Fixable
Lola Bakare - "How do I balance what I want to do with what I NEED to do?"
May 29, 2023
[00:00:00] Anne Morriss:
It's an exciting day on Fixable, Frances. We are talking to our friend Lola Bakare, who we met on Clubhouse.
[00:00:08] Frances Frei:
Oh, I have such fond memories of Clubhouse.
[00:00:10] Anne Morriss:
Tell, remind me what, uh, what, what Clubhouse is, what you were doing there.
[00:00:17] Frances Frei:
Yeah, so Clubhouse is an audio-only platform. Um, I think it still exists, but in the pandemic, it was really a lifeline for so many of us. And I would host rooms, that's what it was called, uh, and teach a, a case, a Harvard Business School case. We'd have a case discussion every week. We'd have office hours every week where people come in and, and talk about their questions. Um, and Lola, uh, who I've never met in person and, but I know her voice so well, I can't wait to hear it again. Um, she was an, a student.
Well, I'm delighted that she's calling in because uh, she is. I want Lola to be more contagious in the world, and if there's a pebble in the way, I'd love for us to help sweep it outta the way.
[00:01:03] Anne Morriss:
Totally. Let's listen to our voicemail.
[00:01:07] Lola Bakare:
Hello Anne and Frances. I am an independent consultant. And my question for you is about this thing I like to call “shiny penny syndrome”. I have a lot of different projects going on. I have a lot of different clients that I work with. I have a lot of responsibilities. I have potential to be writing a book. I have articles that I could be writing.
I never really say no to much of anything that I'm interested in. I say no to things I don't want to do. A lot of times those are things I should be doing. So I'd love your help with figuring out how to get to a place where I can stay inspired and still feel passionate about what's going on in my day, but handle my responsibilities before I pick up any more shiny pennies.
[00:01:54] Anne Morriss:
Frances, what's your reaction?
[00:01:56] Frances Frei:
Uh, this is such a high-quality problem when there are shiny pennies everywhere, uh, to be picked up. And, and I, I think it's right when the newness, the shininess is so distracting and alluring and it makes the mundane bureaucracy of our life feel uninspiring. And so, how do we get, set the balance of doing the things that permit us to be doing things well while also getting the novelty of all of those beautiful shiny pennies? I look forward to it.
[BREAK]
[00:02:50] Anne Morriss:
So Lola, first of all, it's so exciting to see you and put your face to the voice and an actual human as opposed to a little icon on Clubhouse.
[00:03:01] Lola Bakare:
Isn't that exciting?
[00:03:02] Anne Morriss:
It’s super exciting. And hopefully, we'll send you off with an action plan that you're excited to go out and, and execute.
[00:03:11] Lola Bakare:
I can't wait. And you know what? I'm relying on both of you to get me the discipline I need. No pressure, but yes. We'll, well, well, dive in.
[00:03:21] Anne Morriss:
Well, let's, let's start with, um, the, let's start with your day job.
[00:03:25] Lola Bakare:
Okay.
[00:03:25] Anne Morriss:
So what is it, what is the work that pays the bills?
[00:03:29] Lola Bakare:
Yeah, so I call myself a CMO advisor. Um, long story short, I'm a marketer by trade. Started my career at PepsiCo on Gatorade brand as a marketing associate. And then worked various, um, marketing roles after MBA. Places like, like Dell, um, and the startup I was at most recently, the Daily Dot, which is a digital publisher.
Um, and in those roles, the, the place where I'd always been most effective was in sort of advising whoever it was that was, you know, um, my leader or my manager, or even my skip level. Sort of “What does Lola think?” was always like, “What would you do?” Not necessarily go do it, but what would you do?
[00:04:12] Anne Morriss:
And what are you advise—I'm a CMO of a company. What are you advising me on?
[00:04:15] Lola Bakare:
A big one is who to hire for a project from a creative agency standpoint.
[00:04:20] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:04:20] Frances Frei:
Oh yeah.
[00:04:21] Anne Morriss:
So much talent out there.
