The Podcast

Celebrating nearly 5 years and 199 episodes of The Podcast, and giving our recommendations for the best stories and recommendations we’ve recorded so far.

When we receive feedback, or an idea, a suggestion, we tend to become defensive. We’re sure they’re wrong and we’re right, and we stop listening. And thus we miss out on good insights. Or do we? Perhaps the real problem is the culture, people being too delicate, and so we are forced into unnecessary niceties instead of giving and receiving feedback straight?

Like every year, we’re taking this moment to reflect on 2019, review our successes and failures, set some goals (not resolutions!) for 2020, and put in motion a process to ensure it’s going to be a great year.

Exploring the idea of abolishing (or enhancing) the hierarchical structure of companies in favor of dispersing responsibilities broadly into a mesh — not based on rank, but particular skill, specialization, experience.

Getting your hands dirty to create physical objects, tinker, work with plastic, metal, and wood is fun! A more soothing hobby than doing stuff at the computer, and a better way to spend an evening than Netflix. We discuss home renovations, CNC milling, concrete casting, and industrial robots.

We got, no, we _made_ some cool new gadgets for the Fall 2019 Nozbe Reunion: Laser-cut phone stands, zero waste produce bags and hemp dish cleaner, and smog sensors.

To create Nozbe Teams, we had to grow from being a product company to being a technology company. In this episode, we’re telling the story of what technological infrastructure we’ve chosen and created for this project (and why).

In 2016, we decided to make "Nozbe for Teams". Then, we changed its name to just Nozbe 4. Ultimately, we've decided to call the new product Nozbe Teams and become, at least for a while, a two-product company. In this episode, we're winding the history back to the beginnings of this project and re-telling the story of why and how this came to be.

This wasn't supposed to be this week's show. We meant to talk about Nozbe Teams… but instead, we go on a 40 minute long crusade against… jeans and MacBooks.

Catching up after a 3-month summer break from The Podcast. Vacations, conferences, open source, webmastering, Nozbe Teams, Portland, and driving licenses.

The Podcast is on a summer break. Meanwhile, Michael started playing with code again and have just launched three new website projects. And we briefly discuss and update on Digital Minimalism and Michael's break from social media.

Live from Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Jose, California, we discuss our fresh reactions from Apple's conference. New iPadOS, the cheese grater, Shortcuts and automation, Catalyst, and SwiftUI.

Having reached his 40th birthday (and we, The Podcast, our fourth), Michael shares his best bits of wisdom: Finding what you're good at, striving for longevity, knowing when to reinvent yourself, having fun, and nurturing friendships.

Michael talks about what it's like to walk a 260km pilgrimage over a week and a half, why he and his wife did it, how it can be a great experience even for non-religious people, how to pack for it, and why northern Spain is kinda nice.

Discussing The Courage To Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Giving autonomy to live their own lives, neither prasing nor rebuking, and finding happiness in being beneficial to people around us.

The world is bad, but better. The vast majority of westerners believe the world is poorer, more violent, deadly, primitive, and awful than it actually is. This book beautifully illustrates our ignorance, updates your knowledge, and gives you tools for a fact-based worldview.

Digital Minimalism - A philosophy where you focus your technology use on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that support your values, and happily miss out on everything else. We discuss Cal Newport's new book on this very topic. Why clutter is costly, optimization is imporatant, and intentionality is satisfying. We explore reclaiming our leisure time. BREAKING NEWS: Mich...

Nozbe 4, our brand new app has a brand new icon (and logo). This week, we talk about what's wrong with ticks and circles, what makes a good logo, why we decided to go for it, and how it almost didn't happen.

What we've learned about productivity and collaboration over the years. How technology improvement allows us to get to the next level. And why starting from scratch is scary, but sometimes necessary.

Pulling back the curtain on the development process of Nozbe 4. When we started, how we progressed over time, and why we had to impose on ourselves the deadline of April 4.

Stories about competition, punishment, and rewards in the classroom and our childhoods. We continue discussing what we've learned from Punished by Rewards.

When we reward someone (an employee, a student, a child) for doing what we want them to do, we think we're doing the right thing, motivating them to keep doing it. In reality, incentives only have a shallow, immediate effect — and in the long term, we're killing the other person's intrinsic motivation, and making them resent us for being controlling.

The good, the bad, and the necessary of complaining and complainers. To keep improving, and to communicate efficiently in an organization (and to be grown up) is to understand that complaints are not usually toxic, negative, or a personal attack against you — but are simply feedback. To say to someone not to bring you problems, but only solutions is to guarantee you'll be oblivious to everything t...

How to review and plan a year together. Because Annual Review is not just for you, and for your work, but for your family and relationships too.

We started paying our employees salaries based on a formula that applies to everyone, not based on individual negotiations. Here’s why, and how.