Life long learning
We are always searching out and stumbling across things that pique our interest and intrigue, and that challenge and expand our paradigms and world views.
These are the books, writings, podcasts and/or videos that are capturing our attention right now. They might be new releases that carry some interest or older material that has some resonance with current events or a train of thought.
We’ve also included a few perennial favourites that we keep coming back to.
New discoveries
Tiny Habits
The Small Changes That Change Everything
Tiny Habits by Dr. BJ Fogg, a behaviour scientist at Stanford University, is based on 20 years of research and Dr. Fogg’s own extensive experience.
This book digs into what the author calls “Behavior Design”, cracking the code of habit formation, and introducing a model that links behaviour to prompts, motivation and ability. The content is pragmatic, practical and immediately applicable to micro tasks, and also scaleable to how those tasks help or hinder personal and organisational effectiveness.
Essentialism
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
In Essentialism, Greg McKeown draws on experience and insight from working with the leaders of the most innovative companies in the world to show how to achieve the disciplined pursuit of less.
This isn’t just another productivity enhancement book. It’s focus isn’t about getting more done in less time. It’s not about getting less done. It’s about getting only the right things done. It’s about challenging the core assumption of ‘we can have it all’ and ‘I have to do everything’ and replacing it with the pursuit of ‘the right thing, in the right way, at the right time’.
The Dignity of Difference
How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is a British Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, prolific author and politician. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013.
The Dignity of Difference is Rabbi Sacks’ radical proposal for reconciling hatreds. Written nearly 20 years ago, it resonates now maybe louder than ever. The first major statement by a Jewish leader on the ethics of globalisation, it also marks a paradigm shift in the approach to religious coexistence. Sacks argues that we must do more than search for values common to all faiths; we must also reframe the way we see our differences.
Old favourites
The Three Marriages
Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship
In The Three Marriages, David Whyte, the bestselling author, poet and speaker asks us to think about our work, relationships and inner selves in a radically different way, by drawing them into a mutually supportive conversation.
Whyte argues that we are in deep relationships – marriages – with our work, our significant others and our selves. In building this picture, he demonstrates that it is not possible to sacrifice one marriage for any of the others without causing deep psychological damage. He looks to a different way of seeing and bringing these relationships together and invites us to examine each marriage with a fierce but affectionate eye as he shows the nonnegotiable nature at the core of each commitment.
This book has helped reshape our view of ‘work-life balance’, and how the conventional wisdom of that construct is insufficient for true contentment.
On Being
What does it mean to be human? How do we want to live? And who will we be to each other?
A Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast, hosted by Krista Tippett.
Each week brings a new discovery about the immensity of our lives, as Krista engages in authentic, wide ranging conversations with a broad spectrum of guests; poets, philosophers, theologians, physicists and deep thinkers of the issues of our times.
Each show is an hour long, and we’ve found it to be the perfect company on a walk in the park. The conversations are inevitably expansive; they create paths to new questions as much as they help answer questions that have been long forgotten.
There are dozens of conversations to explore. Some of our favourites include Brené Brown, Parker Palmer, Richard Rohr, Ocean Vuong, Fr. Greg Boyle and John O’Donohue, to name but a few.
Blink
The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist, author and speaker whose books have had a profound impact on how the information age and the knowledge economy have emerged and are maturing.
In a time when thinking – that is the processing of information and the creation of knowledge – is the primary currency, Blink is a book about how we think without thinking, about choices that seem to be made in an instant – in the blink of an eye – that actually aren’t as simple as they seem.
Blink reveals that great decision makers aren’t those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing”–filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.