Vidya By Pia & Bart

We are still in the South of Spain (on the last morning before flying out), and we are tackling a topic which somehow has come up quite a lot this week: Ageing. (There are a lot of retired people in this part of Spain). We discuss the differences between chronological, mental and biological age. We talk about the benefits of hanging out with people that are half a generation older and half a generation younger than oneself. We discuss the concept of settling point: The point in one’s life when one stops learning, being curious and adventurous. We briefly discuss longevity, lifespan and healthspan. We argue that you are never too old to grow as a human being, whether mentally, emotionally or spiritually.

We are in the South of Spain, on our twice-per-year deep work days to prepare for the second half of the year client work. Quite appropriate then to discuss deep work. The why, what, how and so what of deep work. We discuss why it’s important to be deliberate about having rituals and routines around deep work, we define deep work as opposed to shallow work, we discuss how to do it: Plan for it (annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily), how to deal with distractions, the importance of specific time and space, chunking, intentions, agenda building and we give examples of what listeners can do as next steps after listening to this podcast episode.

We are in Stockholm, just after midsummer, when the light is always on. It has been a while since the last recording and we start by discussing what gets in the way of our podcasting: Health, bricks & mortar - very much level-1 stuff. Which then gets us into the topic of this episode: Fears. We remind ourselves of the three lower levels of the Barrett model and how we can use the model to provide a framework for fears. We make the distinction between rational and irrational fears. We discuss the role of the nervous system in fear. What happens when we allow fears to hold us back from our personal development? What is the connection between fear, authenticity, and purpose? How do the body, mind and emotions interact in fear? How can we learn from fear? How can we deal with fear, the thoughts behind the fears and the emotions, the physical sensations in the body? As usual, to illustrate this fascinating topic, we discuss lots of personal examples.

The birth of this episode is quite different. We created it and then put it to rest for a number of months. Then I recently listened to it again when I had one of those rare days of hardly any meetings and lots of time to reflect and create. I suppose I had the space to be open and to follow my curiosity. There was a reason we didn’t release the episode at the beginning of the year. You tell us what that reason might be. In the end, the topic Openness is too relevant and important not to engage in and not to have dialogues about. Especially now. If you are familiar with the Big Five personality theory, you also know that Openness is one of the five traits. It indicates how open-minded a person is. High level of openness to experience indicates you enjoy trying new things. You are imaginative, curious, and open-minded. Where do you sit on the scale of openness?

I (Bart) have never felt like I learned so much from recording an episode of our podcast than this one. Nature is something that is very close to Pia’s heart and she has a lot more opportunity to be in nature than most people that live in cities. For me it’s different, city parks are normally the closest I get to nature. In this dialogue, we touch on the importance of nature to us, human beings, for physical and mental health reasons, personal growth, and even leadership and organisational growth. There is a lot in this episode, we hope you enjoy it as much as we did recording it.

This episode is quite different to what you are used to: Rather than in our normal mega-professional studio environment (just kidding), we find ourselves recording this in a beach restaurant, with lots of background noises. We discuss quality of life. Why is it important? What does it mean to us? For us, health and freedom is important, spontaneity, not too much stress, being able to decide who we spend time with, spending time on what we want to spend time on, choosing experiences we enjoy, really to make our passion our work, and making our home what we want it to be. We discuss the opportunities the pandemic potentially may have given us to enhance our quality of life, potentially without taking away anything else. We discuss that some enhancements may cost some money, and other opportunities to increase our quality of life doesn't have to cost anything. So, quality of life is also related to our relationship with money, and in particular our relationship to spending money. Quality of life is its own

Our Christmas present to you, a podcast episode on Life Design. This is a process we use with some of our clients and we discuss in general terms how we go about this ourselves and with others, and the benefits of having a structured approach to reflecting on our lives and setting intentions. A naturally appropriate time to do this is around the end of the year and the start of the new year. What are the highs and lows of 2021, in different categories of our lives, and what could be some intentions, actions or routines we may set for these categories for 2022. We can also do this for a longer period, say 5 years, or shorter periods such as quarters of the year, months or even weeks. We give some tips on how to go about this in the coming few weeks. Enjoy!

It feels a little like we are back in March-2020, when we advised our clients to “hope for the best, prepare for the worst”. Except we didn’t know what we meant by “the worst”. Certainly not that we would, almost two years later, be back at what feels like another chapter in the ongoing story of this global pandemic. Today we discuss resilience. How can we train ourselves, our bodies and minds, to be more physically, mentally and emotionally resilient? This, we argue, is a super power that is very useful in a world full of covid-induced setbacks and disappointments.

