BE 626: English Idioms That Help You Go With the Flow

This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 626, English Idioms That Help You Go With The Flow. Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears 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 hosts, Lindsay and Aubrey, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

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Take it today at allearsenglish.com slash fluency score. That's allearsenglish.com slash F-L-U-E-N-C-Y-S-C-O-R-E. Hey, Aubrey, how's it going? I'm great, Lindsay.

How are you? Glad to be here on Business English. Aubrey, are you generally good at going with the flow? Would you say? I am. Yeah, I pride myself in this.

I'm pretty good about going with it, though. Sometimes I will get an idea and then I am going to dig in and try to convince everyone like this happens, especially when it comes to games, Lindsay. I think our listeners out there know how much I love games at a party and I'm the one that's like trying to get everyone to play a game instead of going with the flow and just like chatting.

Right. What about you? Yeah, no, I'm not. I'm not the games person for sure. Because you'd rather go with the flow at the party. But that happens a lot.

I noticed that sometimes, you know, you'll be in a small group and people will be talking. Someone will pull out a game. And if there isn't that person that's like really pushing the game, it won't happen because you're enjoying each other's company. Right.

So you're talking and everything. But yeah, I am that person. Yeah. You are that person. But sometimes I am pretty good at reading the vibe. And if everyone kind of feels like they want to go with the flow, I'm good with that, right?

You're good with that. All right. So you go with the flow if they want to go with the flow. Absolutely. So we have a great question that came from our YouTube channel for All Ears English, our other podcast.

We are on YouTube. So guys, go over, type in All Ears English and hit subscribe over there. This is from Saddam Mohamed. Aubrey, do you want to read the question?

Yeah, absolutely. They said, Hi, Lindsay, Aubrey and Michelle. Is play it by ear similar to play it safe? Thanks so much, guys. So yeah, this is interesting.

And we actually recently talked about play it safe over on Allers English. So stay to the end for details. If you missed that today, we'll cover play it by ear and some related expressions. Yeah.

Well, we'll just quickly answer the question and then we'll give more context throughout the episode. But the answer is no, they are not the same. Right. Play it by ear.

Play it safe. Completely different. Right, Aubrey? You have to know that. Exactly. Yeah. So play it safe really just means to not take risks, to be safe.

And we shared some other related expressions because there's a lot of ways that we say that over on Allers English. Yes. Before we go any further, though, I do want to call out some very special listeners who took the time to go and leave us a rating and review. And these are all in Apple Podcasts.

And they're beautiful messages, too, that we have. These are three five-star reviews. These listeners wrote in their questions, and you can do that, too, inside your review. So thank you to Naomi from Taiwan, XC93 Mark from China, and Optimistic Nami from Hong Kong.

Huge thank you to these amazing listeners, Aubrey. Yes. And thank you for the nice messages that you all included with your review. We really appreciate it.

Yes, we love the five-star reviews, but we read all of these and we really appreciate it. Yeah. So leave your review and we'll try to announce your name on the show. Okay.

Let's dive right into it, Aubrey, though. Play it by ear. What does it mean? Doesn't mean the same as play it safe, right? It is different, right? It means to decide what to do as events unfold instead of planning in advance.

So if someone's very spontaneous, then they're often going to play it by ear. I say this to my kids a lot. They'll ask like, what are we doing later? What are we doing tomorrow?

And I'll have to say, we're going to play it by ear. Let's play it by ear because often I don't want to commit to anything and then have them be mad if it doesn't happen. That's probably a safe bet. That's probably a good mom strategy.

Here's an example. I'm not sure what time we'll meet tomorrow. Let's play it by ear again. Yes. What else? You may have coworkers or a supervisor who often likes to play it by ear, right?

They're busy. Their time isn't very flexible. And so often you won't know ahead of time. I'll let you know the meeting when I know, right? Yeah. Another example, we might be able to finalize the contract tomorrow, but we'll have to play it by ear, right?

This is the kind of thing where you're waiting to hear from clients. Maybe you're waiting to hear from a legal team at work. We often have to play it by ear because we don't know exactly when things will happen. Yeah, I don't know if this maybe comes from music, the concept of playing music by ear.

Michelle would be able to tell us a little bit about this because I think she's got some experience as a musician. I do as well. I grew up learning to play piano by reading music.

But my sister learned to play by ear. We had different teachers and it was kind of catered toward our learning styles. I wanted to learn music. I wanted to be able to read the notes on the page.

