Hey Reader,

Do you remember the most awkward moments of your life? One for me was definitely the day I was defending my master’s thesis. I was explaining a complex algorithm, when my advisor interrupted me and said, “Well…that’s not really how it works.” In front of my classmates, other faculty, and a number of friends who showed up out of support.

As you can imagine, I was mortified – until recovered, finished the presentation, and said, If you have any questions, I’d be happy to answer them. Unless it’s about that one algorithm. They you can ask Dr. Bishop.”

That got laughs, and I finished strong. I learned an important lesson that day: awkwardness will happen. It’s how you handle it that has a lasting effect. And that’s exactly what Dr. Henna Pryor is going to talk about with us today. She’s a keynote speaker, and her best-selling book, Good Awkward, came out in September with endorsements from people like NFL Quarterback Russell Wilson.

Top Takeaways

• We are living in a society that increasingly doesn’t need to use its “social skills” muscle. We don’t have to interact with as many people, and it’s making us feel worse.
• Awkward goes hand-in-hand with uncertainty. That means if you never want to feel awkward, you’ll never grow.
• In order to embrace uncertainty, and therefore awkwardness, we need to create more situations to “practice” than the current world gives us.

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Behind the Scenes: End of the Year Planning

We’re quickly approaching the end of the year, which is usually a slower time for the podcast.

I like to take the last 2 weeks of the year off, coming back the Monday after New Years…perhaps publishing a lower production bonus or members-only episode.

But I have lots of plans that have changed that up a bit.

The first is that I’m doing several podcast guest swaps, and want to try to release those episodes around the same time as the other podcast. For that reason, I’m extending the season a bit.

The second is I have sponsors lined up through the end of the year – which is great (actually part of that is due to a change in how I’m selling sponsorships – more on that soon). Since we’d like those campaigns to wrap up before EOY, I’m adding a few more episodes.

Penultimately, I’m doing more solo shows, which is a more recent development. But I also have a set number of solo shows I do at the end of the year – one is my annual gift guide. One is holiday related. And one is my Yearly Theme.

Finally, I’m experimenting more, and I’ve gotten some questions around if you should take a break for the holidays. I know it’s anecdotal at best, but I’d like to report my own experience around this…and Christmas falls on a Monday, which is a normal publish day for me…

Until next time,

Joe Casabona The Podcast Systems Guy

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