Why Walking is More Powerful Than You Think & A Career You May Have Missed

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Something You Should Know
Host: Mike Carruthers
Episode: Why Walking is More Powerful Than You Think & A Career You May Have Missed
Date: May 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores two big topics:

• The surprising power and science of walking for your health and longevity, featuring expert Dr. Courtney Conley.
• A fresh take on how we choose careers, with author and workplace expert Tom Rath sharing why pursuing "passion" may be overhyped, and exposure to options is crucial.

Throughout, the host, Mike Carruthers, draws out practical advice and mind-opening facts to help listeners improve both health and professional fulfillment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Science of Walking’s Benefits

Guest: Dr. Courtney Conley, chiropractic physician, foot mechanics & gait expert, author of Rediscover the Most Natural Way to Boost Your Health and Longevity

Walking is a Biological Necessity

• Walking should be considered as essential as sleeping and breathing.
• Dr. Conley:
  "Walking is a physiological necessity. ...It's a core biological input that every system in our body depends on to function well." (06:17)

Step Counts and Disease Prevention

• Just 5,000–7,000 steps per day leads to an 11% reduction in cancer risk; 7,000–9,000 steps brought a 16% reduction.
• You don’t need to be a marathoner—simply increasing your baseline step count makes a difference.
• Dr. Conley:
  "At 5 to 7,000 steps you have an 11% lower risk of cancers. When you get 7 to 9,000 steps, 16% lower risk. I mean, this is something that we all have easy access to..." (07:23)

Steps, Intensity, and Metabolic Benefits

• Brisk walking (about 3.5–4 mph on a treadmill, or 130–135 steps/min) is particularly effective for chronic disease risk reduction.
• Post-meal walks (even leisurely, for 10–15 minutes within 30 minutes of eating) can dramatically improve glucose metabolism.
  "Just get outside...within 30 minutes of your meal—that's when you would see the most benefits for this glucose metabolism." (10:34)

Average Step Counts and Practical Tips

• Average global step count is 4,700–5,000 per day.
• Even those on their feet a lot are sometimes surprised by low tallies; Dr. Conley advises “microwalks” (an extra 500 steps at a time).

Injury and Walking

• Walking is low-load and uses a mid-range of motion: “We as human beings should be able to walk long distances...well over 7 to 8,000 steps”.
• Most walking-related issues stem from weakness or poor footwear, not the act itself.

Overweight/Obese Populations

• For people with excess weight or in pain, start with microwalks: “Five minutes and we will see how they feel that night and the next morning. And it's progressive load.” (14:35)

Treadmill Walking Best Practices

• Set incline to at least 1.0 to simulate outdoor resistance.
• Use interval training (alternate incline and flat).
• Dr. Conley:
  "You can do interval training...increase the incline to, say, three or four, walk there for a couple minutes, and then drop it back down." (17:55)

Footwear: The Most Overlooked Walking Variable

• Most shoes (even “athletic” shoes) squeeze toes together, leading to altered gait and forefoot injuries.
• The widest part of a shoe should match the toes, “not the ball of the foot, the actual toe box.” (18:52)
• Most mainstream brands make shoes with “tapered” toe boxes for fashion, not anatomy.
• Look for “wide toe box, low to zero drop” shoes. Companies mentioned: Altra, Topo Athletic, Notice. "Functional footwear is your wide toe box having the heel and toe in a low to zero drop...That’s the position that aligns the rest of our bodies." (23:05)
• Transition slowly if switching from traditional to functional footwear.

How to Assess Your Current Shoes

• Remove the factory insert, stand on it with toes splayed—if toes spill over the edge, the shoe is too narrow (24:48).

Memorable Exchange:
Mike Carruthers: "If I looked at your shoes right now, would I think, well, those look kind of goofy?"
Dr. Conley: "My daughter is 15 and she'll say to me, mom, you make me wear these platypus shoes." (22:16)

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2. Rethinking Careers, Purpose, and Passion

Guest: Tom Rath, workplace and well-being researcher, author of What’s the Point? Turning Purpose into Your Daily Superpower

The Myth of “Follow Your Passion”

• "Starting with 'what do I want' and expecting the world to revolve around that rarely works."
• Instead, focus on what the community, market, or world need, and fit yourself in there. (29:14)
• Most people end up in jobs by accident: doing what parents did, what’s available, or what pays—not through planned exploration.

Exposure is Everything

• The reason young people can’t answer “what do you want to be?”: their exposure is limited to 5–10% of real options.
• Statistically, many follow parents’ career paths—even the same companies—by default.
• Tom Rath:
  "If your father was a dentist, you're more than 100 times as likely to do that...it's overwhelming the degree to which we just follow our parents." (34:16)

Broaden the Field of View

• The optimal approach is to see as much as possible, try different jobs early, and avoid premature specialization.
• “Doing a thorough evaluation…needs to be built into more of our educational program, into conversations as parents.” (35:51)
• Job satisfaction often grows from exposure plus pursuit of opportunities that serve a need.

