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- [00:00]
Anne Morris
Hey listeners, we want your questions. Are you early in your career and trying to find meaning in the job hunt? Are you looking back on years in one industry and wondering if you found your life's work yet or if you might have missed it when thinking about your purpose and how it ties to your career? Whatever's on your mind, we want to hear from you. Send us your questions by emailing fixableed.com and we'll deliver you answers in a special series coming soon.
- [00:32]
Toyota Sponsor
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- [01:13]
Wise Sponsor
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- [01:44]
Jodi Kantor
This is an environment in which everybody is seeking stability because it's a chaotic, intimidating environment. And I get that. I mean, of course I understand why everybody just wants security right now. But the problem is that you don't really get anywhere in your career without risk. Like, it's just. It's just the other ingredient. Sometimes you need more of it, sometimes you need less of it. But you do need to take chances.
- [02:16]
Anne Morris
This is Fixable. A show where we take the problems at work that feel unfixable and prove that they are not it. I'm Anne Morris.
- [02:23]
Frances Fry
And I'm Frances Fry.
- [02:25]
Anne Morris
As we continue our Purpose at Work series this week, we're talking to the amazing New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kanter. Recently, she's been thinking and writing about how work fits into a meaningful life.
- [02:38]
Frances Fry
Her work has changed the way I think and honestly, the way everyone I know thinks about work.
- [02:44]
Anne Morris
She's reported on everything from power dynamics in Silicon Valley to allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein. She has masterfully documented what is broken about work, and she still believes it can be beautiful.
- [02:59]
Frances Fry
We got to know Jodi years ago when she did a story on gender issues here at the Harvard Business School.
- [03:04]
Anne Morris
And she's been on a rocket ship of impact since then, picking up a Pulitzer Prize along the way. She has a new book out now called how to discovering your life's work. It's a really moving guide to finding your purpose through work. Going to talk to her about what that pursuit looks and feels like and try to find the sweet spot between what you're uniquely built to do and what the world really needs from you.
- [03:28]
Frances Fry
And I hope we find out what got her from there to here. Like, why did she write this book? It's beautiful.
- [03:34]
Anne Morris
I have so many questions, so let's bring her in. Jodi Kanter, welcome to Fixable.
- [03:49]
Jodi Kantor
It's great to be here.
- [03:50]
Anne Morris
So we wanted to start with a hard hitting question that's worthy of your status as one of the world's great investigative journalists. Have you seen the Devil Wears Prada too? I have.
- [04:01]
Jodi Kantor
Oh, yes. We could have an entire conversation about that because it's very much about work, not to mention about journalism. I did think that this is a good movie about the workplace and we have some of those, but I don't think we quite have enough of them. Them.
- [04:20]
Anne Morris
It was a little Hollywood imaginable, just
- [04:23]
Jodi Kantor
a tiny bit, Ann. I mean, I wear that stuff every day personally. Yeah, I mean, there were some specific lines towards the end of the film. I think there was a beautiful tribute to work near the end, right where they say, like, this is why we come here every day. This is what we want. This partnership, these relationships, this feeling of trying to do something big like it. I thought it was a very good defense of that because I think, I mean, I'm curious whether you agree. I think what's basically happening is the idea of work needs defending in the culture right now. And I've seen various parties do it. The other cultural moment right before the book came out was the astronauts. And I don't know about you, but I fell down a rabbit hole of watching their teamwork, ambition, craft, precision, optimism, respect for one another. And I thought this is the most, like, this is the most provocative thing right now because people are regarding work as so dystopian and they're putting together both this very high achieving but joyful sense of what, what work can be like.
- [05:41]
Anne Morris
I found the reaction to it to be kind of just as interesting the moment, because I think, and we see this all the time, people are really hungry for those positive examples and those really hopeful examples of work. It seems like part of your mission with this book and your wonderful commencement speech at Columbia, this fabulous press tour that you're on, is to rehabilitate the idea of work as a path to a meaningful life. Is that how you think about it?
