This is the Business English Podcast, episode 292.
Are you voiling the ocean?
Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Years English.
Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business.
For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American host, Lindsay and Aubrey coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
Hi, Lindsay, how's it going?
Hey, Aubrey, it is fantastic.
How's everything with you today?
I am great. I have a question.
Okay. Are you voiling the ocean?
Oh my god, I hate this. I don't even know how to answer that.
To be honest, does that mean am I upset?
Like, is my blood boiling?
Is that what you're asking me?
Or we don't use this in the US at all.
I'm excited. We got a really good question about some idioms student asking about using them in Business English.
And this is one of them that I had not heard of before.
But it might be common in England or New Zealand, right?
In other English-speaking countries, we're going to share all of these idioms what they mean and whether you can use them at work or not.
For sure. And if you love hearing other voices from other countries, English-speaking countries, go over to our website, guys.
And type in, you know, British or Australian.
We've done tons of interviews with different people from these places, guys.
So we do try to bring those voices onto the show as much as we can.
But for today, we're going to get after these words ourselves.
Right, Aubrey? Yes. So I'll read the question.
It's from Caro on Spotify, who said, I would love to hear about the meaning of some of the following Business English phrases.
Blue sky thinking, boiling the ocean, a quick flag, ducks in a row, hurting cats and singing from the same hymn sheet.
So this is interesting.
Some of these we've heard before, and some of them I have not.
Yes. Yeah, definitely hurting cats.
I've heard. Yes. The other ones are going to be sort of new for me.
Yeah. So we have research then.
Normally, we just kind of stick with the American English.
But hey, let's venture into something new and see what we can tie links to, maybe equivalent expressions we know in American English.
We could do that. Something like that.
Absolutely. We'll see what we can do here.
Yes. And be sure to check out Lindsey and Michelle recently.
Recorded an episode, do you have your ducks in a row?
Vocabulary for getting organized, where they shared several idioms that you can use at work that are very interesting, like having your ducks in a row.
Nice. Love it. All right, guys, and don't forget to hit the follow button right there on Business English to not miss the next episode.
So first one, Aubrey, it was Blue Sky thinking.
Okay. I think just by looking at this, I think I know what it means.
I can kind of guess. Yes.
And I don't know that I'm super familiar, but if you said this, I would definitely know what you meant.
Right? This is clearly not going to be something negative because Blue skies are always associated with positivity.
And this is a little different than I expected.
I thought this would just be being positive, but it actually means more like thinking outside of the box or brainstorming in a way that isn't as practical being super creative.
I guess something somewhat equivalent could be this guy's the limit.
You could say something like that.
Or there's a book I know called Blue Ocean Strategy.
It's just a business book, which talks about red oceans and blue oceans.
It's markets in the business world industries.
And how to find a blue ocean and go into it.
Someone hasn't tapped this particular market yet.
Right. Gotcha. Interesting.
Yeah. So I think it's gone.
Go ahead. I was going to say so with Blue Sky thinking, it looks like, you know, if you're wanting your team to brainstorm and you don't want to think about what's realistic, we want to come up with any idea anyone could think of, we could say this, we need some blue sky thinking here.
And what the way I'm used to hearing this in business English in the US is to think outside of the box.
Yeah. I mean, I do think that the term, the word blue, like the color blue and the word has kind of a sense of openness.
I mean, the sky is blue and the ocean.
And it's just this idea of, I don't know, openness.
Yeah. Blue's openness.
Yeah. That's a good way to callicate to remember this, right?
So you might say, all right, let's start the meeting.
We need some blue sky thinking today.
And you're meeting, like, let's think outside of the box.
Yeah. I mean, is there anything that you, any rituals or habits you have when you want to get yourself to think outside of the box, anything you do, like go for a jog or I don't know, like to reset your brain, because I find that sometimes I'm in pathways in my mind.
And it's a hard question.
Good question. Yeah. I do like to doodle.
Like if I take notes or do like a mind map something, because I think I'm just a very visual learner, as far as wanting to write something down and see it written, then I do feel like that kind of helps me expand my ideas and think about something that I wouldn't have before.
