Curious Minds at Work

Productivity strategies do not work if we are focused on the wrong things. What we really need is an effective system for determining what is absolutely essential and the discipline to work on that thing. We need criteria that empower us to select our highest priority, and a strategy for eliminating everything else. My guest, Greg McKeown has designed this system, and he has written about it in his award-winning bestseller, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. In addition to his writing and speaking, Greg is CEO of THIS, Inc., a Young Global Leader for the World Economic Forum, and a lecturer at Stanford University. In this interview he shares incidents in his own life that led him to develop this system, as well as the elements that make the system powerful. In this episode, we talk about: How we forget our power to choose How our language shapes how we view the world How our priority became priorities and what that means for our lives Non-essentialism as a form of malware that has infected all areas of our lives How the smartest, most driven, capable, and curious people are the most vulnerable to non-essentialism Why we need to retire in our roles in order to gain perspective and get our lives back How a list of 6 can get us to our number one priority A game-changing way to use our journals as reflective, proactive tools The power of small wins The downside of email-to-email living Why technology makes a good servant but a poor master What it means to protect the asset in order to lead an essential life The unimportance of practically everything How discerning what is essential gives us the courage to push back on what is not Teaching young people how to focus on what is essential The three historical waves of non-essentialism or how we got here Why you want to be an essentialist before the busyness bubble bursts The trade off between our highest contribution versus what we got done today Greg also talks about how he is making a deliberate choice to hold off on his second book in order to focus on his highest contribution. He explains how challenging it is to do that and how aware he is of the trade offs he is making along the way. Episode Links @GregoryMcKeown http://gregmckeown.com/ Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown Panem - bread and circuses World War II Facebook Tulip mania Deep Work by Cal Newport @JaniceKaplan2 http://www.janicekaplan.com/ If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

