Career Management Archives - Page 3 of 29 - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis

Christina, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Christina Wallace

Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Pete Mockaitis

I’m excited, too. We’re talking about The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card. That sounds pretty cool.

Christina Wallace

It’s a lot of promise, right?

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, but no pressure, Christina, but we’re going to hold you to every one of these. Could you kick us off by sharing any really surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made while doing the research and putting together this book?

Christina Wallace

So, one of my favorite little tidbits from this, I am someone who is not great at taking time off. Like many type A overachievers, I sort of aspire to be the sort of person who rests, who relaxes. I’m not great at it. And a little part of me has always been, like, slightly, you know, felt some superiority over that, like I work so hard.

And part of the research, when I got into some operations management and some research into sabbaticals and all of this, it was a little bit humbling, where it points out just how important rest and planned downtime is for not just productivity but for happiness, for the ability to not burn out. It seems fairly obvious, you got to have some time to recharge.

But I found some really fantastic research, particularly borrowing from the world in operations management of manufacturing, where the top-performing manufacturing lines only ever schedule 85% of their capacity. They always leave downtime for planned maintenance, for do-overs, for surges. They don’t start from the point of 100%, and then say, “Well, we’ll just do 110% if we have to.”

And I thought that was a good reminder with some great science behind it of why this notion of, like, “Hey, let’s have everyone give 110% all the time” is not realistic. And that’s why we are all in a constant state of burnout.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Christina, that’s intriguing right there, and you’re bringing me back to fond memories of one time I had a consulting project at one of the world’s largest cookie factories. All day long you could smell that chocolate in the air.

Christina Wallace

Oh, man.

Pete Mockaitis

And so, 85% is a top-performing manufacturing line. I’m curious, what do we know about top-performing humans? So, some sabbatical is good, some vacation is good, some rest is good. Do we know – there’s probably a range based on different temperaments, etc. – what’s optimal for us?

Christina Wallace

Certainly, there’s an expectation of having some downtime every day, every week. You have to have it as part of your practice but I found some research from The Sabbatical Project, DJ DiDonna, one of my colleagues here at HBS has done, that really emphasizes the value of taking a meaningful sabbatical every, call it, ten years or so. And by meaningful, they mean really in the realm of, like, three to six months off, taking a significant intentional break where you have a moment to step back, reflect, and really consider, “What do I want to do for the next chapter?”

And sometimes people come back feeling refreshed and renewed energy to keep doing what they were doing. And sometimes people come back, and say, “Okay, I actually needed that space to realize I want to go off in a different direction or I want to make a major life choice.” But I thought there was an interesting reflection of sort of six months every ten years. Like, that doesn’t seem unreasonable to have, call it three or four sabbaticals over the course of your career. That’s not that much time off.

And, yet, without the intentionality behind it, ten years pops up, and you’re like, “Oh, I can’t take six months off. That feels impossible.” So, it was a nice reminder that with a little bit of planning and strategy, these breaks are absolutely doable.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And so then, that’s on the sabbatical side of things. I’m curious in terms of a workweek side of things. I’ve seen some studies that suggest a certain number of hours. After that, you’re actually negatively productive. What have you found there?

Christina Wallace

Yes. So, what’s interesting about a portfolio approach is that there’s some research that shows being able to toggle between different activities, different types of working, different types of thinking and interacting, like, collectively helps actually recharge, renew the way that you are working, the energy that you bring to the table.

And so, it’s not sort of just additive. It’s not saying, obviously, there’s research that says 10, 12, 14 hours, at a certain point, there’s diminishing returns if you’re doing the same thing hour after hour. But if you are complementing, say, a day job with a moonlighting gig, a side hustle, or a serious hobby, or something you really love that works a completely different part of you and that offers you a different way of thinking, and of creating, and of interacting, that doesn’t feel like you just pulled a 12- or a 14-hour day. It can actually help you feel rejuvenated.

So, I don’t want you to work 20 hours a day between your side hustle and your day job. There is a breaking point but I think this notion of your total load across your portfolio is a lot more flexible than you might think, depending on what’s in your portfolio.

Pete Mockaitis

And when you talk about a different type of work, sometimes it’s like how we define different is really kind of fluid. Because, in some ways, it’s like, well, I’ve got two companies. One is in the world of training and people development, and the other is in the world of outsourcing and media production. And so, in some ways, it’s saying, because we’re dealing with words and thinking about words and making words good.

Christina Wallace

Sure. And you’re still writing emails and trying to make the numbers balanced, and maybe making a slide or two. Like, I can see how that could feel like the very same work but managing a different project. When I think about maybe a different ways of working, I think about some of the folks in my book where one person, by day, is a teacher, and then her moonlighting project is writing novels for middle grade readers.

And so, by day, she was dealing with 4th graders, and their sticky hands, and how to teach them math, and how to teach them emotional maturity, and all of these things. And then, by night, she’s inventing these stories and sort of just going deep into this continuous creativity in these worlds that she’s building. That’s a very different way. Like, one allows her to recharge after she’s been giving and giving and giving all day long to her students.

So, you’re absolutely right, that really can come down to, like, “What is that mix? And do they complement each other? Or, are you just doing the same thing but in a different context?”

Pete Mockaitis

And when it comes to recharging-ness, is there a means by which you recommend people reflect, or assess, or gauge that?

Christina Wallace

So, one of the tactics that I recommend for putting together your portfolio is an assessment of two things. One is what do you need to be your best self? And everyone’s needs are going to be a little different. Your needs are going to be a little different depending on the chapter or season of life you’re in but you will likely have some combination of financial needs, growth needs, community needs. There could be other elements of security that you have needs, that need to be met.

And then, in addition to your needs, you’re going to have a set of wants, or, as I like to call them, your wishes. What are the big things that you care about doing, seeing, experiencing, leaving behind by the end of your life? We’re talking this could be minor, “I want to run a marathon.” These could be major, “I want to, I don’t know, walk on the moon,” so whatever. Putting together this kind of list of wishes for your life.

