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Quick Hits are 10-minute conversations designed to exercise your brain by letting you listen in on an unscripted conversation to hear other people‘s thoughts on a variety of subjects. In February of 2021 I and the members of my mastermind group thought other people might enjoy listening in on some of the lively conversations we were having. But we realized that no one was going spend 90-minutes listening to us going on about anything and sometimes nothing. Instead, we decided to pick one top ...
Quick hits from Hack Learning creator Mark Barnes.
Daily (and sometimes random) thoughts from a combat sports fan.
My quick takes on all things sports @thegametimeguru
Welcome to the NY Yanks Quick Hits podcast, where amazing things happen.
A bite-sized daily podcast from the Culture and The Goods teams at Vox that goes wherever our (and your!) pop culture and consumerism curiosities take us. Hear the stories behind the news and trends, get personal about purchases, and find your next book or binge watch. New episodes daily, Monday to Friday. Each 15 minutes or less.
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Daily Fantasy Sports Quick Hits By DFS Prime Lineups
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Daily Fantasy Sports Quick Hits By DFS Prime Lineups
DFS Prime Lineups
Welcome to another podcast sponsored by DFS Prime Lineups who continues to strive to be the best in the daily fantasy sports world. Please give our podcast a review and vist our site at www.DFSPrimeLineups.com and view all of our offerings, from Projections to daily cheat sheets, to our actual lineups for sites like FanDuel and DraftKings . Take 10% off now with the promo code prime 10.
MLB DFS Quick Hits is your daily MLB DFS preview. Get the information you need to build your MLB DFS DraftKings lineups in less than an hour (usually around 30 minutes). We won't get super deep into all the stats, but will point you in the direction to winning picks.
Sports Betting at its finest a break down of all the weeks best sports picks to get u paid live discussions of best money winning match ups to stuff them pockets
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Quick Hits
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Why does being unique sometimes allow us to stand out in a positive way and other times make us weird?
9:58
Dr Cole Galloway started us off by calling all the weirdos in the world to unite and that he feels like it is about fit more than anything else. Kierra Caissey added that all of those words, unique, positive and weird are judgment words and bonus points to her for being able to bring in the reference to the Island of misfit toys from Rudolph the Re…
Justin Dorsey started this conversation off right by sharing a personal story about a boss who was both empathic (I understand you are going through some stuff) and was able to balance it with just the right amount of accountability (and we need you things from you as far as your position here at work). Then Kierra Caissey stunned us with a hard-hi…
This conversation started off really slowly – in fact I deleted a chunk of it to get to the good stuff. The first simple answer was – willingness to take responsibility. But when I asked the question, “What causes a lack of accountability?” Then we were off to the races. Towards the middle of the conversation, I felt like we had two working definit…
When we go through a tough time in life it’s hard to see what the point is supposed to be. But once we get to the other side of it there is often a lesson or a takeaway from it that we use for the rest of our lives. But does that lesson make the suffering feel like it was worth it? Brandon Mahoney’s first take was that no, the suffering wasn’t wort…
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Is it a breach of confidentiality to give out a client’s name as a reference, even if they’ve given you permission?
10:05
I don’t think references are particularly useful to begin with. As I shared during this conversation, I had a situation where I got glowing references for someone and he was a crook. So I’m unclear why they are even a thing (that includes for getting into grad school and the like). But I wondered if other people had the same ideas and what they say…
These three gentlemen were a great panel to have this discussion. Simon Coles is a CEO and founder of a foundation. Ed Samuel is a Career Coach and Jim Tam is a Principal Client Director. At the start of the conversation it seemed that all three of them agreed that quiet quitting has been around for a long time, it just has a label now and that, fo…
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Quick Hits
Catherine Fitzgerald started our conversation out by saying she felt like there is some responsibility on both sides of a conversation for being aware of tone, sharing that her neurodiverse son doesn’t do as well with using and understanding social cues as others might. Kevin Wash added that the tone of our voice is a major player in communication …
Oh man was this a challenging conversation! I went into it thinking that as long as you weren’t hurting anyone, everything is pretty much fine. Then Michael Davis brought up the idea of self defense (you know how widely laws in the US vary on that topic) and I had to rethink my entire criteria. Christina Kelly asked a great question. When someone s…
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If someone doesn’t find a joke funny, do you assume they have a lousy sense of humor or that the joke was flawed?
