Nikki’s mid-year checkpoint

This episode marks the six-month milestone of ResponsABLE. Nikki hops on the mic today to reflect on her podcasting journey. She shares the evolution of ResponABLE's mission and vision and as well as her key learnings so far. 

As mentioned in the episode, learn more about Systems Theory and Actor-Network Theory in the attached links.

To learn more about ResponseABLE, check out the website www.responseable.org or follow Professor Nikki James on LinkedIn or Instagram.

ResponseABLE is produced and edited by Northeastern Alumni, Nora Shepard. For more from Nora, subscribe to Good Disaster on Substack or connect with her on LinkedIn. 

Transcript

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For the listener, I ultimately want them to be inspired, and at the same time see through all the different stories that there is really no one way or clear path to make an impact in the world. Hi guys! Welcome to the 26th episode of the Responsable Podcast. That's right, 26 episodes. That means 26 weeks, which means half a year. Woohoo! I'm so excited. It has gone so fast, yet so slow at the same time. To me, this milestone of six months is the halfway point of my initial goal, of doing the podcast for a year, but I really genuinely believe in celebrating the wins, and I think the halfway point is a serious win. In my perspective, I feel like I've been doing okay. We've had a few close calls on not having an episode ready to go, and I need to give a huge shout out to the amazing Nora Shepard. Her calmness and commitment to editing, sometimes at the very last minute, has gotten us over the line when I've been in minor meltdown mode. So thank you, Nora. I wouldn't be able to do this without you. But earlier this week, you know, even though my perspective is I'm kind of doing okay, it's going well, which is what I tend to say when people ask. But earlier this week, I was prepping for an interview with one of the guests that's coming up. And I would mention that I was already half a year in and she was blown away. And she was like, you know, but most podcasts don't get past 10 episodes. I didn't quite believe her, but I was like, oh, wow, that's cool. Afterwards, I was not convinced, so I asked Claude. And you know what? I found out that she was right. Some of the things I learned from Claude that I'm just going to share with you because I thought they were entertaining and a little bit concerning as well, let's be real. By industry definition, which is a release within the past 90 days, only, about 350,000 to 400,000 podcasts are truly active, which is about eight or 9% of the podcasts that exist in the world. So, I mean, that's a good statistic. But what they also say is 47% of podcasts stop after three or fewer episodes, and almost half quit nearly as soon as they begin. And then the ones that continue, most never reach 10 episodes. And one study that Claude found me said that only 8% of podcasts have published 10 or more episodes. So this celebration isn't just about 26 weeks, half a year. It's also top 8%, of podcasts, which is super exciting. But then I found out to hit 20 episodes, effectively put you in the top 1% of podcasts. Now, this is Claude telling me this, and I know Claude likes to butter us up, so I'm going to take that with a grain of salt. Not necessarily wanting to feel like I'm in the top 1%, but I mean, I'll take top 8. That's super exciting. One of the things that we all know that Claude and other large language models like to do is give us some positive reinforcement at the end. Wow, that was such a fabulous question. What do you want to do next? Or whatever. But the closing line that jumped out of me the most, thanks, Claude, was consistency, not virality, is what does the sorting. So essentially, staying in the game and consistently posting is what's actually going to get you the win. Apparently, it takes about two years for that consistency to start paying off. Right so I think one of the things that is a challenge for us is today we want everything super quickly, like I thought I was doing okay right because I was like oh maybe I need more listeners maybe I need this or that or whatever but the reality is, when I stop and think about it over the longer term it's actually going really well and it's something worthy of celebration something that I'm not so great at that I'm learning how to do. I think this consistency, not virality thing and the consistency, not virality is what does the sorting. This really struck me as a good motivation for our efforts for whatever it is that we want to achieve. Virality is more about a 15 minutes of fame or these days, 15 seconds, but consistency is kind of like compound interest and it builds over time. So the starting is hard for sure if you're building for something consistent that you want to grow over the long term but I think the consistency is actually the harder thing to keep at it, it requires grit determination belief in yourself or a willingness to keep going even when you're having days when you don't believe in yourself and sometimes it's even in spite of the data or despite the data, right? Because I think I'm a little bit of a data junkie. I have a whoop. I love my whoop. I'm consistently checking my data and I want all those little arrows to be green and going upwards. The reality is if I kept doing that and only ever wanted those arrows to be green and going upwards, I'd just be increasing my training every single day and increasing my sleep every single day. And it's not the increase that's great. It's actually the consistency that gives us the win over the long term. I think for me what i've realized through this and this little fabulous note from claude is, that we do have to do it despite the data as i said because i think the data that you are hoping for right and the data that's going to encourage you. Probably going to come after the consistency, not before, and definitely not while you're building it. There's some cool data points, of course. I mean, for me, there's a map. I publish this episode, my episodes every week on Buzzsprout, and then it gets distributed to a whole bunch of the platforms that you guys listen to. And Buzzsprout has this really cool map where it shows you where people are listening from. And one of the things that I think is amazing is that there's people downloading episodes from every single continent in the world. I really do genuinely see myself as a global citizen. My heritage is in England with all of my ancestors that traveled to Australia at different points over history, culturally, and my citizenship is Australian. And I'm really proud of that. That's where I was born and where I was raised. I have the amazing good fortune of living in the United States of America and I just love that I get to do that my adopted home and then two months of the year I get to spend in South Africa and I love my friends and family and the community that I've built here so I truly believe I'm a global citizen and I love that there's people listening from all over the world even continents that I haven't been to yet South America hello I'm gonna get there I promise. So the data is exciting but it's not everything uh it can give you that little dopamine hit for sure uh and my adhd, brain definitely needs those dopamine hits every now and then but that learning to keep going even when the data isn't lining up or even when the data isn't giving you those dopamine hits that consistency that grit that determination, in the short term is what's going to give us the win for a long term. And I think no matter what we do, no matter what our passion is, no matter what it is that we want to do with our lives, I think that is, A really valuable lesson that has come out of this podcast for me and why I'm sharing it with you today. And then one of the other things that comes up a lot when I am talking about the podcast or interviewing guests or, you know, just generally moving about the world and people find out that I do a podcast is I often get the question why I started. it. I've been asked that question quite a lot, which is great. I am always excited to talk about it and everything, but the reality is in my gut, I know why I started it. And there are many, many, many conflating reasons why, but I'm not so great at explaining it. As a specific objective or goal, I'm more kind of telling a story that brings an essence, which is the way that I communicate. But I'm going to try today to explain it in a little bit more detail because I think the why has also changed and evolved even since I started it. The why I do it now and the why I keep persisting is actually different to the reasons a little bit why I started. So there are actually many whys and I know I'm going to get, in trouble from some people for saying that but there's many reasons there's many objectives that all kind of like mesh together, and each why is or each objective is for a different actor in the ecosystem so all my students and most of my friends because I'm a big nerd and I talk about it all the time know that I'm a systems theory and systems thinking fiend. I love it. It's the way my brain thinks, which I really, really love, but it also is very hard for me to say a black and white answer to any question as a result, because it's like, well, it depends. Or, oh, it's this and this and this, it's not just one thing. So I see this podcast and the reason or the objective of the podcast as a complex system, right? So the podcast is a complex system with complex actors and it's an activity system. So all of those actors are kind of moving around each other as they act and react in the ecosystem or in the system together. So in this particular system, I always believe with systems that everyone, if everyone puts something in and everyone gets something out, it makes the activity system or a sustainable system that fuels itself without having to, add additional fuel or to have one person in the system feeling used or feeling like they're putting in more effort. So it's a fine balance. This all makes perfect sense to me, but it often leaves a lot of people I attempt to explain it to more confused than when I started. So if you are really confused right now, I am going to put a link to a video about systems theory, in the show notes because there are some amazing people out there that can explain really complex things really simply and much better than me. So I will put it down there if you need it. So for me, I wish I had a primary objective or a one single thing that I'm building this for. But the reality is, is that's just not true. And if I was to say that, I would be being dishonest to myself and who I am and the way that I think and what I really believe that I'm trying to do here. So if you bear with me, I'm going to give you the why or the objectives behind the Responsible podcast and why I personally have started and continue to grow this podcast. And it's for lots of different reasons. So the objective of the podcast for me, from what I get out of it, it's because it's something I was afraid of. To put myself out there and my stories out there into the world for anyone in the world to listen to was really, really scary. I'm quite an introverted person so, it's not a natural thing for me to like just be open and share my stories with everybody or anyone um and not and also to lose control of my stories because once they get out there who knows. So I wanted to do it for that reason. I was scared of it and I wanted to overcome that fear. I still have that moment. I'm not there