A summary of things you should know about Overwhelmed according to Brigid Schulte: Introduction In this episode Brigid Schulte shares her insights on her book, Overwhelmed, where she the factorsRead More
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]]>In this episode Brigid Schulte shares her insights on her book, Overwhelmed, where she the factors contributing to our collective sense of being overwhelmed, seeking insights, answers, and inspiration.
In her book Schulte shares the story of what she found while traveling across Europe to understand how countries accommodate working parents while investigating companies that are trying to invent a new kind of workplace. The goal of the book is to provide you with practical advice on how to make better use of each day and open your eyes to why we live and work the way we do.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are determined to exhaust themselves for work but find themselves becoming overwhelmed with stress and busyness.
What really differentiates my book is that it really looks at the big picture and how interconnected everything is. I wanted to know why things are the way they are and how they could be better.
I wrote the book very intentionally that you can read it any number of ways because I understand that people are busy. So you can read from start to finish or you can jump around.
You have to take a moment to pause and disrupt the cycle of busyness that’s out there. To be truly productive, to be truly efficient, and true to yourself, you have to take a moment and pause.
The book is divided into five sections. The first section I call Time Confetti because when I first started this journey that’s what it felt like; just do everything all at once in little tiny scraps of time that were exploding all over the place. The first chapter explains how it felt to live in what I call this time confetti. I felt inadequate at work, at home, and that I didn’t have time to do anything and so I really explore that.
I look at the question of leisure; what is leisure time and who has ever had it? I look at the history of leisure and how it’s different for men and woman and also of people with different economic needs. I explore the question of busyness; we tend to think of being busy as the way we show our value. I found a researcher in Fargo, North Dakota who studies busyness and the fast pace of life and I spend time with her at a focus group she set up. The last part of this chapter I look at the consequences of us being overwhelmed and I went to the Yale Stress Center and looked at some fascinating research that they are doing about how stress is affecting our brain.
The next part of the book is divided into Work, Love, Play, and Time. In the work section I talk about policy, I have a section about the ideal worker norm, and a section called When Work Works. In the love section I talk lot about our gender roles and what many sociologist call The Stalled Gender Revolution; why women are still doing twice the housework and three times the childcare. In the play section I went to Denmark to understand what is going on in Denmark that enables people there to have so much leisure time and what I found was very interesting. The last part of this chapter looks at play and why it’s important and the science behind it.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 13:04
“Time is the coin of your life. You spend it; do not allow others to spend it for you.” – Carl Sandburg
I have been a longtime reporter for The Washington Post and been a journalist for most of my adult life. I have covered a wide variety of things throughout my career. I am married and the mom of two kids who are now 13 and 16. I live in Alexandria Virginia and grew up in Portland Oregon.
Overwhelmed was a completely accidental book. Through my career I have always wanted to write a book. There are lots of journalists out there and that’s sort of a big dream that they all have but you just get so busy and you don’t really have time to think about it. I was part of this group in The Washington Post where we were looking at a readership numbers and we were noticing a big gap between male and female readers. We found that more men were reading the newspaper and before women were and the reason why that is important is that women over 50 have always been the most loyal newspaper readers. So we put together what we call The Women’s Reader Committee and we wanted to understand why women are not reading the paper and how do we bring them back? This committee was made up of me and all other women. The first thing we did was roll our eyes because we as women know that we don’t have time in the mornings to read the newspaper. And it became this sort of confessional about just how crazy our lives were. From there I did a time study and to my surprise found that we have all this leisure time we aren’t aware of which led me to writing this book.
The Up Side of Down by Megan McArdle
Mindset by Carol Dweck
Buy Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte on Amazon today
Visit BrigidSchulte.com to learn more about Brigid and signup for her newsletter
Follow Brigid Schulte on Facebook and Twitter
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
The Greatness Zone by Jay Forte
The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Energy Bus according to Jon Gordon: Introduction In this episode bestselling author Jon Gordon reveals all his insights on his book,Read More
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]]>In this episode bestselling author Jon Gordon reveals all his insights on his book, The Energy Bus, where he shares 10 rules to fuel your life, work, and team with positive energy.
