There’s a Facebook post somewhere from years ago where I wished that I could get paid for how good I am at finding things on Google. But at the time that kind of job didn’t exist nor did it make a whole lot of sense to exist. These days with podcasts, especially the bigger ones, it’s almost a given that someone will be there with their main purpose being to Google / fact check things that are said throughout the conversation. I could’ve been that guy - I’m pretty good with Google!

C’mon, you know you have some random skill that you wished you got paid for. Maybe it’s climbing stairs 2 stairs at a time? Maybe it’s being able to remember all of your friend’s phone numbers before you had a cell phone? Or maybe it’s just simply being able to make an amazing grilled cheese sandwich in an air fryer.

You should put these random skills on your resume and employers should care about them.

Well, don’t put down the gaming controller just yet. ManpowerGroup recently did a report on the correlation between playing video games and the employable skills you develop as a result of playing. Imagine playing Mario Kart and improving your critical thinking, collaboration, decision making skills. Or playing Pokemon and financial analyst roles are your recommended career path based on what you learn from the game. According to ManpowerGroup, the soft skills you learn from playing video games have a ton of value as employers struggle to teach people about how to be empathetic, personable, and confident.

This all said, Call of Duty was nowhere to be found in this report and for good reason. Given it was all I played for a good 2 years during the pandemic, I’m pretty sure I only degraded my soft skills - the amount of ______ that happened…oh boy. We won’t get into details but let’s just say my Call of Duty experience will never be included on my resume.

This week's issue is a 3 minute read:

🌴 Vacations without…phones

🎵 The Book of Hov

💼 Overemployed on purpose

Phone-free vacations you pay for…?

I feel like there’s two types of people in the world - the person who takes photos of literally everything while they’re on vacation, and me, who takes about 7 photos in a two week span thinking that will be enough to remember my time on vacation. Truthfully, I get caught up in my surroundings while I’m visiting somewhere I’ve never been before. I assume this would be a normal and welcoming reaction for most while they’re on vacation?

But what if I told you there’s a company out there that will happily charge you to go on vacation without your phone. Correct, you pay for their vacation package and the catch is you can’t bring you phone. Why? I don’t know!

Yes, I’m thinking it too!! Why can’t you just put your phone away??

A company called FTLO Travel (For the love of Travel) curates trips around the world for solo travellers looking to experience places without the buzz of your phone in your ear/hand. Starting at about $1200 per traveller for one of their tours, FTLO believes you’ll have a more immersive trip exploring, talking to people, and learning a new culture WITHOUT your phone. The goal is for you to utilize traditional vacation “skills” like using a paper map and asking locals for directions. Frankly this sounds like it could be good training for The Amazing Race.

This all said, if you need to book a trip where it forces you to put your phone away or risk being kicked out of the tour group, I think you have some bigger issues to discuss my friend. When you go somewhere new, that should inspire you to want to explore, talk to people, and live in the moment - otherwise what the heck did you spend all that money on your vacation for, to take pictures just to post them on IG? Oh wait…tons of people do that too already *face palm*.

If you live in or near Brooklyn, go see this

I recently watched an interview on CBS with Jay-Z touring around the exhibit showcasing his life and career at the Brooklyn library. All I can say is, if you have the chance to go see it, you should. Firstly it’s in a library so it’s free. And secondly, this exhibit is like an interactive timeline of a genius/artist/business mogul from his early days as a hustler and rapper to the present day of him being a billionaire business mogul, and everything in between.

The exhibit boasts two floors of key moments from the famed rapper’s life, including never before seen images, art, and ephemera displayed in glass casings for all to see. One of the coolest things displayed is Jay’s masters to all of his albums. Jay-Z was one of the first rappers to own all of the masters to his music, which are now estimated to be worth well over $75 million.

Another fun unique aspect of the exhibit is that there are 13 limited edition library cards you can get, one for each of Jay’s albums, which basically answers the question - How to get the coolest library card ever?

The exhibit runs until December 4th - again, if you are in NYC this is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity to see such an important artist in our lifetime in such an intimate way and for FREE.

Or you can take the virtual tour here.

The rise of the OVER employed

I’m here to tell you about this secret society on the internet that works more than one job. Yes, yes, I know, working more than one job isn’t exactly this new novel thing. But in this case, it’s people who work multiple full time jobs at the same time.

There’s a whole massive Subreddit dedicated to OE people who have J1, J2, and J3 (jobs) and share successes and failures under a cloak of anonymity for the obvious reasons of not wanting to get caught while they pull in total comps in the range of $800K a year working at multiple tech companies, for instance.

But how do you pull off working three full time jobs at once?

Take vacation time off with the other job(s) while you’re onboarding with the new job given onboarding usually takes a couple weeks to get through.

Treat it like Fight Club - except for your spouse and your accountant, no one should know you do this and if a co-worker brings it up, act surprised this is even a thing people consider doing (lol).

Get really good at blocking your calendars as soon as a meeting is booked with one of the jobs.

And be REALLY good at your job. Apparently a lot of OE people tend to work on average 40, maybe 50 hours a week, which isn’t too bad all things considered. That said, these type of people tend to be doing jobs that they severely specialize in, making them really good at what they do, which in turn enables them to handle the juggling of multiple tasks at multiple jobs.

One might think you’re a little nuts to subject yourself to that kind of work. But you’d be surprised what you can pull off while you’re working remotely. See below: