More To Learn

It's not uncommon to find someone who has physical command of themselves, Discipline of their Body. Nor is there a shortage of brilliant people who have brought their Mind under control. What is extraordinarily rare is someone who not only combines these two disciplines, but also manages to do so 'in the arena' - in public life, as a contributor to society.  With stories from the likes of Queen Elizabeth II, Martin Luther King Jr, and Angela Merkel, this episode (based on Ryan Holiday's book Discipline Is Destiny) shows us what's possible.

Following on from the previous episode about discpline over our physical vessel, this episode is about discipline over our temperament.  Based on Ryan Holiday's book Discipline Is Destiny, we'll hear stories from the likes of Beethoven and Tom Brady to learn how we can improve our own attitudes.

When we're talking about discipline, the first and most obvious place to start is discipline over ourselves, over our exterior: discipline of the body.  In this episode, based on Ryan Holiday's book Discipline Is Destiny, we'll hear stories from basballer Lou Gehrig, inventor Thomas Edison, basketball coach John Wooden, and author Joyce Carol Oates, to learn some lessons that we can apply to our own lives.

Over the next three days, we'll be learning from the book Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday.  Following on from his book Courage Is Calling (episode #xxx of the What You Will Learn podcast if you want to hear the best bits of that book), this is the second book in his four-part series on the cardinal virtues: Courage, Temperance, Justice & Wisdom.  Over the next three days, you're going to hear storties of discipline from basballer Lou Gherig, inventor Thomas Edison, author Joyce Carol Oates, composer and musician Ludwig van Beethoven, footballer Tom Brady, politcal figures like Queen Elizabeth II, Martin Luther King Jr, Angela Merkel, and more. We're going to dive into discipline over three domains: the body, the mind, and the soul.  

Before we power ahead into the new year, let's take some time to look back at the year that was. As has been an annual tradition since 2016, I'm looking back at my top 10 favourite books I read in 2023. 

I had the pleasure of speaking with Oliver Burkeman, who is quickly becoming one of my favourite authors. His books HELP!, The Antidote and Four Tousand Weeks have all been winners and I can't wait for what he dishes up next.  In this episode we speak about happiness, making effect change, the power of identity, motivational seminars, writing, and all things self-help books.  You can find more about Oliver and his work here: https://www.oliverburkeman.com/ 

It's one of the most pervasive cognitive errors in our human psychology. When we assess others, we overemphasise personality-based explanations and undervalue situational ones. If someone is late to a meeting, we assume it's because they're a lazy person, not because they were stuck in traffic. And vice versa - when we assess our own behaviour, we tend to discount the negatives based on circumstances outside of our control. When WE are late to a meeting, we know it's because our train was cancelled, not because we're an intentionally rude or disrespectful person. Looking at luck versus skill, when thigns go wrong for us it's because we were unlucky and when things go right it's because we worked hard.  You can see this in all areas of life, and in this episode I'll share a few more examples of where the Fundamental Attribution Error can rear its ugly head.

You might've heard of Parkinson's Law, how tasks expand to fill the time alloted to them. Well this is Parkinson's on steroids. Hofstadter's Law says that: any task you're planning to complete will always take longer than expected, even when Hofstadter's Law is taken into account. It's a viscious cycle that feeds on itself - even when you expect a task to take longer than you expected, it exceeds your expectations and takes even longer still!

Part 1 of a three-part mini series based on the book HELP! by Oliver Burkeman. This episode is inspired by the article titled 'How To Please None Of The People None Of The Time' that originally featured as a column in The Guardian.  In this episode, you'll learn how trying to please people is possible the worst way to make a decision, whether with family and friends or in the work and business setting.

In preparation for my interview with Oliver Burkeman, I revisited his three books: Four Thousand Weeks, HELP!, and The Antidote. This was originally Episode #400 of the What You Will Learn podcast (published in November 2022) about the book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management For Mortals, which was in my top 3 books I read in 2022! I loved the contrarian views of time management and a new way to think about productivity (counterintuitively managing your time better by resisting the urge to manage your time). Burkeman went deep on productivity and came out the other side with some great ideas we can all apply to our own lives. 

After first interviewing Dan Ariely in November 2017, he's back for Round 2! This time, we speak about his brand new book, Misbelief.  Buy Misbelief: https://misbeliefbook.com/  Dan's website: https://danariely.com/ 

Dan Ariely's 2008 book 'Predictably Irrational' highlighted "the hidden forces that shape our decisions".  Rather than the standard economic theory that looks at how we think people SHOULD behave, behavioural economics looks at how people ACTUALLY behave. Ariely found that rather being in the driver's seat (as we like to think), we're really just pawns in a game whose forces we don't understand and can't control.  This episode goes deep on one of those forces: the power of RELATIVITY.

