Serious Business

Happy New Year! Toni and Mike ring in 2018 with a lively discussion on how to turn your expectations into action.

Instead of blindly setting unattainable resolutions for yourself, take time to really think about the past year. What did you learn? What can you take from the past year to deepen, grow steady, and then create change? It's a subtly different way of thinking about setting goals for the new year.

What will 2018 look like for you?

• Raptitude: Go Deeper, Not Wider
• James Smith: The truth behind why I rip so many traditional diets…
• Todoist

Toni and Mike discuss the value of critical thinking skills and how to measure success before getting to the heart of this week's episode: getting started, showing up (even when you don't want to), and envisioning your own version of the finish line.

• Power Causes Brain Damage
• What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?

You don't have to like it, you just have to do it. This week, we touch on the upcoming holidays and the sensation of mandatory fun and enforced renewal. 

Happy Thanksgiving! Team cake!

​This week, Toni and Mike take on the insidious Impostor Complex, and it's evil twin, Inferiority Complex. BUT ARE WE QUALIFIED?

Show Notes:

• Failing at Normal: An ADHD Success Story - Jessica McCabe
• How to ADHD - Jessica McCabe
• BUCKY RUNS OVER A FUCKING CAR
• Tanya Geislr 
• 12 Lies of the Impostor Complex
• Jumanji 2 
• I Don't Wanna Grow Up (Tom Waits)

This week, we turn to beauty, joy, and delight. It's a celebration of things that make us happy, the little dopamine hits and attention resets necessary to thrive in today's chaotic environment. +

• Outlander
• National Parks Webcams
• Bureau of Land Management Instagram
• New Star Wars trailer
• The Flash
• Neil Gaiman
• Mike and Neil Gaiman
• Norse Mythology
• Good Omens
• Terry Pratchett
• Octavia Butler
• Mary Oliver
• David Sedaris
• Unsplash
• Vellum app
• View from the Cheap Seats
• Pixelated boat Simpsons jokes on Twitter

Yakspo! We're trying to turn our emotions from the tragedies of the week into being part of the solution (or at least not caving to the continual chaos and outrage). Turn on Do Not Disturb and stay to the end for our special tribute to the late Tom Petty.

• Yakspo!
• Delightful local coverage of Yakspo
• Temple Grandin
• Homeless Bird
• Do not disturb while driving
• FruitJuice for Mac
• Everytown for Gun Safety
• Writer John Scalzi Nails Why It's So Hard to Be Creative Under Trump
• Tom Petty's America Is The One We Want To Believe In
• Tom Petty's final interview: There was supposed to have been so much more
• Netflix Documentary - Running Down a Dream

We needed some comforting last week, so we turned our attention to fur pants and comfort-food genre media. Toni and Mike talk at length about the new series, Star Trek: Discovery, and its (frustrating) distribution model. We touch upon the value of genre, "lowbrow" media and outrage fatigue.

We might have made the Trekkies mad.

We are back for Season FOUR, and we're going back to our roots. That is: tasteless humor and occasionally insightful observations on making creativity, career, family and fun work better together.

This week, Toni and Mike catch up on what's new in their writing lives, Toni's Nested Set of Skills™, and the power of empathy in communication. We discuss reward system and getting kids to help out. Also: vengeful peanut stains and Letterman's beard.

• ​Quelf
• Buzzr
• Resistbot

It's our 50th episode! How is this possible? While we ostensibly talk about being a parent in the Internet age, balancing keeping an eye on your kids while giving them autonomy to make mistakes, we're also discussing all the tradeoffs we each have to make to stay sane.

Mike and Toni revisit classic themes of feeling overwhelmed, getting involved, and how to keep the demon dogs at bay.