In this early morning recording of this episode, we talk about sleep. We start from the technology, the biohacking / tracking tools we use, Whoop (Pia) and Oura (Bart), and how we use these tools in optimising sleep. We discuss some of the basics of sleep for example the four main aspects of sleep: Quality, quantity, continuity and regularity and the main stages of sleep: Deep, REM and light sleep. We continue discussing other matters such as the value (and potential risks) of daytime napping, the value of each of the main sleep stages on body and mind repair, and the importance of knowing your chronotype: Are you a lark, a night owl or somewhere in the middle? Do you need an alarm clock to wake up in the morning? Then you are probably not a lark! We talk about the stages of life and how this impacts sleep, for example the sleep of teenagers, parents of very young children and older people. All sleep deprivation in our lives, throughout our lives, has an effect on our health, in particular later in life. H

It has been a while since the last episode, not sure what happened to the time! In this episode, we discuss organisational culture. A good episode to listen to before you listen to this episode is Episode 3, of May 2019, in which we talked about personal values. We define culture as those values and behaviours that are important to a team, group, company or country. What is important to us who work and/or live here? Culture happens anyway, whether you are aware of it or not. We talk about the importance of leadership, and the relation between leadership and culture, and the importance of walking the talk. We also touch on the importance of the company founder(s) in culture, especially when they are still around in executive roles, and for senior leaders to explicitly work with culture. Next is the importance of culture in international expansion, and how for example a European country’s corporate culture might meet US corporate culture and how to get the best out of both. We discuss the importance of auth

Following on from our last episode on coaching, we are discussing a closely related topic, motivation, with one of our clients, Max Barclay. We discuss the importance of motivation in managing and leading people, and what’s important in motivating people. We talk about: Knowing the people you motivate because it’s personal and situational, generational differences, the limited role of reward in motivation, the connection between personal values and motivation, how to use feedback in motivating people, and the importance of motivation in happiness at work. We touch on our favourite book on the subject, Drive by Daniel Pink, and the three drivers of motivation: Autonomy (leave them to it, don’t micromanage), mastery (allow people to get really good at what they are good at already) and purpose (support them to find some meaning bigger than themselves).

It’s the early morning on Good (Long) Friday and we are talking about coaching. What do we talk about when we talk about coaching? Of course, it’s our profession. It’s also a communication or leadership style. And it’s a methodology, a series of behaviours. It’s a personal value, and it’s a way of being in the world. We discuss some of the most essential coaching behaviours: It’s about showing curiosity and openness, being present in the here and now, having empathy with the person you are coaching (which means real interest in the whole person, not just the subject matter), and we discuss some tools such as using silence. We leave listeners with some ideas on what to experiment with the next time they are in a coaching conversation.

Back together in Stockholm after a few months on zoom, we discuss the topic of feedback. Before that even, Pia explains how in her calendar 8 minutes equals one hour, but that aside. Back to feedback, we believe sometimes people think this is a boring topic in leadership development, “oh no not feedback!”, and we also believe that people are not really giving enough feedback in practice. And that it doesn’t have to be difficult, and it can actually be fun. We kick it off by discussing the barriers to giving feedback. Why is it not happening? Then we discuss some other things, here is a selection: Timing of feedback (the earlier the better). The best set and setting for giving feedback. Focus on strengths (getting even better at something) versus fixing weaknesses. Talk from yourself and not others (your feelings, your thoughts, your observations). Feedback is continuous, not an annual event. Be very specific, also about positive feedback eg ask “what was good about it?”. When discussing improvements, coach,

It’s January 2021, some of us are back in full lockdown, and we are talking about Pia’s most used phone app: Calendar. She addresses some of these questions: Why is this her most used app? Why is planning so important to her? What does planning for spontaneity mean to her? Other questions that we address in this episode: What are some of the neuroscientific and psychological aspects of how we use calendars? How can we be more deliberate about how we use calendars? What is, or should be, the impact of pandemic/working from home on how we use calendars? Some practical aspects of using the calendar we talk about: How to use the calendar for all aspects of your life and work, not just for meetings? How to use the calendar to enhance joy and calm in your life? What can we do in our corporate cultures, systems and team working practices to enhance the most effective use of calendar? How to plan well in advance for space for “no meetings”, solitude and deep work? How to deliberately plan for breaks in between meet

