Bruce Feiler, THE SEARCH: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World
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[1:03]The author's filer is the author of the search, Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-career
[1:07]World.
[1:08]This episode is guest hosted by Julie Chavez, author of Everyone But Myself, a forthcoming
[1:13]zippy books title, and also Ask a Librarian.
[1:16]Bruce filer is the author of Seven New York Times Best Sellers, including Life Is in the Transitions,
[1:21]The Secrets of Happy Families, and Council of Dads.
[1:23]His three TED Talks have been viewed more than four million times.
[1:26]And he teaches the TED course how to master life transitions.
[1:30]His latest book, The Search, Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-career World, is a bold
[1:33]new roadmap for finding meaning and purpose at work, based on insights drawn from hundreds
[1:37]of life stories of all locations and backgrounds.
[1:41]A native of Savannah, Georgia, Bruce lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Linda Rottenberg,
[1:45]and their identical twin daughters.
[1:47]Bruce, thank you so much for being with me today.
[1:49]I am so happy that you're a guest on moms don't have time to read books.
[1:55]First of all, thank you for having me.
[1:56]I just want to say I'm a huge fan of moms don't have time as a dad who doesn't have
[2:02]time.
[2:03]But just I just think that what zippy and you and the whole team are building is great
[2:09]for models, great for writers, great for librarians, great for booksellers, just great
[2:14]for the world that when everything is going by us so quickly that we can pause and have
[2:20]a real conversation.
[2:21]So I'm delighted to be back.
[2:23]Oh, I'm so thrilled and I agree with you.
[2:25]Zippy has built something so special in this space and continues to do so.
[2:30]So I'm so happy that I get to be a part of it and talk to you today.
[2:34]So let's dive into your book.
[2:36]We're talking today about the search, finding meaningful work in a post career world.
[2:42]So I have to tell you, I got the arc and as soon as I got it, I went and found my husband
[2:47]instantly and I said, so you're going to be reading this book after me because this is
[2:52]such a timely, timely, interesting book.
[2:56]I tore through it.
[2:57]I took so much, so much wisdom, so I'm so excited to talk about it with you today.
[3:02]Well, thank you.
[3:03]I just, in fact, an hour ago said that the work I've been doing, I mean, this is not the
[3:10]first book I've written, as you know, and I've been doing this for many years, but this
[3:14]work I've now been doing for six years of collecting and analyzing hundreds of life stories
[3:19]of Americans of all ages and all walks of life and all backgrounds led to my last book.
[3:25]And the first time I was on moms don't have time, life is in the transitions and now this
[3:29]one that we're going to talk about.
[3:30]But what I said to someone this morning was like, you know, generally speaking over time,
[3:35]I would say that my work has appealed more to women than to men and this book is appealing
[3:44]to women.
[3:45]And because I think women are at the vanguard of a lot of the change that I kept hearing
[3:51]in my conversations and this book explores, but I also think it's equally men too.
[3:56]Oh, I couldn't agree more.
[3:58]I think there's a lot of really solid information here, obviously, but also I think you
[4:05]do such a good job of really dismantling something that, generationally, I think is very
[4:09]much something that we haven't thought of.
[4:12]So I know for, for example, for us both my dad and my husband's father worked for the
[4:18]same company for their entire careers.
[4:20]No, really.
[4:21]Yes.
[4:22]Wow.
[4:23]Even then was a bit of an anomaly.
[4:24]And when my husband started out, I think he had a sense that that's what he was going
[4:29]to do as well and then had to work quick.
[4:32]And it's just so interesting to see how it's not what happens anymore.
[4:37]I mean, I was looking at your, even early in the book, you mentioned a third of the
[4:41]workforce leaves their job every year that shocked me, but it shouldn't.
[4:46]I mean, that is kind of the news, the new way of things.
[4:49]So when you, I guess let's start here if we can, there are so many beautiful stories
[4:54]in this book.
[4:55]I was so moved by so many of the stories.
[4:58]Will you tell me about the process of collecting them?
[5:00]Because I know you talked a little bit about that for life is in the transitions, but
[5:04]I just want to hear about as, as they've sat with you over time and you've researched
[5:09]these stories.
[5:10]How has that felt for you?
[5:11]Well, it feels like a privilege, right?
