#585 What to make of a life with Jim Collins (A Career Well Spent Series)

**Sarah Ellis** (0:00)
Hi, my name's Sarah, and this is the Squiggly Careers Podcast. This episode is one of our special summer series where we're asking experts about what does a career well spent look and feel like? How can you figure that out for yourself? What are some of the questions, the actions that you can take to really make sure that your career feels fulfilling for you? We know that no two Squiggly Careers look and feel the same, so some really good questions to consider as part of these episodes.
And today, you're going to hear me in conversation with Jim Collins, talking about what makes a good life. Some of you might have heard Jim on the podcast previously, where I got to talk to him a couple of years ago, and you might be familiar with his work, things like Good to Great. Jim is always so compelling to talk to. He's thoughtful, he's insightful, and he manages to turn those insights into really practical actions too. So I hope you enjoy our conversation together.
Jim, welcome back to the Squiggly Careers podcast. You have the rare honor, if that's the right word, to be one of the very few people who've made an appearance twice. So it's lovely to see you again.

**Jim Collins** (1:11)
Wow, I am honored by that very much.

**Sarah Ellis** (1:14)
So today we are here to talk about, I'm going to hold your book up to the screen so people who are watching can see it, What to Make of a Life. And you can tell that I've read it because there are so many folded down pages. It looks scruffy, but that's always a good sign. A pristine book is never a good sign, I don't think.
And like all of your work, it's incredibly thoughtful and well researched. And we were even talking before we started our conversation today about just how long you spent in monk mode to get to the point. And I found actually a section towards the end of the book, particularly interesting, where you talk about what you used to believe and what you now believe. And I really appreciated, I think, your honesty and openness to sharing that with readers, to sort of say, well, I might have had this perspective in the past, but having now done this work, this research, these reflections, that's not where I am now. And so I wondered if we could talk about some of those. I've picked some that particularly stood out to me, I thought were interesting. I've also picked some where I think I need to understand more. Where I was like, oh, I'm not sure about that. I've got some questions. So my first one, which does link very nicely to the idea of Squiggly Careers, is you say, I used to believe in the primacy of having a long-term life plan. I now believe much more in the organic, unplanned, simplex stepping nature of how great lives unfold. So I wonder if you could talk a bit more about that from and to for us.
Help us understand what simplex stepping is, because I think that will be a new phrase, a new concept for lots of people. Then maybe, I think all of our listeners will always be asking the question, so what does that mean for me? So perhaps that's maybe a useful place to start.

**Jim Collins** (3:10)
First of all, I think one of the real contributions that you make with all of your conversations is making this really directly relevant to the wonderful people who join your conversation. So I'll try to make as many links that way as we can. First of all, let's just start with the definition of this idea of simplex stepping.
Basically, one of the things we found when we looked at the lives in this research, we're looking over the long arc of some really rather remarkable lives, done in a rigorous way, we can address that if you feel we need to. The main thing is, they had periods in their time where, put two ideas together, one where they were actually lost in the fog, a period of time where they felt confused or befuddled or disoriented or uncertain, hesitant, really a very foggy patch of their lives. Again, these are people who had huge lives in the end result, but they had these foggy patches. And then the question became very interesting to me is, how did they get out of the fog?
And so I'd like you to think of like, you're in the fog, it's kind of foggy, you're uncertain, you don't know whether you should move over here or move over there or it's time to leave a particular path or your life has just been hit by a big change or whatever. And you can only see like three feet in front of you. You can't see an end destination. You may have no idea that there is an end destination. And so you just look around yourself and you kind of say, okay, if I don't really know where I'm going and I'm feeling lost in the fog and I can't see clearly, what just sort of looks like of the steps I can see right in front of me, the next possible best step. And I'll just take that step and then I'll reset and look around again and see if I can take another next step and then another step. And then eventually the fog might begin to clear. These steps could be simple. They could be things like having a conversation with a long time mentor.