And as you’re assembling your portfolio, you want to be thoughtful of, like, “Are the different things that I do over the course of my day, or my week, or my month, collectively, are my needs being met?” We got to start there, “Are my needs being met?” If you’re doing two or three or four things that all maybe make you money, but they’re all solo projects, you have no colleagues, you’re not being given this community or this opportunity to just have conversations with other humans, you’re over-indexing on one need and your under-indexing on another.

And so, as you think about recharging and rebalancing, it’s, like, “Am I getting my needs met across my day, my week? And am I having a good balance across these things?” The wishes piece is relevant, too, “Am I doing all of this work and all of it only goes toward one or two or a handful of things that I care about? Or, do I have a nice breadth across what I’m doing that maybe this thing gets me closer to this professional goal, and that work gets me closer to this crazy artistic goal that maybe I even felt weird about writing down because it seems so out of this world but I kind of really do want to do before I die?”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And I imagine it’s a common experience for people to not even be aware that they have a need of a particular flavor or stripe. Any suggestions on how to surface those?

Christina Wallace

I think part of this is the reflection or the delving into stories, into your past experiences, and having that opportunity to say, like, “When have I been my best self? And when have I haven’t? Like, what are those moments where I found myself crying at work or doing less than I thought I could or should be able to?” I’ll give you an example, one of my needs is an office with a door that closes.

I do not do well in open office plans. And I have so many examples of working in startups and other organizations where I loved the work, I was a good fit for my role, I had great relationships, everything felt like it should be clicking, but I was in an open office plan where I couldn’t focus. I have high sensitivity to sounds. I couldn’t focus. I was always being interrupted. I couldn’t get into a flow, ever. And that friction wore at me every day to the point where I couldn’t do what I was there to do.

So, I made that on my checklist, of like, “When I’m at my best is when I’m able to shut the door and be able to focus.” And so, in some ways, if you’re just starting out, you might not have a good sense of your needs yet, and that’s okay. But if you’ve been at this a while, or if you have that opportunity to look back and reflect, whether it’s in school or in your jobs, where are you at your best? And where did you find sort of constant friction that you’re like, “Ugh, it doesn’t have to be this way”? That’s a great place to start to surface your needs.

Pete Mockaitis

Well, Christina, now I’m thinking about the notion of friction and some philosophies saying, “Well, hey, if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. And if you can endure that, you’re going to grow and get tougher. And we’ve got it so easy in the 21st century with all of our luxuries and conveniences and comforts, and maybe we need a little friction to toughen us up.” What do you think about this perspective, Christina?

Christina Wallace

So, I hear you, a little bit of friction, not necessarily a bad thing but here’s maybe my counterpoint to that. Many of us, I might argue all of us, are what I would call weirdly shaped puzzle pieces. We all have a different set of skills, and communication styles, and interests, and personality quirks, and all of these things that we bring to the table when we show up over the course of our lives. And there are rooms that have a space that is shaped like your puzzle piece, and then there are rooms that don’t.

And if you try to shove your strangely shaped puzzle piece into what is a nice, square, neat opening, maybe it’s the last piece we’re waiting to put in this puzzle, and you don’t fit, if you try to shove yourself in there, you’re going to have to carve off a meaningful amount of yourself in order to even approximate what they’re looking for.

And I think there are lots of folks who feel this on a daily basis, whether it’s code switching, or whether it’s just the adjustments they make to who they are in order to feel acceptable on a team, at a company. And you realize that, on any given day, it’s not that big of a deal, but every day for years on end, you’re literally using some percentage of your energy, your mental capacity just to show up and be able to do your job, which leaves so much less to do the job itself.

And I think one of the biggest learnings I had through my 20s was that I would rather find the rooms that wanted what I had to offer than try to squeeze myself into a box that didn’t fit me, or into a hole in the puzzle that didn’t fit me. And part of that work was really uncovering what the shape of my puzzle piece was, what do I show with, what do I have to offer, and why is that actually awesome. And so, the people who do want me really do want me.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And I’m thinking right now just about an experience I had recently. So, nowadays, with three young kiddos, I find I’m spending most of my mornings hanging out with them, watching them, taking care of things.

Christina Wallace

How old are they?

Pete Mockaitis

They are five, four, and six months.

Christina Wallace

I’ve got a three and a one-year-old.

Pete Mockaitis

Yeah. And then some things happen in terms of travel where I have the opportunity to just wake up and start doing some work at 7:00 a.m., and it felt absolutely amazing. It’s like, “Wow, I didn’t even know.” I thought, “Oh, I guess I used to do this a lot. I don’t think I even remembered that that was a thing I did that worked really well for me, and I have been not doing that, and I miss it.”

And so, in a way that’s kind of tricky, it’s like, “Well, what’s to be done?” There’s probably some clever things to happen there but I guess, Christina, where you’re nudging me here is one response to that internally is, “Oh, hey, man, that’s just the stage of life we’re in, you know. We got to take care of the kids in the morning. That’s where it’s at.”

But I’m thinking, with your puzzle piece analogy, perhaps you might advocate it’s worth putting some serious thought and effort into thinking, “Is there an arrangement by which this creative morning, productive, energized groove can be deployed in that direction because it’s worthwhile to do so?”

Christina Wallace
Yeah, I think your example is perfect on two dimensions. One is you get to see sort of the difference between what is it like to have that friction versus just to hit your flow. And I think, from like a metaphorically standpoint, that’s exactly the difference between being in a room that wants you and being in a room that doesn’t.

Or, a version of you, if you would, like, soften these things and change that thing, and don’t use too many exclamation points in your emails. But in the same way, I think that’s a perfect example of, you are at a stage of life where your mornings, for the most part, look a certain way. And so, the question is, “Is there an opportunity to either create a version of this that gives you that creative morning, maybe some sort of an arrangement with your partner, or figuring out how you set up your morning differently?”

And if you were working at a company or somewhere else where you had a manager or a boss, there might be a situation where you say, like, “Hey, can I adjust my hours? Can I think about maybe working from home in the mornings so I can get the kids out, and then I can have a couple of hours before I have to sit in traffic, or a couple of days from home?” Like, there’s a way to be thoughtful about, “How can I construct the context of how I do my work to maybe lower some of that friction and give me that opportunity to hit flow better?”