She wanted to be able to hear it and then just know the notes and play it without reading music. So that's true. I didn't even think about how this is related, but that is play it by ear. According to music means you can just hear the notes and recreate them on a musical instrument without reading it on a music page.

That's incredible. How do you even, wow, that's really impressive. I don't know how people do it. Your ear becomes so attuned to the different notes. Most people play stringed instruments like the guitar by ear, but not necessarily.

You could just memorize like how to make a G chord and a C chord, but a lot of like my husband plays by ear. He just will hear it and then just be able to play it. And he's not looking at chords usually. Wow.

Very talented. Interesting. Interesting. All right. Good example. So that's where sometimes it's fun to think about where does this come from, you know?

Right. And it's always interesting with idioms like this, how it has sort of this literal meaning coming from music. And then we use it as well in everyday conversations and at work to mean let's wait and see, right? We're not going to make plans about something until later.

Exactly. And then at the top of the show, I asked you, go with the flow, right? Do you go with the flow? This is, again, to be flexible and just to accept whatever kind of happens and to go with it, right?

Yeah. I really respect this in a coworker, friends as well. But when a coworker is able to go with the flow, if a meeting time gets changed, if something doesn't work out, it's kind of hard when someone... really is panicking and being really fatalistic about it or super rigid.

It's so nice when people are able to be like, it's fine. You know what? We'll go with the flow. It's all going to work out. Yeah. Important to be flexible, especially with remote work, right?

There are so many things that are out of our control, right? So many factors that this is important for just got to be pretty chill sometimes about things, right? Yeah. So here's the sample sentence.

We don't have a detailed agenda for the meeting. We're just going to go with the flow. And this would be difficult for some people. I have a daughter who really wants to know the schedule, the agenda.

Like if someone told her this at the beginning of a meeting, she would probably be frustrated. Whereas me, I'm like, no problem. We'll take it as it goes.

Yeah. I guess someone does have to be like, okay, why are we meeting? Like, what are we trying to achieve at this meeting? ideally but you never know sometimes this does happen where like it's spontaneous we're like we're meeting spur of the moment for some it could even be like an emergency meeting and we're not gonna have a typed agenda oh for sure you know what yeah just go with the flow 100 or i'm down with happy hour if everyone else is i can go with the flow i'm down that's a bonus for today meaning i'm i'm it means i'm up for it is what i mean

Exactly. That's what's really funny. We say these both. It means you're amenable. That's the like band nine IELTS word, the really formal word. I'm amenable for a happy hour.

We would never say that. We say I'm down to go. I'm up for it. It means I'm willing. Strange that we say both I'm down to go and I'm up for going. Yeah, very strange.

But that's for another day. For another day. But yeah, when you say like, I'll go with the flow, if everybody else is up for it, if everybody else wants to go, then I'll go. If not, no big deal.

Right? When you say, I'll go with the flow. Yeah. Okay, what would be another one? All right. Then we have see how things go, which is you're going to sort of wait and observe a situation before making a decision.

So for example, let's see how things go this quarter before we decide to expand the team. Or I'll try the medication for a few weeks and see how things go.

Okay. So this is interesting where you, a lot of things you can't decide right away. You need to see what the results are. You need to see what the numbers are and then you can decide later.

Yep. And then take things day by day. Also very similar. This might be when you get injured and you're healing. You know, you're just going to focus on the present day instead of making long-term plans.

You're going to be patient with yourself. After losing his job, he decided to take things day by day. Yeah. Yes. Or the onboarding process is intense at this company, but I'm taking things day by day.

So this is such a positive mental outlook. If things are going really badly at work or things are really tough, if you say this like, you know what, I'm going to take things day by day, you're instead of being fatalistic about it getting worse and worse, you're saying I'm going to take things. We also will say one day at a time. I'm going to take things one day at a time.

And you're sort of, you know, each day making the best of it and hoping tomorrow will be better. Yes. And then cross that bridge when we come to it. It's a mouthful to say this expression, but you're dealing with a problem with only if and when it actually occurs.

I feel like sometimes we're trying to fix problems that haven't even occurred yet. Right. That's something I'm guilty of. Like I'll anticipate a problem, worry about it.

Maybe it won't even happen. Right. Right. Exactly. Some people are better than others at doing this. Some of us are. We're stressing about possible eventualities.

