August 12, 2025 • 45 mins
Charlie Colenutt shares his journey from disillusioned lawyer to author, exploring what makes work fulfilling based on interviews with 100 people across diverse professions.
You'll learn:
•How the most satisfied workers can see clear, immediate results from their efforts
• That career satisfaction shows little correlation with income beyond meeting basic needs
• Many fulfilled workers had experienced career crises before finding satisfaction
• Career paths are rarely planned and usually involve significant randomness or luck
• Young workers often face disappointment when workplace rhetoric about meaning doesn't match reality
• Being honest with yourself about your motivations is crucial when making career decisions
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and welcome back to the Exam Study Experts
podcast and to our summerschedule which, as in previous
years, is a nice excuse for usto bring back and resurface some
gems from the archives that youmay have overlooked or may be
well worth a re-listen, as wellas bringing you some fresh
conversations which I think you,dear listener, will find very
stimulating and inspiring butcan otherwise be maybe just a
(00:23):
little tricky to weave into ourregular broadcast schedule.
This week's episode is a freshconversation for you, a little
bit tangential to the core topicof studying smarter and passing
your exams, zooming out as wesometimes do in the summer to
look at your journey a littlebit more broadly.
Just to explain, I think thisis a great episode.
(00:43):
I think you're really going toenjoy this.
We are rejoined today, I'mexcited to say, by a former
student story star.
You may remember Charlie fromepisode 75, if you've been with
us for a while.
We met Charlie some years agowhen he was sharing details of
getting through his law schoolexams.
That was his student storyepisode in 75.
So if you're studying for lawexams or other exams that have a
(01:06):
lot of difficult information tolearn, there's a really nice
case study of how he appliedsome of the key ideas from this
podcast.
He'd been a podcast listenerfor a little while.
Since then, charlie has gonethrough something of a rebirth,
after struggling to enjoy thecareer in law that he'd striven
for for so long, and heultimately ended up doing a huge
piece of research, drawing onsome of his skills as a
(01:28):
historian, perhaps, to try andunderstand people's career
journeys and what can lead toenjoyment and satisfaction, and
this all culminated in a majorbook called Is this Working?
I know Charlie in real life,he's a friend in the real world
and he landed a reallysignificant publishing deal for
the book and he did really wellfor this.
(01:50):
So really really proud of himand kind of excited to showcase
some of his findings today and,I think, just to give a little
bit of my own perspective on, Ithink, why this conversation is
why I'm so excited to bring thisconversation to you.
Like, I know that the folktuning into this show do so in
order to achieve academic goals,but I also know that those
goals generally are means to anend rather than the end in
(02:12):
itself.
You're sure you might be kindof towards the end of your
career and maybe you're taking acourse just as almost like
literally a hobby.
You know you're at the oppositeend of your career, you've done
with the world of work and sortof in retirement you're taking
a course literally for your loveof learning and because you
enjoy it and because you wantthe learnings.
But I think for the majority ofpeople listening, you know we
(02:35):
are studying with a goal in mind.
So we're studying for exams atschool to get into our preferred
university or college.
We're studying for exams atuniversity to access our
preferred career path, likeCharlie was with his law exams.
Or maybe in order to earn aplace on a program of further
study or research and stay inthe world of academia.
Or, for many listeners, youmight be studying for
(02:57):
professional certifications inorder to advance your career and
get promotion, move to the nextstep in your career path.
But wherever you are on yourjourney, there's this sense of
kind of the exams forming partof your path, part of your
journey, and I think it's reallyimportant and something we
perhaps don't talk about enough,either on the show specifically
or society as a whole, sort ofwe don't talk enough about sort
(03:18):
of stepping back and taking thetime to think about where we are
on the journey, what our nextsteps are and whether we're kind
of making the next right stepfor us.
Charlie hit a little bit of arock bottom moment when he
realised like, after years andyears of working towards a
career in law, he really didn'tenjoy the work and that's kind
of what triggered him to go anddo this huge piece of work,
(03:38):
interviewing kind of about 100people about their careers, what
led them to them, what theyenjoy about their work and so
forth, and about their careers,what led them to them, what they
enjoy about their work and soforth.