We are back online, back on zoom, to record this 2-part podcast on curiosity. We discuss the many aspects of curiosity. Why is it important to be curious? What can we be curious about? How does curiosity work? How does it feel to be curious? How can we invoke curiosity? What stops our curiosity? What is the purpose of curiosity? What is needed for us to be able to be curious? We roughly identify three categories of curiosity: Curiosity into the self, curiosity into others, and curiosity into things. We discuss different ways to develop curiosity and to learn more about curiosity, the relation between curiosity and the personality trait of openness, the importance of curiosity in leadership, how curiosity is an antidote to polarisation and how the inner journey of inquiry can help us get in touch with the essence of our true nature. Our discussion takes us into many examples, ranging from discussions with cardiologists, Rumi poetry, why we practice yoga, what stops puppies from learning, the metaphor of scuba

We are back online, back on zoom, to record this 2-part podcast on curiosity. We discuss the many aspects of curiosity. Why is it important to be curious? What can we be curious about? How does curiosity work? How does it feel to be curious? How can we invoke curiosity? What stops our curiosity? What is the purpose of curiosity? What is needed for us to be able to be curious? We roughly identify three categories of curiosity: Curiosity into the self, curiosity into others, and curiosity into things. We discuss different ways to develop curiosity and to learn more about curiosity, the relation between curiosity and the personality trait of openness, the importance of curiosity in leadership, how curiosity is an antidote to polarisation and how the inner journey of inquiry can help us get in touch with the essence of our true nature. Our discussion takes us into many examples, ranging from discussions with cardiologists, Rumi poetry, why we practice yoga, what stops puppies from learning, the metaphor of scuba

We recorded this 2-part podcast in a very special, happy place for us, a tiny village in southern Spain, and we discuss happiness. What are the important elements of happiness for us? We touch on nature, slowness, timelessness, lack of a need to perform, presence, mindfulness, space, absence of self-doubt, the somatic experience of emotions (positive and negative), purpose, personal values, truth, freedom, pleasure, positive relationships, flow states, physical and mental wellbeing, success, attention, lightness, play and the relative joy of carrots. We discuss some formulas for happiness, for example the relationship between happiness and success, or the relationship between happiness and expectations of life. We also discuss some distinctions for example between happiness and pleasure, happiness and desire, and happiness and purpose and we dig a little deeper into the purpose of negative emotions. We discuss some important practical tips, we suggest to try for example meditation, gratitude writing, refl

We recorded this 2-part podcast in a very special, happy place for us, a tiny village in southern Spain, and we discuss happiness. What are the important elements of happiness for us? We touch on nature, slowness, timelessness, lack of a need to perform, presence, mindfulness, space, absence of self-doubt, the somatic experience of emotions (positive and negative), purpose, personal values, truth, freedom, pleasure, positive relationships, flow states, physical and mental wellbeing, success, attention, lightness, play and the relative joy of carrots. We discuss some formulas for happiness, for example the relationship between happiness and success, or the relationship between happiness and expectations of life. We also discuss some distinctions for example between happiness and pleasure, happiness and desire, and happiness and purpose and we dig a little deeper into the purpose of negative emotions. We discuss some important practical tips, we suggest to try for example meditation, gratitude writing, refl

It has been a little while since you have heard from us, we took a break. This episode is a follow-up on an episode we recorded in May 2019: Episode 4, titled Decompression. We suggest you listen to that episode if you didn't already. We go deeper into this topic, and discuss the importance of taking a break from a high intensity life, and also bring it into the context of the current COVID situation. We distinguish between taking a break and taking a holiday, the two are not the same. We discuss the reasons why we should take breaks, different ways of taking a break, for example taking a break from the clock or planning for spontaneity, the different levels of taking breaks, e.g. daily, weekly, monthly, annually, and we give some examples of our own experiences in terms the need for taking breaks and what we do to take breaks. We give some hints and tips on how listeners can take some actions, in particular to reflect on the summer break and decide what it means for the planning of future breaks.

In this episode, the 20th episode to date, we discuss trust. What do we mean by trust, how does it relate to sensemaking and news (and fake news)? We discuss for example how the Swedish COVID situation is reported in international media, and the distinction between truth and truthfulness in journalism. We discuss what makes people trustworthy, and the importance of knowing yourself and authenticity in trustworthiness. We also discuss one other important aspect of trust, which is “not lying” and what we can learn about trust from children and teenagers. We introduce the trust equation (David Maister), and we define the different elements of the equation: the trust equation argues that we should maximise credibility (which comes from experience and subject matter expertise), reliability (quality and timeliness, and managing expectations truthfully) and intimacy (authentic connection, openness and vulnerability), whilst minimising self-orientation (people with low levels of orientation on self and high levels