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058: Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer Part II: On Opportunity Awareness + Work Life Blending
This episode continues the conversation with Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer. Just to recap to those brand new to Simply Designed Life Podcast just joining in, if you haven’t listened to the previous episode, you may want to listen to it beforehand for context. That’s episode 057: Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer Part I: On Storytelling & How to Thrive as a Creative. Here we cover their career paths and how they got to where they are today.
In Part II, we continue the discussion on leadership and how to create opportunities out of challenges. Jason and Jennifer will also share their tips and insights on how they manage to be productive with work and personal life—especially in a busy, high-cost-of-living area like New York City.
We also discuss their new book, MR. NICE GUY. Inspired by their own time dating and working in New York City media, married couple Jennifer Miller and Jason Feifer have written MR. NICE GUY (St. Martin’s Griffin; October 16, 2018), a provocative rom-com set in the world of Manhattan publishing.
Taking an insider look at the magazine industry, gender dynamics, and being young and ambitious in an ever-changing city, MR. NICE GUY is the perfect read paired with a bowl of movie popcorn, extra butter.
Who are Jennifer and Jason?
Jennifer Miller is a journalist and the author of three books. Her debut novel, The Year of the Gadfly (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), was called “a darkly comic romp” by The Washington Post and “entirely addictive” by Glamour. Jason Feifer is editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur magazine, host of the podcasts Pessimists Archive and Problem Solvers, and has been an editor at Men’s Health, Maxim, Fast Company, and Boston magazine.
Jason and Jen met on OkCupid. She said “yes” to a date because Jason used a semicolon correctly in his first message to her. Yes, they are super nerds, but hey, it got them featured in the vows column of the New York Times. They live in Brooklyn with their 3-year-old, who they hope will never read this book.
Words of Wisdom
From Jason:
You can choose to see speedbumps and conflicts as opportunities to build trust and to prove yourself. In fact, you’re kind of fortunate to have some kind of challenge to go through where you have to sit down with somebody in a position of authority and work through it together and in so doing so show yourself to be extremely trustworthy and valuable to them, and also, in the same way, prove your value to yourself. You should not hope for smooth sailing. What you should hope for are opportunities to prove yourself and to work together above and below you. (10:08)
You work with the information and that opportunities that you have. And you can always, always, always find value in whatever’s in front of you. It may not be in the original way that you intended, but it could be in something else. (13:51)
You could always find some other avenue, it’s just about not giving up. (14:28)
You just have to start deciding what’s really important, and to me, work and family and friends are important and I can get to the other stuff later. (16:06)
Don’t be afraid to take control, and see the opportunities in front of you as the opportunities that you can command, and that’s how we built our careers and that’s how we run our days and our families. Once you can internalize that and feel good about that, there’s an endless bounty that awaits. (21:45)
From Jennifer:
I think taking risks is really important and it was definitely a risk for me to get on the phone. I think finding somebody to support you taking that risk is also really important. It doesn’t have to be your husband, it could be a colleague, close friend, somebody to talk through how you’re going to approach addressing your issue to your superior, whatever that issue that might be. And just BELIEVING in yourself, believing that you deserve to be respected for your hard work, and really not shying away from advocating yourself. I think that’s hard for a lot of women because we’re conditioned to not necessarily put ourselves forward or to be apologetic but I think nothing’s going to change until we actually take that stand for ourselves when we’re given the opportunity to do so. (8:14)
That’s not necessarily going to have any impact on the next story ’cause they’re always looking for good stories. I think the key is you don’t want to take that rejection—essentially if you consider it a rejection—you don’t want that to stand in the way of moving forward next time. (11:42)
Our work lives and our personal lives blend to a considerable amount and we don’t always mind. And then we have a three-and-a half-year-old running around if we want to focus something totally different. (16:44)
What You’ll Learn
- How to find the opportunities in each situation you face
- How to approach juggling work and family life
- Productivity hacks for dealing with day-to-day tasks
- How to tag team personal responsibilities with a family
Websites:
https://www.mrniceguynovel.com/
http://www.byjennifermiller.com/
https://www.jasonfeifer.com/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/
Social Media:
Jennifer Miller Twitter: @propjen
Jason Feifer Twitter: @heyfeifer
Resources & Productivity Tools:
Storytelling Podcasts: The Moth or Risk!
Reminder App on the iPhone
Other Listening Options:
Individual player or full player view on website: https://lorirochino.com/podcast-2/
