THE OMNI SHOW

Bonni Stachowiak: And even when I get bad at it, to say that I practice it perfectly isn't possible for any of us. But when I return to it, it's an old friend that has systems and structures that allow for and have the flexibility, too, when I get a bit off track and I haven't done my weekly review in many, many, many weeks. But then when I come back and I have that discipline to return to it, it's ready to greet me and still come back and very quickly get back into that sense of peace and get back into that sense of purpose and being able to show up.

Andrew J. Mason: You're listening to the Omni Show where we connect with the amazing community surrounding the Omni Group's award-winning products. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and today we learn how Bonni Stachowiak uses OmniFocus. Well, hello and welcome to this episode of the Omni Show. My name's Andrew J. Mason, and we're so honored today to be able to have Bonni Stachowiak to hear about how she uses OmniFocus in her day-to-day life. She's the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, which has nearly 5 million downloads, is the Dean of Teaching and Learning and a business professor at Vanguard University. Her podcast, which won the 2016 Merlot Classics Award, highlights diverse and has been featured in the Inside Higher Ed and Chronicle of Higher Education. Bonni holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Pepperdine University and is a sought-after speaker on teaching strategies and educational technology. She and her husband, Dave Stachowiak, who hosts the Coaching for Leaders podcast, which has over 30 million downloads, inspires many in their professional and educational journeys, and are parents to two curious children. Bonni, thank you so much for hanging out with us today.

Bonni Stachowiak: I am so glad to be here. I can't wait for this conversation because OmniFocus is such a big part of my life and the way that I show up and how I'm able to show up so, so grateful for the opportunity.

Andrew J. Mason: Absolutely, yeah. And we're so grateful to be able to have you here just to kind of share a little bit more about how you use it in your day-to-day life. I'd love for folks to get to know you more, though. Do you mind adding a little bit more flesh and color around where you find yourself and what you do day-to-day and just kind of what that looks like for you?

Bonni Stachowiak: When I think about my life, I think it comes down to two fundamentals that is just such a part of when I wake up in the morning and when I go to bed at night. I am a teacher and a learner at heart, and those are the sources that really fill my imagination and they show up, as you mentioned, in the bio across both personal and professional contexts. I'm not a big believer in work-life balance. That's not something that's an analogy that really works for me. More work-life integration. I think that's a better research area that I've learned a little bit about that is, again, a better metaphor. But as you mentioned, I'm parents with my husband Dave to two curious children and on a professional context, I have a leadership role. I also teach, and I'm a fellow podcaster and have been doing so for over a decade. And one thing I think is unique about me is that I've been doing it every single week for more than a decade, and so that's both I think a cool thing to do something every single week. I have colleagues who are like, "Wow, I don't know if I've done anything, except maybe brush my teeth for that amount of time," but it also means I'm a little bit of a... A lot of my motivation can come from streaks, and I think sometimes that means that maybe we may not rest as well as we might wish to keep... And so I always joke about my Apple Watch having more control over my life than perhaps I should let it, but I think if I go on more walks than I otherwise would've, that's not such a bad thing. And putting more podcasts out into the world. I don't think that's such a bad thing to kind of have this addictive quality about to keep the streak going. So yeah, a big fan of streaks. Yeah.

Andrew J. Mason: There are much worse addictions out there, I would say, and plus-

Bonni Stachowiak: Yes, there are.

Andrew J. Mason: ... I'd love for you to share a little bit more about the Teaching in Higher Ed Podcast, too. Just delve into that. What kind of topics do you explore in there and what information do you kind of find yourselves covering in that?

