What You Will Learn

The word 'Machiavellian' gets bandied around all the time. Frank Underwood from House of Cards, Richard Hatch from Survivor, Lord Baelish in Game of Thrones or Scar from The Lion King, each were able to manipulate in different ways to ultimately get what they want. For them, effectiveness was more important than being perceived as "nice". The Prince was written in 1532 by Niccolo Machiavelli. To Machiavelli, the greatest evil was stagnation and complacency. The agents of healthy change were what he called "new princes". It has become one of the most influential instruction manual for leaders throughout history. Decades after Machiavelli's death, it spread far and wide. Over the centuries, millions have used it for advice on power. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This book is written to suggest techniques and to give you examples which demonstrate that you do not need to be defeated by anything, that you can have peace of mind, improved health, and never-ceasing flow of energy. In short, that your life can be full of joy and satisfaction.THE PROBLEM: Too many people are defeated by the everyday problems of life. They go struggling, perhaps even whining, through their days with a sense of dull resentment at what they consider the 'bad breaks' life has given them. In a sense there may be such things as 'the breaks' in life, but there is also a spirit and method by which we can control and even determine those breaks. It is a pity that people should let themselves be defeated by the problems, cares, and difficulties of human existence, and it is also quite unnecessary SOLUTION: By learning to cast the obstacles from your mind, by refusing to become mentally subservient to them, and by channelling spiritual power through your thoughts, you can rise above obstacles which ordinarily might defeat you. William James, often called the Father of Psychology, said: "the greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of mind"... “As you think, so shall you be”.In three words: BELIEVE AND SUCCEED. The secret of a better and more successful life is to cast out those old dead unhealthy thoughts. Substitute for them new vital dynamic thoughts. You can depend upon it - an inflow of new thoughts will remake you and your life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Jobs is the authorized self-titled biography of Steve Jobs. The book was written at the request of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, a former executive at CNN and TIME who has written best-selling biographies of Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein.The saga of Steve Jobs in Silicon Valley is the creation myth at large. Launching a startup in the parents garage and building it into one of the world's most valuable companies. He didn't invent everything outright, but he was a master at putting together ideas, art and technologies in ways that invented the future. Some leaders push innovations by being good at big picture, others by mastering details. Jobs did both relentlessly. He launched a series of products over 3 decades that transformed whole industries: - Apple 2 which took Wozniak's board and turned it into the first personal computer - Macintosh popularized graphical user interfaces - Toy Story and other Pixar blockbusters, opened up the miracle of digital imagination - Apple stores, reinvented the role of a store in defining a brand - iPod changed the way we consume music - iTunes saved the music industry - iPhone, which turned mobiles into music, photo, video, email and web - App Store, spawned a new content creation industry - iPad, launched tablet computing - iCloud, demoted computer from its central role in managing our content and let all of our devices sync seamlessly - And Apple itself, which became the most valuable company in the world Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up - by Marie KondoThis book has the potential to change your life. The act of tidying is a series of simple actions in which objects are moved from one place to another. It involves putting things where they belong, something so simple that even a six year old should be able to do it. Yet most people can’t. A short time after tidying their household descends into a disorganised mess.When you follow the advice of this book and finish putting your house in order, your whole world will brighten and never again will you need to revert to clutter. This is what Marie Kondo calls ‘the magic of tidying’. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks for listening to Season 4 of What You Will Learn!In this episode, we'll recap our favourite lessons from our favourite books of Season 4. We go through our 'honourable mentions', then each of our respective Top 10s. The was a seriously strong season: we re-did some of our favourites in Mindset and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, plus some new favourites in Range, Mastery and The Slight Edge.Listen in to hear how we ranked them (especially where we agreed and disagreed!). Check out the post here with the short written summary of each of our favourite nuggets: https://whatyouwilllearn.com/best-of-season-4/  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're awful at making decisions. A survey found that 44% of lawyers don't recommend that students become lawyers. 