The Greg McKeown Podcast

Today is part two of the conversation with Ron Johnson, formerly the Senior Vice President at Apple. He was the lead designer of the Apple retail stores, as well as the Genius Bar and many other things that we take for granted in the experience that Apple successfully created. If you've ever wanted to see behind the curtain about how the Apple transformation was achieved, not by the caricature of Steve Jobs, but by the person himself, the leader, then this conversation is meaningful, it's interesting, and I think you're going to enjoy it. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever wondered how America's wealthiest families manage their fortunes across generations? A lot of people think it's all about the initial success, the sheer magnitude of the wealth itself, but that is wrong. What we know now is that there is a single rule that makes the difference between intergenerational wealth and being broke. By the end of this episode, you'll understand the starkly different legacies of the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, and that one key to generational wealth. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever met someone who made a disproportionate impression upon you? You didn't have conventional conversations with them. Instead, it was something more meaningful, even life-changing? Well, in today's episode, part one of a two-part interview with Ron Johnson, Ron describes specific moments and conversations that he had with Steve Jobs. Ron Johnson was formerly the senior Vice president at Apple. He was responsible for the creation of the retail Apple stores, as well as the Genius Bar. If you've ever been to an Apple store, if you've ever been to the Genius Bar, Ron Johnson has impacted your life. But in this episode, we learn about how Steve Jobs impacted his life. By the end of this episode, you'll have insights into that key relationship, but also insights into how to make conversations memorable and build relationships that matter at work or at home. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever wondered why some people always seem to have a hunger for knowledge and new experiences? Many people believe that curiosity is just an inborn trait, but the truth is it's a powerful discipline that can be cultivated. In this episode, we'll delve into one of the most extraordinary relationships in Silicon Valley history to inspire us into what is possible through this special characteristic. By the end of this episode, you will be better able to unlock the full potential of your inquisitive nature, and you'll have one actionable tool that you can use immediately after this podcast is over. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

How do we connect with our inner voice amidst the noise of modern life? What is the relationship between inner peace and outward success? How can we harness the power of technology without becoming its servant? Today’s guest, Hitendra Wadhwa, and I explore these questions and the pursuit of success both inwardly and outwardly. By the end of this episode, you will have gained insights into the timeless quest for success, learned practical tools for your inner voice, and discovered how to turn chaos into clarity and creativity. Join us for this inspiring conversation, and let’s embark on this journey together. Learn more about Hitendra here: https://www.hitendra.com/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

What if you could design a personalized essentialist daily routine in seconds? This is part three of a multi-part series about how to use AI to make a more essentialist, effortless lifestyle. By the end of this episode, you will be able to make AI your servant rather than your master in setting up your daily routine. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever wanted to make sure that technology would be something that you mastered rather than it mastering you? This is part 2 of my discussion with Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft on how to make technology a tool, not a weapon. By the end of today's episode, you'll learn the one single strength Brad observed in all three CEOs of Microsoft during his tenure – the Bill Gates years, the Ballmer years, and now with Satya Nadella. He sees a certain strength in all of them, and it's relevant for your success in every area of your life as well as how to make sure that AI and all these new technologies can work for you, not against you. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

How are you doing at saying no gracefully? If this continues to be a struggle for you as it still is for me, then today's episode can help. By the end of today's episode, you will learn how to use AI tools including ChatGPT to make saying no more effortless and more graceful. This is part two of a multi-part series in how to use AI to make a more essentialist, effortless lifestyle personally and professionally. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever wondered whether technology was a blessing or a curse? Have you ever wanted it to be more of a tool than a weapon? In today's conversation, I have invited Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft to the conversation on AI. He is among other things, the author of a book called Tools and Weapons, in which he articulates how technology can be terrific and useful or useless and worse. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to take on a position with AI and also other technologies to make sure that you are the master and not them. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

What would you do with an extra hour in your day? Would you use it to be even busier or would you use it to create space to think? This isn’t a hypothetical question. We are all faced with this scenario now cause of the launch of a whole array of AI tools, including ChatGPT. This is part one of a multi-part series of solo episodes and interviews about how to use AI to make a more essentialist, effortless lifestyle. By the end of this episode, you’ll be able to choose wisely how to use AI in your life. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

This is part two of my conversation with Anna McKeown talking about transitions and how we can transition more gracefully. By the end of this episode, you will be able to more gracefully handle the transitions of your life. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

