Plus One Podcast Episode 2 Jacob Eisenberg

Hi there, and welcome to the +1 Podcast. My name's Joe Houghton, and today I'm thrilled to welcome a colleague of mine from University College Dublin, the Smurfit Graduate School of Business, Dr. Jacob Eisenberg.

Hi, Joe.

Jacob was on my very first draft list when I, when I started the +1 Project. He has a doctorate in psychology Psychology from Colorado State. He speaks English, Russian, and Hebrew, although I'm hoping he's going to speak English today because my Russian and Hebrew are non-existent. Jacob is a deep thinker with a serious sense of fun. He teaches at UCD, he does some coaching, and he's an associate professor at the Smurfit School of Business. I send out a pre-interview questionnaire, and I was not surprised to find that Jacob had ignored most of my questions in that pre-interview questionnaire. So I'm not sure where today is going to go. We probably won't have the structure that we might have on some of the other chats, but it's going to be interesting either way. So welcome to the podcast, Jacob.

Hello, Joe. Guilty as charged. I, I like that, uh, that intro. I really like that. Yeah, um, I, I got a bit of a, a reaction. I noticed internally when you said serious, that you, you mentioned the word serious. Um, but, um, yeah, seriously found something, but then it got rebalanced. Uh, so it's just interesting for me how I'm reacting to the word serious. And I think Alan Watts really put it— Alan Watts, who's been a very completely out-of-bounds and framework thinker, philosopher, integrating Eastern philosophy in the '60s and early '70s into kind of Western Western public. He's an absolutely brilliant chap and he said we are using the word serious often wrongly when we should, or when we mean earnest.

Ah.

And that really set it right because for me I realized why I had that resistance to serious because it's like in church, you're serious. In funerals, you're serious. And it has— there are places where we should be serious. It has a weight to it. But it wasn't the weight I wanted in most of my context, right? But then he said earnest, which had the intensity. And it's like, you know, seriously playing football. Well, what are you playing like, you know, with a serious— No, you're playing it earnestly. You're fully in. So that's just kind of something to share.

That's an interesting thing to pick up straight from the get-go, isn't it? The serious and earnest thing. Because I suppose as I've got to know you a little bit better over the last few years, I think of you as somebody who is earnest, who has a care about what they do and what they say and how they do and say what, you know, what you do. Yeah, that's really interesting. I was looking up one of your talks on your LinkedIn profile yesterday, and I think you mentioned in that talk that enjoyment and challenge are both okay. It's kind of like you seem happy with discomfort, Talk to that, because that seems to be something that informs you, doesn't it? This kind of thing about being uncomfortable and embracing it.

You are good, you are good. That is, I think, something that is core. I will change a little bit. I don't think I'm enjoying discomfort, I'm enjoying challenges. And there has been an evolution in me because I think it's part of my Soviet-Israeli upbringing that, you know, like, good medicine should be bitter. And, you know, when they started with the iodine that didn't sting, it's like, is it really working? And so those 2 cultural influences, you know, they made me not enjoy but be able to be resilient with discomfort and challenge. But that has changed over the years and I'm actually not at my peak of looking for challenges.

Okay.

I'm much more discerning now than I was 10 years ago and that's part of it was learning to say no some challenges. So that has kind of my wisening up, but there is something in me that wishes for stretch, wishes for challenge. So I enjoy when I'm able not to be bothered by discomfort, when it doesn't kill my energy, when, you know, and actually something completely not to do with teaching, but very to do with Ireland and very to do with me getting to know Ireland, and it's hiking. And I've always liked to hike, but I wouldn't have hiked in pouring rain until a few years ago because, you know, why do it? It's suffering, it's miserable. And then through this group that was the motto was, there is no such thing bad weather, there is only bad clothes.

Hmm.

And I got into high, you know, Saturday morning getting up earlier than I would have naturally got up after a work week and seeing that it's going to rain and still going out driving and hiking. And it's not like I preferred the miserable weather, I did not, but I enjoyed the fact that I could find enjoyment within discomfort.