83% of mergers/acquisitions fail to add any real value to the company. Hundreds of thousands of tattoos are removed each year. Young people start relationships that are bad for them, middle-aged people let work interfere with their personal lives, elderly have regrets about not smelling the roses more when they were younger.We need a better process for making the big decisions. Our generic process is usually: encounter a choice, analyse our options, make a choice, then live with it.But at each stage of the process, there is a villain: narrow frame, confirmation bias, short-term emotion, overconfidence. In order to overcome these villains, we need to "WRAP" our decisions: Widen our options, Reality-test our assumptions, Attain distance before deciding, Prepare to be wrong. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jared was studying bird watching in New Guinea when he came across a local politician Yali; who asked the question he asked was "why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people have little cargo of our own?" It was a simple question and this book is the answer. Diamond shows us how “History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments, not because of biological differences among peoples themselves”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adam Ashton interviewed Derek Sivers, the author of the book that was our FIRST EVER episode of the What You Will Learn podcast, 'Anything You Want'. We spoke about answering questions then questioning the answers, using creative thinking strategies to find an answer that is the opposite but also true, then we spent a long time nerding out on books. What makes a 'good' book? Is there a difference between a book you like and a book you would recommend? How do you pick what book to read next? What are some of your favourite books?Derek has three new books coming out soon. Keep an eye out for 'How To Live'.Check out all of Derek's books notes and book ratings at: https://sivers.org/bookIf you want to contact Derek, you can find that on his website too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A Whack on the Side of the Head - by Roger van Oech"How You Can Be More Creative" Creative thinking is absolute vital to success. The author even says that creative thinking is just like sex for the mind (not sure what his sex life is like, but each to his own...). But we all have a bunch of 'mental locks' that trap us in our current ways of thinking. As much as we try, we can't break free from these mental locks. Some times we just need a 'whack' to snap us out of it. Mental Lock = "I need to find the right answer"Whack = There's always a SECOND 'right answer', push yourself beyond the first thing that comes to mind and think of another answer Mental Lock = "Play is frivolous, we need to be practical"Whack = Use your imagination! Some times you need to think practically, but sometimes you need to give yourself permission but play and use imagination to come up with new, creative ideas Mental Lock = "That's not my area, coming up with new ideas is for those creative types"Whack = EVERYONE should be bringing new ideas together. Rather than working in silos, bring together different departments and different fields. This 'cross-fertilisation' means you can new approaches to old problems.  Mental Lock = "Making mistakes is bad"Whack = 'Success' isn't always good (it can trap you into a certain way of thinking) and 'failure' isn't always bad (it means what you're doing now isn't working, but that doesn't mean that you'll never find a solution) Mental Lock = "I'm just not creative"Whack = EVERYONE is creative. If you ever saw a cardboard box and pretended it was a space ship or a race car, you're creative. You've just told yourself that you're not. Give yourself a licence to be creative. We need your ideas! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Malcolm Turnbull was the 29th Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 2015 to 2018. His career also spanned through Journalism, Law and Investment Banking.In this episode we spoke to Malcolm about books, the Murdoch Media influence and the world post-corona. Watch the video version here: https://youtu.be/kwiqyMizH0E  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Malcolm Turnbull was the 29th Prime Minister of Australia, in office from 2015 to 2018. His brand new autobiography takes us on a journey through his early career, then his beginning in politics, then through his achievements (and struggles) whilst Prime Minister.In this episode, we look at how Turnbull was able to achieve everything he achieved. From his early success in journalism, to jumping across to becoming a barrister, fighting in (and winning) some of Australia's biggest legal cases, to investment banking, doing billion-dollar deals and amassing a fortune for his client (and himself), then finally rising the ranks in politics. We look to other books we've read like Range, The Third Door and The 48 Laws of Power. Listen to us being interviewed on Owen Fitzpatrick's "Changing Minds" podcast: https://changingmindspodcast.com/season-2-interview-11-adam-adam/ OR https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/season-2-interview-11-interview-adam-ashton-adam-jones/id1441538919?i=1000473874458  