Bonni Stachowiak: Yeah. A lot of times we can feel alone in higher education institutions because, as much as we say that they're about learning, they can often become about other metrics of success. And a lot of people when they go to earn their doctorates don't receive any training in or professional development in how to teach, and yet that can become oftentimes a large part of somebody's role at a university. So I am really fascinated about the art and the science of teaching and an aspect of that has, this whole time for more than a decade, been about productivity. Productivity is kind of an icky word to many out there. It's kind of a culture that people don't want to really embrace. And so I try to think about it, just ways that we can help ourselves and others be able to show up more fully in our lives. I also teach a class, by the way, about productivity, personal leadership and productivity, and I'm in the middle of teaching a semester right now, and I just think about how locked in we can get with kind of a sense of chaos and things flying at us. We sort of give up on tools that, gosh, email's not doing it for me. So I'm kind of thinking, I don't know that given how much businesses still rely on email that you're really going to want to as a business person just give out on it entirely. But how do you make these tools really work for you to be able to show up versus them demanding of your time and attention in really unhealthy ways? So that's what we love to do, and I get to talk to these incredible educators from all over the world who I share a lot of values in common with, and also just things that we're curious about, and I get so delighted with these incredible things people are doing to try to have education be transformative all around the world. It's really an incredible pleasure.

Andrew J. Mason: That's really inspiring to hear, though. I mean, every week, I mean, there is the discipline aspect of it. We're talking about the streaks and yeah, I have to. There's the constraint of every week having to kind of go through the work of having that conversation. But man, so awesome to be able to have your perspective informed by all of these new and probably emerging voices as well to see what's latest and greatest out there to be able to kind of inform your perspective on what makes a productive life or, as you said, kind of the more engaging life, somebody that's more present and focused. I think that's really cool. I want to jump back into that. But before I do, I want to hear a little bit more about how did you come across the Omni Group or OmniFocus specifically. Do you have any specific memories that show up there for you, or was it just kind of this growing awareness over time? "Yeah, I know who they are. I know what that software does," and eventually one day you just decided to give it a try? Talk to me a little bit more about that process.

Bonni Stachowiak: I predict that this is probably going to be the hardest question you're going to ask me, and I tried to get Dave, my husband's help in unraveling this mystery. "Do you have any idea when you first started using it?" Because he's one that introduced me to it such a long time ago, and it has become so integral to my sense of being able to be a person of integrity who does what I say I will do to, like I said, that work-life integration, that I can't even imagine what it would be like without it. That's how integral it is to my life when I get stressed, when I'm able to relieve myself of stress. It's just a really integral part. So short answer is I don't know, other than it's been an incredibly long time. And even when I get bad at it, I'm going to put that a little bit in air quotes. I guess we are doing video here, so those of you who are on audio, this is me doing air quotes and those of you on video, good to see it firsthand. But to say that I practice it perfectly isn't possible for any of us, but when I return to it, it's an old friend that has systems and structures that allow for and have the flexibility, too, when I get a bit off-track and I haven't done my weekly review in many, many, many weeks. But then when I come back and I have that discipline to return to it, it's ready to greet me and it's enough infrastructure that's set up there that I can not tend to that garden well at times and still come back and very quickly get back into that sense of peace and get back into that sense of purpose and being able to show up.

Andrew J. Mason: That's awesome. And talk to me a little bit about the day to day, what it looks like as you're using the system, when you're using the system. Like you said, we're getting off of our own back here. This is the judgment-free zone. If we go days or weeks without using it, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just this sense of what does it look like for you when you are fully engaged with the system? And maybe a two-parter here, what about your system would you say that you do or engage? Is there anything that shows up for you that you would say that "that's uniquely mine? I haven't seen anybody else use these tags or these perspectives or this workflow in this way before, but for me and for how I like to use the system, this is kind of how it shows up for me."

