Do work you love. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But the reality can be quite different. Whether you're just starting out or simply ready to head in a new direction, you're going to need some help turning your natural skills into success-seeking missiles of radness. On hand is Gavin Strange, a creative working by night under the name of JamFactory and by day at Aardman Animations - the Academy Award-winning studio behind Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world.

Talking to people about your designs might seem like a basic skill, but it can be difficult to do well. In many cases, how you communicate with stakeholders, clients, and other non-designers may be more important than the designs themselves. Because if you can't get their support, your work will never see the light of day - no matter how good it is. This practical guide focuses on principles, tactics, and actionable methods for presenting your designs.

Northampton. The center of England. Twelve extraordinary characters transport you through 6,000 years of astonishing history. As Alan Moore’s place-writing masterpiece reaches its 25th anniversary, New Perspectives brings this expansive work to life through twelve immersive audio journeys.

Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious - even liberating - audiobook, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The Design of Everyday Things shows that good, usable design is possible. The rules are simple: make things visible, exploit natural relationships that couple function and control, and make intelligent use of constraints.

Based on more than 40 interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.

Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and learned enough in 30+ years in Silicon Valley about leadership, design, startups, Apple, Google, decision-making, mentorship, devastating failure and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopedia.

Everyone needs to love and be loved - even men. But to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving. In The Will to Change, bell hooks gets to the heart of the matter and shows men how to express the emotions that are a fundamental part of who they are - whatever their age, marital status, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.

One morning in 2011, Libby DeLana stepped outside her New England home for a walk. She did the same thing the next day and the next. It became a daily habit that has culminated in her walking over 25,000 miles - the equivalent of the Earth's circumference. In Do Walk, Libby shares the transformative nature of this simple yet powerful practice. She reveals how walking each day provides the time and space to reconnect with the world around us, process thoughts, improve our physical wellbeing and unlock creativity.

Why do some products capture our attention, while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? This audiobook introduces listeners to the "Hooked Model", a four-step process companies use to build customer habits. Through consecutive cycles through the hook, successful products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back repeatedly - without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

In Mastery, Robert Greene's fifth book, he mines the biographies of great historical figures for clues about gaining control over our own lives and destinies. Picking up where The 48 Laws of Power left off, Greene culls years of research and original interviews to blend historical anecdote and psychological insight, distilling the universal ingredients of the world's masters.

User experience doesn’t happen on a screen; it happens in the mind, and the experience is multidimensional and multisensory. This practical book will help you uncover critical insights about how your customers think so you can create products or services with an exceptional experience. Corporate leaders, marketers, product owners, and designers will learn how cognitive processes from different brain regions form what we perceive as a singular experience. Author John Whalen shows you how anyone on your team can conduct "contextual interviews" to unlock insights.

This practical guide explains how you can apply key principles in psychology to build products and experiences that are more intuitive and human-centered. Author Jon Yablonski deconstructs familiar apps and experiences to provide clear examples of how UX designers can build experiences that adapt to how users perceive and process digital interfaces.

Filled with secrets from a therapist's toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith’s expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself.

Erik Wahl, a visual artist, speaker, and entrepreneur, helps us unite the yin and yang of creativity - the dynamic new ideas with the dogged effort. He shows why we won't get far if we rely on the spark without the grind or the grind without the spark. What the world really needs are the creators who can hold the two in balance. This audiobook offers surprising insights and practical advice about how to fan the sparks and make the grind more productive.

In The Artisan Soul, Erwin Raphael McManus, author, thought leader, and founder of MOSAIC in Los Angeles, pens a manifesto for human creativity and the beginning of a new renaissance. McManus not only calls us to reclaim our creative essence but reveals how we can craft our lives into works of art. There are no shortcuts to quality, and McManus celebrates the spiritual process that can help us discover our true selves.