[5:14]To look people in the eye, it's what you do on, you know, in your life in multiple
[5:18]areas of your life, but it's the essence of what I love most about what I do is looking
[5:23]someone in the eye and saying I'm interested in your story and tell me your story.
[5:28]Let me go back a little bit in the process and talk about how I ended up in this.
[5:31]I, in a lot of ways, had what I think of as a traditional linear life, like I grew up in
[5:36]Savannah, Georgia and I stumbled into what I wanted to do early in my life of writing.
[5:41]I did it for no money for a while.
[5:43]I had some success and, and then got married and had children and this is the fantasy
[5:47]that we all have.
[5:49]But in my 40s, my life blew up, as you know, first I got cancer at 43 as a new dad.
[5:54]I had financial troubles and then my own dad got Parkinson's and tried to take his own
[6:00]life six times in 12 weeks.
[6:03]And as a story, tell her professionally, I didn't know how to tell this story and I didn't
[6:07]want to.
[6:08]And when I did what I found is that everybody's life got blown up, though I ended up calling
[6:12]those as, you know, life quakes.
[6:13]And so I went out and I said to my wife, like, no one knows how to tell their story anymore.
[6:17]And I want to do something to help.
[6:18]And what I did was create this thing that I now call the life story project.
[6:23]And in the first round of interviews that I did, I sort of took everybody, right?
[6:28]I was like, do you know, and I would interview someone and I would say, who do you know
[6:32]that's had an interesting life story?
[6:34]And it was sort of a kind of little bit went viral.
[6:37]I put it on social media and then I began hearing from people.
[6:40]And that then led to life is in the transitions, which turned out to arrive in the middle
[6:46]of the pandemic when the entire planet was in a life transition, right?
[6:49]So that's sort of turned out to be the right idea at the right time.
[6:52]And within really a few weeks of that book coming out in 2020, I both felt, for me,
[7:00]it's always a feeling and then also began to imagine like work is the next thing to fall.
[7:04]Like you already were beginning, like people work from home was coming up, right?
[7:08]There was this, should we be moving in remote work and, you know, then we had the public health
[7:14]crisis and then we had, though, everybody was working at home in the family dynamic crisis.
[7:18]All these things were converging at one time.
[7:20]And so like the first time, I didn't really know what I was looking for.
[7:24]I just knew that we had to tell this work story.
[7:28]And I think it's worth pausing and saying, you know, the idea of our life is a story.
[7:34]That was a fringe radical idea in the 1980s in psychology.
[7:38]And it's entered kind of the mainstream.
[7:41]But for reasons that somewhat escape me, we don't really talk about it in work.
[7:46]We don't talk about our work lives as a story that we inherited from our parents,
[7:51]write these expectations and our culture and our upbringing.
[7:55]And that isn't an idea that's really taken hold.
[7:58]And that began to become the dominant.
[8:01]So the answer to your question is, this time I tried to be more intentional, right?
[8:06]So I, so because I didn't, I wanted to get out of my own bubble.
[8:09]So I actually made what I came to call a bingo card.
[8:11]I looked at the Department of Labor like all the jobs people have.
[8:15]And it was, you know, and I divided them up into 25 categories.
[8:19]And, you know, 25 items and five categories.
[8:21]I was like, energy and maintenance, right?
[8:24]And public service and food and beverage and beauty and fashion.
[8:28]And I just wanted to make sure.
[8:30]So that was the first thing I did.
[8:31]And this time because I already had this team of people
[8:34]that helps me code and analyze these stories.
[8:37]I sent them out.
[8:39]And I would wake up in the middle of the night.
[8:41]And I would say, you know what, I need to do a.
[8:44]And I'm like, I don't want to do that from Brooklyn where I live.
[8:46]Like a dual in Brooklyn is obvious.
[8:48]Right.
[8:49]And so then I ended up, they brought me, you know, they would bring these people.
[8:52]Everybody would go, go, go get me up, you know, go get me someone who's a spy.
[8:57]I want, you know, I want somebody who opened a farm, right?
[9:00]And so I would, I want somebody who works in a nuclear power plant, right?
[9:03]Those are, by the way, just three great stories that Kelly Lively's story
[9:07]who works in the Idaho National Labs started as a secretary.