We may believe that successful entrepreneurs possess innate abilities that set them apart, but what if those skills are just the result of practice and experience? That is the conclusion of Amy Wilkinson, bestselling author of The Creators Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs. She performed five years of interviews with the founders of organizations such as LinkedIn, eBay, Under Armour, Tesla Motors, Spanx, Airbnb, and PayPal. The result? She learned that these entrepreneurs share six common skills that made them successful. Perhaps more importantly, she contends that these are things that any of us can learn. Wilkinson is a strategic adviser and lecturer at Stanford Business School. Her career spans leadership roles with McKinsey and J.P. Morgan. She has served as a White House fellow, special assistant to the U.S. Trade Representative, and as a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. In this episode, we talk about: How successful entrepreneurs seek not to be first, but rather, to be only Why creators hold the key to a new economy The importance of finding the gap between what is and what can be How we can train ourselves to spot problems and see them as opportunities How Starbucks built its success on the concept of lift and shift Ensuring success by looking forward versus looking back Why you might need to fire yourself in order to innovate How nostalgia holds us back What the OODA Loop can teach us about entrepreneurship Why we all need to build a failure ratio into our work in order to grow The power of networking minds to solve big problems How you can be creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial within your current organization Episode Links @amywilkinson AmyWilkinson.com Elon Musk and Tesla and Zip2 Kevin Plank and Under Armour and the University of Maryland and the Terrapins Howard Schultz and Starbucks Nascar Driving School Chris Guillebeau and Born for This: Find the Work You Were Meant to Do Andy Grove of Intel Gordon Moore of Intel John Boyd and OODA Loop and Paypal Billpoint Palm Pilot Youtube Yelp Digg Founders Fund Clarion Capital Palantir Jessica Herrin and Stella and Dot InnoCentive BP Oil AOL If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Fear of job obsolescence ranks higher for most people than their fear of dying! Only half of workers today believe their skills will be valuable three years from now, and of this group, only a third feels their companies are providing the kinds of training they need to do anything about it. That means the learning is on us, and we need strategies for navigating this strange new world. Karie Willyerd has answers. Karie is the author of Stretch: How to Future-proof Yourself for Tomorrow’s Workplace. She is the Workplace Futurist for SuccessFactors, an SAP company, and the co-author of The 2020 Workplace: How Innovative Companies Attract, Develop, and Keep Tomorrows Employees Today. Her articles and blogs appear regularly in Harvard Business Review, and she has been a Chief Learning Officer for five Fortune 500 companies. In this episode, we talk about: How, no matter where we work, it is on us to manage our professional learning What our professional learning has to do with Al Capone Why millennials really are not that different from everyone else The one thing that 83% of executives agree on Five practices we can use to stay current The power of a diverse network What it means to: learn a living A powerful system for reflection with a triple loop for learning What a reverse mentor is and why we each need one Why we need new experiences in our work When to throttle down on productivity in order to learn new skills Why bouncing forward is so much better than bouncing back What it means to become an enhanced employee Karie also shares insights on the power of virtual reality for learning and building relationships. Episode Links @angler Gallup Report - Employee Engagement Findings SAP Oxford Economics Al Capone Sell-by date David Kelly and IDEO Farai Chideya and The Episodic Career Mark Granovetter and the concept of weak ties Adam Grant and Give and Take Harvard Learning Innovation Labs New York Times New Work Summit NFL Disney If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Named one of ten most influential thinkers in the world by MIT, Doug Rushkoff asks some seriously big questions on this episode of Curious Minds. The biggest one is: what if an economy predicated on growth is unsustainable? Growth at companies like General Electric (GE) used to mean jobs for hundreds of thousands of people. That same growth, at companies like Facebook and Google, yields, at most, tens of thousands of jobs. As growth-oriented tech companies absorb more jobs through smarter tech and automation, is this an opportunity to rethink the nature of work, jobs, and the overall economy? Doug Rushkoff asks us to consider that topic in his latest bestselling book, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity. Rushkoff is a professor of media theory and digital economics at Queens College, CUNY. He is the bestselling author of a dozen other books, including Present Shock, Program or Be Programmed, and Life Inc. In this episode, we talk about: Why Doug sees growth as the culprit in our current economy The unmet promise of technology and the long tail for artists and creatives How big data analytics reduces unpredictability and, thereby, innovation Ways more of us can take ownership of the platforms putting us out of work How it is not the job we want but the meaning, purpose, and material benefits work gives Money as a verb How currency tools like blockchain can help us rethink power and authority Twitter as a textbook case of tech success but growth company failure How digital distributism can trump digital industrialism The shift from tech as energizing to energy sucking Ruskhoff also talks about how he thinks about technology use in his own life, including which tools he chooses to use and why. Episode Links @rushkoff www.rushkoff.com Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus by Doug Rushkoff eBay Etsy Operating system Bazaar Crusades Burning Man Acquisition IPO Wired Chris Anderson Long Tail The Long Tail by Chris Anderson Free by Chris Anderson Mondo 2000 Boing Boing Ponzi scheme Alan Greenspan Taylor Swift Power law dynamics Distributism Venture capital Capital gains tax Blockchain Bitcoin PGP - pretty good privacy Distributism Marxism Capitalism Marshall McLuhan Peer-to-peer economy Lendingtree Fintech Faustian bargain Private equity Flip this house Michael Dell The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Technology and globalization are reshaping work, but what can we do about it? What approaches should we take as organizations do more with fewer employees? How can we think about our careers as we hold more jobs over the course of our lives, often from different fields? What skills do we need and what mindsets should we hold? Farai Chideya, author of The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption, helps us answer these questions. Through her research, reporting, and work experience, she offers insights into what has changed and what we can do. Farai is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York Universitys Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, an award-winning author, journalist, professor, and she frequently appears on public radio and cable television, speaking about race, politics, and culture. In this episode, we talk about: The most important step you can take before starting a job search Counterintuitive ways to find local jobs and to use your social network How a learning mindset can ensure greater career success Why emotional resilience is the new superpower The upside of an episodic career Why a tech-informed mindset is a must-have no matter your job Farai also shares her curiosity about American life and the American dream and how a changing world of work is influencing these things. She wonders how new technologies will change how we live. Episode Links @Farai http://www.farai.com The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption by Farai Chideya New York University Journalism Institute Facebook Google Virtual reality Artificial intelligence Robotics Automation Data journalism Farai and the FiveThirtyEight Blog Decision tree Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford Encore.org CRISPR If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

We each have work we were born to do, but it can take time and effort to find it. Becoming comfortable with the search is half the battle, because we need to try different kinds of jobs and work environments. With each experience we gain greater insight into the skills and knowledge we have to share, and we find our perfect blend of work, skills and meaning. In his latest book, Born for This, Chris Guillebeau, bestselling author of The $100 Startup and The Happiness of Pursuit, shares his own experiences and the stories of the many people he has interviewed, to help us navigate this process and choose our own path. Chris is the creator and host of The World Domination Summit, and a successful entrepreneur, speaker, and blogger. After a 10-year personal quest, he has visited every country in the world. In this episode, we talk about: Why you see yourself as self-employed, even if you work for someone else The joy-flow-money framework for evaluating creative opportunities What it means to bet on yourself The environments that support your best work The skills you most need to learn (and they are not what you think they are) Why giving up is actually a good thing Strategies for hacking new products and services Why curiosity is so important Episode Links @ChrisGuillebeau ChrisGuillebeau Born for This by Chris Guillebeau The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau The Happiness Pursuit by Chris Guillebeau The World Domination Summit Steve Jobs Seth Godin Facebook Shenee Howard Manifest Destiny If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

