Good Life Project - The Fine Art of Finding Your Calling, With Jeff Goins

Episode Date: March 26, 2015

"Your activity needs to flow from your identity."It seems that A LOT of people struggle with the question, "What should I do with my life?"So I was really interested to have a conversation with today'...s guest, Jeff Goins, because that very question is at the heart of his new book, The Art of Work.Interestingly, he ended up re-writing entire book after realizing he had sanitized his own story of becoming a writer, and needed to find and share a deeper set of truths.In this conversation, we also talk about the idea of polymaths - multi-talented people - and what a "portfolio life" is.If you've ever wondered what your calling is (and if you have one), you'll find this episode with Jeff Goins very interesting.Some questions I ask:How do you define vocation?Is there just one purpose for each of us to accomplish in life?What is a "portfolio life"?Can you master multiple talents? Or just practice them?What do you think about leaving a legacy?Follow Jeff:Blog | Twitter | FacebookCheck out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Maybe finding your calling, discovering your purpose isn't about getting everything that you thought you wanted in life. Maybe it's really about being open to the shifts and turns and unexpected twists in the plot of our life story that happened along the way and responding to it in the right way. So how do you know that you're doing the work that you're, quote, meant to do? Is there even something that you're meant to do? We get so freaked out by the thought of us toiling away and spending our entire lives doing something, spending the vast majority of our waking hours doing something that's the wrong thing. Is that a legit question? Is there a right thing and a wrong thing? Is there
Starting point is 00:00:52 work that we're meant to do? Is there a calling or a vocation or a single thing that we should be searching for? Well, that's one of the things that we explore in today's conversation with entrepreneur and author Jeff Goins. And he's gone pretty deep into this question in a provocative new book called The Art of Work. And we're going to go into it as well. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. Swimming or sleeping? And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required.
Starting point is 00:01:55 Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?
Starting point is 00:02:09 You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. We've known each other for a couple years now. And what's kind of interesting, and I want to actually pick up a little bit with your personal story and with kind of an interesting shift that you've been going through.
Starting point is 00:02:25 Because I think it would be interesting for our community of listeners to sort of talk to you mid-shift. And we'll dive into some of the stuff that you talk about in the book because it's actually really relevant to, I think, your personal shift. And that is that you became known to me, I don't know, a couple of years back as the writer guy, you know, a guy kind of burst onto the scene, started building a huge readership in the online world and created books and then started teaching with and working with writers and showing them how to actually, you know, like call themselves writers and become authors and stuff like that. And you're in the midst of this really, I think what, in my mind, at least,
Starting point is 00:03:06 is a kind of a fascinating evolution. And, and part of that, you know, I think is often comes with a sense of struggle, you know, building something really powerful around a particular type of notoriety, and then kind of hitting a point where you feel like, huh, I'm bigger than that or I'm interested in more than that. So take me a little bit deeper into sort of what's happening with you right now. Well, you know, in some ways, I feel like I'm just kind of bringing to the surface who I've always been, you know, and I think you see this sometimes you see this with celebrities who kind of make this big shift going from, you know, and I think you see this sometimes you see this with celebrities who kind of make this big shift going from, you know, being known as doing one thing to, you know, doing what they
Starting point is 00:03:52 really wanted to do. I just I just was watching Birdman. I don't know if you saw that movie, but, you know, here's this guy who basically walked away from this billion dollar superhero movie industry to do this, you know, kind of, uh, um, you know, upscale Broadway play. And, and, and there's this struggle because really what it comes down to is, um, he just wants to feel significant and, you know, wants to feel like an artist, but there's this tension between, do I do what people want or do I do what kind of resonates in my soul is the thing that's true. Um, and, uh, not that I'm, uh, you know, a superhero necessarily, uh, but not that I'm, you know, a superhero necessarily. But, you know, I really related to that.
Starting point is 00:04:31 I related to that temptation. And you and I have talked about this before, to do you just give people what they want? And some of that's just really smart marketing, you know, looking at opportunities and serving people. And some of it's, you know, just being nice being nice. Like I'm not going to do just my thing, expect people to pay attention. I'm going to really care about how I can help and serve, uh, other people. But the challenge is when you sort of get stuck in, in that place where you
Starting point is 00:04:58 just do this one thing, when the reality is there's, there's something resonating, you know, deeper with you. So, you know, this new book, The Art of Work, is something that I feel like I've really been living for the past 10 years trying to understand what am I meant to do? How has my life actually been preparing me for this work that I'm doing? And how can this book, I mean, it's sort of interesting that the book is a story, my story and lots of other people's stories of how they transitioned from one kind of work, you know, whether it's, it wasn't always just a day job to them going and working for themselves, although there's stories of that, but going from doing one thing, looking at their
Starting point is 00:05:35 vocations as really a means of making a living to doing something that really creates this meaningful life, which, you know which I love. I mean, you talk a lot about that, Jonathan. I love that. Don't just make a living, make a life. And I guess it's irony of that is the book is also meant to not just share that process that I've gone through, but also kind of hopefully move my career in a different direction and help me reach out to new people and engage my audience in different ways. Yeah. So it's really interesting because in a way you're sort of saying, okay, you kind of burst onto the scene as the writer guy. But fundamentally, what you're really
Starting point is 00:06:19 interested in and what you have been interested in and deeply exploring for better part of a decade is how do we take that thing that lights us up and build our livelihood and our life around it? I mean, really similar to what I spend a lot of time exploring. But it is really interesting because I think so many people who especially listen to us, we tend to have a little bit more of a grown-up audience very often, a little bit further into life, often with a partner or with kids or substantial responsibilities. And it's a different conversation when you hit that point in your life and you've built something that where you're comfortable. Maybe you're earning okay and you've got a certain amount of structure and lifestyle
Starting point is 00:07:02 built around it. It's sort of the classic golden handcuffs. And you don't want to complain to anybody else, because you're actually doing okay, you know, from the outside looking in, but there's something inside of you saying that, that it's not quite right. But it's, it's a much more nuanced and very often, more complex and longer term conversation, I think, to start to explore moving from that place into, you know, more of a, I guess what you would call a vocation. And I want to dive into how you, how you define that more. And then it would be when you're younger in life. And I think that's, that's one of the, and, and, you know, it's interesting because you're also, you're married, you're a dad, you know? So you are that
Starting point is 00:07:43 guy, you know? And, and it's, it's sort of like you're, you're married, you're a dad, you know? So you are that guy, you know? And it's sort of like you're writing the book about doing it while you're in the process of doing it. And the book itself is a major mechanism in your ability to actually make this move from being defined as one thing to being defined as not something which is new to you, but something with, you know, that like you said, you've always defined yourself as, or you've always known was a part of you, but it's sort of like you're stepping into the bigger whole and going public with it.
Starting point is 00:08:13 Yeah, it's a very meta thing, right? It is. This book about this shift that is sort of in many ways initiating another shift in my life. Not unlike the movie Birdman, by the way, which maybe we can get them to sponsor this show. It's like brought to you by. Yeah, it is really interesting. Let's dive into it a little bit because you threw out this word vocation also. And I want to kind of deconstruct that because I use that word a bit. I've heard people like Parker Palmer use it. And I know when
Starting point is 00:08:50 he uses it, at least from the reading that I've done of his work, which I'm a huge fan of his work. And I think you are also from what I remember. He doesn't define vocation in the context of this is how you earn your living. There's something else going on here. So I'm curious, how do you define that word and how is it different or the same from something like calling? So, you know, to answer that question, I kind of have to tell the story about how I wrote the book and I'll briefly summarize it. But basically I wrote a guru book, you know, and I wrote this book where I said, Hey, like here are these seven things that I did and you can do them too. And it'll be great.
Starting point is 00:09:29 Uh, and I, I felt okay about that. Like I felt like that was, it was honest. You know, I have friends who write those kinds of books. I don't, um, I don't, you know, deplore that style of writing. Although when I finished it and I read it, there was something that just, there was like a check in my spirit. And I just thought this isn't right. Like this isn't completely true. And so, uh, like most things I do, uh, you know, I, it wasn't completely well thought or planned. And I was like, ah, like, I think I need some more, uh, testimonials or something. You know, I need some more, um, illustrations in my book. I'm going to go, I'm going to go find some people, have cool stories, and just kind of stick them into the book. And that journey forced me to rewrite the book. And if you read the
Starting point is 00:10:12 book, there's very little of me. And I mean, every once in a while, you'll get pieces of my story. And that was intentional because as I started interviewing people, I think you've probably seen this in your work, Jonathan, just with this show, when you start listening to people's stories again and again, and you're really just trying to hear their story, trying to seek out truth. You don't necessarily have an agenda. Maybe you have some ideas of, of, you know, like themes that you think might emerge. And I certainly did, but a lot of those were proved wrong. And so as I began to rewrite this book, it became this much more nuanced story of
Starting point is 00:10:48 how people really found meaningful lives, really in the context of the work that they did. And for some people, that meant a career, meant going from being a banker to becoming a park ranger. For other people, it meant understanding that all of these different jobs that they had were preparing them for, you know, something that they would do in the later years of their life. And for some people, it just meant a change in perspective about the work that they were already doing. So, you know, to go back to that, you know, how to answer that question of what a vocation is, I think quite simply it's the reason that you were born. I mean it's the reason that you exist.
Starting point is 00:11:30 And in order for you to entertain that possibility, I think you have to believe that there is a reason, that it's masses, you know, molecules slamming into each other, that there's, there's something, there's a purpose. You know, there's some deeper story that's going on that we get to engage in. And all I really wanted to do with the book in terms of talking about vocation or calling, or even purpose, I mean, I kind of use those words interchangeably. Although I like the idea of a a calling because it's, you know, whether you think of that having a spiritual connotation or not, I hear lots of people describing the work that they do in terms that are other, that are sort of beyond you. And one of my favorite quotes that's from Parker Palmer that I use in the book is, before I can tell my life what I want to
Starting point is 00:12:27 do with it, which is sort of like the typical Western approach to success, like I'm going to succeed at this. He says, before I can do that, I have to listen to my life telling me who I am. And I think Parker Palmer would say vocation is really about discovering your true identity. And I would absolutely agree with that. And I would build on that to say that your activity needs to flow from your identity. And when you reverse those, when you put the activity first, as a lot of people do, as I have often done, go do, do, do, you can lose yourself, your true self, in that process. And so vocation to me, what I describe as a path, not a plan, is really the process of rediscovering who you truly are and then figuring out what that means about what you're supposed to do with your life. Yeah. So we're on the same page about one thing, but potentially not about another thing. I completely agree that one of the biggest
Starting point is 00:13:23 limiting factors that we really don't think about is not the fact that we don't know what to do, but that we have no clue who we are. That we're so disconnected from a deeper sense of identity, who we are, what matters to us, how we want to be in the world, what fills us up, that we can't make decisions. We don't know what's calling us because we literally just don't, we haven't spent any time really diving into the essence of our being. So, and how can you build actions around that essence in a way, which is in some way fulfilling if you have no idea what it is. Let's talk about this idea though, of you were born with a purpose, because I struggle with that every person is kind of put on the planet with a single purpose, and whether it's defined by us, whether it's defined by genetics, whether
Starting point is 00:14:31 it's whether, you know, we were brought here and some greater being preordained it, and our job is to figure it out through some process of devotion and exploration. I struggle with the notion that each of us has a solitary purpose rather than the idea that each of us had, has a set of a set of qualities, a set of you know, we have sort of an individual blueprint on multiple levels. And, and part of our job is to go and find
Starting point is 00:15:07 or create work in the world that in some way, you know, the negative of the puzzle piece of that work fits with the positive of the essence of our being. But that also, there could be 100 different puzzle pieces that fit. And that, you know, so I guess my question is, you know, to me, once you go deeper into really defining and understanding that, then, you know, the, your identity, there, when I do that, and when I've worked with people, and we've done that, and then they kind of turn their eyes back out into the world, they start to see a myriad of possible ways that they can invest their energies in a way that would fill them up, that would feel deeply aligned with who they are. And I struggle with the idea that there is one, there's a single form of expression that's the right one. So talk
Starting point is 00:16:03 to me about this. Yeah, well, I struggle with that too. And I don't think there is one. I don't think there's one absolute, you know, thing that you have to do that you're preordained to do. And if you miss it, you know, you miss the boat. And I kind of, in the book, I talk about two different paths. There is sort of the self-determined path, the, you know, what I mentioned before, sort of the typical American or Western, um, you know, I mentioned the Michael J. Fox movie, secret of my success, where you like, you go and you just do it, right? Like you just put your nose to the grindstone and you can achieve anything. I mean, this is sort of the promise that we give people. Uh, it people. It's the lie that a lot of
Starting point is 00:16:46 parents tell their kids, you can do anything that you want to do. And I think it's a nice idea, except that it becomes really crippling and it can pull us away from this process of listening to our lives and trying to make sense of our experiences and our gifts and abilities and skills. And whether you think those are innate or learned, I happen to think most of them are, you know, learned through environment and practice. Although there's lots of, you know, really interesting science that's come out over the past couple of years about how, you know, genetics does, you know, play a role in that. So, you know, that's where the determined path. And if you've ever watched that movie, The Secret of My Success, you find that it doesn't work out too well for Michael
Starting point is 00:17:30 that he tries to do it and he starts working in a mailroom and basically he has to create a false self. He has to lie and pretend that he's somebody that he's not and kind of fake his way into success. And at the end of the movie, you movie, he kind of meets somewhere in the middle. He's not this loser farm boy who's in the mail room and can't get a break. And he's also not this super slick executive that everybody thinks is some amazing prodigy. And he kind of comes to the middle of his true self.
