Applying 'Extreme Ownership' to your career: are you an elbow patcher or an entrepreneur?

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Inger and Jason catch up on Inger's 24th wedding anniversary
(with Mr Thesis Whisperer's permission!).

Inger went to Newcastle in the Tesla and had fun doing a workshop
in a bathroom. It's been a weird couple of weeks: she also
encountered giant animatronic wombats on the lawns of parliament
house while taking part in an NTEU event. Jason's had Covid in
the house (9:47), but avoided getting it, despite using his
Aunt's method of taking temperature of kids via hugging. He's
finally going back to just two jobs (thank goodness) and trying
to work out how to not overwhelm the big boss when she gets
back.

Jason and Inger talk about how they were interview by Andrew for
The Omni Show (18:48) and are just a little bit excited that they
got retweeted by Ken Case (squee!).

At 24:46 there's some talk about Navy SEALS and our
#deathcagematchreadathon with @tseenster on Twitter. Inger's been
reading 'Extreme Ownership' by Jocko Willing and Leif Babin while
Jason has been reading a romance called 'Everyday, Average Jones'
by Susan Brockmann. They also made @tseenster read one, but she
hasn't left a speak pipe review yet (no pressure Tseen!).

Then they both unpack the lessons from 'Extreme Ownership: how US
Navy SEALs lead and win' (40:38) Using a slide deck to guide the
conversation. Inger applies three of the lessons (extreme
ownership, Believe and Plan) to the problems of academic life,
specifically designing a career for yourself (1:01:58). The pair
discuss her theory there are two types of academic 'elbow patch'
(who spend their careers in deep study becoming The Expert) and
Entrepreneur (the ones who are agile to survive). They debate the
pros and cons of both career choices and then how to fit into the
broader mission of a university (1:13:39) and then go on to drop
the knowledge about how to use the university strategic planning
process to basically Get What You Need (1:22:48).

They close out with talk about necrotic robots (yes, reanimating
dead spiders - shudder) and the terrifying footage of a robot dog
with a crazy accurate machine gun strapped to its back (1:42:59).
The two minute tips are there, but trust us when we say that you
will STILL be thinking about killer robots by the end of this
episode - hasta la vista!

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Stuff we mentioned:



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