Welcome to episode 232 of the Nerd Journey Podcast [@NerdJourney]! We’re John White (@vJourneyman) and Nick Korte (@NetworkNerd_) – two technology professionals with backgrounds in IT Operations and Sales Engineering on a mission to help others accelerate career progression and increase job satisfaction by bringing listeners the advice we wish we’d been given earlier in our careers. In today’s episode we share a special discussion with Nick’s daughter. She asks our hosts a number of questions about work, relationships, stress, and career. And then John and Nick ask her some questions.

Original Recording Date: 06-17-2023

Topics – Two Dads Get Interviewed, Questions from Dads to Our Guest

3:10 – Two Dads Get Interviewed

• We have a special guest on the show today, K. This episode was recorded on the eve of Father’s Day and is an opportunity for our guest to ask some questions.

When it comes to parenting do you think it’s harder to sustain your relationship with your child when you have a full-time job? Why?

• John
  • When one has a job or something else that takes you away from your child, it creates a compromise in that relationship. But it doesn’t necessarily harm the relationship.
  • In each person’s life, we need a balance between work (what we do to generate income to survive / provide for ourselves and our families) and family life. Finding that balance is important to John.
  • “Sustaining a relationship just takes time, effort, and attention.” – John White
  • When a career makes it impossible to sustain that attention, it does make things harder.
  • The effort needed for a job has periods of more and less over time (ebbs and flows) based on the complexities of circumstances. This requires more attention to work at times, which can take away time from sustaining a relationship with your child or other family member(s) over time. But hopefully over time there is a balance.
  • If John’s job was so time consuming over a long period of time that it compromised the ability to sustain his relationship with his child, he would look to change the way he was doing the job, change the job, or change company completely.
• Nick
  • Nick tends to agree with John here.
  • It often depends on the problems we’re trying to solve in our work. Sometimes your mind is focused on a complex problem and continues to spin on that, which can unintentionally keep you from focusing on spending time with your kids / your family.
  • Nick knows the above has happened to him before (as does our guest) and tries to do things to empty his brain. He thinks it can be harder if you enjoy the work you are doing.
  • There may be times where the workload is just heavier for whatever reason.
  • There is also a feeling of obligation to do a good job at work to provide for your family.
  • “But I can’t lose them in the process.” – Nick Korte, on periods of high workload and making sure you don’t lose touch with your family
• John
  • John also has a process to follow near the end of his day to help drain his brain (i.e. a shutdown routine). He likes to write down where things are in his work (i.e. status of tasks) as a reminder to himself of what he as thinking abut and the next steps to perform in each area. This helps us fully put down the problem and walk away.
    • If we as parents / spouses are physically present but seem distracted, it is likely we have not done this / done it well.
    • We may still be thinking about the problem and might get an idea at a random moment. And instead of taking a second to capture the thought to put the problem down again, we may try to keep it in our heads.
• Nick
  • “It’s not like you can just pull the plug really quick and let the power go out. You kind of have to shut it down gracefully like a computer.” – Nick Korte, on putting away a problem / draining your brain
    • Maybe you get an idea or solve a problem at a random moment or realize you didn’t do something you said you would.
• John
  • When we remember something we need to do for work while not working, we can sometimes get into this in between state. We don’t want to pick up our phones and record what we need to do because it feels like we would compromise family time, but at the same time we are trying to hold what we remembered in our minds and distracted as a result.
  • Maybe we should communicate that we need to record something for a couple minutes and that we will be right back. Likely that would be better than being physically present and not fully present mentally.
  • Does this ever happen to K?
    • Sometimes K is thinking about certain things, and someone will either interrupt her or she will get another random thought (sort of like her brain does not shut off).
    • Writing things down for her makes it easier to come back to later.
  • If a thought comes into John’s head and he does not record it, it sits there spinning. And it’s worse if this is something he is worried about.
    • John tells us he needs to be better about recording the thought / writing it down and coming back to it later.

11:34 – How does working in an office compared to working at home affect your parental and relationship skills?