[00:04:22] Lola Bakare:
How to evaluate the potential talent. Right? What should I be thinking about? And then, maybe even more importantly, how to evaluate the work. Is this campaign going to move the needle or isn't it? I need another opinion that I can trust, um, but that doesn't have competing priorities to mine. So it's that sort of like external perspective. Um, a right hand to the crown, if you will. Um, that, that I, that I can serve.
[00:04:52] Anne Morriss:
I will. Yeah, I definitely will. And, and so Lola, we listened to your voicemail. What's getting in the way? What inspired you to come have this conversation today?
[00:05:02] Lola Bakare:
Yeah, so, so what's getting in the way is I, I talked about the idea that I like to be in that moment of almost urgent response, but I also like to teach, and I, and I'm developing this thought leadership platform around responsible marketing.
Um, I've come to a point in this entrepreneurial journey, which I think a lot of people probably experience, where I need a new level of discipline and self-direction in order to accomplish everything I'm trying to do. We talked about a book project being part of that, meeting those deadlines of “This is the day where you have to have these chapters in”.
Like that just involves an ability to say no to a lot of things that might come up and be more interesting or exciting or, you know, evoking that, that desire to respond, um, and, and do something that has sort of an immediate impact. So that's what I'm, I'm struggling with. It’s sort of tabling my gravitation towards the shiny pennies of it all and focusing on the things I've decided to do alone.
[00:06:07] Anne Morriss:
And, and what, what's on the, when we solve this problem on this call, what’s the payoff? When you get to the top of this mountain, what’s waiting for you?
[00:06:16] Lola Bakare:
I think at the top of this mountain, I miss way fewer deadlines. You know, I change way fewer things around. I reschedule way fewer meetings, you know? Um, and I'm a lot slower to say yes than I think I currently am. Yeah, it's, it's just a more calm sort of existence.
[00:06:42] Anne Morriss:
Great.
[00:06:42] Lola Bakare:
Which also sounds weird. I'm like, “Do I want that?” I don’t know, like, that sounds kind of scary, but it, it does feel like where I need to evolve to just to be more of a sustainable human.
[00:06:54] Anne Morriss:
If we were gonna just observe the, the behavior that we've labeled, like, shiny penny syndrome, um, but just observe it, not, not judge it, not label it good or bad. What do you think, um, what do you think the need is that the shiny pennies meet?
[00:07:17] Lola Bakare:
Wow. Um, stimulus again, sort of like that feeling of being turned on, like, “Oh, wow. This is exciting.” It's almost like I'm jarred into a place of flow and there's an enjoyment in that. Uh—
[00:07:32] Anne Morriss:
Totally. Learning, stimulation, growth.
[00:07:36] Frances Frei:
Unexpected.
[00:07:37] Anne Morriss:
Variety.
[00:07:38] Lola Bakare:
Yes. Which is—
[00:07:39] Frances Frei:
Variety. Yeah.
[00:07:40] Anne Morriss:
Which is a human need, Frances Frei.
[00:07:42] Frances Frei:
I, I don’t have it. I like the same thing every day.
[00:07:47] Lola Bakare:
Oh really? Okay. Yeah.
[00:07:48] Frances Frei:
I wear the same thing. I eat the same thing. My wife loves variety. I love homogeneity.
[00:07:53] Lola Bakare:
I'm much more a variety person.
[00:07:57] Anne Morriss:
I’m trying not to project Lola, which is not easy for me ‘cause I identify strongly with this. But is it an overstatement to say a sense of aliveness?
[00:08:06] Lola Bakare:
Yes. No, it's not an overstatement. That's very accurate.
[00:08:11] Anne Morriss:
So do you think it's fair to say that some parts of you are a little uncomfortable with the path you're on, but some parts of you are living their best life?
[00:08:23] Lola Bakare:
Well, that's, yeah. No, a lot of parts of me are living my best life. Like it, it’s, um, sometimes it feels like a weird disconnect between the should and the desire. So like, there’s still a part of me that feels like I should be in a very, um, stable is the wrong word, but—
[00:08:44] Frances Frei:
Traditional, perhaps.
