#161: Preparing for Being an OOO Analyst

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0:00:04.4 Announcer: Welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. Michael, Moe, Tim and the occasional guest discussing analytics issues of the day and periodically using explicit language while doing so. Find them on the word at analyticshour.io and on Twitter @AnalyticsHour and now the Digital Analytics Power Hour.

0:00:27.7 Michael Helbling: Hi everyone, welcome to the Digital Analytics Power Hour. This is episode 161. It seems like we never do shows about practical things that might pop up in the life of the analyst. Well, almost never and well, it’s ’cause there’s a lot to cover in the world of analytics. It’s focused on the rarefied air R and Python, data visualization, how to present analysis relating to your team, all those different kinds of things but sometimes people do things like go on vacation or on leave and sometimes for short periods and sometimes for long periods so we decided that we’re gonna talk about it just a little bit. How to be great and being out of the office as an analytics professional. Hey Tim, do you have any vacations planned?

0:01:19.4 Tim Wilson: When you love your work as much as I do, every day of work is a vacation, Michael.

0:01:25.9 Moe Kiss: Seriously, have you ever taken like… Oh no you came to Australia. That’s right.

0:01:30.2 TW: I went to this wedding on the other side of the world.

0:01:35.2 MH: I love the fact that Tim gives the impression that he probably never takes vacation but you do actually take time away from work. You do. I have seen it.

0:01:45.5 MK: But do you take time out from the hobby too, I’m just butchering this whole intro. On the side stuff, do you stop that when you’re on vacation or are you tinkering?

0:01:57.1 TW: Wait, the side stuff, like hobby stuff or my side stuff like it’s analytics side stuff.

0:02:02.5 MK: Your analytics side stuff.

0:02:05.5 TW: Yeah, absolutely. I got all sorts of other interests.

0:02:07.8 MH: He kayaks…

0:02:11.3 MK: Alright. We’ve established he takes holidays.

0:02:13.9 TW: And once every three years, I indulge in some of those for half a day.

0:02:17.7 MH: That’s right. Alright. This is the great thing about the show is, we’re gonna have layers, folks. Alright Moe, how about you? Any plans to be out for a significant period of time?

0:02:32.1 MK: Well, I don’t know. Yeah. I’m about to take nine months out, which seems still terrifying ’cause it’s such a long period of time away from work.

0:02:42.4 TW: I mean you are really taking up wood-working seriously, as a side hobby.

0:02:47.6 MK: Do you know I actually really wanna do a wood-working course. I’m dying to.

0:02:55.3 TW: Well. Maybe you’ll have a lot of spare time while you’re out for those nine months.

0:03:00.4 MH: Yeah, that’s the whole thing with new babies. They give you so much extra time.

0:03:04.9 MK: Oh yeah, for all those extra hobbies.

0:03:07.0 MH: Yeah. Just really pursuing your interests.

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0:03:11.6 MH: Me, like yeah. I try to do better at that. Earlier in my career, I did a bad job of being out or planning ahead and then as time went on, I got better at it but it is interesting Moe. I was recently thinking back to when Maria and I had our second, I don’t think I took more than a week off of work.

0:03:31.2 MK: Wow!

0:03:32.8 MH: I know and that’s not indictment of my employer, I’m pretty sure that was my choice so I’m the bad person in that. We did have family that was around so there was people there but maybe… I don’t know. It’s interesting. I’m just like wow, yeah, you did not take very much time out.

0:03:48.4 MK: Jamie gets a month when the baby’s born and then when I go back to work, he gets another two months so he’ll be the primary caregiver for a couple of months so to all the Americans, please don’t send me nasty messages about how generous our parental leave is in Australia. I’m very thankful for it.

0:04:06.1 TW: I just wanna know if nine months is gonna be enough for you to submit enough good practices that Jamie doesn’t… How many of those… What you you teach this little take in those nine months and then he’s gonna have two months, he’s gonna come back and you’re like sliding down the hallway on a pool of bear and lying around, buying rounds for all the other toddlers at the daycare and…

0:04:32.7 MH: Kids are very resilient and this is what I’ve based my entire parenting strategy on.

0:04:40.5 MK: They are very resilient.

0:04:43.6 MH: Okay, so let’s go dive into this a little bit. I think it’s pretty exciting Moe, obviously and actually we’ll come back at the end of the show or talk a little bit about what Moe’s being out will mean for the podcast as well but let’s talk a little bit about setting up for time away, ’cause I think especially in analytics, a lot of us have, if we’re doing it right, pretty critical roles that get a lot of attention and so there’s definitely something to figuring out how to take the time away that you must take away so Tim…

0:05:23.4 TW: Well I think and that covers everything. I mean, to me, I break it. There’s a planned vacation, you’re gonna be out for… If you’re out for a day okay, maybe we won’t touch on that too much, that’s just a little flex but if you’re out for a week or you’re gonna be up for two weeks and hopefully you’re actually gonna be offline, all of my jokes aside, that you are… Whether that’s for fun or not for fun, you can be out and there can be extended leaves when there’s… A child arrives or those sorts of things or there can be the unplanned ones, which I think actually the unplanned ones are ones that are also sort of worth planning for so…

0:05:58.6 MK: They can also make the unprepared ones. People who know that it’s happening. This happened recently actually, to someone that I manage at work. A colleague was knowing that he was going on parental leave but didn’t prepare early enough and then the baby arrived like a month early so it was like it was unplanned except that he knew that it was happening and he should have just prepared earlier.

0:06:19.6 TW: But I feel like that’s the sort of thing where it gets thrown out all the time. Like what if so and so gets hit by a bus and then people chuckle and they say “Oh! That’s… ” Well yeah, like needing to go out a month early is kind of like being hit by a bus. To me it is and I know I fall in that kind of extreme on some front but it goes to why things need to be documented, why you need to take the extra time with every analysis to make sure that it pays multiple dividends and one of them is oh, you happen to be out for this two weeks and somebody says “Hey, you know that thing Tim or Michael or Moe did, can anybody pull that up and recreate it?”

0:06:58.2 TW: To me, it kinda goes towards where there’s a tendency to cut corners and be driven by the deadline and not leave enough of a trail behind how the data flows are set up, what logic went into your analysis and it’s just one of the benefits it pays if you’re out or if you leave or if you have to leave early. Even if you have time to prepare, you can say “Look, this is already documented. Just let me remind you where it is.” and it’s already documented as opposed to “Oh crap! I need to find somewhere to put it.” and “Oh my God! Now I need to document it. I never really tested the documentation.”