How does essentialism help us with life's big transitions? By the end of today's episode, you will have one clear essentialist strategy that you can use before, during, and after the great transitions, whether they're expected or unexpected. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever struggled with a major transition in your life? Could be moving house, a new job, a death in the family, serious illness, the loss of a job, unexpectedly moving to a new state or country, a relationship shift that you weren't expecting, or many, many other small but still disruptive transitions. Well, today in part one of a two-part interview, I've invited the wisest person I know, Anna McKeown, to come to the podcast to discuss the journey she has been on over the last 25 years as she has transitioned in her approach to transitions from, on the one hand, struggling with transitions to becoming quite masterful in how to handle them. By the end of this episode, you will better understand what makes transitions challenging and what you can do about it immediately to cope better with them. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Welcome to the Greg McKeown podcast. Today's episode is a replay of one of his most popular episodes, It's Not Too Late. Thanks for listening. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Welcome to the Greg McKeown podcast. Today's episode is a replay of one of his most popular episodes, Perspective, Happiness & Social Friction with Dr. Rangan Chatterjee. Thanks for listening. Learn more about Dr. Chatterjee here: https://drchatterjee.com/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Welcome to the Greg McKeown podcast. Today's episode is a replay of one of his most popular episodes, The Bottleneck to Everything You Want. Thanks for listening. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Today we are back with part two of my conversation with Tony Ulwick. By the end of today's episode, you will better be able to identify the real job to be done with the people you interact with. That will increase your influence tenfold, while significantly reducing the times that you put effort into creating a new product, or a new service for somebody else that ultimately isn't even valued. Learn more from Tony here: https://strategyn.com/tony-ulwick/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Welcome to the Greg McKeown podcast. Today's episode is a replay of one of his most popular episodes, 10X Your Results with Less Effort. Thanks for listening. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever wondered why there are so many massive flops in business? How many products and services are launched and then almost immediately forgotten? How can companies spend millions and sometimes billions of dollars to produce something that customers ultimately say is not for them? Today I've invited Tony Ulwick, one of the fathers of the Jobs-to-be-Done theory, to help us understand this phenomenon. This is part one of a two part interview, so tune in for part two next week! Learn more from Tony here: https://strategyn.com/tony-ulwick/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

It has long been thought that understanding others is the key to great relationships, but this may be false. What we know now is that helping people feel understood is the key to connection. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to better distinguish the difference and therefore shift from understanding others to helping other people feel understood, and that makes all the difference. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Today I've invited Matt Abraham's to the show. Matt is a lecturer at Stanford, he specializes in the essentials of strategic communication, and is the host of the Think Fast Talk Smart podcast. I reached out to Matt to issue a friendly challenge, by way of an invitation, to think fast and talk smart on this podcast. By the end of this episode, you will be able to make your communication more memorable. Learn more from Matt here: https://nofreakingspeaking.com/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever felt frustrated by the gap between what you feel is essential and your ability to actually execute it? Have you perhaps had that desire for a long time? Maybe it's years now, but still your life is busier and less fulfilling than you wish it was. Today I'm going to share with you a story that I think can really help you if you are struggling with this, and also a mindset and some actionable advice. By the end of today's episode, you'll be able to evaluate all of the things you've hired in your life and decide whether to fire them or not based upon whether they're actually helping you design a life that really matters. This is part 4 of a 4-part series. Click here to listen to Parts 1-3

This is part three of a four part solo series on solving the right problem in the life of business and in the business of life. It matters because nothing is more irrelevant or even dangerous as solving the wrong problem. In today's episode, I'm going to go deeper in how to implement the Jobs to Be Done framework. By the end of today's episode, you will have a simple process that you can follow, care of Tony Ulwick, for how to turn innovation from an art to a science. This is part 3 of a 4-part series. Click here to listen to Part 1 of 4 Click here to listen to Part 2 of 4

Today we have part two of my conversation with Philippa Langley. Philippa describes herself as an ordinary person, and maybe she is, but she has achieved an extraordinary mission. She found, against all possible odds, where King Richard III was buried. Nobody else believed her. Nobody in the academies took her seriously, but she had a conviction, a sense, an intuition that she knew where he would be and that's why she kept focusing on it again, and again, and again for eight years. Her story has been written in a book called The Lost King, and now a movie by the same name. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to use intuition in being able to find and solve the right problem in your life. Learn more from Philippa here: https://www.philippalangley.co.uk/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever worked to launch a product or a service only to see it go flat in the market? Have you ever developed an initiative internally at work only to see the launch fall completely flat? Have you ever put time and energy, and resources into a relationship only to see it go south? Today I will share a powerful failure story, something counterintuitive I have learned, and some actionable advice. By the end of this episode, you will have a six-word question that you can use at work and at home to make sure that you are solving the right problem. This is part 2 of a 4-part series. Click here to listen to Part 1 of 4

