What You Will Learn

The Paradox of Choice - by Barry Schwartz'Why Less Is More' or 'How the culture of abundance robs us of satisfaction' Barry Schwartz is the author of The Paradox of Choice. One day, went to the store to buy a new pair of jeans. He said to the store person that he wanted a pair of blue jeans: 32 waist, 28 leg. She asked – do you want them stone washed, acid washed, torn, distressed? do you want zip fly or button fly? do you want them faded or regular? do you want them slim fit, easy fit, or relaxed fit? straight leg, skinny leg or extra baggy?Barry just wanted “the regular kind”, but there’s no such thing any moreBuying jeans is a trivial matter, but its indicative of a much greater theme in the world today. When people have NO choice it becomes restrictive and unbearable. As choices increase, we feel a sense of autonomy, control, and liberation – variety brings us a feeling of power and positivity. BUT, as the number of choices KEEPS growing more and more, there are negative aspects of having TOO MANY choices. More choice no longer liberates, it debilitates.This book argues that:We would be better off if we embraced certain voluntary constraints on our freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against themWe would be better off seeking what was “good enough” instead of seeking the bestWe would be better off if we lowered our expectations about the results of decisionsWe would be better off if the decisions we made were nonreversibleWe would be better off if we paid less attention to what others around us were doing Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Big Magic - by Elizabeth Gilbert'Creative Living Beyond Fear' In Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert refers to magic, literally like in the Hogwarts sense. She is referring to the supernatural, the mystical, inexplicable, the surreal, the divine, the transcendent, the otherworldly. Because the truth is, she believes that creativity is a force of enchantment that is not entirely human in its origins. Gilbert believes that our planet is inhabited not only by animals and plants and bacteria and viruses but also by ideas. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest, and the only way an idea can be made manifest is through human efforts that an idea can be escorted out of the ether and in the realm of the material. Therefore ideas spend eternity swirling around us searching for available and willing human partners. When an idea thinks it found somebody (like you) who might be able to bring it into the world, the idea will visit you and it will try to get your attention.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Your career, finances, reputation, love life, even the fate of your kids - at some point all hinge on your ability to negotiate.Chris Voss spent more than two decades at the FBI, including 15 years negotiating hostage situations from New York to the Philippines and the Middle East. At any time there are 10,000 people in the FBI, but only one lead international kidnapping negotiator. Soon he discovered these skills from the FBI worked everywhere. It turned out that the approach to negotiation held the keys to unlock profitable human interactions in every domain and every interaction and relationship in life. This book is how it works.We've already reviewed Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury, a ground-breaking book that had a step by step logical negotiation procedure for a win-win outcome. But if you've been listening for a while, you'd know that human beings aren't logical or rational. Feeling is a form of thinking. Conducting negotiations based on logical concepts without the tools to read, understand and manipulate the emotional underpinning is like trying to make an omelet without first knowing how to crack an egg.Never Split The Difference gives tips that will help you negotiate with the irrational Fast Thinking part of the brain.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Principles - by Ray DalioOver the course of our lives we make millions of decisions, essentially bets, some large and some small. It pays to think about how we make them because they ultimately determine the quality of our lives.Ray Dalio is an American billionaire investor, hedge fund manager and philanthropist. Ray Dalio wrote a set of principles to help with his daily decisions which many have a similar rhyme that can be executed via a set of principles. In this episode we cover: embrace reality and deal with it, being radically open minded and understanding that people are wired differently. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Brief History of time is a popular science book on cosmology written by Stephen Hawking. It is a book for readers who have no knowledge of the universe and are curious to learn more about science. In this episode we'll talk about  Space and Time, Black Holes, The Expanding Universe and the Universe and Meaning. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Seth Godin is back for round 2.  We drill into the choices we make - to take responsibility or relinquish it, to be generous or follow the script, to try something new or stick to the job description.  We also spoke about the importance of REAL skills (some people call them ‘soft skills’). 'Hard Skills’ are the essential ticket you need to get a seat at the table - for you it may be coding, or doing engineering computations, or knowing how to use google analytics or post facebook ads. But these just get you in the door - they don’t make you indispensable. What sets you apart from the masses are the soft skills - being able to influence a decision, solving problems, engaging with a troublesome customer, comforting a colleague after a difficult meeting, and so on.  