In preparation for my interview with Dan Ariely about his new book, Misbelief, I revisited a bunch of his previous books as well.  The Upside of Irrationality takes some of Ariely's research and findings into human behaviour and applies them to the world of work and motivation. This was originally Episode #338 of the What You Will Learn podcast (published in September 2021) but a bit of background into some of Dan's work will give some great context for the upcoming interview episode.

Today I'm chatting with Owen Fitzpatrick. Owen is the author of 8 or 9 great books (with more on the way), he's the host of the Changing Minds podcast, and he delivered my favourite TED Talk of all time.  On this episode, we chat about Owen's compulsion for inputting new information, how he went deep into some personal development sub-cultures, and how he picks what to read next.    Owen's website: https://owenfitzpatrick.com/  Changing Minds podcast: https://changingmindspodcast.com/start-here/  Owen's legendary TED Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBwQZv3_OXE 

A quick wrap up of the month of September: Podcast updates (including stats) Emails and Voice Memos  What I've been reading What's coming up next

I met up with my old buddy Adam Jones (former co-host of the What You Will Learn podcast) to discuss our favourite short books. Some of these books are quick and easy reads, some are small in stature but hefty in nature, really packing a punch. I guess the old adage holds true: it's not the size that counts, but how you use it.  This was quite an unstructured chat, rattling off books we liked (or didn't like) that were 150 pages or less. If any of these books tickle your fancy, check out the full episode we did on the WYWL podcast to go a little bit deeper on a specific book: https://whatyouwilllearn.com/ 

Perhaps my new favourite framework for marketing and advertising - understanding where you customer currently is (in terms of their awareness of your product or service) and using that to inform your headlines and copywriting. You know the end point you want to get them to (buying from you), you'll now know where they currently are, so the job of your ad is to move them along the path from where they are to where you want them to be.  In this episode, I run through the 5 States of Awareness, as outlined in Eugene Schwartz's famous book, Breakthrough Advertising:  Completely Aware Product Aware Solution Aware Problem Aware Unaware

Breakthrough Adveritising was written by Eugene Schwartz in the 1960s. Recently, over the last decade or so, it's had a real resurgence and developed a bit of an underground cult following. And for good reason!  While this book was originally written specifically about copywriting for newspaper ads, I see some of the underlying philosophies as one of the best lenses through which to view modern adveritsing and marketing in general.  I had to break this book into two episodes - this first part is about the ideas of "harnessing mass desire", then the next episoide goes deep on the five "states of awareness".  You can buy a second hand copy of this book for hundreds (and in some cases I've seen thousands) of dollars, or grab a new edition which is still not cheap but at least somewhat reasonable: https://breakthroughadvertisingbook.com/

Tyler Cowen: Academic economist, author, podcaster, blogger, professor, online educator, reader, listener, foodie, and much much more.   Marginal Revolution: https://marginalrevolution.com/ Conversations With Tyler podcast: https://conversationswithtyler.com/

Have you ever been sitting in a stock-standard, stale, boring, question-and-answer job interview? Whether you were doing the interviewing or being interviewed, it's not the best way to identify talent.  Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross have some suggestions as to how to conduct better job interviews. In their book Talent, chapter 2 is titled 'How To Interview And Ask Questions'. Today's episode is the best bits of that chapter.  The first part of the episode is around the types of questions you ask (hint: if you google "top 15 most common job interview questions", you're doing it wrong). The second part of the episode is about the style of the interview: breaking out of pre-prepared canned responses and getting into conversation mode, changing the setting of the intetrview, and 'going meta'.  The next time your conducting a job interview (or the next time you want to showcase your talents in a job interview), these ideas will make things a hell of a lot better for everyone involved.

