Episode 01 · 28:19
Finding Purpose: Are You a Hammer or a Doorstop?
A hammer can hold a door open, but that does not mean it is where the hammer is most useful. In the first episode, Dan and Tom use that image to explore purpose, motivation and the cost of living inside a role that only uses part of what you can do.
Finding your nails is not one dramatic revelation; it is a process of noticing where your strengths create value and building more opportunities to use them.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- Being competent in a role does not automatically make it the best use of your strengths.
- Purpose becomes clearer through repeated situations where your abilities create value.
- External rewards can support action without supplying lasting meaning.
- Look for the next place your existing strengths solve a real problem.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
And welcome to don't be at all stop so the reason why i've called it don't be a still stop is you know tom and i basically that this is going to be a documented journey of planning a podcast and that is the podcast we're going to just plan what we're going to do so both of us as um kind of digital people we also have some opinions that we want to share and get out because they're eating us inside.
In the sense of we've started to craft some things that we've seen and we want to to share insights and input to other people's lives through the medium of podcast and the reason why i called it don't be a doorstop is because i've always thought of the analogy that you know if you take a hammer for example a hammer will make a great door stop um but that's not its ideal purpose its ideal purpose is to hammer nails.
Um a doorstop an actual doorstop is the best type of door stop so sometimes in life we find ourselves as hammers becoming door stops aka fitting into something and doing well with something but it's not the fully fledged it's not the fully fledged best um or the most optimum setup from a purpose perspective um so for the time being we're going to call it don't be a door stop which hopefully is kind of funny as well it's um it's kind of in line with the.
Kind of names that i like coming up with i was telling tom once that i wanted to come up with a coffee shop and call it big mug because i think that's a funny name and we would sell big mugs or or like you would have it in a big mug and we'd sell it bookmarks so you heard it he's imagining someone carrying this two-hander mug down the street from the coffee shop yeah that's the best kind of.
Branding right in the same way that starbucks has its mugs and people buy its mugs i mean even now i happen we're not sponsored but even like this whale's mug is a starbucks mug i'm like if we could have some dragon on it with whales and then say big mug but sometimes i think people might be offended that it's called big mug because it's kind of laughing at yourself but i think that's fine if you laugh at yourself i would be happy to.
Have like this big mug thing because it would get people talking right so yeah i feel like we might need to create a second podcast of be a doorstop for everyone that's found their purpose in being a doorstep for many people yeah it's anyone that's searching the word doorstop because they actually are one we need to create a second podcast for all that sipping into that realm yeah this this is for the people that are currently not where you really want.
To be you listen to this one but then for the people that are really where they want to be you listen to the next one but hopefully we can kind of blend in the new thing and maybe season one it'd be great if we called season one is like don't be a doorstep when we talk about like how do you stop being a doorstop and and kind of talk about that and then season two would be like how to be a how to be a great doorstop.
You know the the ultimate guide this is like the seo way the ultimate guide to being a door stop that would be the funny thing because again it's like it's um kind of podcast culture as and when we build you know more than two followers we then have this funny joke that oh did you listen to season one because they were talking about don't be a doorstop and we like reward people for listening um because they we could talk about like.
Little in-jokes and and stuff yeah so exactly building our bank of in jokes oh definitely but uh what what kind of questions can you ask yourself like how do you figure out if you are a doorstop i i think it's i guess what do you listen to so some people listen to their mind and some people listen to their gut and some people listen to their heart and i think a lot of time being a good store stop is.
Wholeness with all elements i think it is one of those things that you'll go through seasons that your mind might feel stressed or or feel like it's not in the right place or your gut might feel like there's an instinct of something like you might be feeling like you're about to be made redundant in a job so it's putting you on edge and i think it is having that peace all around you that you have to seek out because.
A new season might be you're in a new house or you're in a new job or you just got married or you've just been divorced or you've just had a kid or you just lost a kid would always trigger the do you feel safe at home do you feel safe in your job right do you feel good at your job do you have that purpose yeah in your workplace and in your hobbies or do you just want it in your.
