Stephen Reiff: welcome to another episode of Identity Work. We are thrilled that you have joined us. Adam, it is good to see you today. Backwards baseball cap and all.
Adam: It's good to be here, Steven. It's been a couple weeks. It's good to good to be back in the chair. Back with the back with a baseball hat.
Stephen Reiff: Yep. And we got a good topic today. You finally figured out meaningful work. This could be the last episode since Adam figured it out. This
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Reiff: is the climax. But then AI happened. Dun dun dun dun. but I'm excited today because it's a little bit of a recap of where this journey started and kind of where we are. Seventy some episodes in, you know, you're reading sixty-seven and a half books. I'll post a few articles here or there.
Adam: Yeah, I'm excited to excited to talk about it too. it's a funny a funny lead in of I you never f we never find the answer. This isn't a podcast of like giving the answer. It's exclusively a podcast of asking questions we don't know the answer to, but I do feel like I you know
Stephen Reiff: It's like it's a metaphor for, you know, there's no dream job, there's no right answer, but we are fighting
Adam: That's right.
Stephen Reiff: some themes. It's all and it's a journey. It's a journey.
Adam: That's right. That's right. I do feel like the in 74 episodes or however many episodes we've done, I need to check. I should know the number before we walk into this conversation every time. It's kind of always a surprise when I go look, but I do feel like we I don't know if we answered questions, but I think we like moved pretty far in our self understanding of what meaningful work looks like. I I reflect on that all the time
Stephen Reiff: Agree.
Adam: of like I think You know, if someone were to ask me what is meaningful work, what is the definition of meaningful work? I don't know if I know the answer, but I do feel like I know what it feels like to me it
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: much more strongly and and I can like sense it out more clearly and and just like experiencing it more often in my day. And so this has been a very fruitful experience for me, even if it's just been selfishly learning that
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: for myself. But I think other people
Stephen Reiff: Well we said when we started off, you know, you and I would unpack these topics together as, you know, accountability,
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: discipline, and worst case people listen to it. And, you know, worst case people have listened to it. Shout out to some of our super fans. Chase, Brendan, your mom, Adam. well Adam D. Luzanski is another super fan. So
Adam: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Griffin.
Stephen Reiff: my wife, Griffin. Yeah. So gotta give shout out Sharla, she's a big super fan. She's the first one to say she's binge at our episodes, so
Adam: That's huge. Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: That's a milestone. Yes. and then I guess this started almost two and a half years ago. Kind of when you started it asking questions about what makes work meaningful. And one of them that I think resonated has resonated, still resonates with me is why don't I feel successful even when the world tells me I am? and then kind of your original thinking of like the goals to stop working as quickly as possible. but realizing that that's That's not the goal. as well. So
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I started I started definitely started this journey asking those asking those questions and being really confused on even how to answer them or, you know, if I were to find an answer, like what what it could possibly be. I felt like I'd tried so many different approaches and like styles of work and tried to believe different things about work to feel meaning and, you know, just kind of like hadn't happened or it happened for a bit and faded and I do think meaningful work. Like the the deep connection to work, I've come to really like that phrase, honestly, even more than meaningful work, like feeling connected to my work. I I feel like that probably ebbs and flows, and that's that's like normal. And I think a big part of this journey has been accepting that that ebbs and flows and not feeling like it needs to be like fire all the time. But my the way I've I sum up sort of my my belief about meaningful work for myself now. Is that what what I'm looking for is learning with people that make me laugh and providing for my family. And I think those three things, like learning, people that make me laugh and providing for my family weren't always true. Like until a year ago, I think providing for my family probably wasn't in there. It was just learning with people that make me laugh. And that's sort of a new, a new thing that I genuinely do feel it's like can I feel connected to my work in knowing that it provides For a mortgage and for my kid to eat food. so, anyways, I think like the definition morphs over time. But those those three things feel like real honest like pillars to me that when I have those things in a day is is like really good.
Stephen Reiff: And I wanna yeah, I'd say it's almost three, maybe four, like people that make me laugh. And that's interesting. It's not like people I like, people I admire. It's it's
Adam: Yeah, I wanted to be specific with it.
Stephen Reiff: yeah, yeah. Tell me about that. I mean, I know we'll unpack kind of each one of these in in due time. but I wanna pause there of tell me people that make me laugh.
Adam: Huh. Yeah. Yeah, I was sitting here thinking about writing that and it's the first time I wrote down that idea and was writing this this newsletter. You know, it's not something that I had like premeditated for for months and months on. but I think as I I thought about the people that I genuinely just enjoyed. that was a tangible marker that I enjoyed being with them was I think people I admire or you know, respect or people that are kind or those types of adjectives like they don't it doesn't feel like I really want to show up. When I when I really think about that, I'm like, yeah, that's it sort of feels like eating eating your weaties in a way. It's like it's good, it's good for me that I'm with people I respect. You know, that's like helpful for Adam, but it's but it's not like I'm excited for work today. and I was trying to get to this essence of like what makes me excited for work today? It's like when I'm like really engaged learning something and I just genuinely like enjoy the people I'm with. Not not in a like meta macro, you know. I'm supposed to enjoy them because they're nice sense, but just like have a good time when I'm hanging out with them is really what feels fun to me. So that and that part particularly, honestly, I don't get very much, if I'm being really honest. I think it's really hard to laugh on Zoom. It's really challenging. We've we're do we're doing it. We
Stephen Reiff: We're doing it. We're doing it.
Adam: have a g we have a good time doing it, but we have spent a lot more hours together talking about way more fun stuff than
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, that's true.
Adam: most coworkers. and so I feel like I struggle with that one the most of the three the three pillars, but those are my pillars.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Well of that, just a final comment on the last thing and then we'll go on. But I heard the founder of Savannah Banana speak a couple months ago. And it's just like he talked about every stage of the whole baseball process. And like, how can this be more fun? How can this be more fun? How can like receipts be more fun? and so I have that kind of front of mind. And then, you know, there's a book too that you can add to your list called Humor Seriously, which was Stanford. GSP professor who talked about some of the brain science of like the the importance of humor in the workplace. so it's yeah. And I think of like, yeah, what do I want? Yeah, I want to be with coworkers to make me laugh. I know. I think there's something profound there.
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: as well. So it's cool.
Adam: Yeah, thanks. well this is not to not to like, you know, pour some rain on this happy parade, but the this newsletter was that was the intro, and then it was like bum bum bum and then it all fell apart because of AI. or I don't know if it
Stephen Reiff: Yes, okay. So that's not enough anymore, your definition.