[00:08:45] Lola Bakare:
Traditional.
[00:08:45] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:46] Lola Bakare:
Corporate role, you know, climbing the ranks and, um, having that title and being associated with the brand that everybody knows. Um, but there's so much more excitement to doing my own thing, you know?
Um, and especially now that I've been getting some recognition for it that is mainstream—
[00:09:07] Anne Morriss:
Yep.
[00:09:07] Lola Bakare:
It feels like the best of both worlds. And I guess that's what scares me most is sort of like, how do you make sure this trajectory keeps going and, and not allow some of the sides of you that can be more scattered to get in the way of the continued ascension.
[00:09:25] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:09:25] Lola Bakare:
Like, I know I'm gonna finish the book, but I'm scared about the fact that I might not. And I'm like, I'm, I can say both those things in one sentence.
[00:09:36] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:09:36] Anne Morriss:
I, I wanna follow up on that, but I just have a clarifying question about the should and the, this internal critic. She’s a little judgey, this internal voice.
[00:09:46] Lola Bakare:
Oh yeah. Oh my goodness. What a little, a lot. It's sort of like, “You should be, you shouldn't need so much stimulation. Like you should be able to exist without the need for all of these different inputs.” But to your point, I don't know. Maybe I am over-judging it to some extent. Maybe there's a lack of acceptance, um, of just who I am and how I am that is part of why there's any internal struggle at all.
[00:10:19] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I'm curious about the part of you that's worried about the sustainability of this.
[00:10:26] Lola Bakare:
Yeah.
[00:10:26] Anne Morriss:
Because, um, I really wanna honor her. You know, I kind of wanna put the critic in the corner, but the, the part that's, that's a little anxious right now. Um, what do you think she needs to relax and just trust that you're gonna handle this?
[00:10:46] Lola Bakare:
Hmm, that's a good question. What does she need to relax? I think she needs to see progress.
[00:10:55] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:10:55] Lola Bakare:
So, like, the days I feel the best… It's, it's the days I've gotten the most done often too. Like, I had my list of things I wanted to accomplish. Um, you know, I wanted to respond to these four emails or whatever it is. I wanted to send that slide deck over to whoever it was promised to. I wanted to get that chapter to my editor and it, and it all happened. Or most of it happened.
[00:11:23] Anne Morriss:
Right. And then she can, she can sit down. This part, I just am deciding that it's a she. Might not be, but—
[00:11:28] Lola Bakare:
No, I think it's a she. She can sit down, she can relax.
[00:11:32] Anne Morriss:
Right.
[00:11:33] Lola Bakare:
She can have a glass of wine with her dad.
[00:11:35] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:11:35] Lola Bakare:
Not feel like she needs to like be doing something else. She can call that friend and have that hour conversation that's been being put off, you know? Um, but there, there are too many days that don't feel like that right now.
[00:11:48] Anne Morriss:
Right, right.
[00:11:49] Frances Frei:
I’d love to try a summary of the diagnostic and just, just whether or not I'm tracking correctly and I, um, to me it's, um, you are a victim, it's the wrong word, but you're a victim of the, your multi-competences. So because you can be so broadly helpful, you're gonna be, um, delivered more than you can do.
[00:12:20] Lola Bakare:
That, the way you just put that, and I've often thought about it like that almost as a sarcastic joke. Like, it's hard to be good at so many things, but you, I mean, you nailed it. I mean, and I, and I think a lot of immigrant kids, especially, I'll say it, Nigerian first-gen kids will relate to this. Like we're trained to be good at everything.
And if you're not good at something, well, I remember that being told to me in exact sense. You need to do what you need to do, even if it means you need to spend five hours to be good at it.
[00:12:52] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:12:52] Lola Bakare:
It’s not “Don't focus on that thing.” It was always per—master it. You can.
[00:12:58] Frances Frei:
So the, if I'm gonna summarize the diagnosis, it's what do you do when you could do so many things and now you have to make strategic choices.
[00:13:10] Anne Morriss:
Yes.