0:07:33.9 TW: I think those actually, to me, I’ll get to… What were you finding yourself, ’cause Moe you’ve known for a while that you were gonna be out. What was kind of the thing that you were like oh! This is the type of stuff I have to really get nailed down and it’s gonna require real prep work to be out versus which is the stuff where I just need to figure out how it’s gonna be covered versus I don’t know, the not do stuff.

0:08:01.6 MK: I think it depends, right? I think there is the part of my role that is as an analyst and then it comes down to how do you hand over and give someone that work so that they know the code that you run, or for example, for that kind of stuff, there was a couple of things I was still doing where I was running code on my machine every day, which I went away for a week earlier and it was like a meltdown because no one knew how to run the code and I was like “Oh! This is really stupid. Why are you still doing this? You need to automate this before you go on mat leave.” which I did but the bit actually that I’ve found is taking up the most time the last few months has been all my management responsibilities because that was the stuff that I had shielded the team from.

0:08:46.4 MK: So no one in the team even knew that I was doing a whole bunch of that stuff and so preparing analysis or stakeholder require… I don’t know. I have a bunch of dashboards that are in progress and things like that, that you can write notes and be like, “This is where this is up to. This is what you need to do.” but I’ve had a heap of meeting with the most incredible woman who’s filling in for me on mat leave in my team and basically trying to give her all the context that’s in my head about a particular project where it’s up to the stakeholders that are involved.

0:09:21.1 MK: What their motivations are, how she’s gonna progress our particular perspective. That was actually the really hard bit because you’re trying to get someone to learn… Like some of the projects I’ve been on for over a year or 2021 strategy, like why are we planning to evolve the way that our team is structured and the resources that we have and sharing that context becomes really tough.

0:09:42.0 MK: Thankfully, she actually is a person who’s quite similar to me and that she’s happy to talk through stuff because I think if I’d had a different person who’s not good at talking through stuff, I think it would have actually been really, really hard but then I also wrote a lot of notes as well. Like a lot of handwritten notes of like, if you’re having an issue with this problem, this is who you need to contact, if you’re stuck on this thing, this is how you escalate it because… Yeah, I don’t know. It actually surprised me how much work is involved in hand over.

0:10:17.2 TW: So I wanna follow up on that part and kind of what her bandwidth is but put that aside, that you did make me… You did spark me to remember that when it is a somebody’s gonna have to do something in your absence and I kinda learned this a while back that there’s definitely a benefit in saying, don’t say I’m gonna keep doing it up until I’m out and then I’ve fully documented it and then they run it. I’ve always tried to do the “No. You know what, you’re gonna watch me do it once and then you’re gonna do it while, I’m still here.” and for me, it’s been much more on the… An engagement is wrapping up or I am rolling off or I’m leaving a company and saying, I need to plan to where you’ve got the confidence, not the literally the… And I think that’s where there can be tendency of saying, “Well, it’s totally wrote to me.” It is pretty straight forward until you’ve actually done it but and I am assuming there are different aspects of your role that have been kind of parcelled out, ’cause this is a longer absence so it’s like yeah, you need get full coverage, except for the stuff that is just not gonna get done while you’re out but if your entire role could be absorbed by your team, then why do you work there at all?

0:11:26.9 TW: So how much did you have to deal with? It’s not people sitting around and saying, “Well, I pretty much have 20% extra capacity, let’s just all pitch in and avoid it.” Everybody is already busy. So did you find yourself where it’s like you’re going to these people and saying, you’re taking this extra thing on but that means something’s gonna have to give and it’s kind of a cascade of re-prioritization?

0:11:52.5 MK: Yeah to be honest, could have… I think that’s the thing is like in retrospect, I look back now and there are so many things I would do differently about how I’ve handed over over now. One of the things that we knew, for example, is my team is gonna probably nearly double while I’m out, which is terrifying. One of the things I did was scope out, what are the roles we need, what are they gonna be responsible for, what are they gonna be picking up?

0:12:18.4 MK: So there was basically like a short-term plan of, this is what everyone’s picking up now, we know we have another new starter coming in like a month or two, then we’re gonna reshuffle so we’re kind of I guess in a lucky position where we know that there’s gonna be more resources coming to the team so with time, everyone’s taking on extra stuff for a short period of time but yeah, the woman who’s taken over my role, it’s been really tough on her because she’s…

0:12:47.6 MK: I started saying like “Cool, let’s get you to shadow my meetings that are important so you can get to know the stakeholders, get up to speed on stuff.” but then she was still trying to do her normal workload and that was like… Hats off to her because that was incredibly difficult and that’s probably not going to change until we do get some more resources in the team where she can drop a few things but I think the thing that I also really learned during this process is like there were things that I was responsible for, that I said to her, “You’re not gonna do.” because I did them because they were my strength.

0:13:24.7 MK: For example, I looked after a whole bunch of qualitative research that for various reasons because when it got stood up, I just happened to be the person at the company who knew the most about it so I stood it up and I was really involved in it. She doesn’t have much experience in that and I’m like “That doesn’t mean that you have to pick that up because I looked after it.” This might be the time that we say, “Okay, our team steps away from this because it doesn’t naturally play to our team strengths.” and now there’s people… Other people in the company who know that area really well and can own it and manage it.

0:13:56.7 MK: So I do think it’s also about… It’s not just about within your own team. It’s also there’s topics in a business that we’ve grown as a company and it might actually sit with another department now.

0:14:07.4 TW: Or it’s a good opportunity to do the assessment of what is the stop doing, to say is this the time where we say… ’cause none of us wanna say we’re doing something that doesn’t really add value but the reality is inertia carries a lot of things forward and it gives an opportunity and again, I’ve gone through this as well. Even with just being out for a week or somebody in the chain being out for a week saying, “You know what? Now’s the time to end that recurring task.” We can say it’s just we’re either gonna move heaven and earth to make it continue through that brief period that somebody’s gonna be out or we just say “You know, now’s the time. The time has come.”

0:14:49.0 MK: I feel like we always talk about that thing about if you wanna know if people are using your report, just stop sending it. This is one of those times we can really get away with that because they’ll come back to the team and be like “Hey, we used to get this thing and I really need it.” or they’ll just not notice and you’ll be like “Oh, we stopped doing that ’cause so and so left.”

0:15:06.6 TW: But that’s again like the planning, like if it’s a weekly thing and you start communicating six weeks out in the report, include a note that says “Hey, this is gonna be end of lifed on such and such a date.” and then if they get it six times and they’re like, “Nobody ever responds.” and then they ask you like “Look, we gave you plenty of warning.” ’cause even that, if somebody raises their hand and says, “I really need it.” it’s an opportunity to say “Okay, I’m not gonna produce it. This other person’s producing it. Let’s quickly figure out what it is you really need about it. There may be a paired down version of it.”

