The Rich Roll Podcast - Jonathan Fields On Finding Meaningful Work

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

What am I here to do? What should I do with my life? What is my purpose? Today’s guest has devoted his life to helping people answer these important questions. Meet Jonathan Fields. Author of many a bestselling book, including How to Live a Good Life, Uncertainty, and Career Renegade, he’s the man behind the wonderful Good Life Project podcast and community, a sought after public speaker, father, and a dear friend and personal mentor of mine. He’s been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, FastCompany, Inc., Entrepreneur, Forbes, and USA Today, just to name a few.  Making his third appearance on the show, today Jonathan joins me in the studio to share his unique core belief and perspective, which is that everyone has an innate imprint for a certain type of work—work that makes you come alive. After many years of deep thought and research, he’s divined an evidence-based method for helping others discover meaningful careers, which is explored more deeply in his fascinating new book Sparked. This exchange is essentially an excavation of the self. We grapple with big life questions, break down the components of meaningful work, and what it takes to not just find, but create a fulfilling career. We also dive deep into Sparktypes, which is essentially the social psychology version of Human Design or the Enneagram. After surveying over 500,000 people and accruing 2.5 million data points, Jonathan has created a system to help you better understand your needs when it comes to finding purpose in your professional life. You can take the free quiz at sparketype.com. I love Jonathan’s focus on process over results. His emphasis on the journey over the destination. His deep understanding that authenticity is everything. My hope is that our conversation guides you towards work that suits you, fits your unique blueprint, motivates you, excites you, and fills you with purpose. Work that sparks you, and ultimately sets you on a trajectory to a life marked with more meaning, flow, and joy. To read more click here. You can also watch listen to our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I adore this beautiful man for reasons you will soon discover. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich

There's a certain line of thought that says the ultimate aspiration is to be happy. So we should aspire to just live a happy life. And if you ask the average parent, what do you want for your kid? They're going to say, like, I want them to be happy. But the reality is, if you know that, A, it's not a persistent state. It's a moment that we pass through, like here and there, which is awesome. But to expect to live there, to dwell in that state, is setting yourself up for futility and failure and for many, a sense of shame because you haven't lived up to the expectation that you've been told is possible.

It's not. There's research that actually shows the direct pursuit of happiness leaves you less happy. You do other things that are meaningful, that are relational. And a side benefit, it will increase or relate the net happiness. I think that's what it comes down to. Like, how do we know ourselves better and make better decisions so we can take better actions? If we can figure out pieces of that puzzle, everything gets a lot easier and better. To me, happiness is the snapshot, meaning is the movie.

The Rich Roll Podcast. What am I here to do? What should I do with my life? If these are questions you find yourself asking, you're in the right place at the right time because my guest today has essentially devoted his life to helping people answer these questions. His name is Jonathan Fields. And in addition to being a dear friend, a mentor to me personally, a dad, an author of many a bestselling book, the man behind the wonderful Good Life Project podcast and community, and maker of many other things, Jonathan holds this core belief that we all have an innate

impulse or imprint for work that makes us come alive, all of us. And over many years spent studying this, thinking deeply about this, writing about this, has divined an evidence-based method for helping people discover it. It is this terrain we today tread, a fascinating conversation that will no doubt leave you inspired to dig deeper, which you should all do by picking up his brand new stunning book, Sparked, which hits bookstores this week. A few more things to add before we dive in, but first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment

and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders,

depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you.

Life and recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment.

And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders,

gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first

step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for Basically, this is an excavation of self with the intention of helping effectively and efficiently guiding you towards work that suits you, that fits your blueprint, that motivates you, that excites you, that fills you with purpose, essentially work that sparks you, as Jonathan would say, and ultimately sets you on a trajectory to a life marked with more meaning, with more flow, performance, and joy, qualities we all aspire to have in abundance. I adore this beautiful man for reasons you will soon discover. And with that, I give you Jonathan Fields. So good to see you.

You too. Long overdue. I think the last time I saw you was at Mel Robbins' house in Vermont. Yeah. When was that? It was three years ago. It was pre-COVID, certainly, but I think When was that? It was three years ago. It was pre-COVID certainly,

but I think it was like two and a half years ago. Well, it was spring, I think, right? It was probably spring. So probably going on like, yeah, two and a half, three years. Well, I missed you. Ah, I know, you too. You've been on a pretty interesting COVID adventure though. I just got back from New York City

and I think it's the only time I've been in New York City when you weren't there. And I so heavily associate you with the city and you're no longer of New York. It is really strange place to be. I mean, I grew up outside of the city. Like my wife, Stephanie grew up outside of the city. We've lived in New York City for 30 years.

So it's all, you know, That's been home for three decades. We like had a kid, raise a daughter in New York City. She's a hundred percent city kid. We built businesses in the city, communities in the city. Had a recording studio for like our podcast in the city, in our apartment actually, which you have been to many times. And we hit a point where, you know,

New York City was kind of the tip of the spear when it came to the pandemic last year, you know, in the spring, it was a terrifying place to be, absolutely terrifying place to be in part because it hit us so hard and so deep. And before there was really any understanding of what this was and how to navigate it in any meaningful way.

And it's the biggest cluster of people in the country in the tightest area. So it's really hard. Not exactly where you wanna be when there's an outbreak. Yeah, and yet there's so much devastation that happened there. There's nobody that I know that either didn't lose someone directly or know somebody who's not here anymore.

It touched our family, it touched every friend I know's family. And we hit a point where we were producing a show that kept us in New York also, because in person, similar to the way that you're sort of like in proximity enough to LA where, you know, almost anyone you want to talk to is going to be moving through the city at some point. So you can grab and bring them into the studios. We had the same thing in New York city.

And I always assumed that that was a core part of what we were doing, like my ability to earn a living and sit down with people. So when everything changed in the blink of an eye, we had to completely disrupt our production process and move to remote and go through that whole thing and then figured out we could actually do it. Then the question became, okay, so there's no such thing as disruption without possibility. Where's the possibility? Because it has to exist and you may not feel it

or see it readily when you're in the midst of being disrupted, but it exists, it always does. So then we start to say, okay, what is this allowing us to potentially think about doing that we couldn't even conceive of doing before? Once you untether from the idea that you have to sit across from another human being, the possibilities become limitless because you're decoupled from geographic location all of a sudden.

Yeah. And, and, but I had the same struggle as you, you know, like we've talked about this over the years, you know, like, can you actually get the depth and quality of a conversation virtually that we're having, you know, like just right here, like face to face, where we can see each other, we can feel each other. I can hear the sound of your breath. I can see the nuance of your eyebrows, you know?

So, and I didn't believe it was possible to do that virtually. I thought it was completely impossible, but then we were left with the decision of, we either shut down our show or we figured out. So we started just cobbling it together and figuring it out. And what I learned over time was that my assumptions were wrong.

We were able to create, so we record on a platform that gives us super high quality audio. And at the same time, I see somebody, but we don't record the video. We don't actually share that. It's purely for conversational reference. And what I learned was that the safe container

that we created in the studio is replaced by the safety that somebody experiences when they're in their own setting. And that transfers into the conversation. It's different, but it worked to create intimacy and a level that I didn't think was possible. Yeah, it's so interesting. I think that I never made it over that hump and held onto this idea that it's impossible.

And I tried, and I think some of those conversations were successful, but I was still felt lacking in the sense that a big motivator for me is because I wanna be in relationship with these people too, right? And there is something that feels a little bit transactional because as soon as it's over, you forget who you were talking to or whatever.

But I would say a couple of things. I mean, first of all, you did figure it out. Like I listened to your show and you know, one of the reasons why I felt like it wasn't gonna work for me is because that emotional piece is really fundamental and at the core of what I do. And it's certainly, it's even more so for the way that you approach your conversations

and you did figure it out. And I think what I wasn't able to fully appreciate is that part about people being comfortable in their own home, you know, that allows them to just be a little bit more relaxed. I mean, here we are in a studio, there's lights, there's camera. And like, you're, you know, a seasoned veteran at this.

It's not gonna affect you, but for some people it does, you know, and you're creating the opposite of what you're trying to achieve. So perhaps it would be better if it was in a digital format. I've heard Marin talk about this too, cause he was very reticent and he said something

in a recent podcast where he's like, learned to really love it. Yeah, and I think it's similar to the way I now feel about virtual speaking and keynotes. And I'm literally, as I sit here within the last 72 hours, I've just now done my first in-person keynote in a hall, in a resort. And then 16 hours after that, followed up with a virtual keynote where I was in an Airbnb, like presenting to a senior leadership team spread across an entire country. And to have that comparison, and in the beginning, I wanted nothing to do with it.

I didn't want the learning curve. I didn't want, I thought there's no way I can make the connection. I can't get the feedback. I'm so interactive. I know you're really similar to me, and especially in front of an audience, you're like, we're constantly scanning

to see how things are landing so that we can adapt and give people what they need in the moment. And it's so much harder to do. And yet there are, once you start to learn the tools and the platforms, there are things that you can do that you can't do in person. You can get a level of engagement virtually,

which is surprising that you can't do. You can use things like breakout groups or chats or different things where the quieter, the highly sensitive people in an audience, the introverts who would never raise a hand and participate in a conversation or do a partner exercise, you know, when you actually give them a little bit of safety behind the screen or a chat,

or being able to raise their hand and just share, you know, through distance profoundly changes the dynamic. And so that happened also with podcasting for me, but, and it really blew my mind because I didn't see it coming. I literally questioned whether we were gonna have to shut down because I have that similar value set to you. I'm like, we need to produce at a certain level.

And if I can't do that, I have no interest in doing this. You know, like we're, like the standard is very high. And I was really concerned that we wouldn't be able to do it. And it took a while to figure out, but I feel like we pretty much have figured out. And sure there are some people where you're right. And you know, if there are kids running in the background

or it's like an environment where they don't feel completely cloistered and safe, then, you know, it might not work. We don't air every conversation that we record, which is sort of like a dirty secret of podcasting. Yeah, yeah. There's only been maybe two in the history of me doing this, two that I can recall, maybe a third one

where I didn't air it. And I'm such a people pleaser and I have such porous boundaries that- I know, because I think you've called me every time. I would torture myself. What should we do? Whereas you're ruthless with that, right? You'll do one and just be like,

this is not good, we're not doing it. It's not ruthless because I, like you, if people show up and they give their time, you know, like I really want to respect that. I want to be generous and respectful. And at the same time, my ultimate responsibility is to our listening community, you know, and I can't violate that trust or else everything is over.

So if for some reason we feel like there just something happened or didn't happen in a way that, you know, would make somebody tune in and say, okay, I've just given it an hour, an hour and a half of my life. And I don't quite think it was worth it. I don't ever want it was worth it. I don't ever wanna break that trust. That is the most sacred bond of trust. I know you feel that way also.

Yeah, I definitely do. But I still struggle with the boundaries thing a little bit. For you though. We've actually, by the way, we've like paid the travel and accommodation fees of people where we felt really bad. Oh, really? Where that's happened.

Like, so we try and do the right thing. Like if somebody really invests in being here, I sort of, I live increasingly by the motto of maximum sustainable generosity. You know, I'm sort of like constantly scanning. That's the way I want to build the business. That's the way I want to build friendships. That's the way I want to exist in the world.