The Reality of Modern Careers

• Today, few stay in one career their entire life—a positive in that it permits more exploration and change.
• Changing jobs every few years builds breadth and better fit over time.

Meaning and Money

• Chasing money alone rarely brings long-term satisfaction.
• Once basic financial needs are met, more income brings little happiness ("a hedonic treadmill").
• Purpose is best built into daily actions and small wins, not as a quest for one grand purpose.
• “Purpose becomes something practical, not intimidating.” (39:57)

Notable Quotes

• Tom Rath:
  "None of us...get to spend 50, 60, 70% of my day doing things that are super fulfilling...But I need to try and figure out a way to do that at least once a day." (41:34)
• On law as a profession:
  "If there are two things you really don't want to do for your wellbeing...don't retire...The second one would be don't go to law school." (45:56)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On walking as essential as breathing:
  "Walking is a physiological necessity. ...it's a core biological input that every system in our body depends on."
  — Dr. Courtney Conley (06:17)

• On cancer prevention through steps:
  "At 5 to 7,000 steps you have an 11% lower risk of cancers. When you get 7 to 9,000 steps, 16% lower risk."
  — Dr. Courtney Conley (07:23)

• On the purpose vs. passion mindset:
  "We're essentially doing things backwards...starting with who we are and expecting the world to revolve around us."
  — Tom Rath (29:14)

• On job inheritance:
  "If your father was a dentist, you're more than 100 times as likely to do that... it's overwhelming."
  — Tom Rath (34:16)

• On the challenge of limited career exposure:
  "People don't know what they don't know."
  — Tom Rath (38:34)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Why Preheat the Oven? – Quick science tip by Mike (02:55–05:49)
• How Walking Powers Your Health – With Dr. Courtney Conley (06:00–26:52)
  • Physiological necessity of walking (06:17)
  • Steps, cancer risk statistics (07:23)
  • Post-meal walks & glucose (09:08–11:11)
  • Average step counts and microwalks (11:19–12:34)
  • Injury, overweight populations, treadmill walking (12:34–17:55)
  • What makes a good walking shoe? (18:52–24:16)
  • DIY shoe fit test & the problem with the footwear industry (24:48–26:03)
• Rethinking Careers & Passion – With Tom Rath (29:01–46:40)
  • Problems with “follow your passion” (29:14)
  • How people end up in careers (30:13–34:16)
  • The value of broad exposure & flexible careers (35:51–39:57)
  • Purpose vs. money (42:58)
• Salt, Hyperpalatable Foods, and Overeating – Quick fact (46:45)

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Takeaways

• Walking more (even a little) can transform your risk for chronic disease and improve metabolic health. Prioritize step counts and choose shoes with anatomical toe boxes.
• When walking, don’t stress over pace or perfection—do more than nothing, and be consistent, especially after meals.
• Career fulfillment is less about one perfect passion and more about exposure, adaptability and aligning your work with real-world needs.
• Purpose isn’t a mythical quest but is most powerful when integrated into daily life through small, meaningful actions.
• Reconsider your shoes and your approach to careers—both could use more practical, less traditional thinking.

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This episode is packed with actionable wisdom you probably haven’t heard: from the counterintuitive science of walking’s benefits to how most of us end up in default jobs and what to do about it. If you want to live longer, feel better, and chart a more fulfilling path (at work and on foot), it’s essential listening.

Transcript

[Mike Carruthers]

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[Dr. Courtney Conley]

At 5 to 7,000 steps you have an 11% lower risk of cancers. When you get 7 to 9,000 steps, 16% lower risk. I mean and this is something that we all have easy access to that I think a lot of us aren't taking advantage of.

[Mike Carruthers]

Also is salt in your food making you eat more. And finding your calling is the career you've chosen, the actual thing you're best at.

[Tom Rath]

Most people get all the way to the end of a career and they never uncover what they could have been best at in life. And so I've spent the last five years just doing an intensive dive around how can we help people to at least see what's out there?

[Mike Carruthers]

All this today on something you should

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[Mike Carruthers]