10:03
(Trigger warning – there is a mention of suicide when a standup comedian’s bit is quoted in this conversation.) Humor is a touchy subject. What makes something funny or not funny? Is it okay to tell off-color jokes as long as you “know your audience” and everyone who happens to be in the room thinks it’s funny (I don’t think so). Ed Samuel started …
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In one of his first podcast conversations since being in the ICU Mario P Fields started us off by sharing how having a life threatening situation changed his view on productivity. There were days when just being able to stand on his own for ten seconds made him feel both happy and productive. Lisa McDonald says that it is very situational for her. …
Humans are designed to be able to learn through observation. Dr Bob Choat shared that the part of the brain that engages in prediction – what will or won’t work is called the ventral striatum. That is what allows us to not have to make all the mistakes ourselves - - IF we pay attention and apply what we learn. That can be a big IF. Chandima Dutton …
As you will hear each of the panelists say, this question seems straightforward when you first read it. But… When I posed it to Chat GPT it said this: “Friendship is a relationship between two or more individuals that is characterized by mutual affection, trust, and support. It is a bond that can form between people who share common interests, expe…
The really simple answer is that hearing is the physical ability for the ear to detect sound waves and send them to the brain. Listening is the brain interpreting those sounds into meaning. But in language we don’t use hearing and listening with that strong delineation. When someone says, “You aren’t listening to me!” What we usually mean, “You are…
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Someone is mad at you. How do you acknowledge their feelings without taking responsibility for them?
10:06
The phrase, “You make me…” is so common when emotions enter a conversation that I have actually talked about it as a trigger point when I teach communication and productive conflict. I wondered how other people engage in these types of landmine conversations. Kevin Wash started us off by saying he has learned that he is not responsible for other pe…
Yet another conversation that seems like it should be straightforward. Surely it is clear how we figure out what we want out of life. But nope. It is about as clear as mud. James Lee from StratFi started us off by sharing insight from Otto Scharmer and economist from MIT. There are three ways to look at it: What you think. What you feel and what yo…
It seems like things are really different than they were before the pandemic and I wondered if how sales are made has changed. Brandon Mahoney said he thinks the pandemic simply accelerated changes that were already coming. More self-service and remote sales rather than people in boardrooms giving presentations. Joey Robert Parks and Gary Fredricks…
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Quick Hits
It is hard to find a good coach or advisor. I’m in the industry and I have seen and hired some really awful ones. I know what I do to allow my clients to feel comfortable with me and know that I’m the real deal. But I wondered how other people vetted professional help. Before we could really have this conversation, Dr Mohan Ananda pointed out that …
When thinking about smooth talkers it’s an easy jump to think politics. People who say lots of words, sound like they know what they are talking about, but make you feel lost. What are they talking about? Do those words actually mean anything when you string them together? But someone who is a complex thinker who has a lot of knowledge on a given s…
In order to have good judgement you have to think about something and make a decision or judgement about it. What is your opinion? What do you think? What choices do you want to make based on your interpretation of that information? All of that is internal to you. It is about you and what you want. Conversely, being judgmental is about deciding tha…
Employee “engagement” is a big buzz word in many organizations. When I was working for a large corporation they used to bring in pizza to help us feel engaged. To this day I have no clue what lunch has to do with me doing better work. But there it is. Michael Davis started the conversation off by talking about being in the flow. It is easy to know …
Fayaz Nagoor Shaikh suggested this topic and I thought, “Oof, that is going to be a lot to pull apart in ten minutes.” But what a great conversation we ended up having. We touched on the difference between empathy and sympathy and that empathy happens in small groups, one to one. Not in townhalls and large meetings. It is someone each person has to…
When this topic was suggested by a panelist I thought, “I’m not sure if this is going to create a great conversation.” There are so many sticky points. How can any of us know what an average day looks like for someone else? But then I realized, if the four of us were willing to talk about how we feel on an average day, or maybe just day to day, the…
This conversation was incredibly nuanced. We started out saying, yes, happiness at work is important. But then we came up against A LOT of questions. Among them, What does it mean to be happy at work? Whose responsibility is it to make employees happy at work? I shared how for me, when I worked in the corporate world, my only thing was for them not…
Asking for help is really much harder than it should be. My panelists and I agreed that we often wait much longer than we should. We struggle. Try to figure it out. Reinvent the wheel and only when we become good and properly stuck do we ask for help. I wondered why that was and we talked about the judgement we fear when we ask for help while at th…
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Machines learn from existing information, either in the public domain or privately owned. Who owns the output of those machines and why?
