Learning about philosophy may seem like a luxury in our fast paced world but it has a number of benefits for your career and life, including developing your critical thinking skills and the ability to solve complex problems. Dr Brennan Jacoby, a philosopher and the founder of Philosophy at Work, and I discussed this, his work with Philosophy at Work and much more on Episode 69 of the Reframe & Reset Your Career podcast.
In this episode, we will learn about:
How serendipity and chance can impact your career,
Plato’s allegory of the cave and how this inspired Brennan’s interest in philosophy,
The benefits of reframing and changing your perspective,
How philosophy can help manage uncertainty and decision making,
Stoic philosophy and controlling what you can control,
Strategies for dealing with failure and regret,
How doing philosophy can develop your thinking and problems solving skills and
Ways of creating space in your schedule to have time to think.
The edited transcript of the interview is at the end. It has been edited for clarity and ease of reading. I hope you find it helpful.
Dr. Brennan Jacoby is a philosopher and the founder of Philosophy at Work, a collective of philosophers that teach the thinking skills professionals need to think their best. Brennan holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D in philosophy, and his doctoral work analysed trust in the context of interpersonal relationships and corporate character.
Recent projects include helping Deloitte UK cultivate a growth mindset, supporting The Wellcome Trust to explore trust in healthcare, and enhancing curiosity across Sony Music’s global community.
Brennan works across industries and sectors (examples include groups from Herbert Smith Freehills, Sky, Sony Music, Slaughter and May, Hogan Lovells, Capital One Bank, Deloitte, Media Arts Lab, Ropes and Gray, The Guardian, Nike, and The Financial Times), and with global teams, having delivered sessions in the UK, Ireland, USA, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Denmark, Spain, Australia and Taiwan.
In addition to his role with Philosophy at Work, Brennan is a fellow at the Royal Society of the Arts. Originally from Detroit Michigan, he studied in Sydney, Australia and is now based in the UK.
Brennan talked with me about the benefits of philosophy and how it helps to develop your thinking and told me “complex problem solving, critical thinking and creative thinking are things that are needed for the future of work, for the fourth Industrial Revolution and that’s what you get, those are the muscles that are built up when you do philosophy because you’re given a tough challenge … doing philosophy is good for careers because we know that careers these days are so dependent on not just what you know but how you make sense of the data and also how you move from one thing you know to the next right or from one job to the next and so it’s good not just for work but it’s particularly good for careers because of careers being about how you navigate things right how you move from one point to the next.”
People & Resources Mentioned
Iris Murdoch – The Black Prince
Carol Dweck
Alain de Botton
The School of Life
Contact Brennan
Website (company): https://philosophyatwork.co.uk/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-brennan-jacoby-51807790/
Instagram (company): https://www.instagram.com/philosophy_at_work/
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YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ReframeResetYourCareer
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E-mail – reframeandresetyourcareer@harshaboralessa.com
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Edited Interview Transcript
Harsha: [00:00:00] Welcome to Reframe and Reset Your Career,
a podcast to help if you’re looking for a job, feeling stuck in your career, or
just trying to rediscover your why. I am your host Harsha Boralessa, and this
podcast came from my passion for neuroscience and psychology and the
interaction with career and personal development.
I will be interviewing recognized experts and successful
professionals. And asking them to share the insights and strategies that have
helped their careers thrive. Implementing change is not easy and does take
time, but I do hope that their stories will inspire you on your path to greater
success of fulfillment in your career.
Here are some highlights of today’s
Brennan: episode and
just make some space, because otherwise I think there’s so many things that are
more than happy to take our time and our attention. That skill or that way of
being got me this far, but gosh, now the world’s like this, and now I’m like
this. What might I need to let go of?
Complex problem solving, critical thinking, and creative
thinking [00:01:00] are things that are needed
for the future of work, and those are the muscles that are built up when you do
philosophy. And actually when it comes to careers, I don’t think there is one
philosophy or one approach that just fits everything.
Harsha: Welcome to episode 69 of the Reframe and Reset Your Career podcast. Before we begin, I wanted to thank all the listeners of the podcast for their continuing support. I hope you’ve had a chance to check out my new website. Please note that in this episode we may touch on mental health and wellness topics purely in general terms.
If you have specific issues or concerns, please do contact a
suitable professional. Now back to the show. Brennan is a philosopher and the
founder of Philosophy at Work, a collective of philosophers. The teacher
thinking skills professionals need to think their best. He holds a BA, MA and
PhD in philosophy and his doctoral work analyzes trust in the context of
interpersonal relationships [00:02:00] and
corporate character.
Recent projects include helping Deloitte UK cultivate a growth
mindset, supporting the Welcome Trust to explore trust in healthcare and
enhancing curiosity across Sony Music’s global community. In addition to his
role with philosophy at work, Brennan is a fellow at the Royal Society of the
Arts, originally from Detroit, Michigan.
He studied in Sydney, Australia, and it’s now based in the UK.
Welcome Brennan!
Brennan: Thank you so
much, Hasha. It’s an absolute pleasure to be here.
Harsha: Just before
we were talking about the whole idea of serendipity and these small steps that
seemingly can link together. Now we initially met through the School of Life
where I attended one of your talks in 2017, but actually going back.
Before that, I was actually at school with Alan de Botton, the
founder of school of life, and I did know him very well, but it was through
seeing Alan’s work and I liked his novels that I came across the school of life
and now [00:03:00] many years later, we’re
sitting here recording a podcast.
So I think it’s really interesting, this whole idea of
serendipity, but I think in life, sometimes waiting for those big aha moments,
you can be waiting forever. But actually, it does show that if you take these
small steps and small connections, they can actually build up to quite powerful
things. I mean, what do you think, Brendan?
