Pod Insights How to Be a Better Human Re-release: How to enrich your everyday life with poetry (w/ Sarah Kay) About this episode Roses are red, violets are blue, has poetry ever been intimidating for you? For many people, this art form can feel unapproachable, but poet and educator Sarah Kay, suggests that people who don’t like poetry just maybe haven’t found a poem that really speaks to them. Sarah proposes a fresh approach to this ancient art, talks about why playing with language can help you get in touch with yourself, and discusses the ways that writing and art help us form deeper, meaningful connections with others.
This episode was originally recorded on November 29, 2021.
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1:25 Chris Duffy? Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times. You are listening to How to Be a Better Human. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and before we get started with today's episode, I have a favor to ask you. Everyone on this show works really hard to put together these episodes, and I'm so excited that that hard work has been recognized in a nomination for a Webby Award for the Best Advice and How-To Podcast. You know, people always say it's an honor to just be nominated, and that's true. We are really honored to be nominated. But I also can't lie, I really want to win. Getting an award like this would be a major opportunity for us and for the show. It would be a chance for us to promote the show, to reach new listeners, and to give the folks
2:09 Chris Duffy? who work behind the scenes on this podcast, some much needed and much deserved recognition. So it would mean a lot to me if you went to vote.webyawards.com, that's vote.webyawards.com, and voted for How to Be a Better Human in the Best Advice and How To Podcast category. Voting is only open till April 17th, so there's not much time. Please vote now. And once again, that is vote.webyawards.com, and we are in the Podcast category under the Best Advice and How To show. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Now, on to today's episode. We have got the poet Sarah Kay talking about how to enrich your everyday life with poetry. Sarah is one of my all time favorite artists, and she's also one
2:52 Chris Duffy? of my all time favorite people. I've had the great privilege of knowing her since college, and it's such a gift to have seen her work over these years and to just know someone as talented as she is. We are re-releasing this conversation that Sarah and I had back in 2021 today for a couple of reasons. One is, I think it's a fantastic conversation. I think it's one of the best episodes we've ever done, and I think that it really speaks to this moment, even though we recorded it several years ago. Another reason, though, is because Sarah's new collection of poems, which is called A Little Daylight Left, was just published this month. A Little Daylight Left is such a beautiful collection of poems, and I really hope that you will check it out. And to give you a taste of how great it is and how great Sarah is, here is a new poem from Sarah. This is from the new collection.
3:37 Chris Duffy? And this is Sarah performing in front of a live audience in New York City at the venue Caveat.
3:43 Speaker 01 Miles from any shoreline.
3:46 Speaker 01 I frequently miss entire days caught in my brain's spider webs. But if I happen to look up in time to notice that the darkness still has a little daylight left to swallow, I will ivy up the fire escape to catch whatever embers of the day are still slow dying behind New Jersey. And last week, through the fog of my loneliness, I realized the living room was slippery pink, which I knew meant a light show must be on display. So with a quickness I reserve for emergencies, I scampered to the roof and sure enough, an explosion of upside-down Clementine cotton candy cloud wisps was tie-dying the Hudson River neon.
4:31 Speaker 01 And I swear, I am not a lightweight, but I was color-drunk immediately, dizzy with gasp and skyward reaching, hoping my fingers might find a bell I could ring that would summon all of New York City to look up and west. But there was no bell and no one to call, just my own astonishment, still willing to answer after the first ring. How predictable. One good sunset, and I release my nihilism like rose petals behind a bridal gown. Look, I have married my cynicism and renewed my vows.
5:15 Speaker 01 But it didn't stop the streetlights from coming on at the exact moment I passed beneath them, when nobody else was in the park to see it, like the whole city was winking. And yes, I blushed, the way I do whenever someone beautiful flirts with me. I haven't stopped thinking about death. I am just wringing every last jaw drop from the tissue between heartbreaks. On a long run outside the city, along a highway and miles from any shoreline, I found a starfish alone on the asphalt. An unsolvable mystery.