Starting point is 00:18:03 Like I do have aspirations. I do have ambitions. But, you know, the place where I came from is a good place. I don't burn the bridges behind me. All of the past is prologue and it doesn't dictate my future, but I do think it informs it. So, you know, the determined path is you can do anything. I think we can just look around our world, look at ourselves and embrace
Starting point is 00:18:25 the fact that that's not always true, at least in a completely literal way. There are limitations, and I'll come back to that in a second because I think the limitations can be really good or good can come out of them. The other extreme is what you're talking about here. This, you know, the if one is the path of determination, the other is just kind of, you know, whatever may be, maybe, you know, you can just, you know, whatever happens in life, it was meant to be. And in one sense, that sounds really beautiful. But when you look at all of the evil and pain and suffering in the world, when you look at the times in your life, when you're honest about your circumstance, there are those moments where you do get to kind of, you know, create a piece of your destiny,
Starting point is 00:19:15 where you do get to make the path and forge ahead. And if you just have this sort of, you know, lackadaisical approach to life, I think you miss out on those challenges when you have to press in and use some of that ambition and go for it. And so I talk about the path of vocation as a middle way in between those two extremes. And what I argue in the book, and this was, this was kind of an interesting epiphany. I did think Jonathan at the beginning of the book that everybody has one thing to do and you just got to go find it. Like I wrote that book. And then when I started telling people stories, I realized, um, that I had been sanitizing my own story. I'd been lying. I'd been saying, yeah, I always knew I wanted to be a writer. I didn't. I had always been writing. And you know some of this story at 27 years old. I looked back at my life. I listened to my life as Parker Palmer tells you. And I was like, oh, like I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I was working at a nonprofit. I felt this itch that there ought to be more. I didn't know what it was. And I looked back doing that sort of introspection that you walk people through and realized I'm supposed to be writing. I've actually been doing this my whole
Starting point is 00:20:29 life. Now it's time to be intentional about it. And so when I started, you know, hearing other people's stories that resonated with me and what I now understand vocation as is not this one thing that you're meant to do with your life, not this grand purpose that you, you know, this plan that you have where you just go after and overcome every obstacle to get to, but something in between there. And one of the lessons I learned in writing the book from all of these stories that I encountered is maybe a calling is more about taking what happens to you, some of the things that you can't control in life, and turning those into purpose, turning those into intentional action. In other words, there are times when life throws things at you.
Starting point is 00:21:12 A relative gets cancer. Something goes wrong. You lose your job. Something happens that wasn't't have any control over. Maybe it's taking the things that life throws at us and turning it into something extraordinary in its own way. And in the book, there's lots of stories of people just kind of doing their thing in a very ordinary context, but there's some sort of extraordinary outcome. And I think really that now, having gone through this process, better understanding my own process, what it really takes to find your calling, which is really about living an extraordinary life,
Starting point is 00:21:57 it's not so much the chances that you get, whatever those may be, but rather what you do with them. Hmm. So yeah, I think described that way, we're probably on the same page. I mean, yeah, but it's always, it's interesting to me, right? Because there are these examples of people where they're like, well, I mean, you threw one out, like somebody in the family gets cancer, there's some tragic incident. And then, you know, like the survivor becomes, you know, they find their calling as a fundraiser or an advocate for a particular cause. And then, you know, like the survivor becomes, you know, they find their calling as a fundraiser or an advocate for a particular cause. And then, you know, like the thing that runs through my mind is so you're telling that person that somebody had to die or somebody or they had to go through some horrendous thing or some horrible thing in the world, you know, some that if the, you know, earthquake didn't happen or whatever it was, but for the fact that there was some, some horrible tragedy, um, that came into their lives in some way, they, they would have never found their purpose. And, and that, that
Starting point is 00:22:56 purpose could not be found until that thing happened. So if it didn't happen until you're, you know, 63 years old, then the first 62 years of your life, you're just kind of hosed and, you know, poking around without, without the ability to, to be in that glorious place, you know, where you exist with this strong sense of, um, deliberate purpose. And, um, so I, it's always just sat really, really badly with me. Um, when people say that there's, you know that every person has one sort of predefined sense of purpose and your job is to figure it out or to wait for that external thing to happen that unlocks it in you. Because that does happen for some people, but it also implies a certain amount of complete, you know, extreme pain that you have to go through to get it and, and complete lack of control over the means of discovering where I've just seen so many people like you were saying, where there's a,
Starting point is 00:23:56 there's a sort of a very deliberate process of self inquiry and exploration that can open up any number of ways to invest your energies in the world that make you feel like you're filled with purpose rather than you've discovered that single thing that gives you purpose, which for some people I think may exist, but for the vast majority of people, I think you can live a fantastic life and feel like you're contributing to the world in a profound and meaningful way. And there may be a thousand different ways for any one person to do that. Yeah, no, I agree. In The Art of Work, I referenced the book because it really catalogs all these lessons that I learned.
Starting point is 00:24:40 And I know that you get that, you know, just encountering people's stories. I'm just like, wow, like this was interesting. I really, I learned through this process. But one of the stories I encountered that I talk about at the beginning of the book is a story of a kid named Garrett Rush Miller, who basically gets a brain tumor at five years old and his parents say he won't have, he'll have five years left to live. And so his parents, they're going through all the treatments, trying to extend his life, do whatever they can to fight the cancer. They remove the brain tumor and the kid is left mute, blind, and paralyzed. I mean things just keep getting worse and worse.
