The Hidden Link Between Job Enjoyment and Performance with Jason Silver, Author & CEO of JI Business Advisory

In this episode, Jason Silver, a former Airbnb country manager turned author, shares eye-opening insights on rethinking productivity, leadership, and purpose. He reveals how scaling at breakneck speed taught him that focusing on culture and values especially the ones you pay a price for, can make or break your success. And he challenges the widely held myth that job satisfaction is about finding your passion it's about practicing it, day by day, task by task.

00:00 – Introduction & Jason Silver background
02:30 – From child actor to Airbnb: unconventional career path
06:10 – Inside Airbnb’s hypergrowth (400 → 2500 employees)
09:30 – “Don’t f*** up the culture”: lessons on scaling companies
12:30 – Why company values fail (and how to make them real)
17:00 – The book Your Grass is Greener explained
20:00 – Personal turning point: loss, perspective & mindset shift
23:30 – The “enjoyment → success” reversal (core philosophy)
28:30 – You have more control over your work than you think
42:30 – Practical exercise: redesign your work using enjoyment
47:15 – HR dilemma: misaligned roles & how to fix them
50:15 – Change HOW you work, not WHAT you do
53:00 – Small tweaks that compound into career satisfaction
59:30 – The future of work: danger of chasing “perfect jobs”
1:03:30 – Final insights on values, work, and fulfillment 

Creators and Guests

Host

Martin Hauck

Co-Founder of The People People Group & Host of From A People Perspective

What is From A People Perspective?

A podcast about fascinating professionals, how they got to where they are and where they’re going from the lens HR, Recruitment and People Operations hosted by Martin Hauck.

Martin Hauck (01:26)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of From a People Perspective. I'm your host, Martin Hawk. Thanks for making time today, Jason. I appreciate you coming on.

Jason Silver (01:36)
Thanks for having me.

Martin Hauck (01:37)
I'm I'm I had like a full Vietnamese iced coffee earlier today. And you were like, Martin, you're so calm and serene. And I'm just like, Nope, I'm I'm I'm a bottle of energy just and so I'm excited to talk to you today. ⁓ Our dear friend, Rachel Jacobson introduced us many moons ago.

Jason Silver (01:57)
Mmm.

Martin Hauck (01:58)
And she said, Hey, you got to, think you need to talk to Jason. He's like this awesome person that you should just know. And we've been going back and forth, not on podcasts, um, trying to figure out what the best way to, to do something together would be. And here we are, we've nailed it down. The answer was podcasts and here we are. So what

Jason Silver (02:20)
If it goes great,

we have Rachel as Hank, and if it goes terribly, it'll be my fault entirely. So she's protected.

Martin Hauck (02:26)
So kind again to like just a super nice guy. ⁓

Jason Silver (02:31)
I gotta come and do this more often. It's just a bunch of compliments so far.

Martin Hauck (02:34)
⁓

So we'd like to start off we being me. ⁓ And when I have Vietnamese coffee, I tend to speak in the third person. ⁓ Just like some quick icebreakers. So you've got one album to listen to for the rest of time or one artist, who are you choosing?

Jason Silver (02:57)
Oof. That's a tough one.

Probably I would go David Gilmore from Pink Floyd as the one artist and I'd pick that because at least I get to listen to their whole catalog. So maybe I'd go there.

Martin Hauck (03:11)
Sneaky, nice but

sneaky, right? Thinking about the mechanics of it. Interesting, right? You're not limiting yourself to one album.

Jason Silver (03:20)
One album will be really hard. I'm all over the place with music. You need the right stuff for the right moment.

Martin Hauck (03:24)
That's tough.

Okay, midnight snacks. What are you thinking when it comes to the midnight snack situation?

Jason Silver (03:32)
I'm so boring man. I like I love a Honeycrisp apple is like my favorite like a big Honeycrisp apple So Apple is pretty healthy. Maybe that's boring. That is what it is

Martin Hauck (03:41)
Interesting.

that's that's healthy.

That's definitely healthy. ⁓ Yeah. Okay, cool. Cool. We're learning lots today. And yeah, what was your first gig ever?

Jason Silver (03:59)
First job. Wow. ⁓

Martin Hauck (04:00)
First job.

Going a couple of years back.

Jason Silver (04:07)
⁓ I

know the answer to that. Sorry, I had to think way back. ⁓ When I was a kid, I got stopped. My mom tells me in a grocery store and yada, yada, yada. ⁓ I was on a commercial for Honey Bunches of Oats. ⁓ yeah, was like Honey Bunches of Oats was launching in Canada. ⁓ And I wound up getting like...

Martin Hauck (04:25)
What?

Jason Silver (04:33)
an agent and there's like headshots and I remember very little of this. I was in a bunch of commercials and then thankfully my parents were like, cool, like it's back to school time now. That's where you're going to be focused and it is on the internet. can be found. ⁓ but yeah, so it's, should say this is first time I've ever said that to a large group of people.

Martin Hauck (04:49)
Okay.

Yeah, no. Okay, so we're gonna yeah as part of the trailer, we're gonna it's gonna be like, it's this I can see it already. It's like

Jason Silver (04:58)
It's hard to find. It's hard

to find and I won't help you but I won't stop you if you find it.

Martin Hauck (05:06)
from, you're not going to help us. Okay. Yeah, we've got some we've got, I've got homework. I love this homework because that can be in the trailer and be like, from, and you're going to help us fill this out. This is a perfect segue. Like how do you go from being a honey bunches of oats child commercial star?

Jason Silver (05:14)
Ha ha ha.

That's

a big stretch, but yeah, okay.

Martin Hauck (05:23)
to

to Airbnb ⁓ country manager for Western Eastern Canada or for Canada and and like East and West Midwest USA to to an author like how do you let's hear the story how do you how do you

Jason Silver (05:41)
Those

things are wildly unconnected. So the story will be a long.

Martin Hauck (05:43)
Yes. No?

Jason Silver (05:49)
Yeah, you back to school, acting wasn't going to be the thing, ⁓ thankfully. ⁓ did engineering in school, two of those degrees. ⁓ Thought I wanted to be an engineer. Then I got really interested in business, realized I really loved like building around whatever that initial product is going to be. ⁓ Did a couple of my own startups, few successes.

Lots of very interesting failures. I crashed a company, which is always an interesting conversation. Took a lot away from that experience. And actually, ⁓ one of my investors whose money I almost entirely lost when I crashed the company, I was in a gigantically deep funk thinking, it's it my career is over. I was in my 20s. I figured, no, it's going to hire me for anything. I've proven I suck at all things. So we're all done here, ready to pack it in.

investor calls me up and I guess thought highly enough of the job I did while I was trying to build the company and said, hey, there's this team I think you should meet. Why don't you have a chat with them? And that was the folks at Airbnb back before Airbnb was Airbnb. It was still very, very early stage. Met the country manager at the time there, joined Airbnb, got to experience what the like crazy up into the right rocket ship.

looks like and what it looks like when you scale at truly breakneck pace. of really great learnings coming out of that place, lots of great experiences. I draw on it all the time. Yeah, I'm here for you.