Workplace and less let's delve deeper what does it mean to have peace what does that actually mean like explain it without using the word peace being in the moment with joy and contentment and being able to sleep well in the evening feeling like you've done enough in that day yeah yeah it's the it's the i would say peace is the absence of you know anxiety or i wouldn't say discomfort because i think there's nothing wrong with discomfort in the right kind of way as.
In you you should be sometimes pushing yourself to be uncomfortable because that's where the biggest growth like personal growth will happen um so yeah i would say it's the absence of like anxiety of a of that situation so for example sometimes you'll feel that it uh feels right because you sense a like no fears when you think about that thing um or or less fear when you think about x over y and i think when it comes to.
You know figuring out are you currently the hammer that's doing the door stop job the the best question i always find and i've done it two ways one question is if everything paid the same what would you do and that is great if you're kind of a salary type person or an or a very employee type person but then if you're like more entrepreneurial um then another kind of phrasing of the question is if all your financial burdens were.
Taken care of what would you do so it's kind of like two two ways of asking the same question but it can be applied differently because for example if you were talking to someone more senior in a job already then they they're not necessarily saying thinking about our job that paying is the same they're thinking about well i'm talking i want to think about it more because i'm doing multiple things anyway you know i run multiple businesses or.
Whatever but what would be your answer to those well i think um to add to it sometimes what i tell people imagine if you've got you'll have the same paid role as what you're doing now but you could pick any role because i know that coming from working-class background money can be very shiny and it might feel like it's the best decision going for more money when it it isn't always the best decision because when you end up in those jobs that you.
Don't want that you might be getting paid more you end up spending more money to counteract the fact that you don't actually want to be there it's because it's those three things right you either want power you want money or you kind of want well i i guess it's like yeah all of them but it's kind of i can't remember what the third one is but it's kind of like freedom right like you know time like power like authority.
Like be over someone or the on the money side and you kind of need to work out what your trigger point is because it might not be like the best reward for someone is like pay rises it might be the best reward for someone is like extra days off and figuring that thing out but what would be your answer um i don't know i think just helping people so it's sort of it's finding out what vehicle in doing that it could be.
A podcast like here it could be just a social gathering um and then it just frees up my brain to do that more but i sort of feel like i think in my older years not like i'm very old but i'm still young it's like actually i quite like limitation because you learn to work through it or around it depending on what it is and then you have more to talk about because if let's say i was everything.
Was paid for i was a king or a prince or whatever that wouldn't be able to help anyone because i actually wouldn't have any advice for anyone because i've borne into royalty i've got money and i'll die into royalty and i think it's very difficult to help people if you've not stepped foot at least one toe into those areas or two four or one four i think by going through a journey of getting a job losing a job getting a job.
Being redundant going in a job don't liking it going for another job now liking it actually it's more realistic with what 80 of um people are going through so then what you can do is share your advice with people i think that's why so my answer would be to be a mentor right and the reason why i use mentor rather than a coach and also i'd make sure that basically if everything paid the same what would i do i'd be a mentor but a.
Mentor that doesn't require someone to pay for my mentorship because one is sometimes as soon as money comes in they actually have done studies they did this um test somewhere in the states i think where it's about giving blood and they had three groups of people the all these people wanted to give blood and what they did split them into three groups one group they said you can give blood with no problems you won't get rewarded like it's just doing it because.
You want to do it the second group is like um you can give blood and will pay you for giving blood and the third group is like you can give blood we'll pay you um or you can choose which charity you want the money to go to and actually out of all the groups and they started off all of them wanted to give blood to begin with and out of all of the groups the group with no financial incent.
Incentive actually the conversion of that more of them actually ended up giving blood rather than the ones where you gave financial um kind of incentive or the kind of the financial incentive kind of slash give to charity i think it was something like 50 of people with no without the incentive carry down but like 30 of the people like didn't carry on oh sorry 30 of people did carry on in the two other groups so there is this idea of if there's something.
Intrinsic or external kind of like motivator to things like doing it because like doing good as soon as you whack like being paid for it it like demotivates you in like a really strange way but yeah going back to the mental coach i would say coaches don't always have to have done that thing that you're kind of needing coaching in um and they give you more like mindset patterns and and tools from like a mindset's perspective to work things out for yourself and i.