Yeah, and I mean, I suppose as a photographer myself, kind of going out and doing landscape photography, I mean, if I get up and it's raining or it's going to rain, that doesn't stop me going out because there's a different experience to be had, isn't there, on a rainy day or on a misty day or on a wet day than there is on a dry day. And embracing those differences can be can be very fulfilling. Like you say, if you've got the right gear. It's not much fun being out in the rain if you're cold and miserable.

No. Yeah.

Okay. So you mentioned Russia and Israel, and you were— you got your doctorate in the USA, and now you're in Ireland. So you're a bit of a rolling stone. You seem to have kind of been everywhere. How does that contribute to Jacob Eisenberg in 2021?

I prefer the very non-politically correct term cultural gypsy. Yeah, so I said Soviet, by the way, I didn't say Russia. Although my first culture and first language, which I speak really badly now, is Russian. But, you know, my dad is from Belarus, my mother is from Latvia, I was born in Latvia, but I don't really have Latvian culture. So it was Soviet upbringing with a Russian culture, and especially from my dad, who was really passionate about Russia.

I mean, I feel so ignorant asking this question, but there's obviously a difference there between Soviet and Russian. Well, Soviet For me, I think of those 2 as the same thing. Explain what—

99.9% of the people do, and I sometimes interchange. Russia goes much deeper and back historically than Soviet. Soviet is when the communist regime started, USSR, the Soviet Union, and Russia was the dominant— so the Soviet Union included, I can't remember numbers, but more than 30 republics from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in deep Asia and Mongolia to Ukraine and Moldova and Russia, and then the Baltic States, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania in the European end. And so the Soviet would be kind of really trans-Russia, going beyond Russia. And there was— and of course the Soviet experience was different in Kazakhstan than in Moscow, but there was something permeating. So I would use differently the terms. And when I talk about, uh, some authors of music, I would often say Russian because they were more Russian than Soviet. And then— but there's something about the Soviet toughness that is not just Russian, that it would apply to Ukraine and Latvia, etc. Obviously, Second World War, it was a Soviet war, not just Russian war, etc.

Okay, right. So is there much of the Latvian and Belarusian heritage in you? Are you informed by that? Or are you westernized more?

Well, yeah, I'm really a mix because I was 6 and a half when my parents moved from the Soviet Union to Israel. And so the kind of the floor is Russian culture, Russian Soviet culture, but I think it's more in the last 15 years that I've actually been acknowledging how it affected me because there was— or more 20-something years— because when we moved to Israel and there was very few immigrants at the time, the first priority was to adapt to the Israeli culture, which meant definitely putting all the Soviet clothes both physically and metaphorically deep in the closet. So definitely Israel was my most formative culture. At the same time, I left in '93, and I left for 9 months on a scholarship exchange fellowship to York University in Toronto, Canada. And those 9 months ended up being 3 years. And so it was an exchange scholarship. I was going to go back to Israel and finish my master's there. But I think I responded to life and ended up staying 3 years in Toronto, did my master's there, and then went to Colorado for my PhD. Am I westernized? It depends which part of me you scratch, you know, how hard you scratch.

Yeah, yeah. And you studied For both those degrees, psychology?

All my degrees, all my 3 degrees in psychology.

You don't teach psychology, well, you may teach psychology now, but you're not teaching psychology as a subject head, are you?

Yeah, that was a big, that was one of the major dilemmas, and I had one of the most idiotically broad job searches at the end of my PhD. It is, I mean, really idiotic. And I applied to more than 100 universities, my poor PhD committee. And partially it was because I was clueless and partially because I was open. So I was open geographically.

Yes.