Starting point is 00:25:19 And long story short, what ends up happening is he doesn't die within five years and at the end of a year of treatment, he and his dad finished a triathlon, which for them is sort of a way of, you know, saying that the cancer hasn't beaten them, that they can't control everything that happens in their life, but they can control what they do today. And his dad, Eric, told me this. He said he was sitting in the hospital one day and just kind of had this epiphany where he, he felt like he was, he was counting down the days left in his son's life. And it was just depressing and, um, you know, grieving and, you know, uh, just feeling this sense of despair that was threatening to just destroy their family. And, um, he realized just, just, it just kind of came to him and he realized,
Starting point is 00:26:06 wait a second, who's to say that, that, you know, our, that I, or my wife or anybody in our family is going to outlive Garrett. Uh, we don't know what's going to happen to us tomorrow. We're not promised tomorrow. Um, you know, we all as a family need to be living, uh, every day, you know, as if it counts, which is cliche, but true. And so when I talked to them about this, Garrett was 18 years old. He and his dad had completed over a dozen triathlons. Garrett climbed Machu Picchu, became an Eagle Scout, did all of these things that came out of the restraints from, you know, getting cancer. And his dad told me, he goes, there's no guarantee that, you know, Garrett's going to live another day. I mean, the cancer could come back at any time.
Starting point is 00:26:50 They did some clinical treatments and he ended up regaining some of his sight. He ended up being able to walk eventually and talk, of course, because we chatted. But I asked them, I said, do you ever think about what life would be like if this didn't happen? And Garrett said, no, I've never thought about that. And Eric said, no, I haven't thought about it either. And I was kind of surprised by that. I was like, you've never thought about what life would be like if this tragic, terrible thing that doesn't happen to most five-year-old boys didn't happen to you. And Eric said, no, because it doesn't matter because these are the cards that we've been dealt and we just have to play them the best that we can. And so then I
Starting point is 00:27:29 asked them the opposite question. I said, do you ever think what wouldn't have happened if all this stuff didn't happen if you didn't get cancer? And Eric said, oh, we think about that every day. None of this would have happened. They started a foundation. All this good came out of this bad. But you know, that's not to say the cancer was good. I mean, it caused their family lots and lots of pain. Eric and his wife ended up, you know, divorcing because of the strain and stress of all of that. And he was very, you know, open with that, with me about that, you know, sharing regrets and all of that, I don't think they would ever say, this was good. This thing that happened to Garrett was good. But I think because of that mindset
Starting point is 00:28:11 shift that first happened in Eric, and then he started to share that with his family and his son took that on too, good came of it. And that sounds like a much more passive way of putting it than it really was. They made good come from it. They squeezed good out of the bad. And I think vocation isn't like sitting in a monastery waiting for a ray of light to hit you in the head because most of our lives don't look that way. Vocation is this active process of looking at whatever cards life has dealt you, which I think most of the time, if we're honest, we feel like in some respects we've missed out.
Starting point is 00:28:53 We've missed an opportunity or been given the short shrift in something and all we have is this to deal with. And yet I think a calling is really taking whatever the this is and making something remarkable with it, whatever that looks like for you. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered.
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Starting point is 00:30:09 Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?
Starting point is 00:30:22 You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. You brought something interesting up also, which is, well, you brought a couple things up about your process with the book, which is, you know, the book. And it's funny because I look at, there's a book that I read, interviewed the authors last year called Go Wild. And at the end of it, and sort of like the notes at the end of the book, one of the co-authors said that he never, because a book takes so much energy, and we both know that, you know, we both write books, that he never takes on a book without believing that there will be some kind of profound process of personal transformation through the process of writing the book. So he's not just writing it for himself, you know, or for other, you know, because he has a platform and he can write a book or for other people. But, you know, he looks at the book as this vehicle of personal, extreme personal growth. And you kind of shared
Starting point is 00:31:19 that that happened with this while you're writing this book. How hard was it? I'm curious. And again, I'm sort of like wearing my author hat here also, because I've been through this. How hard is it for you to let go of the idea that you came into it, especially because you basically wrote the book, right? And then you're like, this isn't the book that needs to be written, you know, but you've kind of got something that you could bring to market, you know, it'd probably do okay, you know, it's solid. And then you start to, you know, bring it out into the world, but something in you, something deeper, something intuitive said, something's just not quite right. And I think a lot of us have that voice, but we tune it out, you know, because either a, you know, we've invested so
Starting point is 00:32:15 much time, money and energy into getting where we are, that we kind of don't want to listen to it, because it means that, you know, we're going to go back into the abyss and have to do it all over again. But I think there's this really interesting reframe that you brought up, which is, okay, but if I look at this as a process of personal learning, you know, like this is an opportunity for me, not just to build my career or create something, but how cool is it that I'm actually, I have an opportunity to grow and transform myself through this process and to be honest and to be real and to be vulnerable. And if I'm not going there,
Starting point is 00:32:59 I'm not only potentially shortchanging those who I'm writing this for, but I'm shortchanging myself along the way. I was reading a book kind of during the research phase. I mean I don't even really think of it as research, but as I'm getting ready to write a book, I just read a ton of books because I love reading. And I try to read in a certain topic or genre. But I also let those books take me other places, you know. So I read Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. And in that, he quotes Frederick Buechner talking about listen to your life. And so I went back and read this memoir by Frederick Buechner, this novelist turned minister turned school teacher turned novelist again.
Starting point is 00:33:45 And he had, and he, in like 120 pages shared his experience of finding his vocation. He talks about the importance of listening to your life. And he says something in, in that book that all moments are key moments. And, uh, I was reading another book called what should I do with my life by Pope Bronson. And I love that book because it's just a bunch of stories of people that basically did one thing and ended up doing something else. And there was essentially no advice in that book. No, uh-uh. None. It was just stories.
Starting point is 00:34:14 Yeah. And it was a huge book, too, which was so fascinating, right? You've got this book where you've got all these stories of people and there's no advice else. It's just stories. And it was a massive commercial success. You're like, what's behind that? Right. So what I love about that book is at the very end,
Starting point is 00:34:35 Poe kind of pulls, what a great name, Poe. Great for pandas, great for authors. Only parents will get that joke. He pulls back the curtain and finally kind of tells us his story in the sense that he says, you know, as a journalist, my job is to remain detached from the stories. And yet I couldn't do that with this book. And he talks about introducing this businessman to this other person and helping them connect because through the process of telling all these people's stories, he gets involved in their lives, which I think is
Starting point is 00:35:08 really important. And that connected with me. And then he talks about at the end when he thought, you know, I always thought that as a writer, I'd be writing novels or something. And now I'm writing these, you know, nonfiction advice books, something that I just didn't really want to do because I had, you know, an idea about what that, you know, sort of style of writing, you know, it seemed cheap and I didn't want to do that. And yet here's like, I thought I would do this and I ended up doing this. And when I read that, I thought I putting all those things together, that was really interesting. All moments are key moments, Frederick Buechner said. And, and Poe Bronson just tells this entire, you know, book of stories that people thought they'd do one thing and they ended up doing something else. And here I am trying to write this book and, uh, wanting it to go one way, not feeling great about it, going in and encountering people's stories and learning
Starting point is 00:36:00 things along the way. All I did was ask people to email me. And a lot of times the person that emailed me would connect me with somebody that was two or three degrees of separation away. And then I'd find that person and they'd tell me their story and I'd go, okay, that's interesting. First few stories, I was like, okay, whatever. I don't even know what I'm looking for.