In his book Gordon reveals 10 secrets for approaching life and work with the kind of positive, forward thinking that leads to true accomplishment. The goal of the book is to help you overcome negativity, build trust with others, improve your enthusiasm, and stop holding grudges in order to bring out the best in yourself.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who have a hard time accepting the everyday challenges that come with life and are searching for a way to eliminate negativity from their lives.
I think the fact that’s it’s a fable and it was one of those first books to really talk about the importance of positivity and overcoming negative energy.
A lot of people read it from front to back within a day or two. And then after you read it you will find an action plan in the back of the book.
In the book I tell you about the man who goes to a village to speak to the wise man and he says to the wise man that he feels like there are two dogs inside of him. He has a positive and generous dog but also a mean spirited angry negative dog. These dogs fight all the time and he doesn’t know who is going to win. The wise man tells him that the dog that will win will be the one he feeds the most, so feed the positive dog.
The Energy Bus is 10 rules for the ride of your life. It’s about a guy name George who is miserable and negative, his team at work is in disarray and he has problems at home. He wakes up Monday morning with a flat tire and he has this important meeting to get to so he ends up having to take the bus to work. George gets on the bus and meets Joy the bus driver who calls him Sugar and shows him 10 rules for the ride of his life. These 10 rules not only help him become a more positive leader but a better father and a better husband. George learns these 10 rules and then applies them to his business, life and work.
NOTE: That was just a summary. To get the full deep dive, play the audio clip at 6:01
“The goals in life is to live young, have fun, and arrive at our final destination as late as possible because the goal is to enjoy the ride.” – Jon Gordon
I am a writer and speaker, I consider myself a writer first. I love writing fables that inspire and encourage people. I am a husband and a father to two teenagers.
I was walking, praying, and struggling in my own life and the idea just came to me. The idea of a bus driver who inspires their passengers to change their life and to become a better leader at work just came to me. And I wrote the book in about 3 and ½ weeks of pure inspiration.
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Buy The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon on Amazon today
Visit JonGordon.com to learn more about Jon and his books
Follow Jon Gordon on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books:
The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan
Mindset – The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
Memoirs of Normalcy by Joleene Moody
Relevant advice and tips:
10 Bad Habits That Successful People Avoid
5 Lessons Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Brandon Epstein
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about How to Solve Problems and Make Brilliant Decisions according to Richard Hall: Introduction In this episode Richard Hall takes a deep diveRead More
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]]>In this episode Richard Hall takes a deep dive into his book, How to Solve Problems and Make Brilliant Decisions, where he shares practical skill and techniques to think better, faster, and more productively.
In his book, Hall teaches you how to shape, train, and inspire your thinking to deliver more effective results. The goal of the book is to help you improve your thinking skills, become more confident in making decisions, and become more effective at problem solving.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who need to improve their decision making skills in order to achieve success at a faster rate than currently able.
This book is very accessible, practical, energetic and optimistic. If you read this book it will save you a lot of time reading a whole lot of other books. I summarized and used some of other ideas and made an accessible primer for anybody who wants to think about thinking.
It’s set out in such a way that the reader can go in and out of it or read it back to front. It is very user and reader friendly.
Look around yourself and see what is going on around you. Listen to people and learn to change your mind. I would like everybody to start thinking about thinking and that is a big step forward.
We know little about the brain but what we do know is that there are two parts of our brain, intuition and rationality. Through the book I have tried to look at the various things we need to have in business. I start the book with a reflection on what I think the most four potent words are in English language which are what do you think. We should all be asking ourselves these four words and it’s not easy to do. The book constantly advices us to slow down and don’t get so stressed because the more stressed you are the less effective you’ll be. I talk about how to think better and give advice for that. The first advice is to not multitask. The brain is not designed to multitask and you need to concentrate on one thing at a time. The second advice is to loosen up, take time and be in a good mood.
The key thing to know about problem solving is the brain is lazy and we worry more about what other people think. I advise people to just sit down, look out of a window and work things out. It’s amazing that when you are stopped and not rushing around your mind suddenly starts working in a way that you wouldn’t believe. Another important thing if you are going to be a good problem solving is to ask questions and listen to what other people have to say.