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is the third and final instalment of Ryan Holiday's modern stoicism trilogy. We've previously review The Obstacle Is The Way and Ego Is The Enemy, now it's time for Stillness Is The Key.With all of the chaos going on in the world around us, it's hard for us to find the time and mental focus we need to get things done. We're always reachable, the news constantly has something new we need to read, there's always another podcast to listen to, our to-do list keeps getting longer and longer. In order to do more and achieve me, we must cultivate Stillness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Mastering the Market Cycle, by Howard Marks will help you understand when is the optimal time to invest given a market's conditions.Between 2010 - 2020 there has been an unprecedented growth in the world's stock market. But in March 2020 it dropped suddenly and significantly. The question is: when is the time to be defensive or aggressive, when buying shares in the market, start your new business or borrow money to buy property? When things are going well and everyone is optimistic, or when things are poor and everyone is pessimistic?Warren Buffet said "the less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs" and "be fearful when everyone is greedy, and greedy when everyone is fearful."In this episode we look at:The economics of the cycleGovernments and central banksCredit and debt in the world economyReal EstateInvestor Psychology  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The alarm goes off at 6am. Without conscious thought your hand shoots out and hits snooze... A 10 minute reprieve. You tentatively slip a foot out from under the covers. You open one eye. Still dark out.Now you face a choice: You could sit up, switch on the light and start grinding your brain into gear, prod your groggy grey matter to search out three things you're grateful for so you can write them down. You could then fire up the machinery of tired legs, hips, and back to crane yourself out of bed and go do the 20 sit-ups you promised you'd do every day and then read 10 pages of a book.When you said that, did you even mean Saturdays? Today is Saturday? You yawn. Or you could slip down under the sheets and catch some more Z's. No, that's lazy. Compromise, flip on the news. Catch up on that unfolding juicy political scandal, see what's happening with the manhunt for the murderer of the week. You reach for the remote.And you just set the direction your life will take.The single most important thing about The Slight Edge is this: it's already working, right now, either for you or against you. So don't wait. Our hope that you will put in place something. Perhaps a financial plan for yourself so that you are constantly building equity. Some simple, daily, weekly or monthly discipline that over time will buy you your financial freedom.Easy to do? Surprisingly so... Easy not to do? Tragically so.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On the slope of Long's Peak in Colorado lies the ruin of a gigantic tree. Naturalists tell us that it stood for 400 years. During the course of its long life it was struck by lightning fourteen times, hit by avalanches, bushfires and storms of four centuries. It survived them all.In the end, however, an army of beetles attacked at the tree and levelled it to the ground. The insects ate their way through the bark and gradually destroyed the inner strength of the tree by their tiny but incessant attacks.Like this magnificent tree, it isn't the big events that necessarily take us down. It is usually the small nagging little worries that have the ability to eat us from the inside out. In this episode we talk about how to stop these nagging little worries, change our perceptions about the world and make the most of bad situations. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We spoke with David Epstein, author of 'Range' and 'The Sports Gene'. Range is AA's favourite book of 2020 so far, and we only got to scratch the surface in our book summary episode. In this interview with the author, we speak about: how you should focus on skill development rather than comparing yourself to others around you, not settling for a career you're not in love with because you feel like you're in a rush to achieve things quickly, and stories about how low-level engineers became world famous inventors and how creators with a broad range of practical experiences were able to produce international blockbusters. See more from David Epstein on his website: https://davidepstein.com/ Check out our favourite bits of the book 'Range' here: https://whatyouwilllearn.com/book/range/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Range - by David Epstein'How Generalists Triumph In A Specialised World' There are two paths to success. One is 'specialisation': committing to a field early, getting a head start on your peers, rigorous deliberate practice, refining a narrow focus on specific skills. This approach is popularised in many books and many biographies. But the other approach is 'generalisation'. This means going wide not deep, going through an early 'sampling period' where you test a lot of different potential paths forward, then recognising that switching careers later in life isn't career suicide but you can actually combine different ideas from different fields to get an advantage. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The pressure around the world has been turned up. In the short term (finite game) you can't deny the pain that many are going through. But looking at it through a longer-term perspective (infinite game) it is a hurdle that could offer opportunities for reinvention. "It is just reality that many businesses will fail, they will go bankrupt... The ones who will survive are the ones that don't try and double down on their old business models, but attempt to reinvent their business models." We chat with Simon Sinek (author of Start With Why and The Infinite Game) about how individuals, businesses and leaders can get through the health and financial implications of COVID-19. Full transcript of the interview can be found here: https://whatyouwilllearn.com/simon-sinek/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Infinite Game - by Simon SinekThere are two types of games: finite and infinite. Finite games have clearly defined rules and boundaries, and all players know what the objectives are and what they need to do to win. Infinite games have no clear rules and there is no winning or losing - the only objective is to keep playing. Business is an infinite game, but too many companies are playing with a finite mindset.In this episode, we'll talk about the five essential practices for cultivating an infinite mindset. These lessons are crucial to the times we're living through right now. Stay tuned for a special interview coming this week ;)  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a book that everyone needs to read. The habits aren’t specific to an industry or a point in time, these are pervasive habits that you should constantly be practicing and applying. When we first read this book it shot straight to our #1 and it stayed there for years – it was very hard to knock off top spot.The seven habits are grouped: the first three habits for them 'private victory' (the things that relate to you as an individual – personal effectiveness), the next three are the 'public victory' (how you interact with others and the world – interpersonal effectiveness), and the final is an overarching call to be constantly learning, growing and improving.  Private Victory:Habit 1 - Be ProactiveHabit 2 - Begin with the End in MindHabit 3 - Put First Things First Public Victory:Habit 4 - Think Win/WinHabit 5 - Seek First to Understand, Then to be UnderstoodHabit 6 - Synergise Balanced Self-Renewal:Habit 7 - Sharpen The Saw Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

This is Part 3 of our 3-part series on 'Mastery' by Robert Greene. Now that we've discovered our calling in part 1, then went through an apprenticeship in part 2, it's time to bring in creativity to make something new and original and masterful. Using historical examples, Greene gives us some strategies for developing something unique. If you're just discovering this episode, you might want to check out the previous two episodes first to lay the foundations:Part 1 = Discover Your CallingPart 2 = The ApprenticeshipPart 3 = Unleashing Creativity Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

All of us are born with an essentially similar brain, with more or less the same configuration and potential for mastery. Why is it then that in history only a limited number of people seem to truly excel and realize this potential power?In today's episode we cover part 2 of our 3-part series, The Apprenticeship phase. We will learn about the 3 Modes of the Apprenticeship Phase, strategies for completing the ideal apprenticeship, and the Mentor dynamic. Part 1 = Discover Your Calling (previous episode)Part 2 = The Apprenticeship (this episode)Part 3 = Unleashing Creativity (next episode) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Robert Greene has done it again with Mastery. All of us are born with an essentially similar brain, with more or less the same configuration and potential for mastery. Why is it then that in history only a limited number of people seem to truly excel and realise this potential power?We are a one time phenomenon in the universe - our exact genetic makeup has never occurred before nor will it ever be repeated. At your birth a seed is planted, that is your uniqueness. This is Part 1 of our 3-part series, in this episode you'll learn about how to develop your uniqueness and find Your Life's Task. Part 1 = Discover Your CallingPart 2 = The ApprenticeshipPart 3 = Unleashing Creativity Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As we come to the end of another year of the podcast, we look back on our favourite books we've read this season (so far). As we do at the end of every year then again at the end of every season, we each look back and rank all of the books we read, compile our respective 'Top 10' lists, then share the biggest lessons we took from each book. This is a great way to get a taste of all of the books and decide which ones you want to dive into further and listen to the full episode.  Adam Ashton's favourites:10. Turning Pro - by Steven Pressfield9. Getting Past No - by William Ury8. Eat That Frog! - by Brian Tracy7. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - by Scott Adams6. Oh, The Places You'll Go! - by Dr Seuss5. Grit - by Angela Duckworth4. Ego Is The Enemy - by Ryan Holiday3. Thinking, Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman2. Unscripted - by MJ DeMarco1. Meditations - by Marcus Aurelius Adam Jones's favourites: 10. Zero to One - by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters9. Ego Is The Enemy - by Ryan Holiday8. Quiet - by Susan Cain7. Getting Past No - by William Ury6. Unscripted - by MJ DeMarco5. Oh, The Places You'll Go! - by Dr Seuss4. Homo Deus - by Yuval Noah Harari3. Collapse - by Jared Diamond2. Thinking, Fast and Slow - by Daniel Kahneman1. Antifragile - by Nassim Taleb Read the full blog post here: https://whatyouwilllearn.com/best-books-we-read-in-2019/ Grab our free 'Top 50 best books of all time' document: https://whatyouwilllearn.com/top50/Send us an email: [email protected]  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The body is often likened to a machine. But it is much more than that, it works 24 hours a day for decades without for most part, needing regular servicing or the installation of spare parts. It runs on water and a few other organic compounds, is soft and rather lovely, reproduces itself with enthusiasm, feels affection and appreciates the sunset How many machines behave like that? In this episode we'll take you through the best bits of Bill Bryson -The Body, we'll look at the microbial organ, food, exercise medicine and death. Enjoy! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The book breaks down effective management through the tale of the 'One Minute Manager' through 3 simple secrets. The First Secret - One Minute Goals Most organisations when you ask people what they do and then ask their boss, normally you get two different lists. Once the manager has told you what needs to be done, or you have agreed what needs to be done, each goal is recorded on no more than a single page. The OMM then feels that a goal and its performance standard should take max 250 words. It should be able to be read in a minute. The Second Secret - One Minute Praisings Hardly anyone sees the One Minute Manager, except at the start. He knows it would be a lot easier for employees to do well if you get crystal clear feedback from him on how you are doing. After the goals are set, the OMM is watching the employee like a hawk. He always keeping a close eye and taking notes. At first you think it is because you think he doesn't trust you, that is until I found out from some of the other people who report to him what he was really doing. He was actually trying to catch me doing something right. The Third Secret - The One Minute Reprimands For those who have been there a while, they typically only see the OMM when they do something wrong. If you make a mistake, that's when you get the one minute reprimand. He looks you straight in the eye, and tells you precisely what you did wrong. Then he shares how he feels - angry, annoyed, frustrated or whatever he is feeling.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ego Is The Enemy - by Ryan Holiday'The fight to master our greatest opponent'All of us, at every stage of life, are the victims of our own ego. Our ego leads us to strive too far, expect too much, assume that we're deserving - all before we've even done the work. If we achieve success our ego makes us do things that lead us to failure, if we fail our ego crushes our attempts to get up and try again."It's always nice to be made to feel special or empowered or inspired. But that's not the aim of this book". Instead, Holiday has tried to arrange the passages of the book so that you may end in the same place he did when he was writing it: you think LESS of yourself. He hopes you will be less invested in the story you tell yourself about your own specialness, and as a result, you will be liberated to ACCOMPLISH the world-changing work you've set out to achieve. The aim of the book is simple: to help you suppress ego early before bad habits take hold, to replace the temptations of ego with humility and discipline, when we experience success, and cultivate strength when you go through failure. Hopefully the book will help us be humble in our aspirations, gracious in our success, and resilient in our failure. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our third annual pilgrimage to Sydney took us right back to Dr Karl's office. His brand new book, Dr Karl's Random Road Trip Through Science, features an Augmented Reality app with Dr Karl popping out of the book to share his wealth of wisdom. (If you've been listening to the show for a few years, this is certainly 'breaking the script' and is a definite 'purple cow'). We talk about a bunch of random scientific things Karl learnt this year, as well an injecting a nice amount of conspiracy theory too.  