The right risks to take for a great career (w/ Molly Graham)

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of plans. A show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. You can have opinions, you can have like a strong stance, and then there's your body

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This is how to be a better human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today on the show, our guest is Molly Graham, and Molly is among many other things a very successful business person, a writer, and the new host of Ted's Work Life podcast. So we're going to be talking to her about how the rules for building a great career have

evolved, and what it takes to navigate this new work landscape. You know, when I was searching for my first job, I really really really wanted to write for a newspaper. I was positive that I wanted to be a traditional newspaper journalist. But then everywhere I applied, they were cutting positions rather than hiring.

I couldn't get a job, and I needed a job that would let me pay my bills. So I just started applying for anything, and everything, and I ended up getting a position teaching English abroad, and then I got a job teaching at an elementary school in Boston,

and I could never, ever, ever have predicted that starting there would lead me to be here

hosting this podcast and talking to you right now. In fact, one of the biggest lessons that I've learned, maybe the only career lesson that I feel totally confident standing behind is that you cannot predict how things will turn out. Like it or not, you're going to be surprised.

So how do you help people to figure out how to navigate a career path if you can't possibly know what's coming next? Well, that is exactly the kind of challenge that Molly lives for. To get us started, here's a clip from Molly's TED Talk, where she's addressing one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about their jobs and their career choices.

Here's Molly. There's a lot of pressure around what it takes to build a great career, and it all comes back to this idea that you're supposed to know what you want to do. It's an idea that I like to call the stairs. Here's how the stairs go.

You show up in college and you're supposed to know what you want to major in. That major is supposed to lead you to your first job and then you get another job and you get promoted and promoted and promoted forever. The best part about the stairs is safety and security.

“It feels like you know what you need to do to get ahead.”

The worst part of the stairs is that it's like a weird video game that you can get stuck inside of for years. The stairs will make you feel like your self-worth is tied to your title or your last performance rating or your next promotion.

But the truth is that the stairs are an illusion.

These days, excellent careers are not built by excellent stair climbers. We're going to figure out how to get off the stairs and into a great job or a great series of jobs right after this break. But first, my job includes the requirement of reading you these podcast steps. You can see how to get a better job.

The best part is that you can get a better job for your own house. You can also get a better job with a better job. The next step is to get the stairs. The stairs are completely different. The stairs are completely different.

You can get a better job and you can get a better job. And since 20% you can get a better job for your own product, you can get a better job. This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. With WISE, you can send, spend and receive in over 40 currencies with no markups or hidden

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“If you love how to be a better human, I think you will also love embodied.”

It is one of my favorite shows, and it is a show that also just won a big podcast thing award for the best wellness and relationships podcast. Each week, host a need-arrow explores under-discussed aspects of the human experience. Think brains, bodies, identity, and more. For example, how do you raise boys in an age of impossible masculinity?

Or, what is it like to make your living as a sugar baby? I think Anita is one of the greatest interviewers working today. I had such a great time talking to her on our show a few years ago, and it was an honor to get to be on her show recently. In every episode, you will meet people rethinking sex, health, identity, and relationships.

It's an honest show, it's an eye-opening show, and it's a show that leaves you with a lot to think about. So check out embodied wherever you're listening to this right now. And we are back. We're talking with Molly Graham about how to build a great career, whether you are just

starting out or your many years in. Hi, I'm Molly Graham. I'm the new host of Ted's podcast Work Life, and I'm also a company builder, a writer, a community builder, and some other things that I'm still trying to figure out. Well, Molly, I'm so glad I'm getting into talk to you, not just because we are in the

Ted siblings now, in the podcast world.

“But also because I think you do such interesting work, and you think about work, incident”

interesting, and especially for me, a person who's never had a corporate job, right?

Like I worked in an elementary school, and then I was a comedian, and now podcasting, like none of these are like regular traditional hierarchy. So I love the way that you talk about a world that is for me, largely for and in and make it so relatable, but also you take those lessons that I know are really practical for people who are working in traditional work environments, and also make it practical for people like

me who are not in traditional work environments. Well, first, thanks. That's very nice. And second, I'm so fascinated by your path too, just like you've done such an interesting job defining like what moves you, and what feels right to you, and that to me is like

the most interesting quest in work. Well, if people are following me into the wild blue yonder, we all are doomed.

