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...
Jul 24, 2020•33 min•Ep 278•Transcript available on Metacast 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 gi...
Jul 18, 2020•24 min•Ep 277•Transcript available on Metacast 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 toge...
Jul 11, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep 276•Transcript available on Metacast The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up - by Marie Kondo This 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 cant. 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 orde...
Jul 04, 2020•38 min•Ep 275•Transcript available on Metacast 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!). Ch...
Jun 04, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep 274•Transcript available on Metacast 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. ...
May 30, 2020•41 min•Ep 273•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
May 23, 2020•46 min•Ep 272•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
May 20, 2020•59 min•Ep 271•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
May 16, 2020•29 min•Ep 270•Transcript available on Metacast 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....
May 13, 2020•46 min•Ep 269•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
May 09, 2020•40 min•Ep 268•Transcript available on Metacast 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. I...
May 02, 2020•44 min•Ep 267•Transcript available on Metacast 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 optimist...
Apr 25, 2020•42 min•Ep 266•Transcript available on Metacast 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 o...
Apr 17, 2020•30 min•Ep 265•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Apr 11, 2020•41 min•Ep 264•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Apr 08, 2020•42 min•Ep 263•Transcript available on Metacast 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 potenti...
Apr 03, 2020•32 min•Ep 262•Transcript available on Metacast 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 w...
Mar 31, 2020•33 min•Ep 261•Transcript available on Metacast The Infinite Game - by Simon Sinek There 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 ...
Mar 28, 2020•46 min•Ep 260•Transcript available on Metacast The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is a book that everyone needs to read. The habits arent 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 effectivene...
Mar 21, 2020•58 min•Ep 259•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Mar 14, 2020•25 min•Ep 258•Transcript available on Metacast 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 bact...
Mar 06, 2020•29 min•Ep 257•Transcript available on Metacast 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 negotiat...
Mar 01, 2020•31 min•Ep 256•Transcript available on Metacast Principles - by Ray Dalio Over 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 re...
Feb 23, 2020•30 min•Ep 255•Transcript available on Metacast 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....
Feb 15, 2020•42 min•Ep 254•Transcript available on Metacast 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 faceboo...
Feb 12, 2020•37 min•Ep 253•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Feb 08, 2020•27 min•Ep 252•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jan 31, 2020•22 min•Ep 251•Transcript available on Metacast 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,...
Jan 25, 2020•32 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Jan 18, 2020•32 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast 