• Nick
  • We need to be around other people. There is an expectation to talk to people you work with and for even if you don’t work in an office.
  • There is something about getting out of your normal environment (i.e. going to the office now and then if you work from home) that can allow you to think more clearly.
  • Nick likes this change up / change in environment now and then and feels it can help you accomplish things you could not have otherwise.
  • Being in an office and having social interaction with co-workers / trying to build relationships with them takes you away from your family. If your family is always there (i.e. you work from home), it may cause you to take them for granted or not appreciate them as much as you would if you were not constantly with them.
  • Nick enjoys working from home whenever he can, but stepping away from the house to visit a customer or going to the office for a day or two can in certain cases bring you back to your family more refreshed from a parental perspective. You don’t need to spend every waking moment with your kids or your family.
• John
  • There is a balance. When he travels to an office there is physical distance and time to transition from dad / father to his professional persona (i.e. putting on his worker hat or transitioning to “work John”).
  • And when John comes home, he has to stop working and give himself the time to drive home. In the travel time home, John can take off the “work John” hat and put on his father and husband hat.
  • The transition time of travel helps John to be in a different head space.
  • When John is working from home, he has to be “work John,” a husband, and a father all at the same time. Stepping out of his office means he might need to have an interaction for which he may not quite be in the proper head space. And then he has to transition right back to “work John.”
  • The transitions can be difficult, and because we understand it is difficult, we try to do things to improve our transition skills. It’s certainly not perfect.
  • Part of the reason John has his office door at home closed and stays in there for hours is to manage the transition. John knows when he steps out of his office door the work hat is coming off (even if only for a short time) and he has readied himself a little bit.
  • It is a difficult part of working from home (the transitions). There are many benefits to working from home like being available in an emergency / non-emergency because we might be able to make our jobs work around it.
  • If you were to go to school from home, exercise from home, go to church from home, and go to church from home…home becomes all those places. And we interact with others in these activities in ways that are not the same across all of them.
  • “Those transitions are difficult, I think, for anybody.” – John White, on transitions between activities and personas
• Nick
  • The shutdown routine John referred to is another type of transition.
  • If Nick walks out of his home office and someone needs to tell him something, he may not be able to process it right then. It’s possible he may have stepped out to use the restroom and get a snack before the next call for the day or something he is almost finished doing.

17:20 – Would you say being a parent or working is harder? Which is more stress inducing?

• John
  • Being a parent is harder, but work is more stress inducing.
  • The lows at work can be indeterminate in length (i.e. a problem that festers).
  • Problems at home can certainly pop up with family (a wife and daughter in John’s case), but due to the proximity to the issue and family members he says they have to work on these things right away.
  • “The stakes can be high for any given decision, but also the joy part of those relationships goes a lot higher than work. So I think it balances out.” – John White, on family vs. work
  • John says because we don’t get as much joy from our work, the stress is usually more for work. Stakes are higher at home because a poor decision at home can be more hurtful and more impactful.
• Nick
  • It depends on what is happening as to which one is more stressful. Situations from each can cause spikes in stress.
  • Each area where we’re involved (work, family, other areas) causes some form of stress at some time. You’re likely going to get hit by the aggregate of the stress in these areas at some point.
  • “And when all of the areas are producing stress at the same time, it’s hard to predict in which area you might be acting different than normal.” – Nick Korte, on stress across areas of your life
  • It may come out at home when the problem was actually from work, as one example. Or maybe it comes out at work when it had to do with finances, etc.
  • Nick is giving the consultant’s answer…it depends.

20:17 – When it comes to work stress, is it ever hard to prioritize your family?