Adam: Yeah, I don't think I wouldn't say it's not enough. I still think it's true. I think the question is like, AI is just has like changed everything about the way that I work. And I think is going
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: to do more of that. And it's led me to like really think about
Stephen Reiff: Wait, can before we before we get to AI, can we just close the loop for our listeners? Because I think this is a good exercise. You have like a simple sentence of like what makes meaningful work for you. And I feel like this would be good for our listeners. And I'm kind of doing it for myself real time. So you say learning with people that make me laugh and providing for my family. My definition is I would say leveraging my strengths in a great community and having ballots. Is my definition. so I think I'd encourage our listeners to kind of like write down as short as you can, and then my three things we could unpack the strengths, community, balance. so, anyways, okay. Sorry, I don't normally interrupt you, but I just thought that would be a good stop, pause, whatever. Okay.
Adam: No, those are good things. I think those those three pillars definitely share share some similarities.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, they do. okay. So now this was working. Dun dun dun AI. Carry on.
Adam: Yeah. yeah, so these three pillars it's not it's not getting worse, but I think I just realized that AI is changing it's changing the tasks that I do for work pretty dramatically. And it's changing the way these I engage with these three pillars, or like the potential to engage with these three pillars. And I think it could be massively good and massively bad, honestly. And I it's it's really dependent. And this this article I sort of started sort of wrestling with that. So to give you some examples, like learning. When I think about learning, there's parts of my job where I entire tasks, like domains of knowledge, I no longer need at all. Like I don't need to learn them. It just is a sentence away and the answer is there and I don't even need to know the answer. It just is like solved for me. and so I had this question of like, do I learn faster? Because the the barrier to learning is now gone. Like I don't need someone else. I don't need YouTube plus Udemy plus Google. Like I just kind of it is all in one place and happens really fast. Or is like because I don't have the struggle of trying to figure it out anymore. Do I like lose some of that feeling of learning and like the connection to learning that I once had? So that was my learning pillar. I don't know. Do you want me to rip through all three or do you want to stop at learning and spend some time there?
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, let's pause yeah, let's pause on each one. Hey, I'm always surprised at like how much value you put on learning, which I think is cool and I admire it. and yeah, as you've wrestled with this question of how AI is changing in the learning game, have you come out with any hypotheses yet or no?
Adam: I think hypothesis I do think this is one that I genu I generally feel pretty good about. Like I think it's helping me learn and move. It's definitely changing what I'm learning, but it hasn't felt like I've lost the struggle. I think learning kind of requires some struggle, you know? Some like, I don't know what I'm doing and I need to figure this out and I think they used to be trying to write SQL or trying to craft the bullet points just right or something. And now it's it's been like, how do I use this technology efficiently? How do I like get it to to increase my leverage to do three things at once? How do I like tame it so that it doesn't write 17 pages every time I ask it to write a document? Like, it's been different types of learning, but It's generally felt like higher it's felt the same to me. I think I don't even know if it's in felt that different. I think it's just felt like I'm learning different stuff. And that stuff is high leverage, useful and important things. Like the last stuff I was using was high leveraged and important at the time.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, because I was gonna say you're probably just learning a ton, but it's more around the AI tool, if you will. That's how and like changing work, like I feel yeah. In some sense it's made, you know, when I think about learning in my job, it's like understanding a new industry or like and it's made a lot of that learning like a lot faster. or even, you know, there is a potential new client we had, and I'm like I'm reading their website, I'm like, no one really needs us. I can't figure out what they do. So I had to like ask chat, like use an analogy, help me, you know, help me understand it. So in that sense, it like gave me like I was able to learn very quickly, but or get up to speed very quickly. which would have been more like annoying to then spend the time researching all our articles and, you know, clicking
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: through all these links and all that stuff. but then I, you know, learning AI, you just always feel behind and but it's kind of an exciting time to to
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: be in the working workplace too. So anyways.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, I think learning has a is a double edged sword, making it the the crux of my feeling of connection to work has its has its downsides. I think in AI AI throws gasoline on that fire, and that for learning to be a pillar of meaningful work means you never feel very good at anything. In a way, like my pillar is the antithesis of your pillar. Like You wanna feel s
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, it is.
Adam: you wanna feel strengths and like you're like performing well. I kinda wanna feel crappy about myself and and like I'm like never never doing enough because I always need to do more. which is interesting. Yours sounds more fun.
Stephen Reiff: That is it, I know. I feel like we need Emma to zoom in to like help us sort this out
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: because that's interesting. I was thinking about that too. in which is like maybe why you started on this journey is like I'm always traveling never there. So you're like always learning, never up, you know.
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: where yeah, yeah, there are opposites. I don't know. Any thoughts?
Adam: I like yours better. Yours sounds more fun.
Stephen Reiff: Switch. Try it.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I've maybe just never been in a place where I've been using great strengths that have been like recognized for any extended period of time. Or as soon as I'm using strengths, I just kinda like get bored. I
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: don't know. I feel like boredom is my kryptonite at work. Like the moment that I start telling my boss I'm bored, I'm like six months from leaving.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. I'm guessing you could operate in your strengths and not be bored though.
Adam: Yeah. I have to believe that that's true. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, but I have to believe that that's true.
Stephen Reiff: Do you know your strings? Have you done strings finder enneagram and a an amogulation of all those things?
Adam: I have done these things. I feel like people don't really pay me for my strengths.
Stephen Reiff: That's a that's a bigger pro that's a different problem. Yeah.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. People pay me for the stuff I I don't like doing, but I'm good at. I don't know how that plays out. It's like I don't like my strengths. Or like I don't like the strengths that give me paid. They're they kind of like
Stephen Reiff: Just be specific.
Adam: well, I just feel like the things I'm best at in the workplace are like grinding. Is like like execution and and like operation and making checklists and like executing against them. the strengths that I like are more like relational coaching, knowing people, question asking type of strengths. but those are sort of more manager strengths generally. And I've what I am asked to do is none of those things. I'm asked to like execute my individual contributor job is all that I've done for the last decade. Anyways, we could we could we could unpack that for a while, I'm sure. Emmo would really have a field day, I have no doubt.
Stephen Reiff: Okay. She would. I don't know. She's amazing. Cause I'm like, where do how should I get this out of you? But yes, we can we can pivot. but I yeah, do you think about that? Yeah, how do you 'cause I yeah, I have felt that too. Like I'm very relational. It's like, well, I don't want to be a real estate agent. and I need to like, yeah, cut my teeth for a few years as an analyst and you know. not enjoying my job for a bit to stare at a computer screen and stuff. so there's always the spinach. I don't know. W yeah. But maybe press into that a little bit. Or mem you know, how could you use operating this your strengths ten percent more, you know, this six week or something?
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I definitely live for one of the things I've really appreciated about Chuck that I really like is that a lot of people are based in one place. Like we're fully remote, but there's a hub in New York. And that means we visit New York more often than normal. Like previous companies I would do a once a year off site. And here we do it like once a quarter. And we have a we have one next week that I'm pretty excited about seeing people in person. So that's a
Stephen Reiff: Good. It's gonna be fun.
