline and no one cares, but you've, you've sort of spoken it into the world. And so you yourself know what your goal is.

[00:17:21] Anne Morriss:
I think that's awesome. And I think an awesome antidote to the isolation you were describing. My question is: how much of the problem did that solve?

[00:17:34] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Well, okay, I think, I think like having lunch every Monday with my friends solved the problem for Monday.

[laughter] [00:17:45] Curtis Sittenfeld:
There’s four other weekdays, but, and again, I feel confused because—

[00:17:49] Frances Frei:
Got it.

[00:17:49] Curtis Sittenfeld:
—if I overschedule things, then… You know, like I, I had a grad school friend who would talk about getting ready to get ready. And so it's like, if you have something at 10:15 in the morning, I might think, “Well, there's no point in actually trying to write three pages because by the time my hair dries, right, from, from the shower, like there's only 17 minutes.” So it's like, I, I don't, this is exactly like the essence of, of the problem or the confusion. ‘Cause I'm like, well, should I schedule lunch every day? Or would it be one, less special, and two, like I'll never finish another book.

[00:18:26] Anne Morriss:
Frances Frei, where are we?

[00:18:28] Frances Frei:
So, um, I, we often say that there are very few new problems. There's just a novel context.

[00:18:36] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Mm.

[00:18:38] Frances Frei:
And that's, so I would, I would put this in that category, which is what do you do when you're, you know, isolated by design.

[00:18:47] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah.

[00:18:47] Frances Frei:
That is, your work really is a solo practitioner. And in most organizations, if you, uh, are working in isolation, we want you to be less isolated in the work because there's a co-productive nature that would make the work better. Um, in your context, and I think this is a fun context, the co-productive nature would not make the work better. Your work is best when there is no co production.

And that's just an unusual, um, an unusual thing. But so, so if your work is the work where it's really, and I think it might be close, you said you've never written books about espionage, but you might have things most in common with spies.

[00:19:27] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Ha!

[00:19:29] Frances Frei:
Right.

[00:19:20] Anne Morriss:
Oh.

[00:19:30] Frances Frei:
Which is a very, and I'm a, I'm a rabid consumer of spy novels, but it's someone who it's also not a very co-productive nature. You're on your own, you're doing the things. And so what we know about that is that habits can, um, make you feel in control. The absence of habits can make you feel out of control. Otherwise we're gonna spend all our time thinking about the boundaries, and we will get nothing done.

[00:19:55] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Mm. Yes.

[00:19:55] Frances Frei:
So one of the thoughts I have, and I noticed you, and you, people can't see you, but you look to be in physically very good shape. And so I have to imagine that working out is part of the structure of your week. I don't know that for sure though, but that feels to me that that's probably plays the role of constraints. And so that is my question to you. Do you work out?

[00:20:19] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Well, I do. Um, thank, thank you for asking.

[00:20:22] Anne Morriss:
I mean… Let’s just pause on that. Ah. Take that in, Curtis Sittenfeld!

[00:20:26] Curtis Sittenfeld:
I just want to say. Both of you look great for all, for all the listeners out there. Um.. It’s true. Um, you're, you, you love them for their, you know, their brilliant [mumbling], but they're both so pretty, too.

[00:20:41] Anne Morriss:
Hello!

[00:20:41] Curtis Sittenfeld:
So, um, I actually take so many walks a day that I'm like my own dog or something, so like, I don't like vigorously, like, I don't do, like, CrossFit or something. But I do, I mean, I probably end up walking like, you know, close to two hours a day, which is also, I mean, tied to like, I have to get out of the house. It's that, you know…

[00:21:01] Anne Morriss:
Yeah, I am. I do wonder, uh, about, you know, scheduling this Monday moment. And what's the argument against scheduling some, some kind of similar moment on—

[00:21:17] Frances Frei:
Thursday.

[00:21:17] Anne Morriss:
Tuesday through, Tuesday through Friday?

[00:21:20] Frances Frei:
Start with Thursday.

[00:21:21] Anne Morriss:
And maybe, no, I'm going all the way baby.

[00:21:22] Frances Frei:
Wow. This is, this is our relationship.

