Customer Reviews

What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question

5 star:		(95)
4 star:		(69)
3 star:		(42)
2 star:		(59)
1 star:		(69)

 

 

Questioning his own life, author Po Bronson set out to learn how others made tough career decisions -- and lived with them.
He says he talked to nine hundred people, seventy or so in detail, and he includes the stories of fifty or so career-changers in his book.

Bronson does not offer a systematic study or a self-help book. That's important to get out of the way. As other reviewers have observed, you won't find plans or guidance for your own career move.

Instead, Bronson offers a jumble of anecdotes, unsystematic and uneven -- just the sort of stories I hear every day as a career coach. People seek new adventures. They weigh the cost (and there always is a cost). Sometimes they decide the cost is too high and they back down. Sometimes they leap and experience disappointment. And sometimes they leap and find themselves soaring.

Career-changers are hungry for guidance. Bronson's interviewees often sought his approval -- and his advice. He insists that he's not a career counselor but they asked anyway. This quest for help is typical during any life transition and underscores the need to be cautious about seeking help from whoever happens to show up.

And of course this overlap of roles can be viewed as a flaw in the book. Bronson admits lapsing from the journalist role. He gets so involved with his interviewees that the story becomes a quest, a journey-across-the-country story rather than an analysis of career choices. Bronson includes his own story, told in pieces throughout the book. This feature seemed to interrupt the flow: if the author tells his own story, we should be led to anticipate autobiography.

Despite these flaws, Bronson comes up with some sound insights into career change. He observes that people avoid change because of the accompanying loss of identity. They hang back "because they don't want to be the kind of person who abandons friends and takes up with a new crowd," precisely what you have to do following a life transition.

And he follows up with a warning of solitude that also accompanies any life change. "Get used to being alone," he advises, yet many people fear being alone more than they fear being stuck in a job they hate.

WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE offers questions, not answers. It's like attending a giant networking event. You have to sort through the stories on your own.

Despite these flaws, I will recommend this book to my clients and to other career coaches. Career change, like any change, is messy. You rarely get to move in a straight line and you always experience pain and loss. And every move is a roll of the dice: a coach can help, but there are no guarantees.

Each story in this book is unique and your own will be too. You, the career changer, must put together your own mosaic and find pattern and meaning on your own.

If you are interested in a "5 Step" plan to finding a better job or simply reading a series of "How I became a rich from humble beginning" stories, this not the book for you. Anthony Robbins style of cheerleading plays no role in these pages.

How do people change from what they really want to do for a living with what they are presently doing. How do you reconcile your dream job with how you are still going to make the car payment? What is holding you back from changing? What fears do you harbor? How do you know what is your destiny? These are some of the issues that are addressed in this book. I use the word "addressed" carefully, because you will not find a nice "bullet point" summary of steps to take in this book. Life is not that simple and neither are the issues faced by the average reader of this book.

Everyone profiled in the book (50 people... I believe a total of 900 people were interviewed) made the critical decision to act upon their desire to change the way they earning a living. Real people and real decisions. Unlike Hollywood, not every story has a perfect cute ending. The process for change is extremely complicated and ultimately takes a lot of work. Self-doubt was common. But change they did. The people in this book are just like you and me. Bill Gates has no seat at this table.

Bronson does a careful job of covering all the different angles. There are people who rejected money to follow their dream ( including Bronson himself), then there are others who make a decision without the support of the their family, there are those who struggle for years to make a change and there are those who make the change immediately. Whether you are extremely rich/successful or just starting out you will be able to relate.

Bronson weaves his own story throughout the book and you learn as much about him as you do about the people he is profiling. He is very geniune in sharing his own shortcomings as well as his successes. I believe the average reader can relate to him.

The book is an easy read and is akin to being at a cocktail party, gliding from one conversation to another with Bronson acting as your host. The Book holds together well and you build on each conversation. Bronson does underscore some definite trends that he has observed. i.e. nobody he who made a change did it as a result of an epiphany. But stays clears from "one size fits all" type statements.