And sometimes I meet that and sometimes I fail, but I try and- Explain that a little bit though. Maximum sustainable generosity. Yeah, so, you know, when I think about in business, let's take business, for example, because it's a fairly straightforward way of looking at it. How could you launch and grow a business?

How do you market something? I'm launching a book. How do I actually bring that to the world? Right? Well, I would love to have a lot of people become aware of the ideas. So how do I share that? Well, I could spend a lot of money to buy attention

and then ask people to essentially like exchange money for an idea. And we'll do some of that. But my brain says increasingly, what can we create that will be generative and generous? Even if somebody never buys a thing from me, what can we offer to the world, to individuals, if I never meet them in my entire life, that will in some way make the moment they're in better. And maybe they end up actually turning around and saying,

wow, I wanna go deeper into this, but maybe they don't. But I still wanna lead with being generous with things that I create, with my time, with share of mind, share of heart, share of whatever it is that I can share. But at the same time, there's the sustainable part is in the middle of that phrase. It's not maximum generosity because that can lead to major boundary issues and burnout.

And I'm somebody who's like, I'm an HSP, highly sensitive person. So I know that socially I have sort of like boundaries and I need recovery. And also I run a business and support a family. So how do I do it in a way that is emotionally sustainable, that is cognitively sustainable, and that's financially sustainable? You know, so I'm constantly running those scripts in my head saying, how can I give

to a point where everything is sustainable for me, where I'm not going to hit a point where I'm completely and utterly burned out on all three planes, because then I can't do any of it anymore. Yeah, it takes a certain level of deep self-understanding to know where those lines are though. I find myself with a malleable definition of sustainability because I'm like, I get excited about ideas and I convince myself that I can make it work or make it fit and constantly then end up

in burnout situations. We've talked a lot about this over the years. I've gotten better, but I still, I'm climbing that mountain. And I'm not like, for me, this is an aspirational standard. It doesn't mean like I wake up every morning and I hit that standard.

It's just like, I just keep asking myself the question, like what would the action or the decision be that would allow me to align as closely with that standard of maximal sustainable generosity? Sometimes I rise to it, sometimes it completely utterly fail. And sometimes I like you, I kind of forget the sustainability part in the middle

and I end up wrecked. Yeah. You know, and then I realized, oh, well, yeah, that was nice for a hot minute. And now it's gonna take a lot of recovery. Yeah. I feel a kinship with you in the sense that I feel we both kind of lead with the heart,

but you're much more systems oriented than I am. Like you figured out ways to organize your life in a manner that I still struggle with. And I think that's an interesting, you know, way to kind of launch into the new book and everything that we're going to talk about today. This idea of combining, you know, understanding that that is sort of a superpower for you, but also simultaneously understanding that the best way to leverage that is by using some rationality and logic

to organize your life in a manner that does make it sustainable for you to give in that way. Yeah, I mean, you're right. You and I both lead with a heart a lot. And I think the systems and like the scaffolding for me is a survival mechanism. It doesn't come naturally to me. I don't enjoy doing it.

I don't enjoy creating it. And I don't enjoy following systems, process and rules. I am much more rebellious. You know, like I'm a maker, which means I'm a lateral thinker. Like I open my eyes in the morning and I'm thinking outside of whatever box I constructed when I closed my eyes the night before.

That's not by will, it's just the way that my brain works. It's the way that my life has been structured. But at the same time, I like to be generative. I like to have meaningful output come from whatever's going on, like from all of those thoughts. And I've come to realize that if I don't have structure around it in some meaningful way, then I'm just spinning ideas, you know,

and it's fun, but nothing ever happens. Yeah, but you're also very good, you know, on that idea of creating a foundation or a scaffold to not just organize your life, but create an idea that's scalable and applicable to other people's lives, which is really, you know, the basis of all the work that you do. Yeah, it's interesting.

Back before we went entirely into podcasting, we were producing a video series and we were filming everything. And our producer has reminded me many times that the single most referenced person by me in the history of our show is Milton Glaser, who I had the opportunity to sit down with. He passed about two years ago. And Milton, as you know, was maybe one of the most iconic designers who has lived in the last hundred years. And I sat down with him in his studio.

People won't know the name if you're not in design, but they know his work. He created the I Heart NY logo on the back of a napkin in a cab in the seventies in New York and gave it to the city for like no money, simply because he had a love affair with the city that he grew up in and lived in. And he wanted to do something to help it come back with this massive devastating, like near bankruptcy situation. He was a co-founder of New York magazine.

He's created all these iconic things. All these logos. The famous like Bob Dylan rainbow hair poster, like everybody knows his work, but if you're not- You did an IBM logo too? I don't know if he did that one. But a bunch of logos that we all know well. He taught for like 40 years at Cooper Union.

So he's influenced thousands of designers, then gone out and effectively created the world that we live in and sitting down with him in conversation, which was, you know, we wrapped that conversation and the whole team was just like, does it have to end? Cause it was this magical moment, but he said something to me a few minutes of that conversation. He said, I've known what I want to do since I was five or six years old. So I didn't know I want to be a designer, but what I knew then was that I want to make things. And then he said, I think he said,

my dad told me, if you can make things that in some way are meaningful to other people, that's even better because maybe that becomes a career. So in my mind, what I heard was, I make things that move people. And I said, I literally was vibrating because every cell in my body was just like, me too, me too, me too.

And I couldn't get it out of my mind. And it's funny, actually, we're about to roll out a whole new personal website for me. And the top line now says, I make things that move people. And I can't have that last part of it unless I build the structure around it. I can make all sorts of stuff, but to have it be able to scale on a level where it's meaningful, not just to me, but to other people and actually

make a difference in their lives, that takes more. I mean, we're in a studio now, we've been friends for a long time. Five years ago, you didn't have this structure. No. You know, you have a level of structure around you and a team around you that is allowing you to reach exponentially more people and go deeper into people's lives. And it's been like stunning to witness what you've created. So you may not recognize that in yourself, but it is a hundred percent there.

Yeah. I mean, I'm able to appreciate it, I think on some level, but, you know, on this idea of us going way back, I mean, I'm able to appreciate it, I think on some level, but on this idea of us going way back, I mean, I would be remiss, you've been on the podcast before, but it's been a very long time. I would be remiss in not acknowledging the extraordinary impact that you've had on me

over the years throughout our friendship, but even predating our friendship. I mean, you are impacting me in ways you have no idea about back, I don't know, early 2000s, like back to the early days of Career Renegade and all the work that you were doing around, you know, helping writers. I mean, I see you, this will,

we'll get into this more in depth in the Sparketype discussion, but I've always seen you as sort of a mentor from afar and now up close, but also as a teacher and somebody who always has led with this question that your book kind of opens up with, which is, what should I do with my life? There are so many people who feel adrift or lost or struggling with this idea of how to pursue a life of meaning and fulfillment, et cetera. That's always been at the core of your work. And you were a very early internet adopter in understanding the powerful tools that the internet allowed you to leverage to reach people.

And I remember conversations with friends way, like I remember the first time my buddy Mark Gant said, do you know this guy, Jonathan Fields? You should check out his website. He's got all this stuff. It's about unlocking creativity. And I went down this rabbit hole of all this stuff that you were doing way back then. And it's been this constant process or evolution of reinvention, refinement, figuring out what your voice is and how to impact people in the most meaningful way that you possibly could. And we didn't meet until I was a guest

on Good Life Project back in 2012. Back when we were filming, yeah. And you were the first guy who was doing podcasting in video format at a very high level. Like you had super pro, you know, cameras and team and editing and all of that and created this very polished product way ahead of the curve.

And I've often thought like, why didn't he keep doing that? Like you, like you dummy. I mean, I think the video that we did together back then still gets views. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, it's been an interesting evolution. Like you said, I was a brick and mortar entrepreneur, like in the world of yoga and wellbeing and fitness

in New York City. You know the story. I signed the lease for a floor in a building in New York City, in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, a secure lease, married with a three-month-old baby to open a yoga studio the day before 9-11. And I was all in, in brick and mortar and building community,

but I really got the bug to write and to share, to build more around just ideas, sharing ideas at scale. And that's actually what led me to the internet. And it was actually, it was Tim Ferriss who was the gateway drug for me. And because I had seen what he did to launch the very first book for our work week.

And I was like, huh, here's a guy who actually completely tapped that world to do something pretty astonishing with a physical object. Like eBooks were not a thing when he first launched that book and actually reached out to him. And I was like, can you talk to me a little bit? And he like, this was before Tim has sort of exploded into the landscape and the level that it is.

And I've had a conversation, I realized really quickly, I need to sort of like start exploring this digital space and the media space, because I knew nothing about it. And that was sort of like my entree into it. And then into the world of books and then selling the yoga center in New York City. But yeah, that video series, which is how Good Life Project started,

it was 100% video for the first two years or so. And similar to what we talked about before, I'm at a point in my life where if I say yes to something, I want to be in a space where I'm perpetually raising my own bar and hopefully raising the bar for the space. And I said, let's show up and do this. And people thought I was nuts, including me. And, but-

And that was like 2010? That was 2012. 12. Yeah, and then we pulled out of video because I fell in love with audio and it wasn't podcasting. It made me fall in love with audio actually. It was radio

because as part of launching that first book that you mentioned, it was 2009. I was on a whole bunch of radio and I would go into the studio and I put the headphones on and we're closed mic like this. And then a friend of mine had a show and it became like a regular guest on her show. And I was like, this is awesome. I just, there was something about it. And then Seth Godin introduced me to one of the founders of one of the big public radio franchises,

Studio 360, who was a docent at one of the big museums in New York. And we walked around one day and I was telling her, I'm kind of falling in love with radio, especially public radio. Like, you know, like, I think I might want to get into it and not do the video thing. And she's kind of like, well, why? What's your reason?

And I said, well, you know, like massive reach. And I just, there's something about it that I love. And she kind of looks at me. Radio for reach love. So hilarious. And she kinda looks at me. Radio for reach. Right, right. She kinda looks at me like, and I like, I knew I had just like, like I had broken something in the conversation.

And I'm like, what am I missing? She's like, she's like, yeah, reach. But she's like, the power of audio is it is the single most intimate medium of everything on the planet. And the light bulb went on for me. And as an introvert, as somebody who's quieter, somebody who has zero need to actually be on screen

or be visually recognizable, I'm just as happy sort of like being the wizard behind the curtain. It all started to click. And so my early aspirations were really more radio. But, and at that point, and you know this, cause you were in really early also, everyone was thinking podcast is dying on the vine.

It literally it's the last gasp. And then Apple splits out the podcast app and installs it native on every device. And a couple of months later, serial hits. And the universe changes. It was a huge inflection point of elevated content meets accessibility, like seamless accessibility.

It wasn't just the app. It was that you didn't necessarily have to download these things either, like bandwidth expanded enough so that you could stream them and it just became easier. And then cars started installing that in their dashboards. And so, I mean, still to this day, it's like every time I get in an Uber, there's the radio's playing.

I go, have you ever listened to a podcast? And then 99% of the time, they're like, no, I don't do that. There's still a ways to go, but it's crazy how much it's grown. And I would have never thought that because when we started this, it was a weird hobbyist thing to do.