[9:10]Yes.
[9:11]Yes.
[9:12]And didn't want her to work.
[9:14]And she, she thought having children will help having children didn't help.
[9:18]Didn't help.
[9:19]She went back to school.
[9:21]She thought I'll never get above being a secretary is what they called a man.
[9:24]She became the highest ranking woman in her department who single-handedly led,
[9:27]driving a nuclear reactor from Idaho to Florida to ride on the space shuttle.
[9:35]And she's got a side job.
[9:36]And we're going to talk about this in this conversation.
[9:38]She's got a side job.
[9:39]That's what a stand-up comedian.
[9:40]Like that, that, that's, that's how momma doesn't have time to read
[9:44]because she's running the country and cracking jokes at the same time, right?
[9:46]So, so that's the nominee or work life.
[9:48]So that these, my team would bring me people and then we voted.
[9:52]Like everybody would like, that's a good story.
[9:54]That's not a good story.
[9:55]And so I have to say the bar, like the standard of the stories in this book.
[10:00]or even higher than the amazing stories and life is in the transitions.
[10:04]Well, you can see it because reading some of these, I mean, I would, I would get halfway
[10:09]through one and go, what?
[10:10]I mean, just out loud, I was so amazed by some of the turns these people's lives talk.
[10:16]Let's do Kirsten Green for a second, like Kirsten Green.
[10:19]She grows up in Alabama, okay?
[10:21]She gets a job teaching at an HBCU criminology.
[10:25]She wants to be a doctor, but she switches her criminology.
[10:27]She's running her department at this college and she's got a partner, you know, and
[10:33]there is a family member whose teenage daughter gets pregnant turns out this is, it was
[10:41]not consensual.
[10:43]Right.
[10:44]The experience and the girl decides she wants to keep the baby and says to Kirsten,
[10:49]I want you in the delivery room with me.
[10:51]So she's a criminologist.
[10:53]She starts taking online classes.
[10:55]She becomes a doula and immediately after helping this family member give birth, the girl
[11:02]says to her, you would be great at this.
[11:05]Kirsten changes her academic research to look at pregnant incarcerated women and how we
[11:10]can lower recidivism among them.
[11:12]And now she's opening a birth center so that other people can have the opportunities that
[11:17]she's had in her life.
[11:18]She's got a full-time job and she now has this side job that gives her even more meaning.
[11:24]She's actually doing a main job that gives her meaning, but this side job and that really
[11:28]I think is the thing to underline here, Julie, which is the biggest change that's going
[11:33]on in work.
[11:34]I mean, you mentioned the fact that a third of the people, I think the stakes here are worth
[11:38]emphasizing.
[11:39]Yes.
[11:40]70% of Americans are unhappy with what they do.
[11:44]75% of Americans in a survey released two weeks ago said they plan to look for a new
[11:51]work in the next 12 months, 75% a million people a week quit a job.
[11:57]That's not laid off.
[11:58]That's not fired.
[11:59]That's quit a job.
[12:01]That's a third of the workforce and another third of the workforce is saying, I don't want
[12:06]to go in five days a week.
[12:07]Like I don't want to commuter.
[12:08]I want to spend more time with my family or I want to be a little league when my son
[12:11]is there or the ballet recital for my son or my daughter is there as a ballet dad myself.
[12:17]So that's 100 million people.
[12:20]Like you said with your husband at the outside of this conversation who are sitting across
[12:24]from someone they love this morning, this afternoon, tonight is they're listening to our
[12:28]conversation saying, I'm unhappy with what I'm doing.
[12:32]I want to do something else and here's the thing that no one's prepared to sacrifice
[12:35]anymore.
[12:36]Fewer people are searching merely for work and more people are searching for work with
[12:39]meaning.
[12:40]That is a trend that's been building for a while.
[12:43]I'm not prepared to sell myself to an organization or a company or somebody else even
[12:47]a startup.
[12:48]Meaning is important to me.
[12:50]What's been missing.
[12:51]It turns out and this is what sort of came to emerge from these conversations is how
[12:55]do I find that meeting, which is why sort of the bulk of the search is essentially
[13:00]a toolkit for trying to say, I want meaning for work.
[13:03]I don't know.
[13:04]No one ever taught me.