The book is an excellent starting point to begin the long journey of self-examination to develop a sense how you really would like to spend your working hours. There is no magic formula. But one thing you realize is that you are definitely not alone.

Several contributors to this book -- the ones who haven't been duped by Bronson into joining the shameless publicity-fest -- have complained that their stories as told by Bronson are fictional, at best. Reading this ridiculous I'm-so-great-everyone-else-is-sadly-confused excuse for a book, I believe the naysayers. I also know three of the contributors, and I could not in the least reconcile the facts of their lives with Bronson's presentation of them.

For instance, Lori Gottlieb had been a successful journalist and author of a national best-seller, the memoir "STICK FIGURE: A DIARY OF MY FORMER SELF" BEFORE Bronson interviewed her. Yet somehow he fails to mention that she was the author of two books and had written hundreds of articles for national publications --that she had found this successful career path -- after leaving medical school. Instead, he presents a story of a woman in search of a career merely to suit his purposes -- to fit into the theme of his book. But if a reader were to do a Google search on Gottlieb, the reader would marvel at the difference between the I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-my-life woman Bronson describes and the accomplished professional writer she actually is. It's not that Bronson didn't have this information when he was researching his book: in fact, he knows Gottlieb, and he had been interviewed for Gottlieb's second book, "INSIDE THE CULT OF KIBU: AND OTHER TALES OF THE MILLENNIAL GOLD RUSH," so clearly he was aware of her status as a well-known writer and failed to disclose this very relevant information in his book.

Two other friends were made to sound like clueless airheads and pathetic lost souls, when both are actually quite accomplished and extremely articulate.

The New York Times panned this book, and for good reason. The Times doesn't know about Bronson's loose line between fact and fiction or lack of journalistic ethics, but based simply on its value, the Times reviewer gave Bronson's book a resounding thumbs-down. During the dot-com era that Bronson made a career writing about, the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" was used to describe otherwise smart individuals who blindly joined the cult. Seems a lot of folks are drinking the Kool-Aid and buying into Bronson's cult, but for those who want to stay sober, the New York Times is particularly illuminating.

This is a nice treatment of many different people grappling with the question which titles the book. Po does a nice job of playing therapist and finding the story arc of his subjects' careers. Central themes include career v. family/relationships, facing your fears/biases/baggage, pragmatism v. idealism.

However, the book profiles a disproportionate number of people who are traditionally successful (i.e. wealthy from business, law, etc) and traded down into lower-paying careers that offered more fulfillment. Most of the subjects are Clinton-Gore alumni, Silicon Valley vets, or driven Ivy Leaguers who burned out and then were beset with ennui.

The book has value, but it may be worth waiting for your library to get a copy. It feels a bit, tho' not grossly, self-indulgent, and sincere enough.

I would have preferred to hear a more diverse set of voices, economically and racially. Po refers frequently to how someone contacted him having heard word-of-mouth that he was working on this book. Perhaps the self-selection this created was to the book's detriment.

I've been waiting for this book to be published for several months now, but I find I no longer need it.

A few months ago I found "The Pathfinder" by Nicholas Lore. It's a very powerful "workbook" for exploring how to identify your own unique gifts, traits, desires, etc. and to match them to a career (and life) that you really want. It even gives practical advice on resume building, interviewing, etc.

As someone who has read many a self-help book, this one blows them all away. It is truly powerful.

Maybe you want to dwell on how other people "found their calling". I don't. I want to find out about ME and what I should be doing!

I don't have an axe to grind one way or the other, but if this review helps anyone, so much the better (for YOU).

I found this book to be very boring and provided very little insight. Most of the stories are from very shallow self-centered Gen-Xers. Most of the life stories involve changes that took place in the last several months so it does not provide any real perspective on life choices and effects on a lifetime. Po is not a very good writer. He is boring and very impressed with himself. Don't waste your money or your time.

Many of the stories (by no means all of the stories, but many) are engaging. The writing is good, no argument there. So why is this book so unbearable?

