March 17, 2020 Weekly Three and Meeting Notes

Hello BOSLadies,

Happy remote Monday? My guess is that the majority of you are reading this at home, your office’s physical locations shut down to help get COVID shut down. I’m happy to say that there’s plenty to share after last week’s meeting so you’ll have hours of reading material to fill those opened up by social distancing.

The book that has been selected for our April meeting is A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage. Sapiens is the only other book that we’ve read in this genre so hopefully you will find the change refreshing (pun intended). Since we’re all going to be home for awhile, you can get thematic and enjoy beer, wine and spirits with each of their respective chapters without having to pay for an Uber!

As for our April meeting, I think we should go ahead and just pick a time and date for a GoTo Meeting. Is there a platform that would be better to host multiple callers on? If you have recommendations, please let me know.

The Weekly Three (plus meeting notes)

1. Something about the value of unpaid labor: Unpaid labor, also called shadow labor, was valued by Oxfam in 2018 at $10.9 trillion dollars. For International Women’s Day two Sundays ago, the New York Times published this brief opinion piece about it. Thank you Kseniia for sending it over

2. Something about premium mediocrity: Have you ever heard the portmanteau “premiocre”? If you haven’t heard of it, you’ll most certainly recognize it. It embodies the “fake it ‘til you make it” mentality that very neatly ties into last week’s meeting discussion points listed below. Reading this article made me try to think of things in my life that are premiocre. I’m not totally sure that I have a problem with it. Do you?

3. ALL THE THINGS from last week’s meeting: We had an excellent turnout at Available Light last Tuesday so thank you again Matt for opening up your office to us and for setting up the conference line for me and Kyle. I’m thrilled that we had so many guest BOSLadies and think everyone would agree that our meeting was made all the better by their presence and input. We hope to see you all again soon!

As usual, the topics we touched upon ranged far and wide so please enjoy the notes below:

What the BOSLadies Brought as Recommendations

· Damn Good Advice by “Master Communicator” George Lois, the legendary advertiser that Don Draper of “Mad Men” is said to have been based on. Here are seven of those pieces of advice and an article on Lois from NPR based on the interview he did with them when the book came out in 2012

· The Most Powerful Woman in the Room is You by Lydia Fenet, Christie’s Managing Director and Global Head of Strategic Partnerships. If you don’t know much about her or what that position entails, read this review and pause for a moment on the fact that the position was one she created herself.

In our meeting we talked about all of these kinds of people who create the job that they want. They know what they want but don’t see that it’s a job that exists. Instead of interpreting the job not existing as “the job should not exist”, they interpret this as “this is a job that doesn’t exist so I will create it”. We also noted the complexity of guilt or imposter syndrome when there is an established job position that is open that you may feel you’re taking from someone else, particularly someone who seems more qualified.

· Two podcasts: The Lies We Tell and Science Vs.

Three sample titles from “Science Vs.”

               1. Lyme Disease: How Scary Is It?

               2. UFOs: What the Government Covered Up

               3. Circumcision: Why Are We Doing This?

What the BOSLadies Brought Up Otherwise

· How good it feels to not ask permission and to just go do it (whatever “it” may be). Are we always asking for permission or are we sometimes asking for validation?

· Have you had something that you’re very fixated on doing and you want to just jump in and commit in a big way, either time wise or financially? Has it caused anxiety? Stop and ask yourself why you’re doing it and if the course of action planned is the only way to achieve the goal. Action is distraction – if you stop for a moment then you’re forced to think about your motives and method of execution.

· Is it a bad thing to “fake it ‘til you make it”? Most of us agreed that in some areas, like knowledge, it’s probably not the best idea, especially in the work environment. With things like confidence, it’s probably not a bad thing. But then someone pointed out you can’t fake self-confidence. It’s a paradox and we were all very quiet for a moment thinking about that.

There was more from the meeting but this letter is already looong so I’ll stop now. If you’d like the rest of the notes, let me know. Otherwise, enjoy your week!