Brennan: I do know. I
completely agree. There’s so much, whether you want to call it serendipity or
chance or luck that goes on. I’m a firm believer that life is not a closed
system. I was really struck by this when I was reading a book by Annie Duke the
professional poker player. The book is called thinking in bets.
And she says that life is more like poker than it is like
chess. Now, I’m not a big chess or poker
player either way, but the idea is that in chess, it’s a closed system. So if I
move this piece here, there’s a lot of moves you can make, but there’s a set
number of moves. And, and, , the way to get good, I’m told, at chess is by
working out , [00:04:00] if someone does that,
then you’ve got these options, right?
But poker. It isn’t like that. If I play this card or this
hand, you could be bluffing. There’s chance, there’s uncertainty, there’s all
the pressure that comes with maybe the money that’s at stake or something like
that. And I think life is more like that. And so it can’t just be, well, I
studied this degree and I got this mark.
Therefore, I will be successful. It’s not a closed system. It’s
much more, well I mean, actually, , when I when I met you at the School of
Life, I was on the faculty there, right? And that was a. a role that I attained
by having lots of cups of coffee with various people. Actually the first time I
went along to the School of Life to have coffee, I made a mistake.
I was supposed to meet with one person and there was another
person who was at the School of Life who I’d also emailed, just trying to see
if I could get a foot in. And when I arrived, I think I was just so nervous. I
said the wrong person’s name. And because of my mistake, both people then were
brought from the back [00:05:00] offices.
And we all laughed about
it. And you’re like, Oh, no, you’re supposed to be seeing me, not this other
person. But we ended up having coffee with all 3 of us. And that led to more
opportunity. So it’s not a closed system. There’s mistakes. There’s luck. Yes,
we work hard. Yes, the degrees matter. But yeah, I think serendipity is, is
quite something.
Harsha: I love that. So
Brennan, I, I’m a big fan of the arts. Is there a performance, song, book or
film, which you’d like to share with
Brennan: our
audience? Yes. One that does come to mind is a book that I think it came out
last year. It’s by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan.
So, , Nick Cave, singer songwriter of Nick Cave and the Bad
Seeds. O’Hagan is a music critic. They got together during lockdown 2020 and
had a, well, didn’t get together quite importantly, but had phone calls over
that period talking about life and everything. And the book is called Faith,
Hope, and Carnage.
And I loved it because it’s very transparent [00:06:00], it’s very authentic. They’re being honest
about things that really matter. So they’re trying to grapple with the meaning
of life and, and pain, grief and hope, all the things that are suggested in the
title. , so I listened to it and my headphones rather than reading.
I usually just read books, but I listened to this one and it
was quite good because it’s a conversation between the two of them. And it’s
one where when you’re listening, it provided a great backdrop for me to do my
own wrestling, I think, with some of those concepts, so that was a great one
because yes, it was about culture and I learned a thing or two about the Bad Seeds,
but I think it’s also really great in terms of philosophy and food for thought.
Harsha: I’m a big
music fan and I love reading biographies about musicians and their creative
process and [00:07:00] how things evolve as
much as I’d love to talk about music. I think our audience are more interested
in careers, but actually moving on to
philosophy. I love the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, especially her book,
The Black Prince.
And I believe there’s a quote by her: “To do philosophy is to
explore one’s own temperament and yet the same time to discover the truth.” I
actually got that from one of your conversations with Aoife O’Brien, who’s a
good friend of ours and a good friend of the show. And I found the whole idea
of self discovery so powerful and the idea, if you can really understand
yourself and try to gain the mastery of yourself.
And I don’t think you can completely do that, but it does give
you so many insights into yourself. So I was just wondering what, what is it
that led you to your interest in philosophy?
Brennan: Yeah, thank
you very much. It really, it was a journey of career hopping all around, and
actually I think it maps onto that quote from Iris Murdoch too.
I love that quote, and it’s one because, the reason I love it
is because it gets to the heart of how when we are doing philosophy, [00:08:00] which I think is right. So at the start of
that quote, Murdoch says, to do philosophy. I think too often we think of
philosophy as something that is just writing or just ideas in an abstract, kind
of removed from action kind of way, just in the ivory towers.
But actually, philo means love in ancient Greek. sophia is
wisdom. So when we’re doing philosophy, we should be pursuing, we should be
loving wisdom. That is something that we do, right? It’s not just some kind of dusty, dusty study. And when we
do philosophy, we’re trying, we’re trying to pursue the truth.
Trying to love wisdom, but at the same time we have to do it
through our own lenses. So when Murdoch says that quote, that to do philosophy
is to explore one’s own temperament, and yet same time to discover the truth, I
would almost say we’re trying to pursue the truth, but we have to get through
our own temperament because I’ve only got the experience that I have really, [00:09:00] and I’ve only got the, the lenses and
framings through which I see everything.
It’s like we’re wearing glasses all the time that, that filter
everything. And so the way that I understand life and truth and work and
purpose and meaning and what I want to be doing is through that. So yes, we
have to philosophy is to these two things married up and I was originally
studying communications and I was working in radio broadcasting, but I was studying
at a liberal arts university.
And so, as you do have to. Do a bit of everything. I took Intro
to Philosophy, and I still remember the first day of class the professor who is
this not particularly charismatic person, but somehow just gripped you and told
great stories, , and I remember them telling the story of Plato’s cave.
That’s all about freedom. I mean, well, it feels like it’s
about freedom. Really, Plato’s trying to say something about what’s really real
in life, but in it, there’s this image of People being chained up looking at a
cave wall and just observing shadows of what’s actually real and then [00:10:00] it is the role of philosophy that comes in
and unchains the people and leads them out into the daylight.