• John
  • No – he doesn’t think so.
  • John says to him prioritize means there is a conflict of multiple things happening at the same time (a family obligation and a work obligation).
  • Very rarely does John have work obligations he cannot move if needed. Part of this is choosing his employer carefully.
    • We need to choose employers that understand we have a family life that is very important to us and comes first.
    • John communicates very clearly to the people he manages that if they have a family conflict or emergency, it always comes first, and others will figure out a way to work around it.
    • Sometimes this means doing more work up front, especially if you’re the only person who can do something. Take the information from your head and make a document for others to leverage so that can gain an understanding of what you were thinking. It’s like draining your brain in such a way that anyone else could read it and get up to speed within about 30 minutes.
    • John tries to do this in his job and seeks to document the projects he has going and what needs to be dealt with but also leaves a trail of breadcrumbs for someone else to pick up the work in the event he has a conflict.
    • “That’s just extra work, but it’s the extra work that I do to make sure that is not an issue.” – John White, on ways to avoid conflicts of schedule between home and work
• Nick
  • Nick likes the idea of not putting yourself in a situation where you have to choose between one or the other.
  • Sometimes prioritizing family means you’re going to have to stay up late to handle something and just aren’t going to get enough sleep or just aren’t going to finish something else you thought you would. Sometimes this isn’t easy when the feeling of responsibility for multiple things hits us.
• John
  • Sometimes a deadline may be artificial. Is it a deadline I set in my head, or is it a real deadline? Think about what would happen if you were to miss the deadline to help determine that.
  • If you know you will miss a deadline that seems artificial (i.e. you said you would finish something), communicate that there will be a delay so you can focus on what needs to be handled.
  • This goes back to the idea of a conflict. In those times we need to take a few minutes clear our plate mentally and update people so we can prioritize family.
• Nick
  • Nick thinks over time you get a sense of whether you’ve been prioritizing the right thing. You might realize you’ve been flexing too hard for work and perhaps not enough for family. That means it’s time to “rebalance the scale.”
• John
  • John has gone through his life and after realizing he’s made mistakes, has beaten himself up about the mistake. But he’s come to understand that does not help him put more effort into fixing the mistake.
  • John tell us that accepting what happened and understanding what you need to do to correct it is more important than feeling bad. It feels a bit self-indulgent to sit in your feelings too long as it’s a bit like telling yourself that is more important than fixing the problem.
  • Fixing a problem / correcting a mistake is often not easy and might mean you need to change a behavior. It’s easier to feel bad about not doing something than to do something.
  • This is something we as people need to recognize and work on this and try to get better at it each time. But we are not perfect beings.

26:13 – What’s the hardest part about having a job?

• John
  • There are at least 2 things that are the hardest about having a job.
    • John has chosen to do something he really enjoys. When it’s time to stop working and do something else he enjoys like being part of a family, friend, or social group it can be a tough transition.
    • Another challenge is managing the feeling of obligation to the family by doing well at the job. We want to provide for our families by doing well at a job to keep it so as to ensure there is money, food, and shelter.
      • “It’s kind of the carrot and the stick of the career.” – John White
      • The carrot is about enjoying the work and sometimes not wanting to step away from it. The stick is more about it being a challenge if we lost our jobs.
• Nick
  • Nick agrees with the points John made but seems focused more on the wanting to do a good job.
  • “I want to model that’s what you’re supposed to do. Seek to do a good job.” – Nick Korte
  • Companies pay you to do a specific thing, and you want to make sure you’re doing what you agreed to do as a good employee and member of society.
  • Some people want to ensure they are A players or at least a B plus when they do work to try and excel.
  • Nick aspires to do his work in a way that others (i.e. his daughter) can look up to and learn from. He knows he is no one special, but he wants to model doing even things he doesn’t want to do / doesn’t like to do because it needs to be done (even if it’s in the realm of something he enjoys). This is part of doing a good job.
• John
  • There are certainly unpleasant situations and people that come up, but these are not unique to a job. Dealing with unpleasant people can happen in your family, at church, within a friend group, etc. because someone is having a bad day, week, month, or even year.
• K
  • It seems like from the above that one of the hardest parts of having a job is mentality.

29:45 – What’s one thing you wish you could change about your career?