Something you should know Fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carruthers Even if you're just an occasional cook, I'm sure you've wondered, why do you have to preheat the oven? Wouldn't it be better to just put the fridge and let it heat up along with the oven? Well, we're going to answer that question as we start this episode of Something you should Know. I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome. So it might appear that preheating the oven before you cook something is not only a waste of time, it's a waste of energy. Why do it? Well, according to food scientists and bakers, that first blast of heat once the oven is heated up is one of the most important parts of cooking. When dough and batter hit a properly heated oven, trapped air and moisture rapidly expand, which creates the soft crumb in cakes, the flaky layers in pastries, the chewy, crispy texture of a pizza crust, and the perfect bite of a cookie. Without that immediate blast of heat, the chemistry changes. Cookies can turn hard and dry, cakes even develop a strange, dense layer at the bottom, pastries lose their flakiness, and pizza crust can come pale and limp instead of crispy and chewy. In other words, preheating isn't just about getting the oven hot, it's about triggering a chain reaction that completely changes the texture, flavor, and even the appearance of what you're cooking. And that is something you should know. Okay, so this might seem a little weird to talk about walking if you're an able bodied person. Walking is something you do every day. You do it a lot. You do it without thinking. It seems to work pretty well. It gets you from here to there. So what in the world could be so interesting about walking that would warrant a whole segment on something you should know? Well, you'll be amazed from how you walk, when you walk, how much you walk, the shoes you wear when you walk, and how all of this affects your health and well being. There is so much to the science of all of this I bet you have never heard before. And there's no one better to discuss it than Dr. Courtney Conley. She holds a doctorate in chiropractic medicine and she is an internationally recognized authority on foot mechanics and gait dynamics. She works with individual clients as well as professional athletic teams including the Phoenix Suns, the New York Yankees, Cleveland Browns, New York Giants, San Francisco 49ers, and the Minnesota Vikings. She's author of a book called Rediscover the Most Natural Way to Boost your Health and Longevity. One step at a time. Hi Courtney. Welcome to Something youg Should Know.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Thank you for having me on and I'm excited to talk to you.

[Mike Carruthers]

So when I think about it, walking is not a subject that comes up in conversation very often and yet we're doing it all day, every day. We don't really talk about it, so why are we talking about it?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

What I want to educate people on is that walking is a physiological necessity. So that should be in the same category as breathing and sleeping. And so when we look at it from that lens, that it's a core biological input that every system in our body depends on to function well. If we are not getting the appropriate inputs, then every system in our body suffers. Your metabolic system, your cardiovascular system, your nervous system, your circulatory and lymphatic system. So because this is what we were designed to do and what we have evolved to do, putting one step in front of the other is a non negotiable and we need to look at it, like I said, from that lens, in order to live well and live long.

[Mike Carruthers]

And is walking, walking as long as you're putting one foot in front of the other, the steps or the steps, or is there a quality of walking, a quality of steps that matters or just walk?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

That's a great question. And I always respond, saying anything is better than nothing. So when you're looking at, if you were to assess your baseline, for example, and see how many steps per day you're taking, if you are someone that lives on the lower end, say 2500, 3000 steps per day, then my recommendation is always just get out there, take another 500 steps, which is called a microwalk, so that we can start to put more time on your feet. If you are someone that's already getting 6, 7, 8,000 steps, we can also look at intensity of your walking. A lot of the research, especially the ones looking at lowering the risk of certain cancers, talk about walking for 30 minutes at a brisk pace. So that's very different than say ambient steps that you get around your house. This is going outside or getting on a treadmill, walking at a specific speed. So if you were on a treadmill, it would be 3.5 or 4.0 miles per hour for 30 minutes. Or if you were outside getting a step count of about 130 to 135 steps per minute. And when you can do that, the research is really exciting. At 5 to 7,000 steps, you have an 11% lower risk of cancers. When you get 7 to 9,000 steps, 16% lower risk. I mean, this is something that we all have easy access to that I think a lot of us aren't taking advantage of.

[Mike Carruthers]

And so what's the connection, what's the connection between steps and this reduction of health problems?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Well, when you look at it, for example, with each system. So if I were to take the metabolic system, a lot of the research talks about going for a walk after you eat. And when you eat something, you have an increase in glucose in your bloodstream. And our goal is to get the glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cells to be used. Our pancreas does that and so does activity, movement, walking. So when we eat a meal and we're sedentary afterwards, the pancreas is the only system that's working. We're not taking advantage of the movement system. So the pancreas has to work harder. So for someone who has diabetes, for example, or insulin resistance, and we all should be monitoring, you know, our glucose levels to some extent. This form of activity, of going for a 10 to 15 minute walk after you eat has so many health benefits for your metabolic system, for example. And you can relate that research to, like I said, every system in the body.

[Mike Carruthers]

And that 10 to 15 minute walk after dinner tends to be pretty leisurely because you've just eaten a meal, it's evening, you're getting tired, and I would imagine brisker would be better, but leisurely is fine or what?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Yeah, that's interesting. After you eat, the research will say just get out there. They don't look at how fast you're walking. It's just get outside, get on your treadmill and go for 10 to 15 minutes. The interesting thing that they found there was making it within 30 minutes of the meal, though. So that's when you would see the most benefits for this glucose metabolism. Insulin sensitivity is within 30 minutes of your meal.

[Mike Carruthers]

Regardless of how you walk, just regardless of speed.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

It's just 10 to 15 minutes after you eat, which is, you know, it's nice. My daughter and I do that after dinner. It's, it's a nice little walk.

[Mike Carruthers]

You said, I think you said the average number of steps people take per day is somewhere around 4,500 steps a day.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

That's the average. When you look across the board, global, how many, how many steps are people taking on average? And it's 4,700 5,000 steps per day.