[13:05]My parents said, my parents told me dress for the job you want, not the job you have.
[13:08]They're like, go seek that thing that we all were taught.
[13:14]Well, it turns out the job I want is involved sitting around in sweatpants most of the
[13:19]day.
[13:20]But the point is no one ever gave us this toolkit and that's what I think is the thing
[13:26]that I discovered that I most passionate, I call it 21 questions to find work you love, helping
[13:31]people help themselves and the people they live with, find work to do who they are right
[13:36]now.
[13:37]I love the way that you explain that because even when I was reading through the book,
[13:46]you know, I read through it the first time just to get a sense of everything, but I thought
[13:51]I want to go back and read these questions and fill in the blanks because there's so
[13:57]much and to your point saying, you know, who you were a few months ago, if the idea that
[14:02]we're always evolving and changing and growing hopefully in our lives, then the work that
[14:09]we do has to shift with that.
[14:11]And so this idea that we need more fluidity and you speak to how it's even more fluidity
[14:17]than we really would assume.
[14:19]I think that's right.
[14:20]And I think it's interesting.
[14:21]I got a call yesterday from the editor of Psychology Today and she just read my book
[14:24]and was asking me to contribute to Psychology Today, some pieces and she used a line
[14:28]that echoes what you just said.
[14:29]She said, I think your book is about how to do the work to get the work you want.
[14:33]Oh, that's perfect.
[14:34]And I do think that that is a very interesting formulation, but let's set the stage, right?
[14:39]So what are the, what are the lies that, you know, that your husband and maybe you and
[14:43]certainly me grew up with?
[14:45]I would say line number one is you have a career, right?
[14:48]The idea that you're going to follow your passion and pick something in your like 21 or 22,
[14:52]well, guess what?
[14:54]You know, two or 85% of people in my, my survey said they did not follow their passion.
[14:59]They discovered it or changed it or made it along the way.
[15:02]Like so the pressure on us, I mean, I'm about to send two kids to college in 100 days.
[15:07]Like the chances that they're going to know their passion, right?
[15:10]Passion is great, but it changes over time.
[15:12]So you don't have a career.
[15:14]Point number two, the fluidity, the average person you mentioned work with, right?
[15:17]So what does it work like a work week is a moment where you rethink or reconsider or reevaluate
[15:23]or sort of ask yourself, am I doing what I want to be doing?
[15:26]We go through 20 work weeks in the course of our lives.
[15:30]That's every 2.85 years, but here's the thing.
[15:34]And this that goes on what we've been saying, women go through there more than men.
[15:39]Exors go through them more than boomers and millennials more than extras, okay?
[15:43]By the way, and diverse workers more than non diverse workers.
[15:46]So if you, so a millennial woman will go through 2,3rds more work weeks in her life than
[15:54]her boomer parents, okay?
[15:57]And this I think is the signature piece of data.
[15:59]And actually I think it's almost like the spirit of mom's don't have time, right?
[16:04]Yeah.
[16:05]Which is the majority of work, quite 55%, begin outside the workplace, right?
[16:12]So it's not that you get laid off or you don't like your boss or you don't like
[16:15]the work or you have to like travel and you don't want to travel because you're
[16:18]behind with your, you want to be home with your family.
[16:20]It's because something happens in your personal life, right?
[16:23]With your health, right?
[16:24]Hello.
[16:25]I'm raising my hand.
[16:26]I got diagnosed with a life threatening cancer at 43.
[16:29]And I was like walking the Bible and, you know, doing all this stuff and hosting TV shows
[16:34]and Indiana Jones.
[16:35]And suddenly I was in, you know, I was on crutches for 2 years.
[16:38]Right.
[16:39]So that was a work break, right?
[16:40]I'm a parent of identical twin daughters.
[16:43]That was a joyful, wonderful experience.
[16:45]But you know what?
[16:47]It was a work break because it made us reevaluate everything we were doing, right?
[16:51]So the point is it's our personal lives.
[16:53]It's our health.
[16:54]It's our family.
[16:55]It's between our ears.
[16:56]We don't want to be doing this anywhere.
[16:57]It doesn't bring us meaning and that is the thing like so in the battle between work
[17:01]and life.
[17:03]We're not trying to balance them.