To, you know, I wanted to stay in the US, but I also thought of Canada. There were a couple of opportunities in Israel I explored, and then Europe, and then Australia as well. So I was both open and curious about multiple places, and then I applied into 3 different areas: social psychology, industrial organizational psychology, and organizational behavior in business schools. So Yeah, I honestly had really— I think I'm saying it for the first time publicly— I had quite a stigma about business schools. It was, if you looked at me mid-PhD, even towards the end of PhD, so I had what they call a Jewfro, really long hair, quite hippie looking. Yeah, exactly. And just, but more Like yours in length, but more 3D, like all over. And, you know, I would go with torn jeans. The idea of walking in a business school was so foreign to me, but bless my wise, open-minded supervisor Keith, who knew me well enough, and he said, look— He was very non-conforming. individual. So when he said don't discount business school, I took it seriously. And what happened, what happened, I went to the Academy of Management conference. I was the only one there actually from my school. And there was a test kind of, and it was scary. It was, you know, didn't know anyone. But I found that intellectually I was burning like fire because the things that interested me then research-wise, creativity and cross-cultural issues, they were really addressed more in the Academy of Management than in the IO conference that I also went in, Industrial Organizational Psychology. So, and I met people who were actually— so I met management academics who, they didn't have ties, and I could sit and talk to them. And, you know, my whole process of stereotyping started breaking down, and the next year I looked again and I applied for a few jobs, and I had offers from different universities, but then I ended up, yeah, saying I can see myself in a business school, yeah.

And I mean, so from the academic perspective, I mean, you were on kind of a number of committees, mostly with the Med Division. Tell us about Med. Why MED, and what drew you to MED, and why did you spend so long there?

MED about MED. So MED is one, it's kind of mid-sized division within the Academy of Management, and it's about management education and development. So it's the division that is interested in scholarship, which includes both research and teaching, and then, you know, anything else like consulting, training, to do with the educational aspect of management.

Okay.

It started fairly like a lot of my things in life started serendipitously, or at least it became serendipitous But it started incidentally. My first full-time job after finishing my PhD and before coming to Ireland, first full-time job as an academic, I don't know if you noticed that one, was in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Yeah.

The Greek side. And it was a kind of like a Greek INSEAD type of private nonprofit educational college, very small, very good, all in English. Unfortunately, I didn't learn any, almost any Greek there, and we taught just in the— so there was only master's degrees there.

Okay.

And during that period, Elena Antonakopoulou, who's from a Greek Cypriot background, and she was at the time the chair of the MEd division. She's a very remarkable, lovely lady as a person, but beyond that, a remarkable scholar in management learning with career that was mostly in the UK. And I don't know how we got connected, and she visited the Institute and we had a chat, and she said, we're having— I'm instituting this kind of country liaisons and we don't have anybody for Cyprus, which wasn't surprising, it's a small place. And would you be interested in being country liaison for men? I said, sure, yeah, I'm kind of— that was, I think, 2002. And, uh, so started there, then I really got into it. And then the more I was in the academy and in the MED, the men's division, I saw the convergence between my interests in management education and the division. So I did some role and then I said, well, I'm curious. It was mostly American at that stage and part of my agenda within the Academy of Management Leadership was also to bring more foreign talent or international influence. And then, yeah, I signed up going for for the role and ended up being a 6— typically it's 5 years, uh, for various reasons it ended up being a 6-year cycle where the 2 most significant years were working on the program, on the whole conference program, and then becoming the division chair.

I remember we were talking a month or 2 back and you, you said that your, your focus perhaps in recent years has shifted perhaps away from academia And more into slightly different areas. Do you think that academia and med, for instance, has anything real to offer coalface teaching and education, you know, at the sharp end with students in front of you or, you know, kind of working with you?

Yeah, yeah. So I'm not sure which of our conversations you're referring to, but I think 2 things have been happening. One is my shift within academia. So, so the balance of energy where I invested within academia has changed. And at the same time, I find that I'm trying to have an impact on those areas where academia, or where my academic background meets The external world. There are, yeah, definitely. I mean, the— is a very practice-oriented division.

Right.

Now, I will not say that every paper that is presented has a direct influence or potential to inform teaching, but there is a high conversion rate. So in terms of checking, examining the validity and impact of using various methods of teaching, such as digital. So looking at various methods of experiential learning. So this is a good opportunity to bring something that has been core for me, I think implicitly since I started teaching, explicitly in the last 10 years— evidence-based management.

Okay.