Adam: That's a way to do it for sure. I've got a couple of one on ones that are just purely fun that I like, so I like lean into that stuff a bit, but
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Which goes into the second people who make you laugh.
Adam: Yeah. People that make me laugh. this is the one that I feel worst. yeah,
Stephen Reiff: How's the AI impacting this?
Adam: this is the one that I feel worst about for sure. I wrote a whole article about this one, which is the week after this is article, and it's more depressing than this one. the I don't know, it has some uplifting parts to it, but the thinking about the questions around this, I think it it still does have the potential to be good. but does it the question is does it change the pillar if I have less interactions with people? Less like tedious work. Like a lot of our interactions at work are something like this. I need an answer to some question. I message Joe, who I know knows the answer to that question. Joe takes six hours to respond to me and then says, Let's grab fifteen minutes and schedules that for the next day. The next day I spend 15 minutes where the first five minutes we chat about the weather, then we spend eight minutes answering my question, and then we spend three minutes like, you know, wrapping it up talking about the weather again. And like that's my path to answer this question. Now that question is answered in like 48 seconds by Claude. and I never talk to Joe. I never even think about Joe anymore. and the question is like, is that was that interaction with Joe good? In terms that it like was a relational experience that made me laugh, or was it, you know, forty-five minutes that I just turned into 40 seconds that now allows me to like do more learning and do more providing and do more impact in my job? And that's better. Those are the that's the questions around people. I think it's been bad for me. I think the that 15-minute interaction with Joe is Is good for my enjoyment of work and my feeling of connection to work. And I find myself like cr craving 15-minute nothing meetings in my day now. Like, thank goodness I have I have three hours of meetings today where I can like look at another human and hear their voice. What a treat.
Stephen Reiff: Man. I'm t I think you need to do a hybrid job. I'm just saying.
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Reiff: I think you need to I think you need to get into the office.
Adam: Yeah, so this is this
Stephen Reiff: with
Adam: was my wrestling with people. I think that's I kind of know that to be right. But Yeah, I don't know if these three pillars like they have gives and takes, you know. I think
Stephen Reiff: But yeah.
Adam: I could I could be in person, but I would give up twenty five percent of my ability to provide and twenty five percent of my ability to learn. Like is that a trade I would make? I don't know. I don't think so.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. I don't
Adam: Anyways, so
Stephen Reiff: know. I hear you longing for it though.
Adam: I am longing for it. I am longing for it. I've tried random other I've tried random aspects of this. I've like gone to co working spots and you
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: know, worked in coffee shops or tried to make a friend, I don't know, get lunch with my wife, these types of things and just it's kinda nothing like just having coworkers that make you laugh.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: Like The cut the barista that you see w once a month doesn't really do it.
Stephen Reiff: Yep. Yep. Yeah, I thought about this a little bit in I don't know, like I'm coming off a strategy off site for a team. and one of the reasons I've prioritized doing these more cause it's like what can AI not do? And like you can't rebuild kind of that real time alignment amongst a team. And so I'd love to do and I think it's aligned to my giftings and all the things too, but trying to figure out like how to sell more of those because I that's like one thing that Yeah, I can't do. it's get people together and build alignment kind of through that in person relationship. So
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: AI is making me laugh though. I think I told you in my weekly update to my team that I included it includes a roast every week. which is pretty
Adam: Yeah, do you get a good one last week?
Stephen Reiff: fun. It was pretty good. Let's see where if I can read it real quick. edit this. Yep, between brokering a client's Wikipedia page from a group chat, playing landlord tenant lease on for whiteboard market markers, finding time to have strong opinions about NIL, Steven ran an entire strategy off site this week too. Solid output for a calendar that was mostly one giant gray block rectangle.
Adam: I love that.
Stephen Reiff: I did block the time for the off site. Okay. providing way increase your ability to provide for your family, threaten it.
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: All the above. Product's still out.
Adam: Yeah, this one's this one's kinda the most unknown. Like I think probably positive, but I could totally believe a world where it is negative. This is the obvious question. It's like, say I gotta take my job, or is it gonna make me some superhuman that has five jobs and gets paid for five jobs because like the economy is all about output and I'm gonna be outputting like a fiend. And who knows? I'm I'm I'm no economist. I think I generally believe the like I d I I don't know if I what I believe, but I think I'm optimistic. I think I'm generally just an optimistic person and I find that life is more enjoyable when you're not always looking at what could go wrong. And so I'm I'm hopeful and think that it probably is gonna be a good thing for us and we'll figure out how to make it be something that we like increases the the I don't know through overall thriving of the world. But It's not a hundred percent sure that's gonna happen. So verdict's out.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Right before we jumped on a Wall Street Terminal alert of like a anthropic lead engineer resigns because he thinks, you know, they're working on models that will take over hum you know, the he cause the destruction of humanity. Which there's a dime a dozen of those. but it's still I mean anthropic honestly hasn't had one, it doesn't feel like. and so yeah. It's an interesting pattern for living in.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. There's some one of the things I think about too is we're kind of a ways away from this having all the ripple effects and impact that it people are claiming it's gonna have, but the A lot of what I do in my job right now is try to create systems that are like replacing people's jobs. And like
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: we're gonna we're moving those people to other things to do other stuff that is more important and like higher leverage for their skills. But
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: it is like running after people in a way. And we did we have Like Consolidated jobs. Not hired people we would have hired because of because of this for sure. we had our first instance.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: this is this is new. This is like AI corner stuff. One of our one of our projects or like quarterly goals this quarter is to incre to like improve the way that we work as a team. The the sentence that people are saying a lot is is AI has made us work. individually better, but hasn't changed the way that we work as a team. Something like that. They say it in a pithier way, but that's the general idea. which is like we all have our own clawed systems and agents and stuff, but we're not we don't have shared context that's happening in the AI. And one of the specific projects within that goal is to basically like take to do the job of the product manager end to end fully in AI with no No input is a goal to to have like an entire project go from just like a customer feature request to being built in code with with no human input. And it's like, man, it it finally came for me. That's what I do. Like I've been I've been doing I've been doing
Stephen Reiff: Nervous laughter.
Adam: the thing that's I've been building that taking for other people's jobs, but now it's coming for my job. Is
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: yeah, kinda interesting times.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. That is interesting. That was just this week.
Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like it it did it and the feedback people gave was like, It was amazing, so good.
Stephen Reiff: I just
Adam: So you're like, yikes, it did it. That's good, I guess.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so where does this leave us?