5:56 Speaker 01 With no witness to corroborate. And there I was again, wandering the streets of Bewilderville, population one. What else could I possibly do but swing wide the doors of my delight to this patron saint of unbelonging, fragile and whole and so far from home? If you two have been the one nobody asked to dance, I have a starfish I'd love to introduce you to. And I don't have any proof. But one time, the wind or my ancestors
6:37 Speaker 01 or unseasonal warmth carried three hawks to my kitchen windowsill to rattle my coffin to cocoon. And two of them left, but one of them stayed, eyed me through the glass like a promise or a dare. So lately, I am trying to pick up when the universe calls.
7:11 Chris Duffy? OK, we're going to be right back with more from poet Sarah Kay in just a moment.
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10:01 Chris Duffy? We're back. We're here with Sarah Kay, an incredible poet who I also am glad to say is one of my very good friends.
10:08 Speaker 01 My name is Sarah Kay. I am a poet and an educator from New York City.
10:13 Chris Duffy? Great. And now can you do one where you choose a different name?
10:15 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, of course. Hello, my name is Chris Duffy and I am a stand-up comedian and New Yorker masquerading as a Los Angelino.
10:24 Chris Duffy? Okay, thank you so much. I'm so glad to have you here. Why don't we do the most stereotypical question first, which is how did you get involved in poetry in the first place?
10:34 Speaker 01 Well, how did I get involved in poetry in the very first place is when I was a kid, I used to run around the house and ask my mom. And by ask, I really mean like demand. I would be like, poem. And I would make my mother write it down for me. So if I'm feeling particularly cheeky, sometimes I will say that I've been writing poems since before I could write because.
11:04 Chris Duffy? So when you said a poem, you were like, I'm dictating a poem. You write this down. It wasn't like you give me a poem.
11:09 Speaker 01 No, correct. I was like, is anyone, quick, someone take this down.
11:13 Chris Duffy? Yeah.
11:14 Speaker 01 Mark this down for later. But I would say actually that my real like origin of my relationship to poems is that when I was in elementary school, kids, we didn't go to the cafeteria until middle school. And so from kindergarten through fourth grade, everyone either brought their lunch to school with them or the school provided lunch. And so every single day for those years, my parents took turns writing a little poem on a piece of like neon colored paper that they would fold and put in my lunchbox. And so neither of them are poets. I don't think either of them would consider themselves writers.
11:55 Speaker 01 And now, looking back, it seems like a little too neat of an origin story because it seems like they were planting seeds for a future poet. But I assure you, it was not that. It was just one of many ways that they demonstrated to me that I was loved. But basically what it did. Is it made it so that my relationship to poems was that poems became something that was dependable, like clockwork. I knew I could expect it every day, but it was also a surprise. It was also a gift. It was intimate. It was a secret. It was this sign of care from someone who loved me enough to craft it. And so I think that's really what started my relationship to poems is what I call the lunchbox poems.
12:38 Chris Duffy? Well, that also gets into one of the other things I wanted to ask you about, which is, how do you incorporate wordplay and poetry into your day to day life?
12:47 Speaker 01 You know, all kinds of different ways, which frankly, I don't explicitly think about until someone thoughtful like you asks me to. But I would say like, for example, when I was in college, I every single year would make Valentines for all of my pals on Valentine's Day. And I would write each of them a personalized limerick. And like, I feel like everything about me screams like the kid who brought Valentines for everybody in class. Like that seems like.
13:19 Chris Duffy? You have big Valentine limerick energy, for sure.
13:22 Speaker 01 Really big Valentine limerick energy. So.
13:25 Chris Duffy? As a person who knows you, I also know like you love to do a Halloween costume. That's a wordplay. I feel like you're someone who cherishes when you find like a funny phrase or a pun or something really that is playing with language. You are like, I gotta share this with people and you start sending it around, take a photo or whatever it is, you document.
13:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, it's, it's maybe an affliction.
13:48 Chris Duffy? It's certainly a disease. There's no doubt about it.
