Show Notes
Quickly find exactly the right interview for your needs with this helpful index. If we haven't met before, hey! I'm Zack, an award-winning Hollywood editor and documentary director turned writer, speaker, and career coach who is fascinated by humans, especially the oddball, introverted, and often neurodivergent "creatives" like us who see the world just a little differently. If you're new to the podcast, I've provided the best of the best from my interview archive to get you started on the right learning path. And if you're looking to solve a specific problem, head over to zackarnold.com/episodes to search our entire library. Required Listening Oliver Burkeman | Why Optimization Isn’t the Answer (and How to Make the Most of Our Four Thousand Weeks On Earth) Amie McNee | Why the World Needs Your Art (Even When It's On Fire) James Clear | How Tiny Changes Can Create Remarkable Results Cal Newport | Becoming a ‘Digital Minimalist’ Greg McKeown | The Disciplined Pursuit of Less Jay Papasan | How to Accomplish Your ‘One Thing’ Every Day Gretchen Rubin | Using ‘The Four Tendencies’ to Better Understand Yourself (and Others) The Future of Creativity Jay Clouse | The Intersection of Legacy Hollywood and Next-Gen Content Creators Kylee Peña | Creativity in The Age of AI OpenAI’s Chad Nelson | How Artificial Intelligence Could Shape the Future of Creativity and Collaboration (and How We Can Survive) Navigate Your Career Christina Wallace | How to Future-Proof Your Creative Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger Than Your Résumé Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar | How to Pursue Fulfilling Work and Find Your ‘Calling’ Annie Duke | How to Know (Without a Doubt) If It’s Time to Quit Mauro Guillén | Redefining Your Career Path in a Post Generational Society Philippe Danielides | How to Know What You Actually Want (and Find Support to Make It Happen) Build Your Network Chase Jarvis | Building Your Network of ‘A-Gamers,’ Designing the Life You Want, and Fulfilling Your ‘Creative Calling’ Selena Soo | How to Build 'Rich Relationships' (Especially For Introverts) Carole Kirschner | How to Leave an Impression, Build Your Network, & Get Hired Troy Takaki, ACE | Networking (the Right Way), Mentorship, and Connecting with ‘Experts’ Scott Davis | [CASE STUDY] Why People Don’t Respond to Your Cold Outreach (and How to Get a Response) Do Your Best Creative Work Joey Cofone | What Creativity Is, How It Works, and the Laws to Learning It Scott Barry Kaufman | How We are “Wired to Create”, What It Means to Be a “Creative”, and How We Can Leverage Our Unique Gifts Allison Sweet Grant | On Vulnerability and the Courageous Act of Creating From a Place of Truth Nir Eyal | How to Become ‘Indistractable’ David Allen | The Zen-like Art of ‘Getting Things Done’ Cal Newport | FOCUS: The Superpower of the 21st Century Take Care of Yourself Dr. Edison de Mello | Understanding the Difference Between Integrative & Traditional Medicine Dr. Azure Grant | Optimizing Sleep, Productivity, & Creativity Using Ultradian Rhythms and Self-Tracking Shawn Stevenson | How to Sleep Smarter Dr. John Ratey | How Regular Movement Makes You Smarter Dr. Joan Vernikos | How Being Sedentary Is Damaging You (According to NASA) Be Inspired! Dr. David Fajgenbaum | What Five Near-Death Experiences Can Teach Us About Living Bevin Farrand | From Setback to Comeback: Finding Strength in the Hardest Moments Shane Burcaw | Rewiring Your Brain to Be Happier Sandy Zimmerman, ANW | How to Overcome Doubting Yourself When You Know You’re Meant For More Jimmy Choi, ANW | Using Fitness to Overcome Parkinson’s and Become a Ninja
More from The Zack Arnold Podcast
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Before you press play, take the Vibe quiz on Adam's website to discover your connection style and find the gaps in your portfolio of relationships.
When information is everywhere and costs nothing, what actually makes any of it worth having? Nick Milo is the founder of the wildly popular program and YouTube channel Linking Your Thinking and a former student of mine who is now a leading voice in the world of personal knowledge management. In this conversation, Nick and I talk about why information on its own has never been less valuable, and why the real value comes from your ability to connect ideas and take action on them. We discuss where AI can reduce the bad friction in our lives, but also where handing over your thinking to the robots can lead to what Nick calls "cognitive surrender." You'll also get a first look (or listen) at the mind-bending Obsidian knowledge vault we built for The Connection Conference, so you can see what linked ideas actually look like in practice. And we may even talk you out of letting the robots clean your closet. If you're buried in podcasts, articles, and AI summaries you never do anything with, or if you've started letting the chatbots do your thinking because it's just easier, this conversation will show you that the value of ideas is in the struggle to turn them into action.
How do you make time to read more books and build a reading habit that lasts in a world full of distractions? Alex Wieckowski, better known online as Alex & Books, has been writing and posting about the importance of reading books to his more than 1 million followers across social media since 2017. He has read over 750 books and he's currently writing the 21st century version of Mortimer Adler's classic text How to Read a Book. In today's conversation, Alex and I talk about why reading real books matters more than ever in the age of AI. We discuss the four different types of reading and how better understanding these different approaches can help you build a more consistent reading habit. We'll help you choose what to read, reclaim the time to read it, and remember what you read long after you've closed the book. If you've got a stack of books you keep meaning to get to, or it's been so long since you read a book you don't even know where to start, Alex and I will show you that Reading is a skill anyone can develop and improve.
We seldom write for ourselves because we instead want our stories to touch others. Yet we’re often terrified to put our work (and ourselves!) out into the world. How can we walk the line between wanting to make things that matter while also making sure other people know we made these things for them? I discuss this (and so much more), with Allison Sweet Grant, a former psychiatric nurse practitioner turned author whose is the author of the novel I Am the Cage and the new memoir Lump: A Memoir in Ineloquent Reflections, which candidly explores her experience with breast cancer. In this conversation, we talked about the power of the written word to help create emotional connection, why she chose to write about what cancer actually feels like (rather than her “journey”), and how carefully chosen words can help someone feel less alone. If you're going through something hard, or trying to support someone who is, this conversation offers a different way to connect through uncertainty, pain, and shared experience.