Starting point is 00:36:17 And then I started hearing the same thing over and over again. One of the themes was that Poe Bronson thing. I thought I was gonna do this, but I ended up doing that again and again and again and again. And all of a sudden I was like, well, maybe, maybe finding your calling, discovering your purpose isn't about getting everything that you thought you wanted in life.
Starting point is 00:36:37 Maybe it's really about being open to the shifts and turns and unexpected twists in the plot of our life story that happened along the way and responding to it in, in the right way. And, um, when I started to just, you know, kind of hit the tip of that iceberg in terms of conceptually understanding, there's more to this. I looked back at my own story and I go, you know what? This is the thing that I've been feeling unrest about. Like I've been cleaning it up. I've been saying, well, I did this and I did this and I did this. And all those things are true. It's not a lie in the sense that I made stuff up. It's a lie in the sense that I pulled
Starting point is 00:37:12 out those key moments, those subtle in between nuances, like how I didn't know what I was going to do when I started my blog. I didn't know how I was going to make money or that it was going to, you know, allow my wife to stay home and raise her son and eventually allow me to do all the stuff that I'm doing. I didn't know when I was 12 years old and I was writing stories in my three-ring spiral notebook about gargoyles that I was going to be a writer someday. But there was something underneath all that. this awareness that grew with time that, you know, as I got more information, I began to understand more about what my life was trying to, uh, to tell me. So to, you know, answer your question, was it hard to let go of that? Not really because I didn't like the book, you know, kind of like Poe Bronson. I didn't, I don't like those books. I mean, they're okay,
Starting point is 00:38:00 but I don't, I don't believe them. When I read somebody that says these are the seven secrets for success, you know, like I like acquiring information. I can pull some nuggets out of that. But in terms of sitting down and reading the book, I don't necessarily enjoy that process. And I just have this rule about being an author that no matter what, I can't write a book that I hate, you know, that I wouldn't read. It's a pretty good rule as an author. I don't have high standards. Just like don't write something that you think sucks. It's like, it's really good, but I would never read this. People tell me it's good. I've never read it. I just wrote it. Um, yeah. I, so that was the
Starting point is 00:38:37 process for me was understanding this is true about myself, having the suspicion that I was missing something. And, uh, but I just didn't like it. I wasn't happy with the work that I'd done. I just didn't know what the alternative was. And when I started to engage with the, with these other stories, um, I started to learn things about myself and about this path that I was trying to describe. And I like, I like the Poe Bronson approach. I like engaging in the stories. I mean, I'm having a book launch party later this week and the people that are in the book are invited to come, and a couple of them are coming because I, you know, spent a year of my life studying these stories, learning them, understanding them,
Starting point is 00:39:15 really helping them understand my own story. And now those stories, hopefully, are going to help, you know, thousands of people. And it doesn't feel right for, you know, it to be about me because the whole thing is about this thing, this process that we've all engaged in. And it doesn't feel right for it to be about me because the whole thing is about this thing that this process that we've all engaged in. And so I think we have to celebrate it together. Yeah, no, I love that. It's kind of, you know, AJ Jacobs, the writer? Yeah, yeah. You know, he's doing this summer, actually, in New York, the largest family reunion in history. He's running the World's Fairground. And he's writing a book about,
Starting point is 00:39:45 you know, like how we're actually all cousins, but you know, he's trying to get 10,000 people to come and basically celebrate. He's actually got sister sledge lined up to come and, and reunite and sing. We are family. Of course he would.
Starting point is 00:39:59 It's going to be like perfect. But yeah, it is, it is a really interesting thing. And, and it's interesting to hear you talk about your process because I work in very much the same way and I resist the guru and you've got it all figured out thing pretty fiercely. But at the same time, the world kind of wants
Starting point is 00:40:19 to put you there and we're both traditionally published, your publisher really wants to put you there because they think it's going to sell books more. And so it's an interesting dance to kind of say, look, you know, I'm more of a conduit than, you know, like a master. And, and that's got to be good enough. You know, I see patterns where people see disparate points of data, and, and I'm going to share that and you can do with it what you want. Especially when those patterns emerge from stories that are so relatable and powerful. You bring up a term. We were just talking about this just in a personal conversation recently, but you also write about it. And I think it bears exploring because it's growing
Starting point is 00:41:07 in leaps and bounds in the way that we're seeing people build their working lives. And it's this term of portfolio life or portfolio career. So take me into where the idea comes from and what you mean by it and how you see it sort of unfolding in people's lives. So have you, Jonathan, ever felt like you do a bunch of different things that don't connect and gone, I don't really know how to describe what I do? Me, no, never. Yeah, me neither. But for all of those who do feel that way. Right, for the three other people. This will help you. Now, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine named Keith Jennings,
Starting point is 00:41:47 who's this brilliant marketer, poet, and writer. And his day job is basically he helps hospitals with their marketing. And we met online because we were both bloggers, and he was writing these essays on creativity and just had this – his name of his blog was Keitharsis, which I thought was awesome. And it was just about the creative cathartic process of making things. And just a really neat guy. sort of at the beginning of me quitting my job, starting a blog, starting to teach, you know, online writing classes, but then also, you know, writing these traditionally published books that
Starting point is 00:42:30 weren't, you know, about writing. Although my blog and platform was really about writing creativity, you know, here's, here's how I made it as a writer. And here's how, you know, you can do it too. Kind of that guru thing. And, uh, I just felt this dissonance. I was like, I don't know how to describe what I do. Cause on one hand I'm doing, I'm doing business and I kind of like it. I mean, I don't, I don't despise it. I know it's not for every writer, but I like the entrepreneurial stuff. I like the challenge of making things and scaling them and, you know, worrying about how, how do I pay for this? So you have to think about revenue and stuff like that. But I also have this weird artistic bent where I just – I can't explain it but compulsively like I just have to make something and I don't care who likes it. And as you said, there's a dance, right? And I dance. It's tension. I don't necessarily give in to one extreme over the other and I actually think that's healthy.
Starting point is 00:43:17 I think most good art comes out of that tension. But I'm talking to Keith about this and I just – I'm confused. I think I'm supposed to do one thing, right? And he says, he goes, oh, you're just living a portfolio life. And I never heard that term before. I said, what does that mean? He said, well, you know, instead of having one gig, one thing that you do, one master skill up your sleeve, you have a few, you know, and your job is to find interesting ways to connect and combine those. But your job isn't to master the one skill, it's to master the portfolio. And so we talked about this for years before I could really kind of track down the source of it.
Starting point is 00:43:57 So he told me he learned it from another guy. And, and eventually, I found this book where, you know, the term I think was coined. It's a 1989 business philosophy book by a guy named Charles Handy who – I didn't know his name before, but my more academic friends say that basically if you don't study like organizational behavior and business philosophy, you probably don't know who Charles Handy is, but he's this Irish business philosopher. And in that book, The Age of Unreason, he predicts the future of organizations and basically says that we're all going to have freelance careers. We're not going to have one 40-year career. We're going to have a bunch of mini careers, and we're going to have to kind of put those together in a portfolio. And he describes five different types of work that make up that portfolio. And he argues, and I agree with this, that really this is the way we're wired. We're not conditioned. We're not meant to do one solitary task. We're multifaceted creatures
Starting point is 00:44:59 with different interests. And the industrial age know, conditioned a lot of us to think you're just supposed to do one thing because that's what makes a factory efficient. Well, now we know we don't live in that era. I mean, factories are dying. The freelance community is growing. And more and more of us need to be thinking about organizing our lives not as like one gig, one career, not one what do you do, but rather as this portfolio of things that actually I think is much more personally satisfying and fulfilling.
Starting point is 00:45:33 Yeah. It's interesting that you said in that initial conversation that the task is not to master a single thing, but to master the portfolio. And I wonder, is that, is that possible? Can you, can you master the portfolio or do you master the process of having multiple interests, but never actually being a master of any one? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I would, I mean, I, I love what Robert Green says about this in his book, Mastery, which seems apropos. He says the future belongs to people who can combine diverse skills in interesting ways. That's a paraphrase. their crafts and really talks about, explores how they didn't, they weren't just a master of one, one single skill. Leonardo da Vinci was, you know, was a, was an artist. He was an inventor. And he was also this like war tactician, you know, and made all these, you know, war devices and torture machines for the King of France. That's a pretty diverse skill set. You
Starting point is 00:46:44 know, I wouldn't go to my artist friend and say, make me an Uzi. But that was Leonardo da Vinci's job during the Renaissance. And in the Renaissance, we had a term for these people. It was called polymaths, this idea that you did multiple things. And yeah, I agree. It's not so much about becoming the best at this skill, this skill, and this skill. Rather, it's about looking at how can you combine these different things that you do in a way that is unique. And if you think about that from a business perspective, you're kind of niching down. I mean you're finding the core audience that wants what you have in the weird, interesting way that you're going to offer it. I think a lot of us look at the things that we can't do as weaknesses instead of as signs
Starting point is 00:47:31 of strengths that we can kind of combine in different ways. So instead of me going, I may not be as good as Hemingway as a writer ever. But maybe I could be a better business person than him and my writing and business and marketing sense can combine in some sort of interesting portfolio that's unique to me. So yeah, I like that idea of thinking of a portfolio not as I'm going to be good at this, this, and this, but rather as how do I combine these
Starting point is 00:48:02 basically to create my ideal job description. And, you know, there was this interesting study published in Forbes and several other places recently where they were, they were just watching trends in the workplace. And one of the things that they are seeing is that by the year 2020, about half of the American workforce is going to be freelance. And by 2030, workforce is going to be freelance. And by 2030, it's going to be the majority of people. And so this idea of living a portfolio life, whether we like it or not, whether we think that's for us or not, the reality is it's going to be the way we have to approach work and life for most of us in our lifetime. And I think it's a great opportunity for self-reinvention and for finding out what have I been missing out on by getting pigeonholed into some sort of job description
Starting point is 00:48:55 that's really me just being a cog in a system. And how can all these other side hobbies and interests and passions, how can I start bringing those into my portfolio to create better work? I think it ultimately yields a better kind of work that you do when you take all those seemingly disparate things and pull them together in an interesting and unique portfolio that is your work.
Starting point is 00:49:15 Yeah, I mean, the whole concept of the portfolio of careers is kind of fascinating to me how it's become more and more accepted. And certainly, I would say defines the way that I built my career. The same way you just threw out a term and as you're talking, like something else spun into my head. And you just sort of threw out, you can explore what are you missing out on with other things. Part of the, there's a dark side, I think, to the portfolio life, or to validating the portfolio life as, you know, like, this is legit. This is how I can build my career.
Starting point is 00:49:51 And that is that you – how broad do you allow the portfolio to go, you know? And what's guiding the breadth of the portfolio? Is it you? I think what I've seen so many times is people say, well, you know, I love to paint and I love to write. And I also, oddly enough, I love spreadsheets, you know, and how can I put those together? But then you've got, I love to paint, I love to write, and I love spreadsheets, and I love chocolate, and I love driving, and I love traveling, and I love. And then you've got, I've had conversations with people where, you know, like they're telling me, like, I want to figure
Starting point is 00:50:25 out how to put these 10 things into a career. And they'll tell me, well, I have to be able to do it because I'm a polymath and that's just the way that I'm wired. And I kind of look at them and I'm like, you're being massively guided by fear of missing out. You know, the classic FOMO is a big term we hear right now, hashtag FOMO. And there comes a point where I get really concerned that what drives a relentless refusal to let go of every conceivable thing that you could do that you're remotely interested in, that people throw it in out of fear of, you know, like out of fear of missing out on any one of them. But even more, I think that's actually masking something deeper, which is a fear that, a fear of actually testing their metal
Starting point is 00:51:19 in any one of those deep interests and realizing that they're not that good. A fear of being vulnerable to the world, you know, going to that place of, I'm going to give some, and this is one of my concerns, I guess, with the broader portfolio life approach in general. I think you don't, probably don't see it all that much when somebody is, you know, sort of blending a portfolio of one or two or three things. But I think once you start to go beyond that, you've basically baked into the model that you don't have the human capital, the resources, the cognitive or creative or emotional, psychological, physical abilities to go so deep into any one of them that you become extraordinary at any one. And in a certain way, that, that predefines an excuse for you to never, to always be able to say, well, well,
Starting point is 00:52:17 of course, I'm not the best in the world at this, or of course, I'm not great at this. Because, you know, I've chosen to the portfolio life, and that's not, you know, what it's about for me, rather than, you know, sort of owning up to a potential fear of what if, you know, I actually really do want to do one thing. You know, there are one or two things I really, if I could just do those one or two things, I would really, really want to do them. But you know what? What if I'm not good enough? What if I'm actually not good enough? And it insulates you from putting yourself in that place of ever having to get an answer to that question, ever being exposed to the risk, to the judgment, to the vulnerability. But at the same time, it keeps you from the possibility of you getting what you want. And so, you know, I am a fan of the portfolio life. But I'm also, I think there's a dark side that I've seen people move
Starting point is 00:53:14 into, which is portfolio life defined by so many different pieces of the portfolio, that what they're really doing is insulating themselves from the potential vulnerability of being deemed not good enough in any one. But at the same time, they're insulating themselves from the potential gift of feeling the competence of becoming extraordinary at a smaller number. I absolutely agree with that. And not just because you're the host of the show. So when I started writing, I made this commitment that I was going to really only do one thing with my free time, other than like, you know, go for runs and spend time with my family. I was going to devote all my time to writing for two years before I
Starting point is 00:54:13 was going to expect any sort of outcome from that. So when I started my blog, I started writing on it every day just as a means of practice and, you know, practicing in public, putting my work out there, uh, in hopes of maybe somebody discovering it at some point, but really just as a means of accountability initially. And I did not expect, I mean, of course I like check my stats and stuff, but I didn't really expect it to be where I wanted it to be, which was, I thought, man, if I get 200 email subscribers in two years, uh, and if I don't get that in the next two years, then I'll quit. You know, that was sort of my, my runway, my ramp. And, uh, as a result, um, my really my, my lifelong hobby of playing guitar. And I think,
Starting point is 00:54:58 you know, this, I played guitar with a band professionally for a year. We toured right out of college. Um, that was the thing that I thought I was going to do, but the more I did it, the more I practice it, the better I got at the skill, uh, the less I realized that it was something that I actually wanted to do vocationally. And, uh, so I deprioritized that when I, when I discovered, well, really like music was a, a shadow of, of the writing career that I was supposed to have. It was some sort of sense that you like creating. You like making things. You like standing in front of people and delivering messages and connecting people with art.
