The How This Works show - Episodes Tagged with “Work”

Skipper Chong Warson

Skipper Chong Warson — Tue, 15 Jun 2021 18:45:00 -0400

Recorded in their child's bedroom on a weekday, Laura and Skipper chat about his academic background in writing (English literature, playwriting) as well as his professional background as a product design director (think desktop and mobile apps among other mediums) and how that plays into storytelling, most recently resulting in the creation of How This Works, this podcast.

They also talk about their life together — newsflash: they're married and living in the San Francisco Bay area, having moved from New York City a couple of years ago. Along the way, they get into some of the differences between life in SF and NYC. They also talk about their upcoming wedding anniversary after getting married next to Jane's Carousel in Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Along with talk about his name change from Starr to Skipper (and not Optimus Prime) at the age of seven, they bring in a few questions posed from the listening audience including lessons learned from the first season of the show, calling people the name they want to be called, how crucial listening is in making a podcast, the ubiquity of imposter syndrome, using the five (5) whys to get to the root cause of a challenge as developed by Sakichi Toyoda at the Toyota Motor Corporation, team falling asleep during movies versus team staying awake during movies, and why Skipper color codes versus alphabetizing the books in his background — see photo below.

View of the three shelves behind Skipper's standing desk

Laura and Skipper also reference the following previous episodes, in order of being published, including:

Jack Kahana, the first episode
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, the third episode
Selena Rosanbalm, the sixth episode
Cassandra Carlopio, the 15th episode
Kat Hantas and Nicole Emanuel from 21Seeds, the 17th episode
Sally McRae, the 18th episode
Piper Payne, the 20th episode

Stay tuned after the outro music for a bit of tape where Skipper pauses for a bit of background noise and how from where Laura's sitting, the microphone makes it looks like his nose is a black bit of foam.

Special Guest: Skipper Chong Warson.

Links:

Thejus Chakravarthy

Skipper Chong Warson — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 05:15:00 -0500

This show with Thejus Chakravarthy ranges over a wide variety of topics but along the way we find out about his professional and life experiences in making change in the world.

We start with his origins crowning in a cab in Mumbai, India, the ease in which his right shoulder dislocates after a show once upon a time with his hardcore band Lovers and Killers, the joy of Royal Farm (RoFo) fried chicken, and the brilliance of a 'hot now' Krispy Kreme donut. Skipper and Thejus also get into his two books, Brushfire and The Flywheel and The Lever where they get into some of the foundational details, including Henry Ford's creation of the 40 hour workweek, the Stanford prison experiment done by Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Stanley Milgram's experiments on obedience to authority figures, the notion of 'it's always the system', the Ben Franklin effect, Thejus' experience creating an instructional system out of open source technologies, Donella Meadows' essay on leverage points, and Gamergate. See if you can pick out the Seth Godin namedrop.

Interesting note about Thejus' previous band — Lovers and Killers, then Caestles, and now Queen Wolf as well as a second band called Infinite Pizza. While he formally left that band about five years ago, they're still making music and he helps with production and occasionally contributes. Here's an audio family tree/playlist:

"An Hour Left of Forever" from Lovers & Killers' 2006 album Tropic of Cancer (YouTube or Spotify)
"William Blake" from Caestles' 2010 album A Treatise of Human Combustion (YouTube or Spotify)
Infinite Pizza at the Windup Space in Baltimore on July 13, 2014 (YouTube)

Queen Wolf and Infinite Pizza are both on Bandcamp, if you want to indulge deeper.

After the outro music, you can hear Skipper spring on Thejus a request to read the opening bit from "Brushfire".

This episode was edited and mastered by Troy Lococo.

Special Guest: Thejus Chakravarthy.

Links:

Stephanie Krivitzky

Skipper Chong Warson — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 08:00:00 -0500

Stephanie Krivitzky, currently in New York City, talks to Skipper about how she gets things done, starting with family discussions around the dinner table and then into her current role as creative director at Misen, a cookware company.

The conversation hits so many points, starting with her frustration with baths, how the notion of logistics eventually fed into the concept of getting things done, how hustling and freelancing built her discipline, using your own motivations and demotiavtions as an aligning principle, how getting things done for other people is different than when you're working for yourself, thinking about the Eisenhower Matrix graph with its four quadrants of high/low impact and high/low effort to prioritize your work, what happens when you never do a thing you're supposed to (read: like Skipper's example of not being very good at flossing at night), to-do lists as part of the process of reflecting back on how something went, and how she thinks of her own to-do lists as little diaries.

Towards the end of the episode, Skipper mentions a card-based productivity system of which he couldn't recall the name. It's called Analog.

After the outro music, you can hear Stephanie talk about her friend of 14 years already wanting to listen to this episode. 😃🎉

This episode was edited and mastered by Troy Lococo.

Special Guest: Stephanie Krivitzky.

Links:

Jake Kahana

Skipper Chong Warson — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 08:00:00 -0500

We recorded this episode in Sep 2020 and we talked about Jake's work as a designer and creative director, the notion of focused work, why he started You're Better Than Brunch, and cofounding Caveday with Jeremy Redleaf and Molly Sonsteng.

Like so many of us working from home these days, you'll hear Jake's daughter waking up just after the introduction questions before we get into main discussion about focused work and distraction. We also talk about the 2017 University of Chicago study where they look at the effect of brain drain with smartphones — even when your phone is upside down on a table, even on airplane mode — and how it challenges our cognitive abilities. Did you know that Microsoft did a parallel study that showed that the average focus time in the office is 40 seconds?

Stay tuned after the outro music for a funny bit of tape asking about the background noise and a strangled pause from Skipper.

Special Guest: Jake Kahana.

Links:

Parkinson's Law
Paul Jarvis
Seth Godin
Derek Sivers
Tristan Harris
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Jocelyn K. Glei
Fast Company article on Caveday
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's TED talk on Flow
2017 University of Chicago study on smart phones — Even having your phone on your desk–even if it’s upside down even if it’s airplane mode– temporarily reduces your cognitive abilities. In other words, it makes you dumber.
Microsoft study on focus time for work — 40 seconds!
Caveday on monotasking
Linda Stone on continuous partial attention
Jake Kahana
Intro and outro song: "Zombie Nation" by Jose Travieso