Social psychologist Emily Balcetis has devoted her career to understanding how people’s perceptions of the world fuel their motivations and life goals. In this episode she goes in-depth on that wealth of research, what she’s learned from studying some of the world’s most successful people and how they set goals, and how you can get better results in life if you change the way you see the world and where you place your focus. Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York University (NYU), focused on how the motivations, emotions, needs, and goals people hold impact the basic ways people perceive, interpret, and ultimately react to information around them. She is also the author of the book Clearer, Closer, Better: How Successful People See the World, which was released in 2020. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, and nurture your lifestyle. https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/TKP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Keith Creel calls on nearly a decade of experience working with the Canadian Pacific Railway to discuss his strategies for leadership and how he’s turned the company around over five years in charge. We discuss all you need to know about the rail industry and how it affects our daily lives, what changes he sees coming in the future for the industry, how he thinks about leadership in times of change, and how Canadian Pacific secured a $27 billion deal to take over its rival, Kansas City Southern. Creel became the President and CEO of Canadian Pacific in 2017, giving him executive control of one of the largest Class I rail systems in North America, with more than 13,000 miles of rail network stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In 2021 he helped broker a deal that marked the first major merger in the railroad industry in the U.S. in two decades and created the first freight rail network linking Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. -- Want even more? Supporting Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday, our Brain Food newsletter gives you a mental edge in 5 minutes with timeless insights you can use. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. https://www.metalab.com Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. https://aeropress.com House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, and nurture your lifestyle. https://www.houseofmacadamias.com/TKP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke. We discuss the differences between founders and professional managers, how he’s scaled with Shopify, the constant fight against bureaucracy, how he thinks about innovation in a large company, and how he manages to keep his head when everyone else is losing theirs. A coder at heart who emigrated from Germany to Canada two decades ago, Lütke co-founded the e-commerce giant Shopify in Ottawa in 2006. The Globe and Mail named Lütke "CEO of the Year" in November 2014, and in May 2021 the company reported that it had more than 1.7 million businesses in approximately 175 countries using its platform. As of July 2022, Shopify is among the top 20 largest publicly traded Canadian companies by market capitalization, and the company’s total revenue for 2021 was $4.611 billion. Lütke previously appeared on Episode 41 of The Knowledge Project. -- Want even more? Supporting Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more. Every Sunday, our Brain Food newsletter gives you a mental edge in 5 minutes with timeless insights you can use. Add it to your inbox. Follow Shane on Twitter. Our Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, and nurture your lifestyle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Widely regarded as one of the top business leaders of his generation, Alan Mulally joins the show to discuss the formation of his leadership strategy and how you can apply his lessons to your life and business. On this episode Mulally breaks down the principles of how a team can work together toward a larger goal, creating a culture of love by design, the role of the leader, what happens when people opt out of working together, how to use the ideas of working together in your family life, and so much more. Mulally is perhaps best known as the former President and CEO of the Ford Motor Company, which was struggling during the late-2000s recession before Mulally used his teamwork-oriented philosophy to save the company. Under Mulally’s leadership from 2006-14, Ford was the only major car manufacturer to avoid a government bailout, and Mulally was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time. Prior to joining Ford, Mulally spent more than three decades at Boeing, where he eventually served as an Executive Vice President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Support The Knowledge Project's Sponsors: MetaLab: Helping the world’s top companies design, build, and ship amazing products and services. Aeropress: Press your perfect cup, every time. House of Macadamias: Nourish your daily routine, nurture your lifestyle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is packed with wisdom from previous guests on the art of making better decisions. We discuss the three types of decision-makers, how to control your emotions when making decisions, why it’s crucial to look at every decision differently, the processes for coming to the right decision, and how to learn from your mistakes when you get it wrong. The guests on this episode are author Ventakesh Rao (Episode 7), psychologist, author and professional poker player Maria Konnikova (Episode 89), Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison (Episode 32), cognitive-behavioral decision science author and professional poker player Annie Duke (Episode 37), and Shopify co-founder Tobi Lutke (Episode 41). Transcript: https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast-transcripts/tkp-insights-decision-making/ -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday, our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shane's guest on this episode of the show is New York Times bestselling author Neil Pasricha, who returns for his second appearance on The Knowledge Project. We discuss the importance of gratitude and how simple acts can change the way you feel, where confidence comes from, the specific routines and habits you can use to counter anxiety, the recipe for building resilience, and so much more. Pasricha is the author of seven books which collectively have sold over 2 million copies and spent over 200 weeks on bestseller lists, including The Happiness Equation and Two-Minute Mornings. His first TED talk, “The 3 A’s of Awesome,” is ranked as one of the 10 Most Inspiring of all time, and he also hosts a podcast called 3 Books, where he uncovers the 1,000 most formative books in the world. Neil previously appeared on Episode 72 of the The Knowledge Project, one of the show’s most downloaded conversations to date. His new book, Our Book of Awesome, will be released Dec. 6. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Artificial intelligence researcher and author Kenneth Stanley has argued that “as soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it.” So what should you consider when thinking about your objectives, and what will set you up for success? On this episode Stanley discusses how to set the right objectives for your life, why we’re too tied to accomplishments, what role accountability plays in our education system, the value of peer review, why transformative innovations are always counter intuitive, and so much more. Stanley is the co–author of Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, as well as the former Head of Core AI Research at Uber AI and the Open-Endedness Team Leader at OpenAI. He has also served as the Charles Millican Professor in Computer Science at University of Central Florida. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Few figures have shaped the way we think about business over the past 20 years more than Reid Hoffman. The co-founder of LinkedIn and former PayPal executive is also a wildly successful venture capitalist, author and podcaster, but he didn’t get to his place as a Silicon Valley giant without making plenty of crucial decisions. On this episode Hoffman discusses lessons learned from decades spent as a hands-on operator and investor, including what he knows about scaling that others miss, the three principles of decision making, how to constantly evolve your learning pattern, and why the best leaders adapt to the crisis at hand. Hoffman is perhaps best known for co-founding the professional networking site LinkedIn, which he started in 2003 and later sold for a reported $26.2 billion to Microsoft in 2016. Prior to founding LinkedIn, Hoffman was one of the first employees at PayPal, where he served as an executive vice president. He is also a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, an investor in Airbnb, the author of a series of successful business books including Masters of Scale, and the host of the podcast of the same name. Want to hear the entire episode with Reid Hoffman? Become a member today! Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is acclaimed psychologist and longtime Stanford University professor Barbara Tversky who calls on her nearly 50 years in the field of cognitive psychology for an in-depth discussion about how our minds work. We discuss the Nine Laws of Cognition, why action shapes thought, how the language we use changes what we think, tactics to communicate better on Zoom, why she dove into the work of Leonardo da Vinci, when to use charts and when to avoid them, the importance of perspective taking, learned knowledge vs. earned knowledge, and so much more. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

LA Rams General Manager Les Snead dives deep into some of the strategies that made the Rams a Super Bowl Champion, including assessing character, how to draft the right player, the complicated nature of trading players, how to build a team, hiring the right coach, hidden performance, why it’s so important to be relentlessly curious, and so much more. A native of football-crazed Eufaula, Alabama, Snead served as a graduate assistant at Auburn University before he spent 14 years as an NFL scout for the Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons. He became the Rams’ GM in 2012 and over time built a reputation as an executive willing to make insightful draft picks as well as blockbuster trades, including his move to draft future Hall of Famer Aaron Donald in 2014 and to trade for superstars Von Miller and Matthew Stafford on the way to winning the Super Bowl in February. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is celebrated research psychologist Gary Klein who has spent nearly 50 years studying how and why people make the decisions they do. We discuss naturalistic decision making, the crucial difference between experience and expertise, why some people stagnate and others progress, Cognitive Flexibility Theory, the role of storytelling, surprising ways to gain insights, fixation errors, cognitive biases, mental models, accelerated learning, and so much more. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest is businessman and investor Andrew Wilkinson, who has made a career out of channeling his entrepreneurial spirit, but he knows that sometimes that energy can be a double-edged sword. We discuss the lessons learned acquiring 40 companies, why he struggled to find happiness and what changed, mimetic desire, competing with venture-backed companies, hiring and firing CEOs, getting back up after million dollar mistakes, and so much more. -- Want even more? Members get early access, hand-edited transcripts, member-only episodes, and so much more. Learn more here: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our Brain Food newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices