Nathan Loutit is one of the key people at the Centre for Design Innovation at Swinburne University in Melbourne’s Hawthorn. As it turns out Swinburne is the university where I completed my undergraduate degree, and I have to say that Nathan is working on some slightly cooler things that I ever did.

Nathan has a background as an industrial designer, and co-founded is own design consultancy before he had even left university. He finds himself now back inside a university, this time with the task of harnessing the richness of minds and ideas that are contained within a campus, and enabling this to be used to develop amazing solutions for industry.

In his daily work Nathan gets to work with 3D printers, creating products using the latest in material technology, and on problems that help their clients break into new markets and manufacture products locally.

This is the type of work that is going to have a dramatic impact on the world we are creating, and doing it with purpose and meaning, and with awareness of the breadth of its consequences, will be key to the type of impact it has.

Nathan is passionate about his work, and gives some great insights into a world most of us hear only snippets about.

If you enjoyed listening to Nathan you may also enjoy listening to Gus Hervey on being intelligently optimistic about the future.

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I confess that I do not know that much about the music industry. I grew up thinking that any non-Christian music was evil, as it could influence me in ways I could not understand. As a result my taste were quite limited as a kid, and I restricted myself from understanding it in any great depth.

Today I think that the very ability of music to tap into things I don’t understand is what it is all about. My tastes have broadened since I was a kid, and listening to music often enables me to articulate and express an emotion I don’t have the words for. It seems to go even deeper than language, and enables me to feel what I need to feel.

During a recent episode, Patrick Jones posited that the food a society eats impacts the art that it makes. When we eat food that is produced through cruelty, is poor quality, and is made without love, we can’t help but represent this through blandness and commercialisation in our art.

I think it is an interesting idea, and I wonder if that is true how it might translate to other ways we go about things, and other art forms. For example with music, whether the relationships that enable music to enter our lives have an impact on the music that ends up being created. If the record label is solely motivated by profit, does this impact how the artist creates music? If the artist simply wants to be famous, does this shape how they perform on stage?

My uninformed guess is that it probably does; that people can’t help but have their everyday experience with other people, and their primary motivations, shape the work they create.

If that is the case, then the organisation that Jaddan Comerford created and leads is putting itself in a position that will enable people to experience music with the purest of influence. People are put at the centre of all aspect of the business: whether it be the people who work at the organisation, the artists they represent, and the people who listen and experience what the artists create.

The Unified Music Group includes artists management, live music, recorded music and merchandise, and has recently launched a grant to support emerging artists in all fields.

Jaddan is one of the leading figures in Australia’s music industry, and we have a conversation that is filled with humility and groundedness. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

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I think I got pretty lucky when working at PwC. It was around the time that I had started thinking about changing careers and getting into urban place-making. An opportunity came up to project manage a church building in transition in Melbourne’s north-east, and the Partner in charge of me at the time gave me the all-clear to work on it.

My guest for this week, Ruby Lee, had a very different experience with one of her employers. She was starting on her own quest of understanding how to align her values with her work. One of the ways she was doing this was through a blog, which quickly caught the eye of her employer. While they praised her for what she had written, Ruby was still asked to stop writing as it could reflect poorly on the organisation.

I think historically this has been the experience for many people as they have experimented with different ideas while working full-time. Organisations have feared that in allowing people to have a side-business, or write their own views, this would distract people from their employed job, and open the organisation up to reputational damage.

Today Ruby has found herself working in HR and recruitment at [Cogent](https://cogent.co/), the place where I work part-time as well. We both have side-businesses that are encouraged and seen as good for us and the organisation.

Ruby’s side-hustle is called [The Careers Emporium](https://www.thecareersemporium.com/), an on-line community where she helps people take ownership of their careers and empowers them with insider knowledge. She is passionate about helping those who are wondering what they are doing at work each day, those who are looking for something new, and those who want to excel within their current organisation.

And while she is building a reputation in helping individuals navigate their work life, I think she is also helping to change the conversation within organisations about thinking about the whole person of their employees.

The changing nature of work is one of my favourite topics. I want to see workplaces where at the end of the day people feel more well than they did at the start of the day; where more of our differences, whether they be temporal, locational, or environmental, are embraced.

Ruby is one of the people who is helping individuals and organisations change the way they think about work. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation, and I hope you do too.

If you enjoyed listening to Ruby you may also enjoy listening to Dr Jason Fox on redesigning work, Nicole Avery on creating a side-hustle, or Carmen Hawker on mixing passions with work.

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I have started taking cold showers. I know I am not alone in this – it seems to be quite the personal development thing at the moment. This is an experience I can’t say I particularly enjoy, even after doing it for more than a year. But I get so much out of it – not just the ongoing benefits to my mental and physical health, but also lessons for life through observing myself as I do this.

For example, just before I hope under the ice cold water, without fail I start telling myself that I don’t want to do this. That it will be too painful. That I can’t handle it.

And then I do it anyway. The truth is I can handle it. It is 180 seconds of discomfort, and I can stay with that discomfort for as long as I need to. From this I remember that while there are going to be moments of my day I know will be uncomfortable, I have the power and agency to to choose to enter into them, and the will to stay with that feeling until the moment passes.

After talking with my guest for this week, Penny Locaso, one of the lingering thoughts I have is the importance of being comfortable with discomfort. Penny tells the amazing story of a keynote she gave recently about authentic leadership. As a woman who is leading the way in challenging the status quo of what it means to work, and how to be well and happy in today’s context, giving a heartfelt and inspiring talk on the topic probably would have come easily to her.

But she wanted to do more than talk. She wanted to show what she meant; to put herself out there in such a way that it would make it a little bit easier for those who were listening to find their courage to act. How to do this? Why not deliver the speech in her bathers.

Through this act of courage, and of showing what it means to be comfortable in the discomfort of life, Penny not only inspired her audience to enter into their own discomfort, but created a viral buzz that is continuing to inspire people today.

Penny is about two years into a shift from being a corporate executive at Shell to working for herself. In that time she has going from realising the misalignment of her work and life with her values, to creating a way of living full of purpose and connection, and incremental steps towards happiness.

Penny is energetic and full of insights, and I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation.

If you enjoyed listening to Penny you may also enjoy listening to Rachel Service on finding happiness in life and work, or Jo Le on her journey from the corporate world to working for herself.

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We arrive late. Later than we thought. It is dark outside as we open the front door. As we walk in we immediately feel warm and welcome. There is a fire going. The room is invitingly lit. And Meg, who has arranged for us to meet and talk with Patrick, comes over and gives us a big hug.

Dinner is on the table, and as we sit down we are treated to an explanation of where all the food has come from. Much of it has been grown on their property; all of it has its origins known.

Over dinner we discuss many things: their planned removal of fridge and dishwasher; their way of enabling more recently introduced species of flora and fauna to flourish alongside and longer standing species; their ways of living with less money and material things to enable more connection and wellbeing in their lives.

We learn about Patrick’s days of playing practical jokes in the CBD of Melbourne: climbing and sleeping in trees; holding up signs to make people think. We learn of guerrilla tactics for reclaiming vacant, bare, underused land to create thriving permaculture oases. We hear Patrick’s thoughts on how our understanding of origins and purpose can determine our actions and trajectory.

The overwhelming feeling is of connection and openness.

That night we stay on site in a tiny house with no more or less than is needed to live. And the next morning we are treated to breakfast, a tour of the property, and an expedition foraging for mushrooms in the nearby forest.

My weekend in Daylesford to Meg and Patrick’s place was the first time I had been able to stay with one of my guests for an extended period of time. It gave me an excellent insight into the way they live, and why they choose to live that way. I was able to see the many benefits it brought to their life, and the freedom it enabled them to experience. I have made some changes in my own life to live in a more frugal way and to decouple enjoyment and fun from money, and I was inspired to take this further after this experience.

Patrick Jones and his family live in a fascinating way – one he describes as one response to the context we find ourselves living in now. A context where we seem to see technology as our saviour and the earth as our foe. Where things like slowing down, reusing what we have, and connecting to the land are inferior to doing more, buying more, and putting more layers between us and the dirt.

I am inspired by Patrick and his family’s response, and my time with them left me with much to ponder. I hope in listening to our conversation you are left with the same feeling.

Patrick and Meg’s tiny house (aka the Permie Love Shack) is available for rent through Airbnb.

You can read more about them on their blog.

Here is a link to their book, The Art of Free Travel, about their experience travelling around Australia on bike for 400 days.

And if you enjoyed listening to this conversation, you may also enjoy listening to Samuel Alexander on his response to living in our current context, Karen Ellis and reuse and repair, Matt Wicking on what context we are living in, or Cameron Elliot on crowdsourcing wisdom.