[Mike Carruthers]

What surprises me is that if you walk a mile, which sounds like a lot of walking, that's only about 2000, 2500 steps. That's not even halfway there, right?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

If you look at it from that context, five minutes is about 500 steps. So 10 minutes would be a thousand. It's interesting. You know, when I'm in my clinic and I'm seeing patients, I'm constantly moving, so I'm never sitting for the eight or nine hours that I'm there. But when I get home and I look at my step count, I'll sometimes only be at 4,000, 5,000 steps. So it's been a reminder for me as well. When I get home, if I haven't hit my baseline, which is 7,000 is my baseline, then I know I have a 20 minute walk to do before I'm calling it a day.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about the idea that walking a lot causes injuries? That wears things out? That it's too much is not good?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

When you understand the mechanics of walking, I think we can reframe that a little bit. Walking is a low load activity. It also is a mid range range of motion activity. So what I mean by that is if you were to look at your ankle mobility, ankle range of motion is around 20, 25 degrees. Some have 30 degrees. So that's your average ankle range of motion. But in a walking gait, the ankle only needs 10 degrees of range of motion. That's the same with the big toe. So we're not taking our joints to their end range when we're walking. That's why we as human beings are able to walk upright and balanced for very long distances. We are endurance creatures. So to say that walking too much can be detrimental, I would argue that is it the walking or is it potentially that there's a weakness somewhere? Do you have weakness in your feet? Do you have weakness or less ankle power? And when those things happen, then the longer you walk, things become more difficult because you are no longer efficient. But we as human beings should be able to walk for very long distances, well over 7 to 8,000 steps, if we chose to without being concerned that we would be causing damage to our joints and tissues.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about people who are seriously overweight? So they're putting a lot more stress on their joints because of all the weight they're carrying.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Small doses, this is a large portion of my patient population are either people that are overweight or in pain. And we want to build confidence with them in their movement and get them to trust their bodies. So we start with microwalks. Five minutes and we will see how they feel that night and the next morning. And it's progressive load. You're just slowly adding time on your feet and outside. You're building endurance and it's a safe way to do that because of the amount of loads going through the system.

[Mike Carruthers]

In a moment I want to talk to you about walking on a treadmill because with the treadmill you can design your own terrain, your own incline, your own program. But what's the best way to do that?

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[Mike Carruthers]

We're talking about walking with Dr. Courtney Connelly. She's author of Rediscover the most natural way to boost your health and longevity One step at a time. So Courtney, for people who walk On a treadmill, like, I do always wonder, like, what's the best incline number? Or should you be walking flat? Should you be walking uphill? If so, how much? What do you say?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Yeah. There's many benefits to treadmill walking. It's a controlled environment, so we can keep the speed the same. If you were interested in weight loss and you wanted to focus on zone two training, there's a. You can do that easier on a treadmill because you keep. You can keep the environment controlled. On the treadmill, I like to keep the incline at a minimum of 1.0 because it takes a little bit of the. There's a little kickback feature on a treadmill, so when you put it to 1.0, it takes care of that. But then on the treadmill, you can also do interval training, which I really like. So that would be you could increase the incline to, say, three or four. Walk there for a couple minutes and then drop it back down. And I like that training variability. I think it's very good from a cardiovascular perspective.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about the shoes you wear?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

The simplest answer to that is the widest part of your foot should be your toes. So if you were to look down at your foot, the widest part should be the toes. Which means that if footwear is going to respect the anatomy of the foot to allow it to function as it should, the widest part of our shoes should be the toe box, not the ball of the foot, the actual toe box. And I think if you look at the majority of footwear, you'll see that the toe box is tapered. It almost looks like it's pointing. That changes the function of the foot, in particular the big toe. That big toe is responsible for pushing us forward, for stabilizing our forefoot, for getting us to balance. And when you take that big toe and you angle it and squeeze it into a toe box, you're changing the function of the foot. And that's truly why I believe we see the majority of forefoot injuries or pain in the ball of the foot, because people go to push off when they're walking and they no longer have a wide, stable platform.

[Mike Carruthers]

Wow.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

They have a tapered toe box.

[Mike Carruthers]

I'm looking at my shoes and I have a tapered toe box. And this is a, you know, name brand athletic shoe. How hard are the shoes you're talking about? How hard are they to find?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

When I first started doing this, there was one company, but now there's thousands that are starting to realize the importance of putting your foot into a shoe that respects the anatomy and function of it.

[Mike Carruthers]

So if I were to call the guy that designs the shoes for Nike or Skechers or whatever, and I asked them, well, you guys taper your toes there. What's the point? What would they say?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

I've called, trust me, I've called plenty of them. There is an important caveat to this conversation, is that there is a difference between a wide shoe, a wide toe box. So a lot of these companies have wide shoes, which is width at the ball of the foot. That's a different conversation than a wide toe box. So they'll say, well, we do have wide shoes. And I'll say, well, the width is in the wrong place. These companies are well aware of this research. The problem is that their entire business model is based on stability footwear or fashionable footwear. And we were warned, this is. We were warned centuries ago that if we started compromising our foot because of footwear, that we were going to see problems. And I truly believe that if we were to pay attention, especially with our children, that we would see a lot, a lot less of these foot injuries.

