Meikles & Dimes

198: Sundays With Tozer Episode 22 | Tozer & Casey Bergeson

In this episode we talk with Casey Bergeson, one of Tozer's first "roommates" and one of Tozer's closest friends.

197: Technologist Bob Goodson | What Is the Most Important Problem in My Field?

Bob Goodson is President and Founder of Quid, a Silicon Valley–based company whose AI models are used by a third of the Fortune 50. Before starting Quid, Bob was the first employee at Yelp, where he played a role in the genesis of the Like Button.

Bob is also a co-author of the new book Like, which tells the story of the origins of the Like Button in social media. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• The question Bob routinely asks himself: “What is the most important problem in my field and am I working on it?”
• It’s nearly impossible to make meaningful contributions to important fields from the outside. But by placing ourselves in the heat and discomfort of the furnace, we give ourselves the chance to do our most important work.
• By working on the most important problem in our field, we potentially give ourselves an advantage, because often there aren’t as many people working on that problem as we might think.

 

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196: Harvard Researcher Siri Chilazi | Having Humility in How Much We Trust Our Brains

Siri Chilazi is a researcher at the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Siri specializes in identifying practical approaches to close gender gaps at work by designing fairer processes. Her work regularly appears in leading media outlets including the BBC, Fast Company, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and The New York Times. She is also the co-author of the book, Make Work Fair.

Siri has an MBA from Harvard Business School, a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard Kennedy School, and a BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard College.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• When computer science classrooms changed the pictures on the walls, from masculine-associated pictures to more gender-neutral pictures, more women expressed interest in computer science.

• As Siri said, we should strive to have humility about how much we trust our brains and our own intuition. And by doing so, we can hopefully make work, and the world, more fair.

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195: Mental Performance Coach Riley Jensen | Greatness Is Achieved One Rep at a Time

Riley Jensen is the lead Mental Performance Coach at Weber State University Athletics. He has coached and trained professional, college, and high school athletes as well as corporate clients from companies such as Microsoft and the Utah Jazz.  

In this episode we discuss the following:

• If we’re thinking about coulda shoulda wouldas, we’re in the past. If we’re thinking about what ifs, we’re in the future. But to help us be where our feet are, we can think about 3 things we see, 2 things we hear, and 1 thing we feel. Then add in a deep, diaphragmatic breath and we’ll reset and get our minds into the moment.
• When Riley didn’t think he could make it through another 60 days of caring for his sick daughter, his mom asked him, “Can you make it through tomorrow.”
• Greatness is achieved one day at a time, one rep at a time. And if we’re worried we can’t make it through one day, can we make it until lunch, or even just through the next ten minutes.
• It’s never as bad as it seems, and it’s never as good as it gets.

 

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194: Professor Theresa Glomb | Work Hard, Have Fun, Choose Kind, Be Present

Theresa Glomb is a business professor at the University of Minnesota. She researches the role of mood at work, and has identified several simple, micro-interventions that can improve our working lives.

Theresa has published her research in top management and psychology journals and been covered in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Huffington Post. 

Theresa received a PhD in social, organizational, and individual differences psychology from the University of Illinois and a BA in psychology from DePaul University. 

In this episode we discuss the following:

• To help us work hard, Theresa suggests we “park downhill.” Each day, as we finish work, we can queue up the thing we need to work on first the next day, which can help us hit the ground running.
• To help us have fun, we can reflect, each night, on the good things we did at work. The negative tends to be stronger than the positive, but by creating an “I did list” each night, we can improve our mood and even our health. 
• By being present throughout the day, for example, while walking to a meeting, we not only improve our attention quotient, but also can improve our relationships with others.
• Though work can often feel like we’re digging a hole in water, Theresa provides great tools to reframe and restructure our days: work hard, have fun, choose kind, be present. 

 

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193: How To Make Work Meaningful | Tamara Myles, Positive Psychology Instructor at the University of Pennsylvania

Tamara Myles is an instructor of Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and is an accomplished consultant, trainer, and international speaker. She is a leading global authority on meaning at work and she is the author of the book, "Meaningful Work.”

Tamara's work has been featured in FastCompany, Business Insider, and Forbes, among other publications.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• Given that we spend one third of our time at work, it’s hard to feel like life is meaningful if work isn’t.
• Sometimes it just requires a mental shift to make work meaningful. For example, a data center worker realized she wasn’t just connecting wires, she was connecting people, and even saving lives given all the industries that depended on the data center.
• When a young guest at the Ritz Carlton left their stuffed animal behind, the workers didn’t just return the stuffed animal. They also took pictures of the stuffed animal enjoying an extra-long vacation at the resort.
• To make work meaningful, strive for community, contribution, and challenge. And then try to help others experience meaning as well.

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192: Former Google Executive Jenny Wood | Shamelessly Go After What You Want

Jenny Wood is a former Google executive who ran a large operations team that helped drive billions of advertising revenue a year. And she also created one of the largest career development programs in Google's history. Jenny is also the author of the book, Wild Courage.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• I love Jenny’s advice to be shameless: have the courage to stand behind our efforts and abilities. And go after what we want.
• What a great example of shamelessness when Jenny chased her husband-to-be off the subway to give him her business card.
• In the workplace, it’s hard to be noticed if we don’t stand out. But many of us default to not self-promoting enough. Yet as a manager at Google, Jenny loved getting a shameless Monday morning email from a small number of her direct reports who told her what they had accomplished and what they were going to do next. 

 

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191: Harvard Professor Iris Bohnet on Fairness

Iris Bohnet is a Professor of Business and Government and the co-director of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School. As a behavioral economist, she combines insights from economics and psychology to improve decision-making in organizations and society, often with a gender or cross-cultural perspective. She is the author of the award-winning book, What Works and co-author of the new book Make Work Fair.

In this episode we discuss the following:

• If we’re concerned about fairness, it cannot be a program. It has to be a way of doing things. For example, DEI trainings are programs. And the research shows that they don’t change behavior.
• When Astrid Linder collected data on car accidents, she learned that women tended to have worse injuries than men because the crash test dummies that had been used to inform the cars’ design had been made to represent a prototypical male. Designing crash test dummies that are more representative of women is an example of doing things that make life more fair.

 

190: Sundays With Tozer Episode 21 | Tozer Helps Me Get Recruited & We Discuss Oppenheimer

In this episode we discuss how Tozer helped me get recruited out of high school, and we discuss the movie Oppenheimer, given that Tozer spent more than a decade at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

189: Sundays with Tozer Episode 20 | Tozer and Zairrick Wadsworth

In this episode of Sundays with Tozer, we talk with Zairrick Wadsworth, one of the great wrestlers from Idaho, and one of the great coaches in Idaho, who likely would have never attended college if not for Tozer.