So, I am now a professor. For this stage of my life with young children, this is what fit me better than running a startup. And, as part of what I need, I have the same morning experience, getting my kids out the door, off to daycare, all these things. I can’t teach before 9:30, like it just doesn’t work, and I’m in the position to say that, and to proactively design my day to fit the needs that I have for this stage.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Thank you. All right. Well, we just jumped into a lot of specific things because you kept fascinating me, Christina. And now, maybe I’ll zoom out a little bit. So, this book The Portfolio Life seems like we’ve got some taste for what it’s about. But could you articulate the core big idea or thesis here for us?

Christina Wallace

Sure. So, this idea, everyone is likely familiar with a portfolio from a financial standpoint, you build your financial portfolio with a mix allocation across stocks, bonds, real estate, whatever these assets are that fits the stage of life you’re in, that matches the risks and the returns that you need. And then, as your life changes, you rebalance that portfolio to rematch what you need at that stage. And this is taking that exact approach but applying it to not just your career but your life. I think career is a huge part of many of our lives but it is in the context of your life.

And so, what does that look like? It means that you are assembling work, hobbies, relationships, family time, community time, rest, you’re designing an allocation of your time across these different pieces in a way that meets your needs and moves you forward toward your goals. And what that can look like is several sources of income. It can look like a meaningful sort of hobby or growth opportunity, a project, something you want to learn more about, that you’re going to dive into, that then sets you up for your next professional zigzag.

It could mean keeping your hands in a lot of different buckets, a lot of different communities and networks, you say, “Well, I came from this world, I’m now in this world, I care a lot about that world, and I’m going to stay connected to all of them.” And the reason I advocate for this approach, one, it actually matches much better the full sort of three-dimensional version of who you are as a person. Very few people, from the day they’re born to the day they die, say, “You know, I really am, and I only am, a marketing manager in a pharmaceutical company. Like, that’s who I am. That’s it.” Like, we all have these different aspects.

And so, it’s a way to reflect on and mimic this three-dimensional version of you rather than having your identity be formed by your job. But, secondly, it sets you up with diversification and flexibility to better weather this constant state of disruption that we are now in. This world, whether it is bank collapses, or ecological disasters, or technological advancements, like AI that are going to massively change the face of white-collar work in the next five years. Whatever these things are, they’re coming at us, lifechanging disruptions every three, five, seven years. This is a pace of change the previous generations never had to deal with.

And so, thinking about your career and your life through a portfolio that helps you diversify and build some flexibility against that disruption is truly the only way you’re going to navigate this without having the rug pulled out from under you, like many folks have had in the last few months.

Pete Mockaitis

So, can you share with us perhaps a story that brings that to bear? Like, “Ooh, here’s someone who did not have a portfolio, and, uh-oh, look how that went down,” versus someone who did, and, “Oh, what a softer landing and what it provided for them.”

Christina Wallace

Sure. I have a great example of this. Heading into the pandemic, I come from an artistic background. I went to a boarding school for the arts, I trained as a classical musician, and I majored in theater among other things, and so I know a lot of folks in the arts. And I used a lot of case studies in the book of folks that have a creative pursuit as part of their portfolio.

Going into the pandemic, I have a lot of friends who were actors, directors, designers on Broadway who went from being gainfully employed at the top of their industry to having, literally, no income for two years while live performances were shut down. And many of them had sort of a backup job as a waiter or a bartender. That’s how a lot of actors make their work between gigs but a lot of those jobs got shut down, too. So, there were a huge number of artists in New York who just, literally, had no income for up to two years, minus whatever unemployment checks they were able to collect. And it was devastating. Many of them are still digging out from under that.

But I have one friend, Carla Stickler, who, in addition to being an actress, she was the understudy for Elphaba in Wicked for many, many years, a fantastic Broadway actress, in addition to that, she started learning to code. Many years ago, she took a bootcamp through the Flatiron School. She wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do with it but it interested her, and she decided to learn more.

And so, between gigs, backstage, when she wasn’t in a scene, she was working on code, building projects, writing apps. And when the pandemic came, she’s like, “Well, I didn’t think I was ready to leave Broadway, but I think Broadway is ready to leave me, so it’s time to pivot.” And she took her coding resume, and went out and got a job as an engineer at a startup, and was able to seamlessly move into the world of tech startups, and has a thriving career now as an engineer in Chicago, and was able to navigate that unexpected disruption so much better than her peers.

And what I think is fascinating about Carla, I’m sort of giving away the ending here, but it’s not like she walked away from performing altogether. She kept teaching a little bit. She had a private voice studio. She stayed in touch with folks. And when Broadway came back, this is right around the time that, like, the Omicron surged, it became problematic, they reopened, they started performing again, and then there was this big variant that took out, it was devastating.

It took out a lot of performers really quickly, and Broadway started going through their list of understudies, and backup understudies, and swings, and backup, backup swings. And they got to the point where they needed an Elphaba, they had no one else to perform. They, literally, called Carla in Chicago, she got on a plane to New York, had one rehearsal, and went on stage, painted green, flying 40 feet over the stage, singing, literally, the hardest role on Broadway. And then she got off stage and, two days later, went back to her coding job in Chicago.

So, I think that is a great example of how you can have a mix of skills and interests and networks that maybe you’re not monetizing just yet but can position you to have optionality and flexibility when the time comes.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Cool. And so, as we think about this design process, you mentioned doing reflection associated with seeing when have you been at your best and when have you been at your worst. Are there any other ways to help surface that which is going to help keep us feeling alive and flourishing as well as surfacing cool opportunities to get after those things?

Christina Wallace

So, one of my favorite tools, I developed this short list of questions after my first startup failed. I had built this company, we had raised the money, we thought it was going to be amazing, spoiler, it was not. And I had this moment of complete and total sort of paralyzation. I was like, “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I have to offer. I don’t know why anyone would want to hire me,” and tried to be reflective, tried to journal and figure out what I brought to the table, and I was coming up with a blank piece of paper.

