I commute in Los Angeles. Since I started listening to podcasts on my drive, the long rides have become a lot easier, and I am inspired and smarter and more knowledgable. I highly recommend using podcasts as a tool to expand your horizons.
Here are my favorite podcasts.
Oddly for a senior DevOps guy, my #1 is not technical at all. One podcast above all others serves to inspire me and help me move forward in my career:
Accidental Creative by Todd Henry. His aim is to assist the working creative professional be productive and organized. His audience is the corporate "create on demand" class: designers, marketers, writers. As a DevOps guy I find his work refreshing, it helps me open up my brain, to relax and focus my whole being on solving mysterious code or server problems.
Each short (ten minute) podcast has a clear idea. He then briefly and directly supports that idea, often by interviewing someone. Recently there was an episode on doing
"deep work." By dedicating a few hours at a time, we can have great ideas that we can flesh out during the normal work week. That is, in contrast to the traditional work style of trying to make progress by herding chickens, one creates a
vision then works towards it.
This is similar to John Cleese's theory:
creativity is a shy turtle. Your creativity is shy, so if you create a reliable "safe haven" for it, it might poke its head out and share something awesome with you. This sounds exactly like the "deep work" idea of setting aside reliable quiet time to work on larger ideas.