[00:21:26] Anne Morriss:
And it may, and it may not be as ambitious as, you know, lunch out in the world with three other humans. But we name, the way we name exercise. Like a, a, a daily hygiene commitment. I almost feel like we, we call it something that's not cringy, which I'm not gonna come up with right now, but this daily community moment. And that's partly informed for me by my reaction to COVID, which was not a good one.

[00:21:59] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah.

[00:21:19] Anne Morriss:
And, uh, there were lots of lessons for me out of that moment, but one of them was how important it is to me from, uh, you know, like we can call it something poetic, like from a soul standpoint, or we can call it mental health or… but to be around other human beings and to feel connected to those other human beings and to feel connected to a community. And I heard Elizabeth Gilbert give an interview the other day. Uh, and the interviewer said something like, you know, how much time do you spend on, and I don’t, forget what the word was but essentially mental health, and her answer was 75 percent of her day.

[00:22:40] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:22:41] Anne Morriss:
And the, the takeaway for me was, what, what would 25 percent look like? And certainly part of that would be movement and exercise and being out in the world, but there would be another piece of that that is about community and connection and belonging. What's your reaction to the idea of, of a daily commitment, an intentional commitment to somehow, to that connection experience?

[00:23:08] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Um, it is interesting and I'm also interested in the whole, like Frances saying, "Maybe start with Thursday,” and you saying, "No, do Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.”

[00:23:17] Frances Frei:
Oh, yeah.

[00:23:17] Curtis Sittenfeld:
I mean, I do think it would be an interesting experiment, and, and again, I, I feel that confusion because I've, over the years I've like been like, oh, you know, there, there's an exercise class, but it meets at 10 o'clock or something and, and sometimes thinking like, that's such a bad time. Or this, so I used to say, even like in interviews, I would say meeting someone for lunch is sort of the destroyer of productivity. And I think I'm now at a point where I'm like, it’s, I’m okay with some of my productivity being destroyed because I, I want more of the human connection

[00:23:51] Anne Morriss:
And like Elizabeth Gilbert's productivity has not been destroyed.

[00:23:54] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Right. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:23:54] Anne Morriss:
I mean, that's the thing that was so provocative in the best sense from hearing her come up with the number 75% is that she, this is also an incredibly productive human in the world. And ambitious. Clearly.

[00:24:07] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But, but, but like, what should I do? What I, like…

[00:24:11] Anne Morriss:
Oh, now, then now.

[00:24:11] Frances Frei:
Now.

[00:24:11] Anne Morriss:
This is fun. Uh, this is like, you know, drink with a friend. You know, coffee with someone random who's a parent, uh, at the same school, uh, going for walks with another human being. Uh, you know, I, I get involved in other people's projects all the time.

[00:24:31] Frances Frei:
Oh my gosh. All the time. All the time. She’ll go off Saturday morning.

[00:24:32] Anne Morriss:
You know, like, ‘cause, ’cause I have like, I have a helpful posture. And so people are like, “Oh, I’m trying to start a business. You want…?” Um, yes!

[00:24:39] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Really?

[00:24:40] Frances Frei:
Oh yeah.

[00:24:40] Anne Morriss:
Yes. And so that's where I would say the, the experiment is being intentional and figuring out what's gonna work for you.

[00:24:48] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah.

[00:24:48] Anne Morriss:
But do it for two weeks. Every single day, just schedule this moment and see what happens. In the beginning, bring alcohol. That makes it easier!

[00:24:57] Frances Frei:
And it can range from alcohol, to exercise, to—

[00:25:04] Anne Morriss:
Yes! Food, no food, snacks.

[00:25:06] Frances Frei:
Morning, noon, night, it can be after dinner some days, it can be, um, late morning other days, like I think, uh, and experimenting with that.

[00:25:14] Anne Morriss:
Curtis, you were writing something down, which is very exciting to Fixable hosts. Are you willing to share what you wrote down?

[00:25:20] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Um, I wrote down “Two weeks, schedule it.” And then I wrote “alcohol,” comma, "different times.”

[laughter] [00:25:29] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Anytime afternoon. I, I, I… We’re women of a certain age. It's fair game.

[00:25:35] Curtis Sittenfeld:
And it could be anything from alcohol to tea.

[00:25:38] Anne Morriss:
Yes. Yes. The full spectrum of human experience is right there. Yeah.