And he was aiming, in thosehundreds or so people, to get a
representative cross-section ofall different kinds of jobs in
society, from the manual to thecreative, to the technical, to
the executive everythingrepresented.
And there are some reallyfascinating lessons in this and
(03:59):
the stories he tells and thethings he found out from talking
to all these people.
I think there's some reallyfascinating lessons in this for
all of us as we aspire to buildrewarding and fulfilling careers
and lives for ourselves.
And I've taken a little bit oftime because there's quite a lot
in this episode, so I've takena little bit of time and I've
summarised my top takeaways atthe end of this interview.
(04:21):
We're well worth tuning in forthat, because I've sort of taken
a bit of time to go through andpick out some of the highlights
and the key messages.
But I think it's worthlistening to the interview first
so you kind of understand thecontext and the stories behind
the ideas so that they land.
So without further ado, let mewelcome Charlie Colnup back to
the Exam Study Expert podcast.
(04:42):
I kicked off our conversationby asking him to give us just a
little of the backstory of hisjourney to date by way of
context to bring us up to speed.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Thank you very much, will.
So, yeah, the story of myworking life it's.
I suppose we'll start atuniversity, where I did a
history degree.
As with lots of people that dodegrees that they're kind of
passionate about and followtheir interests, I didn't really
know where it would leadprofessionally.
That kind of state ofuncertainty and insecurity is
(05:15):
when you're often kind ofvulnerable to the ideas of
others, and not so much thingsthat are kind of internal to you
.
So I ended up becoming a lawyernot wholly, because I knew lots
of other people that werebecoming lawyers and that seemed
to be a very sensible andpragmatic thing to do with a
history degree.
If you wanted to live in theSoutheast and buy a house and
(05:37):
have a family, then you ought todo a sensible thing and become
a lawyer.
And so, yeah, I was probablyled by external motivations and
not so much by what wouldactually probably make me happy
deep down.
I had considered going to theUS to do a PhD in history, but
(05:59):
for various personal reasons Idecided to stay in the UK and
that left a kind of well, whatelse am I going to do?
Type vacuum.
And then the thing withprofessional services, jobs like
law and accountancy is thatit's very much an extension of
university in that when you goto university there's a
structure laid out for you.
You know what you're going tobe doing in year one, year two,
(06:19):
year three.
That structure is marked byassessments, as you well know,
and there's a kind of comfortblanket nature to that.
With law it's exactly the same.
I did a law conversion courseand then a bar course and then
the next stage, year three,would be a pupillage, a training
year at a set of chambers, andthen after that you would be out
(06:42):
there practicing as a lawyerand then after that you would be
out there practicing as alawyer, still with clear markers
of success.
You know how much are youearning, how many years
qualified are you, what type ofwork are you taking on.
So you're on a kind of lazyriver, being swept along by this
very structured career, and Ithink I probably would have
carried on on that lazy river.
It wasn't that lazy, I suppose,because it was quite hard work.
(07:04):
The exams are very tough andthe work itself is, you know,
quite long hours andintellectually demanding For me.
I was doing a commercialpupillage, which is the training
year that barristers do, andthat involved reading huge
amounts of material sort ofconstruction contracts with
(07:26):
appendices that would go on to700, 800 pages, and then writing
very long documents about thosevery long documents that you've
just read.
But yeah, I started inSeptember 2020, which is
obviously during COVID.
I think COVID acted as a bit ofa kind of electric shock to the
(07:47):
system, where I was sort oftraveling down a particular path
.
That winter lockdown I don'tknow if you remember it, but in
January 2021, I was basically ina flat by myself staring at a
screen for very long hours andthen just going to bed and it
was dark outside the entire timeand it really stripped away all
(08:12):
of the kind of aspects of beinga barrister that I probably
would have found some comfort in.
So there's the kind ofcamaraderie, there's the status,
being able to wear a suit andparade around.
It left you with the core, coreelements of the job which, for
(08:33):
me, I just did not find veryfulfilling at all.
