Embracing the Grit: Tony Tenaglier's Guide to Finding Flow in Work

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today I am joined by author and manufacturing leader, Tony Tanagua. Tony lives by the simple model. Say what you do, do what you say. He is a manufacturing leader in high-stakes, uh, aerospace environments. And he is an author who challenges the comfortable lives we tell ourselves about burnout, motivation, and success. So we're going to be talking to Tony about everything that he's up to and gonna be up to, and uh talking to him about his his book. So, Tony, thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Thank you, Curtis. Honor to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

unknown 1:06

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

You know what's funny, Curtis? The question of what do you do is one of the reasons why I started my own podcast. Work sucks, but I like it because when we ask or when we answer the question of what do you do, I don't need an asset. But usually what comes to mind is we first start out with the thing that we trade time for money with. And I guess my sort of struggle in why I'm doing, you know, the right the books that I'm writing and then the podcast that I'm hosting is that I want to reshape really work today, right? People are frustrated with what they're doing, they might be getting burned out, and just trying to my sort of like root cause analysis of this is that we're not using the correct language around work. So I'm excited to start sharing really how work should be looked at today.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, and I forgot to mention that podcast. So uh talk to the listeners, talk to the listeners about it, tell us what we can expect when we hear it and where we can hear it at.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah, so when we talk about, you know, work, sometimes it's like you read, I've read a lot of self-help. And if you listeners, you might read self-help too. And a lot of self-help is like chase your passion, and you never, if you have your dream job, you never work another day in your life. And those are all great things, right? And then there's other books out there saying we got a four-hour work week and then five steps to happiness. And not that those aren't important and part of like the conversation. The problem is we overlook the grit, the friction involved with the work. And that to me is a skill to really start to recognize and embrace, right? The cliche of, you know, we have to enjoy the process, the journey instead of the destination. And, you know, the reason why I call the podcast Work Sucks, but I like it. There's that element of, yeah, there's parts that are just gonna really stink, right? Imagine a baseball player getting up to bat and he misses, you know, the first four or five times he gets up there, but then hits the home run to win the game, right? That sucked that he missed the first four times, but then obviously hit the home run and still likes the game.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Well, why do you feel like capable people uh feel so exhausted, even though they're successful?

SPEAKER_01 3:08

I think it's chasing the wrong metric, right? We're in a hustle culture today. We're you know told to get these sort of extrinsic things that, you know, once we get them, what do we do? Right? We get the house, we get the job, we get the title, we get our bonus, we get the whatever it is, the car and you know, whatever it may be, the certain salary that you've always wanted. But once you get those things, that's that's that that's it, right? So we have to start working towards this sort of intrinsic desire to do to do something. And the distinction I like to make here is that we do a lot of different things. We we wake up in the morning, we fight gravity, we might fight the alarm clock. I always fight it in the morning, hit snooze a couple times. You know, we work to get into the car and then we show maybe up to work if we're at a nine to five, or we get on our computer if we're an entrepreneur and we're doing work that way. But there's a difference between doing and being. And so when you're doing these things, sure, you could be checking off boxes, you know, and again, getting all those things that I talked about the car, the salary, the job, whatever it may be. But when you're being in all those activities, that's where we need to really start tapping into.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Do you feel like burnout is actually caused by individuals or leadership systems?

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Yeah, so it's kind of a combination of both, right? It takes two to tango, if you will, right? People are in the system, and then the system is sort of created by people. And, you know, to me, you know, again, it goes back to the idea of what are you working towards, right? When we're we've got this goal, say we'll take the nine to fiver, you know, they have retirements when many years down the road, right? 65, what are the arbitrary ages? And the problem with that is like, well, what are we doing tomorrow? What are we doing tomorrow? And it's the expectation to me that I've found with myself and my own instances of burnout. I've certainly burned out, believe me, and it sucks. Um, it's just because of my expectation. I'm trying to do things so quick, almost like rushing my life away. And that's such a bad thing, right? So on a personal level, I can control that. On a system level, yeah, now we got to start talking about this sort of work and life sort of balance, right? And how can companies really start to embrace value beyond what something is worth, right? If you look at the word value, it has two meanings. And typically our culture today really thinks of value of what something is worth. How much is your car worth? How much is the watch you're wearing or the shirt or the shoes you bought? But when you look up the meaning on Google, the first definition is the standards for which you live by. And when companies start embracing more of these standards, these types of values, that's gonna make you want to show up. When you talk about community and, you know, I guess even self-actualization, right? This sort of potential everybody has. There's beauty in that when people can like live up to these sort of values. They're not checking these boxes off because you can't complete them. You're gonna be continually striving towards them and trying, it's sort of a mastery versus sort of a checkbox.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Well, what is wrong with motivation, culture, and productivity obsession?

SPEAKER_01 6:16

I mean, I think it's comes down to unfortunately, I'm gonna blame the cell phones here and social media. We look out, you know, to our social media platforms. I've been guilty of this too, and it's FOMO, right? Fear of missing out. We have this fear of just, oh, I need this, and because everybody else has it. And you don't always need these things, right? You just kind of have to reassess. What I like to do every day, Curtis, is that my brother and I have been doing this for about the past few years now, where each day we we text each other three things that we appreciate that we've done during the day. Whether he's got a family now, he's got a beautiful wife and daughter, he'll say that he's got to spend time with them or he worked on his business, he's an entrepreneur. And, you know, I'll text him things like I'm working on my homework, got to go do yoga with my girlfriend. And when we start talking about, you know, appreciating these little things, that's really what's going to add up in our day and our work.

SPEAKER_00 7:11

Why does do what you love fail so many people?

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Well, I think you know, it goes back to we talk about passion through the perspective of if you have your dream job, you'll never work another day in your life. And the problem with that is you're gonna keep working. You're gonna keep working and working and working. And so, you know, we have to get out of this mindset of do, do, do, and we have to start transitioning into be. Who are we becoming in this process? And, you know, that's kind of like uh, what do I mean by that? And really the way I've been sort of grappling with it is it's about internal conversations that you have with yourself. When you can start to, you know, really it's whether it be journaling or talking to your significant other or best friend or just whatever it may be, it's this practice of internal dialogue that we meet need more today. Because the problem is we have too much external dialogue sort of replacing our thoughts, and we really need to step up in our own selves and minds with our own internal conversations, our own internal voice to step into what we do.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

How does flow get destroyed in modern workplaces?

SPEAKER_01 8:24

Yeah, it goes back kind of the you know question you had before of the system with burnouts and you know, with in terms of flow, so there's four stages. So, first of all, you know, I love how you like you know the sports theme going on here, Curtis, with baseball. I can only imagine as a baseball player, you know, stepping up there, seeing the ball. It's like slow motion, you know, it's coming at them and they just have this perfect swing and they hit the home run. That's a flow state. And, you know, even if you're not an athlete listening to this episode, you can still encounter flow. And believe it or not, people find flow more readily at work because of the antecedents. So there's these three critical things that go into a flow state. There's clear goals, there's immediate feedback, and then there's what Mihai Chick sent me high, the psychologist who came up with this, challenge to skill ratio balanced. And so when you can integrate all those three things into your work, then you're gonna start to flow. But the problem is corporations, you know, don't do a good job at, say, for example, feedback, right? We think of the nine to five person with, you know, getting the annual review. That's not enough feedback. What about the 300 other 364 days of the year, right? Where's that feedback to help you towards your goals? What about the manager or the supervisor really trying to give employees good challenges to improve their skills? If they say make you know 15 widgets and you've only made eight widgets a shift, that's not a very good goal, and they're gonna get very frustrated and deflated. So when you start recognizing these elements of flow, then workers and the the company are gonna really perform optimally.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

What do leaders misunderstand most about engagement?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

It comes down to active listening. And you know, when we talk about engagement, you know, it's really from a corporation standpoint, it's like they just see them as employee numbers, unfortunately, and they think of transactions that'll help the bottom line, right? Everything's about profit, you know, and minimizing scrap and all these things. But true engagement is when you can sit there with the person and just really listen to them, right? So my great-grateaunt Paul taught me growing up that we have two ears and one mouth. And she always said you need to double your listening over your speaking. And so I try to implement that. So when someone's talking to me, and I try to really listen to what they're saying, not just listening to the words, but also studying the nonverbal cues, right? What is their inflections, their tone, what's their body language? You know, are they scared? Are they upset? Are they frustrated? And that's when you can start looking at people like that, you're truly gonna engage. Now, I think the problem with corporations is that they look at that quote unquote work as not being effective again to helping widgets get across the finish line. But in the reality of it, if you took the time for this small talk, the prof the employees are really gonna perform that much better.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

What is the paradox of work and why is it so important today?