[00:25:42] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:25:42] Anne Morriss:
Um, Curtis, let me ask you one other thing. Um, are there writers or artists, uh, who you admire, who you feel like have solved this, uh, problem in a way that's intriguing to you? And I'm just thinking of Ann Patchett and her Parnassus books.

[00:25:59] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Oh, that's an interesting, um… I mean, I'm sure there are writers, well, so this actually, this gets back to that the same thing again, that makes me lucky, makes me isolated, which is I am a full-time fiction writer, and so I've done a fair amount of volunteer work, and at times I've, I've felt kind of tension between almost like being my writer self as a volunteer and just being a human.

[00:26:27] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:26:27] Curtis Sittenfeld:
So it's like, like at one point there's a, um, there's like a, it's not exactly a food bank. It actually gives, um, food to people who are sick. And at, at one point, not extensively, but a little bit, I, like, drove and delivered meals as part—

[00:26:42] Frances Frei:
Meals on wheels or something. Yeah.

[00:26:43] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah, it's, it's, it’s, that’s not what it is, but it's, it's called Open Arms, but, um, in, in Minneapolis. Um, and, and so I was kind of like, like, on the one hand, it doesn't, you know, draw on, like, my writing skills to, to drop food off at, at sick people's, you know, homes or apartments. And then there's also the question of like, or I could write a check to that organization. And it's not, it's not necessarily an either or thing, but, but it's like, is it like, I don't, I guess I don't want to do something where I'm doing it as busy work or to, like, boost my own sense of self esteem. And it doesn’t really—

[00:27:17] Anne Morriss:
But I think the less we’re gonna push you to look through is, does it, is it meaningful to you.

[00:27:24] Frances Frei:
Yeah. Which is nourishing to you?

[00:27:25] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Like, uh, and does it help you feel more connected to the world, these parts of yourself that don't get expressed in a typical day in the life of Curtis?

[00:27:38] Frances Frei:
What I would liberate myself from if I were you is how can I do the most use to the humane society, whatever yours is. It's, that's not the calculus. This is for my nourishment. What would I selfishly want to do?

[00:27:53] Anne Morriss:
And I think this is part of the experiment you're gonna run. And I, I, I can't give up that word, Curtis, because I think it is figuring out what that metric is for you. Like, what is it that you wanna think or feel or do less of, uh, when this friction is resolved? And the experiment is to try something.

[00:28:15] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah, I think in a weird way, the most revelatory thing that you've said is saying, like, if I think about doing some kind of volunteer work or something, don't do what I feel like would, would objectively be, quote-unquote, the most useful or contribute the most, like, kind of think of it from a more nourishing or almost selfish perspective, which I've never thought about.

And I, I think, again, I do, we could, I, we do not need to go deeply down this path, but I think I sometimes feel guilt about, you know, my good fortune and almost think like, what do I do to balance it out? Which, which again, is a different question from—

[00:28:53] Frances Frei:
It's a different question.

[00:28:54] Anne Morriss:
It's a very important question.

[00:28:55] Frances Frei:
But totally separate.

[00:28:56] Anne Morriss:
A totally separate question.

[00:28:58] Curtis Sittenfeld:
A different podcast.

[00:29:00] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. No, like solving for impact.

[00:29:01] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Will I be punished for being lucky?

[00:29:05] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Solving for impact. That's a different conversation. Here, we want to solve for community.

[00:29:09] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah.

[00:29:09] Anne Morriss:
And, and, there, it may be that giving back in this way, it helps you do that as it helps countless other people. Myself included.

[00:29:20] Curtis Sittenfeld:
Yeah. Yeah. Um, this is so, I, I mean, I, I know that you are very good at what you do, both of you, but this is so interesting. Thank you.

[00:29:28] Anne Morriss:
We were so delighted to have you on the show, Curtis.

[00:29:32] Frances Frei:
Hahaha. Oh my gosh. So crazy delighted. So crazy delighted.

[00:29:49] Anne Morriss:
Well, Frances, that was fun.

[00:29:49] Frances Frei:
Oh, it was so fun. It was so fun.