[17:04]Life has won.
[17:05]We all are prioritizing our life.
[17:08]And that is the change that is happening.
[17:12]And work is forced to accommodate and that's what's the interesting moment that we're
[17:16]in.
[17:17]Okay.
[17:18]So, and then the last thing which we've been sort of talking around, we might as well
[17:20]just dig into it for a minute is that nobody has one job anymore.
[17:24]No they do not.
[17:27]So yeah, I want to talk about this, but you brought this up in the green room so to speak.
[17:31]Like, so this had a big impact on you.
[17:33]So give me a reaction before I tell you sort of how this all came about.
[17:36]Okay, yes.
[17:37]I'm really excited that we can get deep into my own psychological issues on this
[17:41]episode.
[17:42]It feels important.
[17:43]But I know I love it, right?
[17:45]Yes, that's why I'm hosting what I loved.
[17:47]So you talk about job side jobs and the ghost jobs and the ghost job really stood out
[17:53]to me.
[17:54]But what's funny is I have, I work as an elementary librarian and for a long time I talked
[18:00]about that as not a full time job because it's only 30 hours a week, but really that
[18:04]is my main job.
[18:06]And then the idea though that I have side jobs, I do podcasting.
[18:11]I wrote a book.
[18:12]I write sometimes in other ways I'm working on a novel.
[18:15]Those are all little side jobs, but the ghost job and I even wrote this down.
[18:20]Ghost jobs being kind of the mental load, but also not just specific to that.
[18:25]I thought creatives all of us have a ghost job which is pretty much just relentless
[18:32]self doubt and how much time in a day you're going to go just assigned to that, right?
[18:36]I'm amazed.
[18:38]So reading that, I thought, oh my gosh, that's something I never, never thought of, but
[18:42]you're exactly right.
[18:43]So yeah, so I'm a.
[18:44]So I love thank you for sharing that and this is we're going to get deeper in the psychology
[18:48]and we're not going to get away with just that top line.
[18:50]We're going to get into it in a minute here, but let me talk about what the idea that
[18:54]you have a job that you go to and then you come back to your family or your personal life.
[19:00]Like that is an idea that does not reflect how we live today.
[19:03]So no one has one job anymore.
[19:05]In fact, I got out a defining book of my childhood, which is, you know, what do people do
[19:09]all day?
[19:10]And actually for a long time, this book, which is now called the search was called what
[19:13]do people do all day?
[19:15]And you know, that's like it's got the raccoon who's a baker, right?
[19:18]And it's got the, you know, it's got the squirrel that's the, you know, that's a carpenter
[19:23]by the way, they're all traditionally gendered and you know, they do the same thing.
[19:26]So that's not the world that we live in anymore.
[19:28]So it turns out we have up to side jobs.
[19:30]We'll start with a main job.
[19:31]And I love that you didn't.
[19:32]You said that your main job wasn't necessarily a full time job, right?
[19:36]And by the way, interestingly left fewer than half of us even have a main job anymore.
[19:40]And a main job could be the primary source of time or it could be the primary source of money
[19:45]and benefits, right?
[19:46]There are different reasons.
[19:47]Okay.
[19:48]Then we have a care job.
[19:49]Two thirds of us have a care job like caring for children or aging relatives or some
[19:53]of us both, yes, older than you are, three quarters of us have a side job.
[19:58]So I sort of feel like that's been in.
[20:00]a culture a lot. But there were two kinds of jobs I'd never heard before. One is something
[20:05]that people do hoping that it leads to something else, right? Yes. So that I call
[20:10]a hope job, right? And so that is selling Etsy, you know, selling jewelry on Etsy, right? Or
[20:16]writing a screenplay, right? Or something that you do. Maybe for you, it's, I don't know if you sold
[20:21]your novel, but maybe that's a, maybe that's a hope job. Yep. The novel is a hope job. The
[20:26]memoir was sold. So now that's a side job. So that would be a side job, right? And these are both
[20:30]distinctions that don't matter, but also really do matter, right? Yes. What's interesting is often
[20:35]the difference between a side job and a hope job is this side job will bring in money.