So for me, where MAD is great is that if I want to know, as a management educator, I'm curious of trying new method and I wonder if it works for this population and I want to see, well, what evidence do we have with using teams in a certain assessment or with using certain exercises, the research that MAD curates, and of course there is also look, it exists also in other divisions, not just— M&E is just more focused on education-related research. I can go and I can see what has been done, and that would inform my teaching. The last part is there are 2 parts of the, of the program in Academy. So it starts on Friday, and it's a huge— for those of you who don't know, it's over 20,000 staff, academics, faculty, and students, and some executives. About 5% are non-academics who come for about 4 and a half days and descend on a big city in North America. So it starts on Friday, and Friday until Sunday are PDWs, professional development workshops. And then Monday, Tuesday, and then sometimes— yeah, but Monday, Tuesday are the academic papers. And those 2 parts are quite different.

Okay.

The professional development workshop, indicative of how my focus changed as a young— well, not young, but early, not young in age, but early stage PhD or midway my PhD was with Per Sepp. I swallowed mostly the academic sessions, all the people I admired, all the writing. So, and that, that was going on for quite a few years. Into my assistant professorship. And then I started going more and more to the PDWs and relatively less to the academic papers because the academic papers are— I could just grab a journal and read. I don't gain that much extra experience by listening. You do, it's a different experience, but it's not as big. The professional workshops were mostly interactive. I came, I learned skills, even if there was something very dry like statistics, it was hands-on and there was discussion. So the MAD PDWs, when I was involved, that was one of my foci, and we actually had the most PDWs per member than any other division. So that was a very big influence on the practice of education because There was the workshops where people would come and actually learn how to use, you know, in today's terms, how to use breakout rooms, right? Or how to teach multicultural teams how to use exercises. I got some awesome exercises from those PDWs as well. So the conversion there was very direct.

Okay. movement is towards practice rather than pure academic focus. And I guess, I mean, one of the things that we have in common over the last couple of years is this link with the Innovation Academy. I think you did the diploma the year before I did, and that's where this podcast's come out of, you know, the fellowships that we both landed this year with the Innovation Academy. Is that part of this journey into practice, the Innovation Academy and your creative problem-solving module? Talk to us about the last couple of years then and where you're at now as an educator.

I think so. I think so. So what's been happening is I have been defocusing and refocusing. Yeah, I don't know if it's—

Well, I can work with that. Yeah, as a photographer, work with that.

The words came up and then I realized how they are connected to your serious hobby, earnest hobby. And yeah, it's maybe unconsciously I'm affected. Yeah. But what I'm— but I use this term a lot when I talk about our cognitive function. With research and publications, the focus is very much on that. When I defocused from that, when I moved a bit away, when I removed some of my energy away from the almost singular focus on— and it was, you know, I was always into teaching, so it was never only research, but I removed some of my awareness and attention, I would say attention, from the publication research aspect. It started going into different directions and mostly into teaching. But yeah, this is why I then, I started allowing myself to do things that wouldn't translate directly into career progress.

Ah, that's interesting.

Yeah. And it's, uh, I'm having an interesting feeling saying that because what was responsible for the refocusing is a discomfort that the way I want to live life had a certain gap from how I was in my work.

Okay, so why was your work not giving you what you needed or wanted then?

So there are 2 issues. One is my obsession with impact, and the other one has to do, I guess, with me following for many years certain East Asian philosophies and practices, mainly Buddhism, and then some aspect of Hindu non-duality practices and Taoism. And I'm not a Taoist, another— so I wouldn't label, but I have been taking in a lot of those wisdoms. And interestingly for me, they converge amazingly well the newest neurocognitive research as well. Yeah, but I won't go— that's an area I like, but I won't go into it. Yeah, but there was a desire. So, so there was a combination of desire to have a positive impact on the world outside me, and I have on the one hand, and, and then another aspect, it was not to do things just to promote myself.

Yeah. Okay.

So to have— it's not that I became angelically altruistic, but there was a certain need to change the plan, to change the mix. And wonderfully, academia allows many of us to do that, and I'm hugely grateful that I can shift gears, that I can change games. And I had to be honest with myself that I did not feel that publishing article journals had the impact that I desired on the broader sphere of life.

Okay.