[00:29:53] Anne Morriss:
You know, I keep coming back to this idea of Curtis as a messenger from the future because, as you said, she's in a unique context, but this is something that so many of us are struggling with in the pandemic era.

[00:30:09] Frances Frei:
Definitely. I think, and I think she's a beautiful messenger.

[00:30:12] Anne Morriss:
I thought one of the things that was interesting is that we're often having conversations on the show about how to get better at your job or have different outcomes at work. But this was more about what to do when things are going great. Things are going great for Curtis Sittenfeld. But there's a need that surfaces that you realize you're not meeting. So, Frances, what do you think, uh, are some takeaways for our audience from that?

[00:30:41] Frances Frei:
Yeah. So, you know, if, if I would put it then broadly from that frame into work life balance, and this is someone whose work is just fine. Killing it. Right? Killing it.

[00:30:49] Anne Morriss:
No, no. I think that's why it's a, a nice example, yeah.

[00:30:51] Frances Frei:
So that's this is a beautiful example. It's an extreme example. And we do a lot of learning at the extremes.

[00:30:56] Anne Morriss:
The, the world would prefer Curtis not to make any changes.

[00:31:00] Frances Frei:
Yes. No, she’s, she's killing it on the work side. Um, and is so successful at work that she doesn't have any need for additional social things. And I thought her point about that usually, you know, usually our work is co-productive, so we have to do social things, or our work is not financially sustaining, so we have to do other things. She needs neither of those things. And so what do you do when you have to have a deliberate design and intentionality about the balance?

[00:31:31] Anne Morriss:
I, I mean, I think mental health, the word is kind of a bummer of a word.

[00:31:39] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:31:39] Anne Morriss:
Uh, I almost want us to find a—

[00:31:40] Frances Frei:
It’d be great.

[00:31:41] Anne Morriss:
Even though a hundred percent, like, to be mentally healthy is in—

[00:31:46] Frances Frei:
No, it's just a little too literal. It's a little too literal.Yeah.

[00:31:48] Anne Morriss:
Right. But it’s a little, it’s a little too literal, I think, to, um… ‘Cause I want to bring some joy and lightness to that.

[00:31:54] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:31:54] Anne Morriss:
Because that is one of the payoffs here. But we are, I think, this version of American civilization has underscored, and of course the pandemic heightened all of this, but how core a human need this is.

[00:32:10] Frances Frei:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

[00:32:10] Anne Morriss:
But so many of us, like mid career, I think, in particular, um, are… uh, think about this category act of activities as an afterthought and we need to make it more central to our, our days and weeks and lives. And I think for most of us, there's a quite a, a, a beautiful, uh, cycle of, of, of feeling a deeper sense of community and connection than allowing us to show up and be more effective public humans as well. You know, we, we just, I mean, we just published a list of, you know, our 10, uh, 10, 10 underrated emotions in the workplace.

[00:32:56] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:32:56] Anne Morriss:
And fellowship, finding that community at work, which we call fellowship was a—

[00:33:01] Frances Frei:
Agh! This was an episode on fellowship!

[00:33:03] Anne Morriss:
—was, was, uh, you know, at the top of the list.

[00:33:07] Frances Frei:
Love it.

[00:33:07] Anne Morriss:
And I think, um, the, for most of us that there is huge opportunity in the workplace.

[00:33:15] Frances Frei:
Yeah.

[00:33:15] Anne Morriss:
I think, you know, for Curtis, she has to go out and find it.

[00:33:18] Frances Frei:
And be deliberate.

[00:33:19] Anne Morriss:
And be deliberate outside the workplace.

[00:33:24] Frances Frei:
Love it.

Thanks for listening. We would love to hear from you. If you want to figure out a workplace problem together, please send us a message. You can email fixable@ted.com or call us at 234 FIXABLE, that's 234 349 2253.

[00:33:47] Anne Morriss:
Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Anne Morriss. And me, Frances Frei. Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Grace Rubenstein, Sarah Nics, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, Banban Cheng, and Roxanne Hai Lash. This episode was mixed by Louis at StoryYard.

[00:34:10] Frances Frei:
If you're enjoying the show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And tell a friend to check us out.

[00:34:16] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing, if you can, please take a second to leave us a review. It really helps us make a great show.

[00:34:23] Frances Frei:
And it totally helps the search algorithm.