And so, I went out and had coffee, a lot of coffee, with basically everyone in my network. I did, like, 70 coffee chats in 30 days. That was overkill. You don’t have to do that many. But I went out and asked the folks who had known me the longest and some who’ve actually only known me a few months. I asked them three questions.

Number one, “When have you seen me happiest?” Number two, “What do you come to me for? Like, what is that moment where you go, ‘Oh, I should see what Christina thinks about this.’?” And then, number three, “Where do I stand out against my peers?” Because one of the things that I recognize was there might be, like, a superpower that I bring that is easy for me and so I don’t even realize how valuable it is elsewhere.

And having those same three questions kind of across all these conversations helped pull out some themes that really gave me an insight into where I should go next. And then, once I had something more specific of, like, “I’m looking for this type of a role, in this type of an industry, with this type of a job title or an opportunity,” then my network could surface those opportunities because I was being really specific.

I wasn’t saying, like, “Hey, do you know anyone who’s hiring?” I was like, “Do you know anyone who’s hiring a general manager role for a company, not based in New York, that wants to expand to New York, and who’s at a seed or series A stage of financing in the startup world?” Like, super specific. And I landed that job in a couple of days.

So, part of this is, like, you can do some self-reflection, and there are great exercises in the book to do that but you can also go and ask the people who know you what they see when they look at you. And you might be surprised that some parts of you that you don’t even realize are that exciting or valuable really stand out to other people.

Pete Mockaitis

And could you share with us a couple things you heard when you had these 70 conversations that surprised you, like, “Huh, how about that?”

Christina Wallace

So, one of the interesting things when I asked them when they had seen me happiest, the consensus was when I was in charge of my own calendar, meaning I’m not afraid of working hard. I work hard. I work a lot. But I want to do it on my own terms. And for a while, I had been at a consulting firm for one of these big national consulting, international consulting firms. And in client services, you jump when the client says jump, and I didn’t have control over my calendar, and I wasn’t able to slot in the things I cared about or show up for the people that I wanted to show up for. And it really made me miserable.

So, I came out of that realizing, like, “Okay, me and client services, like not a good fit. What do they come to me for?” They come to me to help find the story. So, whether it’s their resume, or it’s a product they want to launch, or it’s just connecting the dots of, like, “I did this thing and that thing and the other thing,” and I’m like, “I don’t see how they connect but I’m sure they do.” I can give them the language. I can help them find the story and frame it in such a way. It’s sort of a communication skill.

And then, “Where do I stand out against my peers?” I thrive in moments of uncertainty. I’m really good at the zero to two stage of company-building, or a project generation, or launching a play, whatever that thing is. Going from an idea to a thing, and getting other people excited by it, onboard with it, and all driving in the same direction, is where I excel.

I’m less great at the 10- to 100-stage, where you’re optimizing something that already exists. And so, I thought that was really helpful to be, like, “You know what, I should stay in early-stage startups or in creative projects, like producing theater, where going from nothing to something is what’s on the table.

Pete Mockaitis

Cool. All right. That’s very clear. And I could see how, in your world, it’s just like, well, yes, it’s kind of, “Isn’t everybody good with that?” how strings can be hidden in that kind of a way. Okay. Well, then can you share, so that’s sort of the insight, personal, wisdom gathering there. And then what are your top tips in terms of surfacing cool opportunities and things to put into your portfolio?

Christina Wallace

A lot of this comes down to your network. There’s some great research I referenced in the book that a lot of the opportunities don’t come from the people you know but the people they know, second-generation networks. And part of helping that one level-removed network surface things that might be interesting requires you to be really specific on what you’re looking for.

And so, that is sort of a two-pronged approach. One part is having the language to talk about who you are, what you’re looking for, and how someone might be able to help you. That was what I needed after I did all these coffee chats, coming up with the specific asks. And then the second thing was keeping in touch with those networks so they know that you’re looking for help, that you want something to surface up.

And this can be a challenge if you sit in multiple worlds, as I do, I have built a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. Those are somewhat overlapping but, in many ways, distinct communities. To stay connected to them takes effort, it takes relationship-building over time not just sort of networking where I show up with a business card and throw it in everyone’s hands. But doing that allows me to stay top of mind, and having a very clear ask allows them to surface things that might be really interesting.

Because a lot of what people love, can get excited about, is really these opportunistic things rather than the, “What’s your five-year plan?” The five-year plan thing hardly worked for our parents. I don’t think it can work for any of us because there are so much that is changing and there are so much that’s unknown. So, having much more of an emergent strategy rather than a deliberate strategy is what’s going to be effective here. And to do that, you have to stay connected.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Well, Christina, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and  hear about some of your favorite things?

Christina Wallace

I think that’s it.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. Could you tell us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Christina Wallace

Madeleine Albright, “There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Christina Wallace

Clay Christensen and his team, when they were writing The Innovator’s DNA, interviewed and studied hundreds of the most creative innovative people, and they identified these five traits that make up the DNA, that make up kind of how these people worked. And at the core of these five traits, the backbone that the other four sort of rotate around, like the double helix of DNA, is the power of associating.

That’s the ability to connect seemingly unconnected ideas, or networks, or industries. That is what made people the most innovative. So, it doesn’t require you to have a net new idea, a cutting-edge technology. It often can come from just being connected and translating something you’ve seen in one world into another.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite book?

Christina Wallace

Oh, man, I think it’s probably an upcoming book. I can still call it a favorite because I got to read an advanced copy. It’s called The Anxious Achiever by Morra Aarons-Mele.

Pete Mockaitis

Oh, Morra. She’s on the show.

Christina Wallace

Yeah, it is just I feel like it was written for me and, like, all of my friends.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. And a favorite tool?

Christina Wallace

Trello. I live and die by Trello. I’ve probably been using this Trello board for, like, 12 years.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a favorite habit?

Christina Wallace

Putting my phone away an hour before I go to bed.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; they quote it back to you often?