So that's my never-weject way, but I will take the compliment, and let's look at this concept

from your TED Talk, which is, you talk about this concept called The Stairs. So can you tell me a little bit about what The Stairs are, and why you believe that's a career model that we should maybe have in mind as we're thinking about how our career could be going, or maybe should be going?

“Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the stairs, like, I think a lot about folks graduating from”

college, and I think there's a lot of panic around like finding your first job, and this sense that if you don't get it right, then you're on the wrong path forever, and, you know, we could talk about first shops a lot, but part of the point of like, I think what happens when you do get that first job is you end up on this, this set of stairs that you didn't even know existed, and the idea of the stairs is basically like, it's kind of like our parents'

generation, like, at least my dad, like, he worked in the same place for 40 years. I feel like when I left my first job, my dad was like, you're doing what? Like, you're leaving a job, you know, and I so many of my friends have the same thing with their parents, where their parents did the same thing in this, you know, they may have done different jobs in a company, but they were in the same company, and this is actually a picture someone drew on a whiteboard for me way back in the

day where he was sort of like, look, you can stay in the same company, and you can walk up these stairs, and, and, and it does have kind of a rhythm to it when you're in these bigger companies where like every two years, or three years, you get promoted, and your job changes from manager one to manager two, and you end up having this sense, or at least, I think the all corporate, you know, compensation systems, or give you this sense of like, if I just keep going up these stairs,

somewhere up there is like this pot of gold, or like this award, or this metal, but in theory, it's like methodical straightforward, but it's also like, both like extremely boring in lots of ways, where like, I think you can get very stuck in sort of their version of what is successful and what is good,

and also, in a lot of cases, it doesn't always give you the chance to test yourself, but yeah,

that's, that's the stairs. You know, it's interesting as I think for a lot of people, especially coming right out of college or high school, right? There's such a set vision of what success looks like, right? You go to school, you submit your work, your work is graded, there's a clear sense of what a successful grade is, what a failing grade is, and you got 100 on a test, you got a 90 on a test, you got an 80, those all mean really clear things, and then

we get into the work world, and we want, at least a lot of us really want that same kind of

Well, it's an F at my job, and I think it's really challenging for a lot of people to realize, like, that's just not how the world outside of school works as much. There isn't one set definition of success. Totally, and you know, imagine that for comedians, Chris, like, what is an A? You know, what is enough? Totally, you know, what I think, honestly, when I talk to people, especially people who are not already in performing arts and want to be, the hardest part about it that I think is hard to

grasp, but before you do it, is that there is no promotion in this job, right? Like, your job title is comedian, and the difference between when you are a completely terrible comedian and not making a single cent and not making a single person laugh, and when you're hugely successful, it's still the same title, and so you don't ever have, like, this clear, I've advanced to the next level,

it always feels like much murky or then you think it might from the outside. Yeah, totally, and I

I really think, like, from from the moment you step out of college and whatever, you know, framework that is today forever. There's always this sense of, like, oh, someone has the answer, and I just need to find it. Do you know what I mean? Like someone, like, someone else, I just, if I imitate that person or that's, you know, and I always say it actually often feels like there's just, like, a door that if you could just, like, get behind the door, then everything will

“make sense. But then one of the things that happens in life is you, like, open a door and you, like,”

walk through it and you're like, oh, shit, there's another door. Do you know what I mean? And it's like, there's never ending set of doors. You know, obviously, that becomes then, like, what is success?

And, you know, I always, I think about this a lot for, like, you know, so much of the goal in the

world of Hollywood and whatever is like, oh, win an Oscar, get this award, whatever. And I'm always, like, yeah, but then you win an Oscar and then it's like, but then I need to win another Oscar. Like, it's like all these doors that, again, you get through it and you're like, but I'm not, you know, I'm not Julia Roberts or I'm not Maryl Streep and, like, am I successful? And I think, eventually, you really have to, like, face down that question of, like, what is

successful to me? There's an interesting thing where I think the difference between, like, meaning and value and success. And I, I would probably put quotes around success because it's, like, what do we think of as success? Which often just means, like, making money or having a particular title. And those, actually, aren't very often very meaningful or bringing a lot of value to your life because, like, you said, you get there and then it's like, well, what actually comes next?

