Using Lifestyle-Centric Career Planning To Pursue A Life You Love

00:00:00.000 | With that, let's get into it.

00:00:02.960 | Jesse, what is our first query of this week's episode?

00:00:06.920 | - Okay, first question's from Rex.

00:00:08.680 | He's a director of career office

00:00:10.520 | at a New England university.

00:00:12.800 | I'm the director of a career office

00:00:14.160 | for an engineering students at an R1 university.

00:00:16.920 | Any suggestions on who we might structure a course

00:00:19.400 | about lifestyle-centric career planning for our students?

00:00:22.580 | - Well, a well-timed question,

00:00:24.840 | because our deep dive was all about

00:00:27.240 | values-based lifestyle-centric career planning

00:00:29.200 | emerging as potentially a dominant paradigm

00:00:31.600 | for how we think about meaning and work.

00:00:34.480 | So Rex, the short answer is,

00:00:38.040 | yes, I have good tips for designing a course on this.

00:00:42.200 | Jesse and I's consulting fee is $250,000,

00:00:44.960 | but we will be happy to spend,

00:00:48.680 | that gets you 45 minutes of our time.

00:00:51.640 | Now, we do this in a group call,

00:00:54.120 | so we might be consulting for a few people at the same time,

00:00:56.680 | but we'll give you some advice, Jesse and I,

00:00:58.680 | so it's $250,000, and there we go.

00:01:01.120 | All right, next question.

00:01:02.360 | - A TDL Roan shirt.

00:01:04.220 | - And a, yes, and a Roan shirt.

00:01:06.480 | We need $250,000 and a Roan shirt.

00:01:10.720 | No, okay, I have some thoughts here.

00:01:14.080 | Thoughts is the right word.

00:01:16.920 | I was jotting down some notes before the episode

00:01:20.080 | about what I might put into a lesson plan

00:01:23.000 | for lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:01:24.560 | So I'm calling this thoughts,

00:01:25.400 | 'cause this is not worked through.

00:01:28.220 | I just thought it would be fun to be concrete

00:01:29.760 | for the sake of being concrete.

00:01:30.880 | So let's just experiment here.

00:01:33.520 | Okay, so what might I do if I was teaching

00:01:35.680 | a bunch of college kids how to think about their career?

00:01:39.440 | I would start by saying, let's form a vision.

00:01:44.240 | This is classic lifestyle-centric career planning.

00:01:46.120 | Let's form a vision of your life,

00:01:48.640 | maybe at the age of 25, and again, at the age of 35.

00:01:52.380 | We want a fully featured vision

00:01:55.400 | about all aspects of your life, not just your job,

00:01:58.720 | but all aspects of your life,

00:02:01.040 | five years from now, and maybe 10 or 15 years from now.

00:02:04.400 | To help structure this vision,

00:02:05.520 | you might wanna use something like the deep life buckets,

00:02:08.780 | where we have craft, community,

00:02:11.440 | contemplation, constitution,

00:02:14.820 | maybe sometimes, what am I missing here?

00:02:16.520 | Sometimes we do celebration.

00:02:18.360 | You know, we talk about this a lot on the show,

00:02:19.540 | but you might wanna use something like that, the structure.

00:02:22.000 | Well, what are all the different aspects of my life

00:02:23.680 | that I wanna be included in this vision?

00:02:27.640 | It's okay if this vision evolves.

00:02:30.160 | It's not set in stone,

00:02:31.000 | just what's resonating with you right now

00:02:32.360 | when you imagine what your life would be like.

00:02:35.320 | All right, now we need to get from this vision.

00:02:37.360 | Here's where we get to my new arbitrary lesson plan.

00:02:40.160 | We have to get from this vision to you choosing a job.

00:02:43.600 | Maybe you're a senior, you have to start job hunting.

00:02:46.120 | How do you choose a job?

00:02:47.060 | Maybe you're farther along in your career,

00:02:48.680 | but wanna make a change.

