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Career Design with Nicholas Lore · Humanity Working

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: You have to find a way for people to notice.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's all paying attention and noticing and how one goes about supporting and encouraging people to start looking at these things.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: About a week ago, I sat down with Nick Law.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Nick has personally guided thousands of professionals, executives, artists, and government officials through one of the things that many of us find hardest: career change.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Nick actually invented the field of career coaching, and he continues it to this day through his book, The Pathfinder, and his coaching service called The Rockport Institute.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed my conversation with Nick, and I hope you enjoy listening to it.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: But really, the field I created was the field of career design, where you do a sufficient job of looking at everything important in one's life and one's, you know, intentions and brain and heart and soul and talents and everything else to pick something that's a really good fit.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: So the that started out with me being interested in college and psychology, but back then, college uh psychology was pretty much about what's normal, what's wrong, and how do you fix it.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the test uh subjects were rats and college freshmen.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it just didn't seem to me like it was heading in the direction of using psychology to work with people who are well and creating exciting, wonderful lives.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: So there wasn't really anything I could do with it.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: I worked for a little while in psychology, but then I ended up doing things like I ran a factory and then I ran a baking company and some other things.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: I ended wound up in on the coast of Maine running a company that did solar research and energy conservation in the 70s.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: So this was very, very early for all of those things, and that's very great stuff.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_02: I loved it, but I got bored at all of those things.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: I got bored.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: I had about a two-year timeline, so I knew something was not right, and I used to blame myself.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I get bored.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: Why do I get so bored?
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there must somehow this is my problem.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I had made friends with uh the well, the the greatest inventor, one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century, Buckminster Fuller.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: We belonged to the same boat club in Camden, Maine.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so he became my mentor, my coach really, in sorting out what I was gonna do, um, and then talking a lot about how to go about it and how to invent the whole field of career design.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: So um to basically what I started doing was just looking and seeing what's important to me.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: And what was the first thing that was important was doing something that made a big difference in a lot of people's lives.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: And also, I'm not a competitive person, you know.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: We have never done any advertising in 40 years at Rockport Institute.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I wanted to pick an area that nobody else was doing and that was in really bad shape, and all the experts were basically nice idiots that had really no insight in how to help people sort this stuff out.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: So Bucky and I talked about these things several times, and I came up with a foundation of what might be a design process for people to pick a career that fits.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: And what I mean by a career that fits is uh, you know, uh not changing light bulbs for tall people, working in the sewers for short people.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean having everything in one's life and self fit together as well as possible in their work so that you feel really feel like you're self-expressed, like um like there's certain things a bear does.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: And the bear probably is enjoying life to a certain extent when it's doing them, when it is in a circus riding a tricycle, that probably is not the case.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: So, what does it take to get somebody uh, you know, so they're in something that's appropriate for them and also speaks to them and gives them an avenue for self-expression?