Martin Hauck (07:24)
we can we double click on what break neck

what break neck pace is in terms of like illustrate that with like a bit of an example like how fast you were growing at that time and what you were experiencing and like what did the whiplash feel like I imagine

Jason Silver (07:41)
So rough order of magnitude, like going from like 400, 500-ish people to 2,500 people in like two years kind of pace. ⁓ You know, I didn't join when the idea was being created. was like, was, there was a spark, it was catching on, it was growing. And the question was, now how do we take this thing and really, really scale it up? And so the pace was...

crazy fast and some of the, one of the more interesting things was, you know, I was coming from a startup background, like running a startup previously thinking, I'm joining this company and it's going to grow and I'll get to see what it's like. And it's going to be so much more sophisticated. And then at a thousand people realizing that like, when I have to go and do a big marketing activation and there's a budget of X thousand dollars, like the process is like,

Yeah. Can you increase the limit on your credit card so you can go buy this thing and we'll just make sure you get reimbursed for it and the number of spreadsheets and duct tape and chewing gum and don't get me wrong, very well run company, but you know, just how much energy was on what are the things we truly need to scale and we'll fix the debt later. You know, take on debt. Debt is useful as long as you take on the right debt, basically, and being intentional about those kinds of things and not cutting corners where

Martin Hauck (08:37)
Thank you very much.

Jason Silver (09:05)
you we really need these things. That was a really great lesson. You don't need to be great at all things at all times. You just gotta be really clear on the few that you need to make sure you do an incredible job at and then go back and fill in the edges later.

Martin Hauck (09:11)
Mm-hmm.

And I want to double click there. What was it that were the important things to be really great at in from your perspective?

Jason Silver (09:31)
Number one, like again, it's going to seem a little bit cliche. hear about it all the time. Now it was not as much in traditional leadership language back then. But I mean, as Brian, the CEO put it, like there's a swear word in there. don't know what the like rating level of the podcast is, but like don't F up the culture basically. Exactly. just really, really being clean and clear about, okay.

Martin Hauck (09:37)
Mm.

Yeah, don't fuck up the culture.

Jason Silver (10:00)
You know, the business is built on people, not just the people that work inside the company, but Airbnb as a business. Like there isn't really, the product is the people who host their places, right? And the travel experience that Airbnb helps you create. And if there's no culture in the company, if that culture is not extended to the people that travel, the people that host, et it doesn't matter how good the software is. You know, it doesn't matter how much revenue is being generated. Like something's going to go wrong somewhere in some way. so.

being very mindful and intentional about what do we care about in the culture? What do we value? How do those things show up truly in day-to-day business decisions was a thing that I was frankly like, it was super foreign to me. I thought entirely through the lens of, okay, ours goals. How do I motivate people? Whatever we need to do to get the job done. If you have to swap this person in or that person out.

So be it, you we're all just kind of cogs in the machine and Airbnb flipped my whole take on, you know, leading and growing a company on its head for the better, I think. And it was really just through a maniacal focus on what do we value? Why do we value those things? And what are we doing to uphold them, especially when it's hard.

Martin Hauck (11:17)
And it comes down and it comes down to two people, as you, as you mentioned, that's it's it feels like. Almost esoteric or almost like hard to. Grasp because business operates in such a way that it's easy to get lost in the day to day and forget that thing. And at some point you're probably going to be reminded of it, or you're going to have hard lessons.

Jason Silver (11:41)
Mm.

Martin Hauck (11:47)
to teach you that because eventually companies find out or sometimes companies don't have to don't have to learn that lesson necessarily as well. Maybe I'm contradicting myself, but I guess why do you think that lesson is sort of out of reach for people?

Jason Silver (12:06)
Good question, so...

You know, so Airbnb, awesome. ⁓ You know, I went and I was the COO of an AI company before AI was like the coolest thing to do. And it was great to be at the cutting edge there. And then I took a pretty big shift and ⁓ focused my effort on helping companies and other founders and other executives and other leaders build their companies. And so naturally,

Martin Hauck (12:15)
Yeah.

Right.

Jason Silver (12:36)
Values is a thing that comes up a lot. so trying to kind of bottle up the thinking on it is a challenge. one of the big things I see is values are kind of quotation, like soft, you know, and I don't love like hard skill, soft skill. It's more, I can do a thousand phone calls as a salesperson and I can measure how that is going to attribute to some goal down the line. It's a lot harder to say by upholding this value, we will generate X, Y, of enterprise value.

Martin Hauck (13:00)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Silver (13:06)
Right. It's going to make this much money for us or the company is going to be able to grow in this way or do these things or it's a, I don't even want to say it's a dotted line. Like there's not even a line that exists between those things. It's more of like a belief. And a lot of times what I find companies struggle with is when I work on them with values, which is something we do regularly, like I'm an operator by nature. Like how do we make these things part of daily decisions? So it's not, like you said, an esoteric thing. go and we stick it on the wall.

And ⁓ one of the reframes that I find helps quite a lot is a lot of people think about values as like, these are the things we care about. And they are those things. But the challenge with that way of thinking about it is we care about a lot of things. So it's hard at that point to say like, well, we're going to care about these things and not those things, right? We're going to care about being customer centric. And we're going to care a little bit less about like being

Martin Hauck (14:01)
you

Jason Silver (14:04)
Uh, whatever employee first or moving really fast or whatever some of those. And the reframe I like to try to use with the executive teams is where if we write the values down and we do a good job at it, these tell us the things we're willing to pay a price for. And if we won't pay a price for them, then they don't matter. Right. And so you're going to wind up in a situation where there's a trade off and the values are not going to tell you exactly what to do in that situation. Cause then we'd all be robots and

Martin Hauck (14:20)
you

Right.

Jason Silver (14:33)
But what they're going to do is they're going tell you which questions you need to ask in this moment. If you're a company that's customer centric, and that's one of your values, then you should rightfully ask in every material business decision, what is the impact to our customers on this decision? And if you don't consider the impact to the customer on most of your material business decisions, you are not upholding that value. And if you're not prepared to pay a price, hey, this is something we would do for our customer, and it's going to hurt our bottom line.

Maybe something went awry with them and we've got to go above and beyond, give them a refund, or we want to run an event for them to show them how much we care, whatever it might be. That's going to cost us significant capital. It's going to cost us a lot of time and energy. But we choose to make the decision because we believe that prioritizing customers over something like revenue or whatever it might be. That sounds kind of a little bit paradoxical as it was coming out of my mouth. I have thought it through more deeply.

The point is, hey, this is a trade off, right? And we're going to pay a price for it. And this is the price that we choose to pay. And that was a thing that, you know, going back to Airbnb, like we grew fast, but we hired so slowly and we constantly, there would be pushback on like, I'm losing candidates because of how many interviews have to come through the process and how long it takes them. And there are competitors out there.