- [06:10]
Jodi Kantor
I mean, thank you for seeing that. Certainly. I don't know that I can rehabilitate it, but I think what I can try to do as an author and what we can all try to do is not lose a sense of aspiration at this time because it's a really hard time and we can't mince words about it. You know, if you, as you know from being educators, if you say naive things to young people about work now, you're going get shocked. Like anything that comes off as naive or overly nostalgic or false optimism, you lose instant credibility. So we both have to acknowledge what is so hard about the workplace right now. And I hope we can get into it in the next hour. But then I think we need to fight for the things that so many of us believe in, which is that the workplace is our engine of progress and that strangers can come together in shared discipline and purpose. And the workplace can be a fair place and it can protect you from the negative forces outside. It can give you a very special kind of happiness that's different from the happiness available, say, in the family or romantic realm. Want young people to know that that exists because many of them, understandably, just think work is, like, horrible and something to protect yourself against.
- [07:46]
Anne Morris
Jodi, for some people listening, you will be an unexpected messenger for this.
- [07:52]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah, because I've. I've reported some of the crappiest things about the workplace. I know. That's part of why I wanted to do it, because I was like, look, the Harvey Weinstein story is about entry level work. Those women were actresses, they were young assistants who wanted to be producers. Many of them were in their first week on the job, and Weinstein turned their aspirations against them and used work as a tool of predation. That is his real legacy. And also I reported these stories about Amazon and other workplaces essentially managing people by machine. You know, the thing I've seen over the last 10 years in my reporting is that management and the employer employee relationship has been partially taken over by technology. And more and more it is. It feels like a really natural line from that to the AI moment in so many ways. And as that happened, it's been unbelievably disruptive, and it has really strained relationships, and it continues to. In reporting the book, in releasing the book, I am talking to a generation of young people who are being interviewed by AI for their first jobs. Look like right now, as we're talking, some dudes are prognosticating on a podcast professing complete certainty about AI and the future of work, whatever that is. Right. Like, I don't know how that's going to turn out. I think we should have humility about what we don't know. But however the big story turns out, what's happening right now is that hiring is being digitized. And so the initiation into the workplace, that is the hiring process, is becoming very lonely, very cold, very sterile. You're not only being rejected, you're being rejected by a robot.
- [09:45]
Anne Morris
Francis, I'm curious, from your perch as a professor of operations and technology, what your reaction to that kind of automation story is right now?
- [09:57]
Frances Fry
Well, I mean, it's first of all grim, and you can imagine the trauma people are gonna have about it going forward. But I will say, at least they're being interviewed, and at least they're hearing back, because what happened right before this, you would never hear back after your interview. Like. Like, so without the digitization, we had gotten to a death valley of the hiring process. So I think that it's imperfect, what is going on. It's not the right use of AI. I hope it's an experimental way to do it, but there was so much room, like, the nostalgic view we have of, oh, the interview. And then you tell, like, none of
- [10:41]
Anne Morris
that was dead a long time ago.
- [10:42]
Frances Fry
That was dead a long time ago, and it was really grim out there.
- [10:46]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah. No, and I think that not getting back to people is still correct, because the overall thing that young people are saying is that hiring is becoming a black box. You know, you submit online, and then you just can't tell. Like, you've no idea what you. Is this a ghost listing? Is this job even real? Or is it just a magnet for resumes? You know, was I seen at all? Was I considered what kind of feedback? You know, even the body language you used to get in an interview was valuable. You know, real data about how you were performing that is increasingly harder to get. But the reason. Listen, I mean, we shouldn't waste our, like, precious time together talking about all the negative things about there, because the more interesting question I would Argue is what is a young person actually supposed to do in this environment? Because, you know, I know just from knowing the two of you, all three of us have a stubborn belief in working past these obstacles and fighting for your ambitions and your dreams. And so the question is, how do you do that right now? And especially for people our age, what do you tell your kids about how to do it?
- [11:56]
Anne Morris
I love that pivot. It is the thing that I think threads the three of us together is this bias towards a practical, optimistic way forward, even in conditions that feel grim. This conversation is part of a series we're doing on purpose. And Jodi, you have lived a very purpose driven life. You know, I think the thesis of the conversations we're having is that purpose is. Is an important part of figuring that out for any human walking the planet. I'm curious how your sense of purpose revealed itself to you. If it. Does it feel like a settled question, kind of, where are you in your relationship with purpose in this moment?