00:02:49.520 | How do you choose a job?

00:02:51.260 | How do we get brass tacks from something so broad?

00:02:55.640 | Well, I'm gonna give you three,

00:02:58.240 | what should I call these?

00:02:59.080 | Three properties, three properties of a job.

00:03:03.120 | Income, how much income it generates, location.

00:03:07.960 | So you're thinking about where you're living,

00:03:10.800 | and work type, which can include both the content,

00:03:14.720 | like the specifics of what you're doing,

00:03:16.160 | but also the parameter under which you're doing this work.

00:03:19.720 | So flexibility, number of hours you're actually working.

00:03:22.780 | So for each of these three properties,

00:03:24.300 | income, location, and work type,

00:03:26.660 | you wanna answer what would I need

00:03:29.340 | for each of these three properties in my job

00:03:32.140 | to support this big vision I had?

00:03:35.380 | So I have this big vision, how much money am I gonna need?

00:03:38.720 | Where do I need to live?

00:03:41.060 | What type and how much work would I be doing?

00:03:43.320 | So you answer those three questions.

00:03:47.000 | Now you have the specificity you need

00:03:49.180 | to go search for a job,

00:03:50.580 | because now you're thinking about,

00:03:51.620 | okay, now I need to find a job

00:03:53.360 | that is going to get me those three properties,

00:03:56.660 | or perhaps more realistically,

00:03:59.660 | if you're just coming out of school,

00:04:01.660 | will get me to those three properties

00:04:03.580 | if over the first five years or 10 years,

00:04:06.060 | I get after it, become so good,

00:04:08.140 | I can't be ignored, build up career capital.

00:04:09.980 | The answer to those three questions I'm gonna propose

00:04:12.140 | is the bridge from a broad vision

00:04:13.900 | to a specific choice of job.

00:04:17.700 | So let me give an example.

00:04:19.080 | I was working on my slow productivity book this morning,

00:04:23.360 | as I do every morning, six days a week, I work on my book.

00:04:25.540 | But today I was working on a chapter

00:04:29.200 | and I was talking about in that chapter,

00:04:31.460 | the entrepreneur Paul Jarvis.

00:04:34.120 | So I went on a Paul Jarvis deep dive,

00:04:36.920 | a sort of rabbit hole this morning,

00:04:38.720 | so he's fresh on my mind.

00:04:40.560 | So if you don't know Paul Jarvis,

00:04:42.480 | he wrote a book in 2019 that I blurbed

00:04:45.120 | that was called "Company of One",

00:04:48.000 | which I really enjoyed.

00:04:49.080 | It was about how if you're an entrepreneur or freelancer

00:04:51.480 | and you start to get good, don't scale your business,

00:04:55.880 | instead leverage that increased ability

00:04:58.720 | to gain more flexibility and freedom in your business.

00:05:01.960 | So if you're making $50 an hour as the web designer,

00:05:05.260 | and you start to get really good,

00:05:06.440 | and there's a lot of demand for your work,

00:05:07.760 | don't scale up a web design business

00:05:10.080 | where you hire four more designers

00:05:11.720 | to try to get your income to really go up even farther.

00:05:14.480 | Instead, double your rate and work half the hours.

00:05:16.980 | That's the idea of "Company of One".

00:05:19.800 | Keep it small, invest your skill to get more flexibility.

00:05:23.400 | Anyways, because I happen to know a lot about this guy today,

00:05:26.880 | let's answer those three questions.

00:05:29.960 | The income I need, the location I want to be,

00:05:31.320 | and the work type I need.

00:05:32.680 | Let's answer those questions for him

00:05:35.320 | and then talk about how he found a job that accomplished him.

00:05:37.620 | So based on the various interviews I read,

00:05:40.360 | he had a vision of his life that was going to be,

00:05:44.200 | he wanted to get out of the rat race,

00:05:46.400 | to get out of the city,

00:05:47.800 | to get away from stress, deadlines, stressed out clients.