Bonni Stachowiak: I think that for a lot of people, I would say there's two broad categories, but, of course, it's across a spectrum, but two broad categories of people. There are those for whom they're just waiting for some magic formula. "Other people got the magic formula, and if you just told me about the right app or if you just..." And there's kind of I feel bad because there's a lot of shame that a lot of people carry around, and sometimes that shame I have found often comes out of maybe being part of a neurodiverse community. Maybe somebody experiences and shows up with ADHD, and so that they're... But maybe that diagnosis for them came later in their life and they're still making sense of what that means for them. So there's kind of a, "I'm looking for the magic formula. I don't have it. Other people got the instruction book in life," and that's a hard thing and so kind of looking for... I get concerned when someone will say, "Oh, what do you do? You seem like you got this podcast. You do the speaking, you do a lot of different things. Where's the magic answer?" And they're thinking that the magic answer is something like OmniFocus. And as good as it is, it's not a magic formula by any... I mean, it's a wonderful, powerful tool designed around a system and framework that helps us show up, but it is not, by any sense of a thing, a perfect answer for people that was going to solve all the problems. And if only you would've known about this one app all these years, you would've been fine. Then the other end of the spectrum would be people who get really curious about technology, and it's kind of like, "Oh, maybe I should try this one. I should try this one." I'm really glad that I haven't gone down these roads and that there's other podcasters and bloggers who do this for me. Every once in a while, some of them will go off and they'll try another to do app, they'll try something else and then they'll come back and report it out. And so the reason I bring that up is that I'm glad that I haven't gone to these other tools or fallen victim because I really would've. To me it's like candy. Like, "Oh my gosh, can you believe it could do this, and I can try that," that kind of thing. It comes down to contexts, and so I will often get the question, and candidly it feels a little bit embarrassing of like, "How do you do it all?" Maybe they've heard me on the podcast and we have real intimate moments together. When you're walking with someone around their lake, you're in their ears, and so they're experiencing, I think this is parasocial phenomenon where they feel like they know you better. And so I'll be at some keynote speaking-

Andrew J. Mason: It's the 11 o'clock weatherman. You see them at Applebee or something, you're like, "I know you." You're like, "I really don't know you."

Bonni Stachowiak: Yeah. So I'll have like two minutes left, and they'll say, "Can I just ask you one question? How do you do it all?" And it's really in an aspirational thing, and I first want to go, "I don't do it all. I fail and I fail again, and I fail again. I'm a human being and I have human failings," but I don't want to just leave it there because they're not just trying to build me up.

Andrew J. Mason: That's depressing, yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak: It wasn't like a fanfest or something like that. But truly, I think because I think about my life with integrated, but yet separate contexts that I could focus on at any one point in time, that to me is how OmniFocus is different than any other task manager I've experienced. I think there's a lot of research around gender, for example, when it comes to multitasking. And so this is all just statistical differences. It's not like men are all this way, women are all... That doesn't happen. But oftentimes women might be more likely to engage in multitasking, and this is the one area that my husband and I tend to fall into some gender norms. A lot of gender norms we do not adhere to, but this is one where it's like he does one thing at a time a lot more naturally, or he's disciplined himself or whatever he does that, that's his strength. He can show up and he's fixing this thing, and that's what he's doing, and my mind and my spirit and where I'm showing up is flitting all over the place. And there's benefits and positives to both of those approaches, and we would both really share openly and candidly about that. That being said, when it comes to being able to produce quality things over long periods of time, to be able to say, "Now I am podcasting, what does that mean?" "Now I am a teacher, I'm a professor. What does that mean?" And to be able to inside of OmniFocus just... They have perspectives. So this is custom perspectives that for me, I would say a different context in my life and just to be able to click on a single button or use a keyboard shortcut, and now I'm in that mode.

Andrew J. Mason: Yes.

Bonni Stachowiak: Okay, we're thinking, and I'll go for, it'll be a really busy week at work or I might be traveling, and then I've lost kind of touch with my podcasting life, and then I get back in and I go, "Oh, no, no, no, no. Oh no, it's right there waiting for me. What is it that I need to attend to for upcoming episodes?" And I will say one other thing about this, and this is just so important to people to using any of these tools well. Don't put due dates on things that are just, "It'd be nice if I did it by Friday." So because I mostly... Now, am I a hundred percent of that? No. Do I fall victim occasionally to be like, I really want to pay attention to this by Friday, and then I'm dragging my due dates around to reorder them. But most of the time, I only put due dates on things when they're actually due. So when I do get a little bit behind, I come in, what is right there in my face saying, "I need you to pay attention to me" is telling me the truth because it has due dates on it for things that, because I wanted to keep the streak, for example. If an episode doesn't air, that's kind of a problem to meeting that streak. Or because I'm going to be giving the keynote for one of the universities I might go and travel to visit to. If we didn't buy the plane ticket, that's going to be a problem because you got to get yourself there in order to give. So there are things that absolutely have to be due by certain times, but a lot of our work, by the time you get to where most of us are in our careers, a lot of our work doesn't have due dates. A lot of our work truly is when we have time to focus on this priority, so that so much time that the tension between the system and other things, of course, also saying, "Pay attention to me," Pay attention to me," "Pay attention to me," OmniFocus is very effective at, okay, we have these different Custom Context, and different perspectives. That's the technical word for you. You set up a custom perspective. And for me, that's my role that I play here. That's my role that I play here, and it just really, really organizes it well to really set me up well, to be able to pay attention to the things that really need my attention.