Right. And they're able to go through their hiring process more quickly. And it wasn't that we were inefficient. It was that like, if you want to come and work on this team, it's going to be like nine to 12 interviews. So the price we were willing to pay is we might lose, you know, locally, a couple of candidates who might be really great candidates, but globally, the belief is this process is the process that's really going to help us maintain the culture that we want to have inside of the company. And the belief is globally, that's going to lead to a

a better company down the line and better results down the line, even though you could pick many individual instances where there was a big price to be paid there.

Martin Hauck (16:40)
And so you've given a lot of amazing examples from Airbnb and moving on to integrate AI as a COO. And now you've written a book that I'd love to chat a bit more, just get the sense of like the inspiration behind it and get a sense of what you're up to today.

Jason Silver (17:07)
wrote a book, feels crazy, still feels weird. Actually, it's a year ago this month. ⁓ So it's having its year-iversary, which is kind of cool. The book's called Your Grass is Greener. ⁓ The idea is really that a lot of us look to kind of change our circumstances so you're not happy in your job and you think, just go get a new job and that's gonna fix it. But a lot of times what happens is we don't change the way we're working.

And you're going to get a new job and you have this great new honeymoon phase and it's awesome. but because you don't change the way you work, lot of the habits that you had previously are still in place. And, know, two months, three months, six months, a year down the line, you're back realizing, ⁓ geez, you know, I don't love this job. And the book for me was, was really all about flipping on its head. This idea that like, number one, you're not in control.

I think in a lot of cases, people have more control than they think they have. And you may not get that promotion that you want because there's only one of them and your boss has to approve it. But unless you're in a really toxic environment, you probably don't have a boss looking over your shoulder telling you exactly how to do every single task that you do all day, every day. And so a lot of us do have choice in the way we approach our work. And if you can shift your mind to think about how could I change the way in which I'm doing my work?

Martin Hauck (18:06)
⁓

Jason Silver (18:34)
There's huge opportunity to change how much you're enjoying your job. And a big flip for me as like a, you know, type a hard driving, achieving type of guys. I always felt that like, if I buckle down and, you know, create success, then I will enjoy that success. That was the order that it was in my mind is I'm deferring it until later, right? I don't really like this, but I need to do it. It's going to lead to success and that I'm going to enjoy.

And a switch flipped in my brain, took a long time ⁓ and a lot of hard work, but the switch that flipped in my brain is actually that's totally backwards. And a lot of us have this backwards where if you can start to prioritize the enjoyment, that is the thing that leads to more impact. The more you enjoy what you're doing, the more likely you are to be successful at it. And so if we can take the like tactical approaches of operations that were all kind of bottled up in my brain.

and deploy them into something that feels squishy like enjoying your job more, it actually can become a highly tactically driven, here are some very specific things you can do. It will lead to more enjoyment in your job and that will absolutely have demonstrable impact for you on success or whatever word you might want to use.

Martin Hauck (19:56)
What flip that switch for you in your brain to say it's it's not moving jobs isn't the answer. It's reframing this situation and enjoying the work or loving the work.

Jason Silver (20:00)
Yeah.

Yeah,

unfortunately it was a bit of a rough story. I haven't talked about it in a little while actually, but the impetus for the book, ultimately, I didn't plan it this way, but my sister got sick and passed away from cancer and she was young. know, it was, was, you know, she, had a lot of life left to live. And I went through obviously a very challenging period as one does when you

face a loss like this, you know, there's no replacing my sister in any way, shape or form. the, but the journey that I wound up on shoved by the way she lived her life was, Hey, like, you're just looking at the equation the wrong way. You know, I, had such a close encounter with somebody very near and dear to me, not having a future of any kind.

that it really made me question, well, hang on a minute. You know, I am, I'm over invested in the future and under invested in the moment. And what would it look like if I, if I changed that, how, how can I change that? And because I am very operational in nature, I, it was really an experimentation process of, you know, I read every self-help book you could get your hands on. I, tried pretty much every tactic.

Martin Hauck (21:18)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (21:39)
you could read about, you know, I was doing cold plunges, hanging upside down, ⁓ intermittent fasting. I stopped using soap for a little while, which is a fun one I could tell you about if you care about that kind of stuff. Basically, if something said somewhere, hey, this has been shown to potentially make you perform better or feel better. Like I tried it. Same thing at work. I took the same methodology. I plugged it in at work. What happens if I set more goals, no goals?

Less goals, only goals. What if I track all my time? I don't track any time, work more hours, work less hours. You know, I was all over the place. And what I saw is, you know, as I was testing these things and measuring what's helping me and how is it helping me, a set of tactics started to kind of surface to the top of like, these are the things that are really happening or helping rather. And it started to coalesce into a bit of a story around the more I do these things.

the more I enjoy what I'm doing and my enjoyment upticks, I was basically tracking the like my experience with the situation kind of day to day, a bit of a journal. And then I would track like results. And what I saw consistently is the enjoyment spikes and stays up nice and high. And then some amount of time after that, there was some kind of success measure that usually followed.

Martin Hauck (22:46)
Hmm. Yeah.

Jason Silver (23:00)
And the more that I focused on improving my experience in my work, rather than just trying to change the work itself, the more I started to see, wow, this is getting better. You know, things are changing in a great way. People around me started asking me questions. I got pushed to write the book. I was like, no, I'm not an author. Huge amount of imposter syndrome there, which I also address in the book, but it eventually just kind of snowballed into, wow, there's like a bunch of stuff written down here.

got a great opportunity to work with the editor from Atomic Habits and it just kind of rumbled from there. I'm so grateful that it's out in the world now. It's been such a crazy experience that I never thought I would

Martin Hauck (23:44)
That's a beautiful homage to an experience to such a challenging time and like my condolences and thank you for sharing. ⁓ I have so many questions now. More than I ever have and we've had enough conversations offline that this is cool. That's exactly what I was hoping for. So the

Jason Silver (23:58)
It's your show, you can ask away.

Martin Hauck (24:09)
part that's interesting to me is I have this idea of you now as sort of this like mad scientist of productivity and, just like thinking about we spend, you know, sleep's important because we spend eight hours, hopefully a day doing it. Work's important because we spend eight hours a day doing it and the rest of our life, right? If you break it into, you know, three quadrants.

Jason Silver (24:16)
Ha ha ha!

Mm-hmm.

Martin Hauck (24:35)
⁓ so you should enjoy or be doing those things well. And so it sounds like you've gone deep on, on the work life side of things. ⁓ and even just to hear about the like reframing things, I'll share an example that I'm kind of working through right now is I've, you know, being an entrepreneur is stressful. Everybody kind of knows that and how

how people respond to that is different. I don't go boxing and I'm not a marathon runner and you know, that sort of thing. you know, it manifests. Yeah, Vietnamese coffee is probably adding to stress. Like it's just elevating everything and like all the, yeah, I probably need to ease off of that. But no, I've been struggling with high blood pressure for a year and a half to the point where my doctors are, you know, like you got.

