Project Creative Vision

New Career Book

You know you've arrived when someone like GL Hoffman asks you to endorse his upcoming book.  GL is a serial entrepreneur and venture investor/operator/incubator/mentor.  Two of his companies have traveled the entire success path from the garage to IPO.  He has been featured in Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and other publications.  He's obviously been around the business block a few times and has the full force of his experience behind his popular career advice blog and company JobDig.  He is also a weekly guest writer for the U.S. News and World Report.

GL's new book Dig Your Job is a collection of all his wisdom for anyone seeking to get and stay happily employed. I, of course, was delighted to endorse the book, because GL's job and career philosophy very closely matches my own.  The book is expected to appear on Amazon next week and you may want to keep an eye out for it.  In the meantime, here's my endorsement.  Way to go, GL!:

"GL Hoffman's book supplies volumes of practical advice without ever losing sight of the big picture:  create meaning and engagement in your work, and you'll build a truly successful career for yourself.  But there is more to Dig Your Job than just career advice. What you get here is a book jam-packed with much-needed wisdom that could be applied to just about any other area of your life.  "Don't blame others," "Worry is the misuse of your imagination," "Change your attitude" - GL doesn't mince words in making it clear: no one but you is responsible for your happiness, whether at work or in life.  Following GL's advice will not just make you better at crafting a career of your dreams:  it will help you build a better life."

Dan Pink Live on Smart Career Moves

I've written about Dan Pink so often on this blog, I might as well start a whole new category just for him.  His "A Whole New Mind" is on my list of recommended reading, and "Adventures of Johnny Bunko" - "the last career guide you'll ever need" - offers fun and strategic career advice for generation Y.

Given how much I adore what Dan has to say just about anything, I couldn't, of course, miss the opportunity to see him in person tonight, when he spoke at the Washington, DC's YesCircle.

Dan is an entertaining writer, but he's an even better speaker.  And career geek that I am, there were moments when I felt like I just wanted to take every word he said and channel it right into this blog. 

I felt this way especially when Dan was talking about two ways in which people make decisions about their careers: instrumental reasoning and fundamental reasoning. (I know it sounds heavy, but read on - it's worth it.) 

An instrumental approach, according to Dan, is when you make your career decisions based on a plan you've devised that's supposed to lead you somewhere.  When you think that way, you may choose a major that you don't actually like but that you believe will help you get a well-paying, even if dull and unfulfilling, job after college.  That job, you believe, would then set you up for a graduate school, which, once you've paid your dues, would help you get the job that you really want.

Something to Live For: New Book from Purpose Guru Richard Leider

One of my favorite authors, Richard Leider, is coming out with a new book, Something to Live For:  Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life, and I wanted to pass the information on to everyone.  As you can see from the list on the left, two of Richard's books are my recommended reading, and I'm eagerly anticipating this one.

(I will be attending Richard's workshop, Heeding Your Call in Midlife and Beyond, this week at the Crossroads Center in Chicago, and I'm really excited about it.  Richard has influenced my coaching philosophy more than anyone else, and it will be with awe and admiration that I will sit at the feet of the master. The fact that he's teaching the workshop with the great Richard Bolles, author of What Color Is Your Parachute?, is a massive icing on the cake.)

At a recent conference call about the book launch, Richard talked about how this book is taking his ideas about life purpose to a whole new, more spiritual level. 

The book is addressed specifically to the baby-boomer generation - those who are now facing the prospect of having another 30 productive years of life but no roadmap for how to live these years happily and productively.

Knowing Richard's other books, though, I'm sure that there'll be plenty of useful and thought-provoking material for the rest of us.  After all, don't we all want to be ahead of the aging curve?  In this society we talk a lot about the financial aspects of retiring and how we need to start preparing  for it early.  An entire industry has grown up around helping us save for retirement.  But what about the psychological and spiritual dimensions?  Much as with money, the earlier we begin to prepare for that transition in that regard, the higher the chances that it will be a smooth and positive one.

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...)

