Productive podcasts are a great way to utilize the idle time you have when you are commuting, waiting for an appointment, or getting your chores done like maybe doing the dishes or vacuuming.
We've hand-picked a list of 10 of our favorite podcasts. These are the podcasts that appealed to the Sunsama philosophy of sustainable productivity, work-life balance, and avoiding "busyness burnout."
Wherever we've suggested specific episodes, we've included links the Spotify. But most of these podcasts can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google podcasts with a simple search.
1) Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
Deep Dive brings you discussions with creators and entrepreneurs about how they balance work and life while maintaining a productive and healthy lifestyle. In this podcast, Ali also talks about entrepreneurship, health, wealth, love, and impact.
It's a weekly podcast with most of the episodes ranging from one to two hours in length – great for a short ride out of town or while you’re getting some deep cleaning done.
Each week, Ali also posts some of the best snippets (about six to seven minutes long) from the podcast. You can listen to these during short breaks you take between working. We picked this podcast because we've been intrigued by Ali's approach to time management — the Pomodoro technique, time blocking, and delegation.
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Recommended episodes
- The Science Of Body Clocks: How It Can Revolutionize Your Sleep And Health - Prof Russell Foster
- The real meaning of productivity | Unjaded Jade
- World's leading expert on how to solve procrastination - Dr. Tim Pychyl
2) Beyond the To-Do List
In Beyond the To-Do List podcast, Erik Fisher interviews people about how one can practically implement productivity tips in their professional and personal lives. They also discuss common pitfalls to avoid, share their failed experiments at productivity and explore why that happened. Through this podcast, you will be able to learn how to pick the right projects, tasks, and goals in work and life.
As the title suggests, the theme of this podcast is not just to help you hustle, and rush through your list of tasks, but to look beyond that and live a meaningful life, which is the ultimate goal of productivity.
Each episode is about 40 to 50 minutes long. Great for a drive to the office or the grocery store.
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Recommended episodes
- Alan Stein Jr. on Sustaining Your Game and Avoiding Burnout
- John Brandon on Maximizing Productivity Seven Minutes at a Time
- Kendra Adachi on Prioritizing the Things That Matter
3) Extreme Productivity
Extreme Productivity is hosted by Kevin Kruse, who is a New York Times bestselling author and Inc 500 serial entrepreneur. This podcast is based on insights around time management tips, tools, and actionable advice that Kevin gained from entrepreneurs, self-made millionaires, and Olympic athletes.
This is not conversational but a solo format podcast, i.e., consisting of only the host elaborating on a topic. Episodes range from 5 to 20-minute in length, so you can take a pick based on the time you have.
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Recommended episodes
- How to Schedule Long-Term Goals on Your Calendar
- Life-Changing Magic of the 80-20 Rule
- This Company Only Holds Meetings on Mondays
4) The 5 AM Miracle: Healthy Productivity for High-Achievers
Jeff Sanders started the 5 AM Miracle when he discovered how waking up early changed how he lived, worked, and felt fulfilled with his day. The aim of this podcast is to show how waking up early can help you perfect your schedule, get things done, and leave a lot of time for fun.
From healthy habits and productivity strategies to reviewing systems and professional-grade daily routines, this podcast is all about actionable content.
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Recommended episodes
- 7 Best Productivity Tools Under $50
- Simplify Your Workspace: Design an Environment That Amplifies Focus
- Productivity Under Pressure with F-14 Fighter Pilot Carey Lohrenz
5) Productivity Tip of the Day
Productivity Tip of the Day is hosted by Marian Knopp, who is also a productivity coach. This podcast is all about short practical tips to help you optimize your day and work. For example, how to decide which tabs to pin on your browser for easy and quick access or how to schedule recurring events on your calendar. These are not big, preachy ideas but small tips you can use in day-to-day work.
Each episode is three to four minutes long, so you can listen to these while you wait for your coffee to brew or your toast to pop up.
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Recommended episodes
6) Getting Things Done
The Getting Things Done podcast is hosted by certified GTD® Trainers Morten Røvik and Lars Rothschild Henriksen from GTDnordic. However, it was started by David Allen, the creator of the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology. This podcast has interviews with people who've used the GTD method to transform their lives. They discuss the best advice for using Getting Things Done® (GTD) to clear your mind, enjoy life, and stay productive but stress-free.
Episodes range from 30 minutes to an hour in length.
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Recommended episodes
- Do You Have Too Much To Do?
- Listener Questions: Project Prioritization & Sharing a GTD Method
- The Three-Fold Nature of Work & The Limiting Criteria
Go From Intention to Action
Sharing your knowledge or tips and tricks you’ve curated from your own experience has never been easier. All you need to be able to share your lessons with your target audience is a mic and an internet connection. Learning from such experts has also never been easier. However, that puts you at risk of overconsumption of content. You tend to snack on the information without actually taking action, hoping to find some magic pill or to build up internal motivation.
Consuming without making real progress is wasteful. Everybody experiences it occasionally. But that shouldn't be a standard for a fulfilled life.
How do you avoid that trap? How do you go from just listening to productivity podcasts to actually implementing the advice in them?
The simplest thing you can do is create systems and get the tools to implement the advice. One such tool is Sunsama — a daily planner for busy professionals.
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It integrates with your calendars (Gmail/Outlook), email, Notion, or project management tools like Trello, Asana, ClickUp, and more. Techniques like time tracking and time boxing are in-built to help you manage your day better or do some real deep work.
You can get a 14-day free trial here to see how it makes your day focused as well as calmer. No credit card is required, and signup takes less than a minute.