Adam: Yeah, yeah. We kinda got got deep on each of those three. I think it left me with this feeling of Like the the paradigm that I understood of work can still hold. And my job is to figure out how to use this new technology that can be good or can be bad to try to push the gas in a positive way in each of these pillars for me. And, you know, I talked about fear that it will harm my relationships with people and existential thread of well let me provide, but there's also good things that can come from each of these things. Like people, I didn't say this in this article, but the next article I spent some time thinking about like how could this actually increase my relationships with people? And like it can be a really effective relational coach. You can like assess your past interactions with people and give you really good feedback on how to like engage and remember stuff that they talked about. Like where did my Boss go on vacation this week. I don't remember, but we talked about it in that transcript that you recorded. Claude, can you remind me before I go into this conversation? Like those types of things I think can help really like enjoy the experiences you do have with people by I don't know, helping you remember the connection a bit better. So, anyways, I think these pillars are still true, and there's opportunities to use this technology to make them even more true and to add more meaning and connection. through those pillars. And so I think that's the task we have in front of us is finding a way to finding a way to do that.
Stephen Reiff: Good. Well, do you wanna move to our Amazon questions?
Adam: Let's do it.
Stephen Reiff: Maybe not one on AI, just to give ourselves a little a little break.
Adam: Yeah, we can we can we can skip that one.
Stephen Reiff: i had i guess it's not really a trend spotter it's just like epiphany corner but i'm reading matt chandler's new book about the beatitudes and in the his opening sentence is it's like the spiritual life is not up to the right and i feel like a lot of our listeners and us it's like we're on climbing the ladder it's up and to the right you know we're on you know our career journey and and we've kind of hit the spot. If he describes life as in the spiritual journey is not up and to the right. It's more of a coil, like up and down, up and down, up and down. And you're slowly kind of getting refined and refined. But I thought that was just a helpful visual as we've talked about just I don't know, this the desire for everything to move up and to the right, whether it's our stock portfolio or our career. But in actuality, life is a lot more of like the coil. So
Adam: Yeah, it's good. Good reminder for me today, particularly.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. what is your favorite dessert?
Adam: There any more questions like this? This is just a nice one.
Stephen Reiff: I know so Delve Deck has two colors. One is blue, which is like the deeper one. And one is yellow, which is the easier one. So I re I just
Adam: We've
Stephen Reiff: found the yellow one, so it's gonna be a lot easier. So
Adam: wow, this is such great news. Holy cow. my favorite dessert. I will give you a very specific answer, which is my mom made this mint chocolate cake for my birthday every year for many years when I was in the house. And particularly a we would put it in the fridge and like a very cold slice of this cake had some chocolate chips that would be very crunchy when you got them cold. with like a scoop of mid chocolate chip ice cream.
Stephen Reiff: Well.
Adam: Haven't had that cake in a long time, but that's my favorite dessert.
Stephen Reiff: Alright, Mrs. Beadley, send it send it to Atlanta. It does sound good. I I'm ready
Adam: Don't don't prompt her with that. She'll do it. She'll do it.
Stephen Reiff: for dessert.
Adam: What are you?
Stephen Reiff: What was the question? Fair dessert? Like a like a dark chocol like a flowerless chocolate cake.
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: Or like I like dark chocolate. I think I told you once that at one point I was at Whole Foods and I found a hundred percent dark chocolate. I was like, Yes, I've never been able to find it. This is it.
Adam: Do like it?
Stephen Reiff: 'Cause everything's always like eighty percent. I was like, Yes, I found a hundred percent. And then I tried it and then I said, shit. It was horrible.
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: Can't cuss, otherwise we get the explicit warning. It was it was like bark chip dirt. I'm like, man, ten percent of sugar goes a really long ways. so that or I mean, there's nothing better than like an apple pie. My mother in law makes an amazing apple pie. and so you got me going on the chocolate, but I just great apple pie or like fourth of July berry cobbler, you know. Marionberry.
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: Not many people have heard of it. It's native to Oregon. All right, one more question for fun. If you could wave a magic wand and make something more popular, what would you choose?
Adam: That's gotta be somewhere between yellow and blue. if I could wave a magic wand and make something more popular.
Stephen Reiff: I gotta answer while you think about it. there's an Apple TV show called Acapulco that my wife and I think is hilarious and heartwarming. And no one's ever heard of it. And I think it's just the best show ever. And like I've never heard of anybody ever hearing of this show. Yeah.
Adam: Okay, that's a good rack. Yeah. I need to
Stephen Reiff: Acapulco.
Adam: that's a definitely a good one. I need to check that out. the answer that's coming to my mind for some reason, this is very odd, is these are pretty popular, so it's not like that much of a hot take, but wallets on the back of phones. I think wallets should be extinct. I I don't understand why anyone carries a wallet anymore versus the phone attachment. It's just so much better.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. It's really just the ID for airports and stuff. So once we move digital.
Adam: Yeah. I don't even need a credit card, but I still have one for some reason that feels like a comfort blanket to me.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. I'm huge on the Apple Pay. So much so our three year old daughter like thinks to pay for something. She just puts her wrist next to it.
Adam: Wow. That's amazing.
Stephen Reiff: and then I guess the r our real answer should be this podcast, right? More popular. Yeah. I mean it already
Adam: yeah, yeah, I can't believe I didn't think of that.
Stephen Reiff: is. It's exceeded our wildest expectations, but
Adam: That's true. That's true.
Stephen Reiff: I'm ready for open AI to make us an offer like they did T V PN. So Sam Altman, if you're listening, or the AI bots are listening for when your name is mentioned, we are for sale. We can't be bot,
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: but we
Adam: Yeah. The number better have a B in it, is all we're saying.
Stephen Reiff: can't be bot. And we demand editorial freedom, but we will our opening conversations. All right, what's the
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: one thing you are listeners thinking about as they finish the commute home or take a moment to journal over the weekend?
Adam: I think this question of how does how does AI impact your connection or feelings of meaning at work? You specifically, uniquely, you know, whoever you are. And yeah, think about what makes work meaningful for you and how's AI gonna gonna change that and how can you use it to make those things better?
Stephen Reiff: I answer that.
Adam: Please, yeah.
Stephen Reiff: I think overall it's removed a decent amount of the tedious work. It's made me more confident in my work. The f the thing that I don't like about it is that it's Yeah, the existential threat, I guess. but like two dates
Adam: That small that small thing.
Stephen Reiff: that small thing, two dates, maybe it's made me have more meaningful work 'cause I feel like I'm able to operate my strengths. so that's where I think I'm netting out on things.
Adam: Good stuff.
Stephen Reiff: For what it's worth. Kev,
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Reiff: with that, see you next week.
Adam: All right. Bye everybody.
Stephen Reiff: Not a not a question, statement. We'll see ya next week. Thanks for listening.
Adam: It's good to be here, Steven. It's been a couple weeks. It's good to good to be back in the chair. Back with the back with a baseball hat.
