Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life

Self-awareness, mindset, and personal productivity are at the center of this conversation with Lisa Marker-Robbins, a Master Certified Birkman Method coach — one of the roughly 3% of consultants at that level.
Lisa has taken more than 4,000 people through the Birkman assessment over 30-plus years. She runs an executive coaching practice for adults and founded Flourish Coaching, where she helps 15–25-year-olds find career clarity before they spend years and tuition on the wrong path. She started out as a teacher, and the through-line — helping people understand how they're built — never left.
In this conversation, we cover:
What Birkman measures that most assessments miss: Not just how you behave, but what you need from other people, and how you react when those needs go unmet.
The four colors and nine components: Why your "usual," your "needs," and your "stress" scores tell three different stories about the same person.
Working with your wiring instead of against it: Why, as Lisa puts it, you shouldn't "should" on yourself — and what to build instead.
Introversion, assertiveness, and restlessness: Erik's own scores become the worked example, and what they explain about energy, recharging, and a renewed ADHD diagnosis.
Career clarity as a productivity tool: How knowing your wiring narrows an overwhelming field of options down to a first step that actually fits.
This one's for anyone tired of trying to fix themselves into someone they're not — and curious how they're actually wired, so they can work, lead, and live more like themselves. Self-awareness isn't the finish line here; it's the thing that makes the rest of your life work better. Find Lisa's work below.
Connect with Lisa:
Executive Coaching — LisaMarkerRobbins.com
Flourish Coaching — Career Clarity for 15–25-year-olds
LinkedIn
Connect with Erik:
LinkedIn
Threads
Facebook
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Self-trust and identity are at the center of this conversation with Lester Clowes, executive coach and author of Stop Lying to Yourself.
Lester Clowes spent a decade running a school system before building a coaching practice around the exact motivational content he used to be hooked on himself. His new book, Stop Lying to Yourself, examines the quiet lies capable, organized people tell themselves right up until nothing changes.
In this conversation, we cover:
Promise debt: How years of small broken commitments to yourself compound into a negative balance — and why that balance, not your system, is usually the real problem.
Act as if, not fake it till you make it: The difference between performing someone else's identity and architecting your own, and why one has an off-ramp and the other doesn't.
Self-trust vs. self-reputation: Why the feeling and the record are two different things — and why feelings always snap back to match the record, no matter how good the pep talk was.
The desert: The unglamorous middle phase between enthusiasm and momentum where most people quit, and why learning to act independent of your feelings is the whole game.
Seasons, not sweeping change: How naming what season you're in — and giving it a boundary — restores the agency that an over-engineered system can't.
If you've built the system and you're still, four years later, the same person — just better at being busy — this conversation is for you. It pairs well with Erik's solo episode on agency versus the illusion of control if you want the fuller framework behind why control was never really the goal.
Connect with Lester:
defytheaverage.com
Connect with Erik:
LinkedIn
Threads
Facebook
Bluesky
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Burnout, energy management, and decision fatigue are at the center of this conversation with Liane Davey, organizational psychologist and the "teamwork doctor."
Liane Davey is a New York Times bestselling author and CEO advisor with 25+ years researching what makes teams work. Her latest book, Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work, argues the number we've been tracking wrong all along isn't workload — it's the mental and emotional weight underneath it. She previously joined the show to talk conflict; this time she's back with the framework underneath the exhaustion itself.
In this conversation, we cover:
The Thought Load Equation: cognitive demands plus emotional burden, divided by your energy reserves — and why managers can see your workload but not this.
AI and the Hidden Cost: why offloading tasks to AI hasn't lightened the load — it's shifted the hard part to judgment and discernment, and added new anxieties of its own.
Output vs. Outcomes: the trap of chasing productivity (did I produce?) instead of effectiveness (did I move the needle?) — and why AI makes this trap worse, not better.
Three To-Do Lists, Not One: Liane's system for separating your quest, helping others, and side quests — and matching each to the right hours of your day.
Emotions Aren't the Problem, the Story Is: the "dragon and treasure" framework for catching an emotional spiral before it becomes a 2 a.m. spiral, plus why rest alone doesn't cure burnout.
This one's for anyone who's done everything the productivity playbook told them to do and still feels like they're drowning. Liane's central point lands right at this show's: winning back your thinking time and energy isn't the finish line — it's what lets you show up for the rest of your life. Get the book and take the free thought load assessment at thoughtload.com.
Related episode: Ep 261 — Conflict: Productive Conflict and How to Make Disagreement Work for You — Liane's first appearance on the show, on fighting well at work.
Connect with Liane Davey:
LinkedIn
Website
Thoughtload Assessment
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Creativity, rest, and mindset are at the center of this conversation with Natalie Nixon, author of The Creativity Leap and Move, Think, Rest.
Natalie Nixon has spent two decades as a creativity strategist advising Fortune 500 companies on innovation strategy — work she calls being a "creative whisperer to the C-Suite." She's the founder of Figure 8 Thinking, and her two books make one connected argument: creativity means toggling between wonder and rigor, and rest isn't procrastination — it's fuel for better thinking.
In this conversation, we cover:
Rest that looks like nothing: Why Natalie assumed her best thinking — staring out the window, taking a slow walk — was procrastination, and what finally convinced her it wasn't.
Wonder and rigor, not "creative types": The real definition of creativity as a toggle everyone already uses, and why "I'm not a creative person" misses the point entirely.
The 90-second daydream break: The neuroscience of the default mode network, and how a short, timed pause can unstick a problem that's had you stuck for hours.
What her father taught her about rest: A weekly Saturday ritual that was equal parts self-care and discipline — and why the work still got done anyway.
Flourishing over productive: Why the right question about AI isn't "how does this make us more productive," but "how does this help us flourish."

If your calendar rewards constant output and treats stillness like a red flag, this one's for you.
Connect with Natalie:
Figure 8 Thinking

Connect with Erik:
LinkedIn
Threads
Facebook
Bluesky

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Energy management, decision making, and knowing when to walk away are at the center of this conversation with Mark Malkoff, author of Love Johnny Carson.
Mark Malkoff is a comedian, filmmaker, and interviewer who spent eight years and nearly 400 interviews building The Carson Podcast. That work became his first book, Love Johnny Carson, written with biographer David Ritz and a USA Today bestseller. He's back on the show fourteen years after his first appearance — back when he was the guy making viral creative stunt videos.
In this conversation, we cover:
Guarding your energy: Why Carson stayed alone all day and showed up minutes before showtime — treating energy as the one thing worth protecting — and what that means for anyone who has to perform without burning out.
Saying no to protect the work: He turned down film roles and refused to chase trends, because staying number one meant declining almost everything that wasn't the show.
Making other people look good: Carson's rule was that the guest gets the laugh, and the same instinct drove how fiercely he protected and publicly thanked his staff.
The cost nobody edits out: An honest look at the reviews he couldn't let go of, the drinking, and four marriages — and why Mark won't hold Carson up as a life to copy wholesale.
Walking away, and the power of asking: Why Carson left at the top to go actually live, plus Mark's own craft — the long game, the homework, and the curiosity behind nearly 400 impossible interviews.
If you make things — if you write, record, build, or perform — this one's for you. Carson is that rare figure who's both a model and a cautionary tale, and the line Mark keeps returning to is the one worth carrying out the door: follow the curiosity, and don't mistake the work for the point of the work. Grab Love Johnny Carson wherever you buy books, and start on The Carson Podcast for the interviews underneath it.
Connect with Mark:
Website
The Carson Podcast
Connect with Erik:
LinkedIn
Threads
Facebook
Bluesky
This Podcast is Powered By:
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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.