[Mike Carruthers]

So if I looked at your shoes right now, would I think, well, those look kind of goofy, or do they? I mean, what. It's hard to imagine. I have to look this up online, but do they look weird?

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Well, when they. The first company that I first looked, that I was. When I first got into this, you could say yes, but they've come a long way. My daughter is 15 and she'll say to me, mom, you make me wear these platypus shoes. So our eyes have been trained to think that fashionable footwear is very pointed and very narrow. Yes. My shoes, my non negotiable with my footwear is a wide toe box.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, and to buy a wide toe box shoe, if I were to look for one online, I would ask, I would search for a wide toe box shoe.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Yes, I have companies. I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to.

[Tom Rath]

Yeah, sure.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, you can say, I'm sure.

[Tom Rath]

Okay.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

We talk about the difference between functional versus minimal footwear. So functional footwear is your wide toe box having the heel and toe in a low to zero drop, which basically means if you were to stand barefoot on the ground, your heel and your toe would be on the same plane. That's the position that aligns the rest of our bodies. Our ankle, our knee, our hips. So when you wear a shoe that has, say, an 8 millimeter drop or a 10 millimeter drop, you're basically in a high heel. And that's the majority of athletic shoes out there. So functional footwear, wide toe box, low to zero drop. Companies that fit in that category, ultra running, topo athletic. And there's a new company called Notice. If you pay attention, you'll start to see more and more people wearing this type of footwear. With my patients, when we're transitioning them out of traditional footwear, I always start with one of those companies because those shoes have a little more cushion on them.

[Mike Carruthers]

There's a. There's a lot of companies that are conspicuously absent from your list.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Yes, you are very correct.

[Mike Carruthers]

And some of them, I would think, would be on your list. People that see the companies that seem to make shoes for. Well, they're not necessarily making walking shoes. They're making tennis shoes or running shoes. And maybe that's a different conversation.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Yeah. You know, one of the things, everybody has a different sized foot, so what you can do at home is take out the factory insert of your shoe. So if you have any type of running shoe at home or walking shoe, take out the factory insert, put your foot on it and splay your toes. Because most people's feet, when you look at them, because they've been in restrictive footwear for so many years, their toes look like a shoe. They're tapered towards the top. So if you can put your foot on the factory insert and spread your toes out, do your toes expand over the factory insert? And if they do, you know when you put your foot inside that shoe that your toes are going to be squished together. So some people with more narrow feet, for example, can get away with some of these other companies, but for the most part, the majority of footwear does not respect the anatomy of the foot. And it's really interesting that, as I've called many of these companies, a lot of the people that design these shoes have a fashion background and not an anatomy background.

[Mike Carruthers]

Interesting, because you would think the opposite when it comes to athletic shoes, that the shoes would be designed for the purpose of that the shoe is intended for. These are basketball shoes, these are running shoes, these are walking shoes.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Yes.

[Mike Carruthers]

No, apparently not.

[Tom Rath]

Yeah.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, you've certainly said a lot of things I've never heard before, not just about shoes, but what you were saying earlier about the relationship between walking and cancer. I mean, this is really eye opening. I've been speaking with Dr. Courtney Connolly, and she is author of a book called Walk Rediscover the most natural way to boost your health and longevity, One step at a time. And there's a link to her book at Amazon in the show notes. Courtney, this was great. Thank you. Thanks for explaining all this.

[Dr. Courtney Conley]

Thank you Mike so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation.

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[Dr. Courtney Conley]

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[Mike Carruthers]

Done.

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[Mike Carruthers]

From an early age, many of us are told some version of this message. Follow your passion, chase your dream. Do what you love. And if you don't find that one perfect calling or you end up in a job that's not your life's passion, it can feel like somehow you missed out. But what if that whole idea is misguided? What if purpose and fulfillment don't come from finding one magical thing you were meant to do? What if meaning is something much more practical and much more attainable? My guest says we've put way too much pressure on ourselves to discover a grand purpose when in reality, small daily actions may matter far more. Tom Rath has spent the last two decades researching how work and behavior affect human well being. He's the author of several best selling books and his latest is called what's the Point? Turning purpose into your daily superpower. Tom, welcome to something you should know.

[Tom Rath]

Thanks so much. It's good to be with you.

[Mike Carruthers]

So what about this idea of seeking out whatever it is you're passionate about as the road to fulfillment? What does the research say and what do you say?