[00:13:10] Frances Frei:
And strategy is defined, in part, by what we say yes to, but it's really defined by what we say no to, right?
[00:13:14] Anne Morriss:
Yes.
[00:13:14] Frances Frei:
And that's what you are, um, uh, and what you are doing. So we're gonna figure out what's the right strategic choices, because in the absence of a clear-cut strategy, no idea is a bad idea.
And I fear you encounter that all day, every day, where wanna do this, you wanna do this, you wanna do this. And if there's not a strategy to say it, it's aligned or it's not aligned, it's just gonna be left to what my particular mood is at that time. So we wanna get to a world where there are some ideas that are bad ideas.
[00:13:47] Lola Bakare:
Yes.
[00:13:48] Frances Frei:
And we want the strategy to do that. So I think that's where I am on the diagnosis of it.
[00:13:52] Anne Morriss:
So if I were gonna add a little bit, um, more architecture to that. I think it's just a little bit more discipline around your process, and I think it's in this category of habit I'm gonna suggest and then we can debate. Um, I think it's around what you do in the morning hours before the world starts demanding your attention.
[00:14:25] Lola Bakare:
Oh, yeah.
[00:14:26] Anne Morriss:
Do you wanna just describe for your audience what that reaction was?
[00:14:28] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:14:29] Lola Bakare:
Um, that reaction was like, “I hope they don't ask me to say, because it's not gonna sound good.”
[00:14:36] Anne Morriss:
Well, uh, well that's super intriguing for radio land. So tell us about your morning process.
[00:14:42] Lola Bakare:
It’s not any, it's not anything intentional at the moment. The average morning is me kind of waking up when I wake up, maybe it's between seven and eight, and I, the first thing I do is turn to my phone and scroll and I read, and I text, and I respond, and maybe I write a few posts, but it's just sort of like, do—responding to the moment.
[00:15:07] Anne Morriss:
And when, when is your writing self most present? Are you a morning writer, evening?
[00:15:15] Lola Bakare:
This is, I don't even know.
[00:15:16] Anne Morriss:
Or do you not know?
[00:15:17] Lola Bakare:
I don't know because I, because what I do know is that like, it’s… So much of it is about psyching myself into picking up the pen or—
[00:15:27] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:15:28] Lola Bakare:
The keyboard. Um, and so part of me would say, “Well, no, like late night is when I…” But like, often I think that's just when I finally psych myself into it.
[00:15:39] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:15:39] Lola Bakare:
And I know, ‘cause I've done morning pages before. I've had periods of, of doing that practice. Um, and everyone's not familiar. It's when you write three pages of freehand, um, first thing in the morning when you wake up, literally before coffee or anything. Um, and it's amazing. It's an amazing practice. Um, The Artist's Way by—
[00:15:59] Anne Morriss:
Julia Cameron.
[00:16:00] Lola Bakare:
Yes.
[00:16:01] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. I see inspiration from that. Yeah.
[00:16:02] Lola Bakare:
Yeah. Um, so I will say I'm not a morning person writer. I just think maybe I haven't had the discipline to be.
[00:16:08] Anne Morriss:
Let me propose something just to get your reaction. A ritual for the next month. Uh, you wake up at seven. Maybe you check your email real quick or something just to make sure that you, you deal with whatever's happened overnight, but you spend an hour working on the book.
[00:16:29] Lola Bakare:
First thing.
[00:16:30] Anne Morriss:
First thing.
[00:16:32] Frances Frei:
You can have coffee beforehand, just to be super clear.
[00:16:33] Anne Morriss:
You have coffee. This is not… Yeah. This is not super precious. You can eat.
[00:16:37] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:16:38] Anne Morriss:
Like, but the first thing you actually do before the rest of the world wakes up and speed dials—
[00:16:44] Frances Frei:
And gets any of your beautiful mind.
[00:16:46] Anne Morriss:
And if it means you have to get up at six, maybe you get up at six, but before those calls start coming, you spend an hour on the book.