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way as you started that answer, you said, I wound up doing this, I wound up doing that.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So even in your own case, you were until you had kind of had this self-discovery, I suppose, you were kind of like being caught by waves and taken places, just as just as many of the people who will be listening to this book.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody as well.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody's even the people that find the perfect thing are taken by waves, and they there's a lot of luck when people uh find a way to steer into something that's right for them.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I first encountered you through your uh through your book, The uh The Pathfinder.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there's a story in The Pathfinder that I love, um, where you talk about uh an experience that you have while watching the Super Bowl that kind of for me sort of sums up the overall approach um that you have to this.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: So so tell our audience a little bit about that.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I hope I remember the story.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's I didn't like football that much because they made me play in high school.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but my daughter was in ads in the Super Bowl for two years in a row.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started watching.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, you know, I kind of like the game and everything, but I really was interested in the ads.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: I I I could and I found that I was I I could take the ads apart and diagnose, you know, whether I thought they were gonna work or not, whether I thought that it was just a one-shot ad and all of that kind of stuff.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: So I found I was critiquing, I was like a movie critic critiquing these little short movies.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so what I realized is that's what I like.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the ads, it's the critiquing that I love.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I started paying attention.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what this story is really about is paying attention to yourself.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: And in a way, it's it's being able to sort of step outside of yourself and look at your behaviors, not in the usual ways that you do, but kind of from uh from the outside in instead of from the from the inside out.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: We're always looking from the inside out, but from the outside in, you can start noticing patterns that you have or things that where you you know you perform or think or solve problems in a certain way.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so that I I learned from that I have uh something that we call diagnostic reasoning, which is an ability to see connections between things that I didn't really know that I had it.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_02: All I knew was in old jobs, I would just get bored.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: And that diagnosed what was wrong.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: I would pretty much have everything figured out in two years.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so then I would get bored.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: There were I didn't have any problems to solve.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: And I realized I needed to have problems almost like I love Lucy in the chocolate factory with the things coming by.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: I need a lot of stuff going by and on my problem conveyor belt.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that was something that I designed into my work, so I would have a constant flow of new problems, and they would really be new problems.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: And helping people design their lives.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um people, it's all very different.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like if you're a dermatologist, you just get the same thing every day.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, oh, you have zits.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so even jobs that are highly technical and complex in in many ways will get boring for people that have this problem-solving ability if they don't have problems to solve.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of an overall view of a lot of areas of talent that people have where they have to use them.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: So if somebody is highly analytical, they're going to use it in some way or another.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that's why the only people that figure out what to do for a living to some certain degree are future geeks who in high school start doing things on the computer and they find that they're, you know, that they have um, you know, just an intimacy with that, an unexpected intimacy.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so they step into it.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's the percentage of people that make good um major choices in college.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's all mostly all just uh accidental, except for future geeks, because they have a way of learning what they're uh great at.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: And then through the high school years, they can kind of take that in different directions within geekiness and find, you know, a part of it that appeals to them more.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and it would be nice if we all had a chance to do that, but uh that's not the case, and it's never gonna really work like that.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: We're people are gonna have to have ways to ask questions that take them into new territory and help them make powerful choices.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think what's really interesting about the story you shared with us there is that this whole process of like understanding yourself better, in the book you call it who am I?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um which I love the simplicity of that.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we often refer to it as self-curiosity, but yes, but we believe that it's it's basically essential for anybody who's gonna either look for a new role or even just be more effective in their other one.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because as you point out, right, unless you know these things about yourself, you're never you're always gonna be you know confused when you don't like something, or as you as you point out, kind of blaming yourself because you don't like something.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: This process of self-discovery, as it were, it's uh what we found anyway in in interviewing a bunch of people is that it's actually quite hard.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a lot of people have never really done this.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and even when they have done it, they've not been at all systematic in in how they've done it.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what kind of tips do you have for people that are just kind of like almost embarking on this?
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: For this, that this is not a muscle that they've flexed before.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: We've even spoken to some people who think it's a little bit self-indulgent, for example, to spend too much time thinking about yourself, for example.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: So um, how do you get people across that initial hump whereby, you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe they're 40, 50 years old and they've never really thought about themselves.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: They've never really thought about who they are or any of those things.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: What would be the first things you would have people do to help them um discover that and build that muscle?