You know, I think of those as kind of external definitions of success, meaning they look successful to other people. And I think I was early in my career that is how I thought about success. I was like, I'm just going to crush this stuff and get promoted and other people will, I matters to me, what other people think of me, right? It matters to me that, that I've proven myself. Like, I've proven myself that I'm good, but a lot of it was, like,

proving myself to, like, all the people around me that I was good. Yeah. And, and, you know, that did come in the form of these externalities. And then I think I, like, so many of my friends, hit a moment where I had the title or I had the job that I kind of, like, thought I wanted. And I was like, oh, like, I have this friend that tells the story, I actually told it in the TED Talk where she's, like, climbing this ladder and literally gets to be CEO. And then goes,

is this all there is? You know, like, I don't like this. And it's like, well, Ben, what? You know, and I think there's just these moments when you get out of that sort of,

“I'm proving myself phase. And you have to really ask, like, okay, what is my definition of success?”

You know, into your point about meaning and value, what matters to me? Okay, so we've already opened up so many of the threads that I want to chase down during this conversation. And one of them is, you know, we talked about the stairs, the flip side, the other way of approaching a career that is a framework that I learned from you is that this J curve, the idea that we, we get somewhere and then we jump and it's kind of, we jump off a cliff. We go backwards in some ways in our career

and sort of like, it doesn't feel like we're making progress. It feels like we're getting worse. It maybe feels like we're making less money, but it can lead us to an entirely new place. So can you talk a little bit about what the J curve is and then a little bit about how that has guided you in your own career decisions? Yeah, totally. So this is something I

experienced really intimately when I was, I spent five years at Facebook and I spent the first two years

in HR and recruiting helping sort of figure out who we were and how we wanted to talk about, you know,

“why you should come work at the company and what kinds of people belonged. And then I think I did”

well in that and so somebody came to me and said, do you want to come help me build a mobile phone? And I was like, first of all, why are we doing that? That sounds like a terrible idea, but then second of all, I was like, why are you asking me? Like, I'm highly, highly unqualified for this. But then I was just kind of like one of those ideas I couldn't put away. And I remember this

and these were like really big, like complicated company-wide projects. Why don't you go see how

“actually good you are? And and it was this like, oh, like, I'm gonna go figure out if I can do this.”

And this was the moment by the way, when the person, the guy that was trying to hire me and get me to come work on the phone, drew the stairs for me. And he was like, basically, he was him being like, you can be boring and stay on these stupid stairs or you can jump off a cliff with me. So it was like that was his pitch. And he was like, the most interesting careers are built by people that are willing to throw themselves into something that they might not be good at, that they

might not be successful at. Because it you basically buy this like incredible learning curve about

yourself and about the world. And so I bought it. And I was like, okay, let's see. And I went to work on this mobile phone project, knowing absolutely nothing about phones or the mobile industry or anything. And I immediately just felt like the dumbest person in the entire world. Like, I was sitting in rooms with just, oh my god, these smartest people asking the stupidest questions. You know, and I felt embarrassed. I felt like an idiot. I felt like I didn't know what I was doing for

really six to nine months. But slowly, I learned, I mean, I learned so much. I think it was unclear for a while if I was like, ever going to feel competent. You know what? I was just talking to someone who just did this. And she was like, I'm three months into it. And I still feel like I only know what I'm doing 30% of the time. And I was like, you're on track. Like, give it three more months.

“And you might have a moment where you feel competent. Because that's what happened to me like six”

months into it. I think it was like six. Might have been nine. I flew home from Taiwan where I'd been working with hardware manufacturers. And I drew the hardware layout for a mobile phone on a whiteboard for my boss. And I was basically explaining to him why something that he wanted to have happen couldn't happen. But I explained it to him like very precisely. And I remember him looking at me being like, whoa, dude. And me sort of having this feeling of like, oh, I actually know things. And

that was the moment of what, you know, so for me with like with jumping off cliffs or the j-curve, like you basically fall, you hit the bottom and then you start to climb out. And that feeling of like, oh, I'm someone different than I was six months ago because I have all these skills in all this knowledge. But it also like, I have a different level of confidence all of a sudden. Like, I can do things that I didn't know I could do. And for me, that phone project, which I was then on for three

years, which by the way was a giant failure. So like, yeah, the project was a failure. But it was

not a failure for me. Like, I learned so much about myself. Good and bad. But the most important

thing it taught me was that I love that kind of learning. And that I really, I now say like, I only take jobs that I'm highly, highly unqualified for. When someone offers me a job, I know I can do. I'm like, that sounds boring to me. Well, so yeah, this is something that I wanted to talk about because I think a lot of us limit ourselves because we're so worried that we might fail and that that would be actually a terrible thing as opposed to realizing that that is the path

to getting better at anything while failing over and over and over again. You know, someone posted this quote, they posted a statement when I, my TED talk got posted. And the person said, you know,