[00:16:53] Lola Bakare:
My authentic reaction is that would be smart. I don't know why it's so hard for me to say “Yes Anne. I will.”
[00:17:03] Anne Morriss:
Because it's hard for everyone. ‘Cause you know, ‘cause you're human. So it's also about tricking the brain into doing this.
[00:17:11] Lola Bakare:
How do you do that?
[00:17:13] Anne Morriss:
We’ll come up with a reward system. You'll text me. Um, because after you've done it—
[00:17:20] Frances Frei:
Every day?
[00:17:21] Anne Morriss:
After you've done it, I, I have like—
[00:17:21] Lola Bakare:
You just nailed, you nailed a part of me that that's real. That is real.
[00:17:24] Anne Morriss:
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:17:25] Lola Bakare:
I love being able to say, “Okay, I did it.”
[00:17:29] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:17:22] Lola Bakare:
You know what I mean? That’s interesting to me.
[00:17:31] Anne Morriss:
Totally. I have, right now, I have five people texting me in the morning when they get up and do the thing. Some of them are friends, some are people I'm coaching. Um, and you don't have to text me, text someone else, like just somebody to help hold you accountable.
[00:17:49] Lola Bakare:
And I have these people, this is the thing.
[00:17:51] Anne Morriss:
Yeah.
[00:17:51] Lola Bakare:
I think for me, yeah, it needs to start as a shorter period of time and it might even go longer, but I'm gonna say 30.
[00:17:59] Anne Morriss:
Great. Perfect.
[00:18:00] Lola Bakare:
That feels good to me.
[00:18:00] Anne Morriss:
That's a perfect start. And then, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you some bad news that there was a second part of this plan.
[00:18:07] Lola Bakare:
Okay.
[00:18:08] Anne Morriss:
That was essential to it. And which, which is that there has to be a daily movement practice.
[00:18:13] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:18:13] Anne Morriss:
But the only way to sustain it is it has to also spark joy, and like, an elliptical makes me wanna shoot myself.
[00:18:18] Frances Frei:
Oh gosh. Not an elliptical.
[00:18:20] Anne Morriss:
So it, it's like figuring out what is—
[00:18:21] Frances Frei:
It shouldn't exist.
[00:18:22] Anne Morriss:
What is the joy-sparking movement for you? So what is the, what would spark joy?
[00:18:28] Lola Bakare:
I, and I know it's pure, it's pure barre. This is my favorite exercise. But you have to go there and that's just so hard to like—
[00:18:36] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:18:37] Lola Bakare:
When you're in this place of responding, you know, but we're having this conversation like, I know these are the tools. I've experienced the transformation of them before. So it's like, if I know these things and I've done these things, why have I stopped? And like, why am I resisting going back to the toolkit that I know works?
[00:18:58] Anne Morriss:
But I'm gonna respectfully offer that I don't care.
[00:19:02] Lola Bakare:
Okay.
[00:19:02] Anne Morriss:
I don't care. I don't care. Like people, people stop all the time. We're human. Like, we fall down all the time. And you're in this conversation with us because you wanna get back up.
[00:19:16] Lola Bakare:
Yes. Yeah.
[00:19:16] Anne Morriss:
So that's super clear and that's the part of the story that I care about.
[00:19:21] Lola Bakare:
I love it.
[BREAK]
[00:19:41] Frances Frei:
Can I offer a—
[00:19:41] Anne Morriss:
Please.
[00:19:42] Frances Frei:
I'm gonna come at this from a slightly different way, Lola. Uh, and I will admit, I think you and Anne are very similar. I can't help but thinking you and I are very similar. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just speak to that side of, of you. So, um, to me, your, your schedule is one that is an always-on schedule, always-on, always responsive as opposed to scheduled time.
Like, I even watched your verbal reaction when Anne was saying, “Do the same thing at seven,” and it looked like she was asking you to hold cement blocks above your head. The, and so the flexibility to just do anything whenever you want and be always on versus the having any notion of structure—
[00:20:28] Anne Morriss:
I just want both of you to know. I'm talking about an hour of structure.