Jason Silver (25:12)
Vietnamese coffee.

Martin Hauck (25:31)
you've got to reel this in, we've got to figure out what this is. I've been in the merge three times in the last, in the last 12 months, and only up until recently. And it was a book by Kelly McGonigal called The Upside to Stress. So you're well versed in the, well versed in the world of self-help books. But it was just so wild to me that like scientifically proven if you look at stress as a positive,

as opposed to a negative, like the outcomes are different. And it's strictly a mental thing. And so like, that's where I'm kind of seeing it from in the sense that like, it's really just reframing your current circumstance, right? And to your point about the book, like your grass is greener as opposed to someone else's is like, I loved when you said that it was like, it automatically assumes that the problem is out of your control, and you have to change your environment. And sometimes that's true.

And oftentimes changing your environment is helpful. But if you don't change your actions, which is what you're saying, like, you might go to greener grass, and then that grass will die quickly because your actions don't nurture the lawn. You know, if I

Jason Silver (26:47)
You're

doing great with the analogy. I think that's it. Before I knew it was a book, I spent a lot of time helping folks and talking to people. Just this feeling I felt a lot of the time was just, I don't want to call it helplessness, but not sure that they really had much to do. If my boss does XYZ for me or if I land this project or if this promotion comes through,

or if such and such works out. There was just like a lot of external factors. And what's been great about the book being out now is like, I'm so hugely grateful for, know, I get emails regularly from people. I have no idea who they are. Like no idea who these people are. I've never met them in my life. I don't know how they found out about the book, picked it up, it, send me a note. I was stuck for X, Y, and Z reason. This chapter that you wrote really resonated with me. And, you know, here's what's been happening since. And like,

such an unbelievable gift. And I think the thing that I really am now really passionate about getting out there is I really think people have way more control than they often give themselves credit for. And that's not to say that that's all cases. You work in a toxic situation, the best thing to do is get out of that toxic situation. It's a privilege to be in a spot where you have some room to maneuver. If you're in a toxic situation,

you know, no amount of trying to like change the way you work is likely to remove that toxicity. And, you know, but the, push I give folks is rather than it's that rather than assuming that it's the environment, you know, what I like about having a book now is I'm like, just read through it. And if not a single thing in the book helps you, that's a great way to know that it's probably the environment, right? There's nine specific tactics in the book. Everyone can try them. You can.

Martin Hauck (28:35)
right?

Jason Silver (28:40)
You know, literally do it in a day and within a couple of weeks, you should see some kind of an impact would be like the longest in some cases. You know, you'll feel it right away. But if you try these things and you see no change to these things, there's a really good indication to you that it's probably the environment. Otherwise there's a lot you can do. to your point, entrepreneurs, leaders, like these folks often feel, feels like we're out on an island. You know, I can't talk to my team. I maybe can't talk to my spouse about it.

I'm trying to build the business in this way. I can't talk to my colleague about this particular thing. It can feel like you're a little bit backed into a corner. And I really wanted something that was a positive way to say, hey, did you know that if you could improve the way that your team or you are making decisions just a little bit, it's going to have a massive impact on how much you enjoy your job and it will produce way better results for yourself. And it's just like,

Okay, great. Now what do I go and do? Like here's the thing to go and try. So I feel very grateful that it's out in the world. A million years, I never would have said like, yeah, I'm going to write a book. still, you know, I talked to someone like you and they're like, here's Jay, he's an author. I'm like looking behind me for someone with the same name who like happened to write a book, but it's, yeah, it's cool. It's a, it's a really neat feeling.

Martin Hauck (29:41)
Yeah.

You

what's on your like you've what's what's next for you or what are you working on right now what's next but like what are you working like the books done so now now what what are what are you given the fact like I mean you hear the term and startup land like dogfooding like how are you taking your own advice from from having written this book like what what are some of the things that ⁓

Jason Silver (30:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Martin Hauck (30:28)
changes you've made to your own life as a result of having written this book and where are you putting your time and energy now?

Jason Silver (30:36)
So the book wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the thoughts in the book. I wrote the book not knowing I was writing a book, but writing because I enjoyed the act of writing. And I chose to prioritize a set of tasks that had no clear business objective. Probably the book's the first thing I think I did in my career that was not like with a lens to some kind of business outcome. It was just like a thing I'm doing because I enjoyed doing it.

Martin Hauck (30:48)
Hmm.

Jason Silver (31:05)
and I'm interested to see where it goes. But across the board, you could. Again, imposter syndrome feels odd for me to like, there are real artists out there and so I don't wanna like, know, devalue them in any way. But I enjoyed the like pursuit of learning how to write better, read better, working with an editor, learning about the industry.

Martin Hauck (31:09)
Would you call that artistic? Sorry.

Jason Silver (31:33)
You know, what does it take to make a cover look good? How do you lay out the chapters? I was used to writing content for business, you know, contacts where it's like, okay, you work at a company and I'm the COO here. It's gotta be a little bit engaging, but like you're kind of contractually obligated to like, at least open my email. Nobody knows who the hell I am. They're not going to pick up the book and read it. Like, how do you write it in an engaging way? That was all really great. And I think the, the big thing I do now is.

The small change that has a really big impact is I genuinely prioritize like task enjoyment. I love what I'm doing with founders and CEOs that I'm working with. ⁓ It's really great. I super enjoy it. And I don't feel like doing twice as much of that is going to be twice as good in terms of the impact I would deliver and the enjoyment I would get out of it. Now that the book's done, I've been thinking through exactly the question that you're asking. And the answer to you is like,

I've just been trying a bunch of different stuff ⁓ to see what sticks. Like, do I enjoy doing something like this? I'm tinkering with a bit of an app idea. ⁓ Some companies will ask me to come in and do some contract work. I try that here and there, but I'm kind of in the process of what's that going to look like? know, most of the big changes to my life as a result of this philosophy are.

more in the life bucket than in the work bucket, which we can talk about, but that might be another, a different kind of podcast.

Martin Hauck (33:02)
Yeah, I mean, well, already, if you know, to to quell some of that imposter syndrome, I'm already excited to do a second episode with you. But I'm curious, have you heard or read the creative act by? Okay. Have you read it? Have you?

Jason Silver (33:10)
Great.

I have. Yeah. So it's a, yeah,

yeah. It's a, I actually think it's on my, I think it's on my like bookcase right next to that. I forgot that we're doing video. So there was a great shot of, we just moved into a new place and so there's nothing on the walls. It's a blank wall behind me, but I was checking out the bookcase and yeah.

Martin Hauck (33:39)
that that for for the listeners, I mean, apart from your grass is greener being a fantastic book to read. ⁓ The creative act is has been the game changer for me. It has been the most enjoyable read for me in terms of like that problem space that you're sort of discussing, I think in terms of like, I mean, Rick Rubin wrote it. He's, you know, this ⁓ savant when it comes to taste making.

Jason Silver (34:07)
Interesting guy,

Martin Hauck (34:08)
in the music industry. And if you don't know him, he's the, he's the like, he looks like modern day Gandalf basically, but also helps folks like the red hot chili peppers, ⁓ craft their, their hits and whatnot. And there's some interesting stories, that he's got. I've always, yeah, I always appreciated those short stories that he's got, but I guess from, from

Jason Silver (34:17)
Ha! ⁓

Martin Hauck (34:35)
that lens and you talked a bit about it, like the mindfulness of like the task at hand. And so you're it sounds like you're at that stage of giving back to a certain extent in terms of like, I have all this knowledge, and I want to help other people see the forest for the trees to a certain extent. And that's sort of what fills your cup to a certain extent.

Jason Silver (35:00)
Yeah. mean, I suppose you could classify it as giving back, but that'll make me sound like it's selfish in a lot of ways in that it's what I genuinely enjoy doing. Like the most interesting in quotations problems for me are people problems. know, like we have a team of folks and let's say I start working with a new company and they tell me something's not going right. We're not shipping the product as fast as we want, or there's a problem in CS somewhere.

Revenue's not growing in the way that we want. First question every time, tell me the people that are involved. Right? And I, I'm always most interested in those problems. And I guess filling, filling your cup is a good, is a good way to put it. Like that is genuinely what I enjoy doing. Like bringing together, you know, operational tactics and people and figuring out how those two things mesh really well. you know,

It's nice that it's giving back. And I think it would be an overstatement to say that the entirety of the motivation for me is because it's giving back. feels great that it's giving back. But, you know, I would have written this book if not a single person ⁓ read it. You know, and I think it was the thing I was doing and it's worked out that it, you know, it kind of is in and of itself, the embodiment of the philosophy there of like, focused on the enjoyment and

Martin Hauck (36:01)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (36:21)
some great stuff has come out of it that I never really could have predicted, you know, if I had tried to plan for it. ⁓ same kind of thing now, you know, I, I love when there's a challenge inside of a company or finding someone that just has some challenge that they're trying to work through and helping them figure it out both because yes, it helps them. And because it's the thing that fires me. It's my Vietnamese coffee, you know, like that's the thing. That's the thing that gets me really fired up is to see that like Martin's got a thing in his business.

Martin Hauck (36:43)
I'm like...

Jason Silver (36:49)
He's stressed about X, Y, and Zed. He hasn't figured out a way to crack it. You know, can I come in and help be that X factor? I'm not going to solve it entirely for you, but like, can I add a thing to the mix that wasn't there before that helps us break through and find a solution for me is like one of the most deeply rewarding things. So yeah, I'm on the hunt for different ways of, you know, getting that feeling, delivering that kind of value and impact. And I have a couple of irons in the fire. I don't know which one's going to go in what way, but you know, I

I'm at the same time scared and also excited that I really am trying to lean in and say, okay, great. Like, here's a thing I can do that would generate great revenue. I'm not going to enjoy it because I tried and doing it 10 more times, like, yep, it checks the delivers money box, but doesn't really check the enjoyment box. I feel incredibly privileged that I'm able to like, okay, you know, that thing is not a thing I'm going to invest my time in right now and keep on the hunt for that right.

Martin Hauck (37:40)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (37:49)
overlap of things I really enjoy and is valuable to someone else and you know, it can can help pace those two.

Martin Hauck (37:58)
My wife has this sweater that she got from a charity event that she and I attended because I used to support the charity. I still do, but I used to go to their events more often. It's called Unity Charity. It's out of Toronto and it supports youth and gets them out of like bad situations at school and falling into the wrong crowd and allows people to sort of like express themselves through the arts, whether it's break dancing or graffiti illustration. It's a fantastic charity.

Jason Silver (38:24)
Now cool.

Martin Hauck (38:28)
And I met the founder many, many years ago through something and the sweater that she has is it just says do what you love. And that's kind of what we're talking a bit about today in terms of like, how do you get to that place? And when you get to that place, but I've seen a lot more feels like I've seen a lot of chatter on social media, where that's being

talked about as like a really privileged position in terms of like, yeah, you can't just do what you love because and so part of me feels like there's there's some truth to that in the sense that but another part of me says like that's kind of missing the point of like, can't just immediately do it right away. So I'm curious to get your take like I'd love to plug on that red with

Jason Silver (39:00)
Yep.

Yeah, I'll give you an example.

And then I'd love to hear also if we have time, ⁓ you know, what's going on in the world of HR and any challenges you think are there. And I'd love to see if I can help in that in any way for folks that are listening. But I'll give you an example. I think, you know, the previous example I gave you of like, hey, I can turn down a thing that would make money, but I wouldn't enjoy it. That to me is a perfect example of privilege. I feel very privileged and grateful.

that enough things have gone right for me in certain aspects of my life that I can make a decision to prioritize whether or not I'm gonna take on work without only looking at the financial impact to my family.

Martin Hauck (40:02)
Yeah,

this is the result of being in a honey bunches of votes commercial, essentially.

Jason Silver (40:06)
That's right, dude, the checks, like I do get a check

every once in a while. the, the check is for less than the paper costs. It's not really even worth me going. It's literally like, I'm pretty sure I once got a check for a fraction of a penny, which is an interesting thing to get. So yeah, we're rolling in and over here. ⁓ but to me that, that is certainly a privileged position to, ⁓ to be in. And I'm very grateful for it. And I know not all people are in that situation, but you know, it's not as if I'm over here like,

Martin Hauck (40:22)
Hahaha

Jason Silver (40:36)
I never need to work another day the rest of my life. ⁓ Even if I was in that position financially, I think I would, I know I would still be doing quote unquote, you know, work. ⁓ But that's not what I mean when I was publishing the book or with the things that we just talked about. There is a huge enjoyment, sorry, God, we're using that word a lot, but like there's a huge difference for me between like love, fun and enjoyment, right?

Martin Hauck (41:03)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (41:05)
Maybe my wife will listen to this podcast, we'll see. Like, I love my wife

Martin Hauck (41:05)
Okay. Yeah. Let's let's split some hairs.

Jason Silver (41:08)
very dearly. Like, we have moments where things don't go so great in our relationship. All couples do, I assume, right? There's like blanket love overall and there's like momentary. And then there's like fun and enjoyment. You know, and I think we, unfortunately the word fun and enjoyment have become synonymous in a way that I think is unhelpful. Work isn't fun. Like sometimes it's fun. You know, you like nail an awesome presentation.

and then your team takes you out for like a celebration afterwards. Like that's really fun. That's different for me than enjoyment, right? Some of the most enjoyable moments of my career have not been fun at all in the moment. We're running up against a deadline. We're not sure if we're going to make it work. Something's broken. It's falling apart. We just got terrible feedback from a customer or a project just exploded. We got to go figure that thing out. That's not fun in the moment.

Martin Hauck (41:43)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (42:02)
Right? Like, I'm not like, this is great. I want more of this. But on reflection, like this is enjoyable. This is the kind of thing that I do enjoy doing when I take the more macro view, right? When someone says something like, I love this person, you know, even though there are moments in time that are maybe not the most fun, right? It's, that's where I try to get people to see. And in that world, with that context, there are a lot of things that you can do in the moment to change the way that you're working.

that doesn't need to be, gotta find your passion and you gotta love what you do all the time. Otherwise you're just doing the wrong thing. I think that that's, I could never make that judgment for someone and I would never want them making that judgment for me. So I'll give you an example of an exercise, okay? ⁓ You take a piece of paper, you fold it in half so you got a nice long thin rectangle, okay? On the left side of the piece of paper, what you're gonna do is you're going to,

Martin Hauck (42:46)
Yeah, perfect.

Jason Silver (43:00)
Start a timer on the side or two minutes or something like that. You're gonna write down all the things that you really enjoy doing Right. I really like being in meetings. I really like doing problem-solving. I really like interviewing candidates I really like whatever I would suggest you keep them work focused for the purposes of this podcast But go nuts if you want to expand this into the rest of your life You write out this list of things you really enjoyed doing. Okay, then you flip the piece of paper over

Right? And on the other side, you're going to open up your calendar and you're going to look in your calendar and you're going to write down the things that you did last week. Right? I worked on this budget. I put hours into that spreadsheet. I replied to three to three to 2,000 emails. I sat in on this thing and that thing. And like I have to do, you know, this remedial meet, whatever. Okay. And when you're done, you're going to unfold the piece of paper. So now you're going to have your two lists on the one on the left, one on the right.

Martin Hauck (43:37)
oooo

⁓

Jason Silver (43:57)
And you're going to draw a line from the things you enjoy doing to the things you actually did on the right that are related. If you're like most people from my research when I was writing the book, you will probably not have a heck of a lot of lines. What you want is a giant mess of spaghetti lines all over the page. And if you're one of the people who has a humongous number of lines all over the page, awesome. Congrats. Like that's really great. You could do more. That's awesome. You can help people around you. That's great.

And if you're not, the rhetoric that I tend to see in social media is like, take that piece of paper, ball it up, throw it in the garbage, go get your resume out there, reply to 6,000 jobs and find a job that will give you more lines on that piece of paper that you just threw in the garbage, which I think is like winning the lottery. It's a myth, right? I don't think that you get a job that you enjoy. I think you practice a job that you enjoy.

Martin Hauck (44:44)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (44:54)
And so the way to practice that is once you've done this, these two lists, right? I'll give you a very tactical thing you can do. Take any one of the things from your list. Okay. And when you're planning for your week next week, look at your to-do list and think about how to do one of the tasks from your to-do list. And if you're like most people, you probably have 50 things on that list. So like, this should be a job you can do. Look at your giant to-do list. Find one of the things from the list of things that you enjoy.

and think of a way to do that task in a way that you will enjoy using the thing from your list. Just one of them, right? It's not a huge ask. And next week, do just that thing, that different way that you might not otherwise have done and just see how it feels. And after you do that, start looking at your to-do list in that way going forward. It will have an impact.

Martin Hauck (45:48)
I feel like I have a tough question for you.

Jason Silver (45:50)
Great, I love tough questions.

Martin Hauck (45:56)
If I'm an HR person at a company and every company's got its fair share, like the reason companies exist and hire people typically is because they're, they're growing or they're not necessarily efficient and they've got lots of problems or businesses going day to day. And so you have a lot of people working for your company. And as this HR person at said company,

you know that not everybody you you almost intuitively know and you can kind of feel it too, where it's like, you're talking to somebody that has a lot of those lines crossed off and they're doing what they love. And they're in a good spot. And they're in like the flow state of their career, so to speak, right. ⁓ But in within the dynamic of an organization and a company in your

an HR person or a people person, you have this like position of influence. How do you help people be able to sort of use the strategies that you've talked about to say like, I'm going to block off more time to do the thing. Despite the fact that their job actually requires them to do like, maybe they're misaligned and they didn't even know it somebody's in marketing and they're not even supposed to be in marketing because they're supposed to be in sales and customer service.

Jason Silver (47:15)
Yep.

Martin Hauck (47:17)
how do you bring people or organizations to do the alternative, which is like look and work.

Jason Silver (47:20)
Okay.

Very common question. Okay. And I want to be, I want to be like, I want to make sure I land the point, uh, effectively. And I wasn't expecting to talk so much about the book, but it's, it's a good, uh, it's, it's good. like that you're challenging it. So I want to be like very clear on the thing. I'm not suggesting that you change what you do. I'm suggesting that you change how you do it. Right. It's a very rare and privileged position to be able to say.

Well, my boss tells me that I have to do X. I don't really enjoy doing that. So I'm just not going to do it. Not a lot of, not a lot of people can do that. Right. You know, even if you run a company, you can't do that because you, you know, for all the reasons that folks who run companies will, will know what I'm not suggesting is swap out the what. Right. What I am suggesting is take the what and change the hat. So let me give you an example. Let's say that I'm a very analytic person.

Martin Hauck (47:56)
Yeah, can't do that. Yeah.

Jason Silver (48:19)
And you are a very data-driven person. Sorry, that's the same thing. I'm a very analytic person and you're a very like, you love to do like presentations, storytelling, things like that. Okay. And let's just imagine parallel universe. We're both given exactly the same task. We need to figure out, you know, what the, ⁓ what the next most important people initiative we're going to run at this company is. Okay.

My version might be, I'm going to create a pulse survey. I'm going to send that pulse survey to everybody at the company. I'm going to crunch all that data. I'm going to figure out where there are statistical issues that we can work on. Then I'm going to make a recommendation, which I'm going to type up. I'm going to call a meeting, right? Because my boss said, we're going to have this meeting on Friday. This is what you have to present. said the same thing to you. I'm going to send around an email with my data-driven analysis.

I'm going to ask people to come with questions. We're going to go to the meeting. They're going to have read through it all. They're going to ask me great questions. I'm going to answer all their questions in all sorts of different ways. Meeting's like a gigantic success. That's my version. Your version is I'm going to go and have coffee conversations. I'm a big people person. I like to like interact directly. I like to do storytelling. You're going to go talk to a bunch of people, get a whole bunch of anecdotal information that starts to form into a story.

you're going to build out a presentation that you're not going to send beforehand. You're going to stand up in front of everybody at the meeting and you're going to walk them through this beautiful presentation that you've built, right? And everyone's going to give you a big round of applause at the end. Similar outcome, right? We've selected the thing we're going to go and do. The difference is the way in which we accomplish the task. If I did it your way or you did it my way, we would not enjoy the process of doing it. So what I'm not saying is,

Martin Hauck (50:03)
Mm-hmm.