I became quite unhappy andquickly realised, through
talking to people that you knowthere was one clear source of
the unhappiness and that was thefact that I didn't enjoy the
work at all really, and this wasthe work at its most basic and
(08:53):
most stripped back.
So if I couldn't enjoy thisthen surely I probably wasn't
going to enjoy the next 40 years.
And so I decided to leave.
I said, well, I'll finish mypupillage so I've got some kind
of qualification, and then maybeI'll go back to law.
But I don't think I will.
At about that time, or maybejust before I'd started
pupillage, I'd read this book byan American oral historian and
(09:16):
radio broadcaster called Studs.
Terkel is a great name and it'scalled Working and he basically
traveled around Chicago puttingdown a tape recorder in front
of ordinary working people.
Well, not some ordinary, someextraordinary.
So there's baseball stars,waitresses, coal miners, people
(09:37):
that work in car factory plants,and this is in the early 1970s.
And he got them to talk abouttheir jobs, sort of describe in
detail what they do all day,tell them how they feel about
what they do all day.
And it's this wonderful kind ofchoral work of people doing
wildly different things withtheir days, whether it's strip
(09:59):
mining coal or being anaccountant or being an
accountant and yet sayingsimilar things about what they
experience at work and the kindof humiliations and
satisfactions of it all.
So I'd read this book and I'dloved it and I thought, wow,
it'd be really cool to do this.
You know, 50 years on in the UKand leaving my job as a lawyer
(10:21):
was kind of the trigger forthinking, well, you know, I
don't know what else I could,what else is out there.
Doing this book would be kindof interesting by itself, but
also it might tell me what Iwanted to do with my life.
If I spoke to enough peoplethen maybe I'd have a clear
answer about, you know, theperfect job for me, and I don't
(10:43):
think it gave me that.
But uh, it was certainly a yeah.
So I started traveling aroundthe UK, um, just talking to
people about their jobs, whetherthat's carers, mechanics,
doctors, lawyers, investmentbankers, the whole kind of sweep
of society.
The idea was it was a kind ofcross-section.
If you imagine the UK workingpopulation as a village, then
(11:05):
this was me walking around thevillage and just talking to
people.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
That's probably, yeah , a not very abridged account of
my working life so far.
That's a good point to pick upthe story.
So you were in this situationwhere you'd achieved your goal
of getting into law and passingyour exams and you were on the
path and kind of just findingthe fundamentals of the job.
This is dissatisfying and youmentioned you're quite unhappy
(11:37):
in it.
I'm sure it's an experiencemany people have when they
finally get into their ininverted commas dream career and
find actually, you know, maybethis isn't quite what I was,
what I was hoping for.
And I think possibly there's anexacerbating factor when it's
something you've worked so hardfor so long and had your sights
on for so long, and then it's abit disappointing, like I think
(11:57):
it doubles the disappointmentcompared to, you know, if you've
just sort of fallen into it,you've almost, you know, built
it up so much and put so muchinto it.
The disappointment, the stingis kind of even worse when
you're not enjoying it.
So one of your motivations fordoing the book and doing the
exercise was a personal one, youknow.
I think you wanted to kind offind out a bit about sort of
(12:20):
perspectives, wisdom on theworld of work and maybe use that
to kind of inform your nextsteps and where you want to go
in your life.
So what did you learn?
What become some of your bigpersonal takeaways that are sort
of shaping your next steps andwhere you're going with your
working life next?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, it was interesting to see the lack of
plan and the sheer randomnessthat defined so many people's
careers.
So there was, you know, softwaredevelopers that only got into
working with computers because,well, there was one site
reliability engineer who hisboss broke his leg and he was
(13:02):
then allowed to start managingthe network and then that led
him from a career in you know.
I think he was working in IT ina school and that led him to
London and a kind of reallypromising career in tech.
There was somebody else thatwas working as a receptionist
and was playing the computergame Doom in her spare time and
(13:25):
loved it and was only introducedto that by an ex-boyfriend.
And then she realized that shealso loved working with
computers as a result of playingso much of that and was begging
the IT department at hercompany to let her have a go at
resolving some support tickets.