Check out more Dr Karl and grab his free AR app: https://drkarl.com/ Listen to our previous two episodes with Dr Karl: https://whatyouwilllearn.com/doctorkarl/ and https://whatyouwilllearn.com/drkarl-round2/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eat That Frog! - by Brian Tracy'21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time'There is never enough time to do everything you have to do. You are literally swamped with work and personal responsibilities, endless emails, social media, projects, side projects, stacks of newspapers to read, a pile of books you want to get to 'some day' as soon as you get caught up on everything else. But the fact is that you are NEVER going to get caught up. You will never get 'on top' of your tasks. You will never get far enough ahead to be able to get to all those emails, books, newspapers, and leisure time activities that you dream of.Forget about trying to solve your time management problems by being more productive. No matter how many personal productivity techniques you master, there will always be more to do than you can ever accomplishing the time you have available to you, no matter how much it is.You can get control of your life only by changing the way you think, work, and deal with the never-ending river of responsibilities that flow over you each day. You can get control of your tasks and actives only to the degree that you can STOP doing some things and START spending more time on the few activities that can really make a difference in your life.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Revealed how painfully burdened they feel by a sense of not being good enough. We don't have to wait until we are on our deathbed to realize what a waste of our precious lives it is to carry the belief that something is wrong with us. Yet because our habits of feeling so insufficient are so strong, awakening from the trance involves not only inner resolve, but also an active training of the heart and mind. Through Buddhist awareness and practices, we free ourselves from the suffering of trance by learning to recognize what is true in the present moment, embracing whatever we see with an open heart. This is radical acceptance. It reverses our habit of living at war with experiences that are unfamiliar, frightening or intense. It is the necessary antidote to years of neglecting ourselves, years of judging and treating ourselves harshly, years of rejecting this moment's experience. It is the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is. Download our top 50 best book of all time: www.whatyouwilllearn.com/top50   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After first speaking with Neil Pasricha 12 months ago about his book The Happiness Equation, he's back to chat about his brand new book You Are Awesome. It's all about building resilience, shifting from fragile to antifragile, and thickening up your skin a little. Check out everything Neil is doing at his site: https://www.neil.blog/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Grit - by Angela Duckworth'Why passion and resilience are the keys to success' Angela Duckworth studied successful people and found that the mega-successful weren't the smartest, the fittest or the most talented, but the ones who had the most grit. Grit, this combination of passion and perseverance, turned out to be the strongest indicator and predicator of eventual success.The good news? Even if you score pretty poorly on the Grit Assessment (like we both did), you can grow your Grit. Through interest, purpose, practice and hope, you can actually improve your grit score and learn to achieve more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lurking behind the mystery of ancient ruins is the mystery with the nagging thought: might such a fate eventually befall our own wealthy society? Will tourists someday stare mystified at the New York skyscrapers, much as we stare at the jungle overgrown ruins of Maya cities? Perhaps we can still learn from the past, but only if we think carefully about its lessons. The book has a 5 point framework of possible contributing collapse to societies: 1 - Environmental damageCould be exceptional imprudence of the people and exceptional fragility in aspects of the environment, or both. 2 - Climate changeToday we refer to human induced. But in the past it was natural climate change, including the advance and retreat of continental ice sheets during ice ages from about 1400-1800 AD, or the global cooling from the enormous volcanic eruption of Indonesia's Mt Tambora on 1815 3 - Hostile neighboursRelationships might be intermittently or chronically hostile. A society may be able to hold off its enemies as long as it is strong, only to succumb in a moment of weakness. The proximate cause is the conquest, but the ultimate cause that leads to the collapse is the temporary weakening 4 - Decreasing support by friendly neighboursEither depend on imports of essential trade goods . If your partner comes weak for any reason, then they no longer can supply the essential goods 5 - The response of the societyDifferent societies respond differently to similar problems. Deforestation for example has arose in many cultures - some went down, some developed sustainable management practices In this episode we'll explore the collapse of Easter Island, the Great Maya Civilisation and The Vikings, and the risk of collapse of modern-day Australia and China through the 5 point framework. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