Christina Wallace

Honestly, it comes from one of the pieces of my book, “There’s no such thing as a left-brained or a right-brained person.” This is fake science that was misinterpreted from a real study back in the 1960s. And so, this notion that we are one or the other, logical or creative, it’s not true. You are both.

Pete Mockaitis

Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Christina Wallace

PortfolioLife.com or you can follow me on LinkedIn or Instagram.

Pete Mockaitis

And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Christina Wallace

Honestly, I would go and talk to your boss, talk to your manager about the thing that you want to try, or learn more about, or explore this year that has nothing to do with your current job description, and see if there’s a way to get a stretch assignment, or a rotation, or a zigzag promotion that allows you to sort of expand that portfolio even in the context of your day job.

Pete Mockaitis

All right. Christina, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and fun in your portfolio.

Christina Wallace

Thank you so much.

Pete Mockaitis
Joanne, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Joanne Lipman
Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into the wisdom of your book Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work but, first, I just got to know, you have had such an impressive career in the heights of senior journalism.

Pete Mockaitis
So, given your perspectives from having worked in journalism for a long time, what can you tell us about humanity, those of us here who make and choose to consume the news? What have you discovered that most of us don’t know?

Joanne Lipman
One of the things that I’ve discovered is that I really, really, really respond and appreciate the audience, the people who are listening. I think that our best insights come from when we’re talking to lots of people, when we’re out and about, when we also listen to people throughout the country. I think that one of the issues that we’ve had with trust in media is the idea that there are…we have media centers on both coasts.

We don’t have as much national media in the middle of the country, and I think it’s really important to have people represented in the newsroom from every community, from different localities, different genders experiences, socioeconomic backgrounds. And that, to me, is what builds trust in the news. And, to me, that’s the most exciting part of being in the newsroom when you’re surrounded by people who come from all different perspectives, and everybody brings something else to the party, which is, I think, helpful for all of us.

Pete Mockaitis
And then what happens when that’s not done, in terms of what’s the vibe or the impact?

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, I think there’s been some legitimate criticism that we’ve had too much sort of parachuting in. So, you’ve got your…because media is, and this is a whole other conversation, but media is under pressure, financial pressure, and there’s been a lot of cuts to journalism jobs. And, as a result, what sometimes ends up happening is there’s a story somewhere where there’s not a big news organization, and one of the big national news organizations, we call it they parachute in. Like, it’s every presidential election, there’s 50 big-time journalists who descend on Iowa and go to a diner.

Diner journalism is not great journalism. What you really want are the people who live there to be the reporters, to tell you to really understand what’s happening on the ground. And I think this is a reason why the media has – and this is all legitimate criticism – missed a lot of the rise of populism, the rise of Trump, certainly, but also just sort of through the last 20 years, the rise of the Tea Party. There’s a lot of really smart, informed people throughout the country whose voices are not heard.

And I think anything we can do to elevate those voices and have a broader perspective about…and an on-the-ground perspective of what’s happening. This is actually one of the great things when I was working with Gannett, which owns over a hundred local newspapers, and it was fantastic to be able to have when there’s an earthquake, a fire, a natural disaster, a shooting, to have local reporters who are on the ground who understood the community, and it really helps to understand the whole country. We’re a very diverse place with lots of perspectives and we need to understand ourselves better.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now can you tell us your book Next! what’s the big idea here?

Joanne Lipman
Sure. So, Next! it’s the power of reinvention in life and work, and I’m so excited about this book because it grew out of what we are all going through right now at this moment, which is we’ve had three years, we’re at the three-year mark, which is crazy, from the start of the pandemic, and the entire world was sort of upended.

No matter what you do or who you are, your life was upended, and it really got so many people rethinking, “What are our priorities? Am I in the right job? Is this the career I want? Is this the life I want? Is this where I want to live?” So many questions, and it occurred to me very early in the pandemic that we’re all going to have to figure out what’s next.

And so, the big idea is I wanted to help people to navigate big changes, navigate change in how we live, how we work, how we lead, and really to help people to move toward finding their real purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so when it comes to doing that, you’ve got a reinvention roadmap. Can you walk us through how that works?

Joanne Lipman
Sure. So, I’ll tell you a little bit about what the reporting was. When I started reporting the book, it was so interesting. I was looking for stories of people, and I did hundreds of interviews, there’s tons of research, scientific research in the book Next! And what I started with was talking with people who had already gone through these major transformations in different ways.

Some had had huge career changes, like one of my favorites. A guy named Chris Donovan who spent years, decades, as a telephone repairman but he secretly would, like, doodle pictures of shoes. And at the age of 50, left the phone company, went back to school, and now is a couture women shoe designer who was named Best of Boston, Boston Magazine, best shoe designer. It’s a beautiful story.

I found all these wonderful stories where people had these amazing transformations, but then what I did was I went back and talked to the academics, the researchers, who study these different kinds of change. And what was so fascinating was I talked to people who had gone through very different kinds of transformations, some were career, some were people who came back from, like, huge failures, some were people who had had trauma in their life, and some were actually people who had these grand aha moments that just changed their life.

So, these all seemed, on the face of it, to be very different kinds of transformation. And then I went and talked to these academics. There’s different academics who study each kind of change that I’ve just gone through, and they all walked me through sort of the steps of transformation, and they all used different words, different language, but they were all describing the same set of steps. And it was such a revelation to understand how this works.

So, they’re basically there’s four steps that pretty much everyone will go through. So, the first step, like, I will tell you the four steps, what we call them are search, struggle, stop, solution, and I will walk you through them. So, the search, almost everyone who I spoke to, no matter what kind of transformation they went through, they actually started before they even knew they started. They started moving in this direction, they started collecting information.

So, if you think about someone who changes careers, that is somebody who maybe has a hobby, or a side hustle, or even just some random interest that just grows and grows. I talked to everybody from James Patterson, the mega-selling novelist, who spent 30 years at an ad agency. He was actually at an ad agency, and he wrote books on the side, some of which got published, many of them kind of did not do well. He was, like, finding his voice, but he was working toward it.

