PUM - personal user manual
Transcript by Sean Jackson
FULL TRANSCRIPT
[Impersonating actor Matt Berry as Douglas Reynholm in TV show the IT Crowd] Hello, and welcome ... sorry, I couldn't resist.
Damiano:
Which voice are we doing today? I don't know. I forgot.
Aidan:
That was a little bit of Matt Berry. Hello, and welcome to Brains- no, I've completely lost it now.
Damiano:
We just literally spent 15 minutes quoting The IT Crowd. If you have not watched The IT Crowd, you should watch it. It's just amazing. It's almost as good as this podcast, so don't forget to tell your friends to listen to it because we need to kind of catch up with Matt Berry. Aiden-
Aidan:
Yeah. You and I, we've got that going on.
Damiano:
How are you today?
Aidan:
I'm probably around a six out of 10.
Damiano:
Okay.
Aidan:
I've been sleeping well, which is good because I still have the mentality of 12-year-old Aidan, which is, "I'm going to stay up until three in the morning playing Pokemon Emerald." But I've been sleeping well, reading books, meditating, and eating well. But yeah, I've recently switched job roles, and I'm now a project manager, and that's just happened. Thank you. [Sound effect of audience applauding.]
Damiano:
Congratulations for that changing role. Full disclaimer, I thought you already were a project manager because you are so phenomenally well-organized and everybody should know that that's what I think.
I'm doing all right. I would say I'm probably six or seven out of 10 as well. I just feel extremely tired at the moment. We're preparing, of course, a lot of virtual events at the moment, and I think we've come to the point where we're really burning the midnight oil in the sense that I am starting to feel that there is a lot of friction in a lot of the communication that is happening with everyone. Have you had this experience in the past few months? It's like those magnetic levitating trains, and it's almost like the magnetic field is reduced so the rail and the wheel is starting to touch ever so slightly.
Aidan:
I wouldn't say I've been experiencing friction on a personal or interpersonal level, but I think, a year of lockdowns on, like we're all starting to feel a bit more stressed out, it's about how our surge capacity has been depleted because our bodies are still kind of running on adrenaline and an entire year of this, I think, is really starting to take an even bigger toll.
Damiano:
A little spoiler, Aiden and I have prepared a little surprise, a little tip that we will give everyone at the end of the episode to spice up the conversation you're having with family and friends and colleagues and everyone, so stay tuned. It's going to be amazing.
Damiano:
So, what is the topic we want to cover today?
Aidan:
So, today ... I know you said that you've been experiencing quite a lot of friction. I think that one thing that I've definitely been experiencing is kind of loss of connection, or at the very least, I know I may not seem it with my very confident Matt Berry impression, which just keeps getting worse. It's like, as soon as it's recorded. I may give you my Gollum impression later, that will make up for it, but I won't do it now, because I'll lose my voice box. But where was I going on that tangent? I was talking about connection. I've found that I'm struggling to reach out to people more, and I think that's to do with the fact that I'm on calls all day and also just because I'm out of practice.
Damiano:
Interesting.
Aidan:
I may not seem it, but I was very socially anxious before and I still am at the moment. When I'm in a presenter workshop kind of setting, that's more a performance, but when it's like, "Oh, have a one-on-one conversation," with just a conversation, not like, "Oh, have a conversation about putting this Lego together, about this project," like when there's something to talk about, I'm fine. I'll chat for ages. I'll be fine. But when it's like talk as humans, it's like, how do I do that? Do you get the same? Or are you a bit more ...
Damiano:
Well, when you said before that in presenter mode, you go into this sort of performance, I think this is the best description. That's exactly how I feel, and it's one of the paradoxes because I love presenting. I've acted in the past, like in theater and musicals, and I love doing it because ironically it protects me somehow from the audience. Between me and the audience there is a character normally, there is this sort of persona that is actually presenting. So I completely feel what you say there, absolutely. Do you think the lack of connection or the difficulty, is that a function of how much you're working, or is just like the collection of lockdown and being maybe a bit out of practice, or cherishing more this sort of alone time that you can have?
