Podcasts That Make Productivity Fun✍️

A curation of podcast episodes to help you do less of the boring stuff and more of the fun stuff in your creative projects and beyond

In partnership with

Podcast artwork for Deep Questions with Cal Newport, Creative Pep Talk, Peripheral Thinking, You Are Not A Frog, and Undo – How history's outliers got stuff done

Curator:

👉🏽Mark Steadman (he/him)

Why this theme?

👉🏽 I love digging into ways we can be more efficient, reduce duplication, and stop wasting time. But so much of the advice in this area is linked to hustle culture or assumes you have a staff like Beyoncé.

I'm interested in the anticapitalist take on productivity, or at least in ways we can do less of the boring stuff and more of the stuff we were born to do.

Podcast Picks

Deep Questions with Cal Newport podcast cover art

Cal is the author of a couple of books about slowing down, and I like the feel he brings to this show. It feels much more like a late-night radio phone-in than a productivity podcast, which is completely by design.

In this episode, he shares five protocols you can bring in that will help you focus – stuff you can actually start doing now, not just questions to noodle over. He has a great mix of the practical and the conversational.

Creative Pep Talk podcast cover art

As a serial creator who is never stuck for an idea, I love this episode because it helps me think about where my focus really should go. Andy shares three tips based on his own experience with stress from a neurodivergent perspective (things like the 80/20 rule or getting out of the all-or-nothing mindset I often find myself in, where things are either absolutely working or absolutely broken).

Peripheral Thinking podcast cover art

The conversations on Peripheral Thinking vary from hallucinogenic mushrooms to fixing the climate crisis.

This one is a great introduction into flow, which is the state we get in when we're in the zone. Athletes understand it well, but so do coders and artists... it's those moments when you're unaware of time passing because you're just so focused. But what I like specifically is that there's a hint into how we can engineer that sense of flow, even for stuff we're not just not feeling right now.

You Are Not A Frog podcast cover art

This is a show for doctors and people with really stressful jobs for whom self-care is super important but could mean saying no to someone who really needs help.

So I love this episode as it's a way to understand what stress looks like, and how to spot if you might be on the way to burning out due to too much on your plate.

Undo – How history's outliers got stuff done podcast cover art

When we have a mountain of things we HAVE to do, coupled with the stuff we WANT to do, we end up doing the stuff that screams the loudest (the squeaky wheel gets the grease). The Eisenhower Matrix is a way for us to categorize what we need to do now, what we can do later, what someone else should be doing instead of us, and what – if we're honest – is never actually going to get done.

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Community

🌎Brittani Ard's You Probably Think This Story's About You is launching new episodes. Brittani is also launching a national tour next month.

🌎The second season of Jeff Daniels' audio-only memoir, Alive and Well Enough Continues is out. This new season is a continuation that mixes storytelling, original music, and performance.

🌎Season two of the fiction podcast Windfall is now out. It picks up three months after the disastrous events of Contact Day, where massive warships appeared in the sky and destroyed one of the city’s four primary towers.

💖In Podcast The Newsletter, Lauren Passell recommends Ramit Sethi’s Money For Couples. She writes: “Ramit Sethi interviews couples about their finances (down to every single penny they are spending) but gets to the heart of who they are and helps them understand each other and get through differences that both are way up front and hiding in the background.”

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Podcast news from Podnews

  • Ausha has added two updates to its Podcast Search Optimisation control panel - keyword rankings and competitor benchmarking. The new tools are available to all podcasters, whether they’re hosted with Ausha or not.

  • The iHeartPodcast Awards has announced its nominations. The award ceremony will be held on Mar 10 at SXSW. Three Icon Awards are also being made, to Sarah Spain, Dan Taberski and Daniel Alarcón. You can vote now for the Podcast of the Year.

  • The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) has partnered with Tape Syncers United (TSU) to integrate TSU’s tape sync rate recommendations into AIR’s comprehensive rate guide.

Spotlight

Relationscapes podcast cover art

Exploring the ever-changing terrain of relationships, gender, and sexuality.

Award-winning journalist Blair Hodges talks to the best thinkers about who we are and how we connect with each other.