Steve Glaveski is an author, a podcaster, an entrepreneur, and a mate. We've both interviewed eachother a couple of times for our respective podcasts, and in this episode we go deep on Steve's reading journey.  We talk about WHY Steve reads, some reasons NOT to read,  books that have changed Steve's life, books Steve would prescribe if he was to create a cirriculum for a university course based on non-fiction books, and how lockdowns shifted Steve's perspective on life.    PLUS - For a little extra fun hidden in the show notes, here's a song I recorded for the last interview I did with Steve, after he recorded a song based on our podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jA8gmbek8iw    Steve's Website: https://www.steveglaveski.com/    Previous podcast episodes with Steve: WYWL #300: https://www.whatyouwilllearn.com/author-interview/steve-glaveski/ WYWL #183: https://www.whatyouwilllearn.com/author-interview/steveglaveski/  FS #410: https://www.nofilter.media/posts/410-the-sh-t-they-never-taught-you-with-adam-jones-and-adam-ashton 

Steph Clarke is a facilitator, futurist, and learning designer. She is also the host of the (recently retired) Steph's Business Bookshelf podcast, where she's shared the three big ideas from over 200 non-fiction books in 15 minutes or less. I met Steph back in 2019 when her podcast was just getting started. Both being book lovers and now book podcasters, we had a lot in common! Coincidentally Steph's Business Bookshelf and What You Will Learn came to an end around the same time... so I wanted to chat to Steph to hear more about how she made the decision to hang up the mic.   Steph's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steph-clarke Steph's Business Bookshelf podcast: https://www.stephsbusinessbookshelf.com/ 28 Thursdays: https://www.28thursdays.com/ Steph's personal website: https://www.stephclarke.com/

I'm interviewing famous economist Tyler Cowen so I wanted to brush up on a few economic concepts. I studied economics in high school and at university, but a lot of the textbook stuff seemed a little crusty and irrelevant. Thankfully, I've read some great books that have taken the concepts from the classroom and applied them to the real world.  In this episode, I look at incentives, and specifically the difference between monetary incentives and non-monetary incentives. Drawing from three great economics books on this topic, I've pulled together the best ideas and stories from: Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely (where he differentiates "social norms" from "market norms") Freakonomics, by Steven Levitt & Stephen Dubner (where they differentiate "moral incentives" from "economic incentives" Discover Your Inner Economist, by Tyler Cowen (where he explain the "dirty dishes" parable and the "car salesperson" parable).  Then I tie them together and apply these to some other real world scenarios - how you can think about applying incentives to housework, business, management, and dating. 

Adam Jones is back behind the mic. After 7 years of reading books and podcasting together on What You Will Learn, Adam joins me to talk about: how he got into reading in the first place, what differentiates a bad book from a good book from an awesome book, face-slapper / jaw-dropper books we've each read since our previous podscast came to a close

At the end of the first full month of the new podcast, I thought I'd do a bit of a round up of: some podcast updates and highlights (and what's to come) my favourite 5-star review of the month a listener audio question the books I read in July 2023 (some I finished, some in progress, some abandonned) Get in touch at any time - email me at [email protected], or better yet, head to https://moretolearnpod.com/contact

In January I had my first child, I transformed overnight from an "adult" to a "parent".  I thought there would be some overnight lightning bolt type of change.. but I don't know if there was. Perhaps there was a gradual change over the weeks and months head. In some ways everything has changed, in some ways nothing has changed.  One quiet afternoon recently, as I was sitting in the dark room in the rocking chair trying to get little Bella off to sleep, I got a little introspective. I started thinking about how life has changed this year and what broader lessons I've learned.  These are not 6 lessons on how to look after a newborn, but broader more philosophical lessons that have changed how I view the world and (hopefully) things you can apply to your life as well.

Cass Sunstein is the author of HEAPS of great books, and is officially the most cited legal scholar in the world.  Some of his books include "Nudge" (co-authored with Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler), "Noise" (co-authored with Oliver Sibony and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman), and "Sludge" (not co-authored, that ones all Cass!).  His newest book, launching August 1st 2023, is Decisions About Decisions. Whether we know it or not, we all have systems or frameworks we use to make decisions, so this book get a little meta on deciding how to decide. Will we use a rule? Will we delegate the decisiont to someone else?  Will we outsource it to our standards and routines? It really got me going to see a 2x2 Matrix where he'd defined and explained a whole range of different second-order decisions, then grouped them into when and why we should use each one!    Grab a copy of Decisions About Decisions by Cass Sunstein: https://www.amazon.com/Decisions-about-Practical-Reason-Ordinary/dp/1009400460/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1J8IDPX34BUMQ&keywords=decisions+about+decisions&qid=1689656673&sprefix=decisions+about+decis%2Caps%2C628&sr=8-1 

The book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein has been described as "the most impactful book on behavioural economics". The core concepts in the book have found the way into large corporations and even entire political teams have been formed called 'nudge units' to implement the ideas in the book.  The benefit I can offer you as someone who has read 500+ books and podcasted about 350+ of them is that I can bring different ideas from different books together to add depth to the arguments.  So rather than just sharing the ideas from Nudge, I'm going to mix it together with the ideas from Sludge by Cass Sunstein (not sure why Thaler didn't get the co-author gig on that one!) and pull out the common threads.  After defining and explaining what "nudge" and "sludge" are, along with some real-world examples, I bring together a nice little 2x2 matrix that compares how nudge and sludge can be used for GOOD... or for EVIL. 