The shoe designer I mentioned was doodling shoes. One of my other favorites was a bank economist. He worked for years, for decades, at JP Morgan, and he had a weekend house. And on the weekend house, it was a farmhouse, and he leased out the land around it to a cattle farmer. And when the cattle farmer died, he just bought the cows, he said, “I just thought all they do is eat grass. It doesn’t really take any work.”

Well, fast forward 20 years later, the guy is a full-time cattle farmer. He used to be a Harvard-educated economist, and now he’s, like, a guy who gets up and shoos the cows from one pasture to another and could not be happier. So, anyway, that’s the search, that people start moving in that direction. The struggle is very often particularly with careers, this is true. You leave one identity behind but you haven’t quite gotten to the other.

There’s a wonderful professor, Herminia Ibarra, who studies career transitions. She calls this the liminal period. It’s where it’s an uncomfortable period where you’re still haven’t quite figured out the future but you’re escaping the past.

The third step, which not everyone goes through but very often they do, which we call the stop. Very, very often, I found that there is a moment, and it’s either you choose it or it chooses you, where you just stop. So, where it’s either you’re banging your head against the wall and you can’t figure out that next step, again, uncomfortable, or, in some cases, for example, the shoe designer who I was mentioning, what prompted him was he got struck by cancer.

He had prostate cancer, and it was one of those moments where he said, “Wait a second. I’ve got to stop and think. Is this the life I want to have? Or, is this the life that I need to follow the path that I think I was put on this earth to do?” and he had that stop. And so many people do. And, by the way, if you talked to creativity researchers, people who study that, this is why we all have those aha moments.

I bet you’ve had this, right, where you wake up in the middle of the night, or you’re in the shower, or you’re going for a run, and suddenly you have that aha moment. It’s because you’re puzzling through something, and you can’t quite figure it out, and then what ends up happening is you have to put it out of your mind, you have to shut off the conscious thinking about it, and that’s what allows all these sorts of random thoughts in the back of your head kind of coalesce in your subconscious and then emerge as this aha moment.

So, there’s your stop. And then that is, again, what takes you finally to the solution. So, these four steps are very common to every kind of transition, and I found that very, very encouraging to understand how that process works.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Yes, very much. And that struggle, it’s interesting that notion of identity. So, our identities are often quite wrapped up in our work careers. Is that a finding you saw again and again?

Joanne Lipman
A thousand percent, yes. Very often, somebody said to me, “You are, like, your title, and when somebody takes that away from you, you lose that title, people are really lost.” There really is an issue with, there’s an Atlantic writer who calls workism, which is it’s almost like a religion where we are so focused on work, and it is so much of our identity, and when that goes away, it’s very hard to come back.

But that struggle is also sort of the pathway. It’s really uncomfortable. What I found almost universally is when you’re going through that struggle, whoever it is that’s going through that struggle, you think you’re the only person in the world who’s dealing with that. You feel like, “I’m a loser, and everybody around me is getting ahead, and they’ve figured it out and I haven’t.” But it is actually a universal feeling.

And it’s also where the really, really important work gets done. It’s not necessarily fun but it’s helpful to know that, first of all, everyone goes through it, and, secondly, it is actually where the most important part gets done. And I think one of the issues that we have in this, with society at large, is we have this sort of fantasy of instant overnight success, overnight transformation, and it starts from childhood with Cinderella, and then it goes to adolescence with Superman and Spiderman, and then it goes to adulthood with American Idol.

And then we hear these amazing stories, like John Legend was a management consultant, and now he’s a superstar. And Mark Zuckerberg was a college kid, and now he’s a tech billionaire. We hear these stories and it just seems so far from our own experience. It just seems like it’s impossible we shouldn’t even try because we’ll never get there.

And it’s really a damaging myth. It’s a complete myth that the important thing is we all need to go through that middle period. It’s really important, great work is being done in that middle period. We all go through it. And so, again, it’s something that we shouldn’t beat ourselves up about.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, you mentioned John Legend, a management consultant to music, and I remember when I was making my transition, I was in management consulting at Bain. And I remember when I was sort of an odd duck, like people typically didn’t believe that company to go be speaker-author-people. So, I did feel that discomfort, it’s just like, “Oh, so what do you do?” I was like, “Oh, I’m a speaker and an author, and I’m kind of still figuring it out. My market is in topics and audiences, but I was a consultant at Bain.”

So, it’s like, “But I’m not a loser, I promise.” I don’t know, it’s like that insecurity that I had in that moment, it’s like, “I’m still figuring out what the heck that I’m doing here, but before I had a pretty prestigious role, so don’t think less of me.”

Joanne Lipman
Everybody. Everybody has been in your position because so many people, they meet you and they’re like, “Okay, what do you do?” and it leaves you tongue-tied. I’ve experienced that myself. I ran a magazine that closed, and then I was meeting people, and they’re like, “What do you do?” I’m like, “I used to…” What do you say, right? It’s a very awkward situation.

I have a whole chapter, by the way, on what I call necessity entrepreneurs, which is women, people of color, and, increasingly, Baby Boomers, people who are actually being squeezed out of the traditional workforce or the traditional jobs, and very often end up with far more fulfilling careers, actually, as a result. But the women who I talked to, in particular, said, “You feel invisible.”

There’s a fabulous woman I talked to who had a big consulting career, and left to raise her children, and for 12 years, she was out of the workforce, and she said, “These 12 years of feeling invisible, it’s tough. It’s tough.” I do love, by the way, that LinkedIn now allows you to have that career gap as, like, a legitimate part of your resume because I think those are…these career gaps, we’re increasingly in a nonlinear world with careers, which is so much about what Next! is about, is this sort of nonlinear life and how do you navigate the nonlinear life.

And we see it with Boomers, and now we’re seeing it with the younger generation, which they expect to have, 10 or 12 careers in the course of their working life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now you got me intrigued. So, LinkedIn, so gaps, you have the option, you have a start date and end date for things that don’t have to overlap within the programming. Is that what you’re saying?

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, exactly. And it’s made for people who have career gaps or people who maybe dropped out of the workforce, paid workforce, I should say, because they’re still working, but paid workforce, you know, they raised their kids or for other reasons, they take care of older relatives, for whatever reason it is. And I think that’s incredibly important.