It was not a cool thing. Well, I mean, when you started this, I mean, obviously it was audio only, but you were in Hawaii then, right? Yeah. Right, so this is, I mean- 2012. Right, so it was like the same time that I started video. Yeah, it's crazy.

It's amazing. But you must think at times, like what if I'd kept up the video? I do. Cause you could always split out the audio or you could have the longer, you could do like the on being model where you have a longer version in audio or whatever.

And we actually did that for about a year. We just ran the audio on the YouTube channel because we had a bunch of subscribers there. And I'm actually, we're now literally, as we have this conversation sitting down with my team and we're exploring different video formats. What I'm trying, we're now literally, as we have this conversation sitting down with my team and we're exploring different video formats, what I'm trying to figure out actually is how can we reanimate the video side of what we're doing?

Because we know that YouTube is the second or third largest podcast platform. So there's a huge audience there that doesn't wanna leave like that platform to actually consume. And for long form conversations like this, you know, this is beautifully produced. You're doing an astonishing job.

And yet I also know, and you know, that a lot of people are actually just letting this run in the background. Sure. You know, so what I'm trying to figure out is between knowing that, not having a strong affinity and also not feeling called to sort of like spend a lot of time visually in front of people.

But I really want the ideas and the conversations and whatever spotlight I have to share on other people and their ideas and their stories and insights, I wanna be able to do that at the biggest scale possible. How do we step back into video in a way that is, it goes back to what we're talking about. Again, maximum sustainable generosity. How do we increase the generosity and the spread of the ideas

and the insights and the individuals in a way that's sustainable for me at the same time? Well, a couple observations on that. First of all, YouTube is also a massive search engine and they figured out discoverability in a way that podcasting still struggles with. So a certain video will get recommended to people who are not subscribers of you.

And it's able to travel across the internet in a way that a podcast episode is not able to. So I think that makes it powerful as well. And just the visual association creates a deeper emotional connection to the host or the guest or what have you. But I think the important point that I wanna make is that, and this is something I've always appreciated about you,

is that you're never one to say, oh, everybody's doing this, like I should do that too. You're always looking for the white space. Like what are people not doing? Like when everybody's zigging, you're zagging. Okay, we wanna get back into video, but like what are people not seeing? What's a new way to imagine

how we could make a presence on this platform, but do it in a unique way that is commensurate with your sensibility? Yeah, I don't like doing whatever else is. Yeah, no, no, no, it's good. I'm like innately zag oriented, you know? And I look at like, I look at what we're creating here and it blows my mind.

I'm in awe of this, of what you've built and you know, like what you offer to your community. And simultaneously my mind is like, I wanna do something visual, but yeah, like the intro is like, God bless man. But also- This would put a serious wrench in your ability to be nomadic in the way that you are right now. Right, I mean, and that's something

we haven't even talked about. But, and at the same time, I'm kind of like, what is nobody else doing right now? Like, if I'm gonna step back into video, which we are going to, what's nobody else doing right now? Because again, if I wanna step into it, I wanna create a different bar. I wanna figure out how to do something

that is really strongly differentiated in this space, but not just to be different, but in a way that I feel like in some way changes the way that the conversation, the insights, the stories are received. And I haven't quite figured that out yet, but we're running a lot of experiments behind the scenes right now to do it.

Yeah, I'm confident that you will. It's funny that you said, you ended that with this experiment. You're always saying, well, we're split testing this. And I'm like, who's we? Like, who are all these people that are running all these crazy tests and you're getting all these data sets. This is the scientist in you,

this secondary sparkotype that you have, which is probably a good way to get into talking about the new book and this idea of, what we should do with our lives. Talk me through the genesis of this idea, because you've been working on this for a very long time. Probably a couple decades. When we were at Mel's house,

you were talking about this book. I think you had even written major portions of this at that time. Yeah, the body of work had really started to form, but the true Genesis is probably two to three decades old. You brought up the question earlier, which is the center of really my professional life or my entire adult life, which is that question,

what should I do with my life? And what I found is that whether I'm writing books, whether I was teaching yoga for years and meditation, whether I was, no matter where I was, that is sort of the singular question that people kept asking me. I don't know why, but it's the thing that kept coming up over and over and over again.

What I realized over time is when they're asking me in particular, especially after I was sort of in the world of business and had built a number of small businesses and they were asking me more particularly how do I find and do work that makes me come alive? And I realized that we had, we, there's the we again, right? I think I sometimes hide behind that to be honest with you. How many people are involved in this mysterious we?

Just a couple thousand. We have a small team. But the original idea really is me saying, okay, I've worked with a lot of founders and a lot of entrepreneurs in the world of business to deconstruct how they look at the businesses that they're thinking about building so that it's not just about, quote, product market fit. Can I actually fill a need for the market and build a business that's successful on the outside because

it's sustaining itself financially? But it's also about what I would call product maker fit. Can I build something that is also fiercely aligned with the essential nature of the way that I need to contribute to the world, which almost nobody explores? And I ended up focusing really heavy on that. I actually think it's much more complex than product market fit. And then I start to realize that I've been focused so much on the question in the context of founders and entrepreneurs, but there were so many ideas spinning in my head and questions around just work in general, whether it's your career, whether it's your devotion, whether it's the thing that you love to do on the side,

whether it's a role that you play, being a parent is work, like being a caretaker is work. Whether you get paid for it or not, like the thing where you open your eyes and you invest a huge amount of effort in it, like how do we do that in a way that gives us the feeling that we want to have? And when I use the phrase come alive,

like how do you do work that comes alive? I deconstruct that because this was a big part of what I had to figure out. Like, what do I actually mean by that? Like, I feel alive, awesome. But how do I actually understand what that is in a way where I can make it fairly systematic and replicable across any number of domains

that I step into? So for me, when I use that phrase, it deconstructs to five things. One is meaningfulness. It has to be meaningful to me and hopefully to other people. It has to matter. I have to feel like the thing that I'm working on matters and there's a sense of meaning associated with it. It also to me

includes the experience of flow. So that blissed out state where you become completely absorbed in the thing, there's a non-differentiation between you and the task that the goal, whatever it is, you get lost time fugues. You know, there's a ton of research on all of these individual things and how they affect us in a profound way. So I'm interested in these well-researched domains, but bringing them all together into one state,

express potential. So I feel like, you know, all of me is being brought forward, not just like pieces of it. I don't just show up and segment who I am, but the fullness of who I am, what I care about, and the impulse that I have to get out is being brought to bear. We also look at excitement and enthusiasm,

which the corporate world kind of phrases as engagement these days. And the final one is purpose in life, a broader sense of purpose in life. So we often talk about purpose in the context of a particular project or domain. Like I wake up in the morning, I have a sense of purpose

because I'm working to accomplish this particular thing, which is really good and really important. But more broadly, and there's really powerful research in the field of positive psychology and social science on what they phrase purpose in life. If you have a sense of purpose in life, there are all sorts of follow-on benefits

that flow from that in terms of health, wellbeing, cognitive function, mental health. And each one of these are really well-researched. And I said, to me, these are the five components that come together. So when I use the phrase as a shorthand, come alive, no, and do work, how do I find to do work that makes you come alive?

That's what I'm talking about. Work that gives me those things. Yeah, that's a very mindful and intentional way of approaching what tends to be kind of these ephemeral concepts of living a passionate life or pursuing a life of meaning. And I think you're exactly right.

Like, what does that actually mean? I mean, when we talk about the terms that capture the life we aspire to lead, we tend to talk about passion and purpose and meaning and fulfillment and authenticity and self-actualization and impact. And it's very confusing because it's so abstract. It's really hard to grasp what any of that means,

let alone how you would drill down and translate that into anything actionable. It's almost impossible to achieve that because those words are about emotion, right? And they're about results, but they tell us very little about how to achieve them. Yeah, and they're about feelings, which are subjective. Yeah.

So if you look at the research in each of these domains, it's interesting because there's a lot of it. And when you look at the numbers, you're like, oh, there's a ton of research, clear outcomes. And, but when you really drill down into the research, you're like, there's also a lot of best guessing. So if you look at the research on happiness, which I happen to like have an issue

with a lot of happiness based sort of like aspirations. But when you look at the research where there's all like granular statistics reported about like do this and you're happier by 5% and this and that, when you ask yourself, how are they measuring happiness? And then you look at like the measures and there'll be things like-

And how are they defining happiness? Did you laugh in the last 24 hours? Right, so how they define it is completely subjective and different across all the different studies. So you'll have somebody say, use meaningfulness instead of happiness. There's a lot of roughness in all of the research around all of these things.

But I keep going for me, like the thing that of all the things that we've talked about, the biggest poll for me is an exploration of meaning. To me, happiness is the snapshot, meaning is the movie. Happiness is a state that we pass through. It's like when you're training for an event, right? You can't be in peak fitness on a perpetual basis.

You'll destroy yourself. It's just impossible. Sure. And it's not exactly, in an overall sense, it's a pursuit that makes me happy, but it's not an experience of happiness, right? It's a meaningful experience. Right, so there's like, we conflate these words. Sure, and I think because there's so much confusion

around that and so little common defining of those terms, it leaves, and you talk about this in the book, like it leaves people confused and frustrated and paralyzed. And I think, you know, experiencing guilt or shame because they haven't figured it out. I mean, here we are emerging out of this COVID area. Everybody is thinking more deeply about their relationship

to their profession and to work in ways that we didn't before. And because our culture over indexes on some of those terms, I think it leaves most people feeling less than. A hundred percent. Because they don't have it figured out or so-and-so on Instagram is living their life of passion or is on a Caribbean beach or something like that.

And you're in your cubicle wondering what it is exactly that gives your life meaning and purpose. Yeah, I mean, I call it happiness shame. You know, there's a certain expectation. There's a certain line of thought that says the ultimate aspiration is to be happy. So we should aspire to just live a happy life. And if you ask the average parent,

what do you want for your kid? They're gonna say like, I want them to be happy. But the reality is if you know that A, it's not a persistent state, it's a moment that we pass through like here and there, which is awesome. But to expect to live there, to dwell in that state is setting yourself up for futility and failure. And for many, a sense of shame because you haven't lived up to the expectation that you've been told is possible. It's not. So there's research that actually shows the direct pursuit of happiness leaves you less happy. You do other things that are meaningful, that are relational, that, you know, and a side benefit is it will increase or late the net happiness.

But the other part of that equation that's not often talked about is that in the context of happiness in particular, similar to sort of like metabolism and other physiological markers, pretty commonly accepted at this point that happiness is in part at least based on genetic set point. is in part at least based on genetic set point. I've seen data that says anywhere between 40 and 60% of your sort of like average set point for happiness is based on genetics, right? So if you happen to be wired to just be more on the melancholy side,

and then the world around you is telling you that to be okay, you actually need to be like, yay all day long, you know, that you need to be like exist at a 75% happy, but you're wired and you're kind of okay being like just who you are, but you're being told that that means you're broken. Well, then you feel even more broken

rather than just saying, actually, I'm okay with myself. I'm fascinated by the world of happiness and how you look at the research and then you look at how that's been translated into common perception and edicts and prescriptions and how there's a lot that's gone missing in the middle. And ultimately, sure, I wanna be happy.