13:52 Speaker 01 I know that there are so many people who have less positive responses to puns specifically, but I just, I just find them so delightful. And the Halloween thing happened because many years ago, I had a dream, like a full, like I was asleep, had a full actual dream. And in the dream, I was late to the Halloween Day Parade in New York City, which I try to go to every year. And in my dream, I was like, oh no, I don't have a costume. Like, what am I gonna do? And so in the dream, I like went to my closet, I pulled out this like hardcore leather jacket and like a collar with spikes on it, I think.
14:37 Speaker 01 And I found a blank white T-shirt and I wrote this elaborate trigonometry equation. And the answer to the equation would have been like cosine x, like COS x. But instead of putting in the answer, I put like a blank line, x. And so my costume was that I was a rebel without a cause. And when I woke up from the dream-
15:01 Chris Duffy? This doesn't translate to audio, but I'm shaking my head furiously. How dare you? What wordplay atrocity that is.
15:09 Speaker 01 When I woke up from the dream, like my first thought was like, you gotta be kidding me. Like, my subconscious could have been working on, like, we have real, serious issues. Like, you could have been solving climate change. And instead, you were out here like, oh, you know what, though? What about this trigonometry pun? Like, that's what we were working on in the depths of our sleep. But then, of course, I was like, well, I have the opportunity to make my literal dreams come true. Why would I not do this? And so I had to do it. And now it's become a tradition of terrible pun costumes that I can't outrun.
15:46 Chris Duffy? What kind of advice do you give people on how they can incorporate wordplay into their lives like this? Like, how do you get, how do you get your brain to start working on that while you're sleeping?
15:55 Speaker 01 It really has to do with habits of observation and giving yourself the opportunity to relish in your own delight. So like, I am genuinely delighted many times a day by the smallest-
16:14 Speaker 01 Elements of my life by the most mundane details. But I think most people, when they experience delight, they experience it in the moment and then it flies through their hands and they're on to the next moment. And so the poetry work, I think, is when a moment of delight happens to, instead of letting it fly away as fast as it usually does, to just pin it just for long enough to ask yourself like, what about this is delightful to me and what about this? Could I maybe try to find a way to share, whether that's in the form of a poem or by snapping a photograph or whatever? Like, I think that's where that comes from.
16:53 Chris Duffy? How do you technically keep track of the words or phrases or things that delight you? Do you, do you have a notebook? Is it an app in your phone? What are you doing?
17:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, you can't see it, but I'm holding it up. I have a little notebook that I keep nearby at all times. I would say that this notebook is incredibly unpoetic. Like, I don't do any poetry writing for the most part in this notebook. It's much more record keeping and it is really about those moments where something happens and I can see it's going to fly away really fast. And so I just jot it down, really just to note it for later. And then when it is later and I'm like, you know what? Today is a writing day. I need to get some writing done. Then I crack open this notebook and I have these little, you know, I think of them as Hansel and Gretel breadcrumbs,
17:42 Speaker 01 back to moments where I was genuinely struck by something. And I can look at them and go, yeah, that was a really wild thing. Or, oh, man, look at how I've jotted this same thing down three times. It's clearly something that's sticking with me. Or, you know, allowing that notebook to show me what my brain has been snagging on recently. So that when I have time to really meditate on it or to really dig into it, that I, I have clues. Cause I think so many people want to write and then sit down in front of a blank screen or a blank piece of paper and are like, okay, world, inspire me now. And honestly, that is very hard to do it that way, I think. So this is a little, a little trick of just marking down these little delights and curiosities.
18:24 Speaker 01 So that when I have the writing time, I have these little breadcrumbs to return to.
18:29 Chris Duffy? Do you have any sort of writing practice or routine where you go back through those ideas and sort them out into actual writing? Or, or is it less? Uh, formulaic and more like you just go back if you feel inspired.