Andrew J. Mason: I love that. One of the most inspirational conversations I've heard regarding this was in the Getting Things Done Podcast Episode 14. There was a guy named Jeff Heilman, who I actually got to know, and he's a fantastic individual. And he said, for me, it really didn't hit the next level where I felt like I was really doing all the things that I wanted to do in life, as you mentioned, work-life integration, where I stopped saying, "Am I a husband? Am I a father? Am I a teacher? And I..." And said, "No, wait a minute. I'm all of these things all of the time. And being able to pull in and out of context saying, yeah, I'm always a worker at my job, but if you get a call from the school saying, your child's broken their arm, then for a minute I have to do something that's a dad thing or something that's, and pull into that context as elegantly as possible." So not quite as discreet as like the drawer metaphor where you have file folders and there's a drawer over here, but you are everything, but you're kind of pulling in and out of those contexts at any given time. I love that you said that, and for me, I think about somebody that is just getting started, maybe they're in that space where their life has run pretty easily. David Allen used to give the analogy of the crank widget job. Your contexts are so discreet that you can kind of leave work at work or home at home and just move on to the next thing and not have to really worry about anything blowing up or becoming ambiguous as you leave one context and jump into the other. For you, is there anything that you would say is a great first bit of advice that you would give to somebody who is starting to find these contexts start to bleed over into each other where it's like, "Oh man, they've maybe gained a life partner or gained another role in their life or gained more responsibility in that role in their life." But those things are starting to show up for them and they're realizing, "You know what? I can't really be fully, fully present unless I do something extra here, and I don't know what that thing is." How would you advise somebody that finds themself maybe in that spot?

Bonni Stachowiak: The first thing to me is a principle. So before we start to search for the magic technique, the magic hack, the magic thing, we have to get our heads around what our mind's good for. And David Allen, I think, said it best. "Our mind is for having ideas, not holding them." And that's so fun to me. As I mentioned, I'm in the middle of teaching a personal leadership and productivity class. So when we get to this point where the students are saying to me, "My mind is for having ideas, not holding them," I mean to me, we've reached a turning point now, and now we're ready to say, "Okay, if our mind is for having ideas, that's what it's really good at. Our minds are incredibly creative." And I do have students who have ADHD or they may have other ways in which their brain may be not neurotypical. And so for them to recognize that's not something to be ashamed of, that's your superpower. Those are a set of assets that those of us with more typical brains, whatever typical means in this day and age, but you could actually use that to your advantage. So once we realize what our brains are good for, then we're ready to say, "Okay, well, what would be a way to be able to have more ideas, to have that mind like water experience where I don't worry, have chaos, am constantly spinning and spinning, but that my..." You mentioned the emergency, "Gosh, someone's in distress, I need to..." That's a rock falling into the pond that needs to create some waves in what I might have otherwise been planning. This is not, "I'm inner Zen and I'm constantly at peace," but it's in proportion to what is needed. Now, what I am exceptionally good at, and I hope it's okay to brag a little bit, is worrying for worrying's sake. I mean, I'm exceptional at it, so that's not a great use of my mind. So rather than worrying, it might be one of those things that it could be more of a what other things might my mind be good to meditate on at that given moment? Or it might be one of those things, "Gosh, you haven't really been working on your system in a reflective sense. You haven't stopped and looked at where have I been, where am I going?" And getting more in touch with those kinds of things. I wanted to mention in addition to David Allen, I really liked the book called The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain and Annie Murphy-Paul in there, I thought... By the way, if you had said to me before I read her book about the extended mind, I would've assumed it's only getting things out of my mind and into a system. I would only have attributed that to the mind sweeps that are talked about in Getting Things Done. So I might use a trigger list to go through my different contexts and see what sorts of things are hiding there causing stress that I'm not even consciously aware of. But it's so much more than that, that she really talks about all of these other types of ways in which we privilege solely the cognitive brain versus all of these other aspects of, and by the way, one aspect that we're not talking much about today, but is the relational aspect and why I love getting to have conversations like the one we're having now because that is a form of thinking, but we're thinking together. And then she also talks about moving together, movement together. Why I love going for walks with friends from work, although most of the time for us, we're putting our ears on and wherever we are, we have this norm, a habit of, "Okay, we'll send the text message out. Anyone ready for a walk?" And it's like we almost a hundred percent of the time, we've all been sitting too long in front of it, and then we can go think together and reflect together, that kind of idea. So the first step, to me, the first advice, there's not anything magic here. But we do need to convince and reconvince and recommit ourselves to what the brain is good for and what it's not good for. So that's number one. Number two, and this comes from... See it cracks me up because this is such a whole 'nother world. So Michael E. Gerber, he wrote a book called The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What To Do About It. And I teach business, but I'm more on the organizational psychology side, leadership side so I don't teach entrepreneurship, for example. And even if you're not an entrepreneur, don't consider yourself one. The same concept that he talks about with entrepreneurs to me applies to any of us living a life, which is to say, all of us hopefully working toward living a life, a life well lived. So what he says in there is that we spend way too much time working in our businesses, instead of on our businesses. And so I would say we spend too much time working in our various contexts, kind of in chaos and reacting to what's happening versus working on our lives in our various context and being able to rise above the chaos-