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I say goodbye to Eddie, giving him a hug before I leave. The thoughts I have as we part ways are ones of gratitude. I feel grateful for having had the chance to chat with him one-on-one. To get a deeper insight into who he is, into how he is, and the things he is pondering. To have had some fascinating new ideas seeded inside me.

I feel grateful that he has had the courage to follow an inclination and curiosity about time. To explore his own temporal patterns and metaphors. To go deep on a single question – one he intends to envelop himself in for ten years – so that he can bring forward a truth, an insight into reality, that will enable us all to live lives of a different rhythm, with greater connection to the beings and objects around us.

I am so conscious of how often I refer to time after I have been with Eddie. And from this awareness, and a new vocabulary he equips me with, I am able to better understand my own temporal preferences, the larger time rhythms of my own life, and to start to think how I can design my time as I continue to live.

In many ways Eddie is just getting started. Already helping liberate many from the time prison they did not know they were in, there are some exciting things to come. I am intrigued by how ideas like encouraging businesses to be temporally mindful and inclusive of their people and their preferences will play out for Eddie, Melbourne and our broader society.

I thoroughly enjoyed my conversation with Eddie, and I hope you enjoy listening too.

You can find out more about Eddie through following him on Instagram, Facebook or twitter, or listening to his alter-ego Dr Time talk at event near you.

And if you enjoyed listening to Eddie, you may also enjoy listening to Samuel Alexander what it means to flourish in the here now, or Matt Wicking on understanding and being mindful of our context.

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My dad used to preach at church. I remember a story he told during one of his sermons about a construction site he would drive past on his way to work. He recalled the fanfare announcing the development, the massive hole that was dug, and then the months and months of nothing. Two years later the site was up for sale: the developer had run out of money shortly after digging the hole. You have to count the cost, my dad said, with the decisions you make. You have to know if you can afford the price. Otherwise you will be left with a big hole and nowhere to hide.

The story has stuck with me for 30 years, and I often recall it when I am making decisions. I’m sure most of us can remember stories we were told at different points in our life and the impact they had on us then and now. Story telling is central to our experience of being humans. It enables us learn, it helps us connect and build trust, and it affects us to action.

What I struggle to recall is story telling within the more formal places that I have worked. Of course this podcast is all about story telling. And within my side business we often share stories. But from my experience within larger organisations I cannot think of one example. What I do remember is actively being encouraged to turn my emotions off, to not show my personal side, to be who I am suppose to be for the client rather than the real me.

Gabrielle Dolan started working with organisations to help leaders share their stories with authenticity and purpose more than 13 years ago (i.e. before it was sexy). She is an author, speaker, teacher and coach who saw the impact of story telling in her job at NAB and decided that the ripple effect of people sharing their stories was something she wanted to be a big part of shaping.

In speaking with Gabrielle I was inspired to be deliberate in my story telling at work. I hope you also get inspired, and enjoy listening to our conversation.

If you enjoyed listening to Gabrielle you may also enjoy listening to Dr Jason Fox on redesigning work, or Mykel Dixon on brining art and creativity to the workplace.

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How much change do you think you can handle? If it were possible for our species to experience a planet wide shift in consciousness, would we accept or resist this? Would the uncertainty of what the change would mean be too much for us, or would we put that fear aside and believe that it would be for our own good, and the good of our planet?

I have a suspicion that there is so much more available to us as individuals, as a species, and as an ecosystem, than we experience right now. In general our ability to incorporate new ideas and ways of being is incremental and slow, even though that seems to be accelerating over our lifetimes.

But while the speed of life is ever-increasing, and the development of new technologies and enhancements to our lives relentless, so much of the change they bring still seems to be harmful to this planet we live on, and brings disconnection rather than bliss.

I have a suspicion that we may come to a point where crisis, such as a climate crisis, or a mental health crisis, makes it much easier for us to consider the option and awaken us to the possibility of completely different ways of organising, being, and understanding.

Perhaps this is not quite the subtle disruption that is the theme of most episodes of this podcast, but it is the work of my guest for this week to help wake up humans from the confines of their current limited perception.

Jeffrey Slater calls himself an ‘innerpreneur’: a term he coined to describe the work he does in helping people transform themselves from the inside, and then allowing this to manifest externally through their businesses.

He is an author, speaker, and thought-leader who has shared stages with many a famous person and has his own success in business. He has also followed a spiritual path of meditation, self-help and inner transformation. But what he found during this process was that there was still something missing. Something that only seemed to open up to him through the assistance of the shamanic and consciousness opening plants.

