As I round the corner into this ninth year of podcasting, after over 700 episodes today, I’m announcing a pause for both shows.
Listen in to hear what factors helped me reach this decision across time, money, energy, depressing industry articles, the pace of both shows’ growth, and mix of additional business factors that make this an important moment to pause and regroup. You might also appreciate the even deeper dive with my longtime friend (and first coach) Adrian Klaphaak in Pivot episode 360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision and Dissolving Related Doubts.
“Expectations are the enemy to the creative process. Sometimes you have to let go of the known to see the unknown.”
Today I’m speaking with James McCrae, an author, poet, and meme artist based in Austin, Texas. He is the founder of 🌻 Sunflower Club, a global school and community dedicated to conscious creativity.
Good decision-making is not about omniscience or clairvoyance—it's more about resilience, according to today’s guest, decision engineer Michelle Florendo. “Decision-making is harder than ever before, and it's not your fault,” Michelle says. “People feel like they ‘should just know’ how to decide.”
Today we’re talking about a framework more helpful than pro-con lists, tuning into your head, heart and gut; why the quality of your decision is not equal to the outcome—did good or bad things happen; keeping a decision journal to evaluate the quality of your decisions regardless of the outcome; and how to drop the guilt of “bad” past outcomes.
What happens when you make a big decision but still have lingering doubt, fear, and even despair? How do you know when a “download” from the universe is worth following, and what does test-driving a decision look like? What happens on the other side or when a pivot is taking far longer than planned?
We’re unpacking all these topics in today’s twelfth and final (for now) conversation for the Pivot x Career Pathfinder series with Adrian Klaphaak.
“You can’t give what you don’t have.” That’s just one of the powerful lessons that Nataly Kogan learned the hard way seven years ago, after suffering a debilitating phase of burnout. As a former refugee from the former Soviet Union, she began her American journey in the projects and on welfare, then going on to build an impressive career as a finance and tech executive and serial entrepreneur over the next 25 years. Until she crashed at thirty-eight years old and needed to find a new way of moving forward.
As part of her healing process, Nataly began to paint when she was 40 by signing up for a painting retreat in Tuscony (that turned out to be for semi-professional watercolorists), and now her paintings are on the cover of her books—front and center as part of her bold self-expression.
I almost fainted when today’s guest, Kevin Kelly, said yes to be on the Pivot Podcast. Kind, brilliant and the king of techno-literacy, Kevin is one of the great technologists, futurists, and thinkers of our time.
Meditation has re-wired my brain. I don’t walk on clouds every day, but I do feel like a new person three years in to maintaining a daily practice (and 120 days in to a consecutive streak). I know, I know. One shouldn’t promote meditation as a miracle cure. But if you have an active mind, one that veers toward anxiety and stress like me, take a listen to this week’s Pivot Podcast.
“The effort to try to feel happy is often precisely the thing that makes us miserable. It is our constant efforts to eliminate the negative — insecurity, uncertainty, failure, or sadness — that causes us to feel so insecure, anxious, uncertain, or unhappy.” —Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote
“To have something (a finished recording, a business, or millions of dollars) is the means, not the end. To be something (a good singer, a skilled entrepreneur, or just plain happy) is the real point. When you sign up to run a marathon, you don’t want a taxi to take you to the finish line.” —Derek Sivers, Ask Me Anything
Get your geek on! This week’s Pivot Podcast is all about robots, artificial intelligence, and automation. How can we become more agile in an economy that is increasingly transformed by these areas? What skills and mindset will best position us for success in the future? How can you become a “robot whisperer” like today’s guest, professor Tom Guarriello? I could talk with Tom about all this for hours, but we contained ourself (for now!) in keeping this week’s episode to one jam-packed 60-minute conversation.