Stephen Reiff: Yep. And we got a good topic today. You finally figured out meaningful work. This could be the last episode since Adam figured it out. This
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Reiff: is the climax. But then AI happened. Dun dun dun dun. but I'm excited today because it's a little bit of a recap of where this journey started and kind of where we are. Seventy some episodes in, you know, you're reading sixty-seven and a half books. I'll post a few articles here or there.
Adam: Yeah, I'm excited to excited to talk about it too. it's a funny a funny lead in of I you never f we never find the answer. This isn't a podcast of like giving the answer. It's exclusively a podcast of asking questions we don't know the answer to, but I do feel like I you know
Stephen Reiff: It's like it's a metaphor for, you know, there's no dream job, there's no right answer, but we are fighting
Adam: That's right.
Stephen Reiff: some themes. It's all and it's a journey. It's a journey.
Adam: That's right. That's right. I do feel like the in 74 episodes or however many episodes we've done, I need to check. I should know the number before we walk into this conversation every time. It's kind of always a surprise when I go look, but I do feel like we I don't know if we answered questions, but I think we like moved pretty far in our self understanding of what meaningful work looks like. I I reflect on that all the time
Stephen Reiff: Agree.
Adam: of like I think You know, if someone were to ask me what is meaningful work, what is the definition of meaningful work? I don't know if I know the answer, but I do feel like I know what it feels like to me it
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: much more strongly and and I can like sense it out more clearly and and just like experiencing it more often in my day. And so this has been a very fruitful experience for me, even if it's just been selfishly learning that
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: for myself. But I think other people
Stephen Reiff: Well we said when we started off, you know, you and I would unpack these topics together as, you know, accountability,
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: discipline, and worst case people listen to it. And, you know, worst case people have listened to it. Shout out to some of our super fans. Chase, Brendan, your mom, Adam. well Adam D. Luzanski is another super fan. So
Adam: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Griffin.
Stephen Reiff: my wife, Griffin. Yeah. So gotta give shout out Sharla, she's a big super fan. She's the first one to say she's binge at our episodes, so
Adam: That's huge. Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: That's a milestone. Yes. and then I guess this started almost two and a half years ago. Kind of when you started it asking questions about what makes work meaningful. And one of them that I think resonated has resonated, still resonates with me is why don't I feel successful even when the world tells me I am? and then kind of your original thinking of like the goals to stop working as quickly as possible. but realizing that that's That's not the goal. as well. So
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I started I started definitely started this journey asking those asking those questions and being really confused on even how to answer them or, you know, if I were to find an answer, like what what it could possibly be. I felt like I'd tried so many different approaches and like styles of work and tried to believe different things about work to feel meaning and, you know, just kind of like hadn't happened or it happened for a bit and faded and I do think meaningful work. Like the the deep connection to work, I've come to really like that phrase, honestly, even more than meaningful work, like feeling connected to my work. I I feel like that probably ebbs and flows, and that's that's like normal. And I think a big part of this journey has been accepting that that ebbs and flows and not feeling like it needs to be like fire all the time. But my the way I've I sum up sort of my my belief about meaningful work for myself now. Is that what what I'm looking for is learning with people that make me laugh and providing for my family. And I think those three things, like learning, people that make me laugh and providing for my family weren't always true. Like until a year ago, I think providing for my family probably wasn't in there. It was just learning with people that make me laugh. And that's sort of a new, a new thing that I genuinely do feel it's like can I feel connected to my work in knowing that it provides For a mortgage and for my kid to eat food. so, anyways, I think like the definition morphs over time. But those those three things feel like real honest like pillars to me that when I have those things in a day is is like really good.
Stephen Reiff: And I wanna yeah, I'd say it's almost three, maybe four, like people that make me laugh. And that's interesting. It's not like people I like, people I admire. It's it's
Adam: Yeah, I wanted to be specific with it.
Stephen Reiff: yeah, yeah. Tell me about that. I mean, I know we'll unpack kind of each one of these in in due time. but I wanna pause there of tell me people that make me laugh.
Adam: Huh. Yeah. Yeah, I was sitting here thinking about writing that and it's the first time I wrote down that idea and was writing this this newsletter. You know, it's not something that I had like premeditated for for months and months on. but I think as I I thought about the people that I genuinely just enjoyed. that was a tangible marker that I enjoyed being with them was I think people I admire or you know, respect or people that are kind or those types of adjectives like they don't it doesn't feel like I really want to show up. When I when I really think about that, I'm like, yeah, that's it sort of feels like eating eating your weaties in a way. It's like it's good, it's good for me that I'm with people I respect. You know, that's like helpful for Adam, but it's but it's not like I'm excited for work today. and I was trying to get to this essence of like what makes me excited for work today? It's like when I'm like really engaged learning something and I just genuinely like enjoy the people I'm with. Not not in a like meta macro, you know. I'm supposed to enjoy them because they're nice sense, but just like have a good time when I'm hanging out with them is really what feels fun to me. So that and that part particularly, honestly, I don't get very much, if I'm being really honest. I think it's really hard to laugh on Zoom. It's really challenging. We've we're do we're doing it. We
Stephen Reiff: We're doing it. We're doing it.
Adam: have a g we have a good time doing it, but we have spent a lot more hours together talking about way more fun stuff than
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, that's true.
Adam: most coworkers. and so I feel like I struggle with that one the most of the three the three pillars, but those are my pillars.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Well of that, just a final comment on the last thing and then we'll go on. But I heard the founder of Savannah Banana speak a couple months ago. And it's just like he talked about every stage of the whole baseball process. And like, how can this be more fun? How can this be more fun? How can like receipts be more fun? and so I have that kind of front of mind. And then, you know, there's a book too that you can add to your list called Humor Seriously, which was Stanford. GSP professor who talked about some of the brain science of like the the importance of humor in the workplace. so it's yeah. And I think of like, yeah, what do I want? Yeah, I want to be with coworkers to make me laugh. I know. I think there's something profound there.
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: as well. So it's cool.
Adam: Yeah, thanks. well this is not to not to like, you know, pour some rain on this happy parade, but the this newsletter was that was the intro, and then it was like bum bum bum and then it all fell apart because of AI. or I don't know if it
Stephen Reiff: Yes, okay. So that's not enough anymore, your definition.
Adam: Yeah, I don't think I wouldn't say it's not enough. I still think it's true. I think the question is like, AI is just has like changed everything about the way that I work. And I think is going
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: to do more of that. And it's led me to like really think about
Stephen Reiff: Wait, can before we before we get to AI, can we just close the loop for our listeners? Because I think this is a good exercise. You have like a simple sentence of like what makes meaningful work for you. And I feel like this would be good for our listeners. And I'm kind of doing it for myself real time. So you say learning with people that make me laugh and providing for my family. My definition is I would say leveraging my strengths in a great community and having ballots. Is my definition. so I think I'd encourage our listeners to kind of like write down as short as you can, and then my three things we could unpack the strengths, community, balance. so, anyways, okay. Sorry, I don't normally interrupt you, but I just thought that would be a good stop, pause, whatever. Okay.
