Category: Self-Improvement, Psychology and Mindset

What did you learn from 2020? 

That question carries a lot of weight, doesn’t it? 

Collectively, all of us experienced an unprecedented year. In March 2020, the world changed overnight. 

Working from home became the norm. The market shot up and down and up again. Bitcoin skyrocketed. Housing prices held at unfathomable highs. We saw a global reckoning around social justice. 

Needless to say, our internal and external worlds experienced rapid shifts. We may still feel ungrounded.

And now we’re dealing with the aftermath, asking questions such as, “What do I really want out of life? How can I form a plan when there’s still so much uncertainty?”

The answer: become nimble. Embrace flexibility. 

At least, that’s the conclusion Brad Barrett and Jonathan Mendonsa reach during this interview.

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Do you tend to see things as they are?

Or do you tend to see what you want to see?

To cut to the chase: how important is it to seek truth and honesty? Especially if it means the possibility of compromising your existing beliefs and ideas about the world?

If you’re unsure, or if these questions have you thinking, “Whoa, I need more caffeine before going down a philosophical rabbit hole…”, today’s episode has you covered. (Just grab your beverage of choice beforehand.)

Julia Galef, author of The Scout Mindset and host of the long-running Rationally Speaking podcast, explains the difference between the soldier mindset (see what you want to see) and the scout mindset (seeing things as they are).

She explains why we often default to the soldier mindset of defending ideas we desperately want to believe, and reviews several thought exercises that we can use to instead train our brains to scout for the truth.

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Does work/life balance sound like a mythical wonderland that only a select few ever achieve?

Do you make it a goal to enter this mythical wonderland each year, only to end up completely disappointed a month or two later?

Or have you completely written off this mythical land to double-down on work in hopes that you’ll achieve financial independence sooner?

Neither of these has to be the reality you settle for.

Work and life can coexist together. Without enormous trade-offs.

But you need to ruthlessly prioritize both areas of your life to make it happen.

“Yeah, okay. Please indulge me. Tell me how I can achieve this so-called work/life balance.” 

We’ll leave that to our guests, best-selling author Michael Hyatt, and his daughter and CEO of Michael Hyatt & Co, Megan Miller Hyatt.

They both practice what they preach in their new book, Win at Work & Succeed at Life, and they’re here to share concrete examples and actionable steps you can take today to make work/life balance achievable.

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Do you ever feel like there’s a voice inside your head that insists on repeating all of your fears, insecurities, or mistakes?

Does this voice craft invisible scripts that then govern your life in the most limiting way ever?

Are you just sick of this voice having a home inside your head?

You’re not alone.

Today’s guest, bestselling author, Jon Acuff, found himself suffering the same fate. It wasn’t until he silenced this voice and replaced it with a kinder, gentler one that he began to wonder if this was common.

He commissioned a study to find out, and the results were clear: 99.5 percent of 10,000 people said they were overthinkers.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if our inbox magically managed itself?

Let’s go a step further.

What if we could live in a world without email?

Email overload takes a real toll on us – on our workflow, and on our brains. A study conducted by RescueTime found that most workers can’t go six minutes without checking email. That, combined with how inefficient we become when switching tasks, creates a gigantic loss of productivity during our workday.

Joke’s on you! I don’t use email. I use Slack instead. Ha!

Slack isn’t any better than email. Any platform that allows for endless back-and-forth communication will cause your productivity to plummet. How are you supposed to get any work done outside of Slack or email if you’re busy checking in every six minutes? Those constant notifications can keep you engaged with unstructured conversation to the point where the day ends and you’ve had no time to get actual work done.

Hmm, those days do suck. But how else am I supposed to communicate with my teammates when something needs to be done?

There are plenty of alternatives that don’t involve back-and-forth messaging. Cal Newport, third-time guest of the show, joins us to talk about these alternatives. His new book, A World Without Email, explores the pitfalls of the “hyperactive hive mind workflow” and the structures and systems workplaces have adopted to cut down on noise and increase productivity.

Cal gives us a brief history lesson on how email came to dominate the workplace, explains the inefficiencies and limitations with email, and tells us which mindset shifts to make in how we manage our time, energy, and attention at work.

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What comes to mind when you think about optimism?

Yeah right, how can anyone be optimistic at a time like this?

*eye roll* What fluff.

Uh…does being optimistic about my chances of eating cake count?

Given our current circumstances, optimism might feel worthless, useless, or both. But optimism doesn’t have to be this mythical, unobtainable pie-in-the-sky concept, especially when considered from this lens:

the expectation of good things to happen and the belief that our behavior matters.

Why? Because we have control of our expectations and our beliefs. We can choose to alter our expectations, and we can choose to believe that our behavior matters.

That’s what Michelle Gielan, Positive Psychologist and bestselling author of Broadcasting Happiness, is here to explain. In this episode, she offers research-based tactics that you can use today to gradually strengthen your resolve, transform your relationship with stress, and shift towards optimism.

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