A second part of the book is about decision making. I used to think making decisions was very easy but it turns out that it is actually difficult because of all the things going on around us. Good decision making is well judged risk taking because some you win and some you lose. But in the end good decision making is based on experience, breaking problems down in to small pieces and giving yourself the most amount of time to make those decisions.
Creativity is another part of the book. The logic of creativity is searching for alternatives and the ability to make connections and I don’t think it’s more complicated than that. It’s not wacky or inexplicable but it’s about a form of thinking which enables people to look at what’s in front of them and say is there another way of doing this. The most important thing about creativity is that you need to be a bit of a rebel. I think one of the joys of good creative thinking is you need to have a sense of humor because if you make people laugh they behave accordingly. In the end if we don’t engage with other people and get them to do the things we want them to do, it won’t work. I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that makes a difference between success and failure is working with other people and getting other people to be on board with what you want them to be on board with. Increasingly we are living in a world which is group driven, not solo driven, and it really matters that people hear what you want them to hear. What matters is not what you said or what you think you said but what they think you said. And unless we crack the understanding of how to get other people to think then we are not going to be successful.
The key thing about the book is for people to make the most of the amazing engine they have in their heads.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Mike Tyson
I have been around in business for a long time. My background is in marketing, advertising and consulting and I’ve worked with a lot of major companies. I have had a fantastic time and am very enthusiastic about the prospects of the changing world.
I have written a number of books before on presenting career development marketing and they are all very specific in their topics. I began increasingly concerned and aware of the fact that we’ve stopped thinking in the way that we used to and there are a number of reasons for that. And this seemed to be an issue worth looking at. The second thing is that it became increasingly clear to me that we don’t know very much about the mind at all. It seemed to me that if you are going to succeed in business today you need to be thinking about thinking at the top of all things that you do.
Enthusiasms by Bernard Levin
Back To Blood by Tom Wolfe
Buy How to Solve Problems and Make Brilliant Decisions by Richard Hall on Amazon today
Visit ColorfulThinkers.com to learn more about Richard and his book
Connect with Richard Hall on LinkedIn
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Powerhouse by Mike Clayton | The Discomfort Zone by Marcia Reynolds | The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan
Relevant advice and tips: 10 Bad Habits That Successful People Avoid
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Hit The Mark according to Erik Fisher Introduction In this episode Erik Fisher shares his book, Hit The Mark, where he givesRead More
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]]>A summary of things you should know about Hit The Mark according to Erik Fisher
In this episode Erik Fisher shares his book, Hit The Mark, where he gives you practical and motivational advice on handling focus, approaching your goals, and maximizing your success.
In his book, Fisher outlines tips to help you improve your focus, strategies to help you get the most out of your time, energy boosters to make you feel better, and techniques to make you not feel like a robot. The goal of this book is to improve your focus, boost your energy, and crush time management.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who are having trouble getting the most out of a day’s work because of fatigue, low motivation, and continuous distractions.
There really is not another book out there that is as focused as this one is about doing your work and continually doing it even when you don’t feel like it.
I think it’s best to read the whole thing straight through.
You have to look at where you are not hitting the mark and analyze why you’re not hitting it. Through trial and error figure out why you’re not and how you can.
Everyone has something that they need to do, something that needs to get done. Knowing what needs to get done is half the part but actually doing it is what really matters. As we go through the book we talk about where energy and time intersect for focus so that you can find your sweet spot and assign the right amount of time to each task at hand.
We talk about mental distractions, focusing on your strengths and what motivates you so that you can bust through and blaze past those distractions. It is a lot of walking through what you think and feel. When you rationalize things as real work, that aren’t real work, you instill bad habits in to your routine and end up not getting anything done.
“When you work at the right time you get more work done.” – Erik Fisher
People may know me from the internet as a person who writes, podcasts and is community manager over at Social Media Examiner. I podcast at beyondthetodolist.com and the most recent book I co-authored was Hit The Mark.
The idea was that we want you to improve your focus, boast your energy and make the most of your time. We knew we needed to go to a place where we talk about those things that help you continue to move forward and have forward momentum on those goals.