So if you look at the last 10 years, a lot of the things I've been doing— so a project I've been involved in the last couple of weeks in a different certain online community had to do with right livelihood, and I can tell you later beyond that or hear what it was about. But so I created a space, actually a Zoom meeting on Friday that brought 24 people from different parts of the world who for an hour and a half talked about what is right livelihood for them.

Explain what does right for me— for you, what right livelihood means.

So right livelihood, the term is from a Buddhist writing, and it's one of the 8 principles. So there is— and it's, it's applicable for— it's not— you don't have to be a Buddhist. So it's applicable for anyone who wants to live a good life.

Ah, okay.

A good life, as in right life. You would have some parallels in Greek philosophy that may be closer to you in that— Stoicism, most of all.

Yeah.

So you have a few principles, right speech. So, you know, don't curse, don't gossip, right action, try not to kill people too often and such. And one of the 8 elements on the path to self-development or refinement is right livelihood. And you'll see different definitions, but for me it means to be aware of what is the impact what you do on the world. And secondly, for me, what it means to take responsibility— so the second thing is to observe, is there a contradiction between what I do at work for my livelihood— work, job, career, whatever, uh, and it's also volunteer work, like it doesn't have to be paid, but for most of us— so what do I do in my work life, how does it correspond to my core values and principles of And the third is the call for action, is to take responsibility. Then if I identified a gap, not necessarily to eliminate it in a day, but to do something about it.

About it, yeah. And I mean, that's what the plus one is for, plus in, in the podcast, isn't it? Just making some change. One thing you— I see you, you're involved in is, is UCD volunteers overseas. Yeah, that's perfect.

Yeah, that's very nice. You're a great interviewer. That, uh, fits in very well. And then actually, it's been taking more time than I expected because those do, don't they, these things? Ah, and it was perfect. I was looking for a couple of years to be on the board of an organization, both because I wanted that experience— was one of few experiences I haven't had, being a trustee or a board member but also to contribute from my skills and what I bought professionally and how I developed as a person to a cause that I believe in. And I really got to like the VO in the last— just known them for about 5, 6 years from events. They organized events. I've never been with them overseas. It's mostly for students, but I went to some of their events and I really liked what they do. do. And I offered a couple of times, uh, because I teach cross-cultural management, so I offered a few times, if you want, I can come and, you know, do some part of training for your volunteers overseas. And then last year I was invited to— well, I had a conversation with the manager and she was curious. She saw me in a few of the events, a few of the films, and she was wondering if I would like to run for the board? Because there's a few new members elected every year. And I said, yes, I would like to. I put myself forward, I was elected or voted in. And yeah, the element I didn't expect is to end up very soon in a committee that I don't have the skills fully for, and then gently but firmly Being invited to be the chair of that committee, so it was kind of like yeah, and a bit of an avalanche. But it feels good to do. So it's fundraising and marketing. So I'm learning about fundraising now and trying to to create strategy for the to help the organization create strategy around it. But yeah, the UCDVO, UCD Volunteers Overseas. It's mostly students who go to disadvantaged, economically disadvantaged places. The 2 areas that mostly we work with are India and a couple of countries in Africa and contributing something. Yeah. And for me, that's exactly that, you know, that combines the experiential learning aspect.

Yes.

that combines the international cultural aspect.

Yes.

And that is, I think, transformative. So I think I put developmental last night as my second word when you asked as an educator, and actually I would put transformative is the one I was looking for.

Right.

So, so not the developmental didn't quite sit with me, but it was late. So transformative is something that very much echoes with how I want to be as an educator.

Yeah, I think you've got a few lines on your LinkedIn profile, and I think it's from there. If it's not, it's from one of your talks, but you said, pushing my own limits and modeling this to students to encourage them to dare more and relax the fear of making an error or being embarrassed. And it seems like, you know, that, like, finance committee or that fundraising committee rather, that's putting you in that space, isn't it? So there may be stories to tell from that later.

That too, when you mentioned creative problem solving, that was— I wrote those lines on my LinkedIn. I added them about a year ago. It's fairly recent, and that was following my experiences with developing the creative problem solving, but, and it also connects to Innovation Academy. So I went to Innovation Academy to have fun first.

Okay.

And to have, you know, serious fun, but earnest fun.