Andrew J. Mason: That's right.

Bonni Stachowiak: ... and rise above reacting to what we might perceive as happening to us versus choices that we're able to make, the freedom that we're able to make. Victor Frankl and his incredible, incredible book that, of course, I can't remember the name of right now, it'll come to me-

Andrew J. Mason: Ah, Man's Search For Meaning.

Bonni Stachowiak: There we go.

Andrew J. Mason: Yes.

Bonni Stachowiak: There we go. Man's Search for Meaning. I mean, it's a choice. Life is a choice. What a beautiful choice that we have, a beautiful freedom that we have when we allow ourselves to have it. And that, by the way, if you're not familiar with his work, was while he was in a concentration camp and seeing people, the devastation around him, he was able to envision himself in a lecture hall talking about the ideas that came from his experience with psychology on the freedom of our minds being able to take us to places. And no one can ever take that freedom away from us. It's an incredibly powerful, powerful book and unexpectedly filled me with hope when I thought all it would do is just fill me with a dread of a terrible time in history. And of course, it is both of those things. It is both of those things, but it is actually a much more hopeful book than it may sound just from the context in which he was experiencing such depravity and devastation.

Andrew J. Mason: And there's the duality, too, where something so awful happening, but also something so beautiful happening internally as a person kind of experiences the best of themselves during that hard time. And I think about your Michael Gerber reference, too. I know there was a quote from David Allen about how our brains are more effectively thinking about our stuff versus of our stuff. This idea of the Checklist Manifesto, if you're really interested in leveling up your life into not just projects as they start to hit you. But there's that pattern recognition where you're like, "Man, this one part of my life, this one part of my business, really, there's only about seven or eight typical scenarios that I bump into. So how can I have this either checklisted out or turned into a project that repeats or something to where I can think more effectively about the work that I'm engaged in versus of the work as it occurs to me over and over again, and you're not duplicating that effort?" I'd love to know when you start thinking about checklists, when you think about repeating tasks and anything that comes with that, do you use any automation in your system at all? Is there anything that shows up for you either as a recurring project or recurring task? You mentioned streaks, but is there anything that shows up for you that's like, "I would say that's kind of not necessarily on autopilot, but it helps me kind of live exponentially because I've only thought of it once and it's on repeat, and I know that that's taken care of, so it's off my mind?"

