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Patsy quit her job. Susannah quit the city. Now they’re on a quest to find the path through the wobbly middle of their careers. This podcast is for every woman who’s asking “What now?”.
Hosted by Susannah de Jager and Patsy Day, The Wobbly Middle features interviews with famed city superwomen, dazzling entrepreneurs and revolutionary midwives and doctors who reveal what they’ve learnt through their own wobbly middle experiences.
[00:00:03] Susannah de Jager: Those avid listeners among you may know that Patsy and I have decided to do some bonus content, and this is our first Q&A with some questions that you have very kindly sent into us, and we are really excited to get into it.
[00:00:16] Patsy Day: Yes, Susannah, you've had a busy day. It's your second recording of the day. What were you up to earlier?
[00:00:23] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, I had a recording this morning for Oxford+, which is a very different podcast focused on investing in innovation in Oxford with the amazing Camilla Easter, who ironically enough could have been a guest on this podcast. She pivoted her career from being a vet into being a CEO of an innovative company that's got an alternative to the obesity drugs that have just hit the market, Ozempic, Manjaro and hers is completely different mechanism. It's a pill you swallow, then you pass it and it basically makes you feel full. So it was a great morning, thank you, and I'm thrilled to be here with you now.
[00:01:01] Patsy Day: There's some overlap because in the investment world, people are always looking at new things.
[00:01:07] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, you know, you'll be reassured to hear there are women and they've started companies and often, particularly in innovation, diversity of backgrounds can be a huge, well anywhere, diversity of backgrounds should be a positive thing. But I think that in an entrepreneurial field that's even more evident and well understood than in some more established corporate structures.
I have the privilege of speaking to both men and women who have often started their career, maybe in academia or in a particular vocational calling, and then have applied their skillsets elsewhere.
[00:01:44] Patsy Day: And what other interesting developments or pivots have you seen in the women you've interviewed on Oxford+? I know you interview men too, but who else is doing interesting things?
[00:01:55] Susannah de Jager: So I had the great pleasure of interviewing somebody called Sue Douglas, who used to be the editor of The Daily Express, and she is and was a total powerhouse journalist, amazing. And then actually she had a very different story to some that we've had whereby she had a really bad horse riding accident that left her just not able to function at the pace she had previously as the Editor of a national newspaper, and she took some steps back and took on some other roles.
But now she's doing something amazing with her acumen, her tenacity, and her knowledge of the world, and of course, an amazing network that she still has. She has an AI powered recruitment company called Veer, where she's working with Sir Nigel Shadbolt and she is looking at recruitment from a skills-based perspective. So, so on point again, for The Wobbly Middle, in that she is saying it's not the what you've done, the work experience, it's the skills you have and how could those be more thoughtfully applied into roles that you may not even have thought of. But also, how can we encourage employers on the other side of that dimension to see those skills rather than just a tick box recruitment process where they hire somebody that's a cookie cutter for that particular role.
[00:03:24] Patsy Day: Oh, please keep us posted on. that.
[00:03:26] Susannah de Jager: Well, it's live, so you can go listen.
[00:03:28] Patsy Day: So we've got some questions from our listeners. Do you want to read the first one?
[00:03:33] Susannah de Jager: Dear Wobbly Middle, I know I need to make a change and I know that it requires lots of time to think, experiment, and network. But I just can't carve out any chunks of time. Work, caring responsibilities, life, it just takes over every time. Any tips for me? Love from, Overwhelmed in OX2.
[00:03:53] Patsy Day: Hello, Overwhelmed in OX2,
You sound like every woman to me. I think it's especially difficult to tackle issues when they still so sort of amorphous. It's like, how do you eat the elephant? Bite, bite, bite. But where do you even start? And something that I've been doing with my sister for a while, which I really like doing, is we have a call once a week or once every two weeks and we just set aside a small job that we each need to do to move things forward.
So for example, I'm working on my uncle's estate, and for some reason the small jobs really fill me with fear. So I push them to one side, but when I speak to Julie, I say, okay, I am going to do that one thing, and when I sit down to do it, it's actually easy. So I find a bit of accountability helps me.
[00:04:48] Susannah de Jager: Interesting, and I think that makes a lot of sense. Something that I remember hearing years ago which always stayed with me, is that if you've got something that maybe is a bit adminy or that you're dreading, put it at the top of your list. So do it first thing in the morning when your energy might be higher.
If you do any exercise, maybe do it immediately after that when you've got that buzz still from having been outside. But yeah, kiss her frog in the morning.
[00:05:12] Patsy Day: researching a little about task initiation may also help you think about what can give you the impetus? Like will you respond to a reward? Say I'm going to pair this bit of work with a cup of coffee, or Once I've done this I can go off andwatch some tele.
Another thing that some of my girlfriends have said they found very effective is Focusmate. So that's just an app that you download. I think it's even free, andit goes to the accountability point. and it pairs you with someone and one of my friends are paired with someone in China practicing her violin, and you come on the call and you say, hi, I want to do this piece of work, and she says, I'm gonna practice my violin and you just sit there and do the work.
Somebody else is keeping you honest on the other side. So I think that there are lots of tools around task initiation and focus. Just think about tackling it from an executive function point of view.
Okay, Susannah, here's one for you.
Dear Wobbly Middle, I fear that tech got away from me and I've managed to keep this inadequacy rather hidden by staying in the same job for a long time where I'm only required to use Word and Excel.
Are there any computer programs that no self-respecting career changes should be without and how do you recommend getting up to speed? Is this something I should conquer before I switch?