“people think that you have to be confident to act. And the truth is, confidence comes because of”

action. You don't have to be confident in order to act or if you wait for confidence like you just might be waiting a really long time. But for me, like actually, one of my greatest strengths is being kind of an idiot and asking a lot of dumb questions and being able, you can put me in literally any situation in almost any business in the world and I will be able to learn it. And I don't think most people have the confidence to say they can do that. You know, so the only way

you learn these things about yourself, what you're capable of, what you're really exceptional at, is by trying and part of trying is failing, right? Like one of my phases at Facebook on this phone project was somebody think the last phase Mark asked me if I wanted to be the product manager for it because prior to that, I was sort of like in partnerships and hardware and operations, and he was like, do you want to be the product manager, which is sort of the person that runs

the whole project? There was something inside me that said, like, that doesn't sound like fun, but I was so confused at the time that I was just like, sure, it's the job that everybody inside of a tech company wants, so I'll be the product manager. Just FYI, no one should ever hire me to be a product manager. I was like, it was like really learning, like, oh, I both like hate this,

and I'm really bad at it. So like it wasn't all wins, but it was this incredible journey of self-discovery.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but then we will be back to discover more about Molly and ourselves. Don't go anywhere.

globe. With Wise, you can send, spend and receive in over 40 currencies, with no markups or hidden fees. With your sending pounds across the pond, spending rails and Rio, bargaining paid in dollars for your side gig, you'll get the mid-market exchange rate on every

transaction, join 50 million customers internationally. Be smart, get Wise, download the Wise App

“today, or visit Wise.com. Teas and Seas Apply. If you love how to be a better human, I think you”

will also love embodied. It is one of my favorite shows, and it is a show that also just one a big podcast thing award for the best wellness and relationships podcast. Each week, host a need a route explores under-discussed aspects of the human experience. Think brains, bodies, identity, and more. For example, how do you raise boys in an age of impossible masculinity? Or, what is it like to make your living as a sugar baby? I think Anita is one of the greatest

interviewers working today. I had such a great time talking to her on our show a few years ago, and it was an honor to get to be on her show recently. In every episode, you will meet people rethinking sex, health, identity, and relationships. It's an honest show, it's an eye-opening show, and it's a show that leaves you with a lot to think about. So check out embodied wherever you're listening to this right now. And we are back for me personally when I left my job as a teacher,

and when I was leaving the fifth classroom, and I was going to start trying to make a living in comedy and radio and podcasting and all of that, it felt so much before I did it like I was about to jump off a cliff. Like, I am going to make this giant leap. I'm going to leave a really stable, predictable, reliable job, and I'm going to do something that is very uncertain where I have no idea of I'll be able to make them enough. Enough money. I have certainly no idea if I'll be able to

continue this career for five or ten years. And then as soon as I did, I remember so clearly like truly the week after I left the job where I was like, I'm no longer employed by the school anymore. I no longer felt in any way like I had jumped off a cliff. And instead I had this clear like alternate metaphor that I had turned a corner where it was like, oh, I could go back. It's like I turned and I could go back. I just couldn't see where I was going. And so because of that,

“it felt like this dramatically. And I think sometimes we make a career decision that is a true”

like you've jumped off a cliff. But a lot of times it's not so true the story we tell ourselves

that like you could never go back to the job that you left or the field that you left. You know,

like if you are a lawyer and you've gone to law school and you have your credentials and then you quit to become a novelist. It's not like you can't get another job as a lawyer later on. Like that's actually not forbidden. Yeah, Amazon has this idea of one way door and two-way door decisions. Like it's one of their decision-making frameworks. It's actually kind of helpful in life. Because the idea of one way door is a decision you can't take back. And the two-way door is a

decision you can't take back. You know, and the point of the decision-making framework is just like treat one very differently than the other. You know, you know, like if you try something and you fail at it in one form or another, often there is a safety net there in some form or another.

“I think it doesn't always feel that way. You know, like, I mean particularly maybe these days,”

like people are scared about whether jobs will exist and things like that. So it can feel extra scary to take a risk to quit and become a comedian. But I'm curious, like, in your experience, what made you feel safe enough to take that risk. Because I do think there's different kinds of fear. And there's like the fear I might fail. And then there's like the much more existential fear of, like, I'm not going to be able to feed my family. So what do you think let you take that risk?

Two very clear things. One was I did the math. And I realized that what I was currently making teaching improv and doing a few comedy shows. If I just kept that stable. And then my worst case scenario, if I kept that stable. And then I worked half time as a barista. Like if I just got a job at a coffee shop. And I was like, that's not what I want. My other half of my time to be. But if I get half the time working at a coffee shop. And then I'll still have more time to do comedy and creative stuff.

And I just keep all my creative things the way they are now. Between those two things, I will be able to pay all of my bills. So I just did the math. I was like, okay, that's the financial

goal. It's just to like not, you know, not go into deep debt that I can't get out of. And the second one was,

I talked to the principal before I left. And I said, if I quit and try and pursue this, which they were very supportive of. Like the other teachers liked coming to my shows. And like they they saw potential in me, which was very, um, I could only imagine what kind of teacher you were. You were not going to class or management. Very fun. But very bad at discipline. That's the number one thing. But what they said is I said, like, if I leave and it doesn't work out, can I come

back? And she said, some version of, you know, we can't guarantee anything. But we hire teachers every year and we like you. So I think you'll probably have a job here in the year after September. If you

pretty sure that my worst case scenario is I just, um, kind of, am a little into savings, but mostly

“just stay like neutral for a year. So that's what I felt like. Those are such great examples for”

two reasons. Like one is, I think financial fear is such a powerful force for people. It's one of the reasons. By the way, that I hate student debt. I think it's one of the greatest sort of like

risk closures in the world. But, you know, I always say there's a difference between diffuse financial

anxiety and specific financial anxiety. And I think a lot of people stay stuck in diffuse financial anxiety, meaning I'm scared I won't have enough money. But what you did is what creates specific financial anxiety. Basically, I know how much money I need every month to live the life that I feel good living. If I have savings, like I know how much I'm willing to spend in order to be able to take this risk, that just changes it from like I'm scared. I'm not going to be able to feed myself

for my family or my cat to like, I have to be able to make this much every month, like, what are different ways I could do that, which is exactly what you did. You know, and I, whenever I work with folks that are thinking about taking a risk or leaving a job or whatever, that is what I do. I'm like, let's sit down. Let's make a budget. Let's like get to a number and then let's talk about what you have to believe to be true to take a risk on this number. Like, can you consult and get this much

money a month, like the kinds of things? And often the number is just actually a lot smaller than people think it is. I mean, there's so many different kinds of risk in life and I think if you can't take a big one, sometimes you can take a small one. But the big risk sometimes people do feel very much like it's a, there isn't a safety net and that can be really scary. I mean, I think one of the

“things that you have to learn if you want to push yourself to sort of be able to find your boundaries”

and also I think your genius is like fear does not mean you shouldn't do things. Yeah, you might fail, but what if you don't? What if you succeed? What if you're better than you think you are? What if this thing leads you to something that you can't imagine? And for me, that's, that's been the case where, you know, I've certainly failed a lot, but I've also found things that I could not have possibly imagined where I was qualified for a job or I, you know, built a relationship with someone

that if I hadn't taken the risk, I would ever would have known, you know? I want to read something from your newsletter, which I really loved and I think it's a lot in line with what we've been talking about. One, my basic belief is that happiness at work is fundamental to high performance. Yes, I have wonderful friends who perform incredibly well in misery and anxiety, but I don't believe it is healthy or sustainable for anyone to do that over a lifetime. In fact, I believe it takes

years off of your life. I don't know that I'm right, but it's what I believe and it's certainly how I manage my choices and what I optimize for. And two, it is really important to understand that making money has not been a primary motivator for me and my career, mostly because I'm very lucky. That absolutely changes the equation for how you decide what to do with your time and I think what work means. So my question for you is how do we know when we're in one camp or the

other? Is it actually just as simple as doing a spreadsheet? And then the second question is,