Starting point is 00:55:36 But really it's the act of creating that lights you up. And writing is something that you've done your whole life and a much better expression of that. And I don't know that writing is the end all be all, you know, for that expression. Although for me right now, it's the primary outlet. And as a result, I just I don't play guitar as much as I did before. And sometimes I feel guilty about that. But I've been reading a lot about play. And it's really important that you have things in your life that don't fit into this portfolio. That's at least in the work bucket, the vocation bucket. That's why I sort of take Handy's idea and turn it into what does a portfolio life look like? And what if
Starting point is 00:56:20 work is just one of those buckets, but then there your home life, whether that's personal or family. There's play, the avocation, hobbies, the things that you do to reenergize. And then kind of this idea of purpose. There's something about the way in which you live your life that isn't just about you but it about you, but it's a part of, you know, hopefully something bigger than you. And, um, if we get all of the hobbies and we sort of muddy the waters in the vocation field, like take all, like I like chocolate and I like playing guitar and you put it all into the work bucket, two things happen, right? One is that's really confusing. You know, if you have a portfolio of a hundred different things, um, that doesn't, that doesn't quite work. I mean, if you think about the analogy, a portfolio is a curated resource. It's this, you know, I mean, if you're an architect
Starting point is 00:57:13 or an artist, you're carrying around a satchel or a bag, not full of every piece that you've done necessarily, at least if you're prolific, it's not eventually going to have every piece of work that you've ever done, but hopefully it's going to have the best stuff that you've done. And it's going to be kind of a broad range of I could do this or I could do this. And you want to give people an impression of here's what I'm capable of, but you're not pulling out of that satchel like cupcakes because you love cupcakes. And you're probably not necessarily pulling out a picture of your niece, even though you probably really love your niece because that's not necessarily a part of the work here. And then the other thing that we do if we don't really learn to play, psychologically, we just get worn down.
Starting point is 00:57:53 We're basically always on and our work will actually suffer. I mean there's tons of interesting research about this, about how play complements work, but it only does that when it's compartmentalized as a separate activity where, you know, you're turning your, um, your brain off. So I agree. I think ultimately you don't want to be a Jack of all trades. You want to be a master of some. Yep. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe, Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes.
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Starting point is 00:59:23 The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. I want to talk about one other thing before we wrap. We're coming up on an hour here. The idea of legacy. It's something that we've talked about
Starting point is 00:59:47 just in conversations over the years and you've written about in different ways and it's something that you write about again. Tell me what your thoughts are because it's an interesting conversation. Should you think about legacy? Does your legacy matter? What does it look like?
Starting point is 01:00:04 Maybe it's just because I'm, you know, sort of a middle-aged dad. And I, so I start to think about this stuff a lot more and I've talked to people in different age ranges and I think there's definitely a gradual rise in importance as people move further into life about them thinking about it. You know, what's the footprint I'm leaving. And what I found also is that people measure that in radically different ways. And you explore the concept of legacy. So talk me through your exploration a little bit. I think there's two ways to think of legacy. I was just reading a blog post this morning about how this Leo from Buffer was talking about this.
Starting point is 01:00:42 And it was a really great blog post. And he was kind of talking about him sort of exploring the question, what if nobody remembers me? Like what does that offend in me? And why is that so important to me? And honestly, like that matters to me a lot, Jonathan, in ways that are probably not healthy and ambitious. I want to leave my mark, you know, egotistical kind of ways. And I thought about that and I was like, that's really interesting. I think sometimes when we talk about legacy, we're really talking about ego. We're wanting people to remember our names for the sake of our own self-importance. We want people to remember us. In the book, I remember seeing a picture of you getting this Time magazine with the old man in the sea. So I extrapolate that as you like Hemingway on the cover. He has this conversation with his editor where he basically feels like he will never complete his greatest work, that all of his good stuff came out when he and again, and there was this history of, you know, bipolar in his family. Uh, but he certainly, you know, dealt with that on some level in his life and, and his dad, you know, committed suicide. Uh, and, and yet, you know, at the end of his life,
Starting point is 01:02:33 he just, he's done all this incredible stuff. He won the Nobel prize for crying out loud. And, um, it just doesn't feel like enough. And I have, you know, there's, there's that quote, right. That says that, um, uh, I think it's been attributed to throw, um, you know, there's, there's that quote, right. That says that's, um, uh, I think it's been attributed to throw, um, you know, that, that you don't want to die with the song left in you. I have a friend who says that's absolutely not true. He said, we all die unfinished symphonies. And, um, I remember watching the movie, um, Mr. Holland's Opus. And not a true story in the sense that it is nonfiction. But it's this beautiful story of this frustrated man who's an artist who's trying to make something his whole life, make this symphony.