And it was only when one ofthem fell ill and she was
(13:45):
allowed to take over for a fewweeks that her career in
software started.
And throughout it there's justall these sort of
extraordinarily random careerstories where no one at any
point in all the 100 interviewsI did sat down and thought you
know what are my skills?
(14:06):
What job best accords withthese skills?
What career goals should I?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
have.
So I mean, that kind ofrandomness is really interesting
.
I mean, you know, so manypeople sit down and have that
plan and they kind of come upwith that.
You describe it.
You know any careers advisorworth their salt will say, oh,
what are your skills, what areyour strengths?
Okay.
You know any careers advisorworth their salt will say, oh,
what are your skills, what areyour strengths?
And you know, okay, well, whatsort of careers are going to be
most suited to you.
I mean, I guess I'm kind ofinterested in the kind of who.
(14:37):
If careers and working life is agame, you know, I think the
most important measure,certainly, as I see it, is kind
of your fulfillment, yoursatisfaction and how much you
enjoy it.
Like a certain level of moneyfor sure is important, like it's
vital to have a certain levelof needs met, highly desirable
to have some finance left overbeyond your basic needs to cover
(14:58):
some wants.
But I think you know, there'sincreasingly an awareness I
think perhaps from what I see,particularly from the generation
just entering the workforce nowthat money is not the end goal,
or certainly not the only endgoal.
It's necessary but notsufficient.
So from all these differentstories, I was just curious who
(15:21):
struck you as the most happy,the most fulfilled in their work
.
Is it the high-paid bankers andlawyers?
Is it the careersstereotypically associated with
job satisfaction, like peoplekind of some form of education
or caring for people, healthcarelike?
Is it those pursuing a kind ofa creative calling um?
Or is it just like totallyrandom, like were there any
patterns in terms of who hadcracked, being able to find some
(15:44):
satisfaction, some enjoyment intheir work?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, so, as you say, there was no real pattern as to
income and salary and happinessand satisfaction.
People that were working insort of truly precarious jobs,
um like, interviewed a gigdelivery rider and he also
(16:08):
worked part-time as a carer.
Just the fact that the moneywas so inconsistent and low
caused them a huge amount ofstress in life.
But beyond, as you say, acertain level, there was no
correspondence really in in theinterviews that I did between
salary and satisfaction at work.
I think in fact the people thatseemed most satisfied were
(16:33):
those that had gone through somekind of experience where they
hit some kind of rock bottomwith their career.
So I interviewed a joiner likea carpenter, who had been
working in a factory, was in ahuge amount of debt I think
something like nearly £10,000 ofdebt and had just had a child
(16:58):
and was completely despondentabout the direction that his
life was going in.
He then took a risk and decidedto borrow some of his friend's
tools and sort of strike out asa joiner and self-employed Was
doing, you know, living hand tomouth where for each job he
(17:18):
would use that to buy the toolsthat he needed for the next job.
And if he didn't have the tools, then he would put off the job
until he could do enough work tobuy the tools that he needed
for the next job.
And if he didn't have the tools, then he would put off the job
until he could do enough work toto buy those tools.
And then within a couple ofyears he had cleared the debt
and was working for himself.
And, um, there were lots offrustrations in his work in the
um.
You know all the thefrustrations that you have
(17:39):
working the constructionindustry.
Uh, in that it's hard work,long hours sometimes and people
aren't paying you, all of thatkind of stuff.
But having been through thatexperience of kind of looking
around at his life and thinkingI need to make some kind of
drastic change here there was akind of level of gratitude and
appreciation for where he wasand he didn't have any ambitions
(18:02):
to go much further beyond wherehe was.
And he was saying I don't wanta fleet of 10 vans and a million
pounds a year, I'm happy whereI am because everything is
balanced.
And likewise there were you knowI interviewed someone that had
come to the UK without any rightto work from South America and,
you know, had been working inone of those, one of those kind
(18:25):
of dodgy operators who drives aminibus full of cleaners and
pays them four pounds an hour,drops them off at various fancy
houses and then takes thewhatever the difference is from
what they're actually being paidprobably sort of 15 pounds an
hour for himself.