Think a mentor is very much the they more typically have the experience and then they can say hey you want to build a business i've literally done that and so here's what i've done here's like route one save you're going all around the houses here route one because i always think of this whole you know you're climbing up this like rope ladder right and you then once you've got to your bit you throw the ladder back down like as you said coming from.
Backgrounds where you know things aren't handed to you like as soon as i've learned something i pass that on and i think hopefully this podcast will become something for it's an outlet for warner's to just get better about sharing information because you know i don't want to hold it to ransom and i never do it in the private conversation so i want to turn it to a more public thing yeah that makes sense i think i've got a good.
Example of that i remember playing hockey over in nottingham direction so i was based in nottingham and traveling over to belpur so in derbyshire and i had the opportunity of getting paid to play it wasn't that much it wasn't like football it was enough to basically cover my petrol and i think i've got my kit paid for or discounted and it was fascinating the motivation of training i think matches didn't change because i loved matches but training if i wasn't getting paid for it.
I would choose to go there but when i was getting paid for it i'm not choosing to go there i'm obligated to go there and because i'm obligated to go that i instantly don't want to go there and that's what we like i learned during my master's it was talking about motivational theory and it was saying money is the worst one it's short term probably the best one but over a long period of time it's it's the worst one because.
Once you've got all the money you need then you're sorted you don't need it anymore or once you've built a certain system that looks after you for the rest of your life well you won't probably want to be working in tesco's to earn money because well you've got it yeah there was another i'm not sure if it was a podcast or a book or something something else it was probably inaudible because i always prefer that something another kind of like example.
Is when you think about kids doing chores if you incentivize kids doing chores with money then they just do it for the money which is fine but actually a better way to incentivize them is to actually do spontaneous detailed encouragement um so then there's less of an expectation of oh you always get paid when you do this thing like taking out the trash or like taking out rubbish like if you knew oh you always get paid when you do this stuff in life you will.
Expect to only get paid um to do anything so it's kind of like building in the wrong principle whereas if you build in the whole hey would you mind taking out the rubbish and then someone takes out the rubbish and then you kind of spontaneously complement that child with something very detailed not like oh thanks for doing that like oh thanks doing that the way that you like tied the knot obviously you can't be patronizing but like i'm just saying as.
An example like oh the way you tied the knot was really interesting because i saw you did that the other week and it really helped you know like something more personable to that particular child that's unique to them and and they were saying in this book was like i think it was actually then converting that to employees and how to motivate employees really doing a whole like you do this job and you get bonuses is not the best.
Type of approach it's actually obviously of course it depends on their circumstance completely because nobody's going to say no to a bonus but it kind of like drove better results if you were um like if someone presented uh like if a group of designers presented a design to the ceo the ceo was like yeah that was really cool i really like the use of your purple because actually you've been inspired by this thing over here haven't you and like that to the design team was.
Like way more satisfaction and way more satisfaction in that particular instance rather than having a bonus for that for that moment but of course everybody is in different circumstances um so it's just trying to say like overall you will have better uh kind of feedback and you're promoting a better pattern if you spontaneously and um kind of like intentionally complement or encourage someone in a unique way to them or that group of people and that's the best type of.
Motivator for people and i would say that's true i i would say that's true for me because i like words of affirmation but i i do see how that would be beneficial to a group of people right nobody's going to say no for like a bunch of encouragement right well it's interesting you say that don't encourage me yeah i'm a bit different i think for some reason unless it's genuine and unless it feels genuine from me i don't always receive it what i'd more.
Receive is you've worked really hard this week have the rest of the day off or have friday afternoon off out of the blue that i didn't plan for so i gain more time probably because um love language i'm quality time so the fact that someone's gone i will it's sort of them saying i'll take your work off you so you could have the day off so it's sort of the acts of service and the quality time that you've got.
Quality time with yourself or whatever you want to pick but i do feel like money is useful i've always found it when you're backed into a corner when you don't have money money's the best instantly you get your head above water of that financial pressure you instantly go actually i prefer more time off so i can spend with my family or friends or go for a walk or meditate or whatever or actually i'd really like a free gym membership so i can do exercise or.