0:15:39.0 MH: Yeah, like a simpler version or easier version.

0:15:41.9 TW: Yeah.

0:15:42.3 MK: See, I love how you include a caveat at the bottom, whereas I’m like I would just stop sending it because including a caveat gives the person a chance to be like, “I wanna keep this.” even though they don’t really need it.

0:15:53.1 TW: But people… And that’s the thing, when we’ve done it and I’ve done it maybe four times across completely over the last 15 years, where it’s like it hurts a little bit when you put it in big red text like “We’re gonna do this. Here’s the specific person to reach out to.” None of those cases did anybody actually reach out. The people who were freaking out were the ones who were sending it and maybe that’s ’cause I was like “I don’t really think people are using it” and I would have left ’cause a lot of those are things that have kind of blown up and gotten bloated over time and so it’s like if somebody says “I absolutely need it.” then you’re like, “Oh, what you absolutely need is this totally automatable thing that I can improve.”

0:16:33.6 TW: I like the handing off knowing that somebody’s gonna hand off work to somebody else as well and there are other pockets, not directly in analytics, where I’d say, “Let me hand it off to you and provide the training and you figure it out but you have a dual assignment, oh person who’s taking it over. You’re taking it over in the near term but you’re also improving the documentation and figuring out how to streamline it because you are going to need to hand it on to then somebody else.” which is kind of another opportunity to… A silly example, like our Web Analytics Wednesday emails transitioned from one person to another and it’s like, “Hey, this is transitioning to you. As you’re ramping up on it, make sure that the process is documented well. We’re still here to support you.” I don’t know. Now I’m like beating this drum of like yeah, the biggest thing to the planning is to give yourself transition time.

0:17:24.6 MK: Documentation.

0:17:25.3 TW: Well and transition time to say, “Try it out.”

0:17:29.2 MK: I don’t know. I feel like documentation is important but the thing that I found the most is context and I don’t know ’cause my team in the coming months might be like “Moe left just in a really shitty position. I don’t know what the hell’s going on.” But I found context was far more important about… It was really, especially because some of the topics are really significant topics that are ultimately impacting the company’s strategy for 2021 and it really came down to like, “This is why this person thinks this. This is why they’re pushing for this particular outcome. This is why this person wants this particular outcome.

0:18:10.0 MK: You’re gonna have to manage how you deliver value to both of those things when maybe they want different outcomes.” That was the stuff I actually found was harder to explain but also more important to explain, because if you don’t understand why you’re going into a meeting and people are pushing different agendas or whatever it is, I think you can be really blindsided, especially when you’re probably, like in this case, the project lead or you’re really driving it and having that… I feel like that’s the thing you would be lost without most of all.

0:18:46.0 TW: But I guess there are different types of documentation and this is pure… This definitely or this is almost certainly a kind of style. The people who say the best way to understand something is to explain it, right? So I have done documentation where I may still be handing off and providing that context but the fact that I’m getting myself to actually try to write it down and people look at it like, “Tim, you wrote a whole book. I’m not gonna read that.” I’m like, “Yeah but at least it’s now clear in my mind and now I’m still gonna talk to you about it but now I’ve had to make myself kind of write it down.” Now that gets itchy if you’re like, “Well, I don’t really wanna write down that Joe Smith is an asshole and so here’s the context, is that person is really just gonna look to undermine our whole team.” That clearly requires some…

0:19:32.8 MK: You can’t write down. [chuckle]

0:19:34.8 TW: Or you write it down very, very carefully or very, very diplomatically.

0:19:37.8 MH: One of those documents you don’t share.

0:19:41.5 TW: Every time I say roses, replace that with asshole. You give them the answer key for the documentation.

0:19:48.9 MK: I don’t have any stakeholders that are assholes, they’re all lovely people but one thing you do need to keep in mind, I got some really good advice, actually, really early in my career about a couple of different topics and one of them was going on leave. I had this particularly blunt co-worker who would just tell me shit as it was and I’m so grateful for it because it’s stuff that I still think about today.

0:20:10.5 MK: So this was back when I was working with youth offenders and so I had a case load of 15 or 20 kids I was working with and I was going away for a week and I left a novel of things like where each case was up to, what kind of counseling or support they needed, details about the family. Every question you could possibly ask about every case and I had been doing the job for a few years. I was working with people that had been doing the job for over 20 years and one of the women said to me, she’s like, “Moe, I get like… Yeah we’re talking about people. So it’s not life or death. In some cases, I guess it was death but we’re talking about people so I know it’s really important but you’re also…

0:20:57.7 MK: You have to trust your team and you are not the single source of failure. The fact that you’re not here for a week doesn’t mean that every one of these cases is suddenly gonna fall over and when you leave us like 40 notes about 15 cases, what you’re saying to me is that you don’t trust us to do your job for a week and guess what? I’ve been doing your job a lot longer than you and I was like “Damn, that is a very good point.” and I’ve thought about it so much since then. It’s like one of those things that you remember of like, “Hang on, I also need to make sure my team know that I trust them and they’re gonna do an amazing job.” and that’s where I feel like you have to be very strict with yourself about documentation because you can also take it to the next level of…

0:21:44.9 TW: And there’s a degree of truly looking at it as an opportunity for it to be done better and communicating that as well, saying, “I’m capturing this… ” but I’ve also said that because I do write voluminously. I’ve even said I’ve learned, this is… I left an agency job years ago, where I literally had a… It was probably a 60-page manual with the table of contents.

0:22:07.4 MK: I do have a table of contents though ’cause I feel like people need to find stuff.

0:22:11.1 TW: But I told them and I’m like, This is for command F. I’m not saying, read this. It’s like, there’s just a chance, if you can come up with the keyword, you might find something but I think you’re… It’s a great point to also be very, very clear that you’re trying to support them but you also recognize that they actually can do things different that are totally fine and they can do things different that are better and they will be bringing a fresh set of eyes and those are all good. So what is it is an opportunity and frankly, there will be people you’re handing stuff off to where they will drop the ball and it’s an opportunity for them to say, “I can take it.” It’s an opportunity for others to kind of show, spread their wings a little bit but not always.