And then she had then since setout and started to find her own
(18:45):
work, um, and was then managingher own cleaning company.
And again, there's a that kindof great, deep sense of
gratitude, and so I suppose it'sthat old thing of like, well,
if you're, if you wouldn't behappy in a mud hut, then you're
not going to be happy anywherebecause, um, actually it's not
so much about your theenvironment you're in, but it's
about your perspective on it.
And yeah, by the same token,there are people working very,
(19:10):
very fancy jobs earningsignificant amounts of money.
I think of the trader in aninvestment bank who was saying
that she just felt like a numberhad been, uh, was sort of was
talking about children andwatching a toddler push a car
across a room and seeing thesmile that the child gets from,
(19:30):
seeing cause and effect soobviously, and she felt that she
didn't get any of that in thejob that she was doing.
So, yeah, the patterns aremaybe not the kind of in the
conventional sense of yeah, thejob you're the actual task
you're doing and the um, uh, themoney you're earning, but in a
more kind of uh, emotional sense, I suppose I think the point
(19:56):
about the difference betweenyour, your kind of rock bottom
and and then where you are now,that kind kind of contrast is
sort of a really interesting, areally interesting point.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And and and I obviously I don't mean to make
light at all of how terrifyingit can be when you feel like
you're, you're kind of in in, incrisis and and and can't
provide for yourself, for yourfamily, and you know I, I the
first bit, you know it kind bit,you know kind of there's an
element to which that sort ofrings true.
For me, the early years of exam, study, expert life, you know,
(20:30):
before I was sort of established, were financially quite
stretching as I was gettingestablished.
And the contrast between thatand now I I don't have a fleet
of 10 vans and you know millionsof pounds are in common, yeah,
but but I don't feel I need that.
You know I need enough to kindof take care of myself and my
(20:51):
family and and and and the, thesense of sort of satisfaction
and the kind of appreciation youget for that I think is a lot
higher, um, as a result ofhaving gone through that
experience.
So so I really do kind ofrelate to that.
I think that's a reallyinteresting insight.
You know I'm sort of curious doyou notice any changes in how
(21:11):
different generations approachthe idea of work?
And you were chatting justbefore we spoke and you
mentioned some careers advisorshave been reaching out to you
and perhaps the slightfrustration from careers
advisors in some quarters thateveryone's wanting to go for the
big salaries in the UK, tryingto aim for London life and
(21:33):
things.
I'm just curious are there anytrends you notice between
generations and how theyapproach the idea of work and
developing a career?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
and how they approach the idea of work and developing
a career.
Well, I interviewed quite a fewpeople in their 20s and early
30s, so I suppose that's latemillennials and early Gen Zs For
them.
It's been quite a kind ofinteresting experience at the
workplace In the time thatthey've been around, uh, in the
workforce.
(22:04):
You've had kind of siliconvalley at peak pump um and all
of the ideas about what workshould be and what a work an
office should look like.
Um seem to sort of come out ofcalifornia and traveled around
the world.
So the whole kind ofdiscussions about bringing your
whole self to work, the ideathat your job should be a kind
(22:27):
of core part of your identity.
And if you're not, you knowvery few people in that
generation are.
You know going to church andengaging in civic life because
they're, you know renting andmoving house every year, and so
work was kind of held out asthis place where you would.
(22:47):
I suppose the word isself-actualize.
I don't really know what thatmeans, but that's what everyone
the word everyone seems to use.
It leads to a kind of raisingof hopes about what work will do
for you when you go to theoffice.
You expect to, if people aresaying you know, bring your
whole self to work, this is,we're all a family, etc.
(23:09):
Then you expect to find thatwhen you enter the workforce and
for many of the late20-somethings and early
30-somethings that I interviewed, they kind of had believed that
.
And then they get into theworkforce and into their career
and you realize that that's justone part of the company talking
.
Often, you know HR departmentsuh, trying to advertise the
(23:31):
company out to potentialapplicants and to clients, but
in fact the internal dynamics ofthe company run very
differently.
So, for instance, there was amanagement consultant who had
they were doing some training onsexual harassment and the
firm's policy had been very much.