• John
  • John wishes he had started doing what he is doing now a little earlier. Making a career change 3-4 years earlier might have helped him do a bit better financially. But he’s pretty happy as things are now.
  • There are many things that have gone right in John’s life. Part of the reason we do this podcast is to understand the lessons learned and try to give them in an organized so people can progress earlier than we (John and Nick) did.
  • John worked at a job for 15 years before he got out of it and began working for a company that sold things to companies like his previous employer. Making the transition earlier John thinks would have been better for him professionally. But then again it would have changed his life from what it is now, so it’s not something he goes back and regrets.
  • There are things John would highlight as not going well at the time they happened, but he’s doing ok now (which he really enjoys).
• Nick
  • Nick wishes he would have done better at consistently keeping track of the things he worked on and accomplished before about 5-6 years ago.
  • Everything that has happened in Nick’s career has been a learning and growing experience, including recording this episode.
• K
  • Does John think his life would be extremely different than it is today if he had made the changes described?
• John
  • It’s nearly impossible to know the answer to that one. Part of meeting Nick when he did, for example, was being in a specific job at a specific point in time and participating in the Spiceworks community. Had he made the move earlier, the two might not have met in the community and become great friends.
  • John wouldn’t want to take a chance of giving things like that up.
  • This is similar to what John mentioned regarding the best way to react to mistakes he’s made by focusing on correcting it. Instead of focusing on what he could have or should have done, John prefers to focus on what he can do now to improve and then taking action to start doing those things.

33:21 – Questions from Dads to Our Guest

For parents / parental figures listening, what advice does K have for them to build better relationships with their kids, be a better influence, and build relationships with the right people in their family?

• K
  • When juggling a job and other things the most important thing is quality time. You should know each others’ interests and spend the time you have together wisely.
  • If your child wants to do something and you cannot make it work on the day they ask, maybe you make it up to them on a different day. Listen to her example about going to Starbucks.
  • Be able to spend time together because that is crucial in relationships.
  • Dinner dates are a good option. Make sure to get away from the work environment when you do this.
  • It’s important to have 1-1 time with your kids without the other spouse / parental figure (if applicable) and without distractions. Spend time just talking.

What if people don’t know how to talk to their kids?

• K
  • It’s hard to give advice that applies to everyone since all children are different.
  • It’s important to know how to talk to a child. Ask them how their day went and that their highlight of the day was. Some kids may be annoyed by that.
  • If you really don’t know what to talk to your kids about, try pivoting off what the child did today, and ask questions. The more questions asked the deeper you can get in conversation. Any question you have or anything you want to talk about is on the table.
  • But in all of this, try not to be annoying!
  • It’s ok to tease your kids a little bit, but it can become annoying quickly.

36:58 – In our professional lives we try to act as an example of someone who takes responsibility seriously and how to be good at something. Does this come across to our kids, or does it look like dad it always working?

• K
  • It depends on your child’s age, and it depends on the situation.
  • K says she sees what her dad does and knows what he does. And he even asks her for PowerPoint help / feedback now and then.
  • K thinks the role model part comes out more when kids get older. You might start to notice it around middle school, think it’s cool, and you might want to be like that one day.
  • When you get older you start to respect it more instead of thinking mom / dad is always working or never at home.
  • “I think when you get older you start to notice what it is that they are doing, and that can come across as very inspirational.” – K, on noticing what your parents do
• John
  • Not everyone knows how to talk about their job as something that is interesting. Some don’t have interesting jobs or jobs in which they are interested.
  • John mentions he and Nick are in the position of doing something that is interesting and are trying to model being good at something interesting while balancing with being a good parent, spouse, friend, etc. It makes sense that for little kids these things might go over their head but that older kids may begin to notice.
  • John once heard some advice that when you’re a parent and get in an argument with your spouse, you should resolve it in front of your kids so your kids can see you work it out with compromise / coming to some sort of agreement and not just see the two of you only getting into arguments.

40:12 – Would it help if we as parents talked about how we’re modeling doing things to put down work at the end of the day or how we’re having to make work a little more important right now to spend more time with our kids later?