Have you ever felt an intuitive insight pull you towards a particular direction? Have you ever had an experience that you knew was right even though you didn't yet have evidence to support it? Well, today is part one in a two-part series with Philippa Langley. You might not know that name, but perhaps you've heard of a movie that came out recently. It's called The Lost King. It's a dramatic representation of a true story about how Philippa felt an extraordinary desire to discover where King Richard III was buried. The journey is fascinating. Learn more from Philippa here: https://www.philippalangley.co.uk/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever been so busy addressing peripheral issues but have that sinking feeling that the real core of the issue is not being addressed? This is part one of a four-part solo series on that subject, and upcoming guest episodes will also be providing more insight on the same subject. By the end of today's episode, you will understand that the seminal research was produced on the distinctive difference between problem finding and problem solving, and you'll begin your journey of improving skill in this essential area. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Today is part two of my interview with Bruce Feiler. Bruce is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestselling books. He's a deep thinker and he's interviewed thousands of people to try to understand what really leads to a higher contribution. His research shows that thinking of work as a single linear career where your job is to go higher and higher is not the way to maximize contribution. By the end of this episode, among other things, you will have what Bruce feels is the single most powerful question he has ever discovered for helping people – to find what their real essential mission and calling in life is. Learn more about Bruce here: https://www.brucefeiler.com/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever felt working with people in the workplace is harder than it needs to be? It's long been thought that it's faster and easier to just do things yourself, but this can be such a false economy. What we know now is that the right person makes everything faster, easier, and better than if you try to do it yourself. By the end of this, part four in the series of four parts about how to make work life more effortless, you will be able to select people who make getting the right things done faster and comparatively more effortless. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever felt that your life could be more than a simple career? Today I've invited Bruce Feiler to be here. He's the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers, and by the end of this episode, you'll be able to escape the suffocating idea that all there is to a career is to go higher and higher on a single linear ladder of success. This is not the way to your highest contribution and Feiler will explain how. Learn more about Bruce here: https://www.brucefeiler.com/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever wished that you could accomplish more by doing less at work? This is part three of a four part series on how to apply Effortless thinking to the sometimes exhausting world of work. By the end of this episode, you will be able to trade off some of the exhausting meetings and replace them with high yield low maintenance delegation. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Are you facing a really big decision in your life right now? Or is someone you know facing an important crossroads? How do you process that? How do you make the best possible decision? Well, this is part two of my conversation with Abby Davisson. She's the author, along with Myra Strober, of a book called Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions. It's based on the popular Stanford University course called Work and Family. In this episode, you will learn how to use the 5Cs method to be able to communicate and check in with the people who matter most, so that you can talk about the decisions that matter most. Learn more from Abby here: abbydavisson.com Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Welcome part two of a four part series on how to apply Effortless thinking to the world of work. Have you ever felt that email was harder than it needs to be? By the end of this episode, you will have practical suggestions you can immediately apply to take one of the most frustrating and exhausting elements of modern work life and make it easier. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever had a decision of consequence to make in your life? Something that really made a difference if you go left versus going right? Should I marry this person? Should I take this job? Should I move to this place? Today I have invited Abby Davisson here. She's the co-author of Money and Love: An Intelligent Roadmap for Life’s Biggest Decisions. By the end of today's episode, you will understand the 5Cs method. It's a step by step way of thinking about the decisions that really matter. Learn more from Abby here: abbydavisson.com Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Do you dread attending meetings because they seem like a waste of time and energy? Are you tired of spending your days in back-to-back meetings with little time left to focus on your actual work? If so, this episode is for you. Meetings can be a drain on our time and energy, but they don't have to be. In this episode, the first of a series of four episodes about how to apply effortless thinking to our work lives, I'll begin with something that is anything but effortless – Meetings. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

We're back here for part two of my interview with Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg. He spent years studying the problem of problems and particularly the skill of reframing problems in order to make sure that before we rush into solutions, we are actually addressing the best possible problem. By the end of this episode, you will have practical tools to utilize immediately to be able to improve your skill in this area. Learn more from Thomas here: https://wedellsblog.com/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Welcome to episode four of four about my adventures at the University of Cambridge. How important are friendships in your life? At the end of this episode, you'll be able to cultivate deeper connections with your friends by creating a safe space for open heart conversation. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

How much time, money, and energy do you waste solving the wrong problems? That's a question posed by my guest today. This is part one of a two-part interview with Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg. I became aware of his work after reading an article that he wrote in Harvard Business Review. By the end of this episode, you'll be able to reframe problems in order to reveal unexpected solutions. Learn more from Thomas here: https://wedellsblog.com/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