Adam: No, those are good things. I think those those three pillars definitely share share some similarities.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, they do. okay. So now this was working. Dun dun dun AI. Carry on.
Adam: Yeah. yeah, so these three pillars it's not it's not getting worse, but I think I just realized that AI is changing it's changing the tasks that I do for work pretty dramatically. And it's changing the way these I engage with these three pillars, or like the potential to engage with these three pillars. And I think it could be massively good and massively bad, honestly. And I it's it's really dependent. And this this article I sort of started sort of wrestling with that. So to give you some examples, like learning. When I think about learning, there's parts of my job where I entire tasks, like domains of knowledge, I no longer need at all. Like I don't need to learn them. It just is a sentence away and the answer is there and I don't even need to know the answer. It just is like solved for me. and so I had this question of like, do I learn faster? Because the the barrier to learning is now gone. Like I don't need someone else. I don't need YouTube plus Udemy plus Google. Like I just kind of it is all in one place and happens really fast. Or is like because I don't have the struggle of trying to figure it out anymore. Do I like lose some of that feeling of learning and like the connection to learning that I once had? So that was my learning pillar. I don't know. Do you want me to rip through all three or do you want to stop at learning and spend some time there?
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, let's pause yeah, let's pause on each one. Hey, I'm always surprised at like how much value you put on learning, which I think is cool and I admire it. and yeah, as you've wrestled with this question of how AI is changing in the learning game, have you come out with any hypotheses yet or no?
Adam: I think hypothesis I do think this is one that I genu I generally feel pretty good about. Like I think it's helping me learn and move. It's definitely changing what I'm learning, but it hasn't felt like I've lost the struggle. I think learning kind of requires some struggle, you know? Some like, I don't know what I'm doing and I need to figure this out and I think they used to be trying to write SQL or trying to craft the bullet points just right or something. And now it's it's been like, how do I use this technology efficiently? How do I like get it to to increase my leverage to do three things at once? How do I like tame it so that it doesn't write 17 pages every time I ask it to write a document? Like, it's been different types of learning, but It's generally felt like higher it's felt the same to me. I think I don't even know if it's in felt that different. I think it's just felt like I'm learning different stuff. And that stuff is high leverage, useful and important things. Like the last stuff I was using was high leveraged and important at the time.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, because I was gonna say you're probably just learning a ton, but it's more around the AI tool, if you will. That's how and like changing work, like I feel yeah. In some sense it's made, you know, when I think about learning in my job, it's like understanding a new industry or like and it's made a lot of that learning like a lot faster. or even, you know, there is a potential new client we had, and I'm like I'm reading their website, I'm like, no one really needs us. I can't figure out what they do. So I had to like ask chat, like use an analogy, help me, you know, help me understand it. So in that sense, it like gave me like I was able to learn very quickly, but or get up to speed very quickly. which would have been more like annoying to then spend the time researching all our articles and, you know, clicking
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: through all these links and all that stuff. but then I, you know, learning AI, you just always feel behind and but it's kind of an exciting time to to
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: be in the working workplace too. So anyways.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, I think learning has a is a double edged sword, making it the the crux of my feeling of connection to work has its has its downsides. I think in AI AI throws gasoline on that fire, and that for learning to be a pillar of meaningful work means you never feel very good at anything. In a way, like my pillar is the antithesis of your pillar. Like You wanna feel s
Stephen Reiff: Yeah, it is.
Adam: you wanna feel strengths and like you're like performing well. I kinda wanna feel crappy about myself and and like I'm like never never doing enough because I always need to do more. which is interesting. Yours sounds more fun.
Stephen Reiff: That is it, I know. I feel like we need Emma to zoom in to like help us sort this out
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: because that's interesting. I was thinking about that too. in which is like maybe why you started on this journey is like I'm always traveling never there. So you're like always learning, never up, you know.
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: where yeah, yeah, there are opposites. I don't know. Any thoughts?
Adam: I like yours better. Yours sounds more fun.
Stephen Reiff: Switch. Try it.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I've maybe just never been in a place where I've been using great strengths that have been like recognized for any extended period of time. Or as soon as I'm using strengths, I just kinda like get bored. I
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: don't know. I feel like boredom is my kryptonite at work. Like the moment that I start telling my boss I'm bored, I'm like six months from leaving.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. I'm guessing you could operate in your strengths and not be bored though.
Adam: Yeah. I have to believe that that's true. I haven't figured out how to do that yet, but I have to believe that that's true.
Stephen Reiff: Do you know your strings? Have you done strings finder enneagram and a an amogulation of all those things?
Adam: I have done these things. I feel like people don't really pay me for my strengths.
Stephen Reiff: That's a that's a bigger pro that's a different problem. Yeah.
Adam: Yeah, yeah. People pay me for the stuff I I don't like doing, but I'm good at. I don't know how that plays out. It's like I don't like my strengths. Or like I don't like the strengths that give me paid. They're they kind of like
Stephen Reiff: Just be specific.
Adam: well, I just feel like the things I'm best at in the workplace are like grinding. Is like like execution and and like operation and making checklists and like executing against them. the strengths that I like are more like relational coaching, knowing people, question asking type of strengths. but those are sort of more manager strengths generally. And I've what I am asked to do is none of those things. I'm asked to like execute my individual contributor job is all that I've done for the last decade. Anyways, we could we could we could unpack that for a while, I'm sure. Emmo would really have a field day, I have no doubt.
Stephen Reiff: Okay. She would. I don't know. She's amazing. Cause I'm like, where do how should I get this out of you? But yes, we can we can pivot. but I yeah, do you think about that? Yeah, how do you 'cause I yeah, I have felt that too. Like I'm very relational. It's like, well, I don't want to be a real estate agent. and I need to like, yeah, cut my teeth for a few years as an analyst and you know. not enjoying my job for a bit to stare at a computer screen and stuff. so there's always the spinach. I don't know. W yeah. But maybe press into that a little bit. Or mem you know, how could you use operating this your strengths ten percent more, you know, this six week or something?
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I definitely live for one of the things I've really appreciated about Chuck that I really like is that a lot of people are based in one place. Like we're fully remote, but there's a hub in New York. And that means we visit New York more often than normal. Like previous companies I would do a once a year off site. And here we do it like once a quarter. And we have a we have one next week that I'm pretty excited about seeing people in person. So that's a
Stephen Reiff: Good. It's gonna be fun.