And that’s where it feels like it’s about freedom. And this
really gripped me. And I thought maybe if I switch my major from radio to
philosophy and I learn how to think, then maybe I can go back to radio and have
more to say because I always enjoyed not just the nuts and bolts technical
sides of philosophy of radio but rather the connecting with people over the
airwaves.
I thought maybe if I need to have something to say, if I learn
how to think, I’ll have more to say. So it was a pivot, I initially moved to
just philosophy and religion instead of just pure philosophy and so I was
studying ancient Greek and theology alongside philosophy.
And I found that the theology courses felt like they were all
about answers and I was really drawn to the questions in philosophy. And so it
was this journey that felt like it was without intention. I mean, well, I had
intention, but it was not designed [00:11:00] by
me for sure. Again, there was, there was chance and things and I had lots of really kind professors.
It was along those moves that I realized actually, okay, I
thought I loved ideas, actually, I love questions. I thought it was about
communicating really. It’s about exploring, exploring questions. And so I never
actually made it back to radio,
Harsha: I love that,
the whole idea of questioning our reality. And actually, what do we need to do?
Because, say, with the pandemic, a lot of people started questioning, , why am
I doing this job? , the world could literally come to an end in a week’s time
or people are dying. I do think with
philosophy, it helps to reframe things, reframe the way you look at the
world.
And one simple thing is that, if you think about the universe,
how long it’s been going on for, and we’re just like a tiny dot in that. So
really what we’re doing now really doesn’t make, in the grand scheme of things,
doesn’t make a huge difference. I mean, clearly on the micro level, I’m not
saying one should be apathetic and just sit at home and wait for things to
happen, but I do think [00:12:00] it helps to
just put things into perspective.
So, say, if you go for a job interview and you get rejected or
something doesn’t go well at work, it’s about perspective. And I think if you
can change your perspective, that really helps to try and change your path and
your reality. I mean, what, what do you think, Brennan?
Brennan: Yeah,
hugely. I mean, perspective is a way of taking something right. A way of making
sense of something, subjectivity, self awareness biases. These things are
notoriously difficult. To really leave behind or really change, right? And yet
it’s possible to and there’s so many biases that were reminded all the time of
these days that need to change. We need to leave behind, but it’s hard to do
that.
And I think the same goes for perspective. It’s gaining
perspective is hugely important, but it’s not easy because of what we’re
mentioning before about Iris Murdoch quote, everything we understand is
filtered by our own experience [00:13:00] and
so how do you step outside of that? It’s through empathy and connection with
others, right?
So I try to really pay attention when I’m talking and listening
to people, listening with people that have different views of mine and try to
cultivate spaces where others might have very different views to myself but
then also try to build in habits to help shift some of that perspective, right?
So I know it’s very easy for me to get up. I have my routines
that I like, I wake up early. I go for a run. I make some coffee. I do these
things and I enjoy that routine. At the same time. I don’t love too much
routine. So I know that I could just get stuck in that perspective.
But if I create a habit, so like, once a quarter, I’ll try to
take an away day for one and get up early, drive out to, Wales or the Peak
District or something, and [00:14:00] spend the
day hiking and asking myself, throwing questions at myself to go, like, why is
what you’re doing matter? What’s this about now?
And just make some space because otherwise I think there’s so
many things that are more than happy to take our time and our attention. So it
is cultivating a practice, having a habit of finding what works for us. I know,
I’ve realized over the years that I just come alive outside. That works for me
for other people, maybe it’s, it’s not doing anything early. it’s doing it late,
it’s sitting by the fire or I don’t know, something else.
But yeah, cultivating those habits makes space for us, even
within our subjectivity, even with our lenses on, which we can’t really take
off. It makes space for us to reflect and, and hopefully break through some of
those filters.
Harsha: I just love
that, Brennan. I think the one point that struck me was that it’s really trying
to understand yourself because I think when people are trying to give general
advice about or strategies, it’s very difficult [00:15:00]
because we’re all on a spectrum. I mean, it could be some people are more
introvert or extrovert.
Some people are more interested in doing deep work or engaging
with people. So I think it’s very much when you’re looking for answers, you
need to think about what it is that , how it applies to you. So it’s very
difficult to say, look, that one piece of advice or strategy is going to apply
to everybody. So ahead Brennan
Brennan:. Yeah,
definitely. I think there’s a huge part of it. That’s understanding yourself.
The only thing I would add, though, I think we can’t do it without
understanding self. That’s for sure but I think we also need to understand
that, which is outside of ourselves. So understanding the world or the
landscape in which we’re trying to do this.
This has been really key in, in my life lately, I would say,
where the work I’ve been trying to do, I’ve gone, okay, so I need to understand
what my values are, [00:16:00] what I care
about. And that’s really crucial. So that I exercise my agency and choices and
do things, but then I also need to go, okay, but how am I reading my landscape?
And again, that’s me reading it. So I have to understand my own
subjective perspective, but what’s going on in the world now, what’s going on
in my industry, what’s going on in this group that I’m trying to work with
right now, which might draw out a different facet of myself so I might say,
well, actually, I’m someone that likes music.
I play music. I do philosophy. I could do a number of different
things and understanding myself probably actually, as I’m thinking out loud
here a little bit, but understanding myself probably wasn’t what made me pursue
a career in philosophy. It was almost understanding what society was kind of
needing and recognizing that I had some of that in me too.
So going back to your question before about how I got to doing
philosophy work, I think there was a, a big moment where, I’d done my PhD on
the topic of trust and I was actually just working, consulting to businesses[00:17:00], some of which had lost the public’s
trust, on that topic. And then it was through some of the feedback I was
getting where leaders were going, actually we want our people to be thinking for themselves.
We want good ideas to come from everywhere. They weren’t using
this language, but it was almost like they were articulated. They wanted to run
their businesses like a good democracy. Right. And because of things that were
going on in actual democracies at that time, it was clear that you don’t get a
good democracy just by giving everyone the vote.
