David had it pretty good. He was working in a great university. His students loved him. His peers loved him. He had plenty of friends who loved him. And then he became a successful playwright. Life couldn’t get any better! Except reaching the dizzying heights David reached in the theatre world didn’t come cheap. For most of his life, he was like anyone else. You might have the occasional tiff with a co-worker or acquaintance, but generally, you’re well-liked by the people you care about. And all...
May 16, 2022•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast **Pre-order your copy of Time Wise at amantha.com** For productivity geeks like us, the professional writer can become a bit of a mystic figure. When we fantasise about finally perfecting our morning routines, finally clearing out enough time for a fruitful Deep Work session, setting up the ideal workstation - we’re often thinking about a writer. There’s something idyllic about the idea of being a writer: it’s just you, your thoughts, and the blank page. It’s the platonic ideal of knowledge work...
May 11, 2022•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast David Siegel’s in his third CEO role, and if all his years of experience as a leader have taught him anything, it’s that most people take too long to make a decision. The clearest example: company strategy. When David joined Meetup, he drafted the new company strategy as quickly as possible. At first, that sounds like a pretty irresponsible treatment of such a huge part of the business… but David’s underlying reasoning reveals why we should all speed up a little bit! David teaches you to make be...
May 04, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast A productivity tip that’s hard to swallow for people who like productivity tips: nothing except doing the work will get the work done. You can have the cleanest calendar, the emptiest inbox and the tightest morning routine, but if you’re not sitting down and putting in the work, your “hacks” serve as little more than decoration. Unless those tips and tricks steer you towards the right kind of deep work? Liane Moriarty, the incredibly prolific author of Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers and...
May 02, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast **BEST OF** It’s 9:30, and you’ve got just under an hour before your next Zoom meeting. There’s already just a bit too much caffeine buzzing around your brain, and your eyes are half-crossed from the last video call. So how do you recharge and show up refreshed for that next one? If you’re Evernote and mmhmm co-founder Phil Libin, you swim laps. Thanks to the “distributed” nature of mmhmm’s workforce, he can punctuate his work days with distinctly not-work activities. Some days, it’s laps betwee...
Apr 27, 2022•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast **BEST OF** You need to be in the office at nine, and if you want to be performing at your best, you’ll need to get in a quick workout and a nutritious breakfast. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for trying to pull an outfit together, so you’ll also need to sort that out the night before. Oh, and you need to make sure your kids have eaten a healthy breakfast, put their school uniforms on, brushed their teeth, packed their bags, and not started an all-out war with one another before getting in th...
Apr 25, 2022•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast **BEST OF** It wouldn’t work to try to tell the Michael Bungay Stanier story - if anyone’s a collection of stories, it’s MBS. He finished law school being sued for defamation by his professor, he was a Rhodes Scholar in his early 20s, and he’s coached Brene Brown on her own podcast. A life and career with so many twists, turns and new directions brings with it an equally eclectic and overflowing bag of tips, tricks and mindset shifts, and Michael shares them generously. Michael covers everything...
Apr 20, 2022•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast **BEST OF** I was a competitive kid, and some classroom rivalries pushed me to better grades than I might have achieved otherwise. However, I was also a perfectionist, and any “A”s that came without a “+” beside them started to feel less like an almost-perfect achievement and more like a glaring signal that I’d missed the mark. I hated failing, and when you combine that with believing anything less than the top spot is a loss, you have a recipe for disaster. I hid my failures, refusing to talk a...
Apr 18, 2022•14 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nobody hears from Janice Lintz just once. Whether she’s chasing down information on her phone bill or chasing down the Queen of England, Janice doesn’t stop until she gets what she needs, and she believes others can benefit from that kind of tenacity. It’s reflected in a lesson Janice learned from the great civil rights activist, Vernon Jordan - don’t answer the phone until someone calls you the fourth time. If it’s not worth their time, it’s certainly not worth yours. So Janice calls again. And...
Apr 13, 2022•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re trying to talk to Josh Piterman after a show… good luck. The second he’s said his farewells to his fellow castmates and crew members, he won’t utter a word until he returns to the theatre the following day. Josh knows there’s no short-cutting recovery, and like everything else, his approach to rest is both holistic and spiritual. A healthy voice is part of a healthy body, and a healthy body needs a healthy mind and a healthy soul. When it comes to recovery, the trick is actually what n...