You know, we are zero toleranceto any kind of sexual
(23:53):
harassment and that kind ofthing.
And she'd had an experiencewith a client where the client
had been saying things along thelines of you know, women don't,
shouldn't be engineers, theybelong in the kitchen, all that
kind of stuff.
And she raised this at theworkplace training and one of
the partners that was managingthe training said yes, I know we
(24:16):
say zero tolerance, but it'svery difficult when it's a
client, isn't it?
Because you don't want tojeopardize the contract, and so
I think you did the right thingthere not saying anything or
reporting it, because we've gotto protect our relationships
with our clients and that'sprobably how these companies
have run for decades.
(24:37):
But it's a kind of interestingexample of the hopes and
expectations that have beenraised about what work should be
and then the realities thatpeople find once they begin
their careers.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, there's another one that you raise in the
conclusion section of the bookwhich is about not too much
admin, one that you raise in theconclusion section of the book
which is about not too muchadmin.
So so many jobs now kind ofhave a whole lot of paperwork
and kind of effectivelyassociated with them, that's not
the core task of the job, it'sit's kind of work to do with the
work and I guess the lessonthere is well, we'll need some
(25:13):
of that.
If that takes over too much ofthe job, then that can get quite
frustrating for the peopledoing the job.
Um, I wonder if you could maybetalk to us a little bit about
that idea.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, I suppose it comes back to this idea of
crisis.
Several of the interviews, orseveral of the interviewees were
considering maybe in the lastyear or two, were considering
leaving their jobs because theyfound it too overwhelming, too
stressful, they're burnt out.
And those were particularlypeople that were working in
(25:51):
vocational professions, soteachers and people that were
working in the NHS.
And there's a kind of parallelwith what we're talking about
earlier with Gen uh, gen z andmillennials where, uh, there too
, you have great expectations ofwhat your job will be because
you feel called to it, you feellike you're doing good and, um,
(26:15):
then when the reality and you'veset so much of your identity by
that job and when the realitydoesn't then live up to that or
is too difficult, then it's akind of extremely painful
experience because of that gapbetween the expectations and the
reality.
And so the way that several ofmy interviewees managed to stay
(26:37):
on in those careers was by akind of conscious stepping back
and kind of looking at things inthe whole and saying I'm
extremely stressed and burnt out.
There's a huge amount of my jobthat I find deeply frustrating
and that part of my job is oftenirrelevant to the kind of true
(26:58):
purpose of my job.
So, for instance, a teacher wasspending a huge amount of time
responding to parent emails andmanagement emails and doing
marking and data drops and allof this other stuff that is,
when it comes down to it, isseparate from the job of
teaching and being in front of aclassroom and getting kids to
learn stuff.
And so she decided that she wasgoing to take her work email
(27:23):
off her phone, stop being a kindof goody two-shoes when it
comes to senior leadership,asking people to do things, stop
, I think, responding to parentemails with the same frequency
and just just kind of focus onbeing the best teacher in the
classroom that she could be anddoing marking as she went around
(27:43):
in the classroom and thatstepping back.
Then she said, you know, I feelcompletely different now in
terms of my relationship withwork.
So she was, I suppose, in somesenses caring less, but in other
senses, was kind of redirectingher care towards the kind of
true essence of the job.
Kind of redirecting her caretowards the kind of true essence
(28:06):
of the job, which is which isteaching.
Um, and so I suppose that's akind of broader theme that we've
been talking about a bit today,which is that there is this
kind of heart of one's job andso much of work gets in the way
of that heart.
Uh, so we talked about adminand worrying about money and
worrying about what other peoplemight think of you, or worrying
(28:28):
about status.
All of that is external to theheart of your job, and so all of
these are different ways ofkind of focusing on what really
matters when it comes to workyou say that when it comes to
that, you know if we can manageto find ourselves a job where
you know we are not swamped byall the admin.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
You talk about how a good task is one with a clear
and immediate result.
Could you give us some examplesof what that looks like?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, this was a kind of comparison with I definitely
felt this when I was doing lawthat you're writing these
extremely long advice documentsand you send them out to the
client or to whoever and there'sno real sense of like was that
a good thing that I did?