We also have to have places where we can constructively sharpen
each other and disagree in ways that are not just causing huge outbreaks. And
so I thought, Oh, actually, yeah, if businesses would benefit from, from
egalitarianism and. People think for themselves, then what are we doing there?
And so I think it was and then Philosophy at Work was created
to, to help respond to that challenge and teach thinking skills and things like
that. But I think that wouldn’t have come about if I was just thinking about
myself. I think it was understanding myself in the context of [00:18:00] what was going on around me.
Harsha: I completely
agree. You’ve obviously got to understand yourself, but clearly you’ve got to
think about the way the world is. I mean, a very simplistic example, say with
this podcast, I can see the analytics. If nobody’s listening, then clearly that
shows that what I’m doing is not good. So, I mean, that’s a very black and
white thing, but also think about careers.
If you’re getting into say an industry, which is declining,
then probably it’s going to be very difficult to make a successful career in
that. So I think, yeah, you obviously have to understand yourself and
understand the way the the world is evolving and potentially the way industries
are evolving to think, okay, it’s much better to be in something that’s
expanding and growing rather than contracting. So yeah, I completely take all
the points that you’re making there.
Brennan: Yeah, I
think that’s right. And thinking about that, what I’m saying is right, that
expansion and contraction. I think that’s the really tricky thing. It’s a
really good point that you make [00:19:00] that
things are always changing.
So I guess the hard work of it is to recognize that yes. Okay.
I can understand myself. You understand the world both those things are
probably changing. A pretty traditional view of the self was that I remember
when I was studying philosophy, there’s this term, the homunculus, which
translates as little person, right?
So the view of the self is that it’s like, there’s this little
person inside of us that is unchanging and is always there. And then the more
that science and psychology and everything has developed is we’ve said, well,
actually, no you kind of can evolve and maybe your core values don’t flex too
much, but actually, gosh, when you put that into the mix, there’s a lot of
movement and maybe that’s challenging. But also, I think that’s part of what
makes it so exciting to be alive and trying to work things out is going, okay,
well, that skill or that way of being got me this far.
But gosh, now the world’s like this [00:20:00]
and now I’m like this, what might I need to let go of and grieve that maybe and
what might I want to hold on to or shift into gears? I think that’s exciting.
Harsha: It’s funny Brennan,
one of my previous guests was telling me that, , she’s a very, , pleasant
person and she worked her way up. through doing all those technical stuff. And then she was in charge
of a department and she thought leading was essentially being quite laissez
faire and laid back. And that led to suboptimal performance in the department.
But then when she was much firmer about, okay, this is the way it needs to be
done.
We need to have order, then clearly, I think everybody knows
it’s not about being too harsh a boss. But I think when people realize, look,
this is what we need to do in order to get these results. And if we don’t have
order, then, , clearly that’s not a good thing. So [00:21:00]you
can be a good person, but also you can be a firm boss.
It’s not as if those two things are mutually exclusive and
sometimes if you are a nice person, you always have to be a bit harsher because
your personality is, I suppose on the more reasonable side, but yeah, it’s just
very interesting. All these different takes on how we can act, but I love the
point you’re making, but so turning to careers now.
So how can philosophy help at work? And I, and we were talking
about. This off air about stoic
principles and how they can be very powerful. Would you like to expand
Brennan: on that,
Brennan? Yeah. Thank you. So I guess at, at a high level, the, the headlines
kind of reasons that philosophy is good for, for career is that, , the skills
that you get when you do philosophy.
And again here I would distinguish between philosophy,
philosophies [00:22:00] and philosophers. ,
where doing philosophy is, is philosophical thinking. pursuing the truth,
trying to grapple with tough problems and work stuff out. That, I think, is
different from philosophies, which are packaged up accounts of what it means to
live well. and philosophers are the people that are doing that thinking.
So if you’ve got philosophers doing the thinking, coming up
with these views of how to live well,
that’s all well and good. But the reason that philosophy that is doing the
philosophy is useful for careers comes out when you think about things like the
world economic forum, for example, has said that in the top 10 skills actually
features in the top three or four of those complex problem solving, critical
thinking and creative thinking are things that are needed for the future of
work for the fourth industrial revolution, all this stuff.
And that’s what you get from those are the muscles that are
built up when you do philosophy, because you’re given a tough, tough [00:23:00] challenge, like, work out what the meaning
of life is like, what does it mean to be ethical? And what , what’s really
real, actually.
The history of philosophy is paved with papers that try to make
it look like there’s a very clear right answer to those questions, but actually
there’s not necessarily, and that’s why we have a really rich discourse around
philosophy, but, but all those questions are so big and so buried that, or so
complex, I should say, that when you grapple with them, it makes your brain
have to practice going, okay, it could be this or it could be that.
Yeah. Both seem like good things, but there’s a lot of
uncertainty, and yet I have to choose one answer because the next question I’m
going to get to is depend, is going to depend on that one. So it makes you be
very limber mentally, and that’s good for complex problem solving. It’s good
for creative thinking.
It is all about critical thinking, and so doing philosophy [00:24:00] is
good for careers because we know that careers these days are so dependent on
not just what , but how you make sense of the data. And also how you move from
one thing to the next, right. And, or from one job to the next. And, and so
it’s good, not just for work, but it’s particularly good for careers because of
careers being about how you navigate things, right.
And how you move from one, one point to the next. But I think
more, more deeply, it gives you examples of people that are courageously
embracing not knowing and I suppose here is an instance where it’s beneficial
to not just do philosophy yourself, but to read about the history of philosophy
and philosophers.