I want my kid to be happy. I want my friends to be, I want you to be happy, right? But more than that, I want you to feel like you matter. I want you to feel like what you're doing is meaningful. I want you to feel like you're surrounded by relationships that nourish you at the end of the day, and you're making a difference. I want you to feel like there's something inside of you that makes you open your eyes in the morning. And if you exert effort in alignment with it, you just feel good, even if you have no understanding of why, and you figured that out,

and then you figured out a way to actually contribute to the world that lets you do that. That's what matters to me. So how do you take that ambition and create a roadmap or a structure that will allow people to discover that within themselves that can be more expressed so they can actualize that in their lives. Yeah, well, first I run from it because I don't wanna be the person who has to try and grapple with that. That's a very ambitious.

Cause I got other stuff to do. I wanna paint, I wanna build other things, I wanna write and create. But here's where the scientist comes out, right? This is a big problem. This is a very macro social problem to solve. It's what economists would call a wicked problem. And it's unique to each person.

And so I started to look at a lot of, when I think about how do we actually, how do we find, how do we understand what is the work that gives us this feeling of coming alive? Like how do we invest ourselves in that, invest effort in a way that gives us that feeling? First, I'm looking at the science, because I'm like, if it's out there,

I don't want to recreate it. I just want to help point people to it. I'm like, there's a lot of science, but a lot of it is not all that accessible and it's very siloed. And then I look at, well, what other paths? I look at philosophy, I look at psychology, I look at spirituality,

and they each have their prescribed paths and their edicts and their offerings. And they're great. There's a lot of value in each one of them. And if you buy into the sort of like the systems that, you know, that would allow you to learn these things, that's great, you know, but spirituality, there's a lot of great, great work that you can do and paths and traditions. And we know a lot of people in that space who are phenomenal teachers. And at the same time, they also often buy you, require you to buy into a larger schema of dogma that a lot of people will tap out on. So they'll run from the tools simply

because they don't want to buy into the bigger ecosystem. So my mind starts to say, all right, how do I tap that? How do I do my own original thinking and create something? So the maker in me is like, how do I make something that moves people? And the scientist says, we need to figure out a complex problem here.

How do we create something, an idea, a set of tools that are profoundly accessible and useful for anybody, no matter what you believe in or don't believe in, no matter where you come from, what your political, philosophical, spiritual bent is. You can show up, interact with these ideas and tools and be like, oh, that helped.

That matters to me. And that was a starting point for me. I actually didn't really wanna dive into this because I knew it was gonna be a years, years long process. But I also knew it was the evolution of where my mind has been focusing for decades now. So for many years, you steep yourself in the science, the social psychology, all of the research,

and that leads you to essentially a series of questions that you've refined over time. And in answering these questions, each individual, it begins to paint a picture of what you call a person's sparkotype. So walk me through that and these 10 sparkotypes that you've come up with, because there is an essentialism to this.

I know that your original manuscript for this book was like 10 times longer than the book. By the way, I didn't say it, but like the book is fantastic and it's beautifully rendered. But I think its power is in its simplicity. Like it's a book that you can pick up and you can really, you know, not just learn immediately, but take these tools and apply them to your life because it's relatable. And Milton would be very proud in how these ideas have been distilled down in a way that makes them very practical.

Yeah, when I said yes to all of this work, part of what I wanted to say yes to was I wanted to create a way for people to feel seen first by themselves and then to help explain themselves to others and have others see themselves for who they really are because we are profoundly unseen in this world. And when that happens, the level of revelation and connection externally,

that alone, even if I never like said, gave any prescriptive information on top of that is transformative. But in the context of creating actual tools in the book and these 10 types that you mentioned, I call them sparketypes because it's a fun shorthand for archetypes for work that sparks you or makes you come alive.

And we're using those five elements to really focus in on that. I kind of hate the fact that I've identified 10 of them because it feels way too slick. It's like, I'm a marketer and this feels way too marketing for me. I'm like, couldn't it have been nine or 14 or something like that?

But you start out with, basically I start with this really big lens and say, okay, so what is the fundamental impulse that people have for effort that gives them this feeling? Is it really as unique and distinct as 7.5 billion distinct impulses? Could that really be true? Are we all those delicate flowers

who have to be completely unique from everyone else? And on the surface, for sure, it can express itself in billions of different ways. But if you keep drilling down and say, well, what's underneath that? What's underneath that? How do we deconstruct this role, this job, this devotion? What are the fundamental impulses for effort underneath it?

It distills astonishingly quickly down to these 10 fundamental impulses, ways that you exert yourself, ways that you work. And once I sort of like landed on those, I started to ask myself this question. Okay, so we've got these 10 universal impulses. Are there a set of also fairly mappable tendencies, preferences and behaviors

that are associated with each of these? Like, so for me, like my sparketype, my impulse is I'm a maker. I make ideas manifest. I wake up in the morning and my fundamental impulse for contribution for work is to make ideas manifest. Now that is the impulse for effort, but built around that

is this really interesting shared set of preferences and behaviors and tendencies that make you really similar to millions of other people. And that's what forms the archetype or the sparketype around these things. So it's a blend of the impulse and then the way that the impulse shows up and relates to the world around it.

And those are those 10 things. So the 10 things are maker, which you just mentioned, making ideas manifest. We have the maven, which is the person who lives to learn. And I loved how you used Neil, our friend, Neil Pesricha as the sort of leading example in that chapter. The most curious person maybe I have ever met on the planet. Relentlessly, relentlessly curious.

Yeah, he's like, if you meet him, there's not a stranger that he's ever met in his life where you don't, you know, that stranger doesn't walk away 20 minutes later and without Neil knowing everything about them. I know, I know. It's amazing. And he does it, that's his disposition.

You realize, right? Like this is just how this guy is wired. Right, and you realize it. And that's the point. Right, really quickly, this isn't a facade. It's not an effort thing where he's sort of like, quote, networking and going down the list of questions he has to ask.

He's just like, oh my God, another human being. I can learn about them and their life and the way they think and move through the world. How incredible is that that I just get to learn? I know, the earnestness of it all, right? Yeah. The scientist, which is your secondary- Yeah. Sparketype. And that's all about right? Yeah. The scientist, which is your secondary sparketype. And that's all about figuring things out.

That's the burning question quandary puzzle person, and if you're not a scientist, what we've learned is non-scientists tend to really run from that work, but scientists can't get enough of it. And in fact, one of the risks is that they lose themselves in it, especially if it's a big thorny problem. Another sort of ripple in this whole thing is this idea of having your primary sparkotype

and then your secondary. So your primary is maker, your secondary is scientist. Yeah, so there was sort of like three elements of what I would call your profile. There's the primary, which is the strongest impulse. There's the shadow or secondary. And you can look at that as sort of like the runner up or, but there tends to be very often

a much more nuanced relationship, which is you do the work of your shadow in order to be able to do the work of your primary better. So for me, I'm a maker scientist, make a primary scientist shadow. I wake up in the morning and I'm like, what can I make? It's 100% generative as much as I can be. But in the context of being of creation, you hit problems.

You hit issues that need like, you know, like to sort of like, okay, let me go into the figure it out mindset. I'm not actually in the process of being super generative at that point, but I'm figuring out things that need to be figured out. And as soon as I'm done with that, I'm back into generation. There's one other piece of it, which we added in actually, there's been an evolution of the work that I call the anti-sparkotype.

And that is the work that most people experiences as the most emptying, the heaviest lift and requiring the most recovery from. You didn't mention your anti, well, I'm not completely done with the book yet, but I don't think that you mentioned what your anti was. I might not have in the book. Like you said, I wrote a bazillion pages and cut so much. I'm trying to remember if that got cut out.

So what is your anti? So my anti-sparketype is essentialist, which, and the fundamental work of the essentialist is creating order from chaos. It's distilling ideas and concepts and turning them into systems and processes to create clarity and utility for others. I have become good at that because it's something that's a mandatory part of almost anything you do if you're building something. So in the early days of a business, I don't have other people that I can pay to do that. So I've had to learn the skill of getting good at it.

But just because I've become competent in it doesn't mean that it's the type of work that nourishes me. Yeah, it's the reluctant thing that you have to do. The idea of the maker scientist is pretty interesting. And the more I thought about that and how it fits with you and what I know about you, I realized, and tell me if you agree with this, that when I think about some of the best

nonfiction writers out there, Malcolm Gladwell, David Epstein, James Clear, Tim Ferriss, Neil Strauss, like they all seem to me like maker scientists. They're people that make things, but the books that they write are so steeped in answering questions and so research-based that the thing that they make

couldn't be as good as it is without all of that work that goes into solving those problems as the quote unquote scientist. So you would assume that from the inside in, but what I have learned working with these ideas and tools for years now is that you can't assume anything from the outside looking in, because like any one of those people

could have been a maven. And they just said, I wanna learn everything that I can possibly learn about this one particular topic. And I wanna spend years doing it and learn at a level of nuance that is so much more profound than anything I've ever seen before.

But I can't get paid just to do that. So I'm gonna have a publisher write me a check that will essentially fund my PhD for the next five years to learn. And my promise to them is I'm gonna share what I've learned in a compelling way. I'll write the book, but that's not the driver. Right.

The driver is the learning in and of itself. So like I know somebody who's literally sold millions of books and who told me very early in my book career, she said, I find a topic that I just wanna know everything about, and then I find a publisher who paid me to learn it. That's so fascinating. So you never know from the outside. Not how I think about things.

Right, you never, like from the outside looking in, what I've learned is sometimes you can kind of like dial in the impulse, you know, but for the most part, until you sit down and talk with somebody or until they sort of like gone through the work or like completed an assessment, you really, you don't necessarily know because what shows up on the surface is not necessarily

what the deeper impulse for work is. Yeah, you have to mind the motivation behind it, right? So Maven, we mentioned scientist, essentialist, we talked about the person who is motivated to create order from chaos. Then there's the performer, the person who turns moments into magic, as you say. Yeah, that's all about animating

and enlivening interaction experience or moment. One of the least prevalent of all the types. The sage. Yeah, the sage is all about illumination. It's about instilling insight. A lot of people would call that person a teacher, but they show up in literally every domain, even when they don't think that that's the role

that they're playing, which is kind of fascinating. These are the people that the motivation behind their learning is so that they can share it. Yeah, so they tend to learn in a very different way than the average person learns because they're not just learning because they're interested or curious about it. They're not learning

because they're trying to solve a problem. They're learning because they know that the next move is gonna be to turn around and share this in a way where other people get it. And they have to actually understand it in a very different way. So I remember, you know, like we both have a very past life in the law.

Right. You know, when I was in law school, very fortunate to be on this, you know, on Law Review there was just this journal and the editor in chief once told me, you know, she was teaching classes, like tagging in for professors when she was still in school. I was like, how are you doing that? I learn everything that I learn. I won't stop studying and learning until I feel like I know enough to turn around and teach it tomorrow. So the sage tends to learn differently from everybody else

because they have a different purpose in knowledge acquisition. Yeah, that's so foreign to me. Me too. It's not my why. It's so weird when you think about it and we'll go through the rest of them. But this idea that,

I think what we do innately is project, you know, this blueprint of how we see on the world on everybody else that we interact with, right? Because I'm a primary X and a secondary Y, of course, that's how everybody else processes information and learns and thinks about what they do in the world. And that just leads to all kinds of problems and confusion and resentments, especially in the workplace.

You're like, why can't you just do the thing like the way that I do it? Yeah, I mean, it's the classic, if you have a hammer, the world is a nail problem. Right. And you absolutely see that in the work around the sparketypes. If you wake up in the morning

and you have this somewhat innate impulse to just work in a particular way, simply because of the way it makes you feel, it makes you feel good, alive. It's hard to conceive that that's unique to you. You just kind of figure that everybody else is wired that way too. And then when they don't do it and they're not as excited

and they don't invest themselves as much in it, it bothers you. Right. And you may view them through the lens of being, oh, you're lazy or you're not committed or you're slacking off, or you don't understand how important this is. It's like, no, it's not their jam.

Yeah. And that's okay. It comes up in parenting too. 100%. Yeah. So this must have been, you being a parent, it must be illuminating in how you communicate with your daughter.

It is, because I think she's actually wired really similarly to me in a lot of ways, like not just this. So going really deep into understanding not just the impulse, but also these, the preferences, tendencies, and behaviors tend to wrap around it and the relational styles that get built around it.

It really helped me understand myself better, but I think it also helped me understand how to nourish that and how to understand her a little bit better. I don't think you can eat necessarily do that with every kid. You know, there's a level of self-awareness and a depth and quality of experiences that would allow these things to reveal themselves over time. And I think generally they tend to reveal themselves. Why I believe they're established very early in life. They tend to reveal themselves

gradually over time and some reveal themselves much earlier than others. So the maker, for example, what we've seen is that tends to show up really early. Like you can identify that impulse really early. And there's a reason for it. It's not because it naturally just emerges. It's because culturally it's rewarded from the earliest days, you know, like creativity, painting, making, dioramas in school, every class you go to, like part of the activities are, let's make something, right? So the person who is innately drawn to that and flourishes and then starts to excel at it and wants to do more and more of it because it just makes them feel amazing, that's offered nonstop from the earliest age

and it's rewarded on a regular basis. So that tends to reveal itself and be celebrated. Whereas other impulses can be the exact opposite. So one of them we talked about is the performer. With that, there's an interesting thing that we've seen happen over and over, which is that if you're really young, an interesting thing that we've seen happen over and over, which is that if you're really young,

you know, a lot of parents will sort of like push that impulse into performing arts because there's no sort of like ready, oh, like I can figure out all these like 20 different ways that this impulse can actually express itself. The easiest way is sort of like performing arts. Great as a kid, then the kid becomes a teen and still loves doing all these things. And the parents start to think, hmm. They get worried. Yeah, they're getting really worried. Yeah. Because they're like,

my kid's gonna be living with eight roommates for the rest of their lives and like never be. And which like, look, we get it. We're both parents. Like you want your kid to be able to feel secure and they can sustain themselves in the world. But at the same time, what I've seen happen is that the message gets handed down that says,

not only this isn't really an appropriate thing to devote yourself to, but it's not actually a valid impulse. And that is devastating. And it leads to a lot of stifling and a lot of shame when you step away from it or you stifle it fiercely and it never goes away, but you're told that it's not valid and you can't do it.

Yeah, it's really interesting. You tell the story of being backstage at Mel's TV show and the interaction that you have with this woman who you're gonna go on stage and kind of perform this sparkotype excavation and how introverted and kind of withdrawn she was backstage, the surprise being that she actually tested as a performer and then kind of mining, you know,

what led her to be in that repressed state. And it goes back to, you know, those impulses not being well received and the repression that follows. And I think secondary to that is this idea that, you know, on the piece of like, oh, the performer is the person who's gonna, you know, pursue a career in Broadway or become a singer.

It's not necessarily that, it's much broader than that. These tendencies can be beneficial or leveraged in whatever job that you find yourself in. Yeah, they're completely dissociated from jobs, titles, roles, industries, organizations. They pretty much every single one of them can be expressed in nearly any of those places. You know, the performer, for example,

you can find that person in a boardroom. You can find that person in a sales conversation. You can find that person in a sales conversation. You can find that person behind a bar. You can find that person as a parent who's just creating this magical moment with their kids. You can find that person as a teacher in sixth grade. It really, that was one of the big awakenings for me is that when most people sort of like go on this hunt

for what should I do with my life, they start at the level of job. What is the career bucket? Right. And when they do that, even if they find something that gives them that feeling that they want to have, eventually that's going to end. You know, we know people bounce now from career to career or job to job to job so many times during the course of, and the problem is, like two years down the road, when you move on to the next thing, you'll never have understood what the underlying impulse was

that made you feel that way. And your ability to replicate it in any future position is left to chance. So what I'm so much more interested in is the deeper impulse. Because if you understand the deeper impulse, then all of a sudden you get to dissociate it from the constraint of a job or a title or an industry.

And you just get to scan the horizon and say, what's gonna allow me to bring this impulse to bear? And all of a sudden, you know, the possibilities become endless. And that to me is magical. Yeah, it's super powerful. I mean, an example of that would be the Maven who is attracted to a certain career

because it allows them to learn all kinds of things. And then suddenly they, you know, they become less sanguine about that career and they don't know why. And your example is that, well, they'd learned everything that they needed to learn. There wasn't, there was no more avenue for deeper learning. And without that self-awareness,

that understanding of why, you know, that stopped paying sort of meaningful dividends for that person, you're left confused. Yeah. And I think like most of us never, I don't know if you did this, but when I was a kid, you know, we used to take these tests

that would sort of like, you know, give you recommended careers and titles and jobs, which are, you know, on the one hand, I'm not entirely against that because it gives you a starting point. But the challenge is most people use that list as an all-inclusive constraint. And then to me, you know, Most people use that list as an all inclusive constraint.

And then to me, it limits your life rather than expands it. And I'm just not interested in that. Yeah, in other words, you can be an accountant or a doctor or a firefighter and be any one of these sparketypes and find meaning in your career path by learning how to kind of be in a situation that allows you to leverage or bring out the best of those qualities in service of this job or career that you're in.

Yeah, and like those professions or titles that you've just mentioned, you could look at every single one of those and say, okay, how could you be a doctor? If you could be a doctor and you can be like the maker impulse can find itself in the role of medicine in so many different ways. You could come up with a new surgical device

or a new process. Yeah, like the scientists solving complex problems and diagnostics, the essentialist organizing mass amounts of information, data charts, so that you can really create clarity and figure out what's happening. I mean, literally every single one of these impulses can show up in pretty much every job role or title,

if you understand how to express them in an intelligent and constructive way. Which is why you have this recurring refrain in the book that is like, don't explode your life and quit your job. Like, that's not what I'm saying here. What I'm saying is develop a deeper understanding, then figure out a way to approach your career or your job with a new pair of glasses

and try to figure out ways within that construct to bring out the best of what you have to offer. Yeah, I mean, there tends to be this sort of pop psychology edict that says, like figure out what you want to do. And then anyone who disagrees with you, just like jettison them from your life. If you're not happy doing what you're doing,

go turn in your resignation today, walk away from it. Like just go do the thing that, you know, and A, people have no idea what the underlying impulse is that would let them do it, which is going to be a massive problem in the next 36 months as 20 to 50% of the people, you know, do the thing that they're calling the great resignation. And then they're going to end up in the great regret because they had no idea how to make a better decision. But, you know,

and the bigger reality is that if you're 18 years old or 20 years old, and the stakes are really low and you've got your life ahead of you and no responsibilities, awesome. But if you're you or me, or if you're in the middle of your life and you have people looking to you for stability and support and you have responsibilities, the notion that you would follow that advice to me is so destructive.

And there's so much collateral damage. So much collateral damage. And we tend to dramatically overestimate the giddiness that we'll feel when we do it and underestimate the pain of the disruption that we cause. And then when we land in it, we're like, oh wow, this is not what I thought was coming my way because we didn't do it in a way that was really intelligent.

I'm not entirely against like the big disruption, but to me, it's the action of last resort rather than the first step in. Yeah, I don't know that I did it so intelligently. You and me both. We have a history of blowing things up. I definitely blew a few things up. I know.

It was not without its collateral damage, I can tell you. 100%, like there's been a lot of pain that's been like wrapped around those big disruptive decisions. And, you know, thankfully, you know, we've been brought to our knees in various different ways and learned from it and found a way back,

but you know, that most people will never make a move if they think that that's what's gonna happen. And also it just doesn't have to happen that way for most people. I think you and I also probably a bit more risk tolerant than a lot of people. And also, I mean, your case was also very different. I mean, you were at a place physically, emotionally,

psychologically, and financially where you were pretty wrecked. Yeah, I was in a desperate state of mind. I think, you know, making that decision, do you leap? When do you leap? You know, how much change are you willing to tolerate or what is, you know, rational in your given set of circumstances brings up a conversation about the psychology and nature of habit change. You

know, some people are draw a line in the sand and you step over it and you never go back. And some people work better with incremental change and developing kind of some momentum, very slow momentum over time. It's a very case contingent situation. 100%. You know, we all have different tolerances for uncertainty and for ambiguity.

And those tolerances change dramatically in relation to stakes. You know, for most people, when the stakes are low, you're pretty tolerant to uncomfort, to ambiguity, to uncertainty, because there's really not much on the line. You know, and that's why I think it's a lot easier, even if you're a little bit more anxious around it, it's a lot easier to make those calls when you're younger,

because for the most part, the stakes are lower for most people and it's much more recoverable. But the further you get into life, the stakes tend to rise. There's more on the line. That doesn't mean that like, if it makes sense, you don't make the big move, but you know, there is a really strong relationship between the level of stakes and your tolerance for ambiguity and your decisions around that and anxiety at the same time. I remember seeing some research when I was diving into a book

I wrote a number of years ago around uncertainty and how we deal with it that showed that there is an inverse relationship between tolerance for uncertainty or ambiguity and creativity, cognitive problem solving and insight-based problem solving. So basically the less tolerant you are for ambiguity, the more anxious you become and the less functional

you become and able to actually solve your way out of that moment in time. And they didn't look at the stakes, but my feeling is the missing variable in that was the stakes. Because if the stakes are low, nobody cares. But when the stakes go high, whether you should take incremental steps or blow it up

becomes much more of an issue. Is there any science or insight into how uncertainty tolerance correlates with any of these various sparkotypes? I'm not aware of it because the body of work is so new. Yeah. This has been a weird book for me to write because in the past I've written books that were more like what the people

that you described earlier, where I'm synthesizing massive amounts of information, but it's mostly other people's research. And this is an entirely original body of work. So we're literally, I mean, I'm doing, I'm presenting to senior leadership teams in global enterprises. And I'm sort of like,

they're asking me all these questions and my answer is sort of like, they're asking me all these questions and my answer is sort of like, we're literally developing this in real time. We're running the tests in real time. We're putting together cohorts in real time. You know, we've got amazing validation around the fact that these archetypes exist, that the sparketypes are real. You got 500,000 people move through an assessment,

25 million data points that tell us, no, there's something really powerful and mappable and valid here. And now sort of like the next horizon is seeing how this actually makes a difference in individuals lives. And the stories are just kind of like mind blowing. And now we're moving into organizations and saying, okay, from a leadership context, from a team building context, you know,

how do we actually take these ideas and, and allow people to organize themselves around work that makes them come alive? Because if we can crack that nut, then leadership becomes a whole different game. Yeah. I mean, once you, if you take a whole team and you test them out, then you realize where you can put these chess pieces so that everybody is maximizing their potential

and the team can basically go to the next level of what it's trying to accomplish. Yeah, I mean, it's what one person who I recently interviewed who runs two companies and has everybody in both companies sort of like, do this work, you know, she described to me as removing friction from the process. It's like the friction just went away

because people weren't waking up trying to figure out how do I do things that I don't wanna do? There's always a part of that in every job. Like you can't make it a hundred percent, yay. But when you sort of like drop below a certain threshold and most of the things are the things that you innately wake up in the morning, you know, like yearning to do, everything changes.

