How I Work

Latest Episodes:

Bestselling author Dan Pink believes in regret - and believes that having “no regrets” really means you’re missing out on the chance to learn from not only your own mistakes, but the mistakes others have made, that you don’t have to. Apr 06, 2022

Show notes

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 your past actions, processes and routines in order to learn from them, and do better next time.

He discusses what’s changed about his working habits since his last appearance on the show, why he was drawn to the concept of regret in the first place, and how compassion changed his whole approach to learning from past mistakes.

Connect with Dan on Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn

Find The Power of Regret book here

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Connect with me on the socials:

Twitter

Instagram

If you’re looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a fortnightly newsletter that contains three cool things I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Episode Producer: Liam Riordan

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Jamila Rizvi - Gain trust by showing vulnerability Apr 04, 2022

Show notes

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 something you’re not willing to give yourself.

Jamila shares one example from an interview with Danii Minogue, in which Jamila shared her own vulnerable moment first, before asking Danii to do the same.

Connect with Jamila on Twitter, Instagram or Linkedin

You can find the full interview here: Give up the work-life balance illusion with Jamila Rizvi

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Connect with me on the socials:

Twitter

Instagram

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Darius Foroux on writing, investing and living like a Stoic Mar 30, 2022

Show notes

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 like meditation when he finds Stoicism too stifling.

Darius shares how ancient wisdom can help you thrive in the modern world, and details how his experience as an investor has improved his thinking, writing and decision-making.

Connect with Darius on Twitter or at his website

Connect with me on the socials:

Twitter

Instagram

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Production Support from Deadset Studios

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Norman Swan - You’re not on a mission to explain Mar 28, 2022

Show notes

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, but in helping others develop their craft, too.

He shares how he’s developed his skills over a long career in journalism, and helps you avoid the most common mistake new writers make: thinking they’re on a mission to explain.

Connect with Norman on Twitter or Linkedin

You can find the full episode here: More naps, less coffee: Norman Swan’s tips for the good life

Connect with me on the socials:

Twitter

Instagram

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Production Support from Deadset Studios

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Persuasion, not manipulation: Zoe Chance on how to influence for good Mar 23, 2022

Show notes

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 at any point, and through no fault of their own, everybody else on the call is unlikely to ask you to.

These kinds of unconscious cognitive biases are everywhere, and instead of bemoaning their existence, Zoe wants you to understand them so you can use them to your advantage. She teaches you how to make your voice heard, how to persuade people without being a brute, and reveals her “magic question” for figuring out how you can help other people.

Connect with Zoe on Twitter or LinkedIn

Connect with me on the socials:

Twitter

Instagram

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Production Support from Deadset Studios

Episode Producers: Jenna Koda and Liam Riordan

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Ronni Kahn - Save your leftovers to save the planet Mar 21, 2022

Show notes

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 techniques to recover that wrinkly tomato, and reminds you that your kitchen has a pause button, in the form of your freezer.

Connect with Ronni on Twitter or Linkedin

You can find the full episode here: Manifesting purpose and profit with OzHarvest founder Ronni Kahn

Connect with me on the socials:

Twitter

Instagram

Visit https://www.amantha.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Production Support from Deadset Studios

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ruth Gotian on studying the habits and mindsets of the world’s most successful people Mar 16, 2022

Show notes

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-setting to writing and publishing academic articles, and it’s all backed by her research into top performers.

Connect with Ruth on Twitter or Linkedin

If you’re looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a short monthly newsletter that contains three cool things I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Production Support from Deadset Studios

Episode Producer: Liam Riordan

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip - Dom Price: Why Atlassian killed meetings and how they built their own tools as replacements Mar 14, 2022

Show notes

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’s holding it back. Maybe not surprisingly, they found that almost nothing about the meeting as we know it was worth keeping. So - they didn’t keep it!

Dom explains why Atlassian decided to almost completely kill the meeting, and how they replaced it with their own purpose-built tool for asynchronous communication.

Connect with Dom on Twitter or Linkedin

You can find the full interview here: Atlassian’s Dom Price on dramatically improving virtual meetings

Check out Atlassian’s Team Central

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Focus! Why Taylor Jacobson founded Focusmate to force himself to concentrate Mar 09, 2022

Show notes

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 himself, and how he balances all that work with restful, restorative time off.

He also shares how a new community has changed his life and the way he thinks about and tackles goals.

Connect with Taylor on Twitter or Linkedin

Visit amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

If you are looking for more tips to improve the way you work, I write a short monthly newsletter that contains three cool things that I have discovered that help me work better, which range from interesting research findings through to gadgets I am loving. You can sign up for that at http://howiwork.co

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Production support from Deadset Studios

Episode Producers: Jenna Koda and Liam Riordan

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My Favourite Tip: Nicky Sparshott - Colour me productive! Why you should be colour-coding your calendar Mar 07, 2022

Show notes

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 meetings in the middle of the night to talk to teams on the other side of the world. But, if she’s going to be working from seven to eleven at night, then she can definitely carve out some time in the arvo for her family.

So, how does she keep it all from toppling over? How does she keep her schedule in order when she sometimes needs to work while everyone else is asleep?

Colours. Yep. Nicky colour-codes her calendar so that she can see at a glance exactly what kind of work she’ll be doing for the next few days. Not only does it keep her organised, but it gives her a clear picture of how much deep versus shallow work she’s getting in.

Nicky also teaches you why “deep work” doesn’t always have to be done alone.

Connect with Nicky on Linkedin

You can find the full interview here: Analogue productivity in a digital age with Unilever CEO Nicky Sparshott

Visit https://www.amanthaimber.com/podcast for full show notes from all episodes.

Get in touch at amantha@inventium.com.au

CREDITS

Produced by Inventium

Host: Amantha Imber

Sound Engineer: Martin Imber

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.