When we're failing to do the things that are most important in our lives, the typical diagnosis of the problem is to believe we're simply not working hard enough, and the typical solution to the problem is to put in more effort, apply more discipline, and grind it out.

My guest would say that we're thinking about both the root and the remedy of the issue in the wrong way. His name is Greg McKeown, and he's the author of the bestseller Essentialism, as well as his latest book, Effortless: Make It Easier to Do What Matters Most. Today on the show, Greg shares how he came to realize that life isn't just about focusing on the essentials, but making those essential things the easy things. We discuss why it is that we commonly make things harder than they need to be, and how while the right thing can be hard, just because something is hard, doesn't make it the right thing. We then discuss the role that emotions like gratitude play in making things feel more effortless, why you need to have a clear vision of what being done looks like (including having a Done for the Day list), how to overcome the difficulty of getting started with things through microbursts of action, and how to keep going with them using a sustainable pace marked by upper and lower bounds. We end our conversation with how seeking an effortless state applies to one's spiritual life. Along the way, Greg shares stories from history and his own life as to what it means to get to your goals using a more effortless path.

Get the show notes at aom.is/effortless.

#716: How to Make Your Life More Effortless

According to a recent survey, the percentage of men with at least six close friends has fallen by half since 1990, and men today are 5X more likely to say they don't even have a single close friend than they were thirty years ago.


What are the reasons for this seeming friendship recession among men? Today I talk to the man who conducted that survey to try to find out. His name is Daniel Cox and he's the director of the Survey Center on American Life. Today on the show Daniel takes us on a tour of the state of friendship among modern men, beginning with the fact that men today have fewer friends and feel less emotionally connected to the ones they do have. We explore the irony that while people have long said that traditional norms of masculinity are what's holding men back from having fulfilling relationships, it's younger men, who are more progressive on those norms, who are struggling the most to make friends. Daniel talks about the fact that the male friendship recession isn't pandemic related, but rather seems to be linked to the weakening of ties to community institutions like church, the changing nature of work, and the fact that Americans are spending more and more time with their families. From there we go down a bunch of interesting avenues, including the fact that husbands rely more on their wives for emotional support than vice versa, why Daniel finds it concerning that young men today are more likely to first talk about their problems with their parents rather than their friends than was true 30 years ago, and the irony that single men are struggling the most to make friends even though they need them the most.

#727: What's Causing The Male Friendship Recession

Who and where do you want to be in the future? It's a question we typically answer by looking ahead. But, my guest would say, you can actually best find the answer by looking back.

His name is William Damon, and he's a Stanford psychologist who studies adult development and purpose, and the author of A Round of Golf With My Father: The New Psychology of Exploring Your Past to Make Peace With Your Present. On the show today, Bill explains why you should consider doing something called a "life review," a process you can initiate at any age in order to get greater clarity on what is now probably a blur of memories around how you ended up who and where you are today. Bill explains the steps of doing a life review, and how doing one can do two things for you: 1) help you think more positively and gratefully about your life story — even its regrets — and understand why you made certain choices and developed as you did, and 2) help you refine your life's purpose, recognize that you can change and grow no matter where you are in the life cycle, and chart a course for further development in the future. Bill does this through the lens of the fascinating story around how he came to do his own life review, in order to better get to know himself, by getting to know his father, who he was told growing up was killed in World War II, but, Bill would discover, in fact survived the war and led a more complex life than Bill could have imagined.

#727: How Doing A Life Review Can Help Your Understand Your Past, Present, And Future

A computer learns to speak with emotion and conviction but lacks the ability to distinguish good ideas from absolute madness. And a man has a chance to work on a secret project involving millions of flying mammals that could put an end to World War II.

STORIES

Theodora

Making sense of the world is always a struggle.  And that’s why, as far back as time has existed, some people have chosen to stand up in front of others and tells stories and share ideas that make sense of the chaos around us. We call them “orators” or “the ones who speak”  They turn the chaos into meaning and inspiration.

But there’s a bad side of orators too—it’s the snake oil salesmen….the buzzword charlatans…the intellectual xenomorphs who prey upon those who just want to find some deeper truths.

Producer Jeff Emtman is particularly sensitive to this dual nature of public speaking…he’s got some of those darker traits himself.  So he developed a simple robot named Theodora who could speak to him about the highly porous barrier that separates inspiration and madness.

This piece comes to us from the podcast Here Be Monsters (HBM146: Theodora). Music by James Li, of Liance.  Album: This Painting Doesn’t Dry

Theodora’s also a Twitterbot. Read her latest meanderings on Twitter at @hypo_inspo.

The Other Secret Weapon

A young man has the chance to work on a very secret, very powerful weapon that could put an end to World War II. The project involves no toxins, no chemicals, no shrapnel and no bullets. Instead, the project involves lots and lots of flying mammals. Lots.

This story details a war situation involving both people and animals, sensitive listeners please be advised.