• K
  • It goes back to the age of the child. If something relationship wise between spouses or related to work gets too heated, maybe it’s not good to keep it in front of the kids.
  • The advice about resolving an argument in front of maybe elementary or middle school kids can give them an example of how to resolve an argument instead of just walking away from it mad. You don’t really learn that in school. You have to have that skill of how to resolve an argument at some point.
  • When kids are younger and see arguments followed by parental figures walking off, they assume the parents are always arguing and never make up. You have to show your kids that you do make up, which K feels is pretty easy to tell based on how you act around each other.
  • This can apply to work too when you’re mad about something, arguing with someone, or in the middle of a deadline and super stressed. It’s important to show kids this but to a certain degree. If it gets to the point where you cannot think, for example, you probably need to work it out yourself.
  • As kids get older they start to see that you are working it out, and they see how you do it. Kids are very observant!
  • K says overall this is a bit situational.
• John
  • Maybe if something gets heated enough to keep away from kids the two people should take a time out and work it out when they can be more level headed about the situation. John says this act of noticing when it’s best to take a time out to cool off took him until adulthood to realize (i.e. it is a skill).

43:37 – Is there something most parents might be lacking when it comes to keeping their stress away from affecting their kids?

• K
  • All parents are different and will handle situations differently.
  • Whether parents decide to show their stress to kids or not, they do not explain why they are acting that way / why they are like that or what it happening. Kids assume it is natural, and if it is never explained, they will come up with their own conclusion.
  • It would be helpful if parents would explain a little more. You don’t need to explain every single thing (because it will take too long and no one wants to sit through it), but sharing a brief summary of why you’re acting a certain way would make it easier on the kids.
• John
  • This is great advice! Does K remember the first time she took notice that something was just stress from work and not how her dad is all the time?
• K
  • She thinks it was about the time her dad started working from home and not going to an office every day.
    • K says they were together in a little bit closer environment once her dad started working from home, and her dad didn’t have the transition time like before which allowed him to still have the stress but not to the point where she saw it affect him.
    • “Oh, he’s been in his office all day. That’s got to be from work. We haven’t talked to each other in a while. So it kind of helped me understand that it’s not from me or from family. It’s just from work.” – K, on seeing her dad’s stress be more prevalent once he started working from home
• Nick
  • Nick says there have been so many times when K has walked into his office, and he could not tell if she needed something from him or just wanted a hug. He might be holding his hand up as if to say “I can’t right now.” But if all she wanted was a hug, he feels like a horrible human being.
    • There’s no way for K to know what her dad’s attitude will be if she comes into his home office and also no way for him to know what she wants if she comes in.
• John
  • John envisions a series of lights which could help the two communicate. Nick suggests maybe hand signals.
• K
  • K mentions a period of time where her dad had a red light / green light sign outside his door that would indicate whether she could come in, but she eventually ignored it and came in when she wanted.
• John
  • John says the system doesn’t work if the light is never green, especially if you have back to back meetings all day with no time to transition between them.
  • He compares this in some ways to the short time between classes in middle school, but it’s more like one class ending and the next beginning 15 seconds later while you sit in the same chair. That’s more like what being in meetings all day is. John tells us it is rough on the brain. K isn’t sure if she could do that.
  • John says his employer will automatically trim meetings back to leave a 5 minute gap even if you schedule a meeting for a full hour to try and help give people a short break. The problem is adhering to this. Should meetings automatically stop as a way of enforcement of a specific time frame?

49:36 – How much to school-aged children (middle school / high school) think about what they might want to do after they get out of school, and how much guidance or discussion needs to happen with parents and others to calm any fears and worries?

• K

  • Elementary school kids probably aren’t thinking about it at all unless they get asked. Usually answers are the popular ones like astronaut or some other high paying job that not that many people actually do.
  • In middle school, girls may tend to think about it more, but it is likely about mindset.
  • The high schooler might be thinking, “I only have college left, and then I’m out in the real world…especially if you’re a senior.”
  • We understand not everyone may go to college and mention that (i.e. out in the real world even faster).
  • “Once you start to get that in your head, you start to think about it more. And you’re like, ‘Ok, what do I want to do with my life?’ instead of ‘I’m just going to go with the flow.’” – K, on the mindset of being closer to the real world
  • In middle school K thinks kids may be thinking about it (career) but not doing anything about it. In high school you start thinking you need to do something about it.
  • If you do go to college you have to pick something in which you get a degree. Once you finish that then it’s real world. And people know they have to have a career to be financially stable.
  • K thinks when it comes to talking about it (career), “we want guidance we’ll come to you, and if we don’t we’re going to figure it out.”

