Laetitia Vitaud Networked Entrepreneurship

Episode Transcript
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Nigel Rawlins (00:00):
In your sixties, you bring more than experience.
You bring a rich network ofrelationships that power a bold
new business chapter.
Today on Wisepreneurs I'm joinedby Laetitia Vitaud a widely
respected author and thoughtleader on the future of work
from a feminist perspective.
Together we explore a compellingtruth.
Your network may be your mostvaluable entrepreneurial asset.

As Laetitia says (00:24):
the most important asset to start a
business isn't cash, it's therelationships you've nurtured.
Join us as we uncover whyconnection, not capital, is the
real currency ofentrepreneurship in today's
networked world.
Laetitia, welcome back to theWisepreneurs podcast, you've
been on episode six and episode19, so this is your third

(00:47):
episode, so welcome back

Laetitia Vitaud (00:49):
Thank you.

Laetitia, could you tell us something about
yourself and where you're from?

I am half German, half French, and I lived
in the UK for five years.
Then I lived in Germany for fiveyears and uh, now I'm back in my
home country, France, and veryhappy to be back.
I've, I've finally acceptedthat, that's who I am.
I am French

So, whereabouts in France are you?

In Paris, well, near Paris actually.
Yeah.

So that's a very busy part of, France.

A very busy part and I'm, so, I'm to the
west of Paris, which, um, whichgets me closer to Normandy.
And Normandy is where I have a,a little house and a very big
garden and a lot of, um, yeah, alot of peace and quiet when I
want it.
When I want to spend daysreading and walking and

(01:39):
thinking, that's where I spendmost of my time.

So how often do you go there?

Ideally it would be once a week.
Uh, in reality it's more likeonce every two weeks because my
children who are now in theirteenage years, they want to stay
in Paris.
And so if I want to have timewith them, I stay with them In
Paris

So how old are they now?

13 and 16.

Oh golly.
They're important ages, aren'tthey?

Yes.

And do they get around by themselves quite
easily?

Oh yes, completely.
They're used to it, when theywere in London, they already
took the bus on their own.
And then in, in Munich, they gotaround the city on their own.
And now, yeah, Paris is alsoquite familiar to them.
So they have this, this ease ofunderstanding metro networks and

(02:28):
public transportation becausewhen you have the cognitive
training of doing it in multiplecities, it gets easier to
understand how it works, tounderstand, you know, how you
get from one place to the otherand, and reading a map, even if
it's a digital map, it'ssomething that they are pretty
good at.
I think that's, that's a goodcognitive training they had from

(02:51):
changing cities.

Do they speak three languages?

Yes, they do.
They, they, they speak it sowell that you cannot guess where
they from.
So their English sounds English,their German sounds German, and
their French sounds French.
Now the thing with trilingualpeople is usually they have a
little less vocabulary thanpeople their own age who only
speak one language.
So it's true, I know they alsomake small grammar mistakes in

(03:18):
each of the three languages, butstill everybody would love to
speak those three languages aswell as they do just, uh, yeah,
I'm, I'm very jealous of them.

Wow.
They're gonna have aninteresting future.

Well, we'll see, I don't know how much of an
asset it is today, but maybeit's still is.
I mean, in the age of havingeverything translated
automatically, being able tospeak it without the need for a
smartphone or any app, it'sprobably also getting deeper
into cultural differences andnot just the linguistic aspect

(03:54):
of communication, but reallyunderstanding like body language
and the little things that arenot recorded by machines.
So probably they will havesomething that may be a strong
asset when the purely linguisticaspect of things can be
automated.
I, I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how much of anasset it is.

Well, I was reading something the other day
about how difficult it is totrain somebody up who speaks
only English, for example, ifyou want to be a spy, to be able
to speak another language andreally be able to live that
language in that new locationapparently is very, very, very
difficult.
It can take many years, so wejust assume, oh yeah, I can

(04:36):
learn that language fairlyquickly.
But to live that language in, inanother culture is very
difficult.
So do they like school?

They do.
It's challenging because they'vechanged systems multiple times
and not only does the languagechange, but also the curriculum.
But, uh, now they will stay withthe French system and try to go
to the baccalaureate, So at somepoint you have to stop switching
the systems, otherwise younever, you can never get to

(05:07):
university.
So now we'll aiming for somestability and so that they can
thrive.
'cause the challenges ofchanging systems in teenagers is
not something I recommend they,I mean, teenagers need some kind
of stability, which is whatwe're aiming for now that we
move back to France.

Oh, that sounds wonderful.
Alright, let's start with thenature of work, we've spoken
about the future of work in thepast, but obviously, that future
is here now, and one of thethings I think you talk about is
you see it as an age ofindividuation and networks, it's
not a mass economy or a factorytype system anymore, though I

(05:52):
think sometimes we still treatpeople like it's a factory
system, but it's a knowledgeeconomy.
So networks have becomeimportant.
Obviously intelligence seems tobe in the network itself, how
can we leverage networks andengage in relational work and
pay attention and look aftereach other in a knowledge

(06:14):
economy?
What do you think is happeningthere?