Aidan:
I think it's a bit of both, probably more the latter. So I live on my own, again, very smart decision at the time, right next to the train station in the middle of Cardiff, so I'd be able to see everyone all the time. Yeah, starting to slightly regret that. But at the same time, it does mean that I do have control over when I do want my controlled introverted downtime, which is very much appreciated. But it also, like you say, does lead to less just practice in having conversations, which is quite weird seeing as how much I'm talking to a webcam for most of the day. I realize I went on such a wild tangent that we didn't actually cover what we're going to be talking about today. So you may have guessed-
Damiano:
Cliffhanger after cliffhanger.
Aidan:
Yeah, it's like a really bad mystery show. We set up all these plot points and then completely forget about them. No, so the theme today, if you haven't guessed, is about finding ways to connect with one another. For me, I love life hacks, anything that makes it easier. So we're going to try and do ways which help you to connect deeper with the people that you work with, that you live with, that you're friends with, but also give them opportunities to understand you on a deeper level as well.
Aidan:
Synergize, because it's very difficult to say it with a straight face and not go into like a "Today, we're going to be synergizing management strategies." Firstly, I really liked the way that you described how acting and performing is almost you're showing an illusion, a perspective, a version of yourself that you control rather than the full intimate, vulnerable version of yourself, which is ...
Damiano:
Absolutely. It's a puppet, right?
Aidan:
Yeah. It's always going to be very scary to show that intimate side, so yeah, I think making those opportunities to connect with people and being vulnerable there and also opening yourself up through things like personal user manuals and more, I think they definitely compliment one another quite well.
Damiano:
I was asking because I find that I would say it's more mainstream, the idea of improve the communication and try to speak up about your feelings and try to, I don't know, not be passive aggressive when you express how you feel about things. All good reasonable points, but what I found to be, I guess, a couple of layers deeper and dramatically more difficult for me personally, is to really get in touch and being able to express the triggers that cause something to happen internally.
So it's not just about optimizing communication between you and I, for example, but it's being able to gain the awareness and then articulate things that cause friction. And that's why I was curious to see how you think about these two things, because to me they're slightly different. It's kind of two slightly different vectors, but I do see that they work in tandem absolutely. So you improve communication overall, of course.
Aidan:
Yeah. I don't think it's really something that I've thought about in that way before, so that's really cool. You've kind of thrown me off my own thoughts there. I'm now going, "Oh, what if I change this? What if I change this?"
Damiano:
No, it's interesting because I read ... I think there was an email thread a couple of weeks ago where we were talking, I think it was in the neurodiversity community, regarding the trigger words, right, or trigger sentences when people say things like, "Oh, you're giving too much thought," or "You are really overthinking this." And I thought how, for some people, for example, for me, the "you're overthinking this" is one of my main trigger phrases, if you want. It's really something that, regardless of the context, regardless of the person that says this, it always, always triggers negative emotions. And this is something that I've come to realize very slowly, thanks to one of my best friends actually, who taught me one of her trigger sentences, and when I finally realized the power that was behind the word, it's something that I've actually started to actively tell people, in a bit of a other primitive user, personal user manual, if you wish, because I've realized that there is an intrinsic energy behind that sentence that just makes me go completely ... there is an irrational reaction to it, right? And so I find it very useful to tell people rather early, "Look, please be careful when you say this, because I don't take it as a joke in any circumstance when you use it."
Damiano:
Maybe it's an intro for the personal user manual, because you are actually the person that told me about this in the first place. I never heard about this before. So maybe you can tell the audience. What is a personal user manual?
Aidan:
Absolutely. That's a personal user manual. It's basically a document. There's no prescriptive format it has to be in. I've got a version that's just like a paragraph long, I've got a version that's a slide deck. But what it is, is similar to how you'd get an instruction manual for, I don't know, an electric screwdriver. You know?
Damiano:
An IKEA cupboard.
Aidan:
Yeah. Something like, "This is how you use the tool, this is how you don't use the tool. This is how you fix it. This is what it's made of."
Damiano:
Maintenance.
Aidan:
Yeah, anything like that. Really useful. If every single tool and item you ever bought, you had to figure out how it worked through trial and error and you couldn't go onto the internet and Google and figure out how it works, if you just had to do it through trial and error, that'd get pretty annoying fast. Or, I don't know, if someone gave you a keyboard, but there's no key caps on it, so you've just got to guess. I know you've touched-
Damiano:
That's a beautiful, beautiful image, I have to say. That was really classy. I'm very proud of you.