Starting point is 01:03:22 And he never gets to complete it and, and people never get to hear it. And he really spends most of his life as this frustrated high school music teacher, you know, helping these kids sing, who sang off key, not saying quite so off key or these kids without rhythm have, you know, a little bit less, you know, bad rhythm. And he's this incredibly accomplished musician. And yet, you know, if you've seen the movie, you know, you know, the climactic ending, he's, he's leaving the school where he's basically, he's not retiring. He's getting kicked out of it in his old age because they're canceling the music program. And he, um, makes his way over to the gymnasium where he hears some noise and he enters
Starting point is 01:03:58 this room full of all of his current and former students who are there to say goodbye to him. And they bring him up on stage and they pull back the curtains. And there's this orchestra of, uh, students from, you know, the previous, you know, uh, generations that he's taught that's, um, are ready to play his symphony. And, and the, um, the MC of the event, one of his students, who's now the governor of the state says, Mr. Holland, we are your symphony. And there's this really beautiful moment where he cries. But I watched that movie and I go, man, like how sucky will it be if I go through my whole life not knowing the magnum opus, the great work, which is really a body of work that I'm creating until the end. Now, we all know that hindsight is 20-20, and the older you get, the more wisdom you acquire. So there's going
Starting point is 01:04:50 to be stuff where you go, man, I didn't know I was doing this at this time, and now I look back and I totally get it. But I want to be as engaged in the difference that I'm making in people's lives now. I want to be aware of the symphony that I'm creating. But I also want to acknowledge that, you know, if Hemingway, who was a genius, I mean, I have so much respect for the man. I love reading biographies about him. I'm obsessed with the story of his life. But if he dies feeling like his best work is still in him, what does that mean? Well, I think that legacy, I mean, there's two ways to think about it, right? One is the ego. And I think if you pursue your work as a means of making a name for yourself, you run the risk of feeling like Hemingway at the end of your life, where you just feel like I could
Starting point is 01:05:34 always do more. There's more to do and my work is going to die with me. And that is scary. That is depressing. The other way to think about legacy is it's not about what you do. It's about what you leave behind. And one of the most significant things that I've ever been a part of was helping initiate the first honor code at my college. You know, this accountability system for students where basically if somebody was caught cheating instead of them getting kicked out of
Starting point is 01:06:03 the school or, you school or failing or whatever, they would go before a board of students and the students would decide what to do with them. And I spent most of my time at college, my free time, trying to make this thing happen. And the very last day of school, we got it voted into place and I realized this is just a document.
Starting point is 01:06:20 Now somebody is actually gonna have to continue this work. And so I had to, I was a senior, I had to find a sophomore who had been kind of engaged in the project and ask him to build this thing that I had really just kind of initiated. And, and he did. And he, and his name is Josh and he did a great job with it. And I went back to, you know, back there 10 years later and it's still going. And, um, the fun thing about that is my name is not on that for two reasons. One, just because it's not and I didn't put it on there or something. And two, because it wasn't just me. All I did was get a document to pass. And it was grueling. It was a hard process. It was a quest. But all I did was pass this document and then it took a community of people behind me to really build the thing.
Starting point is 01:07:10 And I love the quote by Jackie Robinson where he says, a life is not significant except for its impact on others. And so legacy to me doesn't mean that people remember me necessarily because I think that's dangerous territory. I've got a big ego and I know that whatever praise or attention that I get, it never quite feels like enough. So I know that's a losing game. And I think the Hemingway story, you know, and I don't want to make light of mental illness or anything. I mean, certainly that was, you know, part of it. But I think it's sort of it's an example of what happens when you think it's just on you to create the work. And the Mr. Holland story is this, I, you know, I think gives us an illustration of another way where the work that you do isn't really about you at all. In some ways,
Starting point is 01:07:58 you're just, you know, you're a fire starter, you're an initiator of something that's going to continue long after you're gone that other people are going to complete. And your name may not be on it at all. And that's okay. Yeah. I love that concept of it being more about it's the work that you leave or the impact that you leave in the world regardless of whether or not anybody ever actually knows that you were the one who originated or participated in. So the name of this is Good Life Project. Talking about legacy is kind of probably a good place to wrap into this. So if I throw that out there to live a good life, what does that mean to you? When I was finishing this book, I had a friend
Starting point is 01:08:43 reach out to me. She emailed me and she works for the startup in San Francisco and she really wants to be a writer and she's this incredible memoirist. I mean doing a good job. She's the marketing person there. And I keep getting promoted. I want to go right. I don't know how to make that happen. But I keep getting promoted at my job. And she says, honestly, I don't feel like I'm doing a great job. I'm just doing an okay job. But they keep giving me raises and promotions. And I don't know what to do with that.
Starting point is 01:09:20 She said, I'm really scared that I might succeed at the wrong thing. And I think now more than ever, that's a real temptation for so many of us that work is no longer this means of merely making a living of trying to survive. You know, you have choices. Um, and, and sometimes those choices, um, are, are dangerous because we could actually choose the wrong thing because we have the right resources and an internet connection and we can make anything happen with the right attitude or so we think. And as you mentioned earlier, Jonathan, what if your calling could be many things? And I think that's absolutely true. And I think that's, we live in this age of possibility. But I also think there's the temptation to choose something and it's not the right thing because we're measuring our success, you know, on somebody else's scale. everywhere is to not spread myself too thin or go after something so tenaciously that I end up
Starting point is 01:10:26 succeeding at the wrong thing, meaning that I'm somehow, you know, compromising my values or letting the end justify the means in some, you know, unhealthy or unethical ways. And I fear getting to the, you know, end of the race, so to speak, and not having anything worthwhile to celebrate or worse, not having anyone to celebrate it with. So what it means to live a good life for me is really succeeding at the right things and having someone to share that success with. Beautiful, love it.
Starting point is 01:11:01 Thank you so much for the conversation. My pleasure, thank you. What is it that you're meant to do? What about this concept of a portfolio life? Does it resonate with you guys? Does it feel too constricted? Does it feel too kind of loose and out there? Always love to hear what's going on in your mind around these ideas. You can hit me up and share your ideas and thoughts on the show over on Twitter at Jonathan Fields, all one word. And if you enjoyed this conversation and feel like sharing around, that'd be awesome.
Starting point is 01:11:30 And if you feel like jumping over to iTunes and just sharing a quick review, we'd so appreciate it. As always, you can find out more about what we're up to bigger picture over at goodlifeproject.com. We are enrolling Camp GLP, Summer Camp for Makers, Entrepreneurs, and World Shakers. It's going to be an amazing, amazing experience this summer, so you can learn more about it there. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off this week for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever,
Starting point is 01:12:32 making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone
Starting point is 01:12:49 XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were gonna be fun. January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is?
Starting point is 01:13:05 You're gonna die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.

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