- [12:34]
Jodi Kantor
I would say it's 90% answered by context and circumstances. Because I'm an investigative reporter at the New York Times, which is thriving, but journalism on the whole is not. And as everybody knows, our information systems are very, very troubled. Reliable information is getting crowded out by unreliable information. Like the kind of journalistic infrastructure that has helped keep democracy standing up for hundreds of years in this country is severely compromised. So my purpose is to use all of these decades of training and the security and might and skill of the New York Times and our amazing 13 million subscribers and the sources who are willing to talk to me and all of the cred I got out of the Harvey Weinstein story, the fact that, like, you know, not to be presumptuous, but I think I've worked hard to have a relationship of trust not only with my sources, but with readers. You know, how can I use that in the biggest and most meaningful way possible? The days I feel the worst at work are the days when, like, you know, I'm not really sure what story I should be doing. Those days are very rare now. But earlier in my career I'd be like, between stories and like, did I really use today well? And what do I really have going? Those days Feel terrible because my internal dialogue was like, my seat is precious and I need to use it well every single day. So that's given me tremendous purpose. And then I. Then I found, like, a second purpose with this book. And then we can. Maybe you guys can also help me figure out why having, like, one job does not seem to be enough for me. But that's another topic.
- [14:35]
Anne Morris
You said, you know, the toughest days for you at work are, are, were the days when you were trying to figure out what to write, what am I doing here? What changed for you in experiencing fewer of those days? Because the language you used resonates very much for me as a young person starting out, feeling a lot of urgency that I had to quickly get to my purpose and impact. And it, I had to make a mark and it had to be visible. And in retrospect, a lot of that friction was unproductive and it didn't get me to that impact any faster or to that clarity or self knowledge. So that evolution is part of what we're trying to explore in these conversations. Like how did you make that pivot?
- [15:16]
Jodi Kantor
I think everything you're saying resonates because absolutely. For young people, especially young people with great educations, they're like, I went to the school. It costs so much money. I worked so hard. I know I'm incredibly lucky to be in this position. I have to somehow deliver on my promise. And Ann, you're telling like such a recognizable story of the pressure that creates. And I, I did and do feel a grown up version of that. Like I met the New York Times, I have a Pulitzer Prize. Like, how am I, what am I doing to make good on this every single day? I think a couple of ingredients that have helped me in the last few years. Cause you're constantly doing it, right?
- [15:57]
Anne Morris
Yeah. It doesn't go away. It becomes quieter.
- [16:00]
Jodi Kantor
In my experience, it becomes easier because you have craft.
- [16:04]
Anne Morris
Will you define craft just for people listening?
- [16:07]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah. So my book is very much about craft and about craft being one of the main ingredients of successful and happy careers. Craft is having a skill or expertise that other people don't. It's authority. It's what distinguishes you in the marketplace. A lot of people right now are being treated as disposable or interchangeable. Craft is what protects you against that. You can have a classic craft, you can be a surgeon, certainly one of the highest crafts, or you can have a craft that doesn't necessarily get recognized as such, but is very much a craft. I mean, running a restaurant's busy dinner service, as Frances, our operations expert, knows, is absolutely a craft. So craft for sure. And then the other clue I would give to people is there are times in life, and certainly in journalism, when you have to think ambitiously. So I think another thing, and this is not right for everybody at every moment, but I have an instinct that part of the way this next generation will get out of its very understandable work rut is by focusing on big, urgent problems.
- [17:23]
Anne Morris
Francis, this feels very aligned with your worldview and experience of purpose in your own life. Am I reading that right? Yeah.
- [17:32]
Frances Fry
When. Whenever we do work with a company, Jodian, we ask them what their ambition is. We have what we call the magic dust question. But if we were, like, if we could sprinkle magic dust on this, what would be different? And whatever they say, our response is at a zero. So we are basically in the business of helping to amp up people's audacity and ambition, because you make more progress in the presence of great ambition. So incremental change is harder than bold change. It's a surprise to people, but it's just harder to maintain. It's harder to care about it. It's harder to get momentum. And so your prescription that this is what younger people should do, it totally hits my worldview. When we swing big, we have to make sure we enjoy the process. And I think that's the other part of your book that was really wonderful, is that it doesn't have to be drudgery when you take these big swings. And even if you take a big swing and you miss, you still will get so much out of it because of the joy and the process and the learning of it.