Aidan:
Thank you. Yeah, I'm already thinking, "Oh, I should've put that in the presentation." So yeah, that's kind of how we approach our conversations and how we communicate with people. We assume how they work. We kind of guess how to interact with people, usually based off of how we like people to interact with us. Our brains just assume that that's how everyone works. What a personal user manual is, at its core, is just a document written by you, the person in question, and you can cover whatever you want in there. So for example, how you best work. So, for me, I still find it interesting that you think I'm organized, because I am not. I think that's probably why you think I'm organized is because I work so hard to be organized, because I know that I'm not. I know I'm a-
Damiano:
It intrinsically makes you organized. There, I get you.
Aidan:
Yeah, I can't argue with that logic. He's got me there. Things like that, like I can say I am not a long-term planner, but I am great at doing work under pressure or last minute. You can cover who you are as a human being, so for me I'm ... who am I? I'm Aiden. I am a project manager. I like talking about mental health. I have ADHD. Little things like that. Best ways to interact with me: I like feedback to be direct. I need time and space to get stuff done. I prefer having a goal and a reason to do something, rather than a set of instructions. I don't know, strengths and weaknesses of yourself. Just that alone, you could cover that off in a paragraph.
Aidan:
If you were joining a team, say for example, in the middle of a pandemic, where you don't actually have a chance to see people face-to-face, just something like that already means, "Wow, I understand more about this human. I know how to work with them. I know a little bit more about them," and I, for example, put on loads of stuff about what do I like doing in my spare time? Lots of pictures of my Lego. Boom, already there. Aiden likes space, Star Wars and Lego. If you're new on a team, you're like, "Oh, I don't know anyone," and someone else is like, "I like Lego too," boom, instant connection.
Damiano:
That was beautiful. And actually I was curious, because I'm sure there is a process behind these and I know that you mentioned you have not only one, but multiple versions of your personal user manual. How did you decide what is relevant? What is useful for people to know? And how did each of these items come to your attention, as in, how does this belong into my personal user manual?
Aidan:
I'm probably not the perfect example of this, because I am always ready to overshare, and like I said, monologue, and I tend to be quite wordy. My audience is primarily work-focused, so the first sections I've got is conditions that Aiden likes to work in, so like team, environment, workspace, et cetera, my times and hours that I like to work, like my working hours when I'm most productive, out of hours contact. So for some people, they're fine with replying on the weekend. For me, I might read it, but there's no expectation. And the same, if I reply to something out of hours, I'm not expecting you to match that.
Best ways to communicate with me, how I best receive feedback, things I need, how Aiden learns best, Aiden's strengths, which was a very difficult part to write because I, every time, which we'll see in the things Aiden struggles with, is imposter syndrome and low self-esteem. So trying to write that entire, "Here are the things I'm good at," I felt like I wanted to go, "Oh, but you know, I'm not really, or I'm only good at that because of this."
Aidan:
And I'll quickly go through things that I love. This is where I go books, Lego, mental health, rugby, video games, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. Things I like values-wise, my favorite word, sonder, I love that. And then contact details and fun links to click through and learn more. And that's it, at a high level. I never prescribe or say that you must have this in your personal user manual, you must not have this, you must this, because "personal" is the key word in it. It's what you want to share with people. If it's just two pages or three sentences long, that's okay. If you go really in-depth on the exact kind of feedback you like and the content and how you'd best like that phrased, that's great. It's really entirely up to you.
Damiano:
I have a question actually on this one. When was the first iteration that you send to colleagues, for example, of your personal user manual?