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: I would have them find something unexpected about themselves, something to break through.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you can put an egg in your hand and squeeze it, and you you won't be able to break it.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: But if you put a pinhole in it, then it goes.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's um first it's useful to get a pinhole in them in there by having them realize that there's something about them that they're not aware of that, you know, uh from which they are behaving and thinking and doing and everything else.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: So you have to find a way for people to notice.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's all paying attention and noticing and how one goes about supporting and encouraging people to start looking at these things.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are a couple of related aspects here.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's sort of what you what you're good at, which a lot of people are not aware of.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then particularly when it comes to these uh these more soft skills and less tangible skills.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we've spoken to some people, you know, they'll you'll you'll ask them what are they good at, and it's it's almost a line from the British version of the office, uh, of the office, where um the guy's doing a self-assessment and he says list strengths, and he says accounts, and he's pointed out by his boss, no, that's your job, that's not your strength.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there's this that first aspect of like what you're good at, and then the second aspect of what you like and how you go about kind of like framing those in things that are not defined by the job that you're in.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So um, are there frameworks that people use or something along those lines to allow people to understand it outside of the context of the job that they've had for the last five years or the last 10 years?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I don't know.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: My approach to it was uh I made a promise to Bucky Fuller and then he went and died on me, so I had to do it.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that included writing a book, and that book became a top 10 bestseller, completely, you know, to my total surprise.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: I thought Simon and shouldn't be that surprising because it's pretty dumb good.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: I thought they would want the money back.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: I really did.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Three years I sat I wrote that thing, and the whole time I was thinking they're just gonna want the money back, they're gonna laugh at me.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna be the kid on the beach that gets sand kicked in his face.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: But they loved it, and it and and that book and maybe some other books are ways of dividing, uh dividing, sort of shining a spotlight in a magnifying glass on different areas of your life.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: So they're so your natural talents are the most important single thing, um, because uh that's you're an animal, you know, we're animals.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Some of you might not have noticed this yet, but that's what we are animals.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: And like all other animals, we're specific in our talents.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: So with a bear, all the bears, I mean, of a particular species are pretty much the same.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: We human beings are all different, and that is our genetic heritage.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: So uh our society and our tribe defines being good at something in very weird ways that really have not much to do with one's personal talents.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh, you know, somebody will say, Well, they're good with people.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, they're good with people.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: But that's a complicated subject.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: There's all kinds of ways that one is gonna be really good with people.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they're different from person to person.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're gonna be doing something with people, you know, you want to look and see what sort of relationship with people would be most advantageous for your self-extra expression and success.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: And and um, you know, I was talking about that diagnostic reasoning talent.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that really set, I mean, I have two things.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think really, really quickly, and I have high diagnostic reasoning.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, those are the two things that that's what makes that's the heart of comedy.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: There are no comedians who are not high idea flow and high diagnostic reasoning, because those two things give them the quick, you know, wittiness and also the uh ability to look at things in a sort of radical way where you take something about life and you turn it, twist it somehow or another.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: People that don't have those two talents just aren't going to be doing that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we've had clients that, you know, I don't think we've had somebody that wanted to be a comedy writer and failed at it.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: I never remember that.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: We have lots of people who think of themselves as something or other.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe they're good enough to have a job doing it, but they're not, but they're not natural at it, you know, they're clawing their way up their company or or or you know, whatever it is.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's especially uh especially painful to think of in the world of surgeons.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, uh a surgeon should have three-dimensional thinking as a major talent.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: If they don't, they shouldn't be doing surgery.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_02: But most people who go into that field, they don't think about that.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's oh, I'll get a job, I'll I'll become a surgeon.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: Why?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, the money's good, the guys are cool.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, do you ever do anything 3D?
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm interested in philosophy.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um that is not a good, you know, that is not what you want in a surgeon.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's the most basic thing is you want to pick something that's an elegant match with your talents.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then you want to you want to do something in an in a uh in a in a situation with people or without people in a world that fits you.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um and you know, there are people that are a lot of people have a it's only sort of a fairly narrow range of situations at work with which they're going to be happy.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: And then there are other people that they just want it to be as much like high school was as possible.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: And and everything else.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, if you haven't sorted that out, when you make a choice, you're probably gonna make the wrong choice because you didn't put that down as a definite component.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's just something, oh yeah, I liked high school, then you go on to something else.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: But if you want a certain kind of camaraderie and interaction at work, that's something you got to think about ahead of time and declare that as a definite component of what you're going to do.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: So that's just a couple of examples, but you really want to do that with everything.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know what I think is most interesting about that, Nick, is it it runs a little bit counter to some of the um the texts that are out there that have gained a lot of traction in in the last few years.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some thinking about things like growth mindset, for example.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and um growth mindset is a very interesting book.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: It has a lot of very interesting elements in it.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the the ways in which growth mindset has been at least interpreted inside many organizations is to say that um individuals should focus very heavily on the idea that they can become excellent at the things that they uh are not, right?