That type of thing i think it is that it's so hard just to get your head just that slightly above water but i think when you do get your head up of water you can sometimes think clearly of like is your job fruitful or is your how's your home life like is it getting destroyed because actually you're hating your job and you're pushing it down and then it's coming out on your your girlfriend or partner or whatever it is very fascinating because obviously.
If you're single living a life for just money then fair enough you probably don't see it bouncing off other people because you'd be going up clubbing or going out playing sports you're going physically doing something but i think when you've got that strong relationship with someone that you're let's say living with them or had a long relationship you're less likely to let's all go to the pub it might be sitting at home um making food for another or watching a.
Film where it's more likely to bubble away anything that you have pushed down because you're not having loudness trying to drown out the the emotions of work that you're trying to push suppress i think the key thing here is realizing that all this comes from like so the two sides of like love languages and the importance of even though it says the word love like people think like oh that's only for romantic relationships but actually love languages i personally think like.
When we have kids it'd be great to figure out their love languages really early on so you could just give them what they need to feel full in the same way as an employee employer dynamic if you can figure out somebody's love language you can then address that or a colleague dynamic or a family dynamic if you can figure out the love languages then you just serve that person in the bet in the best way then it the knock on to that means that.
You're not necessarily in the surviving mode or the like surviving mode versus thrive right you can start to move over to the thriving mode which then you can address all these like secondary tertiary needs because the primary need is need to pay bills literally that that is the thing i just need to pay bills not get kicked out and not be homeless like that's the primary need for like security and shelter and food and all that stuff as.
Soon as that's like addressed with some stability then you start to be like okay now that i have a house like what would i like to do rather than what do i need to do and you can start shifting up the conversation really yeah i think that's really interesting i think that's the thing is because the internet's around and all of us are learning more stuff and i think we're sort of cross contamination in the way that we think.
Like before you just live in an area think in a certain way maybe learn certain things maybe support a certain team but i think it's sort of making us catch supporting a team abroad or learning about some business abroad or or in the next town along and i think it is that fascinating thing that things like love languages or counseling or mental health is becoming a bigger deal because we're realizing actually people can earn loads of money but then.
They're unhappy so there must be something in between that gap of being super rich and looked after security and finances and genuine being sort of happy and actually sometimes with people that hardly got anything are more happy well how can you be the in between is there somewhere that you could have both or know what you prefer over the other thing i think the baseline is always like i thought that life is 80 mindset but actually i think life is a hundred.
Percent mindset and out of mindset and by mindset i mean like thinking and thoughts like positive thoughts or like you know that that it's not scary like the provision is not skitty like there's not few options that there's many options you know we always think and again this podcast is probably going to be a bunch of like psychology like myers-briggs stuff right you need to kind of convert yourself from thinking oh there's only 10 options to be like no there are thousands of.
Options and it's just down to mindset um and kind of like the vision of that and the big picture thinking of that is helpful so then you can find solutions to the the struggles or the problems that we have rather than think oh no there's only a few options there's only you know well there's already coffee shops so me building another coffee shop doesn't make sense you know like well actually if you take you know no one's recreating cupcakes.
They're just creating a different like grouping right they're just adding a oh let's add orange or let's add min like they're just iterating on it rather than inventing if that makes sense so yeah i think a lot of stuff is mindset and i think the baseline for mindset the starting point is thankfulness i'm trying to be more thankful so kimmer and i have got this whiteboard where we write our wins on it um and by wins i mean like something.
Good that happens so the people that uh following this podcast may not know who kimmer is so kim is my wife she's also a i'm an amazing music artist and at some point i'll have to you know get her to give us a theme song of don't be a dull stuff theme song but um she probably her rates are probably too high for coming to do this low budget podcast because i can't even you know so give it for the label.
To be removed give a tweet long of how long have you been married where did you meet oh yeah this is like interested in our lives you know this is what will happen is like someone will start the podcast and be like why should i listen to these guys then we'll do this talk and they'll move like and this is why you should listen to us like this is our background this is why you should come back for episode two but.
