Hey, what's up, Toby? We made it another week.
Still kicking. It's the Processed Debt podcast.
Happy Friday. This week, we are focusing on all
things personal. Personal Processed Debt, which
we don't want to admit exists, but it does. Fair,
fair. And we're going to start with a Mark Twain
quote, which is, I've had a lot of worries in
my life. most of which never happened. Oh, borrowed
trouble. Now, Chris, how often do we do that?
We just start thinking about something and we
blow it so out of proportion as to make ourselves
and sometimes those around us crazy over nothing.
Yes. Dude. And that is not just me. We want to
do an episode on this. So it means that maybe
there's more than one of us. Think of a world,
in world, where a bunch of us go to the office,
and many of us worry about things that are not
real. What could possibly go wrong? What could
possibly, what could possibly go wrong? Nothing.
Nothing could go wrong. But basically, like,
what I want to talk about today is just the process
debt that we all carry, which are past wounds
and rumination around things that either are
real or not real or anything in between. Yeah.
These supercomputers of ours want problems, right?
Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And boy, they'll capture
something and chew on it. There's probably something,
rumination I think is such a good word, makes
me think about the biological process of just
slowly grinding on something. I've heard people
call it just over -revving too. I just can't
get the brain to shut down. I just keep cycling
back to the same thing and no new information,
no new insights, but I can't let it go. Talk
to me about, I love it when you stir up these
topics and I'll have to say, What have you been
ruminating on about? Okay, and I don't know necessarily
where this came from, but I do think... A friend?
I've been a friend. I'll tell you about a friend
of mine. But what was funny is I did go to lunch
with my son, who's 20, and he's like, he's like,
you know what, Dad? I get in these arguments
or have these conflicts with my friends. You
know, he's 20, his prefrontal cortex isn't fully
formed. And he's like, but then I leave and then
I just think about all the things that I could
say. Oh. And then he's like, do you ever do that?
And I was just had this huge chuckle of like,
no, I would like to, or it's just a you thing.
You're going to have to live with that for the
rest of your life. The one way to get to hell
right there is telling a kid that nobody else
has that. No, but I was thinking about this in
the context of just Not only personally, but
also collectively. When the consumer confidence
index drops, we tend to have a collective rumination
about things. Or depending on our algorithm,
which was basically built to help us ruminate
on things. If you transfer that to the business,
world and you have hundreds of people working
together that not everybody's going to be stuck
in rumination, but it happens. It probably happens
more than we think. Yeah. I think you're right.
I mean, very few of us have jobs that require
our full and undivided attention for hours on
end. Yeah. Right. You may get into flow and we've
talked about that I think in past episodes. Yeah.
But a lot of times the daydreaming, if it's not
about awesome plans for the weekend, it does
tend to circle around on things that are creating
anxiety for us or things that require attention
and we're procrastinating. No, I hear you. Well,
as process debt, I love this as a topic, right?
Here's a case of a workflow that is not producing
anything. a lot of anxiety and pumping chemicals
into our body to figure it out. Well, at the
end of the day, it's like, what did I produce?
You end up back at the Mark Twain quote, where
a lot of worry, most of which never happened.
It's been interesting because throughout my career,
you have moments of stress and moments of not
stress. Oftentimes, you'll be going through the
stress, and you'll think that you're all alone,
and you'll just open up at happy hour, and you
just start talking about it, and this person,
you're in a meeting with them, they're so confident,
just speaking with total authority, you go to
happy hour, and you get this completely other
human side of the, I didn't even know what I
was talking about, or the imposter syndrome shows
up. But it is funny too. We've talked several
times about the Denning -Kruger effect where
the people with only a minimal amount of understanding
can speak with so much authority and make such
decisive recommendations and move forward that
they don't know enough to be a fucking right.
And it also is not costing them any mind space.
It is interesting because I do think this idea
of the ability to have that replay is invaluable,
whether it's after the fact or whether it's in
advance of a difficult conversation or an important
negotiation. It's good that we can kind of do
some shadow boxing and we can do a little bit
of practice, but there is a point, right, at
which all we're doing now is burning cycles and
we're not making, there's no throughput. There
also ends up being a body -mind disconnect. I
believe that most of us are very, very confident
that our mind is very congruent with our body.