The idea of motivation, it's kind of off the table. You're like, you don't have to motivate me to eat dark chocolate every day. Yeah, you have a chocolate fixation like nobody I've ever met. By the way, I brought you chocolate. Excuse me. Oh, you did, great.

I'll trade that for some Shreem. It's LA chocolate. Yeah, when I think about what I experienced when I wake up in the morning now versus what I used to feel like when I was working in a law firm, I have a hard time even like relating to that other than the PTSD that's associated with that.

Like you had a different relationship with the law. Like you enjoyed it more than I did, but man, you know, talk about like a guy who was on the wrong path and didn't know it and didn't know how to get out of it and didn't have any tools for understanding how to make the most of it while I was in it. All right, so let me ask you a question now. You've done the assessment?

I have. We should say like, you answer a series of, the Sparketypes test, you answer a series of questions. Right, and there's- Some of which I felt like you kept asking me the same question. Over and over and over. People are like, why do you keep asking the same thing? So what's fascinating about it?

So we took a year to develop this assessment. And I was gonna ask you how you came up with the questions. Yeah, it can't just be like an idea in my mind or I didn't want you to just say, okay, let me read these 10 descriptions and figure out what feels right to me because there's gonna be a whole bunch of bias in there and there's no way to remove bias from it.

But a lot of people would be like, oh, I wanna be this. Sure. So they'll say I'm that. Yeah, it's really hard to, when I was answering them, like be like, oh, I want to be this. Sure. So they'll say I'm that. Yeah, it's really hard to, when I was answering them, like, is this the person I aspire to be? Like, what is really true here?

Yeah, and those are the instructions that we give in the beginning of the assessment. It's like, don't take this because like, you know, because that's who you think you want to be, or you should be. Answer for who you are. Or how you're holding yourself out to be. Right, like, cause it becomes useless at that point.

You know, take this, like answer honestly to these, you know, like 50 or so questions. And, you know, and then you get assigned your types and the thought that went into the prompts for that assessment were really based around these five domains. Like, how do we create prompts and questions that relate back to these different things?

So what's interesting is that you kind of feel like, didn't I just answer that question? But actually, there's slightly different nuances in each one of them that register back to a different state. But your brain doesn't necessarily consciously process that nuance. But when you answer it, process that nuance, but when you answer it, usually it does. We did a smaller scale, sort of preliminary follow-up study on validation for this. We were looking for validation and also for correlations to these five states.

And in that, we have to go a lot deeper into this data now and do probably a much larger scale study, but we saw a 93% validation rate for people's types, reporting that their types that were assigned were either extremely to very accurate for them. And then really high correlations with people saying, the more you do the work of your spark type, the more I'm going to say that like I matter

and the work that I'm doing is deeply meaningful, like all those different things, even though it may feel a little bit like, are they just asking me the same things over and over again? And they're also, not everybody takes the same assessment, which people are sometimes confused about. So the algorithm for this is actually a little bit more complex than just simple addition and 10 different categories. Wait, what do you mean not everyone takes the same test?

So the assessment actually tracks how you're differentiating your answers and potentially- Oh, and at a certain point, it then leads you down a different decision tree of questions? The algorithm may dynamically add up to three additional questions, which are designed to force discernment. So if it senses that you're not actually making really thoughtful choices and just answering a little bit where you're not really teasing out differentiation,

it will actually prompt you to think a little bit harder. And we've been told that some, like when people get those additional questions at the end, they can be thorny. But that's intentional. Because again, the last thing I wanna do is create a tool and a body of work that's interesting, but not useful.

And so I want something that resonates, that has a really strong level of people. Like it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Like I want you to actually like finish this experience and think to yourself, I feel seen. of people like it goes back to what we were talking about earlier. Like I want you to actually like finish this experience and think to yourself, I feel seen, this is right. And this is valuable. Like I've just learned something about the way

that I can now step back into the world and make decisions that are maybe like a little bit better informed for me moving forward. And just to be clear, one of the questions is not, what's the date of your birth and what time were you born? I love the Enneagram, but this is different. It's totally different.

And I love the Enneagram also. And people often ask us, we're in the second iteration of the assessment now, like we expanded the algorithm to now include that anti-sparker type that I referenced. So people are always asking me like, how is this the same or different from Enneagram, StrengthsFinder, Via Strengths, like DISC,

Myers-Briggs, all these different things. It's one that Julie caught. Yeah, actually that recently landed because a bunch of people asked me about it and how it related to it. And it's been interesting because I think they all offer pieces of the puzzle. Some there's some overlap with certain ones,

but the Sparketype is a much more focused tool. Like I'm only answering one question. I'm not speaking to your personality profile. I'm not speaking to your relational styles. I'm not speaking to all these, I'm not giving you a broad spectrum of all the ways that you exist in the world. What I'm speaking to all these, I'm not giving you a broad spectrum of all the ways that you exist in the world. What I'm speaking to is a single thing, which is the fundamental impulse

for effort that makes you feel alive. Right. And then around that, like in the book, then I explain a whole bunch of observations about how people with that impulse tend to show up in the world. But the fundamental thing that I'm looking at is just this one thing, is that impulse. Because if we can dial that in, going all the way back to that question, what should I do with my life? There are a lot of answers to that. And there are a lot of layers to peel with that,

like human potential onion. But if we can figure out, in the context of work, the thing that we invest a third of our life doing, whether it's the thing we get paid for or not. Like I said, I consider work, maybe it's your job, maybe it's your role as a caregiver or a parent or a companion or a volunteer, whatever it may be. It's the thing you invest your energy in on a persistent basis for years and decades. If we can figure out how to spend that time in a way that's deeply nourishing and fully expressing ourselves,

how is that gonna change us as human beings? How is it gonna change our relationships? How's it can change work? How's it can change society? Like we need human beings who are existing in that state now more than ever, because we are in a place where we need people to be at their best.

Yeah, on top of which there is this epidemic of dissatisfaction in people's, not just in their professions, careers, jobs, but also in other facets of their life in which they are investing a lot of time and energy. Yeah. It's super pervasive. And the one thing that we know is as we, you know, like enter this time of emergence, we're entering a moment of existential questioning that I don't think either of us have seen in our lifetime. You know, it happens after major wars. It happened for me after 9-11, especially as a New Yorker, but at a scale that is happening now where nobody is left out of this questioning. And why do you think that is? Do you think that that is happening now because of the confluence of COVID and the political climate

and what social media is doing to us and climate change? Like it's the combination of all of these existential things that we're dealing with. I think it's a confluence of a global health crisis that made it clear to so many people, to most people, that nobody gets to just like sign away a document or pay the way out of this. Maybe that's not entirely true.

Privilege has definitely played a role in outcomes and access, but that we're all affected in a really profound way. The complete decimation of the structure of work as we know it and everybody, so many people, you know, like there's class differences in work now, there's, you know, like remote work now, there's all sorts of things where work has been turned

upside down in so many ways that the ground beneath us from a work context has been completely destroyed. Including the social power dynamic. Absolutely. And then at the same time, you know, we've got like deep questioning and disruption and change thinking on big societal questions that has had to happen for a really, really long time.

It's been really interesting to see how you've been approaching that in the context of the conversations you've been having here also. And so I think we're in this state of, like you said, it's the confluence of disruption in nearly every part of our lives that gives us a feeling of groundlessness

that's forcing us to question what do we want the next season of our lives to look like and to feel like. And a lot of people are starting to realize that they don't entirely know what the answer is, but what they do know is not the way I've been feeling. And the gift of course, is the opportunity to reframe that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to take it and say, okay, so if that's the negative, course is the opportunity to reframe that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, to take it and say, okay, so if that's the negative, what's the negative to the negative?

What's the positive? Like, what do I wanna create in this next season moving forward? How do I wanna move into it? How do I wanna feel? Like, how do I wanna contribute to my life, to lives of those around us? What matters to me?

It's all tied up. And I think the earlier crisis, 9-11, a certain group of people felt that. 2008, 2009, the financial collapse, a certain group of people felt that. Some of the major global wars and crises in generations that generally were different from ours felt that.

This in my mind is one of the first times where so many people are feeling it on so many different parts of their lives simultaneously. And at the same time, because the structure of work was blown up and a lot of people are realizing, okay, it was really tough to figure this out in the beginning, but now I kind of like it. I don't want to go back. And I'm massively burned out from trying to actually sustain myself. I don't want to go back to the way things were. And like you said, the question then becomes, okay, so then where are we going from here? Right, enter, sparked at just the right moment, right?

The divine timing here is unbelievable for you, given the fact that you've been working on this for years. Right, for so long. And I'm sure you would have preferred that it had come out a year ago. I would have. I would have preferred that there was no need for this work whatsoever.

Like I said, I didn't kind of willfully go into this. I was kind of hoping there were other answers, but it is not lost on me in the fact that I have spent a lot of time in the world of wellbeing, of fitness, of yoga, of spirituality, philosophy, and science. And despite the fact that there's so much wisdom out there, the human condition remains so fiercely broken. And our satisfaction with who we are as individuals

and the way that we interact and the way that we live in the planet is still so unsatisfying on so many levels. Even when you look at people who are objectively from the outside, looking at living good lives, I just keep wondering what we're missing. And if there's even like a hint of a hint of a hint of an answer that I can help provide that matters

to enough people, I'm all in on that. Yeah, it's beautiful, man. It's a beautiful act of service. So I'm gonna ask you, what do you think my primary and secondary sparketype? I knew you were gonna do this. Of course. Everybody who's gonna interview you is gonna ask you this.