Adam: That's a way to do it for sure. I've got a couple of one on ones that are just purely fun that I like, so I like lean into that stuff a bit, but
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Which goes into the second people who make you laugh.
Adam: Yeah. People that make me laugh. this is the one that I feel worst. yeah,
Stephen Reiff: How's the AI impacting this?
Adam: this is the one that I feel worst about for sure. I wrote a whole article about this one, which is the week after this is article, and it's more depressing than this one. the I don't know, it has some uplifting parts to it, but the thinking about the questions around this, I think it it still does have the potential to be good. but does it the question is does it change the pillar if I have less interactions with people? Less like tedious work. Like a lot of our interactions at work are something like this. I need an answer to some question. I message Joe, who I know knows the answer to that question. Joe takes six hours to respond to me and then says, Let's grab fifteen minutes and schedules that for the next day. The next day I spend 15 minutes where the first five minutes we chat about the weather, then we spend eight minutes answering my question, and then we spend three minutes like, you know, wrapping it up talking about the weather again. And like that's my path to answer this question. Now that question is answered in like 48 seconds by Claude. and I never talk to Joe. I never even think about Joe anymore. and the question is like, is that was that interaction with Joe good? In terms that it like was a relational experience that made me laugh, or was it, you know, forty-five minutes that I just turned into 40 seconds that now allows me to like do more learning and do more providing and do more impact in my job? And that's better. Those are the that's the questions around people. I think it's been bad for me. I think the that 15-minute interaction with Joe is Is good for my enjoyment of work and my feeling of connection to work. And I find myself like cr craving 15-minute nothing meetings in my day now. Like, thank goodness I have I have three hours of meetings today where I can like look at another human and hear their voice. What a treat.
Stephen Reiff: Man. I'm t I think you need to do a hybrid job. I'm just saying.
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Reiff: I think you need to I think you need to get into the office.
Adam: Yeah, so this is this
Stephen Reiff: with
Adam: was my wrestling with people. I think that's I kind of know that to be right. But Yeah, I don't know if these three pillars like they have gives and takes, you know. I think
Stephen Reiff: But yeah.
Adam: I could I could be in person, but I would give up twenty five percent of my ability to provide and twenty five percent of my ability to learn. Like is that a trade I would make? I don't know. I don't think so.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. I don't
Adam: Anyways, so
Stephen Reiff: know. I hear you longing for it though.
Adam: I am longing for it. I am longing for it. I've tried random other I've tried random aspects of this. I've like gone to co working spots and you
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: know, worked in coffee shops or tried to make a friend, I don't know, get lunch with my wife, these types of things and just it's kinda nothing like just having coworkers that make you laugh.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: Like The cut the barista that you see w once a month doesn't really do it.
Stephen Reiff: Yep. Yep. Yeah, I thought about this a little bit in I don't know, like I'm coming off a strategy off site for a team. and one of the reasons I've prioritized doing these more cause it's like what can AI not do? And like you can't rebuild kind of that real time alignment amongst a team. And so I'd love to do and I think it's aligned to my giftings and all the things too, but trying to figure out like how to sell more of those because I that's like one thing that Yeah, I can't do. it's get people together and build alignment kind of through that in person relationship. So
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: AI is making me laugh though. I think I told you in my weekly update to my team that I included it includes a roast every week. which is pretty
Adam: Yeah, do you get a good one last week?
Stephen Reiff: fun. It was pretty good. Let's see where if I can read it real quick. edit this. Yep, between brokering a client's Wikipedia page from a group chat, playing landlord tenant lease on for whiteboard market markers, finding time to have strong opinions about NIL, Steven ran an entire strategy off site this week too. Solid output for a calendar that was mostly one giant gray block rectangle.
Adam: I love that.
Stephen Reiff: I did block the time for the off site. Okay. providing way increase your ability to provide for your family, threaten it.
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: All the above. Product's still out.
Adam: Yeah, this one's this one's kinda the most unknown. Like I think probably positive, but I could totally believe a world where it is negative. This is the obvious question. It's like, say I gotta take my job, or is it gonna make me some superhuman that has five jobs and gets paid for five jobs because like the economy is all about output and I'm gonna be outputting like a fiend. And who knows? I'm I'm I'm no economist. I think I generally believe the like I d I I don't know if I what I believe, but I think I'm optimistic. I think I'm generally just an optimistic person and I find that life is more enjoyable when you're not always looking at what could go wrong. And so I'm I'm hopeful and think that it probably is gonna be a good thing for us and we'll figure out how to make it be something that we like increases the the I don't know through overall thriving of the world. But It's not a hundred percent sure that's gonna happen. So verdict's out.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Right before we jumped on a Wall Street Terminal alert of like a anthropic lead engineer resigns because he thinks, you know, they're working on models that will take over hum you know, the he cause the destruction of humanity. Which there's a dime a dozen of those. but it's still I mean anthropic honestly hasn't had one, it doesn't feel like. and so yeah. It's an interesting pattern for living in.
Adam: Yeah. Yeah. There's some one of the things I think about too is we're kind of a ways away from this having all the ripple effects and impact that it people are claiming it's gonna have, but the A lot of what I do in my job right now is try to create systems that are like replacing people's jobs. And like
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: we're gonna we're moving those people to other things to do other stuff that is more important and like higher leverage for their skills. But
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: it is like running after people in a way. And we did we have Like Consolidated jobs. Not hired people we would have hired because of because of this for sure. we had our first instance.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: this is this is new. This is like AI corner stuff. One of our one of our projects or like quarterly goals this quarter is to incre to like improve the way that we work as a team. The the sentence that people are saying a lot is is AI has made us work. individually better, but hasn't changed the way that we work as a team. Something like that. They say it in a pithier way, but that's the general idea. which is like we all have our own clawed systems and agents and stuff, but we're not we don't have shared context that's happening in the AI. And one of the specific projects within that goal is to basically like take to do the job of the product manager end to end fully in AI with no No input is a goal to to have like an entire project go from just like a customer feature request to being built in code with with no human input. And it's like, man, it it finally came for me. That's what I do. Like I've been I've been doing I've been doing
Stephen Reiff: Nervous laughter.
Adam: the thing that's I've been building that taking for other people's jobs, but now it's coming for my job. Is
Stephen Reiff: Yeah.
Adam: yeah, kinda interesting times.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. That is interesting. That was just this week.
Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like it it did it and the feedback people gave was like, It was amazing, so good.
Stephen Reiff: I just
Adam: So you're like, yikes, it did it. That's good, I guess.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so where does this leave us?