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Buy Hit The Mark by Erik Fisher on Amazon today
Visit BeyondTheToDoList.com to learn more about Erik’s book and podcast
Follow Erik Fisher on Twitter and Facebook
Download the full transcript here (coming soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: Limitless Energy by Brandon Epstein | The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod | The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Upside of Your Dark Side according to Todd Kashdan Introduction In this episode Todd Kashdan takes a deep dive into hisRead More
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]]>A summary of things you should know about The Upside of Your Dark Side according to Todd Kashdan
In this episode Todd Kashdan takes a deep dive into his book, The Upside of Your Dark Side where he reveals over 15 years of research on the science of happiness, love, creativity, and relationships.
In his book Kashdan provides the simple tools that will help you get through the negative emotions and launch you to the highest peak in your life. The goal of the book show you how you can truly maximize your potential in any situation.
This book is perfect for entrepreneurs who need help turning simple negative emotions such as anger, guilt, and self-doubt into powerful actions that improve your effectiveness.
There are very few books out there on this topic. It’s couched in scientific research for how to get the best of your personality in the difficult and pleasurable situations.
It’s a very breezy read. I think the best way is to read from beginning to end but it’s sectioned in a way that you can pick your way through.
That while we all want to have a high frequency of moments it’s important to know that negative emotions and the tools that help us get through are the springboards to the highest peaks in our life.
One of the most important premises of the book is if you ask people what the fundamental objective in life is 80% to 90% of people will say it’s to be happy. The best strategy to live a life well lived is to have an attitude where you’re present with an attitude of curiosity and you’re constantly plugging away doing what matters.
For the first part of our book we talk about the benefits towards negative emotions. Instead of trying to categorize and label our emotions we must think of what’s useful and not useful for the exact situation that you are in. We need to focus on not being more positive or happy but being emotionally agile.
The next part of the book we move to social agility. Part of making a contribution to the world is to recognize the value of the sides of your personality that deviate from generosity and kindness. The entrepreneur that does not have a big vision of why they want to make a change in the world, what that change is going to be and why they think they are the perfect catalyst for that, is not going to get angle investor funding. A striving for supremacy, which is one of the components of narcissism, is fundamental to making tracking towards big aspirational goals and we walk your through exactly what those steps are. In this type of environment where we hire consultants and experts to come on to our team for short periods of time, narcissism works extremely well to get traction, get allies and form a strong confident tribe in the face of adversity and difficulty.
Another characteristic we talk about is psychopathy which we use Teddy Roosevelt as the example. One of the elements of psychopathy is fearless dominance; the willingness to be bold with your decisions knowing that 20% to 30% of people will disagree with you. We walk through the parts of your personality that might not be socially attractive to talk about but actually are exactly what you need every once and awhile.
In the third part of the book we talk about mental agility. In our society there is an obsession with mindfulness being the panacea for everything. There are incredible benefits of mindlessness and being present with your negative emotions.
When we prematurely discard aspects of our personality because they are not comfortable we dismiss psychological strengths that are at our win and we give them away for nothing. And those people that are comfortable in being whole which means whatever part of their personality that arises for the situation to help that they are willing to use those tools effectively to get the best possible outcome. These are the people who are going to accomplish more than the ones who are only going to be have human focusing only on positivity and kindness.
“The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to re-baptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.” – Nietzsche
I am a psychology professor at George Mason University, a Senior Scientist at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being and an author of four different books. The four books are Curious?, Designing Positive Psychology, Mindfulness, Acceptance and Positive Psychology, and The Upside of Your Dark Side.
My Co-author and I have been studying the science of happiness, love, creativity and relationships for about 15 years. Both of us have read numbers of books that our colleagues have written about how to integrate this in the workplace and we have always been dissatisfied with it. We wrote this book to rectify what you need to do to flourish and function optimally in a world where we are overwhelmed. This is 15-20 years of science pulled together in one book.
Spent by Geoffrey Miller
Buy The Upside of Your Dark Side by Todd Kashdan on Amazon today
Visit ToddKashdan.com to learn more about Todd and his book
Follow Todd Kashdan on Twitter
Download the full transcript here (Coming Soon)
Listen on iTunes, Stitcher , and SoundCloud
Related books: How to Be a Positive Leader by Jane E Dutton | Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life by Todd B. Kashdan | Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan
What did you like and not like about this episode? Fill out this one minute survey here.
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