Do You Have Advice On How to Live a More Meaningful and Valuable Life?

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00:00:02.580 | - Hey Kyle, I'm Alberto, I'm 25.

00:00:08.720 | I currently work as a solutions consultant

00:00:11.280 | at one of the big four firms.

00:00:13.040 | I once stumbled across your book, "Deep Work"

00:00:15.320 | and let me say, it really changed my life.

00:00:17.160 | I've never felt so understood in my whole life.

00:00:19.480 | So I was reading about Ben,

00:00:20.840 | the University of Virginia grad with a degree in economics

00:00:23.800 | who decided to quit his job as a human spreadsheet

00:00:25.920 | and become a computer programmer.

00:00:29.040 | I followed the same road

00:00:30.040 | since I also received a degree in economics

00:00:32.840 | and decided to increase my value

00:00:34.120 | by learning about programming.

00:00:35.520 | My question to you Kyle is,

00:00:37.040 | I feel that I possess somewhat valuable skills

00:00:39.040 | to the marketplace,

00:00:39.880 | hence my background in economics

00:00:41.280 | and consulting and programming,

00:00:43.480 | but I really don't want to be implementing systems

00:00:45.560 | tailored to a client's needs for the rest of my life.

00:00:48.280 | I remember you quoted Henry David Thoreau

00:00:51.000 | on digital minimalism.

00:00:52.720 | "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life

00:00:55.960 | "which is required to be exchanged for it.

00:00:58.620 | "Immediately or in the long run."

00:01:00.480 | Well, I really don't want to trade my life just for money.

00:01:03.560 | In economics we call this diminishing return.

00:01:05.520 | Do I really want to spend more time of my life working

00:01:08.740 | just to get a nicer car or a nicer house?

00:01:11.360 | I'll be better off by applying valuable skills

00:01:14.000 | to something more meaningful.

00:01:15.760 | As someone who has been impacted by your books,

00:01:17.920 | I wanted to ask you,

00:01:18.760 | do you have any advice for me as to how to live

00:01:21.160 | a more meaningful and valuable life?

00:01:25.320 | Thank you, Kyle.

00:01:28.080 | Well, the first thing I'd recommend is moving back in time

00:01:33.080 | in my library of books to the book that I published

00:01:36.680 | before "Deep Work" to the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You"

00:01:40.880 | which I published in 2012.

00:01:43.800 | I think you're going to find some insights in that book

00:01:46.700 | that are going to be useful to your quandary.

00:01:49.340 | It's also worth keeping in mind that I wrote that book first

00:01:52.180 | and "Deep Work" in some sense was a response

00:01:55.380 | to "So Good They Can't Ignore You."

00:01:56.480 | So a lot of what I talk about in "Deep Work"

00:01:58.440 | can be put into a broader context,

00:02:00.760 | into a context of a life well-lived

00:02:02.600 | if you also read its predecessor,

00:02:04.120 | "So Good They Can't Ignore You."

00:02:06.520 | You're going to find in that book, for example,

00:02:09.100 | a case study of someone in a similar position.

00:02:11.520 | Her name was Lulu.

00:02:13.360 | She started as a math major.

00:02:16.320 | I think it might've been Amherst, might've been Swarthmore,

00:02:19.080 | but she was a math major who taught herself

00:02:22.360 | some basic computer programming,

00:02:24.500 | got a job in quality assurance.

00:02:26.400 | So this is relatively low down on the pecking order.

00:02:30.040 | This is testing software.

00:02:31.640 | Using some of the skills she was picking up

00:02:34.500 | about computer programming,

00:02:35.680 | she then automated some of the QA testing.

00:02:39.040 | She began to make herself more valuable.

00:02:41.640 | And now she could come up with these automated testing tools

00:02:45.320 | that were automating a lot of these processes,

00:02:48.000 | and that opened up new opportunities.

00:02:49.960 | That led her into mastering database development

00:02:53.560 | because there was a natural shift over there,

00:02:55.980 | and she became even more valuable

00:02:57.640 | because she could now design

00:02:58.660 | these complex database-driven systems.