Interesting.

Jason Silver (50:14)
tell your boss to go take a flying leap that they asked you to go and do this task. What I'm saying is take a half a second, the existing task, your existing to-do list, and just stop. And instead of only asking yourself, what's the fastest way? What's the most efficient way that I can get this thing done? Add to the list, is there a way I can do this that I would enjoy more? Right? I'm a data-driven person. How can I get more data analytics into this task that I already have to do? I'm a presenter.

Martin Hauck (50:40)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Silver (50:41)
How can I get more presentation-y stuff into this task that I already have to do? So it has nothing to do with throwing out your to-do list and coming up with a radically new one and just changing the way that you think about accomplishing the tasks that you already have. That requires stopping and taking a second to say, what kinds of activities do I really enjoy? I like having coffee meetings with people. I like creating presentations. I like delivering presentations. Great.

that when you get tasks at the beginning of your week and you know what you have to do this week, intentionally look for ways to deploy those skills that you really enjoy deploying onto the existing to-do list that you already have. It takes a tiny amount more effort, but it's mostly just a mental reframe of we're constantly just thinking through the lens of fastest, better, best way to do it without taking a little bit of time to say, well,

If I just approach this task this way, even though it's different than how Martin would do it, I would get the same impact, but I'm going to enjoy it way more, which actually means if I'm going to enjoy it more, odds are good that the impact is going to be way bigger. Once I finally get to the end.

Martin Hauck (51:52)
There's aspects of tasks that are unavoidable where like at the end of the day, you just have to go through the mud and it's unavoidable and everybody knows that right. ⁓

Jason Silver (51:58)
Absolutely.

Totally.

That's why it's called work and not fun, you know, or play. So, so I'm,

I'm also realistic and not here trying to preach that like you should have fun. That's why I had the call in between enjoyment of like, there are tons of things that I do on a regular basis that I don't enjoy. They are necessary and I do them and I've tried to find ways to make them more enjoyable and they've probably maxed out in their enjoyment because I just don't like doing these kinds of things and I have to do them. The push I'm giving is not.

Can you completely eliminate all those things? And if you don't eliminate all those things and you suck and you're in the wrong job, it's more like, I bet you there's opportunity to improve the ratio. And if you can improve the ratio a little bit this week, a little bit next week, a little bit the following quarter, the next quarter after that, the year after that, if you could just be improving that ratio, the job for you is just going to be getting better and better and more impactful and more enjoyment. It's like, the more you enjoy your job, the better you do at it. The better you do at it.

Martin Hauck (52:48)
Yes.

Jason Silver (53:08)
the more you enjoy it, the more you enjoy it. And on and on and on, it's like this unbelievably ⁓ self-fulfilling prophecy or flywheel or whatever you want to call it. And it just took a little bit of a leap for me to say, you know what, let me take my to-do list and just rethink the how through the lens of what I enjoy a couple of times. It's going to seem nuts, but like the impact was really shocking. It's been that way for others I've worked with too.

Martin Hauck (53:35)
have a mountain.

I have a I have a mountain of laundry behind me. And my body's blocking it. I've actually just, you know, for for for the video podcast, I'm not going to turn around and show people but like laundry, we have the same problem that a lot of people have where it's like, we'll wash the clothes, we'll dry the clothes, but folding and putting them away is is the the last mile of laundry in our home. ⁓ The thing that

Jason Silver (53:44)
Good work.

Martin Hauck (54:02)
I've recently discovered I'm realizing I'm tying it back. ⁓ as an example, or is, is like, that's my podcast time is like folding and putting away laundry is my podcast. I previously I wouldn't do it because I wouldn't find a way to like entertain myself. Like I don't have time to do this, but I, and, then the complaint is like, I don't really get much time to like just veg out and entertain myself now. And it's, it feels like for those of you that already,

Jason Silver (54:12)
Perfect.

Martin Hauck (54:30)
podcast or watch TV while you're putting away laundry like kudos to you like this was a revelation for me like three months ago ⁓ because I'm like why am I not elevating the experience like putting the laundry away is not exactly the thing I'm like that's not my Zen happy place but listening to podcasts is entertaining enough that it just like it actually overshadows them like because it's

Jason Silver (54:35)
It's great.

Martin Hauck (54:55)
you know, autonomous enough of a task that I can do those two things. And now not every time you can do that with like some tasks, but that's kind of what you're talking about. Like you just take something to elevate the experience in a way that distracts from the like man of the work.

Jason Silver (55:11)
It might be

a distraction, it might not. think that's the, you know, I totally get where you're coming from with the, with the analogy. think sometimes it works. You know, I don't like this thing. And so I listen to music or I listen to a podcast and it distracts me away. Other times, you know, it's just finding a different way to do the thing. You know, I want to spend more time with my kids and I want them to learn more responsibilities. So we're going to do the laundry together. And I don't enjoy, enjoy the act of the laundry, but like the time with the kids is great or.

Martin Hauck (55:24)
Mm.

Jason Silver (55:41)
You know, I'm trying to work out more often. I'm going to put on, I don't know, arm weights while I do this. Like it, it's hard to fully abstract away. It's hard to extract away, extract away entirely from the work example. But a lot of the times I'll work with a leader. work with an executive and they have a thing and they're just like, this thing sucks. There's no way I would ever enjoy it. Like your theory is bullshit. I'm like, great. Can't wait to like deploy it. Right. Let's go figure this out. And what it, what it winds up being is like, you're just deploying against this task, you know,

Martin Hauck (55:48)
It's level.

Jason Silver (56:11)
like a suboptimal way for you. And I think there's this term out there that I just hate, cause I think it's nonsense. Like you hear the term best practice all the time. Best practice for whom, right? The best way for me to do this might not be the best way for you to do it. In fact, it's usually not the best way for you to do it. If you and I took our list of, you you can expand it a little bit more, like what am I great at? What do I want to learn? What do I enjoy doing? Those are the things that.

Martin Hauck (56:20)
Yeah

Yeah. ⁓

Jason Silver (56:38)
If you can do one of those three in every task that you have, learn something, leverage a skill you enjoy or leverage a skill that you're already great at. That's the formula to enjoying that test, that task a heck of a lot more. If you and I had exactly the same list for those three things, then we could share a lot of best practices with one another. Right. But it gets blown out of proportion where it's just like, well, most people at my company do this particular job, this particular way. And I hate doing this job this way.

Martin Hauck (56:55)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (57:06)
But I have to do it this way because that's how everybody does it. Do you? That's the question I'm asking. You still have to fold the laundry. You still have to, in my case, do the accounting or pile through the spreadsheet that I don't actually want to spend time on because it's like a necessary condition for whatever it is you have to do. But just because it's quote unquote best practice, the average way of getting this job done is to do it in way X, Y, Z.