Apr 11, 2022•8 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s a moment in the 2013 comedy movie We’re the Millers that points to how pervasive - and misguided - the “no regrets” life motto has become. A character proudly displays a tattoo that reads, “no rAgrets”, and even more proudly proclaims that he really doesn’t have any regrets. Not even one letter. Bestselling author Dan Pink highlights this scene as a great metaphor for society’s almost comical underappreciation of regret. Dan is an advocate for the transformative power of looking back on ...
Apr 06, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Asking someone else for anything is a delicate enough task, but when you’re asking them to be vulnerable, it’s something else entirely. How do you make people comfortable sharing something that is, by definition, uncomfortable? Jamila Rizvi, the bestselling author, public speaker, podcast presenter and interviewer, is no stranger to this tricky task. She’s spoken to everyone from Bill Gates to Kim Kardashian, and many of her interviews unearth incredibly touching moments. The key? Don’t ask for ...
Apr 04, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast How I Work is a product of the modern world - it’s a podcast, a format which didn’t even exist at the turn of the century, and a lot of the productivity tools and hacks are geared towards knowledge work for the digital age. So it’s surprising to hear that Darius Foroux, himself an entrepreneur and writer taking advantage of the digital space, lives and works by the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. But Darious isn’t dogmatic - he’s equally inspired by Eastern Philosophy and employs Zen practices l...
Mar 30, 2022•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast Thanks to social media, everyone’s a storyteller now. Whether you’re guiding your work to the right audience, developing your personal brand or keeping the public up-to-date on the COVID-19 situation, your job is to tell a story. If people don’t understand you, or don’t tune in, then everything else is for nought. So how do you get better at communicating? Norman Swan, a physician, journalist, broadcaster and the host of ABC’s Coronacast, has decades of experience not just in storytelling itself...
Mar 28, 2022•6 min•Transcript available on Metacast You’ve reached the end of yet another long Zoom call with your team when you realise… you didn’t say a word! You’re smart, you have good ideas, and you’ve put in the work. Plus, your team and your clients respect you… So how did this happen? According to Zoe Chance, Yale School of Management professor and author of Influence is Your Superpower, it’s because you didn’t speak up early enough. If you’re not one of the first three people to speak up in a virtual meeting, you’re unlikely to speak up ...
Mar 23, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Ronni Kahn does not like to hear about people throwing away their lettuce. If you compost lettuce, it takes about two weeks to decompose. If you throw it in the book, you can bump that number up to twenty-five. Sorry, twenty-five years, that is. As the founder of food rescue charity OzHarvest, Ronni’s an expert on preventing food waste on a massive scale. But what about on the small scale? Yep, she can help with that too. Ronni teaches you how to salvage soggy lettuce with a hearty soup, cooking...
Mar 21, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast How did the world’s most successful people get to the top? Is it genetics? Nepotism? Grit? Can we even know for sure? Dr. Ruth Gotian believes we can, and she’s on a mission to figure it out and share it with the world. Ruth studies top performers from all walks of life, including Olympic medallists, NASA Astronauts and top academics. She’s uncovered four key traits that all high achievers share, and worked to apply them in her own life. Ruth shares how she approaches everything from goal-settin...
Mar 16, 2022•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast 2022 is well underway and… yeah. We’re still doing a lot of virtual meetings. While there’s great optimism in the air around the new level of flexibility most companies are offering their workers now, virtual meetings are still pretty… average. But let’s not blame Zoom straight away: meetings as a work practice have gone unexamined for far longer than they’ve been online. Atlassian’s Dom Price saw this, and sought a better way. He and his team did a deep dive into what a meeting is for, and what...
Mar 14, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast Have you worked with someone whose abilities were so awe-inspiring that they started to rub off on you? We’ve all had bosses, co-workers, friends or study mates whose discipline we’ve tried to tap into before. And Taylor Jacobson founded Focusmate so he could do that forever! After excelling in college because of his carefully selected study mates, Taylor realised his tactics could be used by anyone, and for any kind of work. He details how and why a Focusmate session works, how he uses them him...
Mar 09, 2022•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s 3pm and Nicky Sparshott is ducking out of the office to go watch her kids perform at their school’s exhibition. Sweet, right? But shouldn’t it be impossible? Nicky’s the CEO of Unilever Australia & New Zealand, and at the time of recording, was also the global CEO of T2 - how can she possibly have time in the middle of the work day for a school show? Well, it’s the positive side she’s discovered in having an absolutely hectic work schedule. As a global CEO, she’s sometimes on virtual me...