[20:39]But the hope job we're often paying out of pocket for, right? You know, you have to like if you're
[20:45]selling pickles at the at the farmer's market, you've got to invest in in the crock. I'm thinking
[20:51]this because I want to make this summer when I become an empty nester, but like you need the pickles
[20:54]and the brine and then, but I kept hearing about this thing, which I have to say is not in the
[20:59]literature of work, uh, to my knowledge. I haven't jet GPT checked that because I've never been on
[21:03]jet GPT, but since that people have an invisible time suck, that here's the key thing that feels
[21:11]like a job battling self doubt imposter syndrome, battling discriminations or macroangressions,
[21:18]right? Battling mental health or sobriety, right? Or I think you just put it beautifully
[21:23]self doubt another huge one by natural wellness. Like I didn't grow up with money skills.
[21:28]And so therefore I don't know how much do I save and how do I invest that was fascinating to
[21:31]keep coming up. Like people, when I talk to a woman who works at, um, who works at Vox and, you know,
[21:37]she's a creative. As you said, she's in the beginning of her career, but she knows her parents
[21:43]have some issues and she knows that she's going to have to take care of her parents. She can't rely
[21:47]on them. She has a side job to bring an extra money and has this go job of like going around
[21:52]on Zillow looking for real estate. So she can move out of the city and get a home big enough
[21:58]like to live with her parents who are going to need her to take care of them. Like that is a huge
[22:02]time suck. So this sounds like a burden. And I know for moms who don't have time, they don't have time,
[22:08]but I actually think the more helpful way to look at it is that what's not negotiable is we want
[22:14]meaning from what we do. So maybe in this fluid world, we live and maybe you do the main job or
[22:21]want this eye job for money and salary, but you do the hope job for meaning, right? Or maybe you
[22:26]say, you know what? I just got a great offer for a promotion, but my kids on travel soccer this year,
[22:32]and I just don't have time. So I'm going to focus on that for a while because here's the blessing
[22:39]of the nonlinear life. When I was growing up and even when we had children 18 years ago,
[22:45]the perception was if you got off the path, you could never get back on the path.
[22:50]So there you have no career. You have no job, but you also have no path. And when there is no
[22:54]path, you can get on our office many times as you want. And that's the thing, the blessing of the
[22:58]moment that we're in is that you can find this mixed defined meaning, but also there is no,
[23:04]you know, sort of career ending moment of taking time off to be with your children,
[23:10]because there's no career anymore. So you can get back doing work when that time is right again.
[23:15]I love the way that this book frames it and that you're framing it right now because there's
[23:20]such a hopeful posture here where it's okay to kind of cobble the things together to make
[23:27]to make it fit for you to make meaning. And it really does give an opportunity to validate all of
[23:35]these jobs instead of seeing them as weights we carry. It's okay. So this is where my energy goes,
[23:42]and this is where I take in a little bit more energy. And just these ideas that I can
[23:47]really put down. And I think the ghost job, part of the reason it was so helpful to me is that,
[23:53]you know, we think about the stories we tell ourselves. And that's another big theme of your book
[23:58]is just the stories that we tell ourselves. So I'm taking a moment to not only evaluate those
[24:06]and see if they're actually correct. I'm fact checking the story I tell myself,
[24:10]but also to ask, is this a story that I want to spend time telling myself? Because so many of
[24:16]those. So that I think is exactly where where this leads us, right? So I think that the first half
[24:22]of the search, the, you know, it wasn't my goal. It was my goal to sort of capture what's going on.
[24:27]But the number one thing I'm hearing from readers is that it is validating. And also it's sort
[24:32]of what whose life is in the transitions in the search of both on is, I don't know, the technical
[24:36]term for the reaction you're librarian. Maybe you know this reaction, but I think it's a technical
[24:40]reaction. People say, like, you're putting words to these feelings that I had that I didn't know
[24:45]what to do with. Yes. You know, that I'm not like transition, right? Or I'm going to work transition,
[24:49]or I'm unhappy. Like, so it's kind of simple minded. I've been joking that it's a technical term.
[24:54]But like, people feel validated that they now understand a framework to understand what they're
[25:01]going for. And what this all leads to though is the task of kind of updating your story.