MJ DeMarco writes some of the most eye-opening books we've read - The Millionaire Fastlane and Unscripted. If you haven't realised it yet, the world is ran by numerous scripts that aren't designed for you to live your best life. In this episode, we run the analogy of the red pill deep: breaking down the BS and biases we all hold, the importance of your F-This Event, and how you could use a job to propel you onto the Fastlane.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Unscripted - by MJ DeMarco'Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship' Has life regressed into paying bills and living for a weekend?You weren't born to slave 9 - 5, Monday through Friday, paying the bills and then die. When life's final moment arrives, what will your spirit sing? Regret and remorse? Or peace and happiness?UNSCRIPTED: is your pen to rewrite a future that's already been written, don't wait for life's twilight to dream about time machines, it exists in the moment. The opportunity to resurrect your dreams and change history awaits. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daily life is full of negotiations that can drive you crazy.Over breakfast you get into an argument with your spouse about buying a new car, your spouse thinks it's time but you say "we can't afford that right now"You arrive at work for a meeting with your boss, you present her with a carefully prepared proposal for a new project, but she interrupts within the first minute and says "we already tried that and it didn't work.During lunch you try to return a defective toaster you bought last week, but the store person refuses to refund or exchange the toaster because you don't have the receipt and that's "Store Policy"This book will show you how to "get past no" via a 5 step process:Step 1: Don't React (Go to the Balcony) Step 2: Disarm Them (step to their side)Step 3: Change the Game (don't reject... reframe)Step 4: Build he Golden Bridge (make it easy to say yes)Step 5: Don't Escalate - Use Power to Educate (make it hard to say no) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big - by Scott Adams Scott Adams is the creator of the 'Dilbert' cartoon series. Before this world-wide phenomenon though, Adams is happy to admit the looong list of things he tried (and failed at) before eventually achieving success. Each failed attempt gave him a lesson, something he could take with him and apply to the next thing he tried. Even as Dilbert was growing in success, he still worked full time for 10 years, drawing Dilbert at 5am before work.This book provides some important ideas and approaches for achieving (eventual) success. In this episode, we'll talk about: the downside of passion, goals VS systems, managing your attitude and energy, prioritising and making decisions, and 'skill stacking'.    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Everything is F*cked - by Mark Manson'A book about hope'  In the infinite expanse of space/time, the universe does not care whether your mother's hip replacement goes well, or your kids attend college, or your boss thinks you make a great spreadsheetYou care, and you desperately convince yourself that because you care, it all must have some great cosmic meaning behind it. You care because deep down, you need to feel that sense of importance in order to avoid the uncomfortable truth, to avoid the incomprehensibility of your existence, to avoid being crushed by the weight of your own material insignificance, and you like everyone - project an imagined sense of importance onto the world around you because it gives you hope.You might say: "I believe we're all here for a reason, and nothing is a coincidence, and everyone matters because all our actions affect SOMEBODY, and even if we can help one person, then it was all worth it"This is hope. That's a story made up in your mind that your brain spins to convince you that it's worth waking up in the morning. SOMETHING needs to matter because without something mattering, then there's no reason to go on living.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meditations - by Marcus Aurelius Originally written as a diary almost 2000 years ago, the struggles people faced then are almost identical to the ones we are facing today. This is one of the core books on stoic philosophy.We recap some of the vital passages of the book and pull out the key themes: differentiating between the things you can control and the things you can't, responsibility and taking ownership, being indifferent toward things like death and change, and living in the present instead of the past or the future.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Talking to Strangers - by Malcolm Gladwell'What we should know about the people we don't know' We think we can understand people. We think that by meeting someone, shaking their hand, looking into their eyes, we can get a grasp on who they are, how they feel, and what their motives or intentions are. We think that a little bit of personal knowledge gives us a big insight into their character - a job interviews shows us if they'll be a good employee, a first date can indicate the likelihood of compatibility.We're wrong. Strangers are complex. In Malcolm Gladwell's brand new book, he highlights just a few of the things that make strangers particularly hard to understand: Truth Default Theory, Transparency, Coupling. Check out our website, where we both rate every book out of 10: www.whatyouwilllearn.com  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.