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they've told a set of stories about themselves, that they're not necessarily good at something, and and by focus and grit and various other things that they can do something, yeah, and all that kind of stuff, yes, related to that as well.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: Utter nonsense.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: If you are just uh take something more basic like ski.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_02: So everybody has there are certain talents, and I would it's not nothing, it's not worthy a subject to get into right now, but there are different talents that make up skiing ability.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um sliding on a slippery thing through space, it's the same talent as surfing and sailboat racing.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's a talent that only rich people get.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um most people are never going to get up on the expert slopes, no matter how much they want to be up on the expert slopes.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you could get them so they were much better.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: You could do like Navy, SEAL, Ski training or something with them and approve and improve them even beyond 100%, probably, but they're still not going to be really good at it.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: And if they're not really good at it, they're probably not going to like it unless everybody else is worse than they are at not being good at it.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: They've distilled it down into a 90-day program targeted at employees that do unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Employees from five different countries around the world are using Billion Minds to help them start each day with a purpose and end it with accomplishment.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you or your team wants to discover how Billion Minds can help employees optimize their work in the context of their broader life, go to billionminds.com slash learnmore today.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's billionminds.com slash L E A R N M O R E.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I wanted to be a surgeon.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of interesting you you kind of bring that example up.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I definitely wanted to be a surgeon.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: And from literally from that age, it was like, okay, what do I need to study in school in order to become a doctor?
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And when I got to med school, uh one of the third one of the first things that you do, uh, you know, in old school med school, you don't do it as much these days, but one of the first things you do is on the in the first week, they pull back a um a sheet and you open up a body of somebody who's kindly donated their body to medical science.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then you spend, you know, each week, um uh you you spend time with that for for basically a year or more, you're in the body dissecting it, and it's all designed to build up your understanding of how the human body works and spatially how it works, et cetera, et cetera.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And there were elements of med school that I raced through and were no problem at all, but the basic anatomy was so hard.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just so ridiculously, ridiculously hard for me.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Long story short, after you know, a bunch of uh different issues, I basically um ended up having to do another career.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And my my uh my dreams of being a doctor were effectively destroyed at this point.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Fast forward three decades nearly, and I do your set of testing, and being what do I realize about myself?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: I am excellent in terms of idea flow, I'm excellent in terms of analytic reasoning.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: I suck at basically um uh uh spatial, uh spatial awareness and all that kind of stuff.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: And also the more important thing too.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: Also, the memory, the memory for design you didn't have.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, and I have literally no visual memory.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess the point that you're making, which I think is really interesting, is that yes, it is possible through sheer willpower to get to get better at certain things, and that's good that it's but it's possible to get better at certain things, but that's the 10,000 hours, yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but if you are spending like your entire life pushing rocks uphill, that's probably not going to be the most satisfying thing.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: As much as you may dream that it will be, and as much as you may have other reasons for wanting to do it, and I think what this would have been super helpful for me if I'd have had that when I was, I don't know, 15 or something like that.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: I could have started taking taking all the reasons why I wanted to be a doctor, which really boiled down to I want to part of me is wanting to make real people, other real people's lives better.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was really what it was, what it was about.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's actually what I'm doing right now, which is fine and probably the reason I love it.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it was uh but taking that thing, that underlying kernel, and then taking something that I was actually good at and applying it to that, to that kernel.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, like most people at you know, at those ages, I didn't have any of that, which leads me to another question, which is do you feel like what's what's the optimal age for somebody to have this realization?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Should this be in like high school or something like that, whereby you can actually have a uh something that will have a meaningful impact upon the trajectory of your lives, or is that too soon?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you need to make a bunch of mistakes first?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's really two branches here.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: I I think in high school it's time to start looking, but it's also time for us to reorganize education.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: So people are learning individually, and they have uh, you know, a computer on their desk and they're doing some of their own work, and then they're doing all the socializing and group things too.