Having reached his 40th birthday (and we, The Podcast, our fourth), Michael shares his best bits of wisdom: Finding what you're good at, striving for longevity, knowing when to reinvent yourself, having fun, and nurturing friendships.
Michael talks about what it's like to walk a 260km pilgrimage over a week and a half, why he and his wife did it, how it can be a great experience even for non-religious people, how to pack for it, and why northern Spain is kinda nice.
Discussing The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Giving autonomy to live their own lives, neither prasing nor rebuking, and finding happiness in being beneficial to people around us.
The world is bad, but better. The vast majority of westerners believe the world is poorer, more violent, deadly, primitive, and awful than it actually is. This book beautifully illustrates our ignorance, updates your knowledge, and gives you tools for a fact-based worldview.
Digital Minimalism - A philosophy where you focus your technology use on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that support your values, and happily miss out on everything else. We discuss Cal Newport's new book on this very topic. Why clutter is costly, optimization is imporatant, and intentionality is satisfying. We explore reclaiming our leisure time. BREAKING NEWS: Michael pledges to go on a 30 day digital declutter from Twitter and Instagram!
Nozbe 4, our brand new app has a brand new icon (and logo). This week, we talk about what's wrong with ticks and circles, what makes a good logo, why we decided to go for it, and how it almost didn't happen.
What we've learned about productivity and collaboration over the years. How technology improvement allows us to get to the next level. And why starting from scratch is scary, but sometimes necessary.
Pulling back the curtain on the development process of Nozbe 4. When we started, how we progressed over time, and why we had to impose on ourselves the deadline of April 4.
Stories about competition, punishment, and rewards in the classroom and our childhoods. We continue discussing what we've learned from Punished by Rewards.
When we reward someone (an employee, a student, a child) for doing what we want them to do, we think we're doing the right thing, motivating them to keep doing it. In reality, incentives only have a shallow, immediate effect — and in the long term, we're killing the other person's intrinsic motivation, and making them resent us for being controlling.
The good, the bad, and the necessary of complaining and complainers. To keep improving, and to communicate efficiently in an organization (and to be grown up) is to understand that complaints are not usually toxic, negative, or a personal attack against you — but are simply feedback. To say to someone not to bring you problems, but only solutions is to guarantee you'll be oblivious to everything that's broken in a company. (But yes, some complaints are nothing more than unhelpful snark — learn t...
How to review and plan a year together. Because Annual Review is not just for you, and for your work, but for your family and relationships too.
We started paying our employees salaries based on a formula that applies to everyone, not based on individual negotiations. Here’s why, and how.
Follow-up on our journey towards a (slightly) calmer life — with fewer distractions, push notifications, and social media. Pushing forward to find the right balance between utility and mindfulness. How to hide (but not delete) distracting apps on iOS and Android, time and open limits on Facebook and other apps, blocking websites, old school newsletters, and more.
Celebrating 12 years of profitably running Nozbe (without any outside investors), Michael recounts some of the most important milestones, and most amusing anecdotes of the company’s history. That, and a sneak peak into the future of Nozbe
Here’s a sneak peak for Michael’s and Radek’s plans for 2019 (a.k.a. the year of Purple / the year of intentionality).
Always busy? Endless meetings? Can’t sleep? No time to think? Screw that. It doesn’t have to be crazy at work. It makes no sense. Exhausted, overworked, sleep-deprived people with no long stretches of uninterrupted time can’t really be productive. Busyness and effectiveness are not the same. We discuss a book from Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.
The biggest themes, projects, successes, and failures of 2018 in Michael’s and Radek’s lives. And COOKIES! (And rockets!)
Here’s your choice to live a more intentional life. To learn from the events, plans, successes, and failures of the last year. To contemplate what makes you, you. To make plans, set goals, learn new things, and develop habits for next year. To let go. Here’s the end of the year, and our definitive guide to Annual Review.
Here’s a crazy idea: what if half of all work performed in our society was useless or unnecessary, and if it stopped, no one would notice — or care. We dive into David Graeber’s food for thought.
We own technology so that it makes our life better. Right? Or is it the other way around? What if filling every single second of our life with social media and compulsively checking all our inboxes and feeds 50 times per day makes us unable to focus and to be intentional? What if visiting social media once per day for 20 minutes is good and healthy, but 20 times per day for one minute isn't? A discussion + some coping hacks
The state of computing is in an awkward state, but full of promise. On one side, unnecessary complicated PCs; on the other, fun but somewhat clunky iPads. One year into the #iPadOnly lifestyle, Radek unpacks pros and cons of both, and their future converging paths. (Last time we talk about iPads until next WWDC, promise!)
Michael’s new iPad is faster than Radek’s 15’’ MacBook Pro. Ouch! Why “you can’t work on an iPad” is (mostly) BS. Which iPad to buy?
Instead of only complaining, you can act to change things for the better in your local community, neighborhood, city, school. Most people tend to think that getting involved must be very difficult, impossible, or political. But the truth is, a lot of the time, it takes very little to make a positive impact.
Over time, we start taking things for granted, get used to the status quo, get into the rut, and forget the basics — the motivating factors behind why we do what we do. Here are our reasons.
Follow-up on the joy of minimalist backpack-only packing: wallets, cycling, charing, shaving… and a follow-up on home renovations and tidying up.
The Podcast special, live from a Nozbe company reunion in Kraków! This one, if you can, you should really watch on video. We unpack our backpacks on camera, and show precisely every single item we have inside. Turns out, you really don’t need that much space to fit everything you need for a trip.
Lessons learned from Michael’s visit to Mobiconf. The liberty of backpack-only lifestyle. Choosing conferences wisely. And talking to people.
Home office renovations, laying out cable, procrastination, tinkering with Raspberry Pi, and home automation on the cheap
Experimenting with home automation with HomeKit