- [18:41]
Jodi Kantor
I love everything you're saying. And another thing is that swinging big doesn't mean changing everything. It can be finding the right toeholder lever, where you say, if I change this one thing, if I report this one story, it sets us down a path of change, or it punches above its weight in terms of impact, because changing everything is too hard. Like, it's over. It's overwhelming. You're setting yourself up for failure, for sure.
- [19:10]
Frances Fry
You want to honor what you're not changing so that you can talk about the few things you are changing. But I don't want to let go of your idea of ambition, which is the swing that we're taking should be bigger than polite company suggests.
- [19:27]
Jodi Kantor
Totally. I mean, the word we use in journalism is impact. And impact can be defined in a lot of different ways.
- [19:34]
Anne Morris
Yeah. The other power of ambition is that there's a relationship between ambition and resilience. And the higher the ambition, the higher the resilience, and kind of vice versa. I'm interested. Your grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. You grew up in a community of Holocaust survivors.
- [19:54]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah.
- [19:55]
Anne Morris
How did that experience impact your own ambition and sense of purpose?
- [20:02]
Jodi Kantor
Oh, I mean, it's the whole thing. It's the Solvent. I was born 30 years after my grandparents were liberated. I grew up in a world of Holocaust survivors. I thought everybody's grandparents were Holocaust survivors. The crazy thing now is that, like, I think back on these people and they were my age, you know, when I was a little kid, which is such a crazy thought. And my grandmother only died three years ago, and I'm 51. So this wasn't like a long ago experience of firsthand, you know, contact with the legacy of the Holocaust. This was spending my life with a genocide survivor who became the happiest person I knew. So this was a lifelong intimate witnessing of recovery. It for sure made me an investigative journalist. Right, because like all the, you know, who did this and are the victims speaking and what was the system and why didn't anybody stop them? These are all the classic questions of investigative journalism. And I think like one of the puzzles of my family and my life is why did my grandmother recover from so well? It was really like something I've wrestled with my whole life. But it has taught me for sure that the most negative circumstances do carry within them the seeds for great improvement. And that the people I respect most are the people who have responded to really difficult things in productive ways. And so that's part of the reason I really want to galvanize this generation is not to be unrealistic about what can be accomplished, but to be tough to dig in, to realize that things can get better, that they are not statistics, that they have agency, they have a self determination and the ability to respond well to very hard things. Like, that's just everything to me. It's everything. It's everything. I don't want them to feel like victims of this circumstance, even when things are very hard.
- [22:34]
Frances Fry
You know, the research on how to build confidence, Jodi, you just gave a great owed to because you, you can systematically build confidence if you stack wins on things that are hard enough so that it feels meaningful, but not so hard that it's out of reach. And so you, in dire times, you can still build confidence by stacking the wins.
- [23:01]
Jodi Kantor
I think it ties to what we said, to ambition. I'm friendly with the therapist Esther Perel, and she talks about just, you know, the Holocaust survivor family phenomenon of just needing to live a very full life if you survived. And I, I identify with that complete.
- [23:36]
Anne Morris
This episode is powered by AT&T Business. I was thinking recently about those early days of building something of your own. It's not just the little things. You're building the whole plane as you fly it. Think of those mornings, you might find yourself sitting in a crowded coffee shop or the back of a library, hunched over a laptop and just hoping the public WI fi would hold long enough to upload a pitch. It's a stressful way to start a day, and an even harder way to build a legacy. You're working from wherever you can, piecing things together, hoping everything holds. And it's funny. Connectivity is one of those things you don't really think about until it becomes a problem, and when it does, it can throw everything off. The last thing you want is to be worrying about whether things are going to work when you need them to. That's why AT&T business is a great provider for small business owners. It's built to work so you can stay focused on what you're building. Powered by AT&T Business Built to Work get today at business.att.com here's something we've
- [24:40]
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- [26:49]
Anne Morris
Jodi, we've touched on your book, how to start discovering your life's work. Let's dig into it a little bit. It's essentially a guide for young people finding their way. You explore these two ideas, craft and need. We've touched on craft. I want to talk about need. It feels harder in some ways because the needs of the world change fast, right?
- [27:09]
Jodi Kantor
Well, what I would ask is of young people is, you know, try on different crafts. Think about what your craft or crafts will be, but also think about yoking yourself to a need, whether it's a business need or an altruistic need, because that's propulsion. If craft is authority, need is propulsion. You don't want your career to be like a lonely paddle upstream. You want your career to be buoyed by the things that other human beings are going to need during the course of your lifetime. You can follow the conventional wisdom on that. Like, all of our lives, we heard, like, learn Jap Japanese or learn genetics or learn Mandarin or learn coding or whatever. Like, that's just conventional wisdom. Right. It may work for a certain amount of time. It's not invaluable. It's not a golden ticket. I think the people who have had the best careers are the people who, independently, using their own eyes and ears, identify what needs they want to address and that can pull them along. I mean, you've got to be specific about it because, look, I mean, there are plenty of needs we have, like, that might not make the basis for great careers. Right. Like, should we tend to stray animals in the streets? Sure. Like, is doing so necessarily gonna pull you along in your career? I'm not so sure. But I also noticed, speaking of kind of hard things and hard backgrounds, some of the people who are the best at identifying needs are the people who have been through really hard things. And, you know, in that category, of the people I respect most are the people who built a career as an answer to some pain or tragedy or struggle they and their family experienced. Because it's a very productive, healthy kind of response, which is like, instead of just struggling with this thing forever and being tortured, I'm going to learn a series of professional tools. That's your craft. That is going to allow me to answer this thing and fight it every single day and make a contribution, and that's my life's work. And I think those people are often very happy because they've Found a route to recovery that's not just a therapist's office, as great as that is, but involves like what they do every day.
- [29:32]
Anne Morris
Yeah, this is not an easy equation you're laying out in practice. So how do you know when you're kind of on the right path of craft and need lining up is you. You are propelled in some way. And that that idea really resonated. You have a whole section on money in this book. Money, of course, means different things to different people. Security, freedom, status, identity. What's your advice about how to think about money and all of these practical needs and where does it fit into this equation for you?
- [30:05]
Jodi Kantor
I'll rattle off, let's do some quickies because we could talk about this forever. The really rich kids just need to get a job for the opposite ends of the spectrum. People who are coming from backgrounds of struggle. I want them to take their happiness in the workplace seriously. I hate this idea that fulfillment is just for rich kids and that they have to take these jobs that are like all duty, all obligation, very low on the satisfaction index. I just think we actively need to fight that and help them insist on happiness and satisfaction. And then very specifically, first jobs, early jobs. I want young people to be evaluating them not just by how much they're earning, but how much they're learning. Not everybody gets a choice of a first job. Right now it's a screwed up entry level employment market. We know that. But if you do the things to look for are how much stimulation are you getting in this job? Are you going to work for a good person? And you can define good for yourself. I'm not going to do it for you, but, oh, I might throw out some ideas like wisdom, integrity, you know, like, are you going to work for a faceless corporation that's treating you like a widget, you know, or are you going to work for leaders who are going to bring you along because prices are so high and housing and particularly is such a torture. There are a lot of young people who are like, oh, you know, this first job, he is $56,000 and that first job pays $49,000. So like, obviously I have to take the $56,000 job. And even though we know that's not true, they don't know that that's not true because like a few thousand dollars is a lot of money in, you know, especially in a big city. So I think that idea that your 20s is a time of investment in yourself and that you are laying the foundation for a whole career, even if you End up doing something completely different is really important.
- [32:14]
Anne Morris
What was your first job, Jodi?
- [32:16]
Jodi Kantor
I have many early career experiences to talk about, from being thrown off my college paper to being a Nazi hunting intern. But the most important is that I worked my first in journalism is that I worked worked for Slate when it was starting. It was owned by Microsoft. I was a temp first.
- [32:31]
Frances Fry
Did you have a pay stub from Microsoft?