BIG thanks to Jack Couffer, who is now 97, and BIG love to the entire Couffer family.

Special thanks to producer Elizabeth Nakano & to Doctor Peter Kuznick from the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University.

The bat recordings were made for us by artist & composer Geneva Skeen. Learn more about Geneva’s work.

Produced by John Fecile, original score by Renzo Gorrio, sound design by Pat Mesiti-Miller, artwork by Teo Ducot

Season 12 – Episode 32

The Ridiculous, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

Everyone has experienced the way deadlines can act as a double-edged sword: on the one hand, they force us to get stuff done; but on the other, they often push us to wait until the last minute to get to work, so that we do that work in a poorly executed, slapdash rush. Scientists call that latter dynamic “the deadline effect,” and my guest today has taken a field-tested dive into how to manage it, so that you can get the advantages of deadlines, without suffering from their downsides.
His name is Chrisopther Cox, and he’s the author of The Deadline Effect: How to Work Like It’s the Last Minute—Before the Last Minute. We begin our conversation with how Chris’s experience as a magazine editor got him interested in deadlines and what studies have shown as to both their benefits and their pitfalls. Chris then unpacks ways to harness the former towards greater productivity in both your personal and professional life, including creating interim checkpoints, knowing how to set reasonable due dates, planning left to right rather than right to left, and using what he calls “soft opens with teeth.” Along the way, Chris explains these principles using a bunch of real world case studies, from the system a chef uses to open multiple Michelin 3-star restaurants to how the Telluride ski resort gets ready to open for the season. We end our conversation with what you can start doing today to take advantage of the power of deadlines in your own life.

The Art of Manliness

#728: Improve Your Productivity With the Power of Deadlines

Today we're speaking to Lebanese researcher and writer Joey Ayoub about last weeks deadly gun battle that broke out in Beirut, Lebanon.


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134. Looking into the Beirut Gun Battle

collab with: https://soundcloud.com/breakmaster-cylinder <3 
for: https://stbbforever.com

STBB [ Ghost ] 774 - Breakmaster Cylinder x JoaGymshoe - non entry

French intellectual Thierry Meyssan discusses Ukraine and the end of the unipolar moment. Since the collapse of the USSR, Washington has tried to prevent any power from challenging it, including the European Union. The EU is a good market but must never become a political power. The Ukraine conflict is being used to pauperize and economically collapse Europe, which will happen. Russia is militarily stronger than the U.S. For over a decade there has been a growing movement of Nazism or Banderism in Ukraine which now makes up one-third of the armed forces. He explains why false flag operations are so successful and that perhaps next time such an operation will be used against Russia or China or anyone and everyone! He lived in Libya and Syria and worked with both governments and explains how the Pentagon uses Daesh as its private army and is doing the same with the Neo-Nazis in Ukraine. He doesn't think the U.S. will go to war with Russia or China as they are too formidable, and that rather, they are at war against the Europeans as Washington wants to be the empire for Europe. They will continue false flag attacks against their own allies. He discusses the oligarchic system in the U.S. and the Straussian neocons. The world is dividing in two blocs which will no longer communicate with each other, and the West is the smaller bloc.

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About Thierry Meyssan
Thierry Meyssan shocked the world with the first "9/11 Truth" books, his L'Effroyable Imposture in March 2002 (9/11: The Big Lie), and a sequel, Pentagate. In the 1990's he was national secretary of a French radical party which held seats in the government. He is the founder of the Voltaire Network, a major alternative international press agency. In 2005, he organized the Axis for Peace, a congress of international leaders and writers opposing illegal wars. In 2007, he was forced into exile and settled in the Middle East, where he has witnessed and participated in history in the making. He has been called France's most controversial public figure, and is the only Western observer to remain on the scene in Libya and Syria during the entire conflict. In 2011 Meyssan went to Tripoli and was appointed by Gaddafi to mobilize international support against the aggression that would destroy the Libyan republic; but the NATO onslaught came too quickly, and he narrowly escaped with his life. He is currently consultant to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government, and has been close to heads of state like Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

*Podcast intro music is from the song "The Queens Jig" by "Musicke & Mirth" from their album "Music for Two Lyra Viols": http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)

Thierry Meyssan: The Goal of the Ukraine Conflict is to Economically Collapse Europe #288

This week on the Global Research News Hour, we are taking a look at the sudden threat to food security suddenly propping up everywhere, and whether or not there is an attempt to recreate food systems the way the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns was the start of restructuring the business sector via The Great Reset. In our first half hour, an expert with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Monika Tothova, offers up specifics surrounding the role of the pandemic and the Russian war in Ukraine in accelerating the situation and about actions they recommend to nations to decrease the misery in the coming year. In our second half hour, we are joined by OFF-Guardian editor and journalist Kit Knightly, who articulates the numerous other ways by which the food security situation is deliberately being made worse and the individuals, corporations and systems that could stand to gain from the outcome.