Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life Podcast By Erik Fisher cover art

Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life

Beyond the To-Do List - Productivity for Work and Life

By: Erik Fisher
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Beyond the To-Do List is a productivity podcast hosted by Erik Fisher. Each week, Erik sits down with experts, authors, and creatives to explore time management, habits, focus, deep work, work-life balance, mindset, and what it actually means to live and work well.

The show has featured guests like David Allen, James Clear, Cal Newport, Gretchen Rubin, Seth Godin, and Daniel Pink — covering everything from getting things done and morning routines to burnout, procrastination, creativity, digital minimalism, goal setting, and intentional living.

The premise is simple: productivity isn't the point. It's the means to a whole life.

© © 2023 Erik Fisher Career Success Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Personal Development Personal Success
Episodes
  • Creativity and Play: A Fuller Life Beyond Productivity with Rachael Renae

    Creativity and Play: A Fuller Life Beyond Productivity with Rachael Renae
    Sep 14 2026
    Creativity, play, and intentional living are at the center of this conversation with Rachael Renae, artist and author of Prioritize Play.Rachael Renae is an artist, workshop facilitator, and self-described "creativity hype gal" based in Detroit. After more than a decade as an engineer and years running a handmade stationery business, she now helps people reconnect with their creativity through play — through workshops, one-on-one coaching, and a creative community called The Juice Box. Prioritize Play is her debut book, and she narrates the audiobook herself.In this conversation, we cover:Play over productivity: Why Rachael reframes creativity as "play" — low-stakes, no expectations — and why that shift reaches the people who insist they're "not creative."The monetization trap: What running a handmade stationery business taught her about pouring all your creative energy into a side hustle, and why a passion doesn't have to become a job to be worth your time.Create more than you consume: How endless inspiration-gathering — Pinterest boards, research, getting ready to get ready — masquerades as creativity, and why imperfect action beats it every time.Structure that supports, not restricts: Using "scaffolding" instead of rigid schedules, loosening the rules so the habit actually sticks, and working with your brain — ADHD included — instead of against it.Self-trust and "salad bar energy": Building confidence in your own decisions by trying things and setting them aside — plus permission to be "mid interested" in something without having to master it.If you've hit every success marker and still feel depleted — or you've quietly decided you're "not creative" — this is an invitation to put play back on your plate. Rachael's challenge is small and immediate: make a seasonal play list, or take the free hour a canceled meeting hands you and spend it on something that fills you instead of the next chore. Grab Prioritize Play wherever you get your books — and if you liked her voice here, she reads the audiobook herself.Connect with Rachael:Prioritize Play (book)rachaelrenae.comInstagram: @rachaelrenaeChaotic Creatives podcastConnect with Erik:LinkedInThreadsFacebookBlueskyThis Podcast is Powered By:Brain.fm - 20% off your first monthDescriptDescript 101CastmagicEcammPodpageRodecaster ProGrab Shortcasts from Beyond The To-Do List by Blinkist:http://beyondthetodolist.com/blinkistSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    56 mins
  • Self-Awareness: The Birkman Method and Working With How You're Wired with Lisa Marker-Robbins

    Self-Awareness: The Birkman Method and Working With How You're Wired with Lisa Marker-Robbins
    Sep 7 2026
    Self-awareness, mindset, and personal productivity are at the center of this conversation with Lisa Marker-Robbins, a Master Certified Birkman Method coach — one of the roughly 3% of consultants at that level.Lisa has taken more than 4,000 people through the Birkman assessment over 30-plus years. She runs an executive coaching practice for adults and founded Flourish Coaching, where she helps 15–25-year-olds find career clarity before they spend years and tuition on the wrong path. She started out as a teacher, and the through-line — helping people understand how they're built — never left.In this conversation, we cover:What Birkman measures that most assessments miss: Not just how you behave, but what you need from other people, and how you react when those needs go unmet.The four colors and nine components: Why your "usual," your "needs," and your "stress" scores tell three different stories about the same person.Working with your wiring instead of against it: Why, as Lisa puts it, you shouldn't "should" on yourself — and what to build instead.Introversion, assertiveness, and restlessness: Erik's own scores become the worked example, and what they explain about energy, recharging, and a renewed ADHD diagnosis.Career clarity as a productivity tool: How knowing your wiring narrows an overwhelming field of options down to a first step that actually fits.This one's for anyone tired of trying to fix themselves into someone they're not — and curious how they're actually wired, so they can work, lead, and live more like themselves. Self-awareness isn't the finish line here; it's the thing that makes the rest of your life work better. Find Lisa's work below.Connect with Lisa:Executive Coaching — LisaMarkerRobbins.comFlourish Coaching — Career Clarity for 15–25-year-oldsLinkedInConnect with Erik:LinkedInThreadsFacebookThis Podcast is Powered By:Brain.fm - 20% off your first monthDescriptDescript 101CastmagicEcammPodpageRodecaster ProGrab Shortcasts from Beyond The To-Do List by Blinkist:http://beyondthetodolist.com/blinkistSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    58 mins
  • Mindset: Why Fixing Your Habits Won't Fix Your Self-Trust with Lester Clowes

    Mindset: Why Fixing Your Habits Won't Fix Your Self-Trust with Lester Clowes
    Aug 17 2026

    Self-trust and identity are at the center of this conversation with Lester Clowes, executive coach and author of Stop Lying to Yourself.

    Lester Clowes spent a decade running a school system before building a coaching practice around the exact motivational content he used to be hooked on himself. His new book, Stop Lying to Yourself, examines the quiet lies capable, organized people tell themselves right up until nothing changes.

    In this conversation, we cover:

    • Promise debt: How years of small broken commitments to yourself compound into a negative balance — and why that balance, not your system, is usually the real problem.
    • Act as if, not fake it till you make it: The difference between performing someone else's identity and architecting your own, and why one has an off-ramp and the other doesn't.
    • Self-trust vs. self-reputation: Why the feeling and the record are two different things — and why feelings always snap back to match the record, no matter how good the pep talk was.
    • The desert: The unglamorous middle phase between enthusiasm and momentum where most people quit, and why learning to act independent of your feelings is the whole game.
    • Seasons, not sweeping change: How naming what season you're in — and giving it a boundary — restores the agency that an over-engineered system can't.

    If you've built the system and you're still, four years later, the same person — just better at being busy — this conversation is for you. It pairs well with Erik's solo episode on agency versus the illusion of control if you want the fuller framework behind why control was never really the goal.

    Connect with Lester:

    • defytheaverage.com

    Connect with Erik:

    • LinkedIn
    • Threads
    • Facebook
    • Bluesky

    This Podcast is Powered By:

    • Brain.fm - 20% off your first month
    • Descript
    • Descript 101
    • Castmagic
    • Ecamm
    • Podpage
    • Rodecaster Pro

    Grab Shortcasts from Beyond The To-Do List by Blinkist:

    http://beyondthetodolist.com/blinkist

    See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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    47 mins
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