We are taught to think before we act. But what happens when we need to act in order for that thinking to make sense? Herminia Ibarra’s research suggests that is exactly the case when learning to lead. Based on decades of research, teaching, experience, and interviews, her latest book, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, outlines ways that we can assume larger leadership roles. Her work also confirms that, until we adjust to these new roles and responsibilities, we may feel fake or unlike ourselves. All of that is normal. Herminia is a Professor of Leadership and Learning at INSEAD and the Founding Director of The Leadership Transition program. In this episode, we talk about: The small but crucial changes we can take on a daily basis to step up to leadership Ways to redefine our jobs to make more strategic contributions What it means to diversify our networks for learning Ways to inject playfulness into how we see ourselves to ensure growth and change Why it is natural to feel like a fake when we take on new roles and responsibilities How to network within rather than outside of or on top of our jobs The importance of taking action over spending time endlessly reflecting and thinking Episode Links @HerminiaIbarra http://herminiaibarra.com Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Rethinking Your Career by Herminia Ibarra Outsight Principle Mark Snyder Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon Zelig If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Should we expect distractions at work? Or are we unwittingly cooperating in our own ineffectiveness? In this conversation, Cal Newport, bestselling author of Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, shares how deep work has become the superpower of the 21st century. Cal argues that today’s workplace is a minefield of distractions. With email, open floor plans, and instant messaging systems, we’re continually pulled away from meaningful, productive work. And the very tools our workplaces rely on to promote productivity are actually contributing to increased distraction and inefficiency. Learning to take control of our own attention is not only the key to a meaningful life, but it is the key to economic viability in a distracted age. Cal is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University, as well as the bestselling author of five books. His ideas and writing are frequently featured in major publications, and he is author of the popular blog, Study Hacks. In this episode, we talk about: What makes deep work so valuable How deep work makes life more meaningful What deep work looks like and how little distraction it takes to ruin it Why boredom is actually the key to doing deep work Why relationships hold the key to deep work Why we should be teaching young people to engage in deep work The value of being lazy when it comes to deep work Why you need a philosophy for doing deep work Cal also shares his deep curiosity to rethink cognitive workflows in a post-industrial age. Episode Links @CalNewport Calnewport.com Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World Georgetown University MIT Slack Eric Barker The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson Madmen Adam Grant Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania Sophie LeRoy and attention residue Jack Dorsey Square Twitter Industrial Revolution Henry Ford Scientific management Assembly lines Knowledge worker Wilhelm Hofmann Roy Baumeister How to Live on 24 Hours a Day by Arnold Bennett Downton Abbey The Collaboration Curse in The Economist If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

Why do we love certain foods? What role do families and memories play in our tastes? How can we help our children to eat well and wisely? While we may think our food preferences are innate, most are learned when we are young. And that also means we can change our preferences if we choose. In her bestselling book First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, Bee Wilson helps us rethink everything we thought we knew about eating. Bee is the author of four books, a writer for The Guardian & the London Review of Books, and the BBC Radio Food Writer of the Year. In this episode, we talk about: how our food likes and dislikes are less about biology and more about learned habits whether children know instinctively how to eat healthy foods how our home environment shapes our preferences why children reject new foods and how to get them to eat a wide variety the fascinating role of schools in influencing our eating habits how to change the types of foods that we like the role that gender plays in the formation of eating habits choices Japan made to change its eating patterns how we often overlook the single biggest influence on our eating habits Bee also speculates on how our healthcare systems could improve our health and save billions of dollars by teaching how to eat. Episode Links @KitchenBee Bee Wilson Consider the Fork First Bite: How We Learn to Eat Clara Davis Supertasters Food neophobia Lucy Cook Tiny Tastes Keith Williams and Tiny Tastes Karl Duncker Julie Mennella Bulimia Anorexia Eating in Post-War Japan If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening!

How can you better forecast the future? What are the characteristics and habits of mind of those who are the best in the world at doing it? And why are those people rarely the forecasters featured in the national and international media? In their  bestselling book Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction, Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner have shared their research on the elite few who correctly predict events that have not yet happened. Dan is an award-winning journalist, an editor, and the author of two other books, Risk and Future Babble. He recently joined the Canadian Prime Minister’s office as a senior advisor. In this episode, we talk about: what separates superforecasters from others making predictions the limits of even the best forecasters the two types of forecasters -- Hedgehogs and Foxes -- and which one is better how the intelligence community learned surprising things about their predictions the most common mistakes of amateur forecasters why the best forecasters are not smarter and don’t have more access to information the role of intellectual humility in forecasting how to learn to be a superforecaster Dan also shares the things he’s most curious about working on next. Episode Links @dgardner @ptetlock Philip Tetlock Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction The Good Judgement Project The Fox and the Hedgehog George Soros IARPA Groupthink John F. Kennedy Bay of Pigs Cuban Missile Crisis Daniel Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow Paul Slovic If you enjoyed the podcast, please rate and review it on iTunes. For automatic delivery of new episodes, be sure to subscribe. Thanks for listening!