- [32:33]
Jodi Kantor
Oh, totally. I have better than that. If anybody from like Microsoft in the 90s is listening, I was a-jodk@Microsoft.com because if you had the a dash it denoted that you were a temp. But crazily enough, Microsoft had started Slate as part of its content strategy and Michael Kinsley was the pioneering editor. And it was a very small upstart magazine meant to figure out journalism on the web. It was a flat organization. Young people had a ton of opportunity and probably the biggest benefit was that it was divided into three different offices and email was like new and magical and sensational. So we had these email lists where story ideas were discussed. And so even as the youngest and least experienced person on the team, I had full visibility into all the story discussions. And that was just, yeah, that's another thing about, you know, first jobs. Like, are you are the decision makers allowing you to eavesdrop and witness what's really going on? Because that is how you learn.
- [33:47]
Anne Morris
Frances, what was your first job? First meaningful job?
- [33:51]
Frances Fry
Seventh grade. I was the, I worked at the general store in the town that I, I grew up in. I, I went down and asked for, asked for a job and they said, when do you want to work? And I said every day. There's no school. So I worked from 8 to 12 every day. There wasn't school. And I remember my first salary, $1.25 an hour. So I would work 16 hours and get a crisp $20 bill.
- [34:13]
Anne Morris
It's interesting to me that what you remember is that crisp $20 bill.
- [34:17]
Frances Fry
That's totally what I remember.
- [34:18]
Anne Morris
We see with our own kids, they get a lot talking about confidence and a sense of self and a sense of agency. Like they, they get a ton when
- [34:25]
Frances Fry
they knock on that door to get,
- [34:27]
Anne Morris
knock on that door to like snow to shovel your driveway. I mean, that kid, particularly youngest, comes back lit up in a way that going to, you know, cross country practice that all the adults are forcing him to do and sharing like it doesn't happen for him. So it's that entrepreneurial. It's like feeling like he's also participating. It's not lost on them. They're operating in a capitalist system, right? And so for them to be able to go and participate in this thing, that seems to distract all the fucking adults around them to the point they're there, not no one's paying attention to them like that is. I do think there is something there that doesn't happen when we force them into these activities that are simulating the world of work that they will enter.
- [35:15]
Jodi Kantor
What was your first job, Ann?
- [35:17]
Anne Morris
My first job was for the public interest research group that.
- [35:21]
Jodi Kantor
Oh my God, they hired everybody. Totally.
- [35:24]
Anne Morris
And you know why they hired everybody? Because they don't even tell you what the job is. You, you walk in on the first day, they just say, come save the environment. That was like the headline, right? Come save the environment. We all showed up and they tell you what you're going to do. You're going to go door to door, you're going to talk to strangers, you're going to stand on street corner, it's going to be terrible. And then two thirds of the people just walk out. So then there's like a third of you who stay. And then they send you out to these neighborhoods where they have no expectation that you're going to make any money. And then every company comes back and then the next day two people come back out of like a room of 30. And I was one of the two. And I just stayed standing. Like I just did the thing and I stayed standing. And by the end of the summer, 17 years old, by the end of the summer I was running the place because, like, no one else would do it. And it was such a crazy learning curve of like knocking on a door, building trust with a human in seven seconds, trying to get them to give you money for this thing. They don't want to give you money. They don't want to hear you talk. Like, I learned more in the 60 days I spent on the perg payroll than in any job I've ever had in the rest of my life.
- [36:35]
Jodi Kantor
Wow, that's amazing.
- [36:55]
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- [39:15]
Anne Morris
Jodi, we have a listener question from a young person that we'd love to play for you and get your reaction.
- [39:22]
Listener / Hannah Burner
I'm graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and linguistics.
- [39:26]
Jodi Kantor
A lot of the people I know
- [39:27]
Listener / Hannah Burner
personally are very saddened by the fact they can't do the work they want to do or have to pivot.
- [39:33]
Jodi Kantor
And I think just like, how do
- [39:34]
Listener / Hannah Burner
you navigate that when you know your purpose? Or like, you know, so strong, like,
- [39:37]
Jodi Kantor
this is what I want to do
- [39:38]
Listener / Hannah Burner
and you can't do it.
- [39:40]
Anne Morris
And you must see a version of this in journalism now, maybe outside the New York Times, which is thriving, but people who feel like I know my purpose and that the world is not interested in it or I can't make a living from it.