Martin Hauck (57:14)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (57:33)
You gotta find your own best practice. You gotta find your own best way. And it's gonna look different than some folks. A lot of times I will find that even a very micromanage-y boss will give you the leeway at some point to deliver a thing they need in a bit of a different way than they want. You have to earn that. It does take time. There's lots of stuff in the book or we can talk to anybody who's listening to this and wants more specific tactics. It can take time, but you know.

Martin Hauck (57:56)
Mm-hmm. ⁓

Jason Silver (58:03)
I've seen very, very, very micromanaging leaders become more and more more okay with the idea of, okay, they want to try this thing this way. I'm going to let them so long as they still deliver this result or so long as they still, you know, whatever it might be and just trying it, you know, it's, a, can be a very big game changer. The skepticism is well-placed. I was very skeptical, you know, probably all the way up until I actually published the book.

⁓ But it's not a huge lift. know, it's just taking your algorithm of how am I going to approach this task and just expanding the aperture a little bit to say, okay, can I use a thing that I enjoy? Is there something I can learn or can I leverage a skill that I'm already really great at? Those things tend to lean toward more enjoyment and you do that enough times throughout the week, you're going to have a more enjoyable week this week than you did last week.

that has nothing to do with changing your job. It does not require you to change your to-do list. And there will still be moments that you're not going to enjoy. Like, you're still gonna have tasks that you don't love. It's not about completely eradicating that.

Martin Hauck (59:12)
What's captivating your attention now in terms of like, the future of what you the future of of what we've just been talking about, right? effectively, people being happy in their careers and performing better at work, if I'm categorizing that right.

Jason Silver (59:40)
What's captivating me? I mean...

That's a really hard question. ⁓ it took you most of this podcast, but this one is, it feels.

Martin Hauck (59:52)
I

thought my hard question, we were like, it was, it was hilarious.

Jason Silver (59:58)
This one feels stumpy

for me. I feel stumped. You know, I think like, I would like to see people. It feels selfish in a lot of ways to kind of prioritize your own experience. I would like to see people be more selfish. You know, like you have this thing that you want out of a company and they have a thing that they want out of you. You both need each other, right? In the absence of employees, the company does nothing in the absence of the company.

Martin Hauck (1:00:22)
Hmm.

Jason Silver (1:00:28)
You know, you're going to have a hard time deploying your skill for money, let's say, or whatever it might be. And I'd like to believe that with a lot of the conversation that's out there, there will be more space for folks to experiment in this way. The concern I have is it's a relatively nuanced message and it can come across as, you know, don't do anything you don't enjoy.

you can expect everything out of your workplace. And if they don't deliver, you should just hop somewhere else. I think even the term like pursuing their own happiness, personally, like I said earlier, I don't think that you get your dream job. I think you practice your dream job. I would, exactly. It's an intentional day-to-day pursuit.

Martin Hauck (1:01:15)
Hmm.

You build, you build it, you, ⁓

Jason Silver (1:01:24)
I shouldn't have used that word, but like it's practice, right? You're practicing it like every time you get a new task running through your list quickly of can I use something and I enjoy, can I leverage something that I'm already great at? Can I learn something new? Whatever, whatever that might be, just going through that loop, it's practice, you know, all day long you're in the gym, just practicing it and removing that expectation of like, if this place doesn't give it to me a hundred percent, I'm just going to go to the next place and they're going to be the ones that give it to me.

And I'm going to keep doing that until I find the place that gives me a hundred percent. And I just, to me, that is, that frightens me for what it means for the future of work. So I think I took your question in a very, a very dark direction, but I like that people are at least asking the question. I like that managers are having to stare down, you know, okay, like employees are expecting something different than they were to go all the way back around to what we talked about earlier.

Martin Hauck (1:02:09)
you

Jason Silver (1:02:22)
How do our values help us think about the trade-offs that we're willing to make and the price that we're willing to pay versus the ones that we won't?

Martin Hauck (1:02:30)
Yeah. Yeah. I've always loved the analogy of like the values and the mission are the, are the instructions. If the entire exec team is stuck on a plane and unreachable, it's like this gives them the guidelines of how to make decisions, make this, if you make massive decisions through this framework, you're not going to make a bad choice. You're going to make the right choice. Ultimately.

⁓ and it's hard for companies to get to that place, I think at least really meaningful values, cause it's so easy to just copy paste or run something through chat GPT. And then you're like, here's our values. And this is, this is what it is. And you need to be transparent and we need to be employee first. And like there's, you have to build that into the entire ecosystem of an organization.

Jason Silver (1:03:15)
Yeah.

If folks are out there thinking about their values, mean, A, I would always love to help, but B, a great question you can ask is look at the values and say, what does this exclude? What does this tell us not to do? And a lot of values that are out there are so inclusive and inclusivity in general is great. But when we're talking about values, if it doesn't stop you from doing anything, then it's effectively telling you to do everything. And in that case, what's the...

Martin Hauck (1:03:30)
Right. Yeah.

Jason Silver (1:03:49)
what's the point? So looking for opportunities of addition by subtraction is a good lesson I've learned as well.

Martin Hauck (1:03:57)
Yeah, I think we'll leave it there. We're just we're all just chipping away at the the marble statue of life and work. And you've created a fantastic guidebook on on how to do that. And ⁓ I'm excited to chat again with you. And any any final thoughts you want to leave with the listeners?

Jason Silver (1:04:01)
Ha!

I mean, I was excited to hear what's going on in the world of people and talk through a big meaty challenge there, but you took the conversation as you took it, which was great. I hope it was valuable for folks. think like always love the opportunity to meet new people and have new conversations. I'm pretty easily findable online. If you Google my name, there's the number one entry is a Christian rock singer. That's not me. He constantly.

He constantly beats me down in the rankings there, but you can find me on LinkedIn. My website is thejasonsilver.com again, because he stole Jason Silver before I could get there. And I've talked to him. seems like a great guy, so I can't really be mad, but I would love anyone to follow up if like there's a challenge you're dealing with and something we talked about struck a chord and you think I could be helpful. I'd love to have a chat or help direct you towards someone who can have a chat.

Martin Hauck (1:04:58)
Yeah.

Jason Silver (1:05:13)
If the book ring, you know, feels like it might resonate, have a read, tell me what you think. I love getting feedback from folks. So we just love to be helpful. And I really appreciate the opportunity to come on Martin. That's a really hard thing to build up a podcast and build up the kind of group that you have and getting the opportunity to just kind of step into the fold and talk to all the folks after, after you've done all the hard work to get the audience around them. I'm grateful for the opportunity. So thank you.

Martin Hauck (1:05:37)
No, no, the gratitude is mutual. So, ⁓ no, that's it. And thanks again to everybody for listening and ⁓ yeah, we'll see you till next time. How ⁓ dare you? Cheers.

Jason Silver (1:05:48)
Go fold your laundry while you listen to the podcast.