So you come across people like the Stoics that you mentioned,
or Simone de Beauvoir existentialist, and you go, wow, these people are not
just . Sitting in a plush ivory tower or something, though, somewhere, but for
many, many of them, that wasn’t the case. And they were doing so about topics
that were socially contentious [00:25:00] and
really difficult.
And yet they stuck with them because they cared about trying to
do what was right or trying to work out what’s true. I think at this time, when
we’ve got people that are going, as you said before, post pandemic going, gosh,
the time I have on earth is quite precious to me. I want to do something that
matters. And yet I’ve got to feed my family. So that’s a live issue.
Well, and there’s a lot of uncertainty when I started doing
this, being self employed and doing philosophy, I thought, gosh, that’s pretty
risky. It’d be better to be employed, but that was at a time when it felt like
being self employed was a risky option.
Now it feels like, well, kind of everything’s pretty risky. And
so I think that, that is leveled out a little bit. So I guess what I’m saying
is, when you’re reading philosophy, and when you’re trying to do philosophy for
yourself, you’ve got some other flames helping keep you warm. I mean, one thing
that was really interesting was, in 2020, during COVID, one of the highest
selling books was The Plague by Camus [00:26:00]
I read it then as well and it’s a little bit like, if Camus was
still around, he might be sued for knowing something about what was coming. It
has a lot of correlations. And I think what people maybe loved and also found
terrifying reading it was it felt like there’s this a little window into what
we were going through and you could read ahead to what might happen if we do
this or that and, and in the same way, I think, and so that was comforting, or
at least felt like you had a friend. Now, it didn’t make the situation go away.
And I think that’s a core part of philosophy.
No philosopher has ever said, hey, doing this stuff is going to
make your life nice. But it’s a way of thinking through it properly. And
saying, okay, well, life’s difficult, but at least I’m going to understand it,
or at least I’m going to try to understand it. And so, in a career context
where there’s so much uncertainty complexity and all that stuff, I think
philosophy is not only something [00:27:00]
that gives us the skills that we need to succeed in this time, but it also. gives
us the encouragement and the courage and dare I say hope.
I mean, philosophers, historical philosophers have not always
been the most like cheery bunch, they’re
not going around talking about hope all the time. Quite often you have, you
have philosophers talking more about death and it can seem a bit dark, but
actually it’s for a really good reason because in talking about death, they’re
talking about hope because remember that we’re going to die and therefore live,
really live now.
Harsha: I think you
made some fantastic points there, Brennan. I think two that struck me is this
idea of the jobs of the future. We don’t know what those jobs are going to be.
I mean, clearly medicine, law engineering sciences. There are certain things
which we know, but there are many jobs , say 10 years ago, [00:28:00] digital marketing or marketing or digital,
whatever creators that those just didn’t exist. So I think it shows that you
have to be agile going forward, even if you have a traditional education
Also I think this idea of the environment we’re in and I think
talking about Annie Duke, the chess environment, and then the poker playing
environment. And I think there’s this term kind environments and wicked
environments where I think kind, it’s rules based, so you pretty much know how
to navigate it. So there are X number of moves you can almost train in your
mind, like a chess grandmaster.
Whereas I think with a wicked environment, which I think that’s
very similar to what we’re living in these days, there are much fewer rules,
and in a way, it’s up to you to figure out how to navigate that path.
So I think, in a way, with philosophy, the training, it gives
you an idea of how can I develop my mind to, okay, see there are these
problems, [00:29:00] which I may not have come
across before, but I can go down these various paths and it’s almost like, as
you were saying before, it’s like a decision tree. If I go down this route,
then this is an implication. If I go down that path, then this is the
implication.
Brennan: Yeah, I
think that’s, that’s right. And it reminds me of stoic philosophy, which was
part of the question before that I didn’t respond to. The stoics were very big
on, on saying in order to live well, you have two groups. The first one is you
need to know your landscape, map your landscape, right?
And then the second one is turn your energy towards the things
that you can control and don’t sweat the rest right now that’s easier said than
done but a lot of the rest of stoic literature is basically. just giving loads
of examples about ways that we might try to do that.
And so they would say things like it’s a good idea every once
in a while to just sleep on the floor without a blanket. [00:30:00] I suppose to remind yourself about the
fragility of your life, but also to go when you wake up the morning after that,
you might go that wasn’t my best night of sleep, but I didn’t die, I’m okay.
It again, brings back some of that perspective, which is needed
if we’re saying, okay, don’t sweat the stuff you can’t control for them what
they thought you could control, they were quite pure about this, the only thing
you can really control is your mindset, so you can’t control nature, you can’t
control other people.
This was born out of a massive career pivot. So Zeno the
founder of Stoicism, I mean, there’s lots of, of Stoic philosophers: Epictetus,
Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, that are known for
Stoic philosophy, but it was kicked off by someone named Zeno who wasn’t
a philosopher to begin with but was a merchant. Then was in a storm, lost their
ship and therefore all their merchandise and everything at sea. [00:31:00]
The, the caricature goes that they were washed up on the beach
and as you do when you can’t do that anymore, what do you do? You go browsing
in a bookshop and he apparently came across the writings of Plato and the
dialogues with Socrates and found solace in it and kind of like we were talking
about before, had just gone through this big change and then found people
talking about, well, what does really matter? What’s really real?
There’s a great deal of humility from Socrates and that was
maybe comforting. So then decided to start his own school of philosophy, met
under this colonnade, the word for was stoa. So they were just nicknamed the
stoic philosophers and out of that, you can see how the thinking was very
context sensitive.
It’s not just this like abstract academic thing. It was very
real to him that life is not a closed system. It’s not all nice and cheery, and
you might lose your belongings at sea. So what should we do then? And what he
came up with was, well [00:32:00], you can’t
control nature.