• John

  • Trying to figure out what you plan to do career wise early on doesn’t make too much sense unless you already know about a specific type of job and love it and really start to learn about doing it.

    • John knew someone in high school who was very into caring for animals and was thinking about becoming a veterinarian or vet technician. This person spent a lot of time volunteering to work with people in different jobs inside the veterinarian space. This investigation makes a lot of sense.
    • The above would be difficult to do unless you knew you wanted to do a specific job in a specific field.
    • “There are too many different jobs out there, and it’s impossible to know what you need to do to get those jobs.” – John White, on kids and thinking about their career
    • At K’s age, a focus should be on building skills that will help you no matter what it is that you do such as designing PowerPoints and being good at delivering them, writing papers that present a point of view or provide the status of something, etc.
    • John says at K’s age he had no idea what he wanted to do, but if he had worked on skills, that would have been better.
    • Some skills are obvious because we take courses in them – reading comprehension / literature, math, English. John cites the importance of doing a lot of reading, summarization, and building knowledge are needed in his job. If he had not learned a lot of this in school he is not sure where he would be today.

  • John says he wishes he had developed a different mindset earlier in his career.

    • John was a smart kid, and he would get praise for being really good at things. But getting the praise would make him only want to participate in activities that sent him back that praise. This became a part of his identity and kept him from doing things where he didn’t get the praise / wasn’t good.
    • John wishes he had been able to get over the ego part (needing to be perceived as good at something) earlier and taken part in things where he was a beginner, bad at something, and needed to develop more expertise. We’ve talked about how no one becomes highly skilled quickly and that seeing someone really good at something means at one point they were not that good at doing it (i.e. they were bad at it when you weren’t watching). John wishes he had understood this earlier in life and that he had built more skills earlier which would help him later.

• Nick

  • This is exactly why Nick continues to tell K it doesn’t matter if something is good or not but to keep doing it.

• K

  • The perception of being good at something goes back to the reputation you want to sustain for yourself.
  • When you’re in school and someone says you’re good at something to begin to think “if people say I am, I must be.”
  • “I think at my age you’re still trying to figure out what you want to do and who you want to be. You could be anybody. You just have to work for that.” – K
  • K thinks the reputation is a form of validation for yourself. If people expect you to be a certain way, you might think you have to be that way because you don’t know any different / better.

• John

  • John says he was addicted to that validation, and it kept him from doing a lot of things he should have done to build skills.
  • The validation and reputation can be a trap. John says you might need an academic reputation in high school to help with letters of recommendation, etc. But you don’t really need to care about a skills reputation.

• K

  • In the end K thinks the (skills) reputation doesn’t really do anything, which is important to learn while still in school. You can be addicted to knowing you’re good at something because people say you are.
  • When you realize something like this is a trap, you might realize you could do other things. But feeding into the idea that people are saying you are good at something else might keep you from actually doing something else.

• Nick

  • Nick says you can run into a situation where you’re not good at something and not know how to handle it. He learned this lesson the hard way.

• John

  • John still remembers failing his first math class, and it happened in an area where he thought he was really good. It’s humbling to not be good at something.
  • Being good in an area successive times doesn’t mean you will be good at every possible thing in that area.

• In Closing

  • We each enjoyed and learned a ton from the conversation. John can’t wait to have this conversation with his daughter once she is K’s age.

• Mentioned in the outro

  • K made a list of questions for Nick and John, but they asked her a number of questions on the spot. Kudos to her for being willing to answer off the cuff.
  • Maybe we as parents need to be more self-aware of how present we are when we are not at work and share when we’re struggling with something more often. Call out the times when you are not as present as you want to be but that you are trying. This may be something we have to learn to do.
    • If we can model this kind of behavior for our kids, perhaps they will start to exhibit the same, and perhaps they will understand as they get older there may be something going on below the surface when someone appears to be having an off day.
  • It was tough to thoughtfully answer the “if you could change one thing about your career” question. Nick says it was hard to answer K’s questions in general at times because you want to have an answer and don’t want to sound like a dummy.

Contact us if you need help on the journey, and be sure to check out the Nerd Journey Podcast Knowledge Graph.