Yeah my elevator pitch is i basically am uh my background is i've come a drummer and a designer so you know designer by day drummer by night and we've met in london kim is also was lawyer by day musician by night or artist by now music guys by night we've been married five years and um she has gone from corporate law which is where lawyers buy and sell or like merge when when companies uh buy other companies she.
Would work on deals like that uh in the corporate law department and she basically had gone through the process of this is great but the real thing inside of me that i've always wanted to do is become a music artist so she's now a fully-fledged music artist um and what's cool is because i know a bit of music i can like feed in a little bit to that um and kind of be the unofficial official manager of some sorts on some.
Stuff but yeah so she's a music artist and then i so how do you find her i found her in church so her songs oh right plug it plug it yeah if you type in kemmer k-i-m-a o-tung o-t-u-n-g into spotify you'll be fine yeah like i'm like like future developer that comes back yeah where do i point for this thing or if i hold my hand like this um yeah so if you go to spotify and search kimmer oto you'll be able to find her.
Music and i think um for me my background is this is not an elevate pitch the elevator's already hit the ground floor i'm just still hanging out i press the emergency button so it stops halfway and for me i've basically done web design at university i then went in to do two years of charity doing web and print and then moved into a digital agency and then felt why build someone else's dream and when you can build your own so then.
Started an agency of my own doing lots of design work or product design as i call it ux work and also web development and now we have clients such as google ford gsk all the way to startups um so yeah which is cool and this is uh an external arm so what i really like doing is the agency is to fund the good work so we have something called the ryland consulting prize up in nottingham trent which is basically awarding a thousand.
Pounds to three uh actually now it's two thousand pounds to six students um in the first year they're complete the first year they've been the best progressed or uh the people that have like done the best in the year um so that's a really really cool thing i've been doing that for four years now it's like a 10-year commitment um so yeah the the agency funds the good work um and at some point we'd like to i'd like to build a school but.
That will come with time so if you're interested in elevate a pitch comment yeah if you want to also build a school then comment and if you're interested in building the school you should watch the documentary called daughters of destiny which i think is on netflix or amazon but you should watch that that's a really interesting story and we'll go into that later what's your long 100th floor elevator pitch oh you've muted yourself you've tapped the mute on the microphone.
There you go i was just saying you need to you need to explain kim and the background a bit before going into what you're about to go into but i've already forgotten what you're going to talk talk about right i don't remember either we'll like comment down below to remind us next time what would we forget or in five years time yeah like when you watch this in 10 years time comment to be like tweet us to be like hey you forgot to mention.
This in your chat in your first episode that you put together yeah yeah so what's your elevator pitch not elevated i would prefer to hold off come for round two yeah come for episode two to figure out who this person is you know his name is tom we're just showing off the ankles at the moment we can't go up to the knees just yet you know what will happen yeah so as you mentioned what i was thinking as well.
When you're saying oh work with google and and ford i feel like we need like some bootleg companies like kugel or something that sounds very similar but it's completely different maybe we need to build other businesses that sound like businesses and hope we don't get yeah just one spelling mistake i mean even i think they always yeah the dyslexic version of all of them they they always say that google like some people type in three o's or whatever and and they've bought those.
Domains so then they can actually get to google like the misspelling of google is bought by someone like hey it looks like you wanted to go to google and that is the web page um which is a funny thing as well but um yeah so stay tuned for episode two if and when that happens no more so when it happens um but until it's all about mindset don't quit but if it won't happen see you soon yeah we should also talk about it as.
Well which is another one um we should we so this podcast is going to be literally with no order or anything over time hopefully we'll add this order in and make it a little bit more streamlined um but yeah if you have any particular takes or particular topics that you'd like us to speak about as you know we've already talked a lot about you know purpose um psychology love languages and stuff so and making money and jobs and all that.
Stuff so hopefully it'll get better over time so what's our tagline going to be stay classy san diego no maybe maybe our tagline should be um there'll be it'll stop but then i'm like i'm worried that the hammer part is the integral part to the don't be a doorstop bit hey hammer time oh yeah hammer time how much time.