18:40 Speaker 01 I think a little bit of both. I think sometimes whatever has been floating around in my brain shows up strongly enough and pulls me to the desk. And sometimes I have to be intentional about making writing time. I also think that so much of my joy in connection with poetry is the writing and is the sharing of my own work, but is also just being around other people that love poetry. And so just getting to talk about poetry and analyze text and discuss it with folks who also are passionate about poetry in and of itself gets my enthusiasm engine running. And so
19:23 Speaker 01 that also, I think, really helps significantly in pushing me in my own process, too. And also, I think with an art form like poetry, sometimes people assume that that is a very solitary art form, which it can be, certainly. And like, when I'm keeping my notebook, that's something I do for myself, by myself. But at least in my case, I didn't fall in love with poetry in a textbook or a classroom. I fell in love with poetry in a dive bar. And it was because that space was where poetry felt communal and urgent, that it really captivated me. And so that continues
20:04 Speaker 01 to be an element of poetry that I really respond to, is the ability to be in community with other people and to share poetry with other people, my own and others. I mean, very few things make me as alive, make me feel as alive, as when I read a poem by someone else and I go, oh, my God, I needed this poem right now. Like, they found language for a thing that I couldn't find language for, and they did it. And I have it in my hands. Can you believe this? And that feeling is just like, you know, plugging my soul into an amplifier or something, right?
20:44 Chris Duffy? As an educator, what's your favorite exercise for getting people who don't think of themselves as poets into writing poetry?
20:52 Speaker 01 I would say that one thing that I'm always thinking about is trying to Lower the stakes around both poetry writing and also performing, because those are two things that I think people have a tendency to really raise the stakes for themselves. And so, you know, I usually like to start workshops with asking folks to write some kind of list, because a list as a form is much more accessible, I think, immediately, or at least much more familiar to people. People write lists all day long in their life.
21:34 Speaker 01 And so being tasked with a list doesn't feel as terrifying as being tasked with a poem, I think. So in my TED Talk, I mentioned writing 10 Things I Know to Be True. And that is a list that I genuinely return to quite often. And it's exciting to see, you know, what I know to be true today that suddenly changes the next time I write that list. And what are things that I know to be true that continue to be true to me for years down the line? It's like a kind of amazing self diagnostic, actually. So that's one that I recommend to a lot of people. That one's pretty broad.
22:15 Speaker 01 Sometimes people like having more limitation or more specifics. So another one I sometimes like is things I should have learned by now.
22:27 Chris Duffy? Oh, I like that, too.
22:29 Speaker 01 Is a list I really enjoy. Of course, there's, you know, ye olde reasons you should date me.
22:35 Chris Duffy? Okay, ye olde reasons you should date me. I love that list.
22:38 Speaker 01 Reasons, reasons you should not date me. You know, these are just some, the point is to allow yourself the opportunity to take a peek at what you already have going on in your brain without worrying that it's not poetic enough or deep enough or, you know, good enough or worthy of poetry. Any of these lists that give you opportunities to see which of these seeds want to turn into poems is a great place to start.
23:16 Chris Duffy? Okay, we're going to give you all a little break for those seeds to start germinating. And while you do that, we are going to do some ads and then we will be right back.
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25:59 Chris Duffy? We're back with poet Sarah Kay. One thing that I heard you say a long time ago, and I actually can't remember if you said this to me personally, or if this was something that you said more publicly, but you talked about-
26:10 Speaker 01 Was it Chris Duffy, "You're the funniest man alive"?
26:13 Chris Duffy? No, it definitely wasn't.
26:15 Speaker 01 I think I said that publicly. Yeah, that was definitely in public.
26:17 Chris Duffy? It was Chris, "You have to stop what you're doing." Stop right now. Rethink your life.
26:24 Chris Duffy? Well, no, something that I heard you say that you try and go through your life with your arms open, like to catch whatever comes your way, rather than with your arms crossed across your chest in a way that makes you look cool, like that that is the sign of being cool is blocking things, when you try and have your hands open to catch. And I think about that so often. I think about that so much, that idea. And I was just wondering if you could talk about that a little bit more, and then I want to discuss it with you. But like, what do you mean by that, by having your hands open?
