The Three Month Vacation Podcast

When we think of motivated people, we rarely associate them with procrastination. Motivated people seem to get everything done, and yet if you speak to someone who is fairly productive, you will often find that they call themselves procrastinators. This feeling they express isn't just a way to seek attention. Instead, it's something that often drives them crazy. They almost come to a conclusion that procrastination is somehow inbuilt, yet it's not something you're born with. Instead, it's a design flaw. Design flaw? Absolutely and let's find out exactly what causes procrastination. You'll enjoy this episode. 

A losing streak can show up at any time, and trying harder doesn't help. If you can't try harder or do more, what else can you do? Here's a system—a really simple system—that can turn your losing streak around. Here's how you go about it. 

Everybody starts out very excited when a business is in its infancy, but after a while, doesn't it get boring? How can you sustain a business for so long? 5000bc is our community site, and it has stayed steady for over two decades. Why is this the case? If you have an information-based community, how can you create something similar?

This episode is a lot about me telling my story, but hopefully it will be useful to you as you go over the next few decades. 

What happens when we finally get from Greece to Frankfurt ? What's the meeting with Keanu about? Do we have any proof? Here's Part 2 of the trip to Greece. 

Generally, a holiday is full of different and new experiences, but sometimes it can take a sudden, unusual turn. You hope that you don't have that crazy experience while on a flight 30,000 feet above the air, but that's just what happened. That was the start of our journey to Greece. 

Dogs are lovely and I love dogs so much, but stray dogs are quite something else. Here's part 2 of the trip to Thailand. Dogs, gifts, mango milkshakes and fishermen who took a break. Enjoy. 

Almost 20 years after we launched The Brain Train, we weren't expecting anything dramatic to happen, and yet suddenly it was on a bestseller list. Not the New York Times bestseller list, but in Thailand. Here's the story, not of the book alone, but of our travel through Thailand as part of the three-month vacation. 

When you speak to somebody, do they get impatient? When you do an illustration, does it feel like the other person is waiting for ages? This is because you and I are operating at below normal speed. When we operate at below normal speed, we are reaching for information, and so we struggle quite a lot. What is normal speed, and how do you achieve that normal speed? That's what this episode is all about.

When you think of storytelling, you just think of a sequence or what happens next, but the reality is that storytelling is a curated amount of information. Anything that is not required simply becomes clutter, and clutter destroys a story. How do you recognise this clutter? Well, there are three ways. 

Some people are adamant that they will never use AI. However, that's a tiny, obscure minority. AI is here to stay and that means we've all dipped our toes in it. Well, I took a bath one day. I got AI to tidy up my article. What happened next? Let's find out. 

Many of us burn out simply because we live in the past. How long the past? We could go all the way to our childhood, and it's there where we learn how to go for perfection. It's this level of perfection that continues to drive us crazy for the rest of our lives. Is there a way out? Yes, there is. It's called quantity. Instead of trying to go for quality, you get to that stage of quality by working on your quantity. Doesn't that seem strange? Check out this episode and decide for yourself.

We hear that somehow we have to get 1% better every day. However, how do you measure this improvement? Can it be measured at all? And what does it mean? 

Once a course ends, it's often just the beginning of a journey. Think about it for a moment: you've finished an article writing course, and you've just managed to put all the pieces together. Now you need to keep going. That's the point when the teacher leaves the room, and so does the group that held everything together. We've tried, tried and tried again to make this follow up work but it's been less than successful. Then we hit upon three specific steps, and everything changed. Here are those steps.

We are constantly inundated with something new and improved. It seems almost impossible to keep up and we scramble for new tools. But what if we could pare back a lot and stay with a lot less? How can we achieve a much bigger "wow factor" with a lot less?

It's not important to win an argument in person. However, when writing a book or creating a presentation, you need to get a slightly new idea across. However, what if the client has a strong counter-opinion? In this episode we look at how to use misdirection to get across an idea that's new and make it feel like it was the client's idea all along.

Notice something strange when you tell a story. People are always waiting for you to finish because they want to know the point of the story. This subtle curiosity level gives us an advantage. It means that we can play director and change the path of the story. Every story seems to have a predefined pathway; yet what if we took one story and swung it in different ways? Wouldn't that be amazing? Let's find out how it's done.

One-on-one consulting seems logical, even superior to group consulting. It's why clients consistently prefer it. Which is why it seems almost reckless to move to group consulting. All the obvious fears bubble up madly. How can we tackle these fears and keep the client more than happy? Let's find out in this second episode.

No one needs to tell us that one-on-one consulting is extremely tiresome, even when it's rewarding. Each consulting session takes so much time: the preparation before, the downtime needed after, and the session itself. But will clients appreciate it—or even stay with you—if you suddenly change to group consulting? Let's find out how it's done, because yes, we've done it before, and so have many others.

Free or paid? That's the question that rattles around in our heads when we want to promote an information product. And if it's free, why free? What's the benefit for you? If it's paid, should you go high or low? Let's explore Part 1 and Part 2 of this seemingly eternal mystery.

It seems almost impossible to price a product—and even harder to decide when it comes to information products. How do you decide if you should give away the information free or charge for it? Let's explore the first two parts in Part 1 and Part 2.

When we think about the journey of a thousand miles, we often assume it means constant forward movement. We picture ourselves taking one step after another, continuing steadily until the journey is complete. But in reality, most journeys involve setbacks. At times, after making progress, it can feel as though we're actually moving backwards. Strange as it sounds, going backwards is a good thing. Let's find out why.

There's hardly anyone who says they have loads of time. We all want 36 hours per day and eight days a week, and yet most of the time the time we so desperately seek lies in plain sight. If you use your time well, you will find that you suddenly have lots of time to waste. Let's go on this weird journey to find time that already exists.

We believe coaching is often the best approach but it's not always the case. You might find an average coach and make little progress or you could have an exceptional coach and become incredibly skilled. For most of our learning, self-study is essential but it doesn't seem to work for many people. Why is this? Sometimes the most perplexing question has a surprisingly simple answer. Explore why self-study is so effective for some while others struggle to make much progress.

You are told that you have to be productive, but how productive is productive? We have been at work for close to 26 years, and we still have a full day of activity. Isn't that good enough reason to slow down or just do nothing at all for some of the days? Let's find out why productivity needs a break.

If you ask most people what is the core of learning, they will give you something banal like hard work or practise; however, they will also state that you need to get feedback. The problem is that feedback almost never has the necessary impact. The reason why it fails to help us move forward is because of the timing. What we need is not feedback but instant feedback. But why is instant feedback far superior than just feedback alone? Let's find out.

Most of us still accept the idea that you need 21 days to build a habit. Yet, most habits can fall apart even if you labour at them with dedication. That's because of why a habit fails. It fails because of a lack of a system. But what's in that system? It's the drive to remove inefficiencies. All habits fail if they're inefficient. Find out why you need a habit system, instead.

If habit change is really about personal effort, why do so many carefully built habits quietly fall over the cliff? The answer isn't motivation and it's certainly not willpower. Bah, grit! Habit change is based instead on your environment. It's almost always based on the company you keep. Let's find out why your environment is the most important habit changing strategy of all.

We are constantly typing, whether it's on our phone or at the computer. Sometimes, it's just a simple message; at other times, it is a bunch of emails. But the typing is relentless. No matter how quickly we type, we can speak a lot faster (sometimes between 80 to 100 words per minute). This is where Wispr Flow really helps. It works at the speed of thought, and better still, it formats everything correctly. This will make you more productive than ever and give you that free time that you're looking for. Listen to the podcast and shave off at least 30-50...