(29:17):
Was it successful in its aim?
And doing these interviews andlistening to people.
So there was a cleaner who wastalking about the sense of
satisfaction she got fromcleaning a room and she would
say that she'd clean it and thenshe'd look back and think, oh
lovely, like that kind of ohlovely thing is such an
important thing when it comes tothe tasks that you're doing day
(29:39):
to day thing.
When it comes to the tasks thatyou're doing day to day and yes
, they're kind of associatedwith kind of manual work, in
that there you're kind of makingand shaping something in the
real world.
So perhaps it's easier to seethat the outcome does this, have
I done the task well?
Does this thing that I'vecreated do the job that I
intended it to do?
But also, you see it, withsoftware developers.
(30:01):
I interviewed a softwaredeveloper who was saying that I
intended it to do.
But also, you see it, withsoftware developers.
I interviewed a softwaredeveloper saying that he likes
it because it feels like it'sthe kind of closest thing you
can do on a computer to workingwith your hands.
You can test the code.
You can see if it works.
You've got this clear idea inyour mind of what you're trying
to call forth.
Yeah, it either works or itdoesn't.
It's a very difficult thingbecause so many of the jobs that
(30:21):
we seem to be creating in ourmodern economy revolve around
email and things like, I suppose, content marketing, hr.
When you're spending a lot ofyour time just responding to
emails and communicating, it'shard to see what in the real
world you have accomplished thatday.
(30:41):
And certainly the ones theinterviewees that could see that
were in some senses moresatisfied.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I think I know exactly what you mean when
you're kind of removed from theend product and what you're
producing as reports andPowerPoints and emails and stuff
.
You know it can be a little bitharder.
You know from my own time inthat kind of of world pre-exam
study expert for me.
You know I, I, I was deeplyunhappy in jobs where for long
(31:11):
stretches I might not get any orbarely any kind of feedback on
the quality of my work.
You know I I need, you knowinternally from from the people
I was, from my kind of linemanager supervisors effectively,
you know I desperately need, Ihad a desperate need for that
kind of validation.
You know, if I'd spent maybeweeks putting a report together
(31:32):
or some analysis, you know Ireally needed that.
Like I had a real sort ofpsychological need to know it
was good and know they thoughtit was good and if that was the
case, then that was okay, wasokay, like I didn't need it,
didn't need much, it just neededthat.
You know that's a good job andif it wasn't good, that's okay.
Like you know, help me learnfrom that and I'll get better
next time.
And and you know I had there'squite a big variation.
(31:54):
Some people I worked with did agreat job of that, some not not
very good at all, and and itmade such a difference to my
kind of happiness at work and mysatisfaction when that was in
place, um, compared to when itwasn't, and and so I suppose a
lesson for anyone listening tothis who does have some
management responsibility ormanagement responsibility or
aspires to in future,particularly in a situation
(32:17):
where the end product is alittle bit more intangible, you
know giving that feedback toyour, to your reports can be,
can be huge for for theiroverall happiness and enjoyment
of work and life generally yeah,that cleaner that I mentioned,
she used to get texts from herclients um, afterwards, after
she'd been, and they'd say, oh,the house looks amazing, thank
(32:39):
you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
it's kind of perfect start to the weekend, basically,
and she was saying how much sheloved getting those texts and
how buzzing she was every timeshe got them.
So all these things cost solittle, don't they?
But it means so much toeveryone.
We all crave that sense thatwhat we're doing has some level
(33:01):
of value and purpose.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
On which note, dear listener, if you enjoy the Exams
to the Expert podcast, do takea moment to leave us a short
review if we've been able tohelp you.
Hopefully, that's very clearwhy we love that so much.
So please do that.
And the same token, you know ifthere are any other kind of
creative products.
You know YouTube channels,podcasts.
(33:26):
You know books you've read.
You know taking that moment toleave that review just means so,
so much to the author, thecreator behind that, who, in
many cases, has poured so muchof themselves into producing
that.
Just taking that moment toshare what you thought and how
much you enjoyed it, how muchit's helped, just means the
world to us, to us creators.
