What to Make of a Life

It is a question we all wrestle with more than once: How do we find our way in the world? How do we make it past the cliffs, significant events that can radically change a life? How do we keep the inner fire burning bright, long and late?

Inspired by relentless curiosity, Jim Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and to minutely analyzing those moments when life flips from clarity to confusion and casts us into a befuddling fog. His exploration follows various lives side-by-side, paired together at cliffs, and analyzes the different choices made and divergent paths taken.

Two rock musicians confronting a future without the group that had brought them success. Two public figures tainted by scandal having to make decisions about how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieving their epic goal and so left with the puzzle of what to do next. Two figure skaters seeking new purpose when their Olympic careers come to an end.

What emerges from Collins’s extensive studies—of writers, actors, scientists, leaders and many others—is a framework for understanding how individual lives can be built, sustained and constantly renewed. By examining the long arc of these remarkable lives, Collins tackles life’s questions.

What does it take to: Discover a deeply fulfilling role in life—one that you are naturally ‘encoded’ for—and then to find a second one, if the first one ends? Overcome a major cliff—a fracture point that forces choices about what’s next and calls for you to re-envision the years to come? Make your personal economics work so that you can focus on one big thing that feeds your inner fire? Navigate the fog, when you feel uncertain or even outright lost, and build confidence step by step? Build personal momentum decade upon decade, so that your most creative and energetic years are spread across an entire lifetime? Achieve the imperative to “Know Thyself” and apply self-knowledge to each phase of life?