I also think that there’s an increasing recognition that during those gaps in paid employment, there’s a lot of learning that’s going on, and there are a lot of people who I’ve talked to who had these wonderful career transitions because of what they learned during these gaps in their careers. The woman who I just referenced, who said she felt invisible for 12 years, she poured her energy and her business skills into community issues.

So, the zoning board, and getting a playground by the school, and getting a stop sign, and joining the PTA. All these kinds of things, civic engagement, and she met a lot of women like herself. Ultimately, what this woman did was she did two things, which is so awesome. She started a nonprofit that she is now the CEO of, that is expanding nationally, called The Acceleration Project. Its volunteers like herself and other moms who had big careers, and they mentor local business owners to help them with things like marketing and finance.

She did that, and then she was elected mayor of Scarsdale, New York, her town, and she now gives speeches all over. And she told me when she gives these speeches, she says, “When I talk about my career path, it sounds like it was so intentional, and that you can tie it up with a bow. But, frankly, when you’re in the middle of it, when you’re in that struggle,” she said, “you have no idea where it’s going.”

And this is sort of that myth that we were talking about. Everybody else’s journey looks so nice and neat, and we feel like we’re the only ones who are a mess, but, frankly, we all go through that struggle.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, we touched on a number of stories as examples here and there. Could you walk us through a story from beginning to end that you find the most clearly illustrative of these stages, “Hey, here’s the search, here’s the struggle, here’s the stop, here’s the solution”?

Joanne Lipman
Yes, okay. So, there’s a fabulous woman who I met, named Marla Ginsburg. So, Marla Ginsburg was a big-time television executive, and she had a great job, and she told me this story about how she got a promotion, she moves to California, gets the big house with the pool, and the nannies for the kids, the whole works, then comes a writers’ strike, and she loses the job.

And so, now she has to think about, “What am I going to do next?” And she says the only thing she can think of is she was always really interested in clothing design, and she’d always hoped to be, in her dream, her dream life was to be a television host. And she said the only problem was she didn’t know how to sew, she didn’t know how to design, and she’d never done television.

So, she, though, was in this struggle phase of, like, “What do I do next?” As she said, she was over 50 in a town that really prizes youth. Her old life, she could see, was fading away but she was in the midst of this struggle, saying, “How do I get to this new life?” And so, she went out, she bought a sewing machine at Sears, she Googled how to use it, and she Googled how to sew.

She Googled everything about design, she starts trying to put together these designs, and then she’s learning, she’s struggling, she’s hoping to get to this next step, and then she gets slammed again, that her son gets ill, he needs treatment. She no longer has insurance, and it’s one of those stop moments. He goes overseas, where her ex-husband is, to get treatment, and she follows.

She’s in a bar department, and this was her stop. She’s struggling, and now this is a dead stop. She is only there to be there for her son. And she said she was all alone, like while he was getting his treatments and such, she’s all by herself and she’s in a new place where she doesn’t know anybody. And she says, “You know, for some reason, during this moment, it was a dead stop, and yet,” she said, “my creativity just flourished.”

And she had all of these ideas about creating new designs and new ways that she could…she thought about the women who could use the designs for, particularly women in her age group, over 50 kinds of women, and she said it was the most creative period of her life. It was an amazing thing. Thankfully, her son recovered. She came back to the United States, she found a manufacturer, and fast forward to today, Marla Ginsburg is one of the biggest stars on Home Shopping Network.

She has a line called MarlaWynne. And PS, she is the face of MarlaWynne, so she, actually, made both of her dreams come true. She’s a clothing designer and she’s, essentially, a talk show host because you can find her on TV talking. And she’s awesome on TV talking about her designs. And it was an amazing thing to see for someone who went through such a struggle and had that stop that was just forced on her that was just horrendous, and yet that was…everything that happened to her was what allowed her to be what she considers the best expression of herself as a clothing designer and being on television.

So, so many stories work out in that manner. It’s been pretty amazing to speak to so many of these people from different walks of life.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that is a lovely story, and it’s cool to see the pattern and the life cycle there. Could you share with us some mistakes, things not to do when we are thinking about making a switch and reinventing?

Joanne Lipman
Yes. So, one thing is if you read all of the traditional business books, they will tell you, you have to have the goal in mind and work backwards. So, if you read like Think and Grow Rich or any of these books that have been around for many decades, that’s how they lay it out but, in fact, that is a myth also. Almost all of the people that I spoke to, some had a goal in mind, but many of the people that I spoke to kind of had the sort of circuitous paths. They would never imagine that this is where they would end up.

And so, one thing is to really keep an open mind. One of the best examples of that, sports fans will remember Len Elmore, who was on the Knicks and on the Pacers and various other teams, big basketball star in the ‘80s. And Len, after he retired, he actually went on to Harvard Law School, he’s had an illustrious career both as a commentator and also practicing law and management in sports.

And his stop was he turned 65 years old and he just had this just series of terrible things. He was hospitalized, and he had a terrible illness, which he had a heart attack. He was let go from his sports commentating job. So, he’s 65 and, suddenly, he’s done all of these, had this great career, and, suddenly, he’s like, “Wait a second. Who am I? What is my identity? What can I do?”

And he said, “I felt like I had so much more to offer.” And he said, “You know what I did, instead of saying ‘Here’s where I want to go’” he said, “I sat down and I actually wrote down what are all of the skills that I bring to the party. And then I looked to see what are opportunities I never would’ve thought of that my skills matched.”

And guess what? He ended up being, now, and he is currently a Columbia University professor, which is not the career he ever thought he would end up in when he was playing for the Knicks, but all of his skills, the fact that he had this law degree and had practice, and the fact he was interested in social justice with athletes, and his knowledge of sports management, all of it rolled into becoming a professor and a scholar, which is, again, not where he thought his career was taking him.

And we saw that a lot, but there are also things that you can do, which perhaps we want to talk about. Things that you can do to help figure out where it is that you want to go.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, sure thing. Let’s hear it.