“if you want to be happy at work, any work is going to involve periods where you're unhappy with the”

job or frustrated or feel like you're not good at it. So how do you know when you're happy at your job? How do you know when you've found a job that will make you happy? So how do you know when you're financially stressed or you actually have the ability to make a choice and how do you know when you're actually happy? So I think like why do we work? The first answer is to have enough money to support ourselves and our family and to live a life that we want. And for a lot of

people, that is the first and primary answer. There is like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? Like I got to make sure I have food and you know work is a huge piece of that for a lot of people. But I do think that I've just seen a lot of friends sort of blindly follow that motivator, right? Money. And I mean the inverse is also true, which is that you can design a career where you're

never going to make money. I mean you're an artist on some level and you've seen a lot of friends.

I'm sure struggle with the relationship between what they feel like they've been put on earth to do and what they can make money doing. So I always say that the true sort of like version of your craft is like the things that you love doing, the things that you're great at and then the things people will pay you a bunch of money to do. You know that's the happiest venn diagram in the world. But I think that money is a real factor. And until you feel financially taken care of or financially

safe, money can often be the sort of big red light, you know, that's stopping you from taking risks and things like that. The trap for me is I've really watched a lot of people and friends,

relative to money. And I think we're each programmed differently. We come from different families. We come from different parents and you know, I have a ton of friends that are the kids of first

generation immigrants or the first generation immigrants themselves. And I always ask that question

“when I'm talking to someone about this stuff because I think if your parents like moved across the”

world to take care of you and you know often they touch you that like you just got to earn money. Like you got to like be on this treadmill for you know and that that is the purpose work and no one cares about how you feel. And that programming can be very hard to shed you know like how when will you feel safe? Is there a world in which you'll ever feel safe? You got to have an answer to what enough is and when you'll feel safe enough to take a risk or to demand happiness, you know,

to demand that you should love at least most of your work because like work is a lot of time. Like if you let it go by it's your whole life. If you literally do the math like it's most of the

hours in your life for most of us and to do that and be miserable or anxious or you know all those

feelings like for most of your life like how can it not affect your health? Like we now have so much data that says that it does and I think that the question of safety and what's going to make you feel safe like that's wildly different for everyone. Like I don't that's not a prescriptive thing that's not like oh you hit this net worth and everyone feels safe. Like no it's like you hit this dollar

“amount per month and some people are like I still don't feel safe but I think you have to tackle”

that question at some point because otherwise you can spend a lot of your life really unhappy. The one thing I would say about happiness is that like everyone's miserable at some point at work like but I have this strongly held belief which which you know is not mine it's anybody that works in sort of the strength-spaced work or the sense of like that you are at your best when you're doing the things that you're sort of uniquely great at and that that give you energy that that's

the the highest and best use of you in the world. When I do work with people to ask them to like kind of think about how they want to shape their future or what they might want to invest more time in or explore. Next a lot of what I'm doing is looking back over what they've done and asking like when did you feel like sort of most alive when did you feel most energized when did you feel like the time flew by when did you feel like you know I could do this forever those are the signals

to pay attention to to think about like what is the kind of work that really can bring you joy. I like to say that my goal is that I'm happy 90% of the time at work and like I do that today. I'm so lucky and I feel like so grateful because that was not true for a long time.

“I think also expanding that the time frame you look at it on right like if your goal is that”

I'm going to be happy every minute and that if I have an unhappy hour that means like something has gone horribly wrong at work versus if it's like okay like you may have a really rough month and that actually doesn't mean that your career your job needs to get completely tossed out but is it like struggle where you're learning something where you're growing or is it struggle where you're getting like abused and beaten down and dismissed like those are really different versions of a bad

month. Yeah there's such a difference between being deeply uncomfortable and very stretched and being miserable. I burned out at Facebook you know after a very intense five years I like really had physical symptoms of could not keep going and I remember this woman who worked in HR at the time she said to me you know everybody has peaks and valleys at work like there's no such thing as like everybody being like happy all the time and she was like so you're happy