Yeah, it's true. It's true.
Wow. OK. That's a good ritual to build it.
Like just to know yourself on how you get yourself outside of the box in terms of the way you think.
Good for business too, right?
Which is what we're looking at today.
Boiling the ocean, Aubrey, what is that?
So this is a good thing. It would be hard to do that.
It does. That's a lot of water.
And that's exactly right, right?
This is very uncommon. I had not heard it before.
I'm curious where it's popular.
It could be somewhere, you know, but it means to undertake an impossible task or to make a task unnecessarily difficult.
Right? So if someone says like, all right, well, we don't need to boil the ocean.
It means like you are over complicating the task you have.
Yeah. The equivalent in American English, we might say don't make this harder than it is or that it has to be, right?
Don't make this harder than it has to be.
Yes, or don't. We'll say that too, right?
It's like don't reinvent the wheel.
It'll end in the wheel. It's like there's a simple solution.
Somebody has already done the groundwork that we can build upon.
So like, let's do this the easy way.
Don't reinvent the wheel.
Don't overthink it. There are a lot of, so today we're kind of adding on to our plan for this episode.
Ways we say the same things in without these idioms that are not necessarily common in American English, right?
Aubrey, is there a next one?
Is there number three? Yes, number three is a quick flag.
And I Googled, I looked in on Reddit, in forums.
I couldn't find this one anywhere.
So it's possible that our listener had misheard a different idiom.
I'm not sure what. So we do not recommend using a quick flag.
I have a answer. Couldn't find it anywhere.
We have nothing for you guys.
It could be like slaying in another country that I just couldn't find online.
So leave us a comment on YouTube, guys.
If you have heard this and know what it means, please share in the comments.
I'd love to know. Yes, teach us what you know.
We love that. We want to learn from our community.
Absolutely. Well, the next one, Aubrey, we both know and it's a funny expression, right?
And this one is used in American English.
Right. And it's hurting cats.
So this is a situation that's difficult to control or organize because those involved are inherently uncontrollable.
I use this the most about my kids.
I'm trying to get them to leave to go somewhere and like that's like hurting cats.
That's hilarious. No one's listening to me.
Yeah, no one's so funny when you think about it.
Even just with cats, the difference between dogs and cats and how much, when you come home, and your dog will come up and be all excited and listen to you and sit in the cats, like, oh, just look at you.
I don't care about you. Yeah, yeah.
It's just like they could have more different animals.
Yeah, it's so true. We have a bunch of cats here because we're on a five-acre farm here and so there are a bunch of outdoor cats that we call mousers.
Because they're here to like keep the mouse population down, but they're feral.
You cannot approach them.
They would just like hiss at you and claw.
So it's tricky with the people.
The kids like don't try to pet these cats.
Oh, I'm a mouse. Yes, you're used to.
So it's just the concept of yeah, something is not controllable and you're trying to control it.
Which is futile, of course.
We know that. It's like we do want to be careful with this artwork.
It can be offensive. Like imagine you're saying your artwork and say I'm trying to get everyone to the meat.
But it's like hurting cats.
So it's really not something you would say about adults.
Even if they're not listening to your frustrated, you can't control them.
This is still not a kind and respectful thing to say about co-workers.
Yeah, I think anytime that you are sort of drawing a comparison between your colleagues and animals, probably be careful.
Danger zone. Very good point, right?
It's just not very kind or respectful.
Stay away or at least be careful.
Make sure there probably are some idioms that are okay.
But generally, what is it?
Wade carefully in that area.
Head carefully. Yeah, it's dreaded carefully.
Head carefully. Absolutely.
Number five, I'll read what is it.
What is it? So this was singing from the same hymn sheet.
This is also uncommon. I hadn't heard it before.
But it might be common in other countries.
Were you familiar with this one, Lindsay?
No, no. It also might be common in certain communities that attend church more often.
Right. Yeah, that's possible.
It means a group of people who all have the same aims or all express the same opinion on a particular subject.
Yeah, and what would be, I mean, we're all in the same boat.
Sort of not exactly the same thing.
We're all on the same page, maybe.