0:22:56.4 MH: No, it’s good. A good way to think about that is when it’s not a technical step-by-step, like you have to do it in this order where you’re writing instructions is more to describe what must be done but don’t necessarily say how. So when I would be out of the office when I was managing the practices or discovery, I had a coverage plan of here’s what needs to happen and here’s who I’m asking to cover it but I’m not telling them how to do it, I’m telling them what I need to have happen and even an unplanned when my father passed away, I was out of the office for at least a couple of weeks on an unplanned scenario and the team stepped in and just did such an amazing job and took care of things and were able to work through that and the other thing I did that it would be interesting Moe, as you go through this process, if you are. We were at a certain place in time where I had leaders ready to step into this is, is after I came back, a lot of the things I handed off to them as leaders, I didn’t take back.

0:23:56.3 MH: I just let them take those on and then that allowed me to go pursue a set of other initiatives that I could add to my workload that I wasn’t getting to. So that was like… It helped us grow even through sort of a tragic situation as a team and it’s pretty exciting ’cause a lot of those people that were… That did that and stepped in like that are now leading practices at Search Discovery today. So it’s kind of cool that yeah, that was a hard time but it actually turned out to be a thing that helped the careers of a lot of the people and get them in a position to become better leaders.

0:24:30.0 MK: I think that’s really… Yeah, I think one of the best benefits of taking time out is the stock take of like, should I be doing all this stuff? Do I even wanna go back to the same role…

0:24:40.1 MH: Yes, yes, exactly.

0:24:40.7 MK: Or is this a chance to think about whether I’d move somewhere else in org and do something different.

0:24:46.5 MH: Well, not even necessarily different but elevate. When you come back in nine months, your perspective is gonna be different and you’re gonna have had time to think about in ways that you haven’t thought of before. How am I gonna take this role and actually make it even more than what I was seeing before? So it’s a great… It’s great for that. So there’s opportunity in it as well, I guess, is the way I would say that.

0:25:16.5 TW: Actually, it’s when managing somebody where somebody on your team is going to be out, I think there is the way to just say, “Well, come up with a coverage plan and go figure it out.” and I think that that is a missed opportunity to say, “Hey, you’re gonna be out, this is an opportunity. Totally, where you’re gonna be back and we’re looking forward to having you back and we expect you to be a long time” and this is for longer planned outages but saying, “Hey, let’s treat this as an opportunity. Who on the team can we use this as a growth opportunity? What are the opportunities for us to maybe stop doing some of this stuff? What are the opportunities to now is the time to fully automate something, ’cause really the non-automated piece, how much value was that really adding? And actually supporting still, put the onus I think, on the analyst who’s gonna be out to try to make a first-pass at those. Figuring that out…

0:26:16.1 MK: It definitely did pick up my ass to automate some stuff that I had been lazy and just been like “It’s gonna take me a day to set this up.” Every day comes and you’re like “I don’t have a day to do it; I have like two minutes to do it.” and it’s easier to just run it on my machine locally and take two minutes and this was like “Oh, I’m not gonna put… ” And I got to… This actually is a awful habit which I don’t recommend to anyone. I got to the stage where I was running it on my machine that even when I did go on holidays, I would still just get up in the morning and run it ’cause I was like “It’s easier for me to just run it than to set someone else up to run the code, set up all the authentication, all that sort of stuff.”

0:26:52.8 MK: It was an awful habit and I knew that it was an awful habit and going on leave was literally the kick up the ass. It was like “You can’t hand this over to someone else, this is a shit process. It’s up to you to take the time to fix it and automate it.”

0:27:07.7 TW: Guilty, guilty.

0:27:08.5 MH: Very true.

0:27:10.1 MK: We’ve all done it, though. I feel like everyone has done it, when you’re like, “It’s just easier to just run.”

0:27:14.9 MH: It’s one of those things that as you go along in your career, you just sort of start learning the value and that it… Bad things, a lot of times, don’t happen. There are counter examples, I’m sure but it’s sort of like that prep you put in ends up paying off in pretty big ways and Moe, it sounds like you really thought this through pretty well which is good ’cause that way I don’t have to give you any advice at all. I didn’t have any advice for you. I mean, let’s be honest. Secretly, this was sort of an us interviewing Moe about all the cool stuff she’s done to prepare for this and then we’ll put window dressing on the other stuff.

0:27:50.2 MK: I still feel like I fucked it up, though. I still do and I had this… It was actually really good that I had this week off. I don’t know, maybe halfway through my pregnancy, where we went away for a week and everything that I thought… There was some really big topics going on in the business and I was like, “Oh, that’s not gonna come up in the next week.” I have a weekly report I send out which I’m just gonna send out while I’m on leave because it’s just… Had really senior stakeholders in it and I was like “It’s just easier to do it myself. It’ll take me half an hour one day.” And then every single thing that could have blown up in that week that I was on leave blew up and even my boss… Because I hadn’t…

0:28:33.1 MK: I acknowledged in that week, was like I probably wasn’t briefing him enough on what I was doing ’cause he’s a great leader and gives me a lot of autonomy but he was then suddenly getting messages ’cause I was out and he’s like, “Oh. I don’t know what the fuck this is up to.” and I’m jumping online on my holiday to try and answer questions about this stuff and it was the best thing that could have happened to me halfway through my pregnancy ’cause it made me be like, “Oh, you can’t do this next time. Next time, you need to make sure that the person who’s filling-in for you and your manager can both answer a question about this if they get pinged ’cause things blow up.” and I feel like that terrified the bejesus out of me enough to actually get me to do documentation or hand over notes.

0:29:20.9 MH: No, that’s a perfect example and actually, I do wanna pivot to just talking about vacation a little bit ’cause we’ve been talking about longer absences but a more common scenario would be like a week of vacation, two weeks. I know in Europe people take the whole month of August off or something, which I’m both jealous and also don’t understand how that works but…

0:29:39.9 MK: Australians do that a lot, as well.

0:29:42.8 MH: Yeah. No, kudos. I’m here to support that but it is interesting. I think there’s different paradigms that people have for time away or vacation time and it’s interesting ’cause I am like… I very much advocate for people to take time away, disconnect and I’ve done some vacations where I’m just like, “Yeah, I’m out in the wilderness camping. I have no access to anything.” But I find my level is I like to be able to just check-in on things, usually in the mornings for an hour or two and that actually makes me feel better about my vacation.

0:30:23.8 MK: Really?

0:30:24.4 MH: Yeah, it’s really weird and I don’t know that… I certainly don’t advocate that other people do that or feel the responsibility to do it but I just love it. I love grabbing a cup of coffee and just checking emails. It makes it when I come back, I don’t have a bajillion emails to respond to and so it just is nice. Now, I don’t actually sit down and do any work. I don’t sit down and do stuff, I just sort of absorb information and then go about my day but I’m very curious what ways that you two do vacations? Do you do any work or do you make a really firm rule for being away and staying away?