Hmm.
Yes.
Interestingly, the, the jobsthat have multiplied the most
over the past few years and thatare likely to continue to
multiply are relational jobs andmostly care work, but also, I
include in care work, actuallythe job that consist in selling

(06:38):
something to someone else,because selling when it's done
well is about caring for thatperson, listening to their
needs, understanding what theywill need, and creating trust
and developing a relationshipwith a lot of trust.
It's not selling somethingpeople don't need and, um, being
a crook, but rather, uh,generating trust.

(07:00):
Those are jobs that havemultiplied the most.
So you have what you call, whatyou just referred to as
knowledge work.
So creative work, people who dopodcasts like you, whether it's
professional or just forpleasure.
It's people who do accounting,people who do marketing, I mean,
you have all these jobs, uh,executives and, and, and the

(07:24):
rest of them?
And then you have people whoserve them, people who work in
restaurants, people who work inall kinds of hospitality jobs,
childcare, elderly care,healthcare, cleaning, all those
jobs and the ratio in thedensest areas like the big
cities that, that I inhabit, isone to five.

(07:47):
For one knowledge worker, youhave about five people who work
in proximity services.
So people who serve, care for,people who teach, et cetera.
And that is the situation thatwe are in.
And we have a lot of blind spotswhen it comes to understanding

(08:08):
the trends because there isusually a very big focus on
knowledge workers, and we seethings changing very fast with
the rise of generative AIs andall the tools that we have and
how these jobs are beingtransformed very fast.
And what we don't see, the blindspot that we have is the massive

(08:29):
numbers of care workers,hospitality workers, cleaning
workers et cetera, whose job isless affected by the rise of
generative AI or more indirectlyaffected by the rise of
generative AI.
And what we are obsessed with isthat we're afraid that the
knowledge work will not bevalued as much because a lot of

(08:51):
the tasks that are in those jobscan be automated.
Um, and we're less interested incare work and hospitality work
and restaurant work and cleaningwork because it's already valued
very little.
It's not paid much in, in, inone word.
And so what we, we don't seewhat is happening with it.

(09:14):
And the trend may be that allwork could be paid less in the
future, not necessarilydisappear, but be paid less.
And that I think is the anxiety,the main root of all the anxiety
that we feel.
Are we going to be valued enoughto be paid enough to have a good

(09:35):
life?
That's how I sum up the mainfear perhaps that we have, we
intuitively know that there willbe work in the future.
But will this work be paidenough for us to have a good
life?

And will it be meaningful work?

Well, it is meaningful to care for others
and to focus on the relationalaspect of work.
Focus on building trust inrelationships.
It is meaningful, but it can bework that's organized in a way
that's exhausting.
If there's a lot of emotionalwork in the work that you do,
for example, nurses, who workwith people who suffer, people

(10:15):
who are in pain.
There's no problem with themeaning of it.
There's a problem with can youdo emotional work for eight or
10 hours a day?
And, and that's usually notsomething that is possible.
And the main narrative around AIand the transformation of work
was if you automate the tedious,boring routine tasks, then you

(10:38):
are left with the moremeaningful aspect of of work.
You are left with either thecreative dimension or the
emotional dimension.
But whether it's creative workor emotional work, that's not
something you can do all day.
You need to balance it out withstupid tasks for it to be

(11:00):
sustainable.
And we're not taking thatdirection.
We're not really challenging thenumber of hours you work and,
well, that, that to me is aninteresting question about how
we organize work, so as to makeit more sustainable, so as to
make it into something that youcan do for, um, five days a week

(11:21):
or four days a week, and for 40something years, in your entire
career.
And, we're not there yet.
I think we haven't answered allthose questions yet.

Yeah, one of the things I think I'm seeing,
especially some of those caring,relational jobs is
understaffing.
Deliberately understaffing sothat the level of care is
reduced because they're running,running from say patient to
patient or in a care homebetween people living there.
Which I've seen with my motherthat, you know, it took a bit of

(11:54):
time to get somebody becausethey had less people.
Then finding the particularworkers in the first place and
making sure they're trainedenough and paid enough.
So, yeah, that's huge.
Let's go back to this relationalpart.
And I think that is critical, itgoes into every job I think now
in terms of relational, that anysay knowledge worker, even an

(12:17):
accountant or a lawyer or anyprofessional has to be able to
relate to other people'causethey're not working on their own
really.
They're working in a networkand, and that's where I think a
lot of things are happening.
So what do you reckon in termsof relationships and stuff like
that, if you wanted to start abusiness, how important are

(12:37):
relationships.
I'm talking about for women, saywho are a bit older and don't
want to continue working.

