Skills Sprint: How to Learn in Hard Moments (Without Spiralling)

Squiggly Careers

AmazingIf

Business, Management, Careers

4.9 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This is Day 3 of the Learn Like a Lobster skill sprint, and today Helen and Sarah share a simple way of reflecting on hard moments at work so you can learn faster, avoid recency bias, and take control in tough situations. Because when work feels messy, reflection is often the first thing we skip - or overdo. In this episode, you’ll learn practical tools, including the 5:1 formula and the WWW/EBI framework, to help you regain perspective, stay in control, and turn difficult moments into learning. 🦞 Join our Learn Like a Lobster Sprint: https://bit.ly/4oZzJ3F 🦞 Pre-order Learn Like A Lobster: 🇺🇸PRH US - https://bit.ly/3KxTeBn 🇬🇧 Amazon UK - https://amzn.to/3KcRZaR ⏱️ Timestamps (00:00) Lobsters grow in hard moments (00:35) The lobster profile (00:58) Why reflecting in hard moments needs more focus (02:33) Thinkers vs doers: how we avoid learning (03:45) WWW/EBI (04:31) The 5:1 formula explained (06:36) Fixing problems in teams (07:39) Taking control in long haul hard moments (09:35) Inspiration & 24hr action 🎯 What You’ll Learn Why reflecting during hard moments leads to better learning How to avoid overthinking or rushing past difficult experiences A simple 5:1 approach to constructive reflection and how to use WWW / EBI individually or in teams Learn Like a Lobster Profiler – https://www.learnlikealobsterprofiler.com/ Download our template for 5:1 reflection: https://bit.ly/llal_5to1_reflectiontemplate For questions about Squiggly Careers or to share feedback, please email helenandsarah@squigglycareers.com More ways to learn about Squiggly Careers: 📩 Download our free career tools: https://www.amazingif.com/toolkit/ 🦞 Join our Learn Like a Lobster Sprint: https://bit.ly/4oZzJ3F 📮 Get Squiggly Careers in Action in your inbox: https://bit.ly/SquigglyCareersInAction 📚 Read our books: The Squiggly Career and You Coach You: https://www.amazingif.com/books/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Helen.
0:01.0	And I'm Sarah.
0:01.8	And this is day three of the Squiggly Skills Sprint.
0:04.9	We are continuing with the theme of learning in hard moments.
0:09.2	And so we're going to dive into some new ideas to help you learn more at work.
0:13.8	There's a quick reminder.
0:15.2	The fascinating feature that we're focused on here is lobsters grow the most by shedding their shells.
0:22.9	It's energy zapping. I mean, it looks really hard when you watch the videos of lobster shedding their shells.
0:25.6	You have a lot of empathy for lobsters when you see this. They look jelly-like and it looks
0:29.2	very tough, but they grow back these new shells. They're bigger, they're better, they're stronger.
0:34.5	And what has really stood out from everybody who's done the profile so far,
0:38.1	we've had thousands of people now who've completed their lobster profile, is that learning in hard
0:43.3	moments is definitely the area that people need the most help with. People are pretty good at
0:47.5	leading their own learning, but definitely want some extra ideas and inspiration. Getting better
0:52.5	at learning as you go, but this is the one where
0:54.7	we're like, we need to keep focusing on that. So that's why we've done two days on this.
0:58.7	So when we're in a hard moment, we want to think about how can we reflect as we go? Because
1:04.2	if we reflect as we go, we learn so much more. If you reflect after a hard moment, what tends to
1:10.6	happen is you forget a lot.
1:13.0	You lose the learning, don't you? And you lose lots of the learning.
1:15.7	Recency bias, you tend to actually be reflecting on the last week. Or you're probably
1:20.8	reflecting on those really big things that might have happened that you can still remember.
	...

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