Measuring Success by the Amount of Happiness in Your Life

I wrote in an earlier post about my growing interest in positive psychology and one of its key conclusions that we are happiest when our lives have both pleasure and meaning.  I've now had a chance to read Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar.  I loved the book so much that I'm adding it to my list of all-time-favorites. 

Happier is one of those subversive little books that's so easy to read, it's only after the fact that you realize that the seemingly obvious insights it contains have burrowed themselves deep into your brain and are doing a trick on you.  Days after you've finished the book, the ideas still percolate, challenging your perceptions and basically forcing you to rethink the entire way you live your life.  And then you find yourself opening the book to look back over those quotes that you can't get out of your mind and give up and just start re-reading the book all over again.

Here's one of those insights that I'm still mulling over. In pointing out the absurdity of our willingness to stay in jobs that keep us miserable, Ben-Shahar says:

"Had we found ourselves in a job that did not afford us our basic material needs, we would do everything in our power to change our predicament.  So why do we set lower standards for ourselves when the ultimate currency - when our own happiness - is at stake?"

Happiness Found at Intersection of Pleasure and Meaning

Positive psychology has been on my radar screen for a while, and with my focus on purposeful careers it was probably only a matter of time before I finally delved into it.

Until now, I tended to lose interest in positive psychology because so many of its conclusions seemed like science catching up to something that spiritual traditions the world over have known for thousands of years. Its prescriptions sound like a mix of Buddhist and yogic philosophy, suggesting self-awareness and mindful action as the first steps toward happiness and fulfillment. 

On the other hand, not everyone is willing to take spiritual teachers at their word, and in the meantime, we as a society are getting increasingly more unhappy.  So any help in convincing people that happiness is in their own hands can only be welcome.  (One of positive psych's recent findings, reported in Sonja Lubomirsky's The How of Happines, is that, while 50 percent of our happiness depends on our individual
"happiness set-point" and 10 percent can be attributed to circumstances outside our control, we individually are responsible for 40 percent of our sense of well-being.)

Career Advice Book to End All Career Advice Books

If you've been reading this blog for some time, you probably know that I'm a big fan of Dan Pink's "A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future."  (See this really long post here, inspired, in part, by the book.)

I'm now eagerly anticipating Dan's next book, "Johnny Bunko," which is supposed to come out in April and which he claims will be "the last career guide you'll ever need."  Written in the form of manga (Japanese comics), the book is supposed to provide "strategic advice you won’t find anywhere else – the sorts of tough and inspiring truths people wish they’d known when they were starting out in the workforce."  And the best part is that you should be able to read it in an hour.

Now that's the kind of book we all need.  I agree completely with Dan that strategic, big-picture outlook is exactly what we all need in our work lives (and lives in general, I would add).  Of course, Dan seems to suggest that the book will put career counselors (career coaches?) out of work.  I guess we'll have to see about that :).

Joining the Club, with Oprah and Tolle

I finally broke down yesterday and signed up for Oprah's 10-week web class with Eckhart Tolle, which is based on Tolle's new book and starts tonight. 

Why all the resistance?  Because there is so much publicity around A New Earth (and there'll be so much more in the coming weeks) that I just didn't think I needed to add to the noise.  I also felt slightly irritated that, now that Oprah got her hands on this, spiritual truths that have been around for thousands of years are suddenly being treated as if they were a new gospel.

Books I Love

Not a week seems to go by without a new book being published on the subject of career change and career transition.  I read the vast majority of them.  But when I sat down a couple of days ago to put together a list of my favorite books, books that I thought could really benefit those of my clients who are seeking to re-design their career paths to create more meaning and authenticity in their work, there was only a handful I knew I could personally recommend.  You can see the titles on the left margin of the blog.  They are books I go back to over and over again to get the benefit of their authors' wisdom and insight.  If you are looking to deepen your thinking about work and its role and purpose in your own life - and to get inspired to take action - these are a great place to start.  And I'll make sure to keep you posted on any new ones that may be worth your attention.