[00:20:31] Frances Frei:
I'm gonna get, I'm gonna get there, I'm gonna get there. Um, so the research that, um, uh, Leslie Perlow and others did, looked at teams that were always on and teams that had structure to them for when they were on. The teams that had structure to them outperformed the always-on teams in responsiveness, in excellence, in everything.
So I also have this, um, I need this freedom thing. Like, I respond, if somebody tells me I have to do something and it's scheduled, I feel like I'm holding a cement block over my head, and yet, I'm ridiculously ambitious. So I feel like I have figured out the minimum viable amount of structure in order to be ambitious.
And it's not, I don't get 24/7, um, uh, flexibility, but, oh goodness, is it a little bit. So to Anne's point that she's asking for an hour, here's the reason why the hour ask is actually a kindness to you. If you are like me, you're spending more than an hour a day thinking about not writing.
[00:21:46] Lola Bakare:
That's a huge understatement.
[00:21:49] Frances Frei:
You're gonna get
[00:21:50] Lola Bakare:
Yes.
[00:21:50] Frances Frei:
All of that time back. So this is actually gonna be—
[00:21:52] Lola Bakare:
Wow.
[00:21:52] Frances Frei:
That's the thing. And that's where the minimum viable amount is just what's the, what can we do to not do all of the other? And so you do it for 30 minutes and maybe it goes up to the max of 60 minutes and then you are liberated, truly liberated the rest of the day. That was you're gonna get the flexibility that you didn't even know you had before because you have shed all of that baggage.
[00:22:16] Lola Bakare:
So you're saying I get more of the thing I want, if I do a little bit of the thing I don't like.
[00:22:22] Frances Frei:
I, That’s exactly right.
[00:22:23] Lola Bakare:
Fascinating.
[00:22:23] Frances Frei:
And I don't, I mean, for all of it. Uh, exercise, writing, all of it, I don't think we're talking about more than two hours a day. So you're still gonna get 22 hours to do all of that stuff, but you will, it will be an unburdened and an unapologetic 22 hours.
[00:22:44] Anne Morriss:
And I, yeah, I think to your point, Frances. In your current existence, like by not making that two-hour investment, you're getting maybe four to six hours of, like, flow and focus because you have these parts yelling at you and demanding attention and distracting. But on the other side of that two-hour investment, you get like, 10 to 12 of those hours of—
[00:23:08] Frances Frei:
Ugh. That’s gonna be just glorious.
[00:23:08] Anne Morriss:
Of doing whatever the hell—
[00:23:09] Frances Frei:
Whatever you want.
[00:23:10] Anne Morriss:
—Lola wants to do. Chasing any shiny penny you want.
[00:23:13] Lola Bakare:
Ooh.
[00:23:13] Anne Morriss:
Shiny quarter. Shiny dollars. I, and I, Frances—
[00:23:19] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:23:19] Anne Morriss:
I'm loving your resistance to the word discipline.
[00:23:21] Frances Frei:
I am too. It's, it's the wrong word.
[00:23:23] Anne Morriss:
It’s two-hour practice.
[00:23:25] Lola Bakare:
You see my face when you said that? That is a, and that's a word. I've, oh, have I heard that word? Oh my goodness.
[00:23:31] Anne Morriss:
Great. What's a better, what's the word that’s—
[00:23:33] Lola Bakare:
The liberation is it.
[00:23:35] Anne Morriss:
Liberation.
[00:23:36] Lola Bakare:
I mean, one of my six values for my business, which I call be/co, um, is learning is liberty. I love that word.
[00:23:46] Frances Frei:
You already had it.
[00:23:47] Anne Morriss:
Let's call it your liberation practice.
[00:23:51] Lola Bakare:
That's something. This, I think I’m gonna do too.
[00:23:53] Anne Morriss:
So Lola, what are you gonna, first of all, did we make progress in this conversation?
[00:23:58] Lola Bakare:
We did. I mean, I, as you can see, I'm emotional right now because it feels so much more possible than at the beginning of this call. Coming into this call, I thought, “We'll have a good conversation, but you know, I'm not gonna change. I'm probably not gonna change anything, you know?” Now, it feels exciting somehow. I think you two are pretty magical.
