(upbeat music) - Hey Kyle, I'm Alberto, I'm 25. I currently work as a solutions consultant at one of the big four firms. I once stumbled across your book, "Deep Work" and let me say, it really changed my life. I've never felt so understood in my whole life. So I was reading about Ben, the University of Virginia grad with a degree in economics who decided to quit his job as a human spreadsheet and become a computer programmer.

I followed the same road since I also received a degree in economics and decided to increase my value by learning about programming. My question to you Kyle is, I feel that I possess somewhat valuable skills to the marketplace, hence my background in economics and consulting and programming, but I really don't want to be implementing systems tailored to a client's needs for the rest of my life.

I remember you quoted Henry David Thoreau on digital minimalism. "The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life "which is required to be exchanged for it. "Immediately or in the long run." Well, I really don't want to trade my life just for money. In economics we call this diminishing return.

Do I really want to spend more time of my life working just to get a nicer car or a nicer house? I'll be better off by applying valuable skills to something more meaningful. As someone who has been impacted by your books, I wanted to ask you, do you have any advice for me as to how to live a more meaningful and valuable life?

Thank you, Kyle. Well, the first thing I'd recommend is moving back in time in my library of books to the book that I published before "Deep Work" to the book "So Good They Can't Ignore You" which I published in 2012. I think you're going to find some insights in that book that are going to be useful to your quandary.

It's also worth keeping in mind that I wrote that book first and "Deep Work" in some sense was a response to "So Good They Can't Ignore You." So a lot of what I talk about in "Deep Work" can be put into a broader context, into a context of a life well-lived if you also read its predecessor, "So Good They Can't Ignore You." You're going to find in that book, for example, a case study of someone in a similar position.

Her name was Lulu. She started as a math major. I think it might've been Amherst, might've been Swarthmore, but she was a math major who taught herself some basic computer programming, got a job in quality assurance. So this is relatively low down on the pecking order. This is testing software.

Using some of the skills she was picking up about computer programming, she then automated some of the QA testing. She began to make herself more valuable. And now she could come up with these automated testing tools that were automating a lot of these processes, and that opened up new opportunities.

That led her into mastering database development because there was a natural shift over there, and she became even more valuable because she could now design these complex database-driven systems. I think she focused in particular on financial institutions, so she really knew how to do this. And what was interesting about this case study in that book is what she did next.

She said, "Great, now that I'm really valuable, let me take this career capital out for a spin." And she completely reinvented her life into a six-months-on, six-months-off structure. Six-month engagement, six-month adventuring. Six-month engagement, six-month adventuring. And during these adventure months, there's lots of different things she would do. Her family was from Thailand, so she would sometimes go spend months in Thailand.

She learned how to fly a plane. She learned how to scuba dive. She had this cool house they lived in, in Jamaica Plain, that they were working on. And so what she did here was took her skill out for a spin to build a journey that really resonated with her.

That is the basic idea of So Good They Can't Ignore You, that you build skills to get career capital. You then invest that career capital to get in your career the things that resonate and to get away from the things that don't. And this is gonna be different for different people.

And so for some people, what resonates is, "I wanna be a master of the universe. I wanna start up that is a unicorn. I wanna be a Sand Hill Road, raising millions of dollars and winning that competition to be the biggest company in my sector." And for other people, they wanna spend six months a year scuba diving, or they wanna live on land somewhere.

I mean, whatever it is that resonates, building skill is gonna be the leverage you have to get into your life the things that actually matter. So read So Good They Can't Ignore You, 'cause this is a more nuanced approach. I worry listening to your call that you might be falling into the trap of, "Oh, I don't like this programming.

I don't like this job. Let me just quit it and do something completely different. Let me go start a vineyard somewhere. If I just completely change my job, then maybe I'll like that new job better." This is not a challenge of having the right job. It's the challenge of having the right leverage in the marketplace to make your life what you want it to be.

Your building skills as a programmer, great. Take that capital out for a spin. Start thinking through what resonates, what doesn't. What's the lifestyle you want? What's the lifestyle you don't? What do you want in your working life, what you don't? What you want in your life outside of work, what don't you want?

And then start figuring out, do I have enough skill to trade to get this in my life? And if not, how do I get that skill? Anyways, it's a more nuanced approach. Deep work in some sense is a good strategy for acquiring rare and valuable skills. So good they can't ignore you.

We'll tell you why you want to do it and what you want to do with them. So check out that book. I think you'll like it. (upbeat music)