I have been around tables where i was you know like running you know like consulting like three-day mastermind consulting sessions with eight people and at the end of it they'd be like okay she knows really well now like tell us you should be able to divine this from everybody that you must think though after being so steeped in this that every person you meet you run a calculation and go i bet that person's uh this i'm curious about it. But like I said earlier, what I have learned is that what you see on the surface is not always or necessarily the deeper impulse

that's being expressed. It may just be what people are using to cope and live a comfortable life that feels safe. For you, let's see. What would I think you are? It's interesting. Okay. What would I think you are? It's interesting. I'll preface this while you're thinking about it. I would have thought that you,

I'm not surprised that your primary sparketype is maker, but I would have thought your secondary would have been nurturer or advisor. But then when I read about the scientist and your explanation of that, it makes sense. Like that fits, but it feels like it could have easily been one of those other things as well. Yeah, and like, if I broke out all my raw scores,

like I wouldn't be surprised if the nurture is more towards like the stronger side of impulses, but it's not. I literally wake up, I was a kid when I was seven, eight, nine years old, grew up in a small town. I would on a Sunday morning, I would beg one of my parents to like get the old Chevy blazer, drive me to the town dump, crack open the tailgate, throw in a bunch of like, like discarded bicycles and parts, go back home,

stay in the garage and duct tape them together to build Franken bikes to ride around the neighborhood. Like this has been an impulse that has been with me for as long as I've been conscious. That is like crystal clear that that's me. The scientists, yeah, I think it's there in a really strong way. And it's been of service to the maker me

in a really powerful way. And the nurture, yeah, I care about people. But apparently the figure it out thing shows up stronger. And I can actually validate that in terms of like what I'm more called to do. I get it. For you, you're gonna put me on the spot. I feel like the nurture is really strong in you also.

I don't know if I'd say that's your primary though. I could see the scientist in you also. I could see so many of that. All right, you guys just tell me. All right, I'll tell you. Primary is maker. Yeah. Shadow is performer.

Oh, I was gonna say maker. The performer I bet surprises you or does it not? A little bit, but not really. I think it all sort of, one of the things you talk about in the book is people discover this within themselves, either because they get plugged into the right thing at an early age and just thrive in it,

or they experiment and tinker over the course of their lifetime and ultimately kind of find themselves in a situation and where it fits. And for me, this whole conversation kind of began with me talking about my dissatisfaction with being a lawyer. My anti-Sparka type is advocate, right? So a lawyer is an advocate.

Like I was not in the right- So that's validated a pretty powerful way. Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't, and now I'm in a situation where I do make things, but I don't make things like I'm not building go-karts or fixing cars or using my hands. It's a more ephemeral version of making,

which you also talk about in the book. It doesn't have to be a three-dimensional object. It can be curating a conversation that's meaningful for other people is making something on some level. The performer part, yeah, like I loved being, like I did tons of plays when I was a kid, which is weird because I'm also introverted

and I enjoy the fact that we have a studio and we're doing this for YouTube as well. So there is a performative aspect of that that I find satisfying. And yet at the same time, like I'm deeply, you know, afraid of getting up on stages, even though I do public speaking. Like, it's not like I'm not this, you know,

gallant extrovert that just gets a lot of energy from that. It's actually taxing for me, even though I'd find it satisfying. Yeah, that's actually fascinating. So the maker I can completely see now, because yeah, since I've known you, you've created so many different things, whether it's these experiences,

the media that wraps around it, books, moments, they're like physical objects, ethereal objects, digital experiences, events. It's all about the idea of imagining something and then making it real so i can see that in so many different ways the performer i didn't know about your past but that's really interesting to me and the what you brought up about the relationship between the performer impulse and your social orientation is interesting too because you're not alone in that there tends

to be this association that says like if you you had this performer impulse, like your impulse is to animate and alive in moments, experiences and interactions that you've gotta be a raging extrovert. There's almost no relationship to that whatsoever. Similar to you, like I love being on stage to keynote for an hour. And then I'm looking for the stage door to exit the back of the theater because I'm an introvert

and I need to recharge by being away from people. And so, you know, the fact that you actually can really dive into a moment or experience and be immersed in it and bring it to life when you're in it, but then you like need to pull back a little bit because your social wiring requires you to refuel by being away from that for a bit.

It's an interesting dynamic that I think some people have trouble navigating or understanding how they could exist in harmony. But in fact, you see that pretty regularly. Yeah, you would assume that there would be some type of symmetry that correlates introversion and extroversion to these various sparketypes. But in fact, that's not the case.

Not at all. It's completely decoupled. And you can be, you know, on any number of points along that spectrum, irrespective of what your sparketype is. Yeah, 100%. We recently had a conversation with Elaine Aron, who is sort of like the primary researcher

and the creator of the phrase highly sensitive person. She identified at first as a trait 25, 26 years ago and has done all this seminal research on highly sensitive people. And in the conversation, she said something to me, which I'd never heard before, because I identify myself as a highly sensitive person. I process differently, like in social environments,

I operate differently. But she said, you can be highly sensitive and also high sensation, which, you can be highly sensitive and also high sensation, which means you also seek highly stimulating, high sensation experiences, which seems counterintuitive on the surface, but she's like, it's actually not that uncommon. Cause I know that that's me. Like I am, I'm definitely more on the introverted side of the spectrum. I love to be in super high stakes situations in front of a lot of people for a moment in time.

And then I need to step back from it. I love to like go and, you know, like I would go mountain biking, like in a past life or rock climbing, like to do these super high sensation experiences, sometimes alone or with a bunch of people. So it's interesting to see that, you know, we are complex beings. Right, right. And yet there is, you know, we are complex beings.

Right, right. And yet there is, you know, a lattice work, a framework to help us understand ourselves. And as, you know, as much as we're all beautiful snowflakes, there's a way of making sense of certain pillars that we can use as mental models to make just better decisions about our lives. I think that's what it comes down to.

Like, how do we know ourselves better and make better decisions so we can take better actions? You know, if we can figure out pieces of that puzzle, everything gets a lot easier and better. The other interesting thing in the book is the fact that with each of these archetypes, you sort of say, okay, here's how you can leverage this to plug in to your specific career or job,

or think about how you approach your life. But here are the pitfalls. Like if you fall into this category, these people also struggle with X, Y, and Z, and you should be aware of that and look out for it. Yeah, and that's where you move from impulse to archetype. That's the distinction. The impulse is the fundamental impulse to work

or to exert effort in a particular way. And the archetype is the tendencies, the preferences, and the behaviors that often wrap around it. They're not universal for everybody, but there's some pretty common patterns. And a lot of those involve dark holes, places where people stumble, challenges. You know, like for example, the scientist,

very often you see a lot of scientists latch onto a problem that is thorny and complex and obsessively immerse themselves in it where they cannot let go of it. And they may end up figuring out something incredible, and getting an answer that is really like life-changing, paradigm changing, maybe world shaking, but they lose themselves and their lives and their relationships and their health

and their wellbeing and the process because they're following the impulse. So it's really important to understand that this is something to look out for because life exists beyond just this impulse. Yeah, lack of control is another one that shows up quite a bit, right? Like if you're a maker, you just wanna do your thing

and you want everybody to just leave you alone, right? But if you're in an organization and there's a team aspect to all of this, it gets complicated quickly. Yeah. And part of that is also because one of those five components that I talk about, like when we say effort that makes you come alive is flow. And flow is a highly absorbed state. Absorptive? Absorptive. I don't know. Flow is a state in which you become highly absorbed, right? Which means you lose track of self, you lose track of time, you lose track of your environment. So, you know, it's a healthy thing to set circuit breakers and boundaries

around that because like I said, you know, like this is one part of life, but it is not life itself. What if you do the test, you get the result and you're like, God damn it. I don't wanna be that person. It happens. Yeah. We have, like, I've seen people, I'm like, why is this email on there three times? It's like-

Oh, they retook it a bunch of times trying to get a different result. Trying to game it and figure out the answer so they can get a different result. I just email them there three times. Oh, they retook it a bunch of times trying to get a different result. They're kind of like trying to game it and figure out the answer so they can get a different result. Or we've just had people email and they're like, or tell me, like personally at an event or something.

And like, I really want it to be something else. Like the thing that comes to mind immediately was somebody was, their primary was an essentialist. And they came to me and they said, I really, really want to be a warrior because it seems, and warrior is about gathering and leading because it seems so like much just fiercer and more like respected.

And like, I want to be seen as that person in the world. And I think it's kind of funny because, you know, and I had this reframe, I said, I totally get that. You know, maybe like, you know, and I had this reframe. I said, I totally get that. You know, maybe like, you know, the essentialist sounds a little quote boring to you, but here's the deal. The work that you do is actually amongst the most loathed work by all the other nine types

and appreciated by all the other nine types because they so don't want to do it. You are one of the most indispensable people on the planet. And when people realize what you're capable of, you're exalted and desired in any place that you go, you are the glue that makes everything else work. Yeah, puts you in high demand. Yeah.

But here's the thing, like, how do you parse that aspiration? Like that person says, I wanna be this. My fundamental disposition is different from that. But who are you to say, you can't be that thing that you wanna be. Or if you're chasing that thing that you wanna be, you're going down a blind alley.

Yeah, what I would say to them is run the experiment. Like, who am I to actually tell you what your truth is? And I think that's actually a really good thing to bring up is whether it's a sparkotype, whether it's any of the other major assessments that are available to people today, they're by definition blunt instruments. You know, we've got really good data on ours

and a lot of people who've now taken it. So we have big data on it. But at the same time, you know, at the end of the day, you know you, if you're really paying attention, and if you're somebody who's done the work to be self-aware, you're gonna have a sense for whether this is valid or not. And if everything inside of you screams, so I think it's important to make a distinction that says,

do you feel like this is wrong? Or do you just like yearn to be something else? Simply because you perceive that the world will perceive you differently if you are. And if you truly believe that something's off, then I think with any assessment, then you got to kind of reflect on that and go with your gut and ask yourself the big questions. But if you also, if you basically just say to yourself, I want to be seen as someone different in the world, I want to be seen as a different type of person in the world,

then I think you got to question why that is. Yeah, what's the genesis of that desire? Is that being driven by social factors or the way that you were parented or whatever reinforcements you've experienced over the course of your life? Right, because every one of these different impulses and sparketypes has profound value to you and to the world.

There's none that's just sort of like, oh, a lesser than type of thing. So if something inside of you says, but I really wanna be something else, then you're like, yeah, you sort of, the work is to deconstruct that. Where's that coming from? You're like, why do I perceive this thing

that is inside of me that yearns to make me work as lesser than in some way, shape or form? It's a heavy thing, man, that you shoulder quite a bit of responsibility because somebody takes this test. It says, okay, here's, you kind of fall into these categories. That becomes self-determinative in certain ways.

Because if then that's the lens through which you're perceiving the world, I am this kind of person, you're gonna make decisions based on that. Like it's not a small thing. Yeah, and that's something that I've grappled with. And it's probably one of the reasons why initially I resisted doing this work.

And it's also one of the reasons why, you know, like I said, what I just said, which is that at the end of the day, this is a tool to help you, but the tool alone is not determinative of you, your own self-awareness, your own self-knowledge, your understanding of who you are in the world. If you do the work,

it's a tool to increase your own level of self-awareness and self-knowledge. It is not the ultimate tool and the ultimate arbiter. So I'm a huge fan of actually looking at this as one tool in a toolbox of a whole bunch of other tools, practices, paths, explorations. It doesn't supplant anything else.

It's just another thing to give you a bit more insight. If it feels right, if it feels resonant, roll with it. If it doesn't, don't. You know, don't supplant your own inner voice. And I say that in the context, not just of the spark types, but of everything, of any one of those tools in your toolbox. You know, you have to ask the big questions.