And so what can you control? Well, what’s going on inside? So I
guess, yeah, I think, things like that can be very helpful because they echo in
our minds and so then when our train is late for an important meeting or we
don’t get the job that we really wanted, it’s not just like, oh, I read a bit
of Seneca, so I guess I’m okay.
It’s going, well, hang on, let me actually think about that.
Can I control things? No, this is frustrating. What can I do about this? Okay,
what I can do is think about how I frame this and there’s a lot of
psychological research since the days of Seneca and Zeno that have said that
positive reframing actually really helps, ,
by saying, okay, I’m seeing it now as a missed train or lost job, but
let me reframe it as an opportunity to do something else, something like that. It’s
not just semantics, it’s not just thinking nice, positive thoughts. It’s actually
changing the lenses that we’re filtering life through.
And I think that is [00:33:00] really
useful because it’s, it’s, it’s saying, no, actually, I’m not living in a world
where I’ve just lost something. I’m living in a world where that happened, but
there might be other things I can do.
Harsha: I completely
agree. And I think it’s very much about the execution that you can think about
these things but actually, you’ve got to put it into practice and say, look,
okay, what’s happened has happened. But I’ve got to try and move on somehow.
And I suppose moving on from that, say, you come across people
who are say, stuck in their job search or stuck in their career. And they’re
looking back at the job that they didn’t get offered, or the promotion that
they’ve missed out on. Now, it’s very easy to start ruminating on that. And
think about, oh, woe is me and getting filled with regret? Do you have any
thoughts about how philosophy can help us deal with that? Obviously there’s a
reframing aspect. [00:34:00]
Brennan: Yeah, I think it’s a really good point. So, I
mean, one thing that I think analytical philosophy can suggest, so the schools of philosophy are generally divided
into well, lots of different camps.
But within the scope of, say, Western philosophy, there tends
to be analytical philosophy and continental philosophy. And analytical
philosophy is like philosophy by numbers, it’s trying to just do clear logic.
And how do you define your terms? And that’s a lot of the philosophy that I was
taught, just, I think, based on primarily the part of the world that I was
studying in and it’s certainly not all of philosophy and it’s not all of
wisdom, and it’s not even the part that like warms my heart. But one thing that
it taught me was to define my terms. And I think if we think about regret, an
analytical philosopher would say, well, let’s stop for a second and say, well,
what is regret?
Let’s define that. What does it mean? [00:35:00]
I’ve not actually read all the philosophical literature around regret but I
would bet that it would be understood as a reactive attitude, which a reactive
attitude is an affective, emotional reaction that bubbles up in response to not
just something that has happened, but something that we infer someone has
intended to do against us, right? So, now that’s one form of regret. So, someone
breaks up with me, I regret that and I hold it against them to some extent,
right? That’s a reactive attitude.
But there’s another form of regret, which I think almost makes
more sense. It’s a regret only ever makes sense to talk about when it’s down to
things that we’ve done. So if I miss a job opportunity, I might be
disappointed. But in a sense, I think it’s a bit strange to say that I regret
that because [00:36:00] I, maybe I had nothing
to do with it. Now, maybe I did because I did the application and I went along
to the interview and maybe I said the wrong thing.
But again, the Stoics, I think, would want to say, well, but
it’s not a closed system. It wasn’t just up to you. If I say, okay, I could
have bought these shoes or I could have bought those shoes, I can move to this
city or that city. There’s still luck involved in everything but it’s my
choice.
And then I moved to one city or buy one pair of shoes and I’m
unhappy and I go, Oh, I regret buying that one and not the other one. That’s
fair but I think a lot of things in our careers that happen, I might regret:
saying the wrong thing or doing something that gets me fired, of course.
But when it comes to missing out on an opportunity, which I
think is probably more what’s going on in so much of us about when we think
about regret in our career. Maybe it’s comforting to go on the analytical
philosophical journey and go, well, what is regret? Where does it make sense to
talk about it?
Do you go, I think it only is really right for us to talk about
regretting things that are within our control. And then we have to say, okay,
well, was that [00:37:00] career missed
opportunity within my control? No, it wasn’t. Okay. Well, then therefore it
might not be very comforting to say, “Oh, a philosopher on a podcast told me I
shouldn’t, I can’t, it doesn’t make sense for me to regret it then.”
No, that’s not the point but by thinking through it, you might
go, “Oh actually, that was out of my control. It doesn’t say anything about me.
I’m disappointed that I don’t have that job, but it doesn’t mean I’m any less
valuable.” And I think when we regret things, the stab of regret is some shame.
It’s something where we’re saying, “oh, I am that and so if I
can reframe the situation and say, , it was outside of my control. I didn’t
miss out because of me maybe they said there was a lots of other candidates and
I always feel like they’re just saying that, but maybe, maybe they really meant
it. Okay. I’m therefore not really going to regret it.”
Another thing that comes to mind with regret that might be
helpful here is sometimes, you come across people that say, do you have any
regrets? [00:38:00] They say, no, I don’t
regret anything and in our culture, sometimes that’s thought to be a really
positive thing, live so that you have no regrets.
In contrast to that, I feel like if I have no regrets about
things that are in my control that I do, then I haven’t been probably growing
or improving. Exactly. Like when I look back on my life. I’ve got some, some
big regrets, some things that I go, “Oh, I can’t believe I said that. Oh, I
can’t believe it. Oh, how embarrassing.”
I would never do that now. And that is like “Oh, I, I hate
having those memories because it just feels so embarrassing” but there’s solace
in going, “okay, the reason I regret that is because I can now see that that
was so wrong. And I can only see that that’s not so wrong because I’ve been
growing.”
So I don’t know, I guess that’s where my mind goes when I think
about regret and career is like, if we regret things that we’ve done, then
maybe that’s a sign that we’re growing and and wouldn’t do them now. And if we
regret things that were out of our control, then it’s, I don’t know if it makes
sense for us to [00:39:00] be regretful because
I think regret something that we apply when, when we had something more to do
with it, if that makes sense.
Harsha: I think
that’s a really interesting way of almost trying to split the type, the feeling
into these two areas. There’s one, so I went to an interview and I said
something stupid or I wasn’t appropriately attired or whatever or I wasn’t
appropriately prepared.
Clearly, that is something within my control. I need to learn
from that. I need to improve. But then, on the other hand, if you go and you
are fully prepared, you have all the qualifications, you’ve done everything
possibly that you could do.
Then on that side, it’s worthwhile reframing and saying, well,
it could be that there were better candidates or the manager just preferred
somebody else, which can happen. I think in life sometimes [00:40:00] maybe with the personal development work
and self help, people say that you have control. You’re the master of your own
destiny. But clearly that isn’t the case.
I don’t think that’s a message either of us are telling our
listeners now, clearly there are huge numbers of uncertainties and uncertain
things out there, but you just have to learn to deal with it and make the best
of it and not get stuck in regret, regretting or whatever term we use about
things that we have absolutely no control over. Is that broadly correct?
Brennan: Yeah. I
mean, that’s certainly how I think about it. Yeah. I’m in two minds about how
much control we have in life, so I think you’re right. Neither of us is saying,
Oh, just think it and it’ll happen. But, but at the same time, I think, well,
we, certainly can exercise our agency and we can influence things.
So I’m not exactly a Stoic because again their context [00:41:00], they’re writing in a time where they’re
dealing with firm beliefs around ancient gods and so for them, the natural
world was at the control of the gods and everything?
I don’t think that, but also I think we can do things. I’m not
a pure stoic because I’m not just saying, well, I just can’t control anything.
I can’t influence anything as well. Instead, no, I think we can influence but
the way that I think about it is something my dad used to say, which was, it
was a word picture metaphor of some sort
where he was like if you want to go sailing, you can’t control the wind, but
you’ve got to put your sail up.
I’m not here saying why isn’t this boat moving? I’ve still got
to, I’ve got the anchor down and I haven’t put the sail up, but , I guess I
can’t control anything. I just have to accept it. No, I’m going to raise the
anchor, work hard, I’m going to put the sail up and maybe I’m going to like
blow [00:42:00] into the sail myself but that’s not the whole thing.
I think that’s the point. We can’t control it all, but we can
have coffees with people. We can work hard. We can do that. But also remember
that we’re not entitled. Just because we work hard doesn’t mean it’s going to
work. It does mean that we’re probably going to learn if we try.
And so I’m a big fan of growth mindset in general. I know that
there’s been lots of critics of say, Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset,
for example, and things like that. But I think the general thrust of saying, focus
on the effort you put in and what you can be learning rather than just the
results. I think that’s that’s a good move here as well.
Harsha: Completely
agree, Brennan, I think I think from our discussions, it just shows that there
are no easy answers. I think it really is incumbent on each individual person
to [00:43:00] say, look, there are a number of
these ideas out there some may apply, some may not.
But you have to be smart and think, okay, which one of these
applies to myself? And almost trying to individualize that and make almost a
path for yourself using various different philosophies. And I think being
wedded to one, you can be a bit too dogmatic sometimes and look one philosophy
is not going to cover everything.
So you might have to pick and choose things that work for
yourself. And I think that’s a more sensible way to be rather than saying,
okay, there’s one right path to success and being dogmatic and sticking to
it. It may work, it may not, but , the
modern world, it’s a messy world.
Brennan: Yeah, I
couldn’t, I couldn’t agree more. And that’s, , that’s why sometimes people ask
me like, Oh, what philosophy does philosophy? Well, we don’t really teach
philosophy. We’re much more interested in, in helping people think well
themselves, and [00:44:00]it kind of scares me
to think of someone just adopting a singular philosophy and go, this is
going to be my lens for everything,
because I just think life is more complicated than that.
That’s why I’m a fan of rather going, okay, let’s try to live
well. And some days we’re going to feel like we got it. Some days, I don’t,
it’s not going to make any sense, but we’re going to be in pursuit of living
fully and openly, honestly, trying to understand what’s really going on.
And gosh, if there’s a philosophy or a way of living that, that
gets it all, then that sounds great. I just think life’s bigger and more
beautiful than that, than rather than the dogmatic way of going it’s just going
to fit into this. So yeah, actually when it comes to careers, I don’t think
there is one philosophy or one approach
that just fits everything.
But the skills of thinking through all those things are again,
the skills that we need to [00:45:00] work
really well. So yeah, I think you’re exactly right about that.
Harsha: And Brennan,
one final question how can we actually create the space and time to think? So
many of us are so busy, we really have no time. So how can we create that?
Brennan: So here
again, I think I have to go back to Iris Murdoch and the reason I say that is
there’s things that help me make time to think that might not work for you,
might not work for someone else. And so I have to understand, to your point
before, I have to understand myself and the context and situation that helps me
think well and do that. Some examples and also there’s probably more than 1.
So for example, right now, we’re talking, sat at my desk and
I’ve got my desk on an angle. And for
some reason, I couldn’t quite articulate this. There’s probably some
neuroscientists somewhere that would explain this to us, [00:46:00] but I have my office, a really open plan kind of space
because I’ll come in and depending on what I need to process or think through,
sometimes I’ll feel like, yeah, this is the angle.
Mmaybe I need to stand for this next hour and do this bit, or
maybe I need to go and walk to do it. There are studies that will say you have
your best thinking when you’re in the bathtub, Scott Barry Kaufman, the New
York academic , pulled out a stat about this one time.