0:31:05.1 TW: Well, I’m gonna be the other American. For the most part. Really, it’s only been really between Christmas and New Year’s this year when we were away, was the most that I had checked out and there were a couple of days that I did not look at any communication. Now, the communication was way down. That’s the period when the least hits my inbox but I’m kind of more where you are that I will sit and just go through and some of that is ’cause I have content I can assume that is industry-adjacent or other… I do get some of my daily news in my inbox and it’s part of my routine and I’m not one who wants to completely check-out of the world necessarily.

0:31:53.1 TW: But more often than not and I’m just… There have been big chunks of my career where there’s not back-up ’cause I’m the only consultant supporting whatever and not that clients aren’t totally fine with, “Hey, you’re out.” And I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m out.” but at the same time, yeah, if they have a question… It just makes them… If they don’t get a response within 24 hours, it starts to make them question like “Wait a minute, do we have a single point of failure here that’s… That’s not good.

0:32:23.3 MK: Agencies are different. When you’re consulting it is different, whether it should be or not.

0:32:28.2 MH: Yeah. It is interesting, ’cause I think Tim, you even have a standard that goes beyond mine in terms of response times, even so. I know when we work together, you’d be like, “Why wouldn’t you respond to this person yet?” I was like, “I’m giving it a good day.”

[laughter]

0:32:46.5 MH: And that was one we’re both working, not on vacation. [chuckle]

0:32:50.7 MK: See, I feel like Australia is very different.

0:32:54.1 MH: Absolutely, it is, yeah.

0:32:56.7 MK: We definitely try and get our team to a stage where… And to be honest, I don’t often take a day off, because I don’t feel like it’s super helpful and I find it really hard in America, where people get two weeks leave or something, because when I go on leave… I’ve had holidays where we take a week off and then when you have your weekends on either sides, you end up with about 10 days. I don’t feel like I switch off from work in that time so I don’t know how people in the States ever feel like they’ve had time off when there’s such limited leave.

0:33:29.9 MK: If we take two weeks off or three weeks off, then I get to a stage where I stop thinking about work but the idea for us is, if you’re not working, you shouldn’t be contacted, you shouldn’t be checking your email, you shouldn’t be on Slack. We will message each other and be like, “You’re on holidays, what are you doing online on Slack? Get off Slack.”

0:33:50.7 MH: Yeah, that’s the right way to say it and that’s definitely the way that I’ve always tried to work with others and you don’t have to create a large profile because there are companies that do wanna pressure you to give up your time during vacation and to those companies, they should stop. Somebody should smack their hand and be like, “Stop doing that to your people.” to create that expectation. It’s more about personal preference and style and as long as you’re in a place where people can let you be… Nobody said, “You have to check in.” or “You should check in.” or “If you don’t check in, it’s gonna be suspect.” It’s sort of, “I wanted to do it so I did it.” And then people will be like, “What are you doing online?” and then give me shit for it. That’s good, that’s how it should be.

0:34:39.1 MH: And at the same time, as a leader, you also have to think about what you’re demonstrating for others and so that was always a little bit of a conflict in my mind too of like, “I don’t want because it’s the way I do it, that people then feel like, “Oh well, then I have to do like that.” That’s the other thing you always have to think about, is what you do is is what others will do and that’s why I like the leaders who are like “I’m gonna leave the office every day at 5:00 PM so that everyone else gets the signal that leaving the office at a healthy time is a good thing to do and a right thing to do.”

0:35:12.8 MK: Hillary Clinton used to do that. She used to come into work at nine o’clock… This is when she was working at the State Department and she would leave at 5:30 on the dot and she confessed later she worked from home for hours before and after. She was like “I wanted to set the precedent for my team that they didn’t have to be there before me and after me.” and I have a guy on my team who I adore, because I have a really bad habit of trying to set a meeting at five o’clock or 5:30, because it’s the only time in my calendar and he’ll be like, “Moe, I log off at 5:30, can we make this a different time?” And I’m like, “Yes, yes we can. That is great. Thank you for reminding me.”

0:35:49.2 MH: Like, “Take the call from the car, pal.” No, I’m just kidding.

[laughter]

0:35:54.7 MH: Actually, I would call a lot of people from the car ’cause in Atlanta, you commute for a long time. I didn’t schedule those meetings though, it was more like drop ins like, “Hey, how you doing?” Tim got a lot of those calls.

0:36:05.0 TW: Yeah great! Yeah. I didn’t have a commute. I was trying to get work done and like, “Oh yeah, well, I guess… “

0:36:09.5 MH: Helbs is calling. [laughter]

0:36:12.2 TW: No, part of it is he’d actually work from home for an hour or two in the morning, on Mondays and then he would drive in at 9:30 or 10:00 and so it was like total mid-morning, he’d be like “Oh yeah… ” He’d call me and be like “Yeah… “

0:36:26.1 MK: You wanna chat?

0:36:27.1 TW: I was… He usually… Stuff he… Which HR violations he had to review with me.

0:36:34.1 MH: I’d like to think it wasn’t a complete waste of your time. I know I sure remember those times fondly, Tim.

[laughter]

0:36:43.6 TW: That is getting to a… I agree. There is a big cultural difference where… There’s all sorts of studies and evidence that the US is… Even companies that are trying to not usher the just surrounding culture of people feel that and that’s not healthy.

0:37:04.2 MH: Yeah, even… There’s the constant thing in the US around unlimited PTO versus defined pay-time off and how a lot of people feel trapped in an unlimited system because they’re like, “Surely, it’s not actually unlimited.” and I think the best advice I got when I was in that company was, my boss said to me, “Now, you’re going into an unlimited PTO so the first thing you need to do is plan one week per quarter out of the gate and get it on the calendar and then figure out your other time for the rest of the year but make sure you’re planning it at least one week a quarter and getting that set aside.”

0:37:44.5 MH: Now, whether you actually end up taking it or not or whatever, I think that’s good advice. It’s like sit down and think through your year and think through “Okay, when will I be out?” And to the best of my knowledge, what will I be… ” We’re recording this at the end of January. We’ve got spring break coming up in April. I work for myself now but it’s funny because I find it even harder to schedule a vacation but I’ve already scheduled that week. I’m gonna be out that week in April and we’re gonna be on vacation somewhere as a family, COVID permitting.