That's the most important asset to start a
business.
How many people do you know?
How varied is the network thatyou have so that it can help you
find ideas of what you do inyour new business or help you
find new clients or help youfind the suppliers that you will

(13:04):
need.
It's, it's how varied thisnetwork and how solid all those
relations.
That's the main asset to start abusiness today, because there's
less capital involved in mostactivities.
I mean, it depends on what youdo, obviously if you start a a
store selling something you'llneed the store and then there's
real estate involved.
But if, if you are in knowledgework, there is a lot less

(13:28):
capital required to start abusiness now.
I mean the only capital you needis enough money to not need a
wage for a couple of months, soas to, you know, have the time
to generate revenues with youractivity.
But apart from that, there is nocapital involved.
You don't need an office.
The computer you probablyalready have, um, the few apps

(13:51):
and tools that you need.
I mean, uh, you can start withfree ones to begin.
So there is no capital, butthere is absolutely the need to
have already a network.
If you work in B2B, uh, maybethe companies that employed you
in the past can be your firstcustomers.
You know the first people youwill speak to, to develop an

(14:13):
offer that will make sense onthe market.
So to be relevant in whateverbusiness you want to start, you
need to have those conversationswith the people who you will
target in your activity.
And that starts with the networkthat you have.
It can be multiple, you know,multiple different circles.

(14:35):
It can be the people you workedwith in the past.
It can be the people who workwith your children now.
It can be your neighbors, it canbe your family, it can be your
friends.
The trick is to develop thoserelationships with care or
maintain those relationshipswith care.
And that's something you need tocontinue to do all your life.

(14:59):
And we're faced sometimes withthe question of how many
relationships can you maintainin your life?
And there is only a limitednumber of relations of
relationships we can really,really look after.
There was this number, theDunbar, uh, figure, so Robin
Dunbar, D-U-N-B-A-R was thisBritish anthropologist who

(15:21):
studied apes.
And, he studied humans the wayhe studied apes, and came up
with this figure, which is, uh,roughly 150.
And his definition was theDunbar figure refers to the
number of relationships that youcan cultivate in such a way that

(15:44):
not only will you know all thosenames, but also the names of
their spouses or their children.
Well, perhaps not all thebirthdays, but if you bump into
them casually, somewhereunexpectedly, uh, you will want
to go to a bar or a cafe andhave a conversation with them
and feel that level of intimacythat, that, you know, defines a

(16:09):
strong relationship.
And he says, well, 150 is themaximum.
And that's probably still true,but one that's something that
you can expand and work on.
And two, with the socialnetworks, digital networks and
AI and automation, maybe you canmake the number a little bit

(16:30):
larger.
So train your memory of allthose people regularly.
You look at the birthdays everyday and send a little message,
something that will beindividualized.
Write private messages on someof these apps on a regular
basis.
Think about those people, youknow, that's the positive thing

(16:51):
about networks like Instagramthat are heavily critic
criticized these days for beinga huge or massive waste of time,
which I agree they are.
But if you look at thenetworking aspect of it, if you
use it in such a way as to keepin touch with the number of
people that matter to you, thenit's not always bad, so yeah,

(17:14):
that's the number one asset,cultivating this network of 150
plus people, depending on howyou, how you can in increase the
Dunbar figure.

It is interesting, isn't it?
Because to do that, it's workand it's attention.
You know, you have to say, I'mnot gonna scroll through Twitter
like I do sometimes.
I have to focus on the thingsthat are important, and if
you're gonna start a businessthat is the core of it.
If you can't relate to people.

(17:49):
You're not going to get thetrust that you need.
So let's go on to now aboutdeveloping a narrative about
yourself.
We just talked aboutrelationships, well the
relational aspect of being in abusiness, but who you are, not
necessarily in a business, butin the work that you do.
Just like all of that relationalstuff is very important if

(18:11):
you're still working, but moreso if you want to go out for
yourself.
But now let's talk about who youare as a person in this business
or starting a business.
So, and I think we also, we weretalking about this before, make
multiple transitions throughoutour lives.
So let's talk a little bit aboutthat.

Hmm.
So these two great thinkers Iadmire, Andrew Scott and Lynda
Gratton, they wrote, uh, nearlya decade ago this brilliant book
called The 100 Year Life.
And if I were to sum it up in acouple of sentences, I would do
it like this, were we're movingfrom a world that was by and

(18:54):
large, a three stage life.
First you trained, then youworked, and then you were
retired.
And those three, three stageswere very separate and they all
had their institutions tosupport them.
Like, you know, schools in thefirst stage and companies in the
second, and pension systems, orI don't know, or even pension

(19:17):
homes in the third.
And, uh, what's been happeningin the, over the last couple of
decades is that we'retransitioning to a multi-stage
life where people train multipletimes, or all the time,
throughout their lives.
They work for much longerbecause they have not only
longer lives, but longer worklives.