00:05:52.000 | He was tired of all of that.

00:05:53.760 | Him and his wife wanted to be somewhere quiet.

00:05:55.840 | They wanted to spend a lot of time outdoors.

00:05:57.280 | This was the vision they had built.

00:05:59.640 | And he wanted a lot of autonomy in his time.

00:06:02.880 | His wife was really into surfing,

00:06:05.440 | so she wanted to be able to just go surf.

00:06:07.880 | He wanted to be able to go for long walks and tend a garden.

00:06:11.800 | And so they had this vision.

00:06:13.080 | So it's a vision of life where

00:06:14.920 | work wasn't at the center of it.

00:06:17.960 | At the same time, he's a creative.

00:06:20.280 | So he was a web designer and he liked creative work.

00:06:23.600 | He's a creative guy.

00:06:24.920 | You know, he has tattoos on his arm,

00:06:26.120 | so that means you're creative, right?

00:06:27.840 | So he wanted some sort of creative,

00:06:29.560 | interesting work going on in his life,

00:06:30.900 | but he also wanted quiet, away from the rat race,

00:06:33.280 | away from deadlines, stressful client communication,

00:06:35.280 | having lots of time and autonomy.

00:06:37.000 | So they built this vision, they could see it.

00:06:40.000 | So how might he have answered those three questions?

00:06:41.840 | Well, for income, it didn't need to be anything special.

00:06:46.320 | Average middle-class salary would be enough

00:06:50.560 | 'cause they don't need to live somewhere expensive

00:06:52.560 | for them to live this vision.

00:06:55.080 | Because again, it's built on free time and nature,

00:06:57.360 | not on trips to Europe or living on the ocean.

00:07:01.120 | Location, they wanted somewhere quiet.

00:07:04.080 | They wanted nature, but they realized

00:07:06.760 | it couldn't be the extreme boondocks,

00:07:08.200 | because again, he has tattoos on his arm.

00:07:10.120 | So he needs to be near a coffee shop

00:07:12.160 | and so they can get organic groceries,

00:07:13.720 | like have internet, like be near civilization,

00:07:16.120 | but a quiet place and in nature.

00:07:18.800 | So they had to answer that question.

00:07:21.000 | And in terms of work type,

00:07:22.320 | well, he wanted the work to be creative,

00:07:25.760 | but to be free of, and he's very specific about this

00:07:28.080 | in the interviews I found, deadlines and demanding clients.

00:07:31.180 | So he answered those three things and said,

00:07:34.480 | "Great, now how do I leave what I'm doing now

00:07:37.680 | "as a freelancer living in what he called

00:07:39.120 | "a glass cube in the sky in the downtown core of Vancouver

00:07:42.640 | "and find a job that'll support these three visions?"

00:07:46.120 | What they ended up doing is they moved to,

00:07:48.520 | here's how they answered, found a specific job.

00:07:51.040 | They moved to Tolfino.

00:07:53.480 | So the Pacific coast of the large rural Vancouver Island,

00:07:57.960 | this big island off the West Coast of British Columbia.

00:08:01.640 | Tolfino's about halfway up the island on the Pacific coast,

00:08:05.800 | has really good surf breaks.

00:08:07.880 | Best surfing in Canada.

00:08:09.240 | That's a phrase that shouldn't impress you that much.

00:08:12.800 | The best surfing in Canada is maybe not that good,

00:08:15.020 | but there's a good surf break here.

00:08:16.660 | So his wife likes to surf,

00:08:18.480 | but it's also so far off the beaten path, as he explained,

00:08:21.800 | you could buy some land

00:08:22.940 | without having to spend that much money.

00:08:24.280 | So they bought some land in the woods outside of this town.

00:08:27.600 | As he said, it's cheap enough that I could afford it

00:08:30.240 | without having a lot of money,

00:08:31.520 | but close enough to civilization

00:08:32.840 | that I could still have organic groceries

00:08:34.760 | delivered once a week.

00:08:35.680 | So they sort of found that sweet spot.

00:08:38.660 | So they moved there.

00:08:42.680 | He continued to do freelance web design for a while,

00:08:45.880 | but he just reduced his number of clients at first.

00:08:48.440 | All right, so that was step one.

00:08:52.360 | That's creative work.

00:08:53.400 | It still had deadlines.

00:08:54.640 | It still had client demands,

00:08:55.780 | but he could do it from Tolfino.

00:08:57.260 | He could do it in the woods.

00:08:58.400 | His wife became a surf instructor at the surf school there.

00:09:01.320 | He built a greenhouse,

00:09:02.960 | began this long running war with the local raccoons

00:09:05.500 | who kept trying to destroy his garden.

00:09:07.200 | So he sort of had that going on.

00:09:09.720 | And so that was the first step.

00:09:11.480 | And then for the second step,

00:09:12.640 | once they were established, they're living cheaply.

00:09:14.260 | They didn't really need to make that much money.

00:09:16.440 | He eventually switched from web design contracts

00:09:20.040 | to he began doing some online courses

00:09:23.160 | for very niche audiences.

00:09:25.000 | Very niche online courses, did some podcasts,

00:09:30.520 | and then also more recently has done various,

00:09:32.560 | like again, very bespoke software products

00:09:36.500 | that is relevant to like a small group of people

00:09:39.840 | and that he could just put together and sell.

00:09:41.980 | That freedom from deadlines,

00:09:43.200 | that freedom from having to answer the clients.

00:09:44.860 | And it just needs to make enough money

00:09:46.700 | to keep this lifestyle going.

00:09:49.500 | And so there they go.

00:09:51.020 | That vision led to those three answers,

00:09:53.860 | those three properties,

00:09:54.760 | which led to this particular choice of career,

00:09:56.900 | which is let me continue the freelance,

00:09:59.060 | but with a reduced client roster

00:10:00.860 | en route to doing online creative projects

00:10:03.980 | that I can support myself and I have to deal with clients.

00:10:07.020 | And so during those first few years

00:10:08.400 | of doing more client work in Tolfino,

00:10:10.640 | he built up a mailing list, he wrote this book.

00:10:13.780 | So he had sort of enough of an audience

00:10:15.240 | that he could then sell a course.

00:10:17.720 | But the point is,

00:10:19.500 | it's a very specific thing he ended up doing.

00:10:22.560 | And you don't get to that decision

00:10:24.440 | by saying, what's my passion,

00:10:27.400 | by saying, what do I wanna do with my degree?

00:10:29.440 | You get there by starting with a vision,

00:10:31.460 | making it more concrete with answers

00:10:33.300 | to those three questions, income, location, and work type.

00:10:35.660 | And then saying, given what I know how to do,

00:10:37.740 | my opportunities, my skills,

00:10:39.100 | whatever's on the table right now,

00:10:40.860 | what do I have available to get towards those three answers?

00:10:43.780 | So I'll use that as a case study.

00:10:45.260 | There is my lesson plan.

00:10:47.380 | Rex, you can send the check for $250,000

00:10:50.820 | and our Roan shirts right to the HQ.

00:10:53.820 | - So a course could just be like a lot of analysis

00:10:55.820 | of case studies and they could develop one for themselves.

00:10:58.860 | - Yeah, like the court, he was doing,

00:11:00.300 | like he did a course on-

00:11:02.140 | - I'm talking about for the students.

00:11:03.740 | - Oh, for the students, yeah.

00:11:04.720 | Yeah, you could do this, right?

00:11:05.680 | I mean, you could just walk through.

00:11:07.580 | - A bunch and then-

00:11:08.560 | - Do the vision.

00:11:09.400 | - Develop your own.

00:11:10.240 | - Yeah.

00:11:11.280 | I mean, you could have like a vault

00:11:15.320 | of like, here's 20 examples.

00:11:17.080 | So you can prime the pump.

00:11:18.680 | And then yeah, you do the vision,

00:11:20.260 | answer those questions,

00:11:21.780 | start working through particular jobs.

00:11:23.320 | Yeah, you could see this thing.

00:11:25.020 | You could structure this course.

00:11:26.760 | They should do this.

00:11:27.640 | You know, the two things I'm so surprised

00:11:29.100 | about they don't do at colleges is one is,

00:11:31.720 | don't just give every student who comes in

00:11:34.500 | like a copy of "How to Become a Straight A Student."

00:11:36.800 | So first of all, your job is to be a student.

00:11:40.400 | I'm just gonna guess you're terrible at studying.

00:11:42.560 | It's not that hard to become good at studying.

00:11:44.820 | Like you should think about how to become good at studying.

00:11:46.600 | We just give everyone that book.

00:11:47.520 | And then the second thing is giving people

00:11:48.800 | some sort of framework for thinking through

00:11:51.280 | what I wanna do with my life.

00:11:52.840 | And so then people, I don't know, people don't know.

00:11:55.120 | I mean, this was my,

00:11:56.280 | I think I get too reflective here.

00:12:01.600 | I remember being really surprised about this at Dartmouth,

00:12:04.300 | where I went to Dartmouth.

00:12:06.280 | And I had come to Dartmouth sort of haphazardly,

00:12:08.840 | just out of public school in New Jersey,

00:12:11.120 | like the schools in the mountains.

00:12:12.840 | I don't know, it sounds cool.

00:12:14.400 | You know, I didn't know a lot about Ivy League schools

00:12:16.280 | and whatever.

00:12:17.640 | And so I just sort of assumed all of these people

00:12:20.720 | I know at Dartmouth are gonna like go off

00:12:22.440 | and become professors and writers

00:12:24.720 | and journalists and start cool companies

00:12:27.520 | and just like do really interesting stuff.

00:12:28.900 | Because like these are all really interesting people

00:12:30.360 | it's hard to get in these schools.

00:12:31.200 | I just remember being so surprised by how many of my friends,

00:12:34.080 | I really think it was 50%.

00:12:35.720 | I don't have the exact numbers,

00:12:37.160 | but I really think 50% plus of my friends at Dartmouth

00:12:40.680 | went to Harvard Law School.

00:12:42.400 | - Yeah.

00:12:43.240 | - And what I didn't realize was they came from,

00:12:47.000 | their parents had professional jobs.

00:12:49.540 | The point of going to a school like this

00:12:51.800 | from their perspective is that it gets you in to the track

00:12:55.160 | to have these well-paying professional jobs.

00:12:57.520 | And it was just like the Manchurian candidate switch.

00:13:01.120 | At some point I was like, okay,

00:13:02.080 | we have to start our LSAT studying group.

00:13:04.560 | I just remember being so surprised by that.

00:13:06.560 | But the schools don't give you any structure for this.

00:13:10.040 | You know, at least Georgetown's good about it,

00:13:11.840 | it has that Jesuit background.

00:13:14.040 | There's a sense of improving the world.

00:13:18.200 | Like that, there's a thread of that

00:13:19.580 | because it's a Jesuit university,

00:13:20.960 | but most schools don't have that.

00:13:23.200 | And I think in the absence of any sort

00:13:24.600 | of systematic structure for thinking through your life,

00:13:27.320 | your work, your application, your skills,

00:13:28.820 | if you have a bunch of smart kids,

00:13:30.560 | they're gonna go to Wall Street consulting or law firms

00:13:34.480 | because it's elite, it's hard to do,

00:13:36.520 | and all things being equal,

00:13:37.960 | they wanna do things that are competitive

00:13:39.880 | because otherwise they feel like.

00:13:41.040 | (upbeat music)

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Using Lifestyle-Centric Career Planning To Pursue A Life You Love

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