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: That in itself gives people uh an idea of their strengths, at least in academic subjects where they're not constantly in competition with everybody else in the room.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Because once you're in competition with a bunch of people, that's what you are.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: You're competing instead of just doing your work.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so also, you know, you you should start thinking about what you're good at and what your personality is like in high school.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, for some people, it's time to get serious about what you're going to do.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: And that could be the geeks I was talking about before.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: If you have good hints about what's going to work for you as a career, then exploring them is a good idea.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: But if you don't have any idea at all, yeah, I think starting to explore yourself is useful.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we we start testing people at age 15.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: We really don't think that the results are accurate.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: We we don't think abilities mature for sure before that.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: Um but uh I've we've mostly we do mostly work with mid-career people.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um but we also have worked with many, many young people too.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I notice what a big difference it makes in the over on the edges of the of the experience there.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: But we've had some of those kids go through the testing program and realize that there were things that they could do.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: They had just been, they had had no possibilities at all.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: They had just had, you know, this vision they had gotten from their upbringing and school and society around them.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um so by going through that, they saw that there were things that they could do, and we've we've gotten many letters over time about how you know the kid turned around and started to get interested in other things.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that's I mean, with any young person, to have them have more knowledge about themselves and their abilities and this, their personality and their values and everything are incredibly valuable because then you're taking an individual view of yourself rather than you know, your view, your parents' view, the view of everybody around you in school and all your friends, um, and the tribal view, you're you know, you're investigating yourself, you're a career detective.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that that in itself is quite um intriguing for people that are starting out on their career because again, it sounds like it starts it starts before some of the guidance that people often give young people.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So the the common guidance that people will give people, I guess, fits into two broad categories.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: One is, you know, give yourself a set of skills that is easily transferable, and then the other, I suppose, is um get maybe there's two or three, right?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: The other is get really deep uh in an understanding of a particular area.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: So engineering is gonna be important.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: So go do an engineering degree.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's the kind of like like the world is gonna be this way.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: You should prime yourself to be ready for what you think the world is gonna be.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then I suppose the third thing is, you know, can be loosely called follow your passion, which is whatever you whatever you like, go after that.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I call this out specifically because I just happened to see a uh uh headline the other day.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't even looked into the details yet, but somebody's saying the advice follow your passion is like the worst advice you can possibly give somebody.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'm just because they don't have a passion.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or they don't know what it is, which could be the other the other thing too, right?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_02: If they don't know what it is, they don't have it.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's true.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess I think what I'm what I'm getting at there is specifically, well, like again, to use my example, right?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I thought my passion was medicine, but it wasn't right, right?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: I thought my passion was defined by a particular type of career, yeah, but in reality it was defined by something different.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, usually people have some internal guidance, so they don't usually pick the exact opposite of what they should be doing, although that does happen.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that there usually are traits that fit.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so there's they're just natural, sort of almost animal instincts of paying attention to those things are useful, but very often they get them wrong.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so there are uh my favorite example from our testing is that um lots of people with high analytical reasoning, that's you know, it's an important thing to know if you have it.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and I think a lot of people who have that know it.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of our common problem solving ability in the West.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_02: And um, but there are plenty of people who uh are not high in it, but will pick a tech career because their their personality is more analytical.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_02: They have an analytical brain in terms of decision making, but they don't have a talent, a big talent at analytical as a gift.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: So there, you know, there are a lot of distinctions that one has to make in in looking at yourself.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it starts out with avoiding trying to figure out the subject and instead get to know yourself.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that means that people who absolutely have excelled in a particular career and haven't thought this stuff through have just sort of kind of got lucky whereby whereby the career they're in happens to really deeply match their talents?