0:38:18.0 MK: Australia is the total opposite. There are companies who I won’t specifically call out that have unlimited leave in the US but in Australia, they only give you four weeks and it’s because Australians will take it. Pretty much every time I have a new starter in our team and I have done this at multiple jobs. We are like, “Hey, I know I’m taking this job but FYI, I have two or three weeks booked.” Like, “I’m getting married” or “I’m going to Europe” or something like that and when I started at Canva, I took three weeks unpaid leave. So I actually took seven weeks of leave that year and that is a very common thing in Australia.

0:38:51.7 MH: Yeah, I think that happens here too. People have like, “Hey, I’ve got some time scheduled already.” I don’t know, I’ve dealt with a lot of those as a people manager. It was never a huge problem.

0:39:00.9 MK: It’s not but I just think Australians are very comfortable at taking big chunks of leave and being fine with it.

0:39:06.3 MH: Yeah, I think you’re selling us all on Australia. I actually looked into it, Moe. There was that brief period of time where I was like, “Do I need a fall-back country?”

[laughter]

0:39:16.5 MH: But to emigrate to Australia, I think I needed to be younger than 44 which I am 44 so…

0:39:24.6 MK: Really?

0:39:25.4 MH: Yeah, there’s a whole… Come to Australia but you have to be younger…

0:39:29.3 MK: A certain age.

0:39:30.5 MH: So I think there may be special exceptions if you’re like… I don’t know, have a cool podcast or something, I’m not sure exactly what the rules are.

[chuckle]

0:39:38.8 MH: But I didn’t research it that closely but it was funny ’cause I was like, “Oh well, Australia, that could be an option.” Anyway…

0:39:48.3 MK: It’s… I mean, good luck pal. But so what I don’t get is, I don’t feel like we’ve come to a conclusion on when you have a week out and let’s say you have a bunch of reports you run and stakeholders you’re responsible for, we would typically, in my team, we would train up someone else to be like, “Hey, can you run this code? Send out this update for the week that I’m out”. Most of us would do that unless it was exceptional circumstances.

0:40:16.3 TW: Would that include kind of a caveat that goes out that, “Hey, I’m filling in for Moe.” so maybe the exception. Like, “Oh, it doesn’t matter”.

0:40:23.2 MH: Yeah. Everybody should know it’s minimum viable…

0:40:25.8 TW: It’s the minimum viable deliverable. Okay.

0:40:28.4 MH: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:40:29.7 MK: Or I would try and do… If it was possible, often it isn’t, because if you’re running numbers on a Monday or a Tuesday or something, you can’t do it on the Friday before but if there was a way to do some of it beforehand for the person I would but we would try and hand that stuff over.

0:40:46.7 TW: For instance, recording a podcast that won’t come out until after you actually have a child, you’re kinda helping us prep here. Dear listeners while you’re hearing this, Moe is doing very little…

0:41:00.1 MH: That’s right, we’re also prepping you for what’s gonna be happening with the podcast. That’s good.

0:41:08.5 TW: So what else? What are the other… I think that is more the norm, it’s either we’re gonna not do, it’s gonna be a not do for this week or it’s gonna be a covered and again, I think agencies sometimes want to completely hide and pretend that everything is always completely the same, which is kind of stupid. People recognize people are out but I think the… We’re gonna do a minimal or a light one so you get the basic stuff but what else were you thinking for when we’re done?

0:41:39.5 MK: What you do while you’re on leave.

0:41:42.2 TW: Yeah. Which is not healthy. Actually that’s a good point. It’s the least healthy for somebody who is a leader potentially to be setting that as a precedent so okay, I’m guilty. I’ll manage but at the same time, you could see the more junior people may feel like this is my way to show, this is the cultural… The end in the US, to say, “I’m just gonna do it”, the problem is, it does come up like that two minutes like, “Well, if it’s gonna actually take me… ” It takes me two minutes and there’s always another three minutes where some little thing has to be done. It can add stress to say, it ultimately has to be on the person who’s doing and if they’re like, “Look, this is coming up, I’m gonna enjoy my week the most, if I know that it goes out, I put it out and then I can go on and enjoy the rest of my day as opposed to somebody else is gonna put it out if it doesn’t go out well, I’m stressing them out”. So it is squishy. I’m realizing I am not at all up to chime in on much of anything on this entire topic, ’cause I’m terrible.

[laughter]

0:42:55.9 MK: I feel like the right thing to do is to get someone else to send it.

0:42:58.5 MH: Yeah.

0:42:58.8 MK: I think that’s the right thing to do. I don’t think that’s the easiest thing to do, which is why we don’t always do it but I think that is the best…

0:43:05.7 TW: I think it’s fair to hold them to an SLA to say like, “Okay, you will do this on Monday before 10. If it’s gonna help me to be able to check and make sure that it went out”

0:43:15.7 MH: Yeah, that’s true. Very specific to you Tim, you need someone to hit a certain timeline for you to be able to relax.

0:43:23.8 MK: Well, if it’s for an 11 O’clock meeting then that, I think…

0:43:27.2 MH: Yeah well, okay sure.

0:43:28.8 MK: It’s just what we’re not Tim’s SLA is reasonable or he’s just being crazy.

0:43:33.2 MH: Generally, not reasonable at all.

0:43:35.3 TW: Well I’ve had people I’ve depended on and when I’ve been like “Okay, they say they’ll do it first thing Monday morning” okay, well then if I’m downstream of them, went out of my way to ask them and half the time I asked them and they’re like, “Oh yeah, I forgot” and the other half the time they say “Well, I was… Thanks for reminding me”, I’m like, “Well, great, I just wasted three hours waiting” and the other half of the time they say, “Oh yeah, yeah, I’m working on it right now” so I’m like, “Okay” so I’ve learned that if there’s a chain but that.

0:44:05.0 MK: I feel like maybe you should work with colleagues you can trust and depend on more. I hear there’s some odd jobs going in Australia, just…

0:44:11.9 TW: I’m way older than that 44.

[laughter]

0:44:15.4 MH: Tim what’s making me crack up right now, is like, “Oh, it’s not just me.”

[laughter]

0:44:20.7 TW: I believe I shared a… I should maybe share it publicly, the ending after Web Analyst Wednesday email video clip of the decree of…

0:44:29.9 MH: That’s hilarious.

0:44:31.4 TW: I’ve actually learned the hard way that because I have a… I have a system that I didn’t have maybe when I was 22 or 23 or 24 but if I commit to doing something, it is document, even if that is something that’s two weeks or three weeks or four weeks out, it’s captured and I have gotten burned when somebody has looked me in the eye and said “Yes, I will take care of that” and then it gets really uncomfortable when “Okay, do I wait until it’s too late and I’m gonna have to swoop in and do it because they drop the ball?” I don’t know, that is a separate…

0:45:04.2 MH: Yeah.

