Dan Pink, Johnny Bunko, and the Purpose of Life

I wrote in an earlier post about Dan Pink's upcoming book:  "Johnny Bunko:  the Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need."  Dan's A Whole New Mind is one of my all time favorites, and I was eagerly anticipating Johnny's arrival.

Well, the book is here, and there is a whole bunch of promotional fun going on around it.  If you're not sure if you want to own it, you can download the first 23 pages for free and even check out a trailer for the book (yes, Johnny comes with a trailer of his own).

The book is written in Manga format (Japanese or Japanese-inspired comics), and is a very quick read.  I actually appreciated the format more than I expected.  It was great to be able to take in a whole book in half an hour, and there was something relaxing about getting your content mainly through pictures, with a limited amount of text involved. 

The messages in the book may not strike anyone who's engaged in serious career exploration as all that new.  They boil down to following your own path ("there is no plan"), relying on your strengths, not being afraid of making spectacular mistakes that ultimately become a source of learning, and - one of my favorites -  thinking in terms of your life purpose.

But I love that these messages are now hitting the 20-something demographic.  And if GenY can absorb those messages - particularly the one concerning your life purpose - maybe there'll be fewer people stumbling into my practice who literally need to be resuscitated from the awful jobs they got themselves into and in which they stayed far too long for all the wrong reasons.

Johnny Bunko's "career coach" Diana warns him:

"You're young now.  But when you get older and look back at your life, you'll ask yourself a whole bunch of questions.  Did I make a difference?  Did I contribute something?  Did my being here matter?  Did I do something that left an imprint?"

The desire to leave an imprint is something I hear from my older - and not so much older - clients over and over again, and I know that Diana's right on when she urges him to "use your limited time here to do something that matters."

In researching the book, I came across a video of Dan, in which he says:

"I think a great life is using your strengths; understanding what it is you were put on this earth to do; understanding what it is that makes you unique, what is the true expression of who you are; and doing that, persistently, in the service of something larger than yourself."

Beautifully put, Dan.  That's what a great life - and a great career - are all about.  Come to think of it, I might make both "A Whole New Mind" and "Johnny Bunko" required reading for my clients.

(This is the end of the post.  For some reason, TypePad thinks there is more, but there isn't.  I've given up trying to figure out what's going on, so I'm letting it persist in its delusion...)

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Comments

[Dan Pink]

Thanks, Izabella. Glad you liked THE ADVENTURES OF JOHNNY BUNKO. It's definitely congruent with your work.
Cheers,
Dan Pink