00:03:00.560 | I think she focused in particular on financial institutions,

00:03:03.320 | so she really knew how to do this.

00:03:05.520 | And what was interesting about this case study in that book

00:03:07.640 | is what she did next.

00:03:09.520 | She said, "Great, now that I'm really valuable,

00:03:12.160 | let me take this career capital out for a spin."

00:03:15.600 | And she completely reinvented her life

00:03:17.580 | into a six-months-on, six-months-off structure.

00:03:21.920 | Six-month engagement, six-month adventuring.

00:03:24.920 | Six-month engagement, six-month adventuring.

00:03:26.920 | And during these adventure months,

00:03:27.840 | there's lots of different things she would do.

00:03:29.840 | Her family was from Thailand,

00:03:31.080 | so she would sometimes go spend months in Thailand.

00:03:34.740 | She learned how to fly a plane.

00:03:36.280 | She learned how to scuba dive.

00:03:38.300 | She had this cool house they lived in,

00:03:40.380 | in Jamaica Plain, that they were working on.

00:03:43.160 | And so what she did here was took her skill out for a spin

00:03:48.160 | to build a journey that really resonated with her.

00:03:51.700 | That is the basic idea of So Good They Can't Ignore You,

00:03:54.160 | that you build skills to get career capital.

00:03:56.880 | You then invest that career capital to get in your career

00:03:59.880 | the things that resonate

00:04:01.000 | and to get away from the things that don't.

00:04:02.600 | And this is gonna be different for different people.

00:04:04.560 | And so for some people, what resonates is,

00:04:06.680 | "I wanna be a master of the universe.

00:04:08.280 | I wanna start up that is a unicorn.

00:04:11.620 | I wanna be a Sand Hill Road, raising millions of dollars

00:04:16.060 | and winning that competition

00:04:19.120 | to be the biggest company in my sector."

00:04:21.060 | And for other people,

00:04:21.900 | they wanna spend six months a year scuba diving,

00:04:23.800 | or they wanna live on land somewhere.

00:04:26.120 | I mean, whatever it is that resonates,

00:04:28.240 | building skill is gonna be the leverage you have

00:04:30.800 | to get into your life the things that actually matter.

00:04:34.260 | So read So Good They Can't Ignore You,

00:04:36.720 | 'cause this is a more nuanced approach.

00:04:38.480 | I worry listening to your call

00:04:40.840 | that you might be falling into the trap of,

00:04:43.000 | "Oh, I don't like this programming.

00:04:44.800 | I don't like this job.

00:04:46.040 | Let me just quit it and do something completely different.

00:04:49.080 | Let me go start a vineyard somewhere.

00:04:53.180 | If I just completely change my job,

00:04:55.180 | then maybe I'll like that new job better."

00:04:56.660 | This is not a challenge of having the right job.

00:04:59.660 | It's the challenge of having the right leverage

00:05:01.860 | in the marketplace to make your life what you want it to be.

00:05:05.060 | Your building skills as a programmer, great.

00:05:07.400 | Take that capital out for a spin.

00:05:10.540 | Start thinking through what resonates, what doesn't.

00:05:12.700 | What's the lifestyle you want?

00:05:13.820 | What's the lifestyle you don't?

00:05:14.900 | What do you want in your working life, what you don't?

00:05:16.580 | What you want in your life outside of work,

00:05:17.940 | what don't you want?

00:05:18.780 | And then start figuring out,

00:05:20.040 | do I have enough skill to trade to get this in my life?

00:05:23.820 | And if not, how do I get that skill?

00:05:25.060 | Anyways, it's a more nuanced approach.

00:05:27.580 | Deep work in some sense is a good strategy

00:05:29.340 | for acquiring rare and valuable skills.

00:05:31.200 | So good they can't ignore you.

00:05:32.180 | We'll tell you why you want to do it

00:05:33.380 | and what you want to do with them.

00:05:36.420 | So check out that book.

00:05:37.260 | I think you'll like it.

00:05:38.460 | (upbeat music)

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Do You Have Advice On How to Live a More Meaningful and Valuable Life?

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