The Future Of Less Work
00:00:00 · Nirit Cohen, Anthony Trucks
[00:00:00] S0: Welcome to The Future Of Less Work where we explore how work is transforming one conversation at a time. I'm Nirit Cohen. And today, we're gonna talk about what it takes to shift our professional identity in a world of work where everything's shifting around us. Because in the next few years, many people will have to rethink not only what they do, but who they are professionally. An expert can become a beginner again. A manager may have to become a coach. An employee may have to become more entrepreneurial. And add to that, we're living longer, working longer, and need to stay relevant for even more years, but the work that made us successful will not carry us forward into this next chapter. That's why I wanted to have this conversation with Anthony Trucks. Anthony is a former NFL athlete turned leadership coach and the author of Identity Shift, which I believe is what every one of us needs to be doing these days. Now for athletes, careers peak early, and they still have a lot of career in front of them when they can no longer do what they used to do or who they were. So they need to transform, and now we all do. And Anthony argues that going through that change is not about learning something, but about doing the deeper work to get ourselves to do it. Anthony, welcome to Future Of Less Work. [00:01:20] S1: Thank you for having me on. It's a good intro. It's actually covered a good deal of what I talk about. It's great. [00:01:25] S0: Oh, I read your book, and I have to start with a confession. [00:01:29] S1: Yeah.
00:01:29 · Anthony Trucks, Nirit Cohen
[00:01:29] S1: Yeah. [00:01:29] S0: So there's a story in there where you tell the story about how you couldn't jump off a cliff right into a pool because it was not... You were not that person, right, until you were. So here's my confession. So I've been trying to, for months, got out a newer ring, trying to take better care of my health, which includes going to the gym more often. And I've been talking about it, but I wasn't actually doing it. Right? And so I started using that phrase, I am that person. Every time I try to talk myself into actually doing something I don't feel like doing, and it's been working for me so far. Good. So thank you for that. [00:02:08] S1: Yeah, welcome. It's actually, is that simple and that difficult at the exact same time. But it's also, the brain has a cognitive dissonance that knows like it's not just you just yet. And so in time it kind of, it'll settle in, but it takes repetition to where eventually the conversation doesn't actually have to have, you don't have tell yourself that. In fact, you will notice like in your gut, something's off. Oh, I didn't do that thing that I've always been doing. That's when you've actually got to that next tick and it's locked in pretty well. [00:02:35] S0: Yeah. Yeah. That's the repetition. So let's kind of... Let's just backtrack here for a second. So you had to reinvent yourself after football, after an injury, even cut that career short. Right? What is it that you had to stop believing about yourself before you could see what was possible for you?
00:02:51 · Anthony Trucks
[00:02:51] S1: Oh, that's a good question. I don't know if I stopped believing. I think I started realizing I'd already had a belief that I didn't like. So it's weird to say this, when I was a kid at this time, I didn't have this belief that I was good or capable. I didn't think that I would deserve very much. In fact, like I just, I had all the bad beliefs. However, I did believe that if I continued on the path I was going, I would not like where it ended up. I was checked out of class, wasn't focused on school, you know, I was just kind of just sleeping through everything. Wasn't playing sports, wasn't doing anything. I was like, I don't like where this is headed. Because if I open my eyes and start looking future wise, like this is going to take me somewhere I don't want to be. So my belief was I had to do something different if I wanted to have something different. But I wouldn't say that there was a belief that changed all of a sudden. It wasn't like, yeah, I can do this. I was like, I have to do something. So I said, well, what do I want to do? And I saw what I wanted do. I want to be great at football. I go, what does a person that's great at football do? I found out what it looked like and started doing those things completely without belief or comfort, but that was the catalyst to it.
00:03:54 · Nirit Cohen, Anthony Trucks
[00:03:54] S0: Okay. So here's the catch, right? And this is where we kind of shift to identity. It's usually not about not knowing. Right? I mean, I know what it means taking care of my health. I know what it means advancing the the same... The next level or Mhmm. You know, transforming the career that I that I want. I know, but I don't do. [00:04:13] S1: Yeah. True. [00:04:15] S0: So what is that... What is it that that extra mile or This whatever, if it's a
00:04:22 · Anthony Trucks
[00:04:22] S1: could be... I could answer this in four different layers. We won't go that deep, though. But I will say this. There's the thing... The same as me. There's things I know I should do. There's things I just don't do. There's something I know I want, but I'm okay for now. It's not too painful. So I'll just, I'll slowly progress towards it, but I'll be okay not getting it done. And so what I ended up finding out is that a lot of people have one, they have a disconnect between a sense of identity around that thing. Because if you have the identity of a person who does that, it would be more uncomfortable to not do it. It's just simply how I'll say it. Like I do a video every single day. It's a podcast that we launch out. It's like seven minutes, it's personal. I've done it now. Today was episode fifteen thirty six. It is more uncomfortable not to do it now than to do it. Like it's a weird dance because it's so much me to do it that I just do it. If I don't, I feel it, right? So that's one part of it. The other side of it is we put too much emotion behind doing the thing, or needing emotion to do the thing. Like I'm supposed to do this and I don't do it. I don't want to do it. It's like, well, this emotion like that gets all heavy and anguish. And I go, we're putting too much into what it is. I think you just have to show up and go, I don't care how I feel, it has to get done. Let me just get it done. Let me knock this thing out. And what happens is we don't realize that that's a very possible thing to do. Meaning most folks operate on willpower, and it doesn't have to be willpower based. It's just to be like, that's supposed to be done. Let me push through it, knock it out, move on. And now what ends up happening, it's not this big mountain to climb. Because you're right, let's say you want to be healthy. You should go for a walk every day. You should work out. You should eat healthy food, right? And we know these things, but then we go, Oh, that candy bar looks delicious. I'll get that workout later on. Maybe I'll just push the workout to tomorrow. I've walked enough yesterday to cover today. We make these conversations in our head, we get a little emotional about it. And the reality is it's like, no, it says on my calendar that that's supposed to be a fifteen minute walk. I take the fifteen minute walk.
00:06:13 · Anthony Trucks
Part of it boils down to the idea of you have to stop having the conversation internally about whether you should and should not do it, because you get to this point of having what's called decision fatigue. I actually just talked about this in my podcast this morning. It's the idea that a lot of us run to that moment and we choose. Should I do it? Should I not do it? There's a decision in it. And there's actually a part of our brain that drains when we make decisions. It's why Jeff Bezos, not Jeff Bezos, but the Apple guy, I can't think of his name off the top of my head. Steve Jobs. That's why Steve Jobs always wore turtleneck. It's why Obama always wore the same kind of suits. What happens is people get used to doing the same thing, because what happens is I diminish the amount of choices I have to make. It's a non choice, therefore I save the actual fluid, we'll call it the tank of my decision tank is still there. And so what happens is I don't decide, should I get the workout? I don't decide, should I get the walk? I don't decide, should I work out and eat food? It's just what I do. And so that when I do it enough, I knock it out. And here's the interesting piece when you extrapolate this. If that's tied to your professionalism, you're the future of work, right? If I'm looking at an eight hour day to get work done, and halfway through the day you have burned your decision take up, because it's not you to do these things, but the second half of the day is a wash. But for me, if it's just who I am to do it, I'll get halfway through the day and still have three quarters of my tank left. So I get those extra four hours done. So if you extrapolate this out a year from now, I have two years of work being completed to your one because you kept battling the decision and not just becoming the person who did that thing.