Two words: Po Bronson. Or, more correctly, Po Bronson on Po Bronson. This book is a nauseauting ego-fest. Po gently sets captains of industry on the righteous path! Po weeps tenderly with his subjects, all of whom appear to have scored free therapy! Po nobly reveals his pain over having cheated on his "West Coast feminist" wife! Po's penetrating insight warns, cheers, and smiles wistfully to itself over the folly of mankind!
Man, if I met this guy I can't imagine wanting to do anything but slap him.

This book is a celebration of the author. On the way, it celebrates a lot of other nauseatingly overprivileged white people. This book reinforces the (untrue) notion that self-discovery is a luxury of the rich and whiny. He does no one any service, not his readers, not his subjects -- and certainly not the main subject of his book, the ever-fascinating PO BRONSON.

A ton has been written and spoken about this book. But some things can be honestly said:
1)It focuses on people who try to answer the question What Should I Do With My Life. A great "high-concept" title for a book.
2)It is no way, by no stretch of the imagination, a self-help book that's going to help you ponder this question, take a survey and reach a conclusion. It's highly stylized in its writing and organization.
3)The book is as much about the author -- injected in the book throughout, as a character -- writing the book and meeting the people he interviews as much as the subject and the people he interviews.
4)It's very much a first person narrative book. Some chapters leave you unsatisfied. Some leave you satisfied. Some chapters seem like expanded diary entries.
Bottom line: Don't buy this expecting this is going to greatly help you arrive at the answer to this question, or read comprehensive pieces about people who struggled with this question and arrived at the answer (which would help you arrive at the answer).
Buy it if you want to read about some people who have dealt with this issue and about an author who writes about his writing project writing about people who struggle with this answer.
It has the title of a typical self-help book...but it isn't. Which will be welcome news to some readers and a big letdown to others. Dale Carnigie, it ain't...

I've been really struggling with this question and saw it at the bookstore, as I'm not one to read self-help books (mainly because normally the people writing them are the ones who really need the help). I gobbled it up and really enjoyed many of the stories.

As a Republican by nature, I found most of his fawning over his Clinton staffer buddies annoying, and also had to stop reading when I found myself reverting to childish class envy. Many of the stories are about privileged pooballs from rich families who got to go to Ivy League schools without much effort and had even easier entrees into lucrative careers such as investment banking or lawyering. I skipped some of these stories altogether as a tiny violinist kept playing sad songs on the coffee table in front of me, in sympathy for the deflating egos and discovery of the fleeting nature of materialism these poor saps had to endure.

I am a hick originally from a sparsely populated Western state, and had to work my way into big-city dot-com era life, and I too found myself lacking in passion for my chosen path (although I certainly did not want to return to my old briar patch). I found many of his stories humbling, intriguing, and inspiring. While he never explicitly answers the question, I think this is the point--most of us, if not all, and even the snobby San Francisco wine-and-cheese liberals have to muddle through and DO before we FIND...

When I first saw this book on the shelf at my local Staples store, I kept a mental note of the title because I was wrestling with this issue myself. I was thrilled to pick it up at a bargain bin some time later, and couldn't wait to dive into it and read about real people telling their stories.

These "real people" belong to a very narrow and elite- some might say elitist-group. There seem to be an inordinate number of attorneys and former dot-commers represented on the pages. There are only a handful of working-class people in the universe depicted here (to the author's credit, he does acknowledge this, and the role that class plays in our perceptions of the world). I attended a "public Ivy" for a couple of years in the mid 1980's and I'm somewhat familiar with the type of people whose stories are told in this book- people who believe that all the goodies that life has to offer are their birthright.

That being said, I think that this book would have been a lot more interesting and relevant to a wider audience if the author had included more people who had to overcome serious obstacles to arrive at a particular place- the self-educated writer, for instance, or a single mother who works during the day and goes to school nights in order to get a degree so she can build a more secure and fulfilling life for herself and her kids.

It's pretty unusual for me to buy a book and not finish it, but I had to put this one down. You don't need to eat a whole egg to know that it's rotten.