yet. I still have that moment every time I post an episode or a social media post about an episode where I doubt myself and convince myself that no one will listen or something terrible will happen or someone will, kind of misconstrue what I say or whatever. But I post anyway. And I hope one day that doubt goes away I really do hope that doubt goes away but right now like I'm willing to settle for that muscle, um that overcomes the doubt to get stronger and unfortunately my trainer, says muscles only get stronger with reps so hopefully as I keep doing it uh if I do another episode like this at the one-year celebration point, I hope that I can say that that doubt is not there. But probably what I hope more than that is that I can still say that the doubt is there, but I'm doing it anyway. For me, when it comes to the guests, and this is still for me and what I get out of the podcast, it's because I love hanging out with the people I love. I'm a quality time person. I don't care what we do. We can be sitting on the couch. We can be going for a run. We can be studying side by side. We can be eating amazing food. We can be eating crackers or bread with butter on it. It's all about hanging out with the people that I love and spending time with the people that I love. I know that at some point I may start interviewing people I don't know on the podcast, but for For this year, at least, I'd made the commitment to interview people I know and story, like share the stories of people I know. And because of this podcast, I've honestly gotten to catch up with so many amazing humans from my past and present, and it's been so fulfilling. And it's not just the catch up when the mics are on, but it's in the lead up and in the aftermath. That are some of my favorite times that I've had this year. And my life has been enriched beyond measure as a result of catching up with people and sitting down and having conversations with them. Because as I said, I'm a quality time person. And I love to spend time with people. I love to dig into fascinating conversations. To me, it doesn't really matter what the conversation is about. We can be debating why Steve Jobs was successful the next time when he returned to Apple and what the cause of that is, or getting to know, each other in a deep and meaningful conversation. For me, it doesn't matter. It's about getting to know the person I'm with, what makes them tick, what they care about, what their perspective is. And I love that I get to make them feel seen and heard in every conversation and exchange. A few of my favorite conversations that I've had this year when the mics were off was sitting with one of my friends and her husband after we'd just finished the podcast and their housemate as well. And we got onto the topic of talking about our similarities and differences between our specific ADHD tics. So in that conversation of four of us, three of us have ADHD. I see ADHD for myself personally as a bit of a superpower it definitely presents its challenges. But I've managed to work out how to use it for its strengths and be aware of the times where it is debilitating and knowing how I need to be kind to myself in those processes I'm still learning but, I really do believe it's a superpower and it's totally supported and enabled me to get where I am today. So anyhow, some of those funny tics we were talking about is one of the people has the inability to clean a room. I find this super fascinating because I can clean a room with the best of them. But for me, I feel like the world is ending if someone changes a plan at the last minute. My brain literally feels like the world is ending. I know cognitively and I can talk myself down and I can say that it's not. But that's just how my brain responds so we were having a pretty serious conversation, we also laughed a lot but most of all I really feel like we all felt seen and accepted as our unique selves with, all of our little weird tweaks and quirks a lot as well which was really powerful, I also got to catch up with another friend that I used to work with probably about a decade ago now. I got to meet his children, and I got to watch him be such an amazing father and own a home and support his wife and all of those things that I just, where we were in our 20s, I just never would have imagined that I would have been sitting there experiencing what I was experiencing. I got to catch up with a bunch of my former students and hear about all the amazing things they're doing with their lives in terms of work and the goals that they have and the cities that they're living in. And it's just been amazingly inspiring and to have so many fascinating and enriching and amazing conversations with people. I've loved every single minute of it. And then for the guests, for them, because that, as I said, was still about me, I want to be able to share their stories. I feel like it's so powerful to be able to help another human. And I think I genuinely believe that it is more blessed to give than receive. And I feel like sometimes we're scared. I mean, that's definitely true for me. I love helping people, but I also don't want to be overwhelming for people. And I think we all maybe feel that way a little. So I just love that I get to sit down and have a conversation with an amazing human that I call friend, and I get to share their amazing story and their wisdom and their encouragement and their challenges with all the people listening, and they in a way get to use their story in their life to encourage and support others that they may not never ever meet, but other people that are going to resonate with their stories that is the why for me for the guests and then for the listener Yeah. I ultimately want them to be inspired, and at the same time see through all the different