Podcasts

Problem Solved Podcast: School Smarts: Kids Making Better Decisions

How may we help kids make better decisions? In this episode of the Problem Solved Podcast we speak with NYC elementary school […]

Problem Solved Podcast: Translating Success With Liz Elting

Most people think innovation is synonymous with invention—and that to become successful, you need to come up with a shiny new product, […]

Problem Solved Podcast: David Bornstein on how to focus on solutions not problems

At a time when our decisions divide too many of us, David Bornstein, co-founder and chief executive of the Solutions Journalism Network, […]

Problem Solved Podcast: From Start Up To Grown Up with Alisa Cohn

How do start-ups become grown ups? Star executive coach Alisa Cohn shares her sage advice from her new book! Alisa Cohn has […]

Problem Solved Podcast: CycleFit: The Science of Decision-Making & Cycling

How do top athletes make decisions to maximize their mental and physical fitness? In this latest episode of The Problem Solved Podcast, […]

Problem Solved Podcast: Fortunes & Foresight with MAC Alpha’s Mark Cooper

How do I make good investment decisions? What research questions do I need to ask? And how do top investment managers generate […]

Problem Solved Podcast: Journeying Beyond Fear with author John Hagel

How does fear impact decision-making and what can we do about it? In this latest episode of The Problem Solved Podcast, John […]

Problem Solved Podcast: Dan Pink on Regret & Decision-Making

One of the strongest negative emotions that we experience is regret – an emotion uniquely tied to how we perceive the quality […]

Safe Flight: How Pilots Are Trained In Decision-Making

At a time when airline travel is back with a vengeance and yet the news is filled with stories of flight delays […]

Label Your Emotions to Make Better Decisions

Facing a big decision is often a very emotional experience. The reason: Our big decisions have big consequences. But for many of […]

Learning from Fictional Friends To Live Our Lives Better

The truth is stranger than fiction. Lord Byron wrote those words in 1823 in a poem called “Don Juan,” which satirized the […]

Creating A Successful Go To Market Strategy For An AI Tech Company

Ali Khaloo is a first-time founder and CEO of Aren, a company that uses artificial intelligence to inspect and analyze infrastructure assets, […]

The End of Jobs? A Podcast With Workplace Expert Jeff Wald

In 2010 serial entrepreneur Jeff Wald co-founded Work Market, a software platform that enables companies to efficiently and compliantly organize, manage and […]

Problem Solved Podcast: Should A Teacher Go Back To School?

So you might expect that an educator would be in favor of more education, right? Well, not for Emma, a former Teach […]

Making A Big Bet: Should Peace First Expand Youth Programming Into the Middle East?

Eric Dawson founded Peace First in 2009 to empower young people to work toward a more just and peaceful world. He began […]

AREA Method: What to Do When Everything Becomes Unknown?

What do you do when everything becomes unknown? So much of our daily lives now seems to fall into the “unknown” category: […]

Using AREA To Be A More Interesting Person: An Interview With MIT’s Vincent Quan

How can I be a more interesting and well-rounded person? That was the question that Vincent Quan, a Policy Manager at Massachusetts […]

Got Financial Decisions to Make? Learn How to Invest In Financial Research

How may we improve our financial and investment decision-making? That’s the subject of my new book Investing In Financial Research, A Decision-Making […]

How An Emmy-Award Winning Filmmaker Used AREA to Navigate A Broken Medicaid System

Emmy Award Winning Filmmaker Jason DaSilva has been living with a severe form of multiple sclerosis for over 10 years. When his […]

Teaching Young Adults Effective Decision-Making: AREA Method 2019 Impact Report

A senior in high school in New York City, whom I’ll call Anna, wanted to go away to college but her mother, […]

The AREA Method: Rethinking the Whiteboard For Creative Problem Solving

What do you think of when you see the classic image of a group of people surrounding a blank whiteboard? Innovation? Idea […]

Introducing the Problem Solved Podcast: How A Banker Used AREA To Plan His Honeymoon

How are you using the AREA Method to make your big decisions better? This month, I’m launching the Problem Solved Podcast, containing […]

The AREA Method: Warren Buffett & Untangling Your Plate of Spaghetti

Recently I sent a copy of my book Problem Solved about decision making to Warren Buffett. He responded with a lovely note of encouragement […]

How to Help Teenagers Make Big Decisions Better

Educational experts across the spectrum bemoan the state of U.S. high schools, yet no one can agree on how to make schools […]

The AREA Method: How High School Seniors Can Make Their Big College Decision Better

Right now high school seniors everywhere are faced with a high stakes decision about which college they will go to. It’s a […]

The AREA Method: Emotions & Decision Making

How do we deal with emotions in decision making? It’s a question that came up over and again as I ran a […]

The AREA Method: What Usain Bolt Can Teach Us About Decision-Making

Could the secret to great performance lie in an uneven distribution of our time and effort? Take the case of Usain Bolt, […]

The AREA Method: A High School Boot Camp To Make Big Decisions Better

What problems are today's high-schoolers wrestling with? How do I get an academic scholarship? How do I create a budget and save […]

The AREA Method: Is Facebook The Electoral College of Social Media?

Facebook recently announced that it is adding 3,000 hires to its already almost 5,000-strong news department in order to streamline what users […]

AREA Method: David Brook’s ‘Choice Explosion’ Explains Why Good Decision-Making Is in Short Supply

David Brooks wrote an editorial this week for The New York Times about the “choice explosion” that’s taken place over the last […]

Welcome To The AREA Method

Welcome to my new website dedicated to the AREA Method. Each month in this space I will write about my work as […]

AREA Method: Kernels of Truth

Recently I read an article on the Farnam Street blog called Incentives Gone Wrong: Cobras, Severed Hands and Shea Butter that recounts […]