(19:40):
In the meantime, the lifeexpectancy of companies and
business models and skills hasbecome shorter and shorter.
So whatever it is that you do asa job may not be something that
you will be able to do and makea living with for four decades,
for 40 years.
And then the last stageretirement, there are so many

(20:02):
more different ages, so muchmore age diversity that if you
are in your late sixties, youmay still be very active and
support someone older, someonefrom the generation above you,
who may face health difficultiesand not have as much

(20:22):
independence.
And then sometimes you even havea generation above that one.
So possibly up to threegenerations above the legal age
of retirement.
And that's unprecedented inhuman history.
So we have so many generationsin the population.
So much age diversity and somany transitions in that

(20:46):
multi-stage life where youchange jobs, you change your
situation, you become acaregiver, you go back to work,
and then you work part-time andthen you have cancer, maybe you
stop working, but then you getbetter and then et cetera.
And so this situation where youhad a stage and a life situation
and an identity that fit thatstage, that's no longer

(21:09):
possible.
So there are so many transitionsand so many different ages and
so many life situations that thequestion is who am I?
If each stage, you know, comeswith different challenges and
you develop different skills foreach of these stage, it does ask
the question or it does comewith the question, who am I?

(21:34):
When I change life so often, orwhen I change jobs multiple
times.
The sense of identity is nolonger a given.
It was not a question that youhad to ask when you had a more
linear career and where, youknow, each next step was pretty
obvious and didn't come withthose challenging questions

(21:54):
because now, probably morefreedom in where to go next, or
at least a sense of freedom.
But this sense of freedom alsoproduces a lot of anxiety.
If I can do everythingtheoretically, what am I going
to do?
How do I make the choice that Ineed to make for the next stage
of my life?
It's like going to thesupermarket and picking a brand

(22:18):
of toothpaste.
There's so much choice, so muchfreedom.
You don't know how to choose, soyou have this paralysis of
choice and that can apply toyour own life.
And it's, um, it's bothexhilarating uh, to be able to
do so many things for many moreyears than our ancestors.

(22:41):
But it can also be terrifying.
So knowing who you are, whichcan come with simple things like
knowing what you don't like, canhelp narrow down the options to
make the choices easier, and toavoid choice paralysis.
Here's what I don't like.
I don't like being an employeeand being told to go to a

(23:02):
meeting at 6:00 PM that's forthe French who make a lot of,
have a lot of meetings late atnight.
So I know that what matters tome is autonomy, uh, or, uh, it
can be I like learning all thetime.
So I want to be in a situationwhere I can spend a lot of time
reading or a lot of timespeaking to other people.

(23:26):
Well, you basically narrow downand you have a better sense of
what you like, what you don'tlike, what you are good at, what
you are less good at, and whatfeels comfortable.
And we've criticized and decriedthe notion of comfort, like this
cliche expression, to get out ofyour comfort zone.

(23:49):
Dunno if you've heard it.
I recently wrote the preface, orforward to a book called'Let's
Exploit Our Comfort Zone' ratherthan get out of it.
Being comfortable means beinggood at something, being
efficient at something.
So understanding what works foryou will make it easier for you

(24:11):
to go further, to do better, todo more, and to feel good about
it.
And after all, that's what weall want to feel some degree of
comfort.

You know, that strikes me that what it sounds
like is from a younger age needto be exploring these things and
just not going Going along withthe flow.
Obviously I think for womenhaving, if they would have
children or not have children,or as you mentioned, having
elderly parents, so theirtransitions change, but somehow

(24:45):
they have to find that core ofwho they are.
Do you recommend, say, getting acoach or reading particular
books or keeping a journal tohelp them get a sense of who
they are?

Absolutely, and there is a reason why the
coaching industry has explodedover the past three decades.
It's because we need that andobviously we need to find the
right one.
It's, it's the same withpsychologists and shrinks and,
you know, you need to find theright person and you need to
make sure that you have someonewho, uh, will be of use to you.

(25:20):
But coaching is, uh, coaching isone aspect of it, but it's also
simply, uh, cultivating thoserelations.
And how they can help you findout who you are and what you
like and what you're good at.
I mean, your friends can helpyou do that.
Your parents, your children.
And when you combine that, youhave a, uh, a better sense of

(25:40):
identity.
It's those relations, yeah, theyneed to be reciprocal.
If they're not reciprocal, youare just a caregiver in each of
these relations, then you willbe burnt out and you will not
benefit from, from them, soperhaps we need to be a bit tiny
bit more selfish in all those,uh, relations.

(26:02):
Think about what's in it for me.
It sounds nasty when I put itlike that, but, um, but
relationships should be based onreciprocity.
And a lot of women lose outbecause they do not find
reciprocity in their relations.
So we need reciprocity.
Let's be a little bit selfishand ask for something in return.

(26:25):
Ask for help, ask for support,ask for reciprocity.
So if you've, you know,supported someone, um, through
cancer and once they're better,at some point, maybe they can
give back to you and maybe youcan ask for help.
And so the help that you can getis not just from professionals,
but also from that network thatyou've supported all along.

Basically what you're saying there is do
something different that youhaven't done before and it will
shift you in differentdirections and, and again, I
think this is how we do getsmarter is through these
relationships and asking andasking people.
We, and I think it's importantto do it more and more.
Alright, let's move on a littlebit to what your thoughts on AI

(27:12):
are and you know, I talk aboutAI and augmented work, but, um,
you know, the thinking side, thecognitive side that we've all
got to try and maintain andimprove, especially as we get
older.
If machines are gonna be doingsome of that, what's gonna
happen to us?

That's a good question.
I think that older workers willhave the upper hand because they
have been trained cognitively tothink critically, and to analyze
data with a critical mind beforeAI was available.
And so they have more of acritical mind.

(27:50):
They can analyze the data andthe output produced by the AI
tools that they use.
They can analyze that outputwith a critical mind.
So paradoxically, we, I mean,we've long said that, you know,
all the workers are less goodwith digital tools.
That's the opposite.
The other way around with AI,they probably prompt better,

(28:13):
they're better at doing promptsbecause they know exactly what
look to look for, and they arebetter at using AI like an
assistant to augment theirskills.
Whereas the young ones, and I'mworried about my own children,
they use it with less of acritical mind and they've never
developed the skills to writeit, you know, a whole essay with

(28:36):
no help at all, with no outsidehelp.
And when I look at the way Idevelop my own cognitive skills,
writing was a big process, wasan important element of
developing a critical mind.
The ability to think, theability to ask questions, the
ability to analyze a subject.
And, and yeah, basically writingis necessary to think.

(29:00):
So if you can no longer write,can you still think as well?
So the positive way of lookingat it is that I think older
worker have an advantage therebecause they developed those
skills, whereas younger ones maybe, um, at risk of never
developing those cognitiveskills.

(29:23):
The negative way of looking atit is that maybe we all, we will
all let those skills getatrophied.
And that's probably one of mybiggest fears.
I call it the WALL-E effect.
Uh, are you familiar with thatPixar movie from 2008 where, you
know, there was this littlerobot left on earth to clean up

(29:44):
the mess made by humans andhumans left and went on this big
space ship and after a couple ofgenerations, because they
automated every task, everythingin the ship is automated.
They are on those little flyingchairs and they are connected to
computers all the time.
So they stopped working, theystopped walking, they stopped

(30:05):
thinking.
Um, and they can no longer doanything by themselves.
And the film is beautifulbecause I, at the end, they
learn to walk again, right?
Make the first step and thinkagain, and grow plants and
things.
Do everything from scratchagain, with no help of machines.
But, I personally am afraid thatbecause I write less now, I do

(30:28):
use generative AI, like thisvery efficient assistant, an
assistant I cannot completelytrust.
I need to check everything.
But it's an assistant that is ahardworking one.
And so I write less.
I do combine things, et cetera,but I, I don't do everything
from scratch with no help atall.
I use it and I'm afraid that mywriting skills and perhaps

(30:52):
someday my thinking, my abilityto think, um, will get atrophied
and that I will fall prey to theWALL-E effect and be like those
humans on the spaceship who canlonger do anything by
themselves.
The same has happened withcalculating, I started using a,
a, a calculating machine when Iwas a teenager, and now I'm not

(31:16):
sure I can do divisions.
And, you know, even with a, withpen and paper, it will take time
for me to be sure that I get tothe right result.
I can no longer calculate.
Um, my memory is atrophied.
I used to know a lot of phonenumbers by heart when I was,
when I was young.
I no longer have to, so I nolonger do, so do I exercise my

(31:39):
memory enough?
Maybe not.
So, you know, this, this atrophyof skills has already started.
Is it going to continue on andget worse?
That's my biggest worry.

Now that's interesting as well.
The older you are, the morethings you have done, like
having to write things, havingto read a book, take notes, put
that into an article orsomething like that.
Yes, nowadays as as olderpeople, we can use generative AI
to help, but I think you're alsomanaging the process, which is

(32:15):
another aspect to it.
Whereas I think what the youngpeople might be doing, and I
think a whole lot of people inmarketing are doing is just
saying, write me an article, 800words, 600 words.
Here's the five key words and itkicks it out, and we get a lot
of mush.
And that's that's where I thinkthings will change and, we were
talking about relational stuffthere, is one way you can have

(32:37):
an identity is to stand out in,in some sort of niche that's
important that people want tofollow.
Uh, and not necessarily tryingto chase followers, you know,
and again, creating arelationship through the writing
even if it, it is augmented withAI.
I do know with my articles now,I do use AI a lot.

(32:59):
I base them all on the notetaking that I've been taking for
years in note taking apps.
Then I interrogate those notesand rewrite it and say, look, I
didn't wanna say that.
I wanna say this.
Can you help me say it that way?
then I still edit it.
So, there's a interaction goingon.
And I don't, don't think I'd seethat with younger people if they

(33:22):
haven't had that experience inlife.
And the other thing I thinkabout expertise in there is you
sort of know when something'snot right.
Because you've seen it a lot,your gut feeling says hmm,
something not quite right there.
Whereas if you haven't had thatexpertise or experience, you're
not gonna see it.
So how would you suggest olderpeople who may be making some

(33:45):
older people, I don't even knowwhat we call people who are
older anymore.
Not, not everybody who's old isold.
Some people are young andthey're old.
So for example, a 60-year-oldwoman, 60 year young woman,
who's doing a transition, notreally used AI in the past or
maybe digital tools, what wouldyou recommend that they try or

(34:07):
have a look at to see if thereis some benefit, for them in
those tools?