26:52 Speaker 01 I think that, so the specific instance that I think you were talking about, if I remember correctly, it was a long time ago that I gave that talk. But I think I was talking specifically about the sort of terrifying, the terrifying experience of being a teenager specifically, and the messaging that teenagers receive about how to be earnest, to be vulnerable, to be, to admit to feeling anything is-
27:31 Speaker 01 Weakness and will be used against you. And therefore, to refuse to let anything affect you or to show that anything has affected you is the safer path, basically. And so that it's a mode of protection to move through the world being unaffected or to appear to be unaffected, at least. And a lot of what I do in my work with young people is to try and both tell them
28:10 Speaker 01 and also show them, hopefully, the benefits of the risk that to risk being vulnerable and to risk being earnest and to risk having the world affect you is scary and also worth it. And I think perhaps what is missing from that conversation or what is missing from that initial comment as you remember it is just an acknowledgement that people who do walk through the world with their arms crossed, metaphorically, that is not a character flaw.
28:51 Speaker 01 That is often a result of learning how to survive and that their circumstances has necessitated that kind of self-protection. And so it is also the case that I don't just want to encourage people to be open and vulnerable willy-nilly and subject themselves to danger or anything else. I want to be part of the world building that makes it safe for everyone to be able to walk through the world that way.
29:26 Chris Duffy? I was gonna ask for people who are aspiring poets and writers, but I also think it applies to you now, too, which is, how can people get better at writing and using language? What do you do when you have this desire to be somewhere and you're not quite there yet? How do you get better?
29:39 Speaker 01 I think reading is a huge part of it. I think anything that you want to be good at, it helps to know what is possible or what has been possible thus far.
29:57 Speaker 01 Being able to have access to as many examples as you can get your eyeballs on just opens more and more doors, I think, in my experience. So, reading and reading and reading helps. Not even necessarily reading in the specific genre that you're writing in, right? So, it doesn't mean that if you want to be a poet, you should only be reading poetry. But I think just seeing the way that people use language, craft narrative, accomplish an argument so much as
30:37 Speaker 01 has been done and made for us to feast on that I think it would be silly to not spend a lot of time soaking in in all of that good, good writing. So that is the first one, perhaps not, not a, not a particularly controversial tip.
30:58 Chris Duffy? It's so true. I mean, if you read someone's writing and then you read something fascinating, whatever it is, then you go, oh, well, that is a trick that people can use. I had never even thought that you could do that.
31:08 Speaker 01 Absolutely.
31:09 Chris Duffy? Whatever, whether it's you can write the transcript of a phone call and that can be your dialogue, or you can write a voicemail, it can be text messages, it can be writing without verbs. I, I mean, just all of the things that you see happen and you think, oh, that is expanding the realm of what's even possible in my brain.
31:25 Speaker 01 Absolutely. And then the other thing that I think is helpful, and this doesn't work all the time and it doesn't work for everybody, but when I am wearing my educator hat, I try to think a lot about orienting my work away from product and towards process. So by that, I mean, I never want to be grading a student on a poem because who am I to determine? The arbitrary goodness or badness of this poem that is unhelpful to me.
32:03 Speaker 01 What I can do is ask this student to learn how to give feedback and how to take feedback, learn how to attempt several drafts, learn how to collaborate with another student, learn how to take risks in performance, learn how to work on the skills that are going to serve them beyond just this one single poem in their process as a writer and as a performer or a person who says words, right? So because I, I think that when we focus too much on the product, it turns it into
32:46 Speaker 01 something that feels failable. And that has the, the risk of really damaging someone's relationship to poetry, frankly. So because I think that way, when I'm thinking about my students, I would also say, can we have that kind of compassion for ourselves as writers?
