What You Will Learn

Debbie Milman is a writer, designer, educator, artist, brand consultant and host of the podcast Design Matters. She is one of the OG's of podcasting, going at it for over 15 years. She has been named as one of the most influential graphic designers working today. Her book Design Matters contains interviews and essays from her long journey in design, interviewing and podcasting.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Hold Me Tight, Dr. Sue Johnson presents the concept of Emotionally Focused Therapy–which helps reestablish safe emotional connection and preserve the attachment bond in relationships. Love has always been a mystical elusive emotion for many of us. It should come as no surprise that people recently surveyed in Western societies rate a satisfying love relationship as their number one goal. Thankfully, within the past few decades, an exciting understanding of love is emerging. In this book, Johnson focuses on pivotal moments in a relationship. She uses touch points such as “Recognising the Demon dialogue” or “Revisiting a Rockey Moment” for 7 healing conversations. Through stories from Dr. Johnson's practice, illuminating advice, and practical exercises, you will learn how to nurture, protect, and grow your relationship, ensuring a lifetime of love. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There is a big difference between EXTENDING LIFE and PROLONGING VITALITY. We're capable of both - but "extending life" - simply keeping people alive - decades after their lives have become defined by pain, disease, frailty and immobility is no virtue"Prolonged vitality" meaning not just more years of life, but more active, healthy and happy ones is coming and its coming sooner than most people expect. By the time people who are born today have reached middle age, these changes should be here. And in the next century, a person who is 122 might say they've lived a full but not a particularly long life. 120 years might not be an outlier but an expectationSo much so we don't call it longevity. We simply call it life. What's the upward limit? There isn't one. There is no biological law that says we must age. Prolonged healthy lifespans are in sight. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Everyone is probably familiar with some job at your workplace which is the butt of the jokes: the jobs with a fancy title (and probably the juicy pay packet) but they seem to do nothing. They don’t seem like they don't really play any vital role. The more you think about it, the more you'll realise that this list is seemingly endless…So the Author started thinking, are these jobs REALLY useless? And if they are, are the people those those jobs just blissfully ignorant, or do they know that their job is bullshit too?There are plenty of jobs we can label “bullshit” - jobs that don’t actually contribute anything of positive value to society, jobs where people just show up and put in their time but aren’t actually doing things that make the world a better place. Listening to this episode, you’ll hear stories about all kinds of bullshit jobs. They’re funny to laugh at, but if you take a long hard look in the mirror, you might find elements of bullshit in your job too… See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out

Procrastination. It is a problem that we all have in some areas of our lives. Be it balancing the budget, filling a legal brief, or painting the spare bedroom - anything we have delayed in favour of more pressing or pleasurable pursuits. We all have tasks and goals we attempt to delay - or totally escape. Procrastinators still get most of these tasks and projects completed on time and in good order... but the pressure and the stress they accumulate along the journey causes unnecessary anxiety and diminishes the quality of the end result.This book offers a solution - a cure for procrastination. Whether you are a professional, an entrepreneur, a middle manager, a writer, or a student who wants to overcome problems with procrastination (or if you simply want to become more efficient in completing complex and challenging tasks) - we hope this episode will help you get results. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway - by Susan JeffersFear seems to be epidemic in our society. We fear beginnings, We fear endings. We fear changing, we fear staying stuck. We fear success, we fear failure. We fear living, we fear dying. What is it for you? Fear of public speaking? Fear of asserting yourself? Fear of making decisions? Fear of intimacy? Fear of changing jobs? Fear of being alone? Fear of aging? Fear of driving? Fear of losing a loved one? Fear of ending a relationship?It turns out that while all of these fears seem completely different, they actually all boil down to one root cause. In this episode, we dissect fear, we strip it back to is most basic component, then provide ways to overcome that fear and move forward with your life. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In The Psychology of Money, Morgan Housel shares 19 short stories exploring the strange ways people think about money. Financial success is a soft skill where how you behave is more important than what you know. A genius who loses control of their emotions can be a financial disaster. Ordinary folks with no financial education can be wealthy if they have a handful of behavioural skills that have nothing to do with formal measures of intelligence.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Our annual tradition, recapping our favourite 10 books we've read in the second half of 2021. We share our faves, the best snippet from each, and try to remain coherent as we proceed with our own end-of-year celebrations (these can tend to get a little sloppy towards the end...) See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

by Laurence Peter See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Tapping into Netflix's work culture, No Rules Rules explains the philosophy behind one of the world's most successful companies. This book is an overview of how Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings built a culture that focused on freedom and responsibility. Hastings set new standards such as valuing people over process; emphasizing innovation over efficiency; and giving employees context, not controls. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Inner Game of Tennis book isn't just about tennis. In this book, W. Timothy Galleway uses anecdotes of tennis games to illustrate the tools we need to improve our performance in any activity. Focus in tennis is fundamentally no different from the focus needed to perform any task. The Inner Game of Tennis reveals how to:- Focus your mind to overcome nervousness, self-doubt, and distractions- Find the state of relaxed concentration that allows you to play at your best- Build skills by smart practice, then put it all together in match play. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If all goes well, human history is just the beginning. Humanity is about two hundred thousand years old, but the Earth will remain habitable for hundreds of millions more. Enough time for millions of future generations, enough to end disease, poverty and injustice forever and enough to create heights of flourishing unimaginable today. Such a lifespan places present-day humanity in its earliest infancy. A vast and extraordinary adulthood awaits. This book argues that safeguarding Humanity's future is the defining challenge of our time. For we stand at a crucial moment in the history of our species. Fuelled by technological progress, our power has grown so great that for the first time in humanity's long historyWe have the capacity to destroy ourselves. Severing our entire future and everything we could become. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The 5 Levels of Leadership provides the ultimate leadership GPS to guide your career journey. In this book, John C. Maxwell identifies 5 levels of leadership and how to maximise them. As you progress in your leadership abilities, you move up to a higher level. But instead of trading one level for another, you need to build upon it. Don’t leave the lessons from your previous experiences behind! This book is the guide that will help you make the most of your professional experience—regardless of where you are right now. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Ryan Holiday joins us on the show to talk about all things books. We've covered five of his books on the podcast before (Perennial Seller, The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is The Enemy, Stillness Is The Key, Courage Is Calling) so we were able to dig a little deeper into his writing and his career. Check out more Ryan Holiday here: https://ryanholiday.net/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There is nothing we prize more than courage. But courage is not a precious stone like a diamond that takes a billion years to create, nor oil that must be drawn from deep underground.Courage is something much simpler. It’s renewable. It’s everywhere. It's something that we are capable of at a moment's notice. There are unlimited, even daily opportunities for it everywhere. And yet it remains so rare. Why?Because we are afraid. It's easier not to get involved. We have something else we're working on and now is not a good time. An understandable logic, but if everyone thought that way, what's left?In an ugly world, courage is what allows beautiful things to happen. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Robert Greene is back! Not every day you get to speak to your favourite author. Robert Greene is author of books we've already reviewed on the podcast, including The Laws of Human Nature, Mastery, 48 Laws of Power, 33 Strategies of War (plus we'll do Seduction one day too).His new book, The Daily Laws is like a 'greatest hits' album, giving you a powerful punch for each day of the year.In this episode we get to delve deeper into some of the best ideas in his books. He's a weapon. Enjoy!Find more about Robert Greene and all of his books here: http://powerseductionandwar.com/And check out all of his social channels here: http://robertgreeneofficial.com/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Whether we like it or not, the process of innovation is dictated by random combinations of different concepts. Individuals and teams who often break new ground know this and therefore maximise their chances of finding intersectional ideas. They do it by introducing diversity into their occupations, teams, and encounters.Frans Johansson has named this concept ‘The Medici Effect’ after the Medicis, the 15th Century banking family in Florence, Italy. The Medicis funded creators from a wide range of disciplines and brought sculptors, scientists, poets, philosophers, financiers, painters, and architects to converge on the city of Florence. This was the beginning of The Renaissance—a period where knowledge and creativity were advancing. This book will show you how to find such intersectional ideas and make them happen. It isn't just about the Medici family or the Renaissance era. It's about the elements that made that era possible. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In Enlightenment Now, Steven Pinker explains the impact of Enlightenment values – reason, science, and humanism – on the world. These values were instrumental in moving society forward, and Pinker worries that they are under threat.Humans have achieved a whole bunch of cool shit over the ages. Unfortunately, we take it for granted. Progress has a very funny way of erasing its tracks as we move forward as a species.The local supermarket is overflowing with food. You’ve got clean water on tap. You drop your waste in the toilet, and with a click of a button, it vanishes. We have pills that demolish painful infections, planes to take us to the other side of the world, cheap energy to pop the lights on, and you have all of the world's knowledge inside your pocket.We assume these things are birthrights, forgetting that they're human accomplishments. At some stage in history, a person worked on solving these problems and drove our society forward. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Humour, Seriously - by Jennifer Aaker & Naomi BagdonasWhy Humour Is A Superpower At Work And In Life (And How Anyone Can Harness It... Even You)Everyone loves a laugh. We like to watch funny movies, listen to entertaining podcasts, go to comedy festivals to watch stand up or improv. But that's all in our personal lives... surely in our professional lives there's less room for jokes? Surely the workplace should be a little more "serious" if we want to be productive and effective?Well, it turns out that humour isn't something that stands in your way at work - it's something that can actually help you BECOME more productive and effective. Humour at work can deepen relationships, make people more effective and more joyful at work, and fundamentally transform companies from somewhere "serious" to something more enjoyable.This book Is About blending the behavioural science of humour with principles of comedy and applying them in a way that would actually be useful in business and work.  See acast.com/

What an honour to be able to speak with Steven Pressfield.He's the author of three awesome books that we've covered on the podcast previously: The War of Art, Turning Pro, and Do The Work.Plus he's the author of MANY more books, both fiction and non-fiction, and was the screenwriter for a bunch of Hollywood movies.Find more about him and his work at: https://stevenpressfield.com/  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.