Aidan:
I think my first one was my one-paragraph version, which I've got a copy of here. Was just "Aiden (pronouns he/him/his) is at his best when people give him direction, a goal, and a deadline, rather than a set of instructions." You'll notice I wrote this in the third person. That's because, for me, I found it easier because it kind of combated that self-esteem imposter syndrome side. "He gets easily distracted. He's diagnosed with ADHD, so is happy for people to send multiple reminders or requests of how things are going. He likes feedback to be direct and not sugar-coated. He's not great at planning things in advance, but performs exceptionally well under pressure. Aiden is comfortable talking about mental health or how you're feeling. He also uses exclamation marks and emojis a lot, but means it in an excited/not aggressive way! :)"
Damiano:
I find it very, very interesting because it's a mixture of your work optimal spots, so to say, your patterns, so people can also understand, "Okay, I can expect this range of, let's say behaviors," or, "He is going to perform this way." And then there are these sorts of best practices or recommendations, so like you perform best when you have a goal rather than a set of instructions, I think is super interesting. And let's take this as an example. How did you find this out?
Aidan:
Great question. I've always loved learning about self-improvement. Again, I think that comes from the imposter syndrome/low self-esteem. I've always liked to find ways to do things in an easier manner or to do more with less or just to improve in general. So, I've always been looking for new ways to do things, but also I've always been very self critical/overly critical. So that's not great long-term, to be constantly beating yourself up for stuff. But it does mean that I think a lot about what I do and I can analyze that from an external perspective, but it's also because I've chatted with a lot of people and asked for that feedback and figured it out through trial and error over time. Yeah, a lot of the time it's just, say, working on projects when I realized I wasn't given a goal, I was just given a set of instructions and no context, and I didn't enjoy it and I didn't do well in it.
Damiano:
Right. And do you find that, after writing the personal user manual, some people started to actually change, a little bit, their approach?
Aidan:
Yeah. So, on the previous project I was on, it was always really lovely to hear someone use an example from my personal user manual. So one of them is to do with ... phoning is not the best way to get in touch with me, but if you need to get in touch with me urgently, calling me twice in a row is the best way to get ahold of me, because then I know it's important. And I've got a smart watch, so my wrist will be buzzing. I can't ignore it. About a month or two ago, someone actually used that and they called me twice, and I was like, "Oh, hello." They're like, "Oh, hey. Yeah, I thought I'd call you twice because I saw it in your personal user manual." And I was like, that is absolutely awesome, because I ignored it the first time. Second time it must be important, and it was. And it was so great to have just that little thing, it was just such an awesome thing to get out of that.
Damiano:
That is pretty brilliant. And I'm thinking really now from our million listeners that of course will try to write their own personal user manual. What happens? You spend the time to write it, and you, of course, are happy when people use it. How do you feel when people don't? Do you invite them to, "Hey, please check this out"? Or is it something that you leave more as almost an exercise of self reflection at times?
Aidan:
So, to your second point, it's really powerful for self reflection. If you write one and don't share it with anyone else, it's really powerful, just in terms of having a chance to be introspective and try and think about how others will perceive you and what you need. That in its own right, taking time to do that, you'll learn a hell of a lot about yourself. But there's a question around how you want to share it, really. So I, again, possibly oversharing, I have this attached in my email signature, so every single email I send, there's a link to this. For other people who aren't as comfortable with sharing it, again, that's completely okay, possibly just sharing it with one or two people in your team.
Aidan:
So someone's got to be the first person to introduce personal user manuals to their team. You're not all going to wake up on a random Thursday and all happened to have written one at the same time, so there's always going to be a case of vulnerability, but gathering up, say, just one or two people on your team who you're close with and encouraging them to create personal user manuals as well, and then as soon as two people do it then people are like, "Oh, okay."
Damiano:
It's a movement.
Aidan:
Exactly, yeah. There's a great video of someone dancing.
Damiano:
Dancing in-
Aidan:
Yeah, on the hill.
Damiano:
Exactly.
Aidan:
Encouraging you're not alone is probably a powerful thing.
Damiano:
Good one. And especially in the context of a team, right? If I was a team manager or a team leader, would you recommend the team leader to propose this to the team, and to invite them to do it? Or do you think it's something that is so intrinsically personal that it should actually come necessarily for everyone spontaneously? Because I can understand what you say, right, that some of the things may actually be quite maybe intimate. Maybe you don't really want to share with the whole team, because ...