Earnest fun, yeah.

I know it doesn't flow, but like to have serious fun, you can say, and to invest in something that will not translate, that to something I did not need for my career. In order to formally advance, I need publications.

Yes.

Etc. Maybe I need some good evaluations, I need this, but I became much more open for self-development and this is why I feel I can be honest with the students and say, look, the world is a big one, pursue your career, but make choices. I am hugely passionate about conveying to them the intoxicating sense of freedom that they can choose whether they want to be the next Bill Gates or at least go there, or they want a very different mix, and both are fine. I'm not, you know, I'm very much staying away from infusing my teaching with my values. The only thing is critically evaluate and do what makes sense to you deeply. So, you know, I was partially practicing that and I think on the second day of the module of the— and that was the certificate, not the diploma— I think I kind of demonstrated this out of this pushing my limits. We had a project where— I don't know if you had the same one— where we had a saying and we had to create a little video about it.

Right.

And people had to guess So I ended up playing a cat and we filmed it in the science building. And that was, that was about 3, 4 years ago when students were roaming the corridors and I had a tail and ears and I was crawling on my fours. And, uh, that was Curiosity Killed the Cat. That was ours. We got that one.

Yeah.

And, you know, ended up like lying on my back dead and, uh, it helps if you're a little bit extroverted. But with the creative problem solving, I really pushed my— it was the module that most pushed my own limits, where I introduced things like collage making. Who the hell does collage making for credit in a top graduate business school? I mean, you know, and I knew that some of the students will be skeptical. It's an elective you may know, but others, it's an elective module, so most students I did not encounter before. They came from 5 different programs. You know, those who knew me from semester 1, you know, I think there was a professional trust there, even if they were skeptical.

Yes.

But then more than half of the class I've never seen before, and I felt very honest, very authentic that I have been in experimental mode, that I've been trying things that I earnestly did not know they may completely fall flat, and that's what I wanted to model.

Okay, that's a funny place to be, isn't it, when you're an educator with a class in front of you? And I don't think I— from talking to other educators in different, if you like, levels of Whether that's primary or secondary or college or whatever. I think all of us have this fear of falling over, of kind of failing in the classroom in front of the class, but that's— how do we change our teaching if we don't do new things, if we don't try things out?

So going back to where— to one of the first things you said was about discomfort, right? So I don't enjoy stress, but I have been reformulating, and again, to a large part thanks to Buddhist psychology, implementing it. There's nothing religious about it, but they are— they They experimented in a different, not in a Western experimentation, but in a very personal way with those things over 2,000 years ago, and they learned a lot. So A, it's decoupling, decoupling your teaching from your ego. So being really serious about what you do, but not about yourself.

Yeah.

So you fail, hallelujah, you fail. It's all ego-based. It's like, oh, now I'm not that professional, perfect professional professor or lecturer that I thought I was, right? So, but I want to challenge myself in that way. So it's not that I like stress, it's not that I like failing. I don't. I would rather not. But I don't— but I want to cultivate a state of mind where it doesn't stop me from doing something that I feel I should do, just like the rain doesn't stop me from putting the gear on and going to the hills, you know.

Hills, yeah.

Just so it's not, you know, just do whatever, but be prepared, know what you're doing, and take risks. And I think leaning into discomfort— and one of my big became— and it was interesting how students remember that One of my things that I've been kind of not motto, but been saying in almost every module I teach is befriend uncertainty.

Yeah.

Befriend uncertainty. Yeah, I like it. And it's never been more useful or true than in the past year. But that's something I started saying because I said it spontaneously in one of the classes, and then when I was reading reflective essays or something, I've seen a few students bring it up. So it's like, oh yes, it's landed, and that motivated me to then mention it really systematically more and more, befriend uncertainty.

Isn't it amazing when you ask students to do reflective journals, and I do it in almost every class, you know, the stuff that comes back to you? isn't always what you think is going to come back to you. They pick up on stuff that you didn't expect them to pick up on.

I love it. It's that, honestly, I'll tell you frankly, the one part I really dislike about teaching is assessment.

Yeah.