[Tom Rath]

I think what the biggest challenge or mismatch that I see out there right now is that we're essentially doing things backwards and we're starting with who we are and then expecting the world to revolve around us. And I think a lot of people realize pretty early on in their career that it doesn't work out that way very well. So what I've been encouraging people to do. The more I study this and learn about it is to, instead of trying to kind of pump who they are into the world to do a much deeper dive and focus on what the community around you needs, what your family needs, what your customers need, what the world needs, and then to figure out how you can connect some of those dots, because simply starting with what you're passionate about, it creates an instant mismatch in the basic supply and demand of people and labor markets out there.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, I mean, I guess it could by accident fit into the scheme of things, but it seems like the odds are much better doing it the way you just suggested instead of the other way around.

[Tom Rath]

You know, most people that I talk to, they wind up in the jobs that they're in the same way I did. And most people, I know where you end up doing what mom did, you do what dad did, or you do where who will employ you, or where the money is, or where the social expectations are. But in very few cases is it ever the product of real, meaningful thought and working things through and trying to see what's out there. And that's one of my biggest concerns in life, especially for my kids who are 15 and 17 right now, because I'm increasingly convinced that most people get all the way to the end of a career and they never uncover what they could have been best at in life. And so I've spent the last three to five years just doing an intensive dive around how can we help people to learn more earlier on so that they at least see what's out there?

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, when your son or your daughter comes to you and says, you know, or you have a conversation about, you know, what do you want to do with your life? What kind of, what is it that interests you? The question is, what interests you? It's what do you want to do? What do you find interesting? That that's usually where the conversation begins.

[Tom Rath]

Yeah. And my biggest concern is that they're not even qualified to answer that question. So when I asked my daughter that when she was 14, three years ago, and I said, what are the things you kind of think about when you're thinking about careers? I started to dig into this and for context. My wife's a second grade teacher. She said, oh, I think maybe I could be a teacher or maybe a writer. So that's. I mean, there are. You'd need to see 50 jobs, have exposure to 50 jobs just to see half of the US workforce. I've done the math on this. And so if young People are asked to figure out what they want to major in or what they want to do for a career. When they're 17 years old or 21 years old, they probably have about 5 to 10% field of view or aperture, if you think about it, similar to a camera lens. And so we've got to find ways to stretch that a little bit, because the byproduct of it is that you end up in a job when you're 35 that you burn out in and you're not loving, or you miss out on an opportunity to be really great at something because our system pushed you to focus and narrow so early on that people never had the chance to broaden their exposure, essentially.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, it seems that when you look back or you talk to people about, oh, how did you get into the line of work that you're in, it isn't from any kind of deep thought or as you were saying, it's because your father did it, or the neighbor had a. Knew a guy who had a job that you took, or it's. It seems very happenstance and very random. It doesn't seem like a thoughtful approach.

[Tom Rath]

Yeah, I mean, most people, to be really honest, they just fall into the defaults. Right. And so as I've. And even, even when I've. I've been interviewing people about this for three or four years now, and when I get back and talk to him about what their precious childhood dreams. Usually those childhood dreams are more of an amalgamation of what their parents might have been good at or might have failed at and pushed down to the next generation. Or. I mean, some of it's really innocent. Where we've grown up in a kind of a developing country with a real hard work ethic, where it's natural for parents to say, I want to pass X or Y or Z psychologically or financially, on to the next generation. And there's a piece of financial security and sustenance built into that as well. But yet, I mean, I've met with people who have passed businesses on to the next generation of their family, and I say to the first generation founder who passed on, I said, you know, did you ever ask your kids if they wanted to be a part of this? And they'll kind of look at me and chuckle and be like, no, actually I didn't.

[Mike Carruthers]

You know, I'm curious if there are any statistics about how often someone actually goes into the same business their parents were in. Do we have any sense of that?

[Tom Rath]

You know, it's. It's absolutely unbelievable. There's Some tables we have in this new book, what's the Point where it shows that if your father was a dentist, you're more than 100 times as likely to do that, or if your mother was in the military service, you're 200 times more likely to end up in that exact job. And there's research that longitudinal 30 year research out of Europe showing how most young men between I think it was in 1970 and 2000, roughly because these are long term studies, they not only end up, a majority end up in the same job or industry as their father, it's boys follow men, women follow their mothers. On average, to oversimplify it and but, but it's almost a third end up in the exact same company and job. So it's overwhelming the degree to which we pretty much just follow our parents. When I this a part of what got me into this work and really struck me was I when I first met my wife 20 years ago, she took me to a wedding down in South Carolina and it was a bunch of people I'd never met. And the first question all the young men my age asked me, they said, oh, what's yo daddy do? And I didn't really understand the question at first. And I asked my wife, I said, what's this? What's this about? And they said, oh, they just know that that's what you're going to do and that represents what your social standing will be. Right? And so I mean growing up around a couple of family businesses, that's frightened me a little bit. Where am I just kind of falling into this? Because it's what everybody expects.

[Mike Carruthers]

So if the approach of what does your daddy do? Or what do you want to be when you grow up? If those aren't the best ways to go about it, what works better?

