Jim Collins is a well-known business researcher and writer. He taught at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business before founding his own research lab in Boulder, Colorado. His signature approach is to study matched pairs of companies to work out why some became great and others didn’t.
His newest book, What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative, applies his matched-pair method to people instead of companies. It is the product of about a decade of research and two years of writing.
The book studies 34 notable people from music, athletics, politics, science and literature, paired up to show how key choices lead lives in different directions.
Collins builds a framework around a few central ideas. “Encodings” are the built-in capacities each of us has to discover. “Cliffs” are the life-changing events that almost no one gets through a long life without. “Fog” is the confusing stretch after a cliff. “Fire” is the energy that can bring a person’s most productive years surprisingly late.
The book’s strongest message is that meaning and peak contribution are not reserved for youth. Collins also moves away from his earlier thinking about who is “worthier” than whom, landing on the view that lives are “not about better… about different.” That message may resonate with readers in or near retirement.
The book has weaknesses. Some readers may find the terminology heavy for ideas that come down to familiar wisdom: know your strengths, follow what energizes you, stay curious. More serious critics may point to survivorship bias and to a sample of famous, well-resourced people whose options most readers don’t have. The research also relies on existing biographies rather than original interviews.
Even so, What to Make of a Life is thoughtful, generous and often moving. It works best as a guide for thinking through life transitions rather than as proof of a formula. It’s worth reading for anyone facing a “cliff,” especially the move out of a long career.
-RK