In my book Effortless, I asked an important question. What could happen in your life if the easy but pointless things became harder and the essential things became easier? This is episode three of four about my adventures at the University of Cambridge. At the end of this episode, you'll be able to replace one bad habit with a good one by making the bad one harder and the good one easier. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Today is part two with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen. In this episode, we go deeper into the challenges, but also the opportunities of being neurodiverse. Have you have ever struggled with traditional schooling? Have you ever felt that your mind works differently compared to the people around you? If you work with people who would fit that description or live with people who seem to be somehow on the spectrum, this episode can be exceptionally valuable. By the end of this episode, you will discover how these differences, even though they may have kept you back until this point, can be the exact key you need to become unstoppable. Autism Spectrum Quotient: https://www.autismresearchcentre.com/tests/autism-spectrum-quotient-aq-adult/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever felt like you were too busy living to think about life? By the end of this episode, you will be able to create space for continually deep and uninterrupted concentration. This is number two of four solo episodes about my experience at the University of Cambridge. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever felt that you were neurodiverse in some way? Did you ever struggle with the traditional school system? Did you or someone you know take away from school the worst of all possible learnings, that you or they were unintelligent? Well, today I have invited Professor Simon Barron-Cohen, the author of The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention, to be on the show. This is part one of two interviews in which Simon takes from his 40 years of research at the University of Cambridge in order to help people who are neurodiverse, particularly people on the autistic spectrum, to be able to operate at their very best, and for the rest of us to be able to figure out how to work with them so that we can draw the best from them. By the end of this interview, you will better understand how to utilize your neurodiversity and the people that you live and work with. Learn more about Sir Barron-Cohen here: https://www.autismresearchcentre.com/staff/simon-baron-cohen/ Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

I've become aware recently that I haven't really shared very much with you about my experience and adventure here at the University of Cambridge, and for the next four solo episodes I'm going to try and put that right. Have you ever found yourself in a place that made it easier for you to detect your mission in life? By the end of this episode, you will feel inspired, I hope, to seek out places that increase the probability of you detecting, understanding and hearing that mission that is so often hidden below the surface. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever felt you had more life experience and talent than your job requires or even allows you to use? Today I've invited Soren Kaplan to the show to talk about how you can better tap into that experience yourself, and also in the people around you. I've long believed that what we know about other people is less valuable than what we don't know. That there's an enormous amount of potential under the surface. What's not on someone's resume, what's not in their current job title, and our ability to mine that experience in ourselves and in other people is, Kaplan believes, a predictor of our success. First we had IQ, then we had emotional intelligence, or EQ. This is XQ, Experiential Intelligence. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com Learn more about Soren here: https://www.sorenkaplan.com/bio/

How are you doing at applying essentialism to your leadership responsibilities? By the end of this episode, you will have specific things you can do right now to be more attentive, more efficient, and more essentialist in your leadership. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

What is happening to the psychological safety of people at work? Is it going up? Is it going down? What is the primary threat to it today, and is it the same as what we had 20 years ago? Well, to discuss this and other questions I've invited back Dr. Amy Edmondson. She's a celebrated Harvard professor, one of the best listeners that I have ever interviewed. She's present, she's real, and by the end of this episode, you are going to be more empowered to be able to create psychological safety in a world that sometimes seems to be attacking it. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Welcome to the Greg McKeown podcast. Greg is in Monk Mode this week. Today's episode is a replay of one of his most popular episodes, Eliminate the Nonessentials. Thanks for listening. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Do you feel psychologically safer at work now than you did several years ago? It's an interesting question, and today I've invited perhaps the preeminent expert in the world on the subject of psychological safety to discuss that and other things with us. This is Dr. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard, and the person most responsible for making the term psychological safety ubiquitous in the world after she published a paper more than 20 years ago focused on this subject. I knew it was going to be a good conversation because Amy is as capable as they come, and the subject is so timely. But even with that, the conversation went further and deeper, more real, more raw than I expected it would. By the end of this episode, you will have new insight as to what psychological safety actually is and what it isn't, and where the threats are coming from to that psychological safety in today's workplace. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Have you ever felt that your ability to pay attention was in free fall? If you have, you are not alone. By the end of today's episode, you will have a better understanding of why this is happening and one specific tool that you can use to do something about it over the next two weeks. I'm going to share an insightful story from a book I've been reading, 'Stolen Focus' by Johann Hari, and also some actionable advice, which I'll invite you to participate in alongside me. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com

Do you ever feel like there's something in the modern world that fries your brain, that leaves you in red brain, where you're just so pulled in a million directions all the time that it's hard to actually give attention to what's essential? Well, in part two of my conversation with Dr. Gloria Mark, we get into some specific questions you can ask yourself to be able to assess how you are doing and what you can do to increase, and then protect, your peak attention hours. Join my weekly newsletter at GregMcKeown.com/1mw Learn more about my books and courses at GregMcKeown.com