- [39:51]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah, but like, I just have questions. Who are you? How did you become so sure that anthropology is not gonna translate into what you do next? Like, anthropology to me seems like a very useful skill in about, you know, a million different settings. Like, if you wanna be Margaret Mead, like I, I get that that is, you know, a very hard path. But if you wanna use anthropological wisdom and even research in the work, in A way that will also, you know, provide a real job and provide financial stability. That's not a crazy goal.
- [40:30]
Frances Fry
What might one of those jobs be? Just one.
- [40:32]
Anne Morris
For example.
- [40:33]
Jodi Kantor
Oh, that. Asks the Harvard business professor who studies human behavior. I don't know, Frances, what might it be?
- [40:42]
Frances Fry
I'm with you. I'm sitting in the first row of the church, but I'm just now channeling this person.
- [40:46]
Jodi Kantor
I need to know more. Like, it's so hard to give good advice based on that, you know, tiny little bit of information. Again, like, I don't want to presume too much, but this caller did sound a refrain. I sometimes hear from young people, which is like, this thing is not an option. This thing's totally off the table. This is not an option. And I just want to know why. Now, if her answer is that she's $300,000 in debt and just needs to take the most lucrative job. Okay, like, got it. Understood. And in that case, maybe we need to deal with her feelings of grief, you know, and talk about a path back to what she's interested in in many years. But if the problem is that she doesn't have a capacious enough sense of the workplace's possibilities because she hasn't experienced it yet, or because she got sent to, like, a very conventional career services center where, you know, the options are very out of the box.
- [41:51]
Frances Fry
I love this answer, Jodi.
- [41:52]
Jodi Kantor
I think my answer is, knowing the little that I know about you, I would encourage you to explore why you think certain things are not possible. And I would challenge you to not just sit in a library and think about it, because, like, this is. That's very painful. I don't think introspection is so good for students, to be honest. I think they need stimulation and exposure. Not like self marination and extended anxiety, but, like, go out into the world and talk to people about how the stuff you're interested in could translate to the workplace. I mean, there's no shortage of former anthropology and even linguistics majors who have made fascinating careers.
- [42:37]
Frances Fry
I find myself saying at least once a week to a group of people, if there were an anthropologist observing, what would they. Right. What would they see? What would they say? So I'm calling on anthropologists regularly.
- [42:52]
Anne Morris
Yeah, yeah, I love challenging the story that she's using of the world is not interested in the thing that I love sometimes she's interested in human beings. Right. So that would be. That's my tough love advice in this. So get out there with other human beings. My experience of this search for craft is Also, that craft for me didn't present in any kind of a traditional way. It wasn't a major that you could, you know, it wasn't, you know, you couldn't go to the trade school on what. What I was interested in, what was kind of pulling me forward. And I suspect that she's probably circling something like that. Jodi, this book is geared towards young people. It feels like a lot of your advice works for anyone seeking impact and purpose and activating ambition. Do you have different coaching for people reinventing themselves later in their careers?
- [43:46]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah, I mean, the main thing is, and this is like, so basic, but it's really worth saying because anybody trying to reinvent themselves needs to hear it every day. The main thing is to encourage them to insist on their own happiness. Not in a naive way, but making a change requires real bravery, and it requires risk. I mean, that maybe that's the note to end on. This is an environment in which everybody is seeking stability because it's a chaotic, intimidating environment. And I get that. I mean, of course, I understand why everybody just wants security right now. But the problem is that you don't really get anywhere in your career without risk. It's just the other ingredient. Sometimes you need more of it, sometimes you need less of it, but you do need to take chances. And so through the book tour conversations, I feel like some of my work has been to rehabilitate the idea of risk, even when other people are trying to totally minimize it. And especially making a change made a career that, like, there's a lot of risk and there's a different kind of risk than there is when you're young.
- [45:01]
Anne Morris
Francis, what's your reaction to that?
- [45:03]
Frances Fry
I just was thinking of all of the people that I know mid career. And your word risk is right, because when they did it, awesome at their last job, successfully transitioned, but didn't make it on the same timetable they wanted to. So I'm thinking of junior faculty that switch what they're studying, are totally happy in the new thing, but it didn't happen in time for them to get promoted. And I think that's the risk. In retrospect, I think they'd still do it because they went towards happiness. They're now doing the thing, they ended up in another school doing the thing. So I think your point of risk on which dimensions, and it's probably not as devastating like a no here. I don't. No doesn't mean anything to me. I get told it all the time. I hear, not now, not here. But I don't really hear no risk I think has. If it has a small R, we can just go and do it somewhere else. I want to treat it as a small R risk. So that's what my thought process was.
- [46:07]
Anne Morris
Jodi, for people listening, what's one thing that our listeners can do this week to start?
- [46:13]
Jodi Kantor
Okay, I hate cheesy journaling exercises, but I am about to recommend one because I really believe in this one.
- [46:22]
Anne Morris
You are a very credible messenger for this.
- [46:24]
Jodi Kantor
Thank you. Okay, buy, like, a really cheap notebook. Don't go to, like, one of those fancy stores where the notebooks are $67. I'm talking, like, $1.99. And I want you to use the notebook to notice yourself as you go through whatever your work, your extracurriculars, your classes. I'm going to give you the first couple of pages, like, in terms of what you should label them as categories, and then you can go on and make your own. I think the first page is tasks. I like doing tasks I haven't, not in the abstract, but like observing yourself as you go through your life. Which tasks made me the happiest this week? Which tasks did I hate? Which people did I feel most drawn to? Who couldn't I stand?
- [47:12]
Anne Morris
Which people do I hate? Just to keep the structure and poetry
- [47:17]
Jodi Kantor
of the exercise, you have to be very careful that this notebook doesn't fall into enemy hands. You might want to use code names for the people you hate. Another big one is, like, which events or meetings lit me up? Or were there events or meetings that I wanted invitations to even if I didn't get them, which were total bummers for me, this is the first step to finding craft and I think to starting again. Because we're filled with duty and obligation and because we go through the workday looking at our phones, I think we don't do enough noticing of which are the hour by hour tasks that I really groove to. You don't have to be amazing at them at first, but they need to hold, like, some sort of magnetic attraction to you, and that is the first step towards craft.
- [48:07]
Anne Morris
I love it. I love light me up. I love groove, too. I love all those phrases.
- [48:11]
Frances Fry
And I think an anthropologist would be really good at this.
- [48:13]
Anne Morris
Yeah. If only we had anthropologists who could help guide us. All right, last question. We ask all our guests. What are you currently fixated on outside of work?
- [48:22]
Jodi Kantor
Ooh. Oh, my God. I have a great one. I'm going to take a sabbatical a year from yo. Look at you guys. So I'm gonna take a sabbatical a year from July. I'm gonna do it when the younger kid is in summer camp. So for the first time in my working life, I will have no work responsibility and no parenting responsibility. It's four weeks. I can do basically anything. I mean, not something that costs $4 million, but like within a reasonable spectrum. I can do anything. I don't want to learn a new skill like no violin. I have worked way too hard. The goal is rest and the goal is letting go. But the thing I think about every day is how do I use that time really well, not in an over optimized, every minute needs to be accounted for way. But this is special. This is really special. I've worked really hard over the years.
- [49:21]
Anne Morris
Jodi Kanter, you're a rock star. Thank you so much for coming on Fixable.
- [49:24]
Jodi Kantor
Thank you for having me. It's great to talk to you guys again.
- [49:30]
Anne Morris
And if you're enjoying this show, make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and tell a friend to check us out. Fixable is a podcast brought to you by Ted and Pushkin Industries. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris, and me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Trina Menino. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloraiso and Roxanne hi Lash.
- [50:03]
Frances Fry
Our show is mixed by Louis at Storyyard.
- [50:14]
Anne Morris
I love that we have audio of Jodi Kanter at work.
- [50:19]
Frances Fry
Key strokes and everything.
- [50:20]
Anne Morris
Keystrokes. Yeah.
- [50:22]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah, it's exciting, guys. I mean, the sending of emails. Just brace yourselves.
- [50:27]
Anne Morris
Very glamorous.
- [50:28]
Jodi Kantor
Yeah, exactly.
- [50:34]
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- [51:12]
Listener / Hannah Burner
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- [52:07]
Anne Morris
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- [52:41]
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