33:10 Chris Duffy? Yeah, it's interesting. When I'm writing scripts, if I'm working on a TV project, one of the things that I always think is that the, the point is not to write one perfect script. That's impossible. The point is to get to draft 10 as quickly as I can. And sometimes that requires a very bad draft one. So that draft two can be a little bit better and then draft 10 will inevitably be better than one or two ever it could be. And I think about the same thing, right? Like one of the things that I love about podcasting is that it's just inherently iterative. Like it comes out every week. And so by the end of a year, I listen back and I like this episode better than the other episodes, hopefully, right? Fingers crossed, you know? But I think just by doing it and making it not about each one being perfect, you inherently get better.
33:52 Chris Duffy? And I think the people, and I'm including myself in this, but people who focus on making sure that the one thing they put out is as good as it could possibly be, they often end up never putting out anything at all because it's kind of impossible to make one thing be as good as it could ever possibly be.
34:09 Speaker 01 Yeah, or another way of thinking about that is because like, let me not sit here and pretend that I'm not that and like, let me not point fingers when I should be pointing them at myself. Like, I'm absolutely somebody who is a perfectionist, or if not a perfectionist, then just, you know, very product oriented sometimes and trying to work on that.
34:32 Chris Duffy? Yes, absolutely. I think that when you think about it less as a product, because if it's a product, then you finish it one time, it's done, and it doesn't matter if you're still curious or have more to say. But, but if you think about it as process, well, it's you want to get to the bottom of this hole that you're digging and you want to see what is the treasure that's buried down there.
34:51 Speaker 01 Exactly. And sometimes you like, find something and you're like, amazing, wait, is there more down there? And you keep going, you know, like, that happens too. I mean, I'll be writing poems about my little brother for as long as the two of us are on this earth, right? So I have written one poem and I'm not like, well, figure him out.
35:10 Chris Duffy? Lock him up. Phil, you're done. We're coming to the end of this interview. So what is one idea or book or movie or a piece of music that has made you a better human? What's one thing?
35:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, I knew this question was coming and I still didn't prepare thoroughly enough for it. One idea that has made me a better human is when I realized that I could love someone and think about them all the time and care about them and be invested in their life. And they can't know that unless I show it to them. And this was important, especially when I was traveling all the time, because I was physically far away from pretty much everyone in my life. And I was so sure that it was obvious that I missed everyone.
36:11 Speaker 01 But no one knows that that's happening in my brain. And so I think figuring out that I needed to find small ways to demonstrate that. And it didn't require a lot, you know, that's a text message. That's a silly photo. That's a package in the mail, whatever it is. But I think just the putting two and two together to say like, yeah, you just caring in your head is not the same thing as you expressing it in a tangible way that someone else can experience it. I think that really helped make me a better friend and a better person.
36:48 Chris Duffy? That's beautiful and so, so important and true. Well, Sarah, I always love talking to you. It's always just such an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for being on the show and thanks for sharing your work and your wisdom with us.
37:02 Speaker 01 Thanks for having me.
37:07 Chris Duffy? That is it for today's episode. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and this has been How to Be a Better Human. Thanks so much to our guest for this episode, Sarah Kay. On the TED side, this show is brought to you by Abi Manu Das, who's penning an ode, Daniela Balarezo, who's writing a haiku, Frederica Elizabeth Yosefov, who is scripting a sonnet, Anne Powers, who's crafting a limerick, and Kara Newman, who's vibing on a villanelle. From PRX Productions, How to Be a Better Human is brought to you by the allegorical Jocelyn Gonzalez, the rhetorical Pedro Rafael Rosado, and the literal Sandra Lopez-Munzalve. Thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed our show, please share this episode with a friend and leave us a positive review. We really appreciate it and it makes a big difference. Thanks so much. Have a great week.
38:02 Chris Duffy? This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at N R D C dot org slash human and your gift will be matched five times.
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39:18 Speaker 03 Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at G O O dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini. That's G O O dot G L E slash Workspace with Gemini.
39:52 Speaker 04 Hi there. It's Adam Grant from TED's Rethinking Podcast. And this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow dot com.
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