Bonni Stachowiak: Oh, I absolutely do. And it's one of those things where I feel like in some ways someone listening may be helped by what I'm about to share. But I also want to say that Omni Group has gone through such transformation since I found the automation that I still use to this day. So all this to say, I so appreciate the programmers, the developers, how this is a software that we can make use of across a long time, and they're not always going for the flash in the pan. And then stuff that you've created that you've come to rely on goes away with upgrades and things like that. So my examples may be a little bit dated, and why I say that is that they are contained in AppleScript and that Omni Group now has its own automation service, and I'm aware of that. So when I was talking about the two broad groups of people who, some people are looking for the magic formula, I know the magic formula doesn't exist, and then there's those of us that want to go try every new thing. I've had to hold myself back and keep asking because I get so curious about it that... And you mentioned the holidays, and for me, summertime may be a slightly slower season, although I am a year-round person, but I don't want to break something that's working when it's worked well for me so far. So I use a couple of AppleScripts that are from someone named Curt Clifton.

Andrew J. Mason: Yes. Yeah.

Bonni Stachowiak: Yes. And I will say, even if you were a little bit more well-versed than I am in the automation features in OmniFocus, you could do what his scripts do even using the more current and modern automation. So for all I know he's already done that. I just missed the memo or something. But I use one of his scripts that's called Complete and Await Reply. So while OmniFocus is not designed to be a group project management system, you do definitely need and a good trusted getting things done system, you're going to need some sort of list of what you're waiting for, what you've delegated. That's the first question that David Allen tells us in terms of don't put it on your plate to do. Is there somebody else's plate? And I would even include in that automation, is it a person or is it a technology or a tool that you could delegate something to? And so the Complete and Await Reply as soon as I've got something. So for me, a new podcast episode on the stuff that's on my plate is about 15 steps. So one of those steps is I need to send the person an email and say, "Could you fill out this short form that makes a profile for you in our system?" As soon as I send it to them, I use Complete and Await Reply because now it's off my plate. Now I'm waiting for them to respond. So that's one that really has worked well for me. The second one is called Populate Template Placeholders by Curt Clifton. And you mentioned the Checklist Manifesto. That book is, if people haven't read it, my gosh, the most fascinating book with like who would think checklist could be that riveting? But it is a riveting book, fascinating, but also so much what we need to manage the chaos in our lives and to be able to really be able to do amazing things, especially with other people, is checklists. My gosh. We're getting ready to go on a trip right now. So it's like, thank goodness for packing lists, and thank goodness... My husband has the greatest departure checklist that you've ever seen. And it's like scratching an itch to see him go through. And that's why we don't have to worry about if a water leak happens while we're gone and all the thing. I mean, he's just got it down and it's so much less stressful to pack for a trip when you've got a checklist. So I've got a packing for a podcast episode trip Populate Template, so I've got it where there's just variables in there. Who are the guests? What is the name of the episode? What is the number of the episode? And then it'll just generate things. And then I make sure that they're going to get that request to fill out the form before we record that. I'm going to warn them that there's a part of the podcast that's called the Recommendations. I'm going to send them a thank you email, thank goodness for Send Later feature now in Apple Mail so that we can put these things out in advance. So those are the two that I use. I use other automation, but it's not specific to OmniFocus, but I just know there's going to come a day, whoo, where I am going to have so much fun going and exploring the incredible things that are there now. I mean, I know that I've got them all bookmarked. They're waiting in my digital bookmarks, and so that's going to be a little holiday treat for me at some point, I'm sure. Yeah.

Andrew J. Mason: What is currently inspiring you? Like what do you see that, and it doesn't have to be latest, greatest, shiniest, it could've been something that you've uncovered like, "Man, this is seven years old, but it's new to me, or it's become new to me again because I'm now focused on it." But what's the latest thing that is inspiring you that either you've come across, it can be a book, it could be a talk, it can be anything that you've had that just kind of showed up in your world and you're saying, "You know what? There's something there for me there, and I don't know if I have it figured out yet, but it's on my mind and, therefore, I want to pay attention to it because I feel like it's there to show me something?"

Bonni Stachowiak: I would say that what came to mind instantly when you said that is simply the word solidarity, that we can go through really hard times and it can feel so alone. And what's reverberating for me right now is to togetherness, that we are never alone. There are people out there who share values. And as much as the ways in which social media can take away from our lives, what a gift it can also be to be able to bring you together with people for whom you share values with, and that togetherness, solidarity. That's what came to mind, that I want to be focusing on and being intentional about that, instead of letting the entities that want to feed more vitriol and it just kind of builds upon itself. One of the books and authors that we explore in this class that I'm teaching is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey. And he talks about this comes in forms of habits, seven habits. You think he has some things to say about habits there, but that we can build these loops that are self-reinforcing to take us upward, closer toward our goals and our dreams and our vision for our lives, and just as much we can have these loops that can draw us downward toward more hatred, toward more chaos, that kind of a thing. So I guess I'm inspired by how easy it is to be able to learn from people who both think like I do, but also people who think differently than me, and to have access to is just an incredible thing. And also how easy it is to be swept up very quickly because that's what gets the clicks, that's what gets so when I start to feel myself going, "Oh, that's the anger economy. That's the attention economy." Okay, well, you get to control this. You get to decide what is going to be fed these systems. And if you can't, by the way, then probably time to sign off of that one. So I won't go into specifics, but I did just delete an account that I'd been hanging onto. I hadn't been active on it for a long time. And then somebody was like, "Hey, delete this, delete this social media." And I thought, "Yep, you're speaking to me today." And I did it literally right before we got on. I was like, "You got 15 minutes. You can do it." So if it's not feeding you well, and despite your attempts at curating your community, your sense-making, those for whom you think you have things to learn, then you get control. You get to decide if you're going to stay on there and what that community looks like. Yeah.

Andrew J. Mason: It's wonderful bit of advice because it makes me think of Seth Godin. I think it was either All Marketers Tell Stories or one of these books where he talks about this concept of things like this for people like us. And it's so easy. The negative of it is, yeah, there are people not like us, and whatever you take that to mean, but there are a group where you say, "These are my people, or these are the people that I am in a community with at least because of this shared interest or shared value that we have." And the good news from what you just said is, yeah, there's always a people like us out there. And if you don't necessarily know who they are or where they are, honestly, there's probably just a couple of searches or clicks away. And that's an amazing thing about technology. It's honestly an uplifting thing, especially in a place and time where it's so easy to think of us and them. Like there's a great way to be connected within us out there, and I think that is a really inspiring thing to think about.

Bonni Stachowiak: Yeah, you're reminding me of a conversation I got to have on my podcast with someone named Dave Cormier, and he talked about when we get to have these communities where you know that you're in one is one that doesn't require the othering. Because it's not us good, them bad. That's probably not going to be a particularly nourishing, over time, sustainable community. But us, look at us, look at what we share, what is building, what is growing, what is healing. And I'm not quoting him at all nearly as well as him sharing on that episode, but that's what I thought because I want to pay attention to that, too. Because we as humans, we are fallible and it is very easy to other. It's real easy to other. So I want to seek out a vision for what things could look like and I struggle toward those things and while also recognizing human beings are complicated, there is not good, bad. Most of the time, the overwhelming sense of humanity is not that simple to divide people into categories like that. So that's something I really appreciate. Yeah, we got to kind of know we need to have places and spaces to process things and to struggle and learn and grow and be challenged in really good ways.

Andrew J. Mason: Well said, and such an inspiring conversation. I hope that folks that have listened to this have felt at least there's something to take away that is going to stretch or grow them in some way. And not the end of the conversation as well, Bonni, because I know that you have multiple ways for people to connect with you, be in your orbit if they're interested in kind of learning more about what you're up to or being a part of your world. How can they do that?

Bonni Stachowiak: Yeah. So the easiest way would be if you want to go to the website and find out contact information, it's teachinginhighered.com or whatever podcast player that you use that you prefer listening, whether that's Spotify, whether it's Apple Podcasts, Overcast, you name it, search for Teaching in Higher Ed, and you'll see the podcast pop up. We'd love to have you listen, or would love to have you connect on the website. So grateful for this opportunity today, Andrew.

Andrew J. Mason: Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you so much for joining us, Bonni. This time has flown by, my gosh.

Bonni Stachowiak: Definitely.

Andrew J. Mason: Hey, and thank all of you for listening today, too. You can find us on Mastodon at the Omni Show at omnigroup.com. You can also find out everything that's happening with the Omni Group at omnigroup.com/blog.

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