Joanne Lipman
Yeah. Well, there’s a number but I’ll just mention three. So, the first is there is a concept that is called possible selves. This is a concept in psychology, a couple psychologists actually coined this phrase, and it means you’re imagining who you might be, who you might become. And that is something that a lot of people sort of felt was very helpful.

James Patterson told me that while he was an ad executive, he imagined himself as a bestselling novelist. It was the kind of thing, it seemed like a far-off dream. Marla Ginsburg did the same with thinking about being a clothing designer. But just imagining it isn’t sufficient. You actually want to do something. So, you want to either take some action as in a hobby or something.

But the second thing that I would say, because this ties in with this first idea of possible selves, is talk to what we would call, I’m calling an expert companion. Expert companion is somebody who knows you really, really well, who can reflect back to you what are your strengths that you may not even be aware of. Again, I saw this very frequently with people who, they’re so close to their own strengths that they don’t even see that they have them.

And then the third thing I would say is reach out to your network, particularly weak ties and dormant ties. And I think you’ve talked about this on the show before. Your most helpful career advice very often will come from, not from your direct circle – you kind of all know the same things and the same people – but from somebody who either you lost touch with, or somebody who you know tangentially. There’s been a lot of research that’s been done on this over the past 50 years. And for people who switched careers, the majority will tell you, it came through weak ties or dormant ties, people who you lost touch with.

There was a really cool experiment that was done fairly recently where executives were asked to reach out to try and solve a business problem that they had by reaching out to someone who they hadn’t spoken to in at least five years. And the results were quite remarkable. They were like, first of all, they got better advice than they got from their inner circle but, also, they just found that it was really gratifying to reconnect with these people.

And they also said, “It was also quite efficient because they could kind of pick up where they left off,” so you didn’t have that sort of awkward get-to-know-you kind of thing. They could kind of dive right into it. So, it was really a win-win for everybody.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s very cool. Well, Joanne, tell me. Anything else you want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, you know what, there’s two things I want to mention, actually, that I came across that I think can be really helpful to people. I know you’ve done some shows about burnout. There’s a lot of burnout in this particular moment, and I think it is with the pandemic, it really did get people to rethink and reprioritize. And one of the things that I found, and I found this to be true in the research as well as with the people I talked to, is listen to your gut.

If your gut is telling you you’re not in the right place, listen. It turns out there’s a lot of research behind gut instinct, and very often your gut instinct is correct. And I would also say give yourself a break. This is also so important. When I talk about that stop phase, sometimes it was somebody who either shows to take a career break or had one forced on them when they were, let’s say, laid off.

And every piece of research will tell you that when you take that break, it is a way for your brain to reset, but also when you’re not so actively thinking and focusing and losing sleep over trying to solve a problem, that is when your brain is at its best. When the thoughts that are swirling around in your head can coalesce into some fabulous new idea.

And, by the way, and I think a lot of listeners probably know this, but you cannot say it enough that it’s so important, even during the course of your day, take a walk, take a break. One of the great pieces of advice I got was what we call the 90-minute rule. And the 90-minute rule is if you’re working on a project, you focus intensely on it with no distractions for 90 minutes. So, you turn off the cellphone and you don’t look at your email, you just focus on whatever you’re doing, this task at hand, for 90 minutes. But then, after 90 minutes, you must take a break.

And it doesn’t matter what you do during your break. You can go for a run, you can eat something, you can do whatever you feel like doing but you have to take that break, and then you can do another 90-minute segment. And you can do about three of these in one day and get far more work done than if you just, like, sit at your desk and stare at your computer for eight hours.

There’s the famous research that was done that Malcolm Gladwell popularized about you need 10,000 hours, but the professor who actually did that research on the 10,000 hours, that was only one piece of what makes you an expert. The other piece of it was exactly what I just talked about, which is that his research was on violinists that needed 10,000 hours to be an expert. But what these violinists did is they practiced for 90 minutes, they took a break, they practiced for another 90 minutes, and they did it no more than three times a day. So, it’s so important to take that break to allow your brain to reset.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now, Joanne, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Joanne Lipman
Absolutely. I don’t know who said this but I repeat it almost every day, which is, “If something is bothering you, and it won’t matter five years from today, it doesn’t matter now.”

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. And we heard about a favorite study, so how about a favorite book?

Joanne Lipman
So, favorite book, my favorite book of all time is Anna Karenina. However, I would say there’s a book that I absolutely love that I highly recommend called The Eureka Factor, and it’s by two academics, John Kounios and Mark Beeman, who are the reigning experts on aha moments, why they happen, and how you can have more of them.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Joanne Lipman
Yeah, one that I came across while researching the book is a CV of Failure. And I found that people who are highly successful, some of them, there’s an academic who I met along the way, who, she said the best thing she ever did was she sat down and created a resume, not of all her great successes, but of everything she failed at, every research project she didn’t get, or grant she didn’t get, and every rejection she got.

And she said it was really helpful in helping her understand, first of all, all the amazing things she tried, but also it helped her understand where her strengths were, and it actually led her to a different field of research. So, I love the idea of a CV of Failure.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?

Joanne Lipman
My favorite habit is definitely the 90-minute rule that I referred to earlier. I use it every day.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks; you hear people quote it back to you often?

Joanne Lipman
Yes. Yes. I was once asked, “What advice would you give to your younger self?” and I said, “Exhale.” I hear that all the time. All the time. The idea that we get so caught up in our careers, and we worry so much about the future, and just if you exhale.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Joanne Lipman
My website is JoanneLipman.com, and you can find Next!: The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work on Amazon or anywhere where you buy books.

Pete Mockaitis
And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Joanne Lipman
Two things related. First is if you have a hobby or an interest or something that you think possibly you might be interested in, take action, learn about it, talk about it, follow somebody in the field. And second, and so related to this, is be open to the unexpected. You never know where your interests may take you. And for the people who I interviewed for Next! so many of them ended up in places they never dreamed, and they’re so much more fulfilled in their careers because of it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Joanne, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and many quality reinventions.

Joanne Lipman
Thank you, and you as well. This has been a terrific conversation.