Life can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, right? It can be difficult to clear your mind of a million different anxieties and focus in on the one thing you need to get done. The best-selling author of Clarity and The Little Book of Clarity goes one step further with Results by using his Clarity Coaching Model to help you de-clog your mind so you can make better decisions, prioritize, and focus on achieving those important goals.

The best selling Leading with Soul is a contemporary parable chronicling the journey of a beleaguered executive's quest for passion and purpose in work and in life. True to the essence of leadership, Bolman and Deal offer an invitation to participate with them in understanding the ties that bind spirituality and leadership together. Interludes between the story chapters explore the everyday application of lessons learned along the way and provide practical ways to get the most from work and life.

We've all read about the experts: the artists, the scientists, the engineers - that special group of people known as Imagineers for The Walt Disney Company. But who are they? How did they join the team? What is it like to spend a day in their shoes?

Jack Valentine seemed to have it all. He made good money as an ad man and looked good doing it. He had a hot apartment, cool friends, even a slick car - at least until the hectic Monday morning a truck smashed into it, sending the critically injured Jack to the hospital. Everything happens for a reason, though, and Jack’s reason reveals itself in the silver-haired cancer patient who becomes his roommate one evening. The elderly man, Cal, shares his life story - one not dissimilar to Jack’s - of material wealth masking a gaping hole within.

In The Heretic’s Handbook, the internationally bestselling author of The Secret History of the World has collected and codified ancient, secret wisdom from around the world, formulating a complete philosophy on how to live a happy and successful life. An acclaimed author and public speaker, Black shows how this body of knowledge has been declared ‘heretical’ both by the established church and by today’s atheistic intellectual elite.

When designer and computer scientist John Maeda was tapped to be president of the celebrated Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, he had to learn how to be a leader quickly. He had to transform himself from a tenured professor - with a love of argument for argument’s sake and the freedom to experiment - into the head of a hierarchical organization. The professor is free to speak his mind against “the man.” The college president is “the man.” Maeda has had to teach himself, through trial and error, about leadership.

Walking in This World picks up where Julia Cameron's best-selling book on the creative process, The Artist's Way, left off to present readers with a second course, part two in an amazing journey toward discovering our human potential. Full of valuable new strategies and techniques for breaking through difficult creative ground, this is the "intermediate level" of the Artist's Way program.

The definitive guide that teaches you how to use the Japanese concept of wabi sabi to reshape every area of your life and find happiness right where you are.

Jonathan Fields knows the risks - and potential power - of uncertainty. He gave up a six-figure income as a lawyer to make $12 an hour as a personal trainer. Then, married with a three-month old baby, he signed a lease to launch a yoga center in the heart of New York City...the day before 9/11.

In this easy-to-listen-to yet wisdom-rich manual, Robin S. Sharma offers 101 simple solutions to life's most complex problems, ranging from a little-known method for beating stress and worry to a powerful way to enjoy the journey while you create a legacy that lasts.

If you have not encountered Chuang Tzu before, prepare yourself for a treat. He was the sage who stood apart from all others in Chinese history. He was a unique presence, a great mind like no one before or since. Chuang Tzu quickly distinguished himself and became well known for his deep understanding and sense of humor. His mastery was such that he could explain the Tao with simple stories, and his humor was such that he could see the joy in ordinary things.

What if we could learn to accept I don't know and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity? The Art of Uncertainty is an invitation to the listener to consider its essential message: learning to love the unknown by staying present in the moment....The only thing we can control is our next thought. What if we could learn how to be at peace with uncertainty and embrace the possibility that the future is full of mystery, excitement, and unlimited opportunity?

In this thought-provoking exploration, Matthew May defines elegance as the elusive combination of unusual simplicity and surprising power, and pinpoints the four key elements that characterize it: seduction, subtraction, symmetry, and sustainability. In a story-driven narrative that sheds light on the need for elegance in design, engineering, physics, art, urban planning, sports, and work, May offers a surprising array of stories that illustrate why what's "not there" often matters more than what is.