It was like 75 percent of us have our best ideas in the
bathtub. Other people will say, no, it’s when I’m cycling or running or playing
piano or these flow state kind of activities. I think as we practice them, we
notice different types of thinking. So I know that when I start the day with a
run, I can’t really hold a thought fully when I’m in a flow state, but it
creates space in my thinking, so that later when I sit down, I have good, good
ideas or I can think through things properly.
If I need to actually make a decision, I don’t go for a run
because I need to be more concrete than that [00:47:00].
So instead, what I know works for me and some things I could suggest are make
yourself a hot drink that you like. So for me, that’s coffee. It might be tea
or just like water.
And then put on something that’s going to help you feel like in
the head space, an ironed shirt, whatever it’s going to be. You should get a
sharp pencil and think through it, one of the things that we do in some of our
workshops, just because if we say, okay, now I think through decision, people are
like “How do I do that?”
We get people to write a word at the heart of the thing they
want to think through down in the middle of the page. So this is what we call
our neural mapping activity. So you’ve got to work on budgets, but you’re
having a hard time getting started. , how do I get moving on this?
So you write the word budget in the middle of the page, circle
it, see what comes to mind. And maybe the next word is like fear. So you write
fear next to it and draw a line from budget to fear. And then you think, when I
think about fear, what comes to and so
on and so forth. And you map the connotations, the neural network around [00:48:00] these concepts in your brain.
Now, that doesn’t get you doing the budget. It doesn’t tell you
what figures you should put in the budget, but it gets you thinking about
what’s going on for you. And you might go, “Oh, do you know what, I realize.
Actually, I don’t have enough information to do the budget yet, or I have an
anxiety about this” you can go away and deal with that and then come back and
actually get started with the budget.
So there are thinking tools that we can do. The neural map is
one, just sit, , carving up some space, thinking about your physical space or
movement, like the running one. Another one just really quickly that I practice
and sometimes we talk about in our self awareness workshop, we actually start
with this pressing pause, reflective check in.
So you just sit or stand
comfortably, maybe shut your eyes and you start by scanning through your body,
just thinking through the top of your head, down to your toes, just noticing
what’s going on at a physical level. Oh, there’s a pain in my knee or whatever.
And then you scan through at an emotional level and you go, [00:49:00] okay, now where am I at emotionally?
And the last thing is scan through your thinking. Are there
any ideas that are hanging around? Is
someone that, something from my last meeting, is it still lingering? And you
just note some of this stuff down. And
it only takes, , a minute or two. You can do it in the Lift, whatever.
But by doing that day in and day out, it is a way of creating a
habit that creates space where we can even have ideas. If we’re not even doing
things like that, then we’re going to just be bouncing from thing to thing to
thing, from meeting to meeting, or like from email to social media, whatever.
And there’s not a lot of space. Yes, we might have responsive
ideas, but we’re not going to have our own ideas. And we’re not going to be
thinking, making sense of what we’ve already consumed. And so I would say move,
hydrate, do a neural map, cultivate a habit, like taking five minutes or three
minutes, even, and just scanning through, train yourself to check in with
what’s going on in your body, your emotions, your ideas, [00:50:00] and that makes a big help.
Harsha: No, I just
love that. And I think just the whole idea of trying to create a habit where
you can build in these small times for space and reflection. It’s great. Now, I
know that we’re coming up to the end of our time, Brennan. I don’t want to keep
you too long, but just a couple of final things. How can people get in touch
with you? Obviously your website, you’re on LinkedIn, anything else? And all
this will be in the show notes.
Brennan: Yeah,
certainly. So Philosophy at Work so www. philosophyatwork. co. uk is the
website. You can learn more about the work we do in businesses and the thinking
skills workshops. Also, I’m on LinkedIn at dr__brennan__jacoby.
We also have Philosophy at Work, which is just at philosophy
underscore at underscore work on instagram as well at philosophy at work And
yeah, and then there’s there’s all sorts of ways to reach out through those
platforms as well if anyone wants to pick up any of the themes that we’ve
discussed here
Harsha: Fantastic and
Brennan one final thing. [00:51:00] Is there
anybody, one or two people who you’d like to thank, who’s helped you on your
journey or your personal life, not an Oscars speech, but just one or two?
Brennan: Yeah, great
question. So the first philosophy professor that I mentioned earlier, who was
telling the story of Plato’s cave or Charles Campbell, he’s hugely, hugely
beneficial to me, really generous.
One of these philosophers who didn’t make out, if you studied
philosophy, you would discover all the answers. In his lectures, he would tell
you all this really complex stuff, and
we’d be gripped with it in the lecture, but then he’d always end with something
like, oh, but , who knows.
And I think it was a nice injection of humility that really
gave me a hunger for the spirit of philosophy, rather than just learning how to think so that I could expand my ego, so yeah, Dr. Charles Campbell
and also Miffa Salter is a coach and trainer. She’s been a mentor of mine [00:52:00] for years and we’ve worked together and
also just a really wise, wise person that has not only played things back to me
about my career and everything that a good coach does but mixed that coachy
playback with also some suggestions and has been again, really generous and
supportive in helping me understand my strengths.
So I think particularly, maybe it’s something about studying
philosophy. that teaches you to doubt everything and critique everything. It’s
good, but you can become very critical
sometimes if you’re not careful. So I think she really helped me see why what I
was doing would be helpful to people. And that was a good connection.
Harsha: Fantastic Well
thank you once again, Brennan, for your time. And yeah, look forward to hearing
more about what you’re doing in the future. Take care. Bye bye. [00:53:00] Thank you so much, Harsha.
Thank you so much for listening and staying to the end. That
was such a fun interview.
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*Reframe & Reset Your Career, including any comments made by the host and guests, is for informational purposes only and does not constitute advice of any description, including but not restricted to financial, legal, investing or medical advice.*