stories that there is really no one way or clear path to make an impact in the world. There really isn't. If you think back to, if you've been listening for a while, think back to all the different stories. Some people start making an impact right out of the gate after university, kind of like me. Others do it later on in life, like Natasha and Ian that we heard from last week. Some people go into the corporate sector. Some people become lawyers and believe they can make an impact there. Some people end up in politics and have the desire to make an impact there. And some people might go into a job with the intention or a pathway with the intention of making an impact, get a little bit lost along the way. And get caught up in the success of it all and then come back to it and have a revelation that they do want to make an impact and they do want to make that right turn and walk back to that path of impact. And whatever it is, however our stories unfold, they're all different and they're all okay. And we're all on a journey and it takes time to work it out how we want to make an impact in the world. All we can do is respond to each moment and each opportunity as best we can. Course correct when we realize we've gone astray. And at the same time, invest in our ability, our abilities, our knowledge, our skills and our resources so that the ability to respond we have tomorrow is greater than the ability that we have today. And I believe that with my whole heart. I know that that seems quite simple and it's much more complicated and complex when we overlay each of our unique lives and circumstances to it, but I truly believe that when we peel it all back, that's the reality of it. And that's why this podcast is called Responsable. A secondary objective, a phrase right there that I'm 90% sure that I will get into a debate about for the listener is for them to pick up some hard-end wisdom, that's learned by others along the way. At the end of most podcasts, unless I forget, I ask what's one piece of advice you would tell your 20-year-old self? And we've heard some amazing advice and some amazing wisdom come through the amazing stories and the vulnerability that all the guests have brought to the table each and every week. And I hope that the reason that you are still listening is because you're learning from their stories and you're receiving things that you see you can apply to your own life. To me, all that fits together perfectly. And when I'm sitting down to do a podcast, I'm not thinking of one of those things. I'm thinking of holding the tension between all of them as best I can. It's not perfect, but that has been my goal. While outworking all of this, I've learned a few unexpected things along the way. Firstly, I've learned that humans are my favorite animal. People really are amazing and have amazing stories and wisdom to share regardless of how old they are or how much experience they think they have. I feel like I knew that subconsciously before, but as I've sat down to interview person after person, and then reflected on each interview, I've been reminded over and over and over again how truly amazing humans are and specifically how truly amazing the humans in my world are. I've learned that a conversation is probably my favorite hobby. It's not something you would tend to say is a hobby, but I genuinely love the co-creation of knowledge and wisdom that happens when you sit down with someone or with a group of people for a chat about life, about the journey, and just about anything really. And finally, on a little bit more of a practical note, I've learned a lot of technical skills that I never thought I would actually learn, but I'm grateful that I now know. You have to be learning every day, right? It's been an adventure so far. I genuinely can't wait to see what the next six months bring. And before I sign off on this six-month celebration, it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge all the people that make this possible. Firstly, to you guys for listening. But not just for listening for texting me and telling me what you learned or enjoyed about an episode or for picking up the phone and telling me that you're listening right now and you're just excited to share it with me. For sharing with your friends and also for giving me feedback to help me make it better for sharing suggestions of who I should interview all of those things it really does feel like a community effort and I'm so so grateful for all of you, and to all the people who have joined me and shared their stories and wisdom so far thank you i have learned from you and i've heard that people listening have learned from you as well, beyond that i've also really enjoyed reconnecting with you all and hearing what you've been up to since we last worked together or did life together. And then to those who have just jumped on board and offered their help and technical expertise any way they can. To Mark for the sound tech lessons during one of my earlier interviews. Hopefully you guys have heard the interviews improve as they go on. Thank you, Mark, for that. Yalisa for your amazing photography skills and Jesse for your amazing design skills. All of these guys have really helped me out along the way. And you'll see some of your Lisa and Jessie's work coming soon. So stay tuned. And then the final, final thank you to Nora Shepard. Nora lovingly edits each conversation into an episode that you listen to every week. I really could not do this without her. So thank you, Nora, for that. And so that's it. Six months in I'm excited I feel like I should be doing a happy dance but I'll let you do that for me on your behalf so pick your favourite song and go for it, we'll be back next week with another conversation with my amazing friend and colleague Simna Tempa.