[25:06]And so because I think that the really I would say my, the sort of number one thing I learned
[25:13]is you go back to your, your in-laws, right? That you're talking about your husband. And
[25:17]is that the story we've been telling in this country for 200 years has been all about up
[25:23]rights, rights to riches, up by your bootstraps, higher floor, bigger office, greater salary,
[25:29]more benefits. But if there's one thing I learned of talking to hundreds of people,
[25:33]1500 hours of interviews is that the people who are happiest and most fulfilled in what they do,
[25:39]they don't just climb. They also dig. And they perform what I call kind of personal archaeology,
[25:44]right? They perform a meaning audit in which they explore. What is it that gives them meaning right
[25:49]now? And so what the whole 21 questions define work that you love is all about is, is using the
[25:56]basic building blocks of storytelling, right? Who, what, when, where, why and how? The mistake that
[26:02]most people make is they start with how? And they're like, okay, I need to work like, how do
[26:06]brush up my resume? Like clean up my LinkedIn profile, right? You know, call my friends close and far.
[26:11]Well, you know what the problem with that is it will work. And you actually will get a job,
[26:14]but in two and a half years, you'll be unhappy in doing it again. So the first thing to do is to
[26:19]try to figure out who are you right now? And that begins by going back and saying, what did I learn
[26:25]from my parents? Like what imprint? You know, when I ask people, I'm going to actually I'll pull
[26:29]these numbers up. You can hear my clicking and the microphone here. But if I look, it's on page
[26:36]164 of the search question. What were the upsides of work you learn from your parents and the
[26:41]downsides? You know, give me a quick answer. So what were the upsides you learn from your parents?
[26:45]And what were the downsides? Upsides are, I mean, financial, obviously, you make money. And you
[26:53]have, I think my dad was in hospitality. So definitely a service element that you're of use
[27:00]and present and attentive and work with the, yeah, work with the downsides you learn from watching
[27:07]them downsides where it's easy to overwork. I think I learned overwork a little bit from them. And
[27:13]then also work life balance, poor work life balance. So this is interesting. I told you we're going
[27:19]to get deeper here. Number one upside, hard work, right? The value of hard work, okay? That's
[27:25]like two thirds of us. And the rest were like, love what you do or be true to yourself. But when you look
[27:28]at downsides, they're much more tightly clumped. And number one, overwork. And then number two,
[27:34]this train on the family, like, you know, my parents worked very hard. And this is a difference,
[27:38]right? So we're in a generation. I'm almost afraid to say anybody listening to this conversation
[27:42]self identifies as a mom, like that's important to them. But yet they want ideas, right? So what
[27:47]does mom don't have time to read? It's all about I want to be part of the world. But I'm
[27:52]being a mom is important to me. So we, one of the ways that we define meaning is that we're not prepared.
[27:59]Yes. The work by the old metric of only money is the way you're going to engage it. If it means
[28:04]traveling three times, you know, three month, three weeks a month, I talked to a mom who was,
[28:08]you know, had a great job in Chicago and was traveling two weeks a month. And she was like,
[28:12]I, you know, what that's not what I want to be. I want to be home with my family more
[28:16]and so she took in, changed her job, something that more suited to what she was now. And by the way,
[28:21]over the years, she ended up getting two masters and now started her on company. But again,
[28:24]here's the oscillation of the nonlinear work life. So there's a question, right? So right away,
[28:30]we're only one question into the 21 questions. And what we've established is you have
[28:36]all of these, again, almost like ghosts. You have all of these things that are bouncing around
[28:41]in your head. This is why I call it our work scripture, right? Because it's like homilies and
[28:45]power bowls and lessons and stories and narrative that are clouding our choices, but we're not
[28:50]aware of it. And so part of what I'm trying to do in the searches, I put them out onto the kitchen
[28:54]table. So you can have them. So let me just ask you one more question. So other than family,
[29:01]who will your role models as a child growing up? Probably my teachers. And I wanted to be a doctor.
[29:10]So doctors. Okay. And so here's what's interesting about this, right? So in the who, what, when
[29:16]we're, why and how, what were the upsides and downsides of work you learn from your parents? That's
[29:20]a who question because that's just you inherit that. They're just, that's just in your who
[29:24]they'll are your parents, right? They are in the ecosystem, right? But when you start saying,
[29:29]what role models did you admire? And what did you admire about them? That's a what question?