[Tom Rath]

I think what works better is doing a thorough evaluation of a what's out there and what are things that people do that are important and that do serve a need. And that needs to be built into more of our educational program. It needs to be built into more of the conversations that we as parents have with our kids. So we say to our kids we want you to explore a lot of stuff and find what you could be great at, not just feel like you need to do what mom or dad did. And I also think it takes some examination as we enter the workforce to say what are the things that not only society values most, but how can I make sure that in the earliest years of my time in the workforce I get exposure to a lot more Than there was kind of a conventional wisdom when I entered the workforce, geez, almost 30 years ago now, where the goal or the dream was to have a lifelong career. And I think that's already changed quite a bit where people are moving around every year and a half, two, three, four years. And so to think about that broadening of exposure, especially in the earliest stages of a career, as a positive aspect might be a good thing.

[Mike Carruthers]

Very often when you talk to young people about what they want to do, the answer is I don't know. It's kind of hard to carry on the conversation from I don't know.

[Tom Rath]

It's hard to carry on the conversation from I don't know. And that's a part of the reason why I've spent most of my time in the last few years trying to. We've sent production crews out all over the country and filmed people doing A Day in the Life of being a Veterinarian, A Day in the Life of Being a Pilot, A Day in the Life of Being a Nurse, and talked about the stressful parts, the fun parts, exciting parts, boring parts, and just so we had some videos to show people about what that's like. Because when I look back at my own experience, I mean, I. I followed my family into a family business and ended up kind of doing research and writing because of my family and mentors and where that path took me. And I mean, as I look back now, the thing I'm most passionate about and spend hours every morning studying is more about health and medicine, to be really honest. But I never knew any nurses or PAs or physicians growing up or there's a really good chance I could have and should have studied that. So think as parents and teachers and mentors, we've all got to do a little bit better job of helping people to stretch that field of view.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, that's a really important point, is that people could be good at lots of things, but it really has to do with how much exposure you have to something. If you might have been great in the medical field, but you didn't really have the exposure to that, it's kind of hard to know. It's hard to know what you don't know.

[Tom Rath]

That's, you know, that's. As I've worked on this for the last five years, I've talked to my team about it and said the biggest problem we have with trying to educate people around this is that people don't know what they don't know. So you just came to that perfectly where it's. We don't even, we're looking out of a lens where we can see about 3 degrees of all the careers out there, maybe 5 degrees if we're lucky, out of, out of 180 or whatever. And if that's, or if we're looking out of a pinhole, there's almost no way we have a shot at that. So I think the goal should probably be to help people see 10 or 20% of what's out there instead of 3 to 5. And that that would be, that would make some big progress. And I also think that the way the nature of jobs is changing so fast right now that if we have this upheaval that is already starting in pockets, I'm seeing that a lot of people are going to be forced to say, hey, what's a career? That was never on my radar when I was young, but I need to kind of think about new ways where I can contribute to the world, even if it's in a very different capacity.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, we hear today that people, unlike in previous generations, don't pick a career, work it for 50 years, get a watch when they leave, and that's the end of it. That they have multiple careers or certainly many multiple jobs within an industry that it isn't like it used to be.

[Tom Rath]

Yeah, I don't think it's realistic at all for someone to think about a career in the same sense that I would have growing up and something you kind of stick with forever. And that can produce anxiety and be challenging in terms of the security and financial aspect of it. And I hear from young people about that all the time. But it also presents a little bit of opportunity because ideally early on in your career you're going to have the opportunity to jump around a little bit more, see some more opportunities, and then ask a question about over the next 20, 30, 40 years of your life, what are all the different ways that you can make a contribution to your community or your organization and continue to find ways to do things that serve a purpose? That was kind of the other big discovery from this whole research project I've been working on is that when I heard the word purpose at first it seems like this big time consuming quest and something that eventually you find after years and years of hard work, when in reality purpose is just something that you have to build into your day on more of a moment to moment, an hourly basis and make sure that you're connecting back what you do every day with the value it delivers for another person. And if you're able, if you're able to build that into your daily routine. Purpose becomes something that's a lot more practical than a big, intimidating, overwhelming concept about kind of like winning in your career, essentially.

[Mike Carruthers]

So then how do you find something that makes you happy, that lights you up, not just because you made a difference in some people's lives, but because you enjoy the work you're doing?

[Tom Rath]

Yeah, I mean, that's the obvious goal. And I think it's also important to set realistic expectations. Where when I first started working on this research about strengths with our teams at Gallup many years ago, the question that we ask people in the Gallup's employee Engagement Survey many years ago is I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day. So none of us, even as much, many decades as I've spent on this, I don't get to spend 50, 60, 70% of my day doing things that are super fulfilling and use my strengths and all that. But. But I need to try and figure out a way to do that at least once a day and maybe even with 10 or 20 or 30% of my day, if I'm really lucky, and acknowledge that that's kind of the fuel that keeps things going. Even though we all have to answer emails, we all have to do expense reports and do things our boss wants, that may not be at the top of our priority list. So there's some alignment of expectations there too. Where I think people in the workforce today need to have some realism about that, where it's making sure you have some small wins throughout the day and then acknowledging those wins instead of taking for granted so you have a little motivation to keep going the next day, even if you're in a neutral to mediocre job until you find something better.