0:45:04.8 TW: Therefore, I’ve had very experienced co-workers who I… And they say, “Yeah, I just wait till somebody’s pinged me three or four times and it doesn’t bother them at all” and those are in kind of our consulting space.

0:45:16.2 MK: [0:45:17.1] __ together.

0:45:19.3 MH: Yeah it’s really difficult to find the right ones. Anyway, we can’t totally decode that specific situation. We don’t have the time.

0:45:27.6 MK: I do have one more little…

0:45:29.9 MH: Okay, yeah.

0:45:30.9 MK: Which is, what are your thoughts about contacting people when they are out of office? Because I had this one use case where I overtook an attribution model, I’d never written attribution, I’d never programmed in R and this guy left the company and was like, “This is your responsibility now.” for a major client. He was kind enough to be like, “Here’s my WhatsApp. I’m going to be in Europe, if you get really stuck,” ’cause no one else in the company knew R. No one knew this attribution model and he left me amazing notes but they were amazing notes that would have been amazing for someone that understood attribution in R and he was like, “Here’s my number, just in case you need it.” and over the next five months, I maybe had to contact him a handful of times and be like, “I have no idea what the fuck you were meaning here or what you were talking about, can you just take two minutes to explain it?” and it was my lifeline. I probably would have lost my job without that lifeline and I’ve said the same to my team, I’m like “I’m not dead. If there’s literally something that you’re stuck on, you’re really struggling, just send me a message.” But I don’t know. I just wonder, do you guys do that normally when you go on leave?

0:46:40.8 MH: So I always am open to people reaching out but I also want them to understand or expect that I might put off responding if I don’t think it’s crucial and then the second is, if I email them or contact them, I’ll often make sure to put in my note, “Don’t respond to this till you get back. I just had it on my mind so I’m gonna send it to you but don’t reply.” So they know I’m not expecting a response or anything but yeah, in your case, it was someone leaving the company too. So I sort of feel like that’s a slightly different scenario as well, which is good and it’s nice, it’s very nice of him to be willing to do that and that’s kinda the stuff that hopefully pays itself forward over time when you do a nice turn for somebody, ’cause obviously that is very helpful.

0:47:29.5 TW: Yeah, I’ve done that when rolled off engagements or left companies and said, “Hey, provided it’s somebody who I think will be judicious.” And that does mean it’s worth when you reach out to somebody acknowledging, “Hey, I get it. You have no responsibility. It’s just I’m hoping that you can say, I’ve tried X or Y or Z” and not a “I’m permanently supporting it.” and I think that too but it’s back to the messaging, if you’re out for a week, as long as you’re not saying, “Reach out to me ’cause I don’t trust that you can actually do this.” Just say, “Just know that where I’m gonna be, it’s gonna be fine, except on Wednesday. Wednesday, I’m gonna be completely out of pocket but I’m totally cool. If you hit something and you are pretty sure that it’s probably a really quick and easy thing for me to answer, I don’t want you to have to burn three hours pulling your hair out and let’s just do whatever kinda makes the most sense and it doesn’t bother me if you… ” and most people, 95% of people, are only gonna reach out if they really are beating their head against a wall and will appreciate it, then it’s just kinda everybody helping everybody out.

0:48:32.4 MH: Yeah, I agree.

0:48:34.1 MK: The one thing that I have been super diligent about this time is I’ve taken work Slack off my phone, I’ve taken my work email off my phone, which I never normally do on holidays, lots of people do and the way I’m trying to frame it… ’cause I have this thing at the moment, especially now ’cause I haven’t had the baby yet, where I wanna poke my head in and be like, “Oh, what’s happening over… “

0:48:53.6 TW: Oh you have. Just so you know, you have had the baby. We’re in a time machine.

0:48:57.3 MK: But I just wanna poke my head in and be like, “What’s happening, what’s going on with these, what’s going on with that?” And the thing that’s stopping me from doing it is the person who’s filling my role, because she can’t take over leading the team and making her own decisions if she feels like I’m constantly checking in and the thought of how that would make her feel is the best barrier to stopping me from checking things and I actually find that’s working quite effectively. Like if you can’t force yourself not to look at stuff, then at least think about how it might be for the other person and that will make you feel really guilty and stop you from doing it. A whole kind of unhealthy work practice.

0:49:42.0 MH: Although, everybody probably still wants to meet the baby. So you can do a…

0:49:46.6 MK: Oh, definitely.

0:49:47.4 MH: So you can go and do a victory lap with the new child.

0:49:50.7 MK: Yes, that will definitely happen.

0:49:52.6 MH: Okay. We have covered a lot. Mo, thank you for being our undercover guest this episode, where we just interviewed you about your plans but it is… Let’s think about it, that’s technically something that’s gonna happen to a lot of analytics people in their career so I’m really glad we talked about it. I think you have a pretty solid plan going in and hopefully people heard something they can use for themselves too or feel some freedom or know that “Hey wow, the fact that I’m expected to do all this on vacation means I’m in a terrible job and I should find another one.” Which probably means it’s easy to find a job so go do it. Alright.

0:50:29.8 MK: Sorry Helbs. I’m just gonna add one last tip. Do different handover notes for different stakeholders. So I did handover notes that were for my manager and my very senior stakeholders and my replacement has access to those but then I also did a separate set of handover notes for her because the content of those things are very, very different. Anyway, I’ll leave it at that.

0:50:51.3 MH: That’s good. Alright. Well, we’re starting to wrap up but one thing we do like to do on the show is a last call and something we’ve found, we thought might be interesting to people, Tim, do you have a last call you wanna share?

0:51:07.4 TW: I have a last call. It is completely on the nose, less analytics but I just could not do it because… So this was a podcast episode from Planet Money that came out in late January called How Desi Invented Television and it’s about Desi Arnez and basically how, largely driven by the fact that Lucy was having their first child, part of is, they sort of invented syndication because the way they negotiated shooting on film, that basically they wound up revolutionizing aspects of television.

0:51:45.7 TW: I mean, they kind of invented a three camera sitcom and some other things but the fact that they owned the film and they were able to basically say “We’re just gonna show old episodes of I Love Lucy, while we’re getting to know our new child” but it was… It’s pretty interesting about how the whole dynamics of the entire kind of Hollywood scene came out but I also got a big chuckle as I was listening to it knowing that we were about to record… That basically syndication of television was driven by Lucille Ball’s pregnancy and the fact that she and Desi Arnaz owned the past episodes and could therefore re-broadcast them.