SPEAKER_01 11:29

Yeah, so going back to Mihai, Chick-Sent Mihai with this study on flow and those three antecedents I talked about. When he did the study, it was very interesting. Study, he called it the experience sampling method. Basically, throughout a given time period, this was with pagers back in the day. So we didn't they didn't have cell phones. Essentially, what he did was throughout a given you know week or period of time, he would page the participant that wanted to take part of the study. And the the participants would basically write out what they were doing. And Mihai, the psychologist, his original intention with this experiment was to really answer what was kind of happiness. And when you know people were doing these different states, why did they find joy? And so when he got all these results back from all these different participants and different areas of work, what he found was very striking was that people at work would find flow states, as I talked about with the clear goals, immediate feedback, channels of skill ratio balance, because work provides those things very clearly most of the time. But when he asked the participants where they would rather be, they would say time and time again, anywhere but work. And so he called that the paradox of work. And that's actually what I'm studying, Curtis, now in my PhD, trying to figure out where the gap is today. Some, you know, researchers think it's a lack of intrinsic motivation. Um, Mihaik attributed to the values of a company being different than that of the employees. So I'm just very curious to see where we're at today if people are still answering the same question. I think they are, unfortunately. They would rather be anywhere but work, which is sort of sad in some sense.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Do you feel like work can be meaningful without becoming your identity? Why or why not?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah, I mean, identity is kind of tricky, right? So that's why I talk about doing versus being. And I think that's why it goes back to, you know, when you introduced me, Curtis, on the show. I said, you know, one of the things I struggle with is, you know, what do you do? Because that immediately labels your identity. If I say if I'm an author, I say I'm an engineer, I say I'm a podcaster, I'm a whatever, all of a sudden that's my identity. But in reality, there's so many other different things, right? I like to read books, I like to do yoga, I hike mountains, I climb rock climbing and soccer and golf and all these different things. So, you know, to me, we have to really start kind of shifting this conversation of okay, we're not we're doing all these things, but who are you being in all of it?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Or talk to the listeners about your book, you know, tell us uh why you decided to write it, what we can expect when we read it and where we can get it.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Yeah, no, appreciate it, Curtis. So I've actually written a couple books. Um, so the first one was, you know, The Impression of a Good Life, Finding Your Song and Dance. And it really talk about identity here. So I was having sort of this 20-something-year-old crisis here with my life. I was told to get a job, told to get a degree, and I was told to get married. And I dropped out of grad school, I got fired from a job, I ended up breaking up with this woman. And my life was just, I was depressed. I mean, I literally went to yoga and had to find myself. But essentially, the first book is looking at what I call the traditional song and dance of get a degree, get a job, get married, retire, and die. That's what culture tells us. And not that those are bad things, and not that I can't fit them into my life or you can't fit them into your life. The question became well, there's other aspects of life. So the book explores okay, what is your song and dance? How do you reach your peak potential? And I don't believe it's some arbitrary age that culture says, Hey, you know, you're 65, you can retire, and then all of a sudden you kind of drop dead because you don't do anything. So that's the first book. The second book was um called Don't Let Life Pass You By, Win the Game of Work and Play. And basically that book talks about how you can integrate what we've been talking about in this episode, the concept of flow and recognizing flow states and a workplace. And all those you can find on Amazon.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Tell us about any other upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Yeah, so I mean it's forever a project, forever sort of, you know, um adventure, if you will. So one of the things I'm working on now is another book. It's called In a Rush to Go Nowhere, Finding Shivasana. And I just believe that you know, people are just anxious. They're kind of burnt out and they're frustrated. And it's almost like we're having this big, like sort of existential crisis. Like, what am I doing with my life? Right? We're getting all our likes, but it's not really fulfilling us. So the book is using yoga as sort of a vehicle to get people to be in touch with who they are again. We talked about that doing and being. So, really, the book is aimed towards okay, we're gonna do a lot of things in a yoga class, but when you get out of there, you're gonna be who you need to be. And so that book is still in the works. It's editing. I got some beta readers. So I think I'm shooting for the end of this year with that project to come out.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

Well, so people can keep up with everything that you're up to, though at your contact info.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

Yeah, no, thanks, Curtis. So work sucks, but I like it.com is a good place to reach out to me. Um, I'm not really a fan of social media. I do use LinkedIn, I deleted my Facebook, I have Instagram, my girlfriend manages it. But if you go to the website, you can find the podcast there, find the books, and you can shoot me an email for any questions that you have.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

All right. We'll close us out with some final thoughts, maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on. Any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

I think you know, it goes back to being appreciative. And, you know, one of the things that um that I told you before with my brother is, you know, for you listeners out there, you might be overwhelmed, you know, with things that are going on. You know, there's a lot of work in front of you, a lot to do, you know, the bills need to be paid, everything else. We got taxes coming. It's you know, April 2026 here. Right. But find that person that you can just celebrate some wins. And I really think that's important today because corporations love to talk about, oh, we missed this quarter's sales goals, and you know, you drop that thing and you scrap that part, and it's it's just it's all very negative. We can it's very easy to point out the negativity in today. Go online, right? The YouTube fail videos, right? People failing. They love, we love to see failure, but we need to sure embrace failure because we're humans, no one's perfect, but really remember that you're doing a lot of great things. So do yourself a favor, write down three things today that you have done well, that you you know have appreciated, and tell someone about it. Celebrate it, give yourself that victory.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

All right, ladies and gentlemen, work sucks, but I like it.com. Please be sure to check out everything that Tony's up to. Pick up his books and check out that podcast and check out the new book when it comes out. Also, for all things living the dream, check out www.curveball337.com. Sign up for that newsletter if you haven't done so. Drop us a line, leave us a review, follow the show, share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Tony, thank you for all that you do to make the world a better place. And thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Thank you, Curtis, and thank you, listeners.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.