Check out everything Seth has to offer: https://akimbo.com/ Be a part of the next Real Skills Conference: https://realskillsconference.com/ Read Seth’s daily blog: https://seths.blog/ Download our free ’Top 50 Best Book of All Time’ document, heavily featuring Seth’s books: http://whatyouwilllearn.com/top50  RELATED EPISODES:First interview with Seth GodinLinchpinThis Is MarketingPoke The BoxPurple CowTribesThe Dip Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our world is filled with factories. Factories that make widgets, insurance, websites, movies, take care of sick people and answer the phone. You can become a great factory worker if you pay attention in school, follow instructions, show up on time and try hard and in return they would take care of you. You won't have to be brilliant, creative or to take big risks. The factories would pay you a lot of money, give you health insurance and offer you job security. It's a pretty seductive bargain, so seductive for that century, we embraced it. We set up our school and our systems and our government to support that bargain. For a long time it worked, but in the face of competition and technology, the bargain has fallen apart: job growth is flat at best, wages in many industries are on a negative cycle, the middle class is under siege like never before, and the future appears dismal. People are no longer being taken care of: pensions are gone, 401ks have been sliced in half and it’s hard to see where to go from here.  Suddenly, in the scheme of things, it seems like the obedient worker bought into a suckers deal. You weren't born to be a cog in the giant industrial machine, you were trained to become a cog. The bargain is gone and it's not worth whining about and it's not effective to complain. There's a new bargain now, one that leverages talent and creativity and art more than it rewards obedience  A linchpin is an unassuming piece of hardware, something you can buy for 69 cents at the local hardware store. It's not glamorous, but it's essential. It holds the wheel onto the wagon, the thingamajig onto the widget. Every successful organization has at least one linchpin, some have dozens or even thousands. The linchpin is the essential element, the personal who holds part of the operation together. Without the linchpin, things fall apart. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Power of Habit - by Charles Duhigg"Why we do what we do in life and business"William James wrote in 1892: "All of our life so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits". Most of the choices we make each day may feel like the products of well-considered decision making, but they're not - they're habits. Though each habit means very little on its own, over time, the meals we order, what we say to the kids each night, what we spend and the way we organise our thoughts have enormous impacts on our health, productivity, financial security and happiness.Habit Change follows a 3 step loopFirst there is a CUE, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to useSecond there is the ROUTINE, which can be physical or mental or emotionalFinally there is the REWARD, which helps your brain figure out of this particular loop is worth remembering for the futureIn almost every experiment, researches have found habits are powerful but delicate. They can emerge outside of our consciousness, or can be deliberately designed. They often occur without permission, but can be reshaped by fiddling with their parts. They shape our lives far more than we realise. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mindset - by Dr Carol S Dweck'Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential' This book is about one pervasive view we adopt for ourselves and our abilities: we either have a 'fixed mindset' or a 'growth mindset'. Those with the fixed mindset believe that we have a natural level of talent or ability that we are born with and cannot change, whereas those with a growth mindset believe that everything can be learned and improved upon. These 'mindsets' rear their heads in business, sport, relationships. This simple distinction becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and permeates all aspects of our lives, from the way we view failures, to the success we achieve, to how we view effort, and everything in between.Read this book. Adopt a growth mindset. Apply it to all areas of your life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Emotional Intelligence - by Daniel Goleman 'Why it can matter more than IQ: The groundbreaking book that redefines what it means to be smart'   Emotional Intelligence is a guide to making sense of the senselessness. Daniel Goleman worked as a psychologist first then as a journalist for the NYT, and has been tracking the progress of our understanding of the realm of irrationality. From this position, he's been seeing two growing trends: one portraying a growing calamity in our shared emotional life, the other offering some helpful remedies. This book is all about the latter – offering ideas about how we can understand ourselves better, manage our own emotions, and use empathy to better understand the feelings and emotions of the people around us. The book will show you why EQ  indeed trumps IQ in the modern world. There are 5 elements to emotional intelligence: 1. Self-Awareness 2. Managing Emotions 3. Motivating Oneself 4. Recognizing Emotions in Others 5. Handling Relationships Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.