Adam: Yeah, yeah. We kinda got got deep on each of those three. I think it left me with this feeling of Like the the paradigm that I understood of work can still hold. And my job is to figure out how to use this new technology that can be good or can be bad to try to push the gas in a positive way in each of these pillars for me. And, you know, I talked about fear that it will harm my relationships with people and existential thread of well let me provide, but there's also good things that can come from each of these things. Like people, I didn't say this in this article, but the next article I spent some time thinking about like how could this actually increase my relationships with people? And like it can be a really effective relational coach. You can like assess your past interactions with people and give you really good feedback on how to like engage and remember stuff that they talked about. Like where did my Boss go on vacation this week. I don't remember, but we talked about it in that transcript that you recorded. Claude, can you remind me before I go into this conversation? Like those types of things I think can help really like enjoy the experiences you do have with people by I don't know, helping you remember the connection a bit better. So, anyways, I think these pillars are still true, and there's opportunities to use this technology to make them even more true and to add more meaning and connection. through those pillars. And so I think that's the task we have in front of us is finding a way to finding a way to do that.
Stephen Reiff: Good. Well, do you wanna move to our Amazon questions?
Adam: Let's do it.
Stephen Reiff: Maybe not one on AI, just to give ourselves a little a little break.
Adam: Yeah, we can we can we can skip that one.
Stephen Reiff: i had i guess it's not really a trend spotter it's just like epiphany corner but i'm reading matt chandler's new book about the beatitudes and in the his opening sentence is it's like the spiritual life is not up to the right and i feel like a lot of our listeners and us it's like we're on climbing the ladder it's up and to the right you know we're on you know our career journey and and we've kind of hit the spot. If he describes life as in the spiritual journey is not up and to the right. It's more of a coil, like up and down, up and down, up and down. And you're slowly kind of getting refined and refined. But I thought that was just a helpful visual as we've talked about just I don't know, this the desire for everything to move up and to the right, whether it's our stock portfolio or our career. But in actuality, life is a lot more of like the coil. So
Adam: Yeah, it's good. Good reminder for me today, particularly.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. what is your favorite dessert?
Adam: There any more questions like this? This is just a nice one.
Stephen Reiff: I know so Delve Deck has two colors. One is blue, which is like the deeper one. And one is yellow, which is the easier one. So I re I just
Adam: We've
Stephen Reiff: found the yellow one, so it's gonna be a lot easier. So
Adam: wow, this is such great news. Holy cow. my favorite dessert. I will give you a very specific answer, which is my mom made this mint chocolate cake for my birthday every year for many years when I was in the house. And particularly a we would put it in the fridge and like a very cold slice of this cake had some chocolate chips that would be very crunchy when you got them cold. with like a scoop of mid chocolate chip ice cream.
Stephen Reiff: Well.
Adam: Haven't had that cake in a long time, but that's my favorite dessert.
Stephen Reiff: Alright, Mrs. Beadley, send it send it to Atlanta. It does sound good. I I'm ready
Adam: Don't don't prompt her with that. She'll do it. She'll do it.
Stephen Reiff: for dessert.
Adam: What are you?
Stephen Reiff: What was the question? Fair dessert? Like a like a dark chocol like a flowerless chocolate cake.
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: Or like I like dark chocolate. I think I told you once that at one point I was at Whole Foods and I found a hundred percent dark chocolate. I was like, Yes, I've never been able to find it. This is it.
Adam: Do like it?
Stephen Reiff: 'Cause everything's always like eighty percent. I was like, Yes, I found a hundred percent. And then I tried it and then I said, shit. It was horrible.
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: Can't cuss, otherwise we get the explicit warning. It was it was like bark chip dirt. I'm like, man, ten percent of sugar goes a really long ways. so that or I mean, there's nothing better than like an apple pie. My mother in law makes an amazing apple pie. and so you got me going on the chocolate, but I just great apple pie or like fourth of July berry cobbler, you know. Marionberry.
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: Not many people have heard of it. It's native to Oregon. All right, one more question for fun. If you could wave a magic wand and make something more popular, what would you choose?
Adam: That's gotta be somewhere between yellow and blue. if I could wave a magic wand and make something more popular.
Stephen Reiff: I gotta answer while you think about it. there's an Apple TV show called Acapulco that my wife and I think is hilarious and heartwarming. And no one's ever heard of it. And I think it's just the best show ever. And like I've never heard of anybody ever hearing of this show. Yeah.
Adam: Okay, that's a good rack. Yeah. I need to
Stephen Reiff: Acapulco.
Adam: that's a definitely a good one. I need to check that out. the answer that's coming to my mind for some reason, this is very odd, is these are pretty popular, so it's not like that much of a hot take, but wallets on the back of phones. I think wallets should be extinct. I I don't understand why anyone carries a wallet anymore versus the phone attachment. It's just so much better.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. It's really just the ID for airports and stuff. So once we move digital.
Adam: Yeah. I don't even need a credit card, but I still have one for some reason that feels like a comfort blanket to me.
Stephen Reiff: Yeah. I'm huge on the Apple Pay. So much so our three year old daughter like thinks to pay for something. She just puts her wrist next to it.
Adam: Wow. That's amazing.
Stephen Reiff: and then I guess the r our real answer should be this podcast, right? More popular. Yeah. I mean it already
Adam: yeah, yeah, I can't believe I didn't think of that.
Stephen Reiff: is. It's exceeded our wildest expectations, but
Adam: That's true. That's true.
Stephen Reiff: I'm ready for open AI to make us an offer like they did T V PN. So Sam Altman, if you're listening, or the AI bots are listening for when your name is mentioned, we are for sale. We can't be bot,
Adam: Yeah.
Stephen Reiff: but we
Adam: Yeah. The number better have a B in it, is all we're saying.
Stephen Reiff: can't be bot. And we demand editorial freedom, but we will our opening conversations. All right, what's the
Adam: Mm.
Stephen Reiff: one thing you are listeners thinking about as they finish the commute home or take a moment to journal over the weekend?
Adam: I think this question of how does how does AI impact your connection or feelings of meaning at work? You specifically, uniquely, you know, whoever you are. And yeah, think about what makes work meaningful for you and how's AI gonna gonna change that and how can you use it to make those things better?
Stephen Reiff: I answer that.
Adam: Please, yeah.
Stephen Reiff: I think overall it's removed a decent amount of the tedious work. It's made me more confident in my work. The f the thing that I don't like about it is that it's Yeah, the existential threat, I guess. but like two dates
Adam: That small that small thing.
Stephen Reiff: that small thing, two dates, maybe it's made me have more meaningful work 'cause I feel like I'm able to operate my strengths. so that's where I think I'm netting out on things.
Adam: Good stuff.
Stephen Reiff: For what it's worth. Kev,
Adam: Mm-hmm.
Stephen Reiff: with that, see you next week.
Adam: All right. Bye everybody.
Stephen Reiff: Not a not a question, statement. We'll see ya next week. Thanks for listening.