So this is a phrase you'll hear a lot. If you are sort of hypothesizing about what might go wrong, someone might say, you know what, let's cross that bridge when we come to it. Yes, for sure. So for example, what if the project takes longer than expected?

Right. Yeah. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Yeah. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Yeah. It's good to be able to do that for sure.

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That's allearsenglish.com slash f-l-u-e-n-c-y-s-c-o-r-e. Okay, Aubrey, let's do a role play here to finish up the episode. So here you and I are co-workers and we're managing a software project. Okay.

Yeah. You want to start us out? Yes. Have you finalized a schedule for next week's client training sessions? Not completely. A few stakeholders haven't confirmed their availability yet, so we'll have to play it by ear.

Makes sense. We also don't have a detailed agenda for the strategy meeting. Yeah, that's okay, though. We have the key topics ready. We can go with the flow once everyone starts sharing ideas.

Good point. By the way, do you think we'll need to hire another support specialist after the launch? I'm not sure yet. Let's see how things go during the first month.

If ticket volume stays high, we could revisit that. Fair enough. How are you handling everything? You've been working long hours lately. Honestly, there are so many moving parts that I'm just taking things day by day right now.

I don't blame you. One thing I'm worried about is what happens if the client requests major changes after we go live. Yeah, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, our priority is getting a successful launch.

You sound very calm and collected. Yes, right. Exactly. It's funny. I am the one that ended up saying all of these. And I'm the one who's like, Oh, what about this?

What about this? What about this? Yeah, it actually worked out really well that I had so many different ways to say this, right? You wouldn't want to say let's play it by ear over and over.

Yeah, for sure. Yes. You never want to be that person that's repeating the same phrases again and again. So the first one you used was a few stakeholders haven't confirmed their availability.

So we'll have to play it by ear. We can't quite finalize the schedule yet, which is what I asked you. Exactly. What a great phrase. And this isn't, it sounds like it would be super casual play by ear maybe, but it's really not.

We hear this at work a lot, right? It's not overly informal. So this is perfect if you want to say like, we can't decide yet. We don't have all the information we need.

Yes. And then I said, yeah, we can go with the flow once everyone starts sharing ideas. So this does happen. Sometimes you have like key issues, key topics, but then you know that you're going to need to be flexible depending on ideas that are shared by everyone.

And sometimes a meeting will sort of go with the flow like that. Exactly. And then I asked you about hiring another support person. You said, I'm not sure yet.

Let's see how things go during the first month. We're going to see how things go, right? Yeah, right. It's often you need to wait to make a decision until we see, you know, so this is, you're going to hear this one a lot.

I use this one a lot. Let's see how things go. both with my kids and at work. Yeah. I bet that drives them crazy though, right? I remember my mom used to say that a lot.

Like, we'll see. She used to say, we'll see, we'll see. And that is strategic, right? Like you said. And I've told them because if ever I say yes, definitively, and then something comes up that's out of my control, they get really upset.

So if ever they're upset that I'm saying, we'll see, we'll play it by ear. I tell them, I'm like, the reason I'm saying that is I don't know what's going to happen. Like, we'll try. I'm going to try.

Yeah. But I don't want anyone mad at me if things go badly. Right, right, right. And then I asked you, how are you handling everything? You've been working long hours.

You said, oh, there's so many moving parts. I'm just taking things day by day. So calm and collected. Yeah. Yes. I really love this phrase, right? It's such a great attitude instead of being like, you're right.

It's everything's chaos. I'm so over. It would just be like, you know what? I'm taking things day by day. You're admitting that things are kind of crazy, but it was such a positive spin, right?

Yeah, very good. And then what's the last thing you said? I said, oh, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. So we're worried. You're expressing some concern, some worry.

What happens if the client requests major changes? And my thought process is like, let's hope they don't. Let's not worry about that until it's the reality.

Exactly. Guys, go on over, check out 2627 of All Ears English. That's over on the All Ears English podcast. So open your search bar, type in All Ears English and go find that.

Hit follow. Do you play it safe when it comes to your English? So good topic over there for sure. That episode plus this one, we have a very full and complete answer to Saddam's question, right?

These are very different phrases, play it safe and play it by ear. And there are a lot of different ways we express this in English. So check out that episode because these are all really great to use at work. Yes, good stuff.

And Aubrey, we'll talk to you very soon. Have a good day. Enjoy your day. You too. Thanks. We'll see you guys next time. All right. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.

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