Mar 07, 2022•9 min•Transcript available on Metacast You know what it’s like when you move house - you’re tripping over boxes for weeks, eating takeout on the floor while you wait for that new dining table to arrive, and lamenting that the rest of the world - including work - doesn’t take a pause while you get your life in order. We’ve all been there, but have you ever used that moment of chaos as the trigger to start writing a book? It sounds insane - and as someone who’s been working on a new book for some time now, I feel certified to call it t...
Mar 02, 2022•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast You wouldn’t think of roasting a chicken as a poignant metaphor for life, but when Maggie Beer talks cooking, you get words to live by. Starting with sourcing the perfect chicken, Maggie teaches you why it’s so important to do a little research before you buy anything, and from there, gives you a step-by-step walkthrough on the whole process. Yep, you’re getting a free masterclass from the master herself. And a damn good dinner, too. Connect with Maggie on Twitter or Instagram You can find the f...
Feb 28, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast If anything immediately strikes me as a pretty bad idea, it’s an adult learning to ride a skateboard. Without the years of experience built up over a childhood spent cruising on the asphalt, stepping on a skateboard almost promises to put you on your butt. And as an adult, a skateboarding injury could have a pretty disastrous effect on your daily life. Kids bounce back pretty easily, but I know if I had to miss six weeks of workouts or couldn’t write or type for a few months, I’d be in strife. S...
Feb 23, 2022•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Running late is… stressful. You worry that you’re going to get in trouble, let someone down or miss something important. Your heart rate rises, adrenaline courses through your body - and then someone wants to get in front of you on the road. Oh. My. God. But what if it wasn’t stressful? Sounds too good to be true, right? What if it’s all in your head? Meshel Laurie, a podcaster and author, believes it is all in your head, and that - actually - that’s a good thing. Because if it’s in your head, i...
Feb 21, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Life Admin. That phrase probably makes you nervous - I know it does for me. It makes me think about all the stuff I have to keep on top of: I need to remember to pay my car rego, to RSVP to that parent-teacher conference, and to book my next doctor’s appointment. But when you think about all the things you have to get done at the office in 2022, you’re probably pretty confident, right? There’s heaps to do, but you’re a professional! You have systems and processes in place to make sure you don’t ...
Feb 16, 2022•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re a bit of a productivity buff, you probably have some clever hacks for reducing time spent reading or sending emails. Maybe you use Superhuman, like I do, or maybe you’re a big proponent of Inbox Zero. Either way, you’re probably not looking for, say, a How I Work episode that suggests you spend more time on email! But this is different… The goal of true productivity, after all, is to get more meaningful work done in less time. So, what if using some work tools at home could enable you ...
Feb 14, 2022•5 min•Transcript available on Metacast Sometimes you have to put yourself on the line to test your assumptions. How better to know if something will work for you than to do it yourself? Michael Mosley takes this one step further than your average person, though… Like when he willingly infested his body with worms. Seriously. TV producer, presenter, journalist, author and former doctor Michael Mosley has done all manner of weird and wonderful self-experiments in the name of science - mainly so you don’t have to! He gives his top tips ...
Feb 09, 2022•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast You and I are finite beings, my friend. That’s a pretty abstract concept until you think about just how much stuff we need to get done every day. Oliver Burkeman, a journalist and author, says the amount of things we could potentially do every day is, by definition, infinite. And a finite being with an infinitely long to-do list is not a happy being. This causes most of us to start our days feeling like we’re in “productivity debt”, and our to-do list is our ticket back to zero, back to a clean ...
Feb 07, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast You’ve tried it all. You’ve joined the 5AM club, done the morning HIIT workouts, tried the pomodoro technique, downloaded Headspace and worked at a standing desk. But… you haven’t quite figured it out yet. Lisa Leong, host of the hit ABC radio show, This Working Life, says that’s the point. Every day is “lab day”, and the experimenting should never end. Lisa’s job is to examine… well, jobs. She’s on a mission to understand the modern working world and how we can all make our working lives more e...
Feb 02, 2022•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast It’s 3:30 in the afternoon and you’re pumping Red Bulls. You’ve just had a long, very cerebral meeting, and now you’ve gotta back it up with some pretty intellectually demanding writing work. But you’re exhausted. Holly Ransom, Fulbright Scholar and author of The Leading Edge, wants you to find a different way to perk up when you’re running low on energy. The Red Bulls, the half-litre cups of coffee and the sugary snacks might feel like they’re working, but they’re really just numbing the signal...
Jan 31, 2022•7 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