On the same page. Yeah, it's a little tricky because on the same page or aligned means more like we have the same goal.
And this sort of means we all have the same opinion.
So that's a little different.
Do we have another idiom for that?
Well, you guys say we see eye to eye with two people, but not multiple people.
I think in the same boat is more similar than on the same page.
Right. If we all have the same opinion, I could see saying, okay, we're all in the same boat.
Yeah, we're all in the same boat.
So we'll come back and circle back and teach these another day for sure.
But it's good to just kind of draw the connections.
Kind of fun exercise here.
Yeah. So you could say at work, right?
Glad to see we're all singing from the same hymn sheet, but keep in mind that at least in the US, people would might be like, what does that mean?
They likely won't be familiar with this phrase.
Unless you're living with a community that goes to church a lot and may definitely you might hear it all the time.
So maybe it's so specific to people.
And totally what they think about.
Fascinating. Yeah. All right, let's do a role play here.
You and I are running a conference in this role play.
I want to start us out. That is a big endeavor.
Oh my gosh. Yes, the imagine.
She's just attending a conference.
This is a number of challenges.
Yeah, that's a running one.
Woo. Don't think so. I'll pass.
All right, so here we go.
I loved that last speaker.
Her message about Blue Sky thinking was fantastic.
I agree. Much easier to be creative when we're not focused on what's realistic.
Well, we need to get everything organized for the book signing.
I think it's going to be an uphill battle.
For sure. Moving everyone between sessions at this conference has been like hurting cats.
Yeah. Yeah. And this maybe I wouldn't use it this way with like a colleague and we're sort of speaking metaphorically generally about just a group of people.
Right. I mean, if all of them were my colleagues, I don't know that I would say that.
Right, right. The difference is it's you and me and we're in the corner.
We're having a conversation.
We've been going through this challenge together.
That's acceptable to use.
I certainly wouldn't say this publicly in front of all of them.
Like, okay, it's been like hurting cats getting you to go where we want.
Yeah. No, no, no. You would not say that right.
So it's very subtle choosing who's going to overhear it and who you're actually talking to and what the levels are there.
So in this case, I said, I love that speaker.
Her message about Blue Sky thinking was fantastic.
So it's maybe a keynote speaker.
Gave a motivational talk.
Yeah, about thinking outside of the box being creative.
Love that. Yeah. And then you said, and this is one I was thinking was sort of a parallel for one of them.
You said, I think it's going to be an uphill battle.
And this was when I was thinking about recommending instead of boiling the ocean, just like, you know, an impossible task or something that's extremely difficult.
We would often say an uphill battle.
That's a good one. I like that.
And that one is very common for sure in American English.
And then last one, we already talked about this.
At this conference, it's been like hurting cats to get people to move between sessions.
Yeah, which is very fun.
It's just be careful who you're saying it to or about could be offensive.
100%. Any takeaway for our listeners today?
We've had an interesting episode because we've shown you some idioms that we're not necessarily super familiar with.
But then we've drawn connections to the same way to say that in American English.
Exactly. So thank you to Caro for sending in this amazing question.
A good takeaway is just that some idioms are too uncommon or too unfamiliar to use in English, depending on where you live, the community.
Some of these I wouldn't use in the US because people might not understand what you mean they might be unfamiliar with them.
I also would say as a learning tip for our listeners today, see if you can play a little game in your head of based on what we just did today when you're speaking.
So this whole game of say it another way, right?
How can you, if you're having a conversation, you say something, you say some expression, then you think to yourself, just in your head, how could I have said that in a different way?
A different sense. A good activity to help you learn to paraphrase because then if you can't think of how to say something and it's not going to come to us just by listening, it's actually going to, we need to take that extra step and play a little game in our minds.
Exactly, right? In your mind, like you said, or speaking out loud or with a conversation partner, such a great quality.
I love that idea. Yeah, maybe we'll add that in as a game for a fluency party or something.
One of these mods here. Absolutely, yes.
All right, good stuff. All right, I'll be talking to you soon.
Have a good day. Awesome.
Thanks, Lindsay. See you next time.
Bye. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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