And I, so I don't hate it anymore because I actually have a lot of freedom of how to shape it and I shape it to be meaningful learning. but I still don't like it. The one part without exception every year, every course I taught from undergrad ones to executive development that I enjoy is the reflective part. And exactly because I can never be sure what will come up because it is me in my class, but through Each time a different set of eyes.

Yes, yes. And I ask everybody in the questionnaire, and this is one of the few questions you did actually fill in, to give me their plus one. Okay, so what can we offer people listening or watching this podcast, if you like, you know, to take into their education or whatever? Now I'll tell you what you wrote and then tell me whether you want to keep it or not, or whether you want to give us something different. Your plus one was, take seriously what you teach but not yourself. Observe when you react against something and bring non-judgmental awareness to it.

Okay.

Do you want to leave that one or do you want to give us something different?

What's your— Yeah, I've— so I've mentioned the first part a few minutes ago. Yeah, I think Take— I'll expand maybe, or you can mix and you can do— you can edit it as you wish. Um, take nervousness and discomfort as information.

Okay.

Not as a signal, not as a stop sign. Take it as information. And if possible, lean into the discomfort. If it makes sense, this is using intuition in that regard.

Yes.

So lean into discomfort, lean into the tingling, and see if you can find certain enjoyment in pushing your comfort zones.

Yes.

The information is— so the information is you're doing something that you have not fully done before, therefore the nervousness about failing is higher than if you're doing something in routine, but the reward of mastering it is also higher. That is doing something you've done before, and maybe you want to do it again. There's no reason to stop. We cannot— there is— each has its own, his own balance between same and new. But I would say to not— yeah, do not see comfort or discomfort or nervousness as a stop sign saying you shouldn't go there. Rather than pause, assess, take it as information that there's something New and see if you can push it a bit more.

Yeah, fantastic. Well, that's lovely. That's super. So, I mean, last question then for you, because you didn't give me any books or podcasts that people should go and read or whatever, but I've made a note.

I'll send you a list.

So what's next for Jacob? Where's your professional or personal or teaching journey taking you over the next year or so? You've got a fellowship, for instance.

I know, I know.

With your fellowship.

Different ideas come to mind. So I would like to get more into bringing— it's kind of like going back to where I started many years ago, to psychology. And again, it's very much working with evidence-based. I want to bring more elements to do with learning into my teaching. So related to decision-making, but not in a kind of very structured, more reasoning, How— so one of the things I got interested recently in, how we can help people, students, to be more— to be critical thinkers.

Okay.

To use the reasoning, so to have a better balance between what they call intuition and logic. So basically to have more effective reasoning, and it goes beyond decision-making and the various conspiracy theories, for example. Is example of how sometimes very intelligent people put away all that intelligence when it comes to a certain area. So it has to do with becoming self-aware and reasoning. And I want to more broadly, I want to go into neurocognitive science and what's been happening there in the last 10 years. So I've been listening to several podcasts and talks that really fired me up in that area and to see how I can take that fairly basic science and implement it into teaching students how to be better learners.

Wow. Well, if you can do that, I think you'll be able to, you'll be able to come back and tell us all about that. Maybe that would be, that would be great. Yeah. And you've got to share that with everyone.

Yeah, plus one, that's me in a year.

That'd be an amazing plus one. Yeah, fantastic. Okay, well, look, we're on half past 1. We've run almost an hour, so I think we'll draw it to a close there. But thank you so much, Jacob, for taking the time today and sharing your journey and your thoughts on education and awareness and discomfort and and earnestness and everything. So that's been great. So thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Thank you for showing me how it can be fun rather than work. I think what we've done now is exactly what I'm actually talking about. It's been intensive. Like, you know, we've been looking at each other for an hour. Yeah. And I feel I've invested energy, but it's It's like a— I guess it's a difference. It's been intensive play.

Yes.

Not work. And going back to the learning, we actually learn a lot through play. We learn through work, but I think we neglect the playfulness too much these days. So what happened here was effortless dancing.

Fantastic. And we didn't even touch on dancing and improv and all the other stuff. Maybe another day.

Next year.

Okay, right. Well, we'll call it a day. Thanks, Jacob.