some of the time and you're less happy some of the time but the goal is obviously like more peaks than valleys and and I also that the valleys aren't super long and she looked at me and she goes your valleys are getting longer and closer together you know which which I think about a lot because it's like you know that's measurable I had a coach when I was sort of struggling with a job who said you know at the end of the day I want you to go through every single meeting

that you've sat in and rated on a scale of one to ten and do it for a week and it was like eye-opening because I had tens and once you know sitting right next to each other and it mostly taught me a lot about the kind of things that do bring me energy but there's a lot of exercises you can do to kind of really ask yourself like what are you uncomfortable are you miserable how much like what is bringing you joy can you do more of that like that's that's something you can make

or optimize as much as like needing a quit a job and go do a whole other thing you just recently started this new role as hosting the work life podcast how did you think about whether to do it or not and what were you worried about or what were you excited about so I got asked to take

over this podcast and it's obviously just session amazing podcasts that's been you know Adam Grant

has built over the last seven years with Ted and a lot of people listen to it and when they first called me they sort of said you know have you thought about podcasting and I was like yes and

a podcast will neither be created nor destroyed it will simply move from one form to another like yeah water to vapor and then they explained what they were curious up I was interested in and I tell you crispy I said yes on that call like five minutes after it and I'll tell you why because they offered it to me and my first reaction was holy shit I have no idea if I can do that

and I think I'm like I'm terrified and I'm like why are you offering this to me and I've never done

audio I mean I've been on other people's podcast but I've never done I have never done video I don't know anything about this world like I don't know so anyway spiral but you know immediately for me

“all of those signs are like you have to do this because you're scared and you don't know if you can”

do it and what an incredible learning opportunity and I had to you know when I took a step back from that first call and and sort of had a chat with myself it was like okay if we're gonna do this like our bar cannot be at a grant or am you fuller or crispy like I just have one of them it can be one of those three let's be real no I mean you know there has to be a different way of measuring success for myself and so I made an agreement with myself that I was gonna measure

success on two things the first was that I was gonna learn so much right that by the end of you know even one year of doing this podcast that I was gonna be a different person I was gonna know so many things that I hadn't known before including all the things that I screwed up and then the second thing was that I was gonna make some stuff that I was proud of and that I wanted to be out in the world that I was gonna put content into the world that I just knew could help one person right

and and that's actually how I thought about my TED talk too because I mean you know this like TED is kind of a terrifying experience as well and there's a very like visible like number

“next to your talk and all these things and I think if you get caught in that game which is the”

external validation game right like you know how many people have watched this thing it's not how I measure value and I really you know when I do stuff like this that's terrifying and it's so easy to get swept up in these sort of like external signals of success I have to say no but matters to me is that I get one email from someone that says thank you so much this made such a huge difference in my life and so that's all that matters you know that's my definite as I go on

this like absolutely terrifying journey that I'm like let's go watch Molly make public mistakes and a lot of people be potentially frustrated that I'm not out of grant like I want to make stuff that I'm like no matter what I'm glad it exists. I love the the concept of like defining success and not just every possible form because it really does get out of hand. I mean I've had this so many times where it's like if I had a time think what do I actually care about? What do I

care about on this project? It's much easier to then go in to a job or a project or anything that I'm doing and say like okay this is what I mean for and it's nice if the other stuff happens it's not like I don't like the other stuff but my goal is this one thing. Yeah well and it's to the original you know the thing I said a little bit ago about the doors like it's actually pretty easy to feel like a failure. Do you know what I mean like it's if you look in the world and you're like uh there's a

million definitions of success that you know we're unachievable or at least like gonna make you

feel like you haven't done anything and that can be subscriber counts that can be view counts that can be such and such awards that can be so and so is getting all these jobs and getting these offers that I'm not getting like it's been a lot of time being like I'm not that person therefore I have failed. I optimized for that stuff and then I found myself in a place where I was like oh I'm miserable like I don't like this like I have I have fought for other people's goals or other people's

“definitions of success and I have discovered that land and it is not for me and so like I think as I”

embark on you know taking on work life and just a project like this like I think I have to have a compass that works for me and and I have to know um what is good enough for me because otherwise I'll drown in like all the comparison and all the sort of things I'm not and that's just not a good use of like my time or energy. I feel like the title of this episode is something like how to chart a career path or how to chart a career path that you actually find meaningful.