[00:06:38] Susannah de Jager: For this one, we actually asked some experts for help. Our friends at Ivee, who's a platform for people that have taken career breaks. In particular, women wanting to return to work.
Firstly, it's really, really common to feel this way, so don't get too freaked out. Things are moving fast, but people don't expect you to be an expert at everything. That said, there are core programs that every employee should get to grips with and that form the basis of most workplaces regardless of industry.
Think Google Workspace, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, Slack and Notion.
[00:07:14] Patsy Day: What else did Ivee say?
[00:07:16] Susannah de Jager: For upskilling on platforms like these, Ivee recommend checking out online upskilling sites such as Google Digital Garage, has great Digital Skills for Work Course. YouTube for general tutorials. Really surprisingly helpful. LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, never heard of that one before, Udemi and FutureLearn for more in-depth courses. A lot of these online courses also offer you a certificate in the end, which is obviously a great thing to pop on LinkedIn or your CV. And it really demonstrates the thing that employers are really looking for, which isn't necessarily a particular skill or one program. It's demonstrating that you're a continual learner and that you've got a great attitude. That's what they're looking for. So I think that's really encouraging. Firstly, some practical tools, but also if you go and learn anything, you can demonstrate that you've got the right attitude to anyone that might look at you.
The final thing that we'd recommend is to try and get comfortable using AI, and Pats, you and I have discussed this too. It can seem daunting, but it's not even the future, it's here, and so if you haven't used it, just play around. It's quite good fun. Experiment with generative AI, such as Chat GPT or Google Gemini. You'll start to get a sense of how it might help you in a job or a new role you want to go into, and then you can formulate some answers to those kind of questions.
So employers don't expect you to be perfect, but they value somebody who's proactive and engaged.
[00:08:44] Patsy Day: A point on Chat GPT and Claude AI. They're all free, browser based, there's no downloading, no tech panic, and you just enter prompts. You can say things like, good morning, I'm always very polite to the robots. Please can you write a cover letter to my CV, I want it to be professional, confident, personable. I want it to strike a balance between formality and genuine enthusiasm. I just want to sound like a capable human being. So you can feed in prompts and then it generates your cover letter.
But my only thing is do read every word. It hangs words together nicely, but it's also got to still sound like it comes from you.
[00:09:29] Susannah de Jager: What do you mean? I don't use the word "seasoned professional" all the time. Oh, and also spell check it because it will use US spelling unless you give it a prompt. So if you write English spelling, it will very obviously not be in your voice.
[00:09:43] Patsy Day: We've got one more question.
[00:09:45] Susannah de Jager: Wobbly middle, once I've started to make a change, it's so hard to stay the course. What advice do you give for resisting the siren call of a career, which is familiar and easy when your new career is not yet making itself evident?
[00:10:00] Patsy Day: Yeah, it felt like Aundrea was the perfect person to go to for this. So we dropped Aundrea line and she gave us just these four perfect points.
She says, maybe you need to strengthen your why. Why are you doing this in the first place?
That's the thing you're going to have to hold onto when you start doubting yourself or losing motivation. If you haven't listened to Aundrea Klein Thomas's episode, go back because the first point she talks about in her Empower framework is around envisioning and evaluating where you've been, what didn't work? What are the gaps? And she's really fabulous. She's got good energy and she says, what lights you up? If you could wave that wand? What do you want? And these are all things about getting clear about why you're doing this in the first place.
[00:10:57] Susannah de Jager: And just feeding on that before we go onto the next point, I remember somebody saying that if you ask a young child, what's your spark? They will say, without hesitation, the thing that lights them up and that at some point we forget that. And I think we discussed it with Aundrea when we spoke to her, but it's trying to reconnect with what it is you love and that lights you up and we should all be doing that more.
[00:11:21] Patsy Day: Aundrea's second point was about getting your ecosystem in place. So reducing the friction as you are moving from one thing to the other. And she talks about the equivalent of getting your running kit out the night before and putting your shoes by the door, you're more likely to go for the run. So make this as easy for yourself as possible by putting the right things in place and part of that ecosystem is also having a support system with people around you that are supporting what you're doing and know what you're doing so that you can tell them I did this, or I'm beginning to wobble. And number three, and I really love this, she said you should be running towards something and not running away from something. I think when you're trying to move towards whatever it is, when you want to stay the course, you know, you have to be drawn to something to stay moving forward. And that takes it back to the clarity points around really having a clear vision of what it is. And then maybe you want to talk about the fourth point she makes Susannah about gratitude.
[00:12:28] Susannah de Jager: The gratitude piece, I think sometimes we can feel impatient for things to happen faster than they realistically are going to, and that can make it hard to stay the course. But Aundrea really focuses on celebrate your small wins, and again, with your ecosystem, with your friends that are there to support you, make sure you bring them in when you have succeeded in some small way. Share a glass of wine. Go for a walk. Give yourself a pat on the back. It's tough to change. If you can't celebrate until you reach right the end at the pinnacle, then you're not gonna enjoy it, or learn from the process, and the chances that you won't stay the course are so much greater.
[00:13:07] Patsy Day: Yeah, so Aundrea sent us a little video clip on this so really go and watch her. It's on our substack. It's got maximum feel good vibes. So, if you're feeling low and wondering what your motivation is, go and watch Aundrea. She'll make you feel good.
[00:13:23] Susannah de Jager: And on that note, we want to say thank you and if you have any questions for us, please share them, and if you want them directed to any of our previous guests, feel free to pop that in there too, because it's really fun for us to be back in touch with them.