Am I resisting it because of some one of those tools in your toolbox, you have to ask the big questions. Am I resisting it because of some sense of shame or other social contract or other pathology? Sure, what is the locus of that inner voice? Is it corrupted or influenced? Of course it is. It's influenced by your life experience, but there's a lot of work that goes into self-understanding so that that inner voice can be trusted

as intrinsic versus reactive. Yeah, the thing that tends to, that I look at a lot is if you take the assessment and then like, if you look at the more detailed information that's in the book, how does it land? Like, do you literally, what I look for is an embodied response. If it's cognitively interesting to you,

I'm not entirely sure that we got it. If there is a felt response to this, if there's something visceral where like your body is tingling or something in you is saying, oh, hell yeah. Like going all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, where if you do this and there's something inside of you,

your whole body screams, this is me. I feel seen. Like this is so true to me and the way that I've existed in the world. Then I think that that's what I look for. The single biggest response that we see, if we're gonna isolate a word that people share in response to this work,

it's not that they've learned something new, it's validation that they've actually known this the whole lives. And you're providing a construct or a language for that. It's a key that goes into a lock and that key turns in a fluid way. And it is an emotional thing. You're like, that's what I am.

I knew it all along. Now I can more deeply understand my motivation. Or this thing that I felt for most of my life, but stifled or put away because, you know, I, for any number of reasons, I learned that it was inappropriate to lead with that or show it. Oh, this actually matters.

This actually is important. Like I can't, the weight of not living into this is not worth the pain that it's causing anymore. Do you have a sense of the archetypes emanating more from nature? Does nurture play a part in this? Are they malleable over time? Do these types change?

I mean, I'm sure if you had decades of performing this test and research, you'd have a better sense of that, but what's your gut? Yeah, and so that last point was spot on. It's nearly impossible to answer that question from an actual data-driven standpoint because we would literally need to track people from birth through the time that they took the assessment

to see whether things have stayed consistent, similar to all the other major indexes. But a number of the prompts in the assessment have actually designed to be long-term reflective and have people answer from a place of what has been a consistent through line that I can identify in my entire life that has seemed to like show up and be there the whole time.

The other thing is that intuitively and anecdotally, I talked to a lot of people now, I've like done a lot of story-based and interview-based research. And the consistent thread really does seem to be that this, whether it's, you know, like genetic, whether it's behavioral, whether it's environmental, whether it's spiritually endowed, I honestly don't know. Maybe it's some blend of all of those, but it does tend to touch down pretty early in life. And in my mind, from what I've seen, stay fairly consistent, barring some major, major disruption in a person's psyche or brain or physiology on the level that literally would rewire them, which can happen.

If somebody has a psychotic break, their brain is not different. The same as it was before somebody has traumatic brain industry, the injury, the brain is different. But what we've seen is that I do believe that it stays relatively steady state. But that has a really interesting compliment to it, which is, can it change over time? Well, what if I take the assessment once and then two years later I take it and maybe my primary and my shadow have switched or there's a different answer? Does that mean that my sparkotype has switched?

In my mind, that's unlikely. I think what's much more likely to happen is that the primary constraint to your ability to answer these questions in a really articulate self-aware way has changed. So any one of these assessments are limited by the depth and quality of your experiences and your level of self-awareness. That can change in a major way. Guaranteed over the last two years,

people have experienced things in their lives that force them into work, relationships, scenarios, circumstances that they've never experienced before. And a lot of people have become much more self-aware of how they feel about a lot of different things. So if they return to it, they may actually bring that level of greater depth

and self-awareness to responding in a way that's probably more informed. Yeah, that's a very good point. That's interesting. Yeah, because if you're not self-aware and you're living in some state of denial, your responses to these questions are gonna reflect, you know, the person that you believe yourself to be,

not necessarily the person that you actually are. Yeah, which leads to a useless outcome, you know? And that's just, that's not what this is about. Yeah, but anybody who's a parent, especially if you have more than one child, you learn pretty immediately. Like kids come out the way they are. And of course, nurture plays a huge part in it,

but constitutionally, you could see the differences like immediately. And those are differences that remain constant throughout their life. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because there's, I feel like culturally we hate the idea that anything about us is fixed, that anything about us is not susceptible

to change over time. And yet, you're like, my eyes are hazel, they're not changing. There is a lot about us physiologically, that is what it is, that may change over time with gene therapy and other stuff. But right now there are certain things that we say, yeah, that's sort of like, it is what it is. That may change over time with gene therapy and other stuff. But right now there are certain things that we say, yeah, that's sort of like, it is what it is.

But when we talk about psychology or brain or growth or abilities or capabilities, we hate the notion that we are not entirely evolutionary beings. We reject that outright simply because we don't wanna feel like, you know, like there's a certain thing about us that will always be a certain way. And yet there's not necessarily a bad thing, you know,

and we are a certain way in certain domains of life. The word trait exists for a reason, you know, trait versus state, they're different things. So, you know, in the context of the sparketypes, can I give you a hundred percent data-based answer that says it's a hundred percent fixed, it won't change over time, this is a trait? I can't because the data just isn't there

and you will never be able to actually prove that through data. But from everything that I'm seeing, it does look like it stays relatively the same throughout life. And like you said, any parent knows, like kids touched down with a certain wiring that you can pretty much track through their entire lives. Doesn't matter what you do.

Right, and some of it is malleable, but I think some of it isn't. I brought up Elaine Aron earlier who identified this like thing called highly sensitive person. She identifies that as a trait. It's not something you grow out of or evolve yourself. You know, like out of, you can learn skills to allow yourself to cope and be in the world

in a much more comfortable and easeful and constructive way and really understand the gorgeousness and the value of that trait. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you've changed the underlying like code. Sure. I loved how you talk about how we kind of innately find our way into situations in which, you know,

our archetypes will kind of match up with our environment. And that happens, as I talked about earlier, either through, you know, sort of luck of getting plugged into something at an early age or through a process of experimentation over time. And my sense is that the extent of that fit or how well, you know, that fit happens for somebody is gonna calibrate

with their risk tolerance, with their relationship to failure, to all of these things. Kind of, it reminds me a little bit of David Epstein's book, Range, in that you gotta try a bunch of different stuff until you find that magical situation where your archetypes, your sparketypes kind of match with the environment.

Yeah, and I loved that book. I love the way that his brain works. Yeah, don't specialize too quickly, like keep running the experiments. And we've used the word experiment a whole bunch of times in this conversation. And I look at life as basically like my job is to just keep running experiments and make my primary metric for those experiments,

not success or failure, but simply learning. And also running smaller scale, lower stakes experiments before I commit to a bigger scale, higher stakes project or endeavor or company, which again, I haven't always done. But I'm at a point in my life now where I'm kind of like, before I say yes to something big and scary and high stakes, I want to run a series of experiments.

So I look at life almost entirely as a series of, how can I get out of my head? How can I get out of assumption land? And how can I just run an experiment on any particular thing that will give me more intel, validate or invalidate my assumptions, and then have a better sense for what to say yes or no to. And that's one way to figure out your sparkly type too.

You don't necessarily have to take the assessment. The assessment is just hopefully a much faster, shorter path to discovering it than years of potential experimentation. And the truth is most people don't live their lives that way. Most people live their lives much more with a lower sense of directionality agency. Sure.

And out of sheer, but out of sheer sort of, you know, autopilot defense mechanisms, most people find them in some, you know, version, even if it's a low grade version of a situation that allows their, their sparkotype to manifest in some way. Yeah. And, and, and also like more broadly speaking, some people have life situations that allow them more freedom to run experiments. And other people don't. I mean, if you are like in a circumstance where you're like, you've got, you know,

a lot of people looking to you to support them, you know, where you're working three jobs to put food on the table. Yeah, there are a lot, there are certain life circumstances. I think it's important to acknowledge control. Your sparketype is an indulgent luxury. Yeah, I think it's important to acknowledge control. Your sparketype is an indulgent luxury. Yeah, I think running, devoting yourself to running a series of experiments,

like as a way to figure this out, assumes that you have the time and the ability to do that. Not everybody does, you know, which again is why like I'm trying to build tools that are accessible and available to everybody that can at least try and help a short customer. And yet, you know, for anybody who is in a job, taking this assessment, reading this book,

gives you a broader understanding of kind of how you function. So within the construct of that job, perhaps there are ways in which you can be better at your job or more fulfilled in that capacity and ultimately a happier know, happier, more purpose-driven person, if you can find a way to bring those personality traits

to life and channel them in that construct. A hundred percent, you know, this is not about like figuring out what the next job that you're moving to is. If that ends up being the choice that you make, fine. But like fundamentally the steps before that are it's about knowing yourself on a deeper level. So you can understand how can I show up differently?

How can I understand what to say yes or no to? How can I potentially expand beyond the job description? How can I add nuance and more meaning and context to what I'm doing in a way that I experience it differently and that it fills me up more. I can just tell you after taking the assessment and reading the better part of the book and then reflecting on decisions that I've made big

and small over many years to kind of arrive in this place, it's amazing the extent to which I made these decisions unconsciously, like there were unconscious drivers that ultimately, and very non-linearly and elegantly kind of nudged me into this direction that we're in. Yeah. Like they're unconscious motivators, like, but then developing a conscious awareness of them

allows you to then be that much more purposeful and directed in those decisions that you make. Yeah, and developing a conscious awareness of them definitely does and spending less time to get to that place. I'm a huge fan, like in the heart of it, okay, I'm not in New York anymore, but I lived New York pace of life for the vast majority of my life.

And the idea of like waiting online for anything is horrifying to me still, even though like I live out in the mountains and stuff like that. As an entrepreneur, I want it to happen yesterday. Yeah. You know, as somebody who's in ridiculously future oriented, I just want it to show up now,

to the extent that yes, if you wanna take sort of like the laborious way or the long-term way, that's fine. But I'm kind of wired for speed, which is one of the reasons why I meditate every day as like a counterbalance to that. And that line make things that move people. It's not just about me, you know?

And a lot of people are in a place in life where they don't have the time, the bandwidth, the resources, the interest to spend a lot of time going deep into this. And if I can offer anything that helps get people to a place of self-awareness faster, I want to. I think that's a good place to end it. I think you stuck the landing.

How do you feel? I feel good. Yeah. How do you feel? I feel great, man. I'm just happy to be with you. I know. It's like, can we take a hug break? Will we hug before, we'll hug after, for sure.

I love you. I love you too, man. I'm proud of you with this new book. I think it's gonna help a lot of people. Thanks, I hope so. Yeah. So everybody check it out. It's called Sparked.

It's available everywhere. It hits bookstores September 21st. Patronize your favorite independent bookseller. Short of that, it's available in all the normal places. And you can find Jonathan at the Good Life Project, jonathanfields.com. Where else do you want people to go? That sounds good to me.

Good to you, yeah. You're so low key about that. And where are you off to next in your nomadic adventures? I'm hanging out in California for a bit and then off to Brooklyn and then to New Orleans, then to Brooklyn, then to Napa, then to Boulder. Wow. Where like Boulder is sort of like the quote residence.

Your hub at the moment. Yeah, it's where we're based out of. Yeah, good for you, man. Awesome. You seem happy, you seem healthy, you look great. I feel good. Yeah, and I'm proud to be your friend. Thanks.

Cool, man. Well, we'll continue this conversation. Peace. Plants. Peace.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube. Sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media

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Plants. Namaste. Thank you.