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: Is that one of the main like if you look in any field, you'll obviously have extant outstanding examples of that field?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do those people just sort of luck into the fact that they ended up in that spot, or are they so brilliant that if you took them out and put them in something completely different, they'd also excel in that field?
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, I don't know.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think John Lennon would have necessarily made a good surgeon, but uh I don't know.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think that there are there are there was a boy I went to grade school with that knew what he wanted to be a doctor and what kind of doctor he wanted to be as a young man.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: And he did that and he enjoyed it for his entire career.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know whether he was just lucky or whether he had just very good antenna.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of think it's both that there are some people who have good antenna and they just do things in a way that promotes their gifts and they have a personality or the or the world responds to them in a way that they get to see this stuff, so they really do know, but probably just as often it's just a big accident.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_02: So that boy who became a doctor, I have always thought that he had good antenna, but maybe it was just luck.
• 35:06
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• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked a lot already about this idea of people uh understanding themselves really well, and and you've given us some clues as to how people can do that.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but and then also I think we've talked a little bit about this idea of of what you like, what your where your passion is.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um this obviously is leading us to something, right?
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's leading us to the idea that we have this passion and and this uh you know underlying meaning to our lives and and this purpose that we're looking to try to fulfill.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: At some point that's got to be mapped to something that probably for most of us has to be mapped to something that pays the bills.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so what's the what is effectively the the next step to be able to take all of this and map it to something that that pays the bills?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose I'd approach the question in two ways.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, you're gonna have a category of people that are already know that they need to go down a different path, right?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: They already know that they're in the wrong, the wrong place.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then other people for whom they're probably trying to figure out whether they can uh whether they can fulfill make an adjustment in terms of what they already do.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: So um what do you advise people to do once they're trying to actually turn this into something practical and actionable?
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that the process, I think that's part of the process of designing what you're going to do.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think it makes sense to start off looking at yourself.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_02: And then as you go through that process, start looking at things that match it.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: So in my books and when Rockport Institute works with clients, we have people looking at all sorts of different aspects of themselves, but actually, what they're leaning towards throughout the whole process is making definite choices and picking specific components.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: At the beginning, you just pick components that are a perfect fit.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then as you're sort of getting toward the middle of the process, you start looking in a more and more practical way, but without killing off possibilities that might be outside of the frame of reference of what you would normally think of.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: But if you build definite components about what you're going to do, like for me, I knew I had to use these two abilities constantly.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: That was my job was to, you know, think quickly on my feet and use diagnostic reasoning.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: And I knew that what I was good at was designing methodology and solving problems that you couldn't really figure out in an analytical way.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: So that was a component.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: Then another definite component was it was got to all be about making a difference in people's lives.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: Had to be something where I didn't feel like I was competing with people smarter than me, and a whole bunch of other things.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I even have my own neurosis about not being competitive included as one of the components of what I'm going to do.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_02: So you just put everything in there that's important enough that you can say, that's it.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_02: This is the way it's going to be.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_02: You have to take a stand on components.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_02: Then you can think about, you know, well, what's that job going to be?
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: And uh then it's just a matter of how far you're willing to stretch in terms of making something happening.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Are you are you willing to go back to school?
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_02: Are you willing to go back and get a degree or a couple of courses?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: Are you willing to move to this place where that happens?
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_02: And all those other questions, you you start, you know, stirring in all the practical questions somewhere in the middle.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there's a third piece to this, which is you have to have the courage to not cross things off that scare you a little bit as you're going through it, because you're going to have feelings of uncertainty when you start thinking of things that uh it's like, holy cow, how would I ever get to do that?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, then your brain is just telling you to keep everything the same.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's the mechanism of the brain to be safe and keep things the same.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but you have to persist through that, recognize these are more Yabat thoughts rather than the, you know, uh the law of the cosmos.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a point you make in the book, actually, that I really love, um, which is how we go about thinking about alternate states versus existing states.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you point out um in the book that we often treat like keeping things the same as the safe choice, as the best choice for us.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I bring this up specifically because we get a lot of people that we speak to for whom they know what they're in is not meeting their needs.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: They know that.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_00: But the fear of shifting to something else is so great that it prevents them from taking that final step, the final step of actually executing on everything, uh, on everything they know.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: But the point you make in the book is that that the previous uh you know safe spot that you're in, the thing that you're not moving from, who knows?