[29:34]Because that's the first time when we're children that we make affirmative actions
[29:38]about whom we choose to relate to. Okay. What do we know about you? We know that you spend time
[29:44]in the school. You're an elementary school librarian, right? Yes. So this is a thing. And now if I'd
[29:48]asked you, which I probably should have, like what you admired about your teachers, why was
[29:53]that school? What did you admire about your teachers? You know, it's their engagement and who they were
[29:58]as people?
[30:00]I mean, I wrote about it at one point. One of my teachers, she just was settled in her own self,
[30:05]and I couldn't have articulated it at the time, but I just wanted to be like her. She was wise,
[30:11]she was kind, she was engaged.
[30:13]So what are you doing in your life, right? You're engaged? You like ideas,
[30:18]right? Yes. Spend time with children, but you're podcasting and you're meeting new people,
[30:22]right? You are a conduit between people and ideas. Like before we have, before we're told,
[30:29]money matters most of all, right? Or it might all matters or address for the job you want,
[30:33]not the job you have. Before we, that is imprinted on, that's the script that the culture gives us,
[30:40]but we all have the scripture before we have that. Okay? And so then what you do,
[30:46]so each of these questions are about the past, who are your role models? Like what pain
[30:50]point did you want to solve and you're growing up? So what was your toothache? These are the
[30:53]questions that are the past, and then what we worked toward in these 21 questions to find work you love,
[30:59]is a question I'll ask you right now. So you mentioned that you've got all these different
[31:03]side jobs and hope jobs. It's like work 360, I call it, but answer this question for me, right?
[31:08]Like, so my purpose right now is blank. Connection to be connected.
[31:18]So where's all we are having this conversation, not in the same room? We are connected
[31:24]in having this conversation. If I just then echo what I have heard,
[31:29]what's the first thing you said? I said down with my husband, I connected with him over that.
[31:33]He has these connections with the people in his life that are imprinting his expectation of work.
[31:39]I'm connected to my students, but I'm also now connected to myself, not all my writing a non-fiction
[31:43]book, but I'm also writing a memoir, which is connected to my creativity. So what's insanely
[31:49]powerful about this? I interviewed a guy named Mark Sivick, who is like the dean of this kind of
[31:55]thinking of kind of it's called narrative career construction, constructing the story of who we want
[32:00]to be. And he said to me, when I meet somebody, I know within five minutes what the answer should
[32:05]be, what they should be doing. But I don't want to tell them because I want them to discover it inside
[32:10]yourself. And that is what I've been trying to do here is to give, you know, the one thing I learned,
[32:17]their three lives, the one truth is only you can write your own story. And the blessing of the
[32:22]world we live in today is, and this is, I have to say disproportionately true for women and for men,
[32:28]is you don't have to chase someone else's dream. You don't have to do it. The one thing I tell to
[32:32]my my 18-year-old twin daughters is don't do what you think I want you to do,
[32:38]because you'll be unhappy and you'll be doing something else in 10 years. And by the way,
[32:41]doing something else in 10 years is fine. But the job is for you to figure out what you want to do.
[32:45]You don't have to chase someone else's dream anymore. You can chase your own dream. And what
[32:50]I've tried to put down on the pages is a set of tools to help you identify what is your dream
[32:56]because it changes. And then maybe the blessing, as you said, is to use those questions and help
[33:01]someone else that you love find their dream to. Bruce, thank you for this time. I am moved.
[33:07]This has really been a beautiful conversation. And I hope that everyone picks up your book.
[33:14]And I think the important thing for everyone to remember is that this book really is for everyone.
[33:19]I think no matter what you think your job, you know, finding meaningful work is something that we are
[33:25]all doing, whether you're employed or not. And so I just, I love what you've done here and
[33:30]I'm so grateful for this time. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you again to Zibi for
[33:35]all your building. And yeah, I think of this book in some ways as like the greatest informational
[33:39]interview to meet these people. And if you come on this journey, I think you will be inspired to find
[33:44]the work you love, the meaning you crave and the happiness you deserve. I love it. Thanks so much.
[33:51]Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to
[33:55]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my
[34:00]newsletter at Zibi Owens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom
[34:05]every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan Heck, Texture Sound for the Sound Editing.
[34:10]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[34:14]now trim music.