Aidan:
I'd say, if you're a manager, the best way to get people to talk openly about this is to model that behavior yourself. If you try and mandate everyone and say, "Oh, everyone must do a personal user manual, and you must talk about your deepest, darkest fears and traumas," it's never going to happen, or if it does happen, people are going to talk very surface level. But if you're in a leadership position and you create one yourself and share it with the team, it's modeling that vulnerability, it's showing people it's okay to talk about this stuff. You're not going to be discriminated against. You're not going to face judgment or stigma, because we're doing this too. I think that's possibly the best way to encourage a team to do it. But yeah, if you're just an individual and you hear about this and you like it, I think creating one yourself, sharing it with one or two people, seeing what they think, if you don't feel comfortable sharing with everyone at once, is a great way to go about it.
Damiano:
Now, as we start to get towards the end of the episode-
Aidan:
Already?
Damiano:
I know that we have the cliffhanger of the event that you were talking about before, and I absolutely wanted to touch base on that. What was that event? Tell us more. What happened?
Aidan:
Okay. I'll give you the short version of this, which is very powerful ammunition. I know you thought you'd got me earlier, when you were saying that I'm organized. This is where I have a counterpoint, which is a very weird battle to be fighting, but I can let the imposter syndrome have this one. Long story short, Mozilla Fest is an excellent festival where they talk about all sorts of stuff. Wonderful world of open source technology, they're also talking about neurodiversity. I delivered a talk earlier this week, on Monday, about personal user manuals and how to connect with people, and I'd been preparing for this for a couple of months.
Aidan:
And so, I'd made sure that it was all finished on the weekend. It was on the Monday, at around three o'clock. So everything was prepared. I'd had all my calls in the day, I was standing up, I'd had a cough sweet, I'd had lots of water. And I was like, right, I'll do some more stretches. And I thought, I'll do a quick 10 minute meditation, just to fully clear my mind. I had all my speaker notes ready, slides were all available, so I was like, "Cool. Yep, I'm ready to go." Did that, joined the call, I was like, "Cool, yeah." I was like, "Wow, everyone's already joined the call. This is great." There was 20 people there already. I was like, "It's fantastic." Doing the whole, "Oh, right. Okay. Which video call? Yeah, Zoom. Okay." Claim the host key, set that up. Got a message from their facilitator like, "Oh, is everything okay?" I was like, "Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to share the screen, and then I'm good to go." They're like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, we were just wondering, because it started at quarter to."
Aidan:
I was like, "Yeah, that's fine. Wait, what?" "Oh, its started at quarter to." "I'm sorry. What?" This is now two minutes to three. I was like getting ready to start out at three. At some point, I thought that I'd moved the event forwards by 15 minutes in my calendar, so that I wouldn't miss it, and I hadn't moved it forwards.
Damiano:
You had the right time in the calendar?
Aidan:
I had the right time. It just didn't start on the hour. So then, all of a sudden, I was like, "Okay, this is fine. Hey everyone. Thanks for coming to talk about personal user manuals. Today we're going to be talking about why they're really important and how you can use them." Luckily, because I had prepped everything, I was like, "Right, okay. My apologies, everyone, for my lateness, but I'm going to go straight into this." I thought to myself, right, I can't go back in time and make myself any earlier, so panicking about that and going, "Oh, well this is terrible, ah!" ... I can't control that, that's already happened. What I can do is, from this point, I can try and make it as calm, as professional, as valuable a session as possible. And I think, given the situation, I tried my best to do that and not rush through and panic, and it was okay. Okay.
Damiano:
This is not only a very good example, and I still don't take this as a counterpoint to me saying that you are very organized, but we will also have a link in our show notes, possibly, of the speech, right? We do have it. Wonderful. I'm looking forward to that. I'm really looking forward to that. Because-
Aidan:
Yes. Yep, if we forget, it's tinyurl.com/MozFestPUM, which is M-O-Z-F-E-S-T-P-U-M. PUM is just a shortened word for personal user manual. It's good fun to say PUM.
Damiano:
Wonderful. Because I think it's super interesting to see how people manage mishaps in presentations, because I do think it's one of these moments where you really see the ability of a speaker to react quickly, and I think the way you explain this is actually incredibly thoughtful and interesting, and it's something probably most people can really learn something from. So looking forward to checking that out.
Aidan:
If we look back on it and on my actual thing is, "Hi, I'm really sorry guys! I'm so late!" I don't think I did that. I hope.