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like if it's stressing you out and you're hating it, it could be literally killing you versus the all versus the alternative, which may not be.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the problem is people think that things being scary is bad.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it really isn't.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, the mechanism of us, the Yabots mechanism in us is also our feelings of fear.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: So this was all designed for when you know you and I might be going for a walk, and you know, I'll I'll say, Hey Paul, let's take check out this cave over here.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: That looks pretty good.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: I'm somebody that has no something, no sense of safety.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_02: But Paul, and you're thinking, I don't know, there might be cave bears in there, there might be lions, there might be all these things that kind of smells badly.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: So your mind is doing the appropriate thing.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_02: You're feeling fear and coming up with thoughts about why we shouldn't do that.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: That's why that system is in us, it's in there to protect us, but it was designed for days when things used to eat us, not when we're just making a job change.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: So now we think that I mean, we interpret fear as you know, lions and bears.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: When it isn't, it's just the unknown.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's and it's and it's what makes it scary is you're stepping into it.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not gonna do anything, if you're just watching it on TV, you're not gonna be scared.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: But if it's affecting your the your potential survival, which is really what that whole system is about, it's gonna affect your survival.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna make any money, I'm gonna live on end up living under a bridge.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, whatever, all those things scare people, and they avoid the fear rather than recognizing that the fear is absolutely normal.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: It's supposed to be there.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: Only really psychotic people wouldn't feel fear in a career change.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: Even Arnold Schwarzenegger might feel no, I don't think so.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_02: So he had a moment of fear when he decided to run for mayor.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so, but anybody else would have.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's one question that I guess I'll finish up with here, Nick, which is um around the pandemic.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: But certainly one pattern that we've seen is that a whole bunch of people are re-evaluating what's personally important to them.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: This has been a sort of like mass um evaluation of do I want to do this?
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do I want to carry on doing this?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if you were a sales guy that was constantly on the road and that was all taken away from you, you're either going to realize that you really loved being on the road and you want to go back, or actually that it's just been a rut that you've got yourself into and that you want to go do something different.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I wonder whether you're seeing as well uh this sort of uh re-evaluation that we've seen quite a bit.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but do you think in general this will be a time when people try something new?
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: And is there, and do you have any thoughts as to how people should go about interpreting what's happened to them during the pandemic and using that as a source of clues as to what they should do going forward?
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yes, first of all, I think you should use everything as a source of clues as much as possible, as much as it's germane to deciding what to do in your future.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: And most of us have been like just a bunch of cows eating the grass.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: And our extent of our thinking about the future is should we go chew the grass over there or stay here or whatever?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's not really thinking clearly about one's life and future.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: So the pandemic has given us an opportunity to look at things differently, and lots of us see that they're that not everything uh is, you know, we've had a year to have life be different.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we're just gonna have a different perspective.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_02: And all I think is just well, take advantage of it, just like you could take advantage of anything useful.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if um I somebody once said that they read personal growth books.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: If they only got one thing out of it that was really powerful and important, it was worth reading it.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_02: So the the problem is people just not investigating and and just you know, you know, hoping to fall back to where they were before.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: And for those people, that's fine to do that.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but for all of those people, a huge number of people that have found out at the very least they don't want to go in and you know be in an office all the time, and that the nature of their work is uh is now different and they've gotten a chance to look at things in a new way.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_02: Go out and explore.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Go for it.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: Nick, thank you so much.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was super, super helpful.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know our audience will get a ton out of it as well.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Really appreciate your time today.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_01: The Way Too Busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayTooBusy at BillionMinds dot com.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.