This episode was sparked by a conversation Adam Jones and I had over a brunch. Adam Jones said he'd been battling through, trying to read Seduction by Robert Greene, and we tried to rank Robert Greene's books in order from our favourite to our least favourite.  As our mutual favourite author of all time, even a 'bad' Robert Greene book is still better than most other books out there... but this is our unfiltered views on how they stack up against each other.  Check out Robert Greene at his website: https://powerseductionandwar.com/books/ 

Over the weekend I went hunting for truffles. It was a bit of a guided tour where we were introduced to the background of the truffle farm and their philosophies, then we went out with a couple of dogs to go and sniff out some truffles that we'd use to cook up a delicious lunch.  While we were wandering around, I picked up on a few cool ideas or lessons that I thought could apply not just to truffle hunting, but to life more broadly. Using truffle hunting as a metaphor, here were 5 thoughts: Don't be afraid to look stupid Lying means you lose opportunities to learn Trust The Dog Cut out the rot before it spreads Some truffles aren't worth harvesting

After 7 years of podcasting as a duo, I'm now podcasting solo. It's going to take a little while to work out this transition, so if you're listening now - thank you... and please stick with me!  I reached out to two people I've viewed as mentors over the years, two blokes who are authors slash podcasters slash speakers slash educators... slash slash slash... a few years ahead of me on the journey. I asked them their advice on solo podcasting, some traps to watch out for, and what they recommend I do to make this new thing work.    Check out the guys and their shows here: Steve Glaveski: https://www.steveglaveski.com/  Future Squared: https://www.nofilter.media/podcast/future-squared  Owen Fitzpatrick: https://owenfitzpatrick.com/  Changing Minds: https://owenfitzpatrick.com/changing-minds-podcast/ 

Derek Sivers is one of my favourite people to learn form. Check him our here: https://sive.rs/ In this episode, we nerd out on all things books. We speak about why he reads books, how he picks what to read next, why he recommends some books and doesn't recommend others. But my favourite part is how he determines what makes a GOOD book and what makes a GREAT book. It's simple yet eye opening. 

What should we do in order to get the most out of our lives? How shold we behave to maximise our outcomes? What is the BEST way to live? Derek Sivers tells us just that. In his book 'How To Live', he shares exactly how we should live. Except... There isn't just one answer... there are 27. Each chapter answers the question 'how should I live my life', but while each one is emphatic adn 100% correct, each one is also totally different.  In this episode, I take my favourite pieces of life advice from Derek Sivers and share them a black-and-white, all-or-nothing instructions and what you should do in order to live a good life. You can either view these as menu items at your favouite restaurant where you pick one to eat for dinner, or, you can view them as ingredients to cook up your own dish from scratch.  I highly recommend buying yourself a copy of How To Live direct from Derek Sivers's website: https://sive.rs/h 

My name is Adam Ashton and i'm kind of addicted to learning… Instead of going to some 12 step program, I've decided to fuel this addiction. I started my learning journey in 2015 when I read 10books. In 2016 it was 30, and every year since it's been around 60 to 70 books a year… I cant get enough! I started sharing the best bits from the best books on the What You Will Learn podcast where my cohost Adam Jones and I did over 400 episodes in 7 years. I've written 5 books as well, most notably Attitude in 2023 and The Shit They Never Taught You in 2021.   But more importantly, while I'm continuing my learning journey, I want to help play a part in YOUR learning journey as well. In this podcast, I'm going to be sharing cool ideas from books, interviewing some of the world's greatest authors, answering your questions, and who knows what other experimental episode formats we might try along the way.   Check out the new website at moretolearnpod.com - it will be the home of podcast episodes, blog posts, and an opportunity for you to get in touch or send in a voice memo. I'd love to get an audio message from you - send in a book recommendation, ask for a book recommendation for a specific problem you're facing, ask for some advice, recommend an author I should get in touch with, or just share what you think I'm doing well and what I could be doing better.   There will be a new episode every week, because there's always More To Learn…