Episode 5: "The reality of life kicking in" (The Encouragement Engineer)

I’ve written probably 2,400 blog posts on my main site since about October 2013. I did the average per day on that once, and it’s something like 1.7 per day. In short, I have blogged a lot. Once in a while people ask me what my favorite-ever post is, and I mean, it’s hard to choose because I barely remember everything I’ve written on here. But … I think in 2016, I wrote a post called “New product features? How about new people features.” The idea is that workplaces become obsessed with product launches and rollouts, and those are obviously really important to the business -- but every day, people go through stuff too. They get married, they get divorced. They raise kids, they (hopefully not) lose kids. Their parents age. Friendships change. They fight with their spouse. They reconcile with their spouse. All this stuff happens to us day in and day out and it changes our connection back to the work we do every day.

That’s a big theme of this discussion with Bob Brumm, who brands himself as an Encouragement Engineer. The origin story of that term is within the episode. He’s a professional speaker and coach focusing on a positivity mindset and helping people get through different challenges. I figured he’d be a good guest because the focus of this podcast is on the Second Act of Life, about 25 to 50, and a lot of different, very impactful stuff happens to people in that age range. Turns out my guess was right -- this is a relatively short episode of maybe 24-25 minutes, but we cover a lot of themes, including work-life balance, work-life integration, “the reality of life kicking in,” being human at work, whether “purpose” is a buzzword, and more. Let’s get to it.