According to Jeffrey there isn’t a billionaire alive that has not gone through an ayahuasca ceremony – a process of purging and opening that is millennia old. A process he thinks more of us need to go through to break through the manipulations and facades we are fed and believe as part of a daily existence.

This episode will not be for everyone, but I encourage you to keep an open mind and see how what he says sits with you. After we finished our recording Jeffrey also mentioned that ayahuasca is something that is not to be taken lightly – that the type of Sharman to approach is somebody who has done this kind of thing 1000 times before.

I personally have not gone through such a process, and cannot vouch for it either way. What I am fascinated by though is what is available to us as humans, and what we are deliberately or unconsciously blocking from coming into our way of being. I have had glimpses in the past as to what is available for us if we are willing to do the work, and to let go of the things around us the prop us up. I think the possibilities are profound and within reach, and I am curious about the different ways of accessing them.

Jeffrey speaks openly and freely about his ideas, and I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Some other things we talk about in this episode include:
– this article on the way in which evolution actually selects for us to not see reality as it is
– Jeffery’s book

If you enjoyed listening the Jeffery, you may also enjoy listening to Al Jeffery on connection with ourselves and each other, or Emeli Paulo on authenticity.

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I drive through the Melbourne suburb of Coburg, and into the street of my guest for this week. I am looking for number 3, and see number 5. Instinctively I look to the right of number 5 and see a house that does not fit with what I imagine my guest would make his home.

I don’t know that much about him. I have seen him talk at The Weekly Service. I have read an amazing essay he wrote about two years of living in a shed he built from reclaimed materials. But from what I do know, the straight lines, the manicured garden, and the clean facade of the house I am looking at, all jar with my impression of him. I find the number of this house…number 7. No wonder.

Looking to the left I see a place that seems to fit much better. Vegetable planter box out on the nature strip. Lots of edible, interlaced plants and trees in the front garden. A place I feel comfortable approaching, as if it is not pretending to be anything it isn’t, and will allow me to be as I am.

I knock and my guest opens the door with a warm, understated expectancy. And while he is the guest for the podcast, I am the guest in his home, and he invites me in and has a cup of tea already brewing, made from lemon verbena picked fresh from the garden.

We move out the back and as I walk through the house I can see there is a richness of activity that happens here – piano, books, sewing machine. Through to the back yard, where we have our conversation, chooks, vegetables, fruit and compost toilet are all contained within this standard sized plot.

Among the many things that make up Samuel Alexander, being an academic, a writer, an activist, founder of an ecovillage, father and partner are some of them. The impression of him that lingered most after our conversation though was his empathy for our planet and his fellow humans, his willingness to challenge what it means to flourish as a human, and the alignment of what he talks and writes about with the way he lives.

Here are some links to some of the things we talked about:

• A Simpler Way documentary
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• Samuel’s essay about living in a shed

If you enjoy listening to Samuel, you may also be interested in listening to Maria Cameron on simple, community living in an urban neighbourhood.

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I am writing the letter ‘S’ as part of the title on my school project poster about our chooks. I am in grade 3, and am trying something different in my lettering.

I muck it up – I don’t like how it looks, and mum sits with me to try and fix it. Whatever we do just makes it look worse. I hate it.

That anecdote sums up the way I used to feel about giving new things a go. I always felt like I had one chance to get it right, even if I had never done it before. Gettings this right was more important to me that giving them a go.

It is thanks to people like my guest for this week that I have had my eyes opened to the joy, wonder, and possibility of following my curiosity, experimenting, and being open to whatever the outcomes may be.

Barry Spencer started doing this about 10 years ago with alternative type designs for the Latin alphabet.

Initially wanting to understand and follow the ‘right’ way to create new type designs, he then started experimenting with ‘wrong’ ways of doing this. He has taken this to the point where many of his designs are beautiful, cryptic alphabets with letters than are no longer readily recognisable as the shape which inspired them.

10 years and over 100 alphabets later, this experiment has led him to teaching positions, running workshops, and completing a PhD.

The reactions he has received have varied from disgust to joy, and thankfully he keeps pushing the boundaries so that we can have our minds open to what we might be able to create, and what we give meaning to and why.

Barry is open in his sharing about his journey and work, and I hope you enjoy listening to our conversation.

You can see some of Barry’s work through his Instagram or Twitter feeds, or his website.

And if you enjoyed listening to Barry you may also like listening to Kate Challis on the relationship between design and wellbeing, or Max Olijnyk on being an author, writing and Good Copy.

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