[Mike Carruthers]

What about people who say or who think that really they don't care so much what they do, they just want to make a lot of money. Is that a worthy goal?

[Tom Rath]

I don't think so. Personally. I'll just be real direct. I think if the soul. The more that the goal is climbing a financial ladder, the less likely the person is to ever find real purpose or meaning or satisfaction. Because that is kind of what researchers call a hedonic treadmill that never stops. Where if that's your orientation, you're always going to have discontent and you're always going to feel inadequate when you're comparing yourself to, to a higher status group which just keeps going and going and going. So there, of course, all of us, you need to make enough money to where it's not causing day to day stress and consternation. You're not worrying about paying your bills, you're not worrying about your mortgage, you're not worrying about being able to feed yourself. But once you get to that point, every doubling in income, people think it's going to make them twice as happy. And it makes them, I don't know, 5 or 7% as happy with each doubling in income. So all the time that's wasted on that from a social and a family and an emotional and a relational standpoint, I think is commonly a mistake.

[Mike Carruthers]

But at least today it seems that once you choose a career, you're not locked into it in the way that maybe people were a few generations ago. Where once you became a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, that was pretty much it for you. Now it's much more acceptable to jump ship and go do something else that you want to do.

[Tom Rath]

It is. But there's still, I would argue, like a little bit of that, what psychologists call that endowment effect, where once you've put four years into an engineering degree, or once you've put six to eight years into medical education, or you've put six years into a law degree, you're much less likely to jump because you feel like you've invested so much time and psychologically and financially into the more specialized training in some of those fields. So I mean, another part of the problem here is I talked to a bunch of my friends who I went to undergraduate college with at Michigan and they mostly went into med school or law school because that's what their parents expected of them, whether their parents were in those professions as well or not. And out of the ones that went to law school, there may be one out of five who are still practicing law because they realize they didn't enjoy that and probably would have taken back going to law school had they done a more thorough evaluation of that. So you still have some of that baked into the higher education system. You have a little bit less when you get into trades and two year and technical school.

[Mike Carruthers]

Yeah, well that does seem to be pretty commonplace with lawyers. You hear that a lot about lawyers, and I know some too, that went through law school, became lawyers and hated it and left and thought this is not, this is not for me. And you wonder, well, it took you a long time to figure that out.

[Tom Rath]

You know, I spent a big chunk of my career studying global well being research. And if there are two things that you really don't want to do for your well being over a decade or a lifetime, the first one would be like we talked about, don't retire because you'll fall off. Have a huge fall off. The second one would be don't go to law school. Those are the two.

[Mike Carruthers]

Well, this is something everybody needs to think about regardless of where they are in their career. And maybe people do think about this, but I haven't heard it talked about this way. So I appreciate you sharing this. Tom Rath has been my guest. He is author of the book what's the Point? Turning Purpose into your Daily Superpower. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you Tom for the conversation.

[Tom Rath]

Thanks so much, Mike. Take care.

[Mike Carruthers]

People trying to lose weight often focus on sugar and calories, but one overlooked culprit might be salt. Research from Deakin University found that adding salt to food caused people to eat about 11% more calories because salty foods were simply more pleasurable to eat. Today, scientists believe salt is part of something even bigger, the rise of hyper palatable foods. Foods loaded with combinations of salt, fat and sugar that can overpower the body's normal fullness signals and just keep us eating long after we should stop. Researchers say these foods may help explain why ultra processed foods are linked to overeating and weight gain. In fact, ultra processed foods now account for more than half of the calories consumed by many Americans. The really interesting part is that salt may not just season food, it may actually make it harder for your brain to know when you've had enough. And that is something you should know. And that's one of those things you might want to share in a conversation with someone. And if you do, you might tell them where you heard it. Share the episode, tell people about this show. I'd appreciate it. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Did you know if your windows are bare, indoor temperatures can go up 20 degrees. Get ahead of summer with custom window treatments like solar roller shade from blinds.com and save up to 45% off during the Memorial Day Early Access sale. Whether you want to DIY it or have a pro handle everything, we've got you free samples, real design experts and zero pressure. Just help when you need it. Shop up to 45% off site wide right now during the Early Access Memorial day [e-mail] rules and restrictions apply. There's a new way to Sweetgreen Meat Wraps. Handheld, hearty and made for life on the move. With bold, chef crafted flavors, fresh ingredients and over 40 grams of protein, they're built to satisfy without slowing you down. Try wraps today in the app [e-mail] available at all participating locations.