I'd like to go back to what you just said about
challenging whatever the, thetool you use gives you, the
result that is giving, it's aconversation.
It's exactly what you said aboutproducing something and
challenging it.
So as a 60 year young woman, youhave, as you said, more
crystallized, intelligent, more,more experience, more knowledge,

(34:34):
and even if that knowledge is alittle bit blurry, you don't
remember everything, but youhave the ability to challenge
whatever is said to you becausewhatever you read because Hmm,
yeah, as you said, it doesn'tquite sound right.
So this is a greatest way tobegin is to, to begin this as a
conversation and, and the app,whatever app it whether it's
Chat GPT or Anthropics Claude orGemini or et cetera.

(34:58):
I mean, the, they have theiradvantages and, and, and, and
drawbacks, each of them, buteach of them basically works the
same way.
It works best as a conversation,and it's not, it's not a robot
the way we imagine robots inscience fiction.
It's a networked intelligence.
It's algorithms trained on tons,tons of data produced by humans

(35:22):
at first, then produced by othergenerative AI more recently.
But, uh, it, it's networkedintelligence.
It will take, you know, an ideafrom there, an idea from here,
and, you know, it will justcombine it and, and give you
something that, uh, thatalgorithms try to make relevant,
uh, depending on what yourquestion is or what your prompt

(35:44):
is.
And so it's you in a network.
That's how the use of generativeAI can be defined, uh, and, and,
and this interaction with yourcritical mind and this network
of tons of data produced by tonsof humans.
And if you, if you start usingit like that in a very simple

(36:07):
way with this conversation in anongoing conversation, you make
it into a very useful and verylife-changing assistant, an
assistant you challenge, anassistant you can never fully
completely trust because youhave to ask more questions and
edit whatever is produced.
But I think it's not verythreatening and it's not

(36:29):
difficult.
It's the most intuitive toolwe've ever had, and that is why
there are already 2 billionusers or more, probably it's
underestimated and probably it'smore now, so half of the world's
population already use it.
And again, as a 60-year-oldwoman, you have more skills to
do this conversation properlythan someone younger or that

(36:52):
someone and someone lessexperienced.
So make the most of it.

That's right, they've just gotta try it and
see where it goes.
But it can help them if they'rerunning a business, on their
own.
For example, what was I doingtoday?
Things weren't showing up.
I'm, I'm downloading things ontomy Mac, downloading a document.
And it's not showing up.
So I said to AI, it's notshowing up, what can I do?

(37:17):
And it sent me in a littletrail, it gave me one way of
fixing it, which fixed it.
So this is also becoming a techadvisor to do things, it can
help you fix things, not justfor your work, things in the
house.

Not just tech.
Yeah, exactly.
Even, uh, things that have to dowith the home, how to fix this,
how to do that, how to cleanthis stain, how to et cetera.
Uh, and, and it, it brings thewhole, you know, YouTube
tutoring that was already a bigrevolution.
You know how to do something,this and that with your hair.

(37:54):
You had the video explainingexactly how to do it.
So it brings it even one stepfurther that it's like this
universal tutoring tool forlittle how to questions.
Whether it's cooking or fixingthings or solving a computer
problem or finding the solutionfor your professional question.

(38:16):
That's where I think it worksbest.
The, the small technicalquestions, not necessarily the
big, uh, research questions, uh,where I think it's less
satisfying, but the small ones,yes.
And I've only learned to askthese little technical questions
very recently.
I've only discovered it monthsago, rather than years ago,

(38:39):
because, my first reflex was notto ask Chat GPT or Claude, these
little how-to questions.
And I've discovered that, as yousay, it's probably one of the
best use cases because it's sofast, so quick.
And so as a worker, or as aself-employed business person
that is the best use also of,uh, those generative AI tools

(39:03):
that you can find, that willhelp you get wherever you want
to get a lot faster.

Now that interesting because, it will
save you money, which is one ofthe problems when you're running
a little business is, you know,you can spend a lot of money
getting technical help andsometimes you need to do that,
but for little bits to get youalong the way.
It will help and it will saveyou money, if you are paying for
it anyway, you might as well getsome benefit.
I still believe it's gonna bemuch easier if you can get a

(39:30):
really good it person to comeand work out all the wiring.
Like if you saw my setup,there's wires everywhere.
I would love somebody to come inand clean all that up.
But yeah, I think it can solve alot of problems and save you a
lot of money.
Well, we've been talking aboutthinking, so let's just talk a
little bit about our cognition.
I think you share with RahafHarfoush's view that cognition

(39:53):
and attention are crucial today,especially navigating in this
knowledge world, the world wherewe really have to think for
ourselves and sort things out becreative.
And when I use the word creativenow, I used to think, oh, you
have to do this amazing stuff.
But what creativity means isfinding a better way to do
something.