But I just don't think the older I get, the more
I think we just think we are. And sometimes we
are and sometimes we're not. But it's like that
last 5 % where you're off. Yeah. And you're in,
you know, you're in a meeting, you felt fear,
right? Or felt some, some sort of imminent threat.
Yeah. Then you historically gave that a thought
and then you feed that thought and really it
could be something completely different. Or you
just misunderstand, you misread the room. Wait.
Yeah. Have you ever, have you ever, have you
ever had a time where you just completely misread
the room? and just went completely dark and then
we're like, oh, I was just in my... Frightening,
right? But it's true. I mean, the best case is
we just keep our own counsel when we're so in
our head versus coming out with it and trying
to explain away problems that don't exist or...
to try to argue a position that the other side's
not arguing against. I think it's visible when
people are stuck around the axle of something.
It's hard to know when we're doing it though
because we're so much in the thick of it. I was
gonna ask, I think a lot of our listeners are
familiar with this, that wasted energy and the
Working through a problem that's not a problem,
therefore there's not a solution. Any, any thoughts
on strategies to kind of break this? Cause it
can be, it can be a vicious cycle. It can be
fatiguing. It can, it can prevent you from taking
action because it's a bit of analysis paralysis.
Yeah. I mean, I think it comes down to really
quite simply, you have to play both sides. Like
when our, when we ruminate, we're almost always
ruminating in one direction. You don't ever ruminate
in, oh, you know, it's, look, the, you know,
I like that. I was trying to come up with an
analogy and I just failed miserably. But, but
I'm just thinking of like, we don't sit, we sit
and ruminate on the negative. And oftentimes
we don't sit and say, hey, you know, maybe, maybe
we got caught off guard at work. Right. But also
maybe, maybe. You know, the other side of that
is we're, we're not supported, right. Or don't
have enough resources. Right. So we don't, we
don't play both sides. And so your mind doesn't
have a way out if it's just stuck, stuck in the
red. I'll say for my part, Chris, that when it's,
when it's a material thing that I do think needs
to be resolved, you know, or it's a conversation
that is going to happen or a task that has to
be completed. Oftentimes, my rumination makes
it so much bigger than it is. And so my only
real escape is to put pen to paper. And it's
not even a keyboard exercise. Sometimes it's
a pro con list, to your point about playing both
sides, right? Just so I can see it more objectively.
And much like we all think we're multitaskers,
I think we all fancy that we can turn a problem
in our head and look at it objectively. Um, until
it hits paper, I really can't start to see it
in an objective way. Yeah. Um, the other piece
of that too, is that often what I'm picturing
is an entire conversation and all the many ways
that it could go or has gone instead of what
was the heart of what that entire exchange is
about or will be about. And I get back to this
idea of to break that painful rumination cycle
that paralyzes us, putting it on paper lets us
start to explore it. Sometimes it's bullet lists,
frankly, you know? Well, for sure. Like many,
I'm quick to oversubscribe. Of course I'll do
that. Let me get that to you today. And then
I realize there's only one of me and I plan to
go to bed at some point tonight. So task lists
are really powerful, but even those pro -con
lists are starting to just... break it down into
what are the big ideas around a conversation
so I can look at them? I don't know if you use
any of those. You tend to use more tech tools
than I do, but maybe, does process help for you,
or is it equally effective for you to use some
of these different technology tools? I mean,
it's always better when I write with my hand.
It always is. The weird thing that I do, which
I'm not necessarily proud of, is that sometimes
when you ruminate and you just want to be in
a bad mood because you just want to be in a bad
mood, like nothing's worse than that, right?
Yeah, right. I mean, and, you know, there is
some corollaries with work where it's like this
work just sucks, but I'm just going to continue
to do the sucky work, right? And I don't know
why. I wish I could say, oh, this is because
of XYZ. I don't think that that's necessarily
true. But I would say - Get a therapist on here
with us one day and have - I know. Figure out
what the hell's wrong with this. Maybe it's only
- When I do journal and I do write, I generally
do a five whys. That has been the most helpful
for me. And I generally do a third person question
like, why, Chris, why do you? Like even in third
person, because it does something funky with
my head. Yeah. And I answer in first person,
I do da, da, da, da, da, and then I go back to
third person. I found that that has actually
been very helpful when I, when I do want to get
out of some major funks because that, that again,
we, I think at first blush, sometimes we think
that that original rumination that's got us spinning
is the real thing. And really it's something
that could have happened decades ago. And we
don't even know. Those five whys are powerful
and in the spirit of process debt, it takes a
toll. There is a cost for letting these things
just kind of run away with us. I remember a conversation
just a couple months ago and the punchline was,
these ideas are not necessarily reality. You
know, you don't have to subscribe or believe
every idea that passes through your mind. You
think sometimes when we're in a funk and I just
want to have a bad day, let me sit here and swim
in it. You know, we don't always appreciate there's
a cost associated with something in it because
it can warp our outlook. And I would say you
taught me or told me a saying probably about
a year ago, which is clarity is kindness. And
oftentimes, oftentimes we're ruminating, like
we're just stuck in a process because we're unclear.
And that doesn't matter if it's stuck in our
head or at our work in our day job. Now the problem
can be getting clarity sometimes is painful because
that means that we've got to, if it's in our
head, we've got to go to some dark places and
maybe we don't want to do that. If it's in our
job, we got to admit that we don't know how to
do something that someone thinks that we should.
or something like that. I love that that stayed
with you. Sometimes we try to be nice and we
do that more for others than we do to ourselves,
right? And so that kindness is something that
we also deserve. So getting out of the mystic
funkiness of a rumination cycle is a really good
way to be kind to ourselves. For sure. So how
do we kill the process dead of personal rumination?
Writing? Yeah. Writing, and at some point calling
enough enough, right? I think so, yeah. I think
the other thing that's super powerful is to go
grab a walk and put some music on or put on a
book or a podcast. Yep. That physical exercise
sometimes loosens up, not just the chemistry,
but also some of the log jam in the brain. The
other thought was like autonomy is another one.
Like, what can you control? And what do you not
have control over? And getting really clear on
what's yours to own, right? Like, I think especially
if you're responsible, I tend to... Lean towards
being over responsible for stuff that I don't
have any authority over. Yeah, and that doesn't
necessarily help I'm on the going for a walk
thing. Yeah Complete sidebar off topic. You never
do this. Oh, no never I am but I'm reading a
book on EMDR. Do you know what that is? Is this
the the visual I yeah, it's the I E I motorization
desensitization something. Yeah. Yeah, but it's
basically it's It's this thing that this lady
kind of discovered for people with PTSD I'm gonna
think that that's another reason why I kind of
thought of this as I've been listening to this
book But it talked about how you know in in when
in sleep and REM like we have my movement But
she was dealing with some kind of crazy stuff
at work. She was ruminating And what she did
is she went out for a walk and she was just looking
around, right? And she was, she was a psychologist.
So she's, she thinks about how she thinks a lot.
Yeah. Yeah. She's out just looking and just kind
of looking just on a trail. And afterwards she's
like, wait a sec, that went from like an intensity
of 10, you know, down to like a three. And she
was just like, what happened? So then she started
playing with just these eye movements. Yeah.
And, and, and so it is, you know, getting outside.
looking around, like giving your brain, like
getting out of our cubicle cage. Our cubicle.
Dude, right? So great. Yeah, even though we're
not physically exhausted, I think sometimes our
mental or emotional buffers are full and we have
to get up and move and flush them out. Yeah,
well a lot of times work is just unclear. Yeah.
So every day is a new adventure where you're
navigating the social hierarchy of work, and
the actual deliverable of what you're delivering
can be nebulous, can be an email, could be a
meeting that is here and then gone. Yeah, maybe
it may be affected. Absolutely. So cool. Well,
mission and I hope I hope folks take nothing
if nothing else away from this. It's permission
to recognize that we all suffer from a little
bit of ruminate. Yep. Well, absolutely near 120.
So yeah, ruminate, but get out of it. That's
it. Get out of it. Move on. Don't hold yourself
back. Thanks, sir. Love it. All right. Have a
good one. See ya.