You have a great essay about early career advice. Is it possible for me to just have you read

some of that essay right now? All right I've never been one of those people who knew what I wanted

to do for work you know those people the ones who've known they wanted to be a doctor since they were 14 in college my best friend knew she wanted to become a paper conservationist. That's not

she is today. Cut to me who majored in African history in college but ended up in tech and my first job out of school was leading wilderness trips in Patagonia and Alaska. My parents were very unsure that that was a real job. There's some cultural programming and family programming telling

“you that is a 20 year old you should know what you want to do. I know I felt that way and I see it”

in my younger friends as they head off to college. But over my 20 years since college I've become a

big believer in the winding path as a powerful way to figure out the highest and best value you can

bring to the world. I want to make the case that not knowing is not only okay but it can actually be a strength if you're willing to lean into it and use the first part of your career to learn about yourself. It's a different and I think better way to do your 20s figure it out mode. Eventually you want to find the jobs and situations where it's full of the stuff you are great at. The stuff you love doing and also the world highly values what you have to offer. To start

that winding path you have to use your 20s to collect data about yourself. That means you get to those bigger answers by 30 or 35 not by 25. To be honest I'm a general believer that some amount of exploration is good for anyone. Even those of you that are like my college best friend and feel sure of what you want to do. I'm thinking of the friends who made it all the way through

medical school and got to residency only to realize they didn't want to be doctors. You're incredible

at reading things out loud. Great voice. Dad is not true just ask my producer on your claim. Okay but I'm impressed. That idea that we shouldn't necessarily know exactly where we want to be and that even if we do know exactly where we want to be we should still embrace the potential to

“explore and to discover new things about us. I find that so relevant to how I think about my own”

life and to the people whose careers I admire most and honestly I would say like not just till you're 35. I'm past 35 and I still feel like that's the way I should keep going. The feeling that you're supposed to know is the thing that can lead you to spend 10 years trying to be something that you're not, right? Trying to be something that actually makes you

miserable. The doctor, the lawyer, whatever. You know it doesn't have to be one of the traditional

careers but it's some programming or some college course or some parent or professor or whatever told you that this is what good looks like. This is what success means and you just followed that blindly like it was in A, right? Like it was the great at the A grade and at some point you wake up and you're like and God help you if you've like spent $500,000 on medical school right and you're like I don't want to be a doctor like those can be very expensive decisions both in terms of money

and in terms of time. So it's why I'm such an advocate and why I said to my younger cousin like go figure it out like go be a farmer like really what I learned in my 20s was like who I am and what I'm good at and what I like doing and what I don't like doing and as you said like I followed that for a while

“and you know somewhere around I think like 38 or 39 I hit another wall where I was like oh shit this”

thing that I am like literally the best in the world at that people you know everyone knows me for that you know I'm the COO that runs other people's companies you have a visionary CEO go hire Molly she'll help you bring your vision to life turns out I hate doing that now like I was really I really liked it for a while and I really don't like it anymore and that's terrifying but the beautiful thing is in theory I have the skills to figure it out right because I built them in my 20s

doesn't make it not scary and you know I felt lost for the last a lot of the last like three to five years but it was something I knew I needed to do right because I I believe that I should be happy most days of work and I believe that I should listen to those voices that are like like let's time to try something new well Molly Graham thank you so much for being on the show it's truly been such a pleasure talk with you and I know same thank you for having me Chris this was so fun and I'm excited to keep

learning for me oh same right here right back at you that is it for today's episode of how to be a better human thank you so much to Molly Graham you can listen to her on Ted's work like podcast or read her thoughts at Molly g dot sub stack dot com I am your host Chris Duffy and my new nonfiction book humor me is out now you can find out more about my live show dates and other projects at christduffycomedy dot com how to be a better human is put together by a team that works so

well together they should host their own work advice show on the Ted side anytime two Ted hosts are in a room together it means a producer got its wings this week newly flying arden yellable areso bandband chang Michelle quint Chloe shot shot Brooks Valentina Bohanini lady lot tensaka son manoeuvong intony lay in Joseph de Brian this video was put together by the angelic Ryan Lash and this episode was fact checked by Mateus Salas whose work and life are both highly

accurate on the PRX side they sound professional and they look business casual Morgan Flanry, Norgill, Patrick Grant and jostling Gonzalez thanks to you for listening please send this episode to

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