(40:14):
We were just talking about AIhelping us solve problems.
Tell me about cognition andattention and why it's so
important.

So we're, we're flooded with information.
There's so much informationoverflow now, and since the
launch of Chat GPT more than twoand a half years ago now, uh,
we've, we've witnessed anexponential rise in texts and
images and videos produced nowlargely by a, by AIs, online.

(40:48):
And there's so much of it.
So we're flooded with it.
And, there are so many actorsasking for bits of our attention
just to be able to selladvertisers some of our
attention, seconds ormilliseconds of our attention.
And that has lead to, um,degraded attention and degraded

(41:09):
attention skills because to beable to grab our attention,
they've made the content evenmore attention seeking more,
more colorful, more bright, moreloud, more shocking, more
provocative, something that willgenerate anger.
That's one way of grabbing yourattention.

(41:30):
So shock and anger.
And so it's become like anaddiction, that we need things
that are more, you know, wow insome way that will generate the
wow effect and we can pay lessand less attention to simple
things.
Things that will require time,things that will require hours

(41:52):
to understand, like reading awhole book with no distraction,
et cetera.
And so we have this need formore dopamine and dopamine hits
from social networks, fromInstagram and the like.
And we move from one tab toanother tab on our computer

(42:12):
every couple of seconds.
We're like fish, our attentionis extremely short.
The attention span has reducedfrom, I don't know, it was a
couple of years ago it was 12seconds to eight seconds on
average.
And we check our phones all thetime.
Even if we have nonotifications, we'll go there by
ourselves and checking ifthere's something new, if

(42:34):
there's some dopamine hit toget.
And, and that's a hugedifficulty because it's not just
making us less cognitivelyskilled, it's making us sick.
It's creating stress, anxiety,it's making us sick in, in every
possible way.
And the counter movement now, ora lot of people are, um, leaving

(42:57):
social networks.
So I left Twitter a couple ofyears ago now after Elon Musk,
uh, took over.
I'm trying to have a morereasonable use of Instagram,
mainly for professional aspects.
I left Facebook a while ago,maybe five or six years ago.
I try to have no notifications.

(43:19):
If I go on a walk outside, Ileave the phone at home.
So I go outside without thephone.
So as to practice thisattention, this ability to pay
attention to look at what'soutside, to look at the trees,
to look at the floor, to look atpeople, to look at faces and
things like that.
And this is probably the onlyway we'll be able to regain, uh,

(43:43):
our ability to have longerattention spans, to pay
attention.
And now there's a a link betweenattention and cognition because
this ability to pay attention isgoing to help us maintain or
develop cognitive skills, ourability to focus, analyze

(44:06):
information, think, and thenproduce creative things,
whatever those creative thingsare, and make decisions that are
sound decisions.
Because our ability to makedecisions in a world of
information overflow has alsodegraded, and it's, um,
sometimes we're paralyzed or wejust make bad decisions, uh,

(44:28):
whatever those decisions may be.
Um, so yes, attention andcognition are the battles of the
future.
The good thing about 60-year-oldwomen is that, some of them,
yeah, they've already hadburnouts.
Sometimes they've already felttheir cognition under threat, or

(44:49):
they may think their cognitionis under threat because of
aging.
And so perhaps they have alreadydeveloped good habits when it
comes to developing or tomaintaining attention and
cognition.
So working on your memory, uh,doing things without the phone,
like whether it's playing chessor reading a book or going on a

(45:12):
walk outside or meditating ordoing yoga or doing Pilates.
I mean, everything that requiresthat you leave the phone outside
or in a bag is a good thing, isa good activity.
And, a lot of activities that 60year olds are fond of like a
physical activity or, I don'tknow, whatever it is that you

(45:34):
do, for example.

I know you wrote something about seasonality as
well recently.
How do you think that helps withcognitive vitality?
Obviously, we can do more insummer.

Yes.
It's, it's interesting becausethe modern work was largely
shaped by industrial work andindustrial work, basically
factories with assembly linesthat work 24/7 because they need
to be, you know, you need tomaximize the output so you have
artificial light that was theelectricity revolution, so that

(46:07):
you could have the sameproduction, the same
productivity, the same outputday in, day out every month of
the year.
And you didn't care about whatseason it was.
You didn't care how hot it wasoutside because you could have
this artificial climatecontrolled environment where the
output could remain the same.

(46:28):
And we created shifts so thepeople could work, you know,
teams of people could work allday, all night.
And so we could maximize theoutput and that's the fantasy of
industrial work, that you can beequally productive all the time
and work the same number ofhours all the time.

(46:51):
So, Henry Ford created the 40hour work week and was still
left with basically somethingthat looks like the 40 hour work
week, five days a week.
I mean, most people work withthat model still, even though we
no longer work on assemblylines.
Some of us still work in climatecontrolled environments, but a
lot of us do not.