10:08
This topic is not my area of expertise but I am REALLY interested in where this field is going. It is clear who owns the algorithms. Whoever wrote them. But the output of those algorithms? The person who created the parameters? If you do a Google search, do you own the results? I’ve seen lots of people copy/paste Google results and no one screams p…
Making time to think is something we all “know” is an important part of problem solving. But that does it actually look like to “think?” You might be trying to remember something and the more you actively try to think about it the less likely it seems you will remember it. In those cases, I tell my brain, “I know you know this. Go find it.” And usu…
At first glance this seems like a straightforward answer. The truth is the truth. No more. No less. But that’s not the way any of us function in our day to day lives. What kinds of details are okay to fudge or tweak for the sake of a clear story? Michael Davis spends a lot of time helping people share their stories and he made the point that if you…
When I suggested this topic, I thought I might be the odd one in that I think if a job is “entry level” it should mean that you can come in willing to work and they will teach you everything you need to know from the ground up. But Atif Agha and Domenico Ciarallo agreed with me – to a point. We talked a little bit about people not wanting to work (…
All feelings are valid and no one can tell you your feelings are wrong. However, that doesn’t mean the feelings you are having are related directly to what is going on in the moment. Sometimes we have old stuff/trauma that creates a disproportionate emotional response. How do you catch that? And if you do catch it, what do you do? And what about pe…
This is one of those topics that doesn’t get enough brain time. We get into projects and we either find ourselves really interesting and excited to be there. Or the passion dies and we either leave or trudge along not really caring about the outcome. But what makes the difference? Stewart Wiggins and Jim Tam have lots of experience doing projects u…
This conversation is Quick Hits number 427. I still get nervous before I record. Will I say everyone’s name right? Do I know the topic? Will I be able to facilitate a smooth discussion? Here are a few things that came out of this conversation: Fayaz Nagoor Shaikh kicked us off by offering four tips: It's okay to be nervous. Prepare for the audience…
When I asked this question, I thought we would talk about people assuming life owed them something. And we did discuss that. But we also talked about how people ARE entitled to equal treatment and if we see someone demanding they be treated better than or get something above and beyond that is taking away from someone receiving basic respect and fa…
Have you ever had someone be so absolutely certain about something that you backed down even though you were pretty sure they were wrong? We didn’t get into in this conversation but that is how a narcissist makes you question reality. A healthy person has the ability to wonder if they are wrong. To question and to learn. We are hardwired to believe…
Most people are kind and want to do as much as they can to be helpful, whether that means saying yes to doing extra things at work, helping out a friend or even texting back and forth with someone. But there are times when we suddenly realize that we feel like we are being taken advantage of. That our kindness is being taken for granted. Or maybe w…
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Quick Hits
I too often hear horror stories of bosses who want everything to be a priority. Do it all and do it all now. That just isn’t a reality. If you are going to create priorities you have to be able to say that somethings just aren’t as important as others. There have been times in my life when I felt guilty or was shamed for the things I didn’t get don…
Trust – it’s a word we throw around all the time. Trust is earned, lost, broken, given. There are all manners of engaging with trust. But what IS it really? I certainly wasn’t sure so of course I had to ask a Quick Hits panel to weigh in. Tim Hawkes from Unlimited Potential started us off by saying that it had to do with consistency. That you can e…
This conversation followed off of our conversation about how to keep from becoming disheartened. (https://youtu.be/yzsDuDMLyLs). A lot of this discussion centered around feeling like we don’t get to say, “Hey look at me. I made a difference.” And that is fair. But we also talked about how, when someone who we are serving says, “You made a differenc…
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Quick Hits
Disheartened, dejected, despondent. There are times when it feels like life as a whole is just not working. When I feel like that it gets worse when I start comparing myself to other people. Why is their life so great? What are they doing right that I’m doing wrong? Why can’t I make this work? Surely this can’t be this hard. It can spiral into “I’m…
When an organization sees what have been able to do as an individual contributor, they might decide to move you up into a leadership role. That can be exciting but it can also come with great challenges — you’re now faced with a completely different perspective, from the day-to-day details of an individual contributor to the bird’s eye view of lead…
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Quick Hits
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Is a performance improvement plan (PIP) beneficial to the employee or is it just to create documentation to fire someone?
9:54
This might be the most honest and yet heart wrenching conversations I’ve done. A couple of weeks ago Stewart Wiggins and I were talking about PIPs and I shared that I have only ever seen three outcomes from someone being put on a PIP: They quit The manager forgets to document the process and the PIP expires They get fired Stewart agreed and said th…
Guilt is often felt when we don’t live up to a standard of some kind. But I wondered if it was an internal standard or if it was an external one placed upon us by others. I have noticed that I feel A LOT less guilt than I used to and I don’t let people send me on guilt trips. I was fortunate to have a global perspective on this conversation. Ursula…
Kindness might not look the same for everybody, but we can always control our internal intention. We can do our best to listen and take others’ needs into consideration. Some acts might have the appearance of kindness but are in fact disguised condescension or harm. That’s coddling. As author Seema Desai put it on this edition of Quick Hits, there’…
In the conversation I had with this group and posted yesterday, we defined manipulation as “harmful influence,” of a particularly sinister kind, because we don’t always know when it’s being done to us. We decided we needed another ten minutes to discuss ways that we can become aware of being manipulated. When I look back, I can point to “gentle sug…
I looked up “manipulation” on dictionary.com and it said, ‘the act of manipulating someone’ — Clearly their grade school teacher didn’t tell them you can’t use the word to define itself. You might be accused of being manipulative when in fact you're only maintaining boundaries and arguing for your position. To help find a definition, I turned to my…
There are many ways a meeting can go wrong if they aren’t well guided — they can veer off topic, they can go in circles, they can repeat points that have already been addressed and resolved. Sometimes they need a firm hand that says, “This discussion is over, we are moving on in the agenda.” But that can be tricky. You have to be firm, but diplomat…
This has been an ongoing debate for the more than hundred years since daylight savings time was first introduced. It seems that most people agree with me and would just like to stick to one. But which one? The American Association of Sleep Medicine argues that standard time creates better conditions for a healthy lifestyle. Other studies show some …
A healthy sense of competition can be beneficial, essential even, on an individual level. It allows individuals to strive to be the best they can possibly be. But when a team has to work together, does that sense of competition benefit the group or cause it to splinter? I heard strong cases for both sides of the argument from my guests on this edit…
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Quick Hits
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How many times do you allow someone to reschedule a meeting before you stop blocking out time in your calendar for them?
9:51
Having people cancel, reschedule or completely no-show for a meeting can be frustrating. Of course, life happens and sometimes we have to be accepting. We can never what is going on in someone’s life. But if it continues to happen, that may be a sign that this person isn’t worth holding onto as a friend, client or colleague. On this edition of Quic…
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Quick Hits
If you have built your business on LinkedIn or similar platforms, you have likely received a range of sales pitches. Some might be the automated response from a total stranger who promises to solve all of your problems, never mind they have no idea what your problems are. Others might still be presumptuous, but at least reflect some thoughtfulness …
This topic was suggested to me by a Quick Hits regular and I thought, “Are they different?” The thesaurus says they are synonyms. Hmmm – might not make for a very interesting conversation. But I’m game for just about anything so… We gave it a try. Turns out, it was a really good, mind twisty conversation. Rabbi Yonason Goldson compared optimism and…
