Brian is the Chief Philosopher of Philosophers Notes, a website and business I discovered about a year ago and think is absolutely terrific. Brian’s role as Chief Philosopher is to study and share the the world’s greatest wisdom. He has picked the hundred best, wisest, smartest books, he has articulated the thousand best ideas in those books and from those he has extracted the ten core principles behind the real works of wisdom that guide us and shape is in our 21st century.

What makes this sweeter still is that Brian is also a brilliant entrepreneur. He founded an organization called E-Teams that grew, was massively successful and sold it in 2000 to The Active Network then came back and founded another brilliant online company called Zaadz which is now known as Gaia.com and which is also terrific – it’s like a Facebook or LinkedIn for people who want to save the world and change the world.

This is a really juicy call, full of ideas and in it we talk about:

• How you know if you’re ‘following your bliss” (and what Carlos Castaneda has to say on the point)
• One of the deepest choices of life: do you step forward into growth or back into safety
• A brilliant mapping system to help you keep track of your path
• And what Brian learned from Jim Loehr about projecting his shadow
• The importance of ritual

And of course, a whole lot more.

You can find Brian at www.PhilosophersNotes.com and follow him on Twitter at @_Brian_Johnson. (And if you do so, you’ll see he’s just announced he’s getting married. Woo hoo!)

Listen to my interview with Brian Johnson

One of the giants in the self-development world, Leo Babauta. His blog Zen Habits is read by over 150,000 people, and with good reason. It’s practical, wise and committed to helping people create a better life for themselves through simple productivity. He’s also the author of The Power of Less, a best-selling book which helps declutter your life on every possible level.

I’m thrilled to say Leo has  contributed a piece to my new book,  Do More Great Work.

In this interview Leo and I talk about:

• How he balanced two jobs (and a family with six children) to launch Zen Habits
• Leo’s core planning tool – and it’s about having fun
• Why starting small is the most powerful way for getting big
• The secret to leaving behind a bad habit and taking up a more positive, new one.

You can follow Leo on Twitter at @zen_habits and read his work on his blog.

Listen to my interview with Leo Babauta

I like napkins. I spend time in coffee shops and inevitably end up showing ideas and sharing models on napkins. The subtitle of the first version of Do More Great Work was “napkin-size solutions to stop the busywork”. So I was delighted to speak to Dan Roam, author of the deservedly popular book The Back of a Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures. Dan – who’s just released a workbook version called Unfolding the Napkin – has done a masterful job at explaining just how to make your ideas – your Great Work ideas – powerful, focused and useful.

In this interview we get into:

• Why we must abandon our “endless bullet points and endless paragraphs” if we want our ideas to stick
• Why simplicity isn’t a goal in and of itself – but clarity is
• How drawing a circle – and another and another – can help untangle any problem (Dan explains just how)
• And why we need to stop the meeting madness!

You can follow Dan at Digital Roam and on his blog.

Listen to my interview with Dan Roam

I remember years ago Tom Peters raging on about the importance of design. And, as usual with Tom, he was right on the money.  Because content and knowledge is now ubiquitous and free, design becomes absolutely critical to adding value and creating something of worth.  It’s no longer content and then some token thought about design.  The design is a significant part of the content.

That’s why I’m so delighted to have spoken to John McWade. For decades he’s been at the forefront of design in publishing.  He currently publishes the brilliant Before & After magazine, which on a regular basis shares practical tips on graphic design. In doing so, he’s drawing on experience that started when he was the very first user of Aldus PageMaker – a program that grew up to become Adobe – and he founded the first desktop publishing company.

In our conversation we cover

• the genius of Apple and their design (and it’s not just their cool gadgets)
• how John knows when a piece of work is complete
• the starting point for any project – design-led or otherwise – and the big question you need to ask
• a fundamental principle of design which you can use in planning everyday life, not just a magazine cover
• John’s three word mantra for brilliant design – and for that matter, Great Work

You can connect with John at www.BAMagazine.com

The interviews are all between 25 and 30 minutes long.
You can either download them here as mp3s, or go to iTunes, type in “Great Work Interviews” and you’ll see them all there.

Listen to my interview with John McWade

The interviews are all between 25 and 30 minutes long.
You can either download them here as mp3s, or go to iTunes, type in “Great Work Interviews” and you’ll see them all there.

When I’m wandering a bookstore, generally poking my nose into either the business or self-help sections, I find I put books into one of three categories

1. Books I wouldn’t have wanted to write

2. Books I couldn’t have written, even if I’d wanted to

3. Books I really really really wish I’d written myself.

The third category isn’t that big.  There’s some Seth Godin, lots of Peter Block, and maybe this one and this one and this one.  These are the books that somehow help me figure out what I’ve always believed, somehow crystalize my own wisdom into something tangible … and more tangibly and more beautifully and more simply that I could have done myself.

Bill Jensen’sThe Simplicity Survival Handbook is truly one of those books, which is why he was one of the very first poeple I asked to interview for this Great Work Interview series.  It’s full of practical, smart and effective approaches to getting to the heart of what really matters in work today.

=> Listen to or download the interview here

What I didn’t expect from the interview – and which made all the sweeter – was to learn of Bill’s passion about design, and he tells some marvellous and moving stories about how design and his experience in a hospital helped shaped the path he now walks.

But it’s not just stories.  In our interview we talk about the two critical skills you need these days, why 1440 is such an important number, and a bunch of other intriguing things connected to Great Work.

I’m very proud of this interview, not least because I want more people to know about Bill’s work. I hope you enjoy it.