Damiano:
And now, Aidan, as we have the last few minutes, this is the very first cliffhanger we had at the beginning of the episode. We want to give this super life pro tip to our audience on how to spice up a little bit the conversation with family, friends, even colleagues at times. You gave me this idea earlier. I thought it was brilliant. Can you tell the audience what the idea is?
Aidan:
I think we've chatted a little bit before about check-ins and that's what we kind of do at the beginning, and I like to bring it into all calls. So I do a lot of, "How are you doing?" Ask a completely random question, so on this recent project, I've been asking things like, "What are your top three books of all time? Favorite film? What did you have for dinner last night? What'd you get up to on the weekend?"
Aidan:
But the thing that we're talking about today, which is a fantastic coincidence that we happened to have the same thing, is the game called We're Not Really Strangers. And the initial intent behind this was it was a card game, which you play with absolute strangers, and there are three levels of deepness, let's say, connectedness of the questions. And I've been using it when having conversations with friends and family. So for example, I just started a wonderful call with my mum about a week or two ago. We ended up going on such a deep and wonderful conversation that covered like so many things about like growing up, why she chose to go to university, how she met the people there.
Damiano:
That is incredible. So you were using the card as like a prompt, almost, for the conversation?
Aidan:
Absolutely. Because I don't know about you, but how are you doing with conversations in day-to-day life, when we spend so much time on video calls?
Damiano:
You know, I think I do quite all right. I think most people say that I'm usually very energetic in calls, which is actually true. The thing is, for me, this is totally a persona, right? For me, this is stage performance, and it's just something that I know that it works for me and I can go in and out of this persona extremely easy. It's very taxing though, from an energy perspective. I'm an introvert. So most of my days have like six to seven calls every single day, which means that by the end of it, I need to literally go back into a corner and stay completely alone for at least a couple of hours to recharge the batteries. But what I wanted to ask you is, to close the episode in a very interesting and unexpected way, would you like to ask each other a question from We're Not Really Strangers?
Aidan:
I would love to ask each other a question from We're Not Really Strangers.
Damiano:
Which level should we pick? One, two or three?
Aidan:
So level one is perception. And again, for everyone listening at home, if you don't have this card deck, you can just like grab some piece of paper and just write down some questions, just random questions, and just go into the conversation and say, "Oh, do you want to just ask and answer some random questions?" And just asking that permission already puts you into, "Oh, this is different to the usual." This is my last tangent I promise, but Daniel Sloss on his podcast came up with a great thing, which is called the COVID silence, which is when you have a conversation like the ... it wasn't an awkward conversation, it was a lovely conversation, but I felt awkward when I met my friend in Sainsbury's in a supermarket by chance last night and I'd forgotten how to talk. It was like, "Hey, how are you doing?" "Yeah, I'm good. How are you?" "Yeah, I'm good. How's work?" "Yeah. It's all right, you know. How's work for you?" "Yeah, it's all right." "What are you doing on the weekend?" "Yeah, not much. What about you?" "Yeah, not much." And then there's the COVID silence.
Damiano:
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Aidan:
And then it's like, "Anyway, got to go. Yeah, great seeing you."
Damiano:
"Bye!"
Aidan:
"Great seeing you too." And you're like, "Bye!" Yeah. And this is so great to counter that. So the levels are one for perception, two for connection and three for reflection, I think?
Damiano:
I'm taking a level one, perception, because I think it's a very good way to break the ice with people, especially ...
Aidan:
[crosstalk 00:31:02]. Okay.
Damiano:
So who starts? Shall I start? I have a very good one here.
Aidan:
Yeah. Okay. Go for it.
Damiano:
Right. So Aiden, how likely am I to go camping, and how high maintenance is my setup?
Aidan:
So, it's funny, this, because by its nature, it's not intimate, and you can get as intimate or not as you want. It's definitely a lot more intimate when it's not just two people, there's an entire podcast listening as well, which is interesting. I think you'd enjoy camping. I don't think you'd initially be very good at switching off from the world of emails and phones and things, but I think that after the initial five or six hours, I think you'd turn into like quite a zenful ... you'd bring a bunch of books along with you. How high maintenance do I think? Yeah, I think medium maintenance. I don't think you'd be full-on, like, "Oh, I've got a 12-person tent. It's got all this rigging, it's got this, I've got like a stove and I'm catching fish with my bare hands." But I also don't think you're going to be like a £5 tent where you can't even sit up. So I think you'll be middle of the road. But I think you'd enjoy like a weekend away from society.