[00:24:22] Anne Morriss:
Amazing. This was so fun for us.
[00:24:25] Frances Frei:
Delightful from our end.
[00:24:26] Lola Bakare:
Thank you so much.
[00:24:40] Anne Morriss:
First of all, I think I need to do a formal shout-out to Doctor—
[00:24:44] Frances Frei:
You sure do.
[00:24:44] Anne Morriss:
Dr. Richard Schwartz. Uh, we use the language of parts a lot in this call, and he is the brilliant mind behind a theory of human behavior called Internal Family Systems, which, um, is based on the idea of a multiple mind where we have, uh, lots of different sides of ourselves that, uh, not only show up for the world but also have to, uh, negotiate their relationships with each other. And it's, it's just a super powerful way into, uh, and understanding ourselves and sweetheart, the people around us. I’m… And you, like Lola, have parts that really like freedom.
[00:25:28] Frances Frei:
Oh yeah, I could. I just felt such kinship, um, there and I think, you know, 22 hours a day of freedom, well, it's not a trivial thing. It's actually better than 24 hours a day of freedom because I'm not carrying around all of the angst. And that was, that's the, been the counterintuitive part for me.
[00:25:50] Anne Morriss:
As your wife…
[00:25:53] Frances Frei:
There were so many words you could have said there.
[00:25:55] Anne Morriss:
I'm trying, I'm just trying to think of what's really worth sharing with our, our audience. Uh, but I have to say, I myself have experimented with, um, how much of that freedom I'm gonna ask for, um.
[00:26:08] Frances Frei:
Of, of me.
[00:26:08] Anne Morriss:
Of you.
[00:26:10] Frances Frei:
Yeah.
[00:26:10] Anne Morriss:
And I have also learned that too much is not great for you.
[00:26:15] Frances Frei:
Yeah, no, I think I—
[00:26:17] Anne Morriss:
Even though you will resist, you are, uh, a happier human with a little structure, even though it's counterintuitive.
[00:26:24] Frances Frei:
Uh, that’s exactly right. And, and if I get to put my optimization mind, I'm, I can optimize higher if I don't have 24 hours of freedom.
[00:26:36] Anne Morriss:
And when that, when, when that structure also comes from you, which I think was a, uh, an important insight for Lola as she was working through this.
[00:26:45] Frances Frei:
A little bit of deliberate liberation.
[00:26:47] Anne Morriss:
Little bit of self, uh, invited liberation is gonna have an enormous payoff, and I mean it quite sincerely that I am eager and restless and impatient to live in that world.
[00:27:04] Frances Frei:
Where she is unleashed.
[00:27:08] Anne Morriss:
Okay. That's our show.
[00:27:10] Frances Frei:
Oh. Thanks everybody for joining us. This was wonderful.
[00:27:15] Anne Morriss:
And hey, we wanna hear from you too. If you wanna figure out your workplace problems together with Anne and Frances sent us a message, email us fixable@ted.com or call us at 234-fixable. That's 234-349-2253.
[00:27:31] Frances Frei:
We would totally enjoy working with you.
Fixable is brought to you by the TED Audio Collective. It's hosted by me, Frances Frei.
[00:27:48] Anne Morriss:
And me, Anne Morriss. This episode was produced by Isabel Carter. Our team includes Isabel Carter, Constanza Gallardo, Lidia Jean Kott, Sarah Nics, Jimmy Gutierrez, Michelle Quint, Corey Hajim, Alejandra Salazar, BanBan Cheng, and Roxanne Hai Lash. Jake Gorski is our Mix engineer.
[00:28:10] Frances Frei:
We'll be bringing you new episodes of Fixable every week, so please make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:17] Anne Morriss:
And one more thing, if you can please take a second to leave us a review. We love hearing from our listeners. Particularly when they have nice things to say about us.
[00:28:25] Frances Frei:
We’ll see you very soon.