(47:12):
Whether we are on the road to gofrom, you know, one person to
the other, to deliver care, tocut people's hair, to clean
people's homes, to look afterpeople's children, or to do
creative work.
We no longer work on assemblylines with a linear, equal
unchanging productivity.

(47:33):
So what we are finding also withclimate change is that, yes,
there are seasons.
There are also seasons in ourlives and sometimes we feel
tired.
And to be able to workproductively in creative work or
in emotional work and relationalwork, it doesn't work with the

(47:53):
fiction of equal productivity ofconstant productivity.
So we are rediscovering, um, andespecially those of us who work
very freely, who can choose ourown time and how we work is
that, yes, there are seasons andsometimes, as you just said, we
perhaps we work best in springand summer and should be able to

(48:16):
sleep more in winter.
And perhaps it's the other wayaround.
We want to enjoy outdoors funactivities outside in summer.
And work more inside in winter.
I mean, depending on where youare and how affected you are by
climate change and by climate,and depending on what you do.

(48:38):
There are seasonal aspects inthe work, what we do.
And it's a good thing because itwill make it possible for us to
work more years and because itwill make the work that we do
more sustainable and because itwill help us stay healthy longer
if we do not strain that, if wedo not push ourselves a little
bit too much.
If we listen to what our bodiesneed and, and what the seasons

(49:01):
are like.
Uh, so it's a, it's, I thinkit's an interesting trend.
It's not everywhere yet, butthat we are, maybe we are
learning to make work moreseasonal again.

I think for probably a hundred thousand
years it was.

It was, it was when it was agriculture.
Yes.

That will be in us somehow, we will feel that,
we will know it.
Okay, one of the things we spokeabout in one of our previous
episodes was that when womenbecome freelancers, often only
make a minimum wage.
And you stress the importance offinancial literacy and
empowerment for women.
So how do these financialrealities and the need for

(49:43):
financial resilience impactwomen to make say, a transition
into independent work?

So they got to think about their retirement
savings, and they have to thinkabout that as early as possible.
And yes, it's still the samethat women freelancers earn less
than their male counterparts.
It's still the same that womenin the second or the third stage
of their career, earn less andsometimes earn less even than in

(50:11):
the previous stage of theircareer because following the
motherhood penalty, so thefinancial impact of having a
child, they never go back, onaverage to where they were
before.
And so the gap between mothersand non mothers, uh, is as big
as it's ever been, sadly.

(50:31):
So no progress there, but thereis progress, I think, in
information, in knowledge aboutall that.
And in financial literacy.
So, what I've seen is that overthe past five or six years,
there have been many more media,many more people offering some
kind of training to improvefinancial literacy and also

(50:56):
political lobbying, so thatwomen who work part-time, I
think it's also the case inAustralia, that they are
encouraged or even forced tocontribute to their pension
systems.
Um, fully, I mean, not justpartially, but fully.
And so I think we have a betterknowledge of that and we are

(51:18):
thinking of that perhapsearlier.
And that's a good thing.
And hopefully, it will have animpact on the gender pension gap
in, in the future.
So I think also, more women knowthat part-time work is a trap,
that there is a triple penaltyassociated to part-time work,

(51:38):
whether that's as an employee oras a freelancer.
Freelancers also have the debtto take into account because if
you work part-time, not only areyou paid less, but then you will
be paid less in the futurebecause your your pension will
be lower.
And the third penalty is thatyou are usually in jobs or
careers that in general pay lessand have less pay progression.

(52:04):
Working part-time is notpossible in every kind of jobs.
And the jobs where you workpart-time are usually not
associated with as muchprogression as full-time, uh,
work.
So that's where I would say theprogress is, more financial
literacy overall and morepolitical awareness.

(52:24):
And a few political decisionsor, or laws that have been
passed recently that areprotecting women in that regard?

Laetitia is there something else you'd like to
add?
And, and then we'll find out howwe can get in contact with you.

I don't know.
I have a blank with such openquestions.
Suddenly, I dunno what to add.

we've we have covered most of everything, I
think, which is really, reallygood.
'cause it's been wonderfultalking to you again.
So, Laetitia, where do they findyou?
You've mentioned Instagram.

Yes, Instagram.
So my name's Laetitia Vitaud,and you can find my account, but
also my newsletter, my, mynewsletter in English.
Laetitia At work on Substack.
I still publish about one piecea month, that used to be more,
but as you yourself have foundwith your podcast too much is
not sustainable.
So once a month is the frequencythat fits, that works best.

(53:18):
So I, I write these long pieceslike the recent one you
mentioned about making workseasonal so that's where you can
get in touch with me and answerthis newsletter and I receive an
email and, and you can get incontact

LinkedIn as well.

and LinkedIn as well.

Well, Laetitia, thank you for being my guest
again.

Thank you, Nigel.
It's been my pleasure to speakto you for a third time.

I'd like to do it again, maybe in a year's time or
something to keep in contact.

Thank you, Nigel, and have a good night.

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