Damiano:
Very interesting. That's why I love this game. Because of course, the next question would be, why is he thinking this about me? Where did he get that impression? Because frankly, we never spoke about camping before. It's not fascinating. Question for you Aidan. When you play this with your-
Aidan:
Cool. Oh, before we do, how far off was I?
Damiano:
Quite far off, I have to say.
Aidan:
Oh, interesting. And that's great, that means I'm learning more.
Damiano:
Because interestingly enough, I'm not a camping person at all, actually.
Aidan:
Really?
Damiano:
Yeah. I've had a few experiences when I was a kid in something ... in Italy, we have these groups called like the Boy Scouts, right, where you go out and they try to get you to, I guess, learn about nature and go camping. And I had terrible experiences back in the day, just because the kids were horrible, the ones I was with. And so, I think this kind of extended into my idea of if I spent a night in a tent, in a place, blah, it never really appealed to me. So probably there is still a bit of a story behind this. But I love what you said, that you think I could switch off after a few hours, and I hope it's true because boy oh boy, at the moment, I really would have a hard time. What is your question? What is your question? I've got a surprise-
Aidan:
What about me is most strange or unfamiliar to you?
Damiano:
The most unfamiliar ... you are the first person I've ever met that, well, at least that told me they had ADHD and was able to clearly articulate how this works. For me, it's been like an epiphany moment. It's when I really felt I understood, which was very unfamiliar for me, so I don't know if this can count, but for me that would be the most unfamiliar thing. The thing is, you're a great conversationalist, so you really manage to make things feel extremely familiar, even though most of the topics we cover, even in this podcast ... you are the brain, right, besides most of this. So I would say you're really good at making people feel very comfortable. And the most strange ... right now, I would say the sweater you're wearing, with this very interesting eighties orange and black pattern. And I'm like, did I just insult an Arsenal t-shirt, and all the soccer fans ...
Aidan:
No, not at all.
Damiano:
Ah, okay. For a second, I thought it was a soccer t-shirt.
Aidan:
No, I was just bathing in the ...
Damiano:
In the compliments?
Aidan:
In the incredibly kind words. Thank you so much. Yeah.
Damiano:
But this is why I think it's actually great. So for all the audience, we'll put the link, of course. We are not affiliated.
Aidan:
Not yet.
Damiano:
But it's a very good way to get the conversation started, even with people you already know. Aidan, I thank you so much. As usual, it's been a wonderful, wonderful conversation.
Aidan:
I did mention that I was going to a Gollum impression at some point.
Damiano:
You did.
Aidan:
I did.
Damiano:
Then you have to do it.
Aidan:
Have we got time left in the episode for me to do that [crosstalk 00:35:19]?
Damiano:
Of course. I'm going to cut another part of the podcast to make space for this.
Aidan:
I think that's fair. Yeah, we can just get rid of all the nice things you were saying about me. What would you like me to talk about when being Gollum?
Damiano:
Well, I most definitely want the Gollum reaction to being late to the MozFest.
Aidan:
We're late to the presentation, precious. We thought it started on time! No, you always do this. You're wrong. Stupid, fat hobbit! You can't even turn up to a thing on time! No, it's okay. I can't change it anyway, precious. It's already happened. We just need to do the presentation. No, you're a failure. Stupid Aidan! Give up now. No, I'm going to use this in the presentation! You haven't got a presentation, precious!
Damiano:
Oh my God. This is amazing.
Aidan:
And the reason I did that at the end is because that wrecks my voice.
Damiano:
It destroys your voice, but that was brilliant Aidan. It was well worth waiting until the end of the episode. Yes, to spare your voice any further, thank you for sharing this with us.
Aidan:
Thank you.
Damiano:
Thank you for everybody listening, and as always, as we say at the end, it's okay ...
Aidan:
... to be okay, precious!
Damiano:
See you later.
Aidan:
Take care, everyone. Bye bye.
Damiano:
Bye.