0:52:25.0 MH: Nice.

0:52:25.5 MK: What about you Helbs, what’s your last call?

0:52:29.0 MH: Great question. I’m not sure I’ve picked one. So why don’t we go with you next, while I’m trying to figure out which one I’m gonna share?

0:52:38.4 MK: Well there’s a reason that I’m not going last today and that’s because guess what? I’m trying to switch off so I don’t have a last call.

0:52:44.7 MH: Oh, I love it and in honor of that, I’m not gonna do one either so that’s perfect. [laughter]

0:52:51.0 TW: Wow! You want me to do a couple more?

0:52:53.8 MH: Yeah, Tim, could you just do a couple honorary last calls on our behalf?

0:52:57.7 TW: So, there was a Kevin Frisch episode of the, Marketing Today podcast… No? Okay.

0:53:01.5 MH: What’s funny is, I had told him that by 10 AM this morning, I’d have all my last calls emailed to him and obviously I let him down. So I’m sorry about that Tim.

0:53:10.8 TW: I was waiting. I was like “Need to get an SLA”.

0:53:13.7 MH: Yeah, it is like, “Should I tell Josh?” [chuckle] no. Okay so you’ve been listening to this episode and you’re thinking, “Hey yes, I have things that happen to me like going on vacation or going out on leave of some kind” and so we’d love to hear your thoughts as well. That being said, we have a number of things that are happening with the podcast, with Moe being out, it’s going to affect our show. So let me tell you a little bit about that.

0:53:46.7 MH: Over the coming months, we’ve selected some of our favorite and most popular shows from the past few years and we’ll be re-running some of them but Tim and I will be doing some check-ins, while Moe is out but we just didn’t feel like creating new episodes without Moe, would really be something we wanted to do.

0:54:06.1 MH: However, we do have some pretty exciting changes planned for the podcast in the interim so we’re not really taking time off as much as just sort of working on some things behind the scenes and so when we come back later this summer, you should be able to see some of those come out and hopefully we’ll work on our marketing plans. We can do cool secret, viral marketing messages via Twitter that people can decipher like “What does the 10-08 mean on our clock in the logo?”, that kind of stuff. Okay.

0:54:39.7 TW: And we’re going to have Moe checking in on us periodically because she did not trust us to make these unsupervised.

0:54:44.0 MH: Yeah, probably.

0:54:45.0 MK: It’s just things that are being made in 2021. [chuckle]

0:54:48.6 MH: But, we’re going to try to give Moe, time off too and that’s why we’re gonna be re-running… And we’ve picked some really good ones so we’re really excited to share those with you as we go through the next few months so be ready for that and thanks for listening.

0:55:05.6 MH: Obviously, no show would be complete and certainly none of the work we’re about to do, over the next few months will even be possible without our awesome producer, Josh Crowhurst, who helps us get this whole thing off the ground, each and every episode. So thank you, Josh and Moe were very excited for you and we’ll miss you but we can’t wait to meet whoever it is we’re gonna meet in a little bit of time and we wish you all the best and we can’t wait to get you back but we’re excited for you to be away.

0:55:35.8 MK: Thank you.

0:55:36.8 MH: Alright, that’s it. That’s the whole show. So I think I say, no matter if you’re out for a day, a week or a month or a year, remember, when you come back, I know I say this, for both of my co-hosts, Moe and Tim. Keep analyzing.

0:55:55.6 Announcer: Thanks for listening and don’t forget to join the conversation on Twitter or in the Measure Slack. We welcome your comments and questions. Visit us on the web at analyticshour.io or on Twitter @AnalyticsHour.

0:56:10.0 Charles Barkley: So smart guys wanted to fit in so they made up a term called analytic. Analytics don’t work.

0:56:15.4 Thom Hammerschmidt: Analytics. Oh my God! What the fuck does that even mean?

0:56:25.2 MK: No, I loves Pablo. Pablo just messaged me, being like, “I’m watching Australian Master Chef, is it Australian to say, ‘Yum’ so much?” [laughter]

0:56:41.5 TW: Read the defense of the word moist in the Washington Post.

0:56:45.5 MH: I certainly… No, yeah, absolutely not.

0:56:48.6 TW: Well, people hate that word, people get all weirded out but then she’s like, “But what is a synonym, that you could use… ” So, she was going author… Some cake was being reviewed and was described as damp or something and she was like, “No, you want your cake to be moist. Like, we can’t not say moist. There is no… “

0:57:08.3 MK: No. You can’t say it’s damp.

0:57:09.7 MH: Yeah so I’m fine with cakes being moist, I’m not fine with a lot of other things being moist.

0:57:15.9 TW: Right, the people just don’t like the word.

0:57:18.4 MK: I know. It’s just what pisses me off, it’s like America gets so squeamish about the stupid shit. Like they call them Gender reveal parties when that’s not actually true. They are sex reveal parties. All because Americans are to prudish to say the word sex and I’m like “But now, you’re actually just, misusing the whole word”.

0:57:37.8 TW: I think Americans misuse a lot of words. It’s stupid.

0:57:42.3 MH: They just shouldn’t have the party. It seems like they just mostly cause forest fires. At least once did it.

0:57:54.4 TW: You’re gonna tease that? In the intro? When she responds, say, “Hey, we’ll talk about what that means for the show” at the end of the show?

0:58:01.2 MH: Yeah, maybe.

0:58:01.9 TW: Okay, well, if it moves you. You do you.

0:58:04.9 MH: Okay alright, yeah. I’m gonna feel it. I just wanna feel how that feels.

0:58:11.4 TW: Alright. Feels moist.

[laughter]

0:58:14.0 MH: Yeah, it’s such a random… It’s not a good word.

0:58:19.5 TW: I know but I’m so glad, we got it, on tape.

0:58:21.6 MK: Well, if you misuse it, no wonder it seems weird.

0:58:27.2 MH: It’s like, if your brain… It’s probably good for your brain to be, moist.

0:58:31.2 TW: Moist! You don’t want a dry brain.

0:58:33.3 MH: You do not want a dry brain.

0:58:37.4 TW: Jesus. [laughter]

0:58:38.5 MH: I don’t know. Okay, let’s just get started. There we go…

0:58:48.3 TW: Rock flag and breathe, breathe, breathe. Push!

[laughter]

0:58:56.7 MH: Is that really… I don’t think that’s…

0:58:58.7 TW: No!

0:58:58.9 MH: Well, I don’t… I mean, I don’t know but…

0:59:01.5 TW: Rock Flag! It’s a baby!

[laughter]

Photo by Matthew Lee on Unsplash

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