Um, so, charlie, this has beenso, so interesting.
(33:47):
Is there anything, uh, youthink we haven't touched on that
you think would be interestingto to, to, to bring up before we
, before we start to bring thisto a close?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
um, I suppose it's the kind of practical uh side of
things that if you are in yourearly 20s or going through a
career change, or if you're 17,18, thinking about what to do at
university, how you can makethose decisions in a sensible
way.
(34:16):
I don't know if I've got muchto say based on my interviews,
but it's certainly a kind ofcrazy thing that when we make
our career decisions, we reallyknow very little about the world
and about ourselves.
And yet, as I was just talkingabout, you know, most people
don't really go in, go throughlife with a career plan, and so
(34:38):
often the decisions you makewhen you're that age with a
career plan, and so often thedecisions you make when you're
that age end up that being thekind of path you walk down for
the next 30, 40 years, I think.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Given the amount of time we spend in our working
lives, it's scary how littlethought we give to making that
choice, making that decision.
You know, if you add up thenumber of hours of time that the
average person spends in thesoul, searching, doing the
researching, trying things out,you know it's it's very, very
little time compared to the whatis it?
(35:10):
60, 70, 000 hours of your adultlife is spent at work.
It's, it's crazy.
I don't know, charlie, is thereanything that would have helped
?
Because I mean, in hindsightthe path looks clear, like doing
the law conversion course, kindof knowing how it would end up
for you.
But you know, with hindsightdoesn't seem like the right
choice.
(35:30):
But like, is there any way thatyou, the version of you
pre-doing that law conversioncourse, could have learned that
like?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
yeah, it's, um, that's a good question.
I so I I've done a huge amountof work experience and
preparation for it and um.
But the kind of human mind is avery powerful thing.
You can basically rationalizeyour way to any decision once
you've kind of uh, you'vedecided upon it.
Perhaps what we're talkingabout more generally is just
this kind of being extremelyhonest with yourself about where
(35:59):
these ideas are coming from.
Is it because you're pursuingsome kind of high status?
Is it because you want money?
All of those are kind of fairand valid goals and aspirations,
but often we clothe them inother things.
We say you know, I want to dothis career because it's a good
job, it's going to give me goodskills that I can then use to do
(36:21):
the thing that I really want todo down the line.
Well, the other lesson of thisbook is that people very rarely
make that leap.
You know, doing three or fouryears in a job that you know,
perhaps a corporate job, andthen doing something apart from
you will, I should add.
But, yeah, be sort of trulyhonest with you.
(36:42):
Know, know, don't talk toyourself like it's a job
interview where you need todress everything up in the
language that you think otherswould find acceptable.
If you want to pursue a highstatus job because you status is
something that really mattersto you, then fine.
But uh, be honest with yourselfin terms of things that I
should have done.
There's a book called Designingyour Life by, I think, bill
(37:03):
Burnett and Dave Evans.
I've just looked that up andthere's a good piece of advice
in there which comes back tothis idea of what constitutes a
good task, and they recommenddoing a good time diary.
So whenever you're doing you'rein your job or you're doing
work experience, kind of writedown a list, uh kind of table,
(37:26):
of how you're spending your timeand then how it makes you feel.
I did that, but only when I wassort of six months into
pupillage and I could see the.
Basically, you know I wasspending, you know, six hours a
day reading, reading umparticular documents, five hours
a day writing, and the scoresthat I was giving myself for
(37:48):
those were quite low.
Just as you should make a largelist, you should also just go
out there and try as much aspossible.
People like to talk aboutthemselves and their own careers
.
So if you message people onLinkedIn and say I'm really
interested to hear how you gotyour current job.
That's a great way of exposingyourself to lots of different
(38:10):
jobs, getting work experienceand things like that, and don't
just stick to jobs that someonein your position would be
expected to do so.
Last year, I worked as aconstruction labourer whilst I
was finishing off the book, fortwo or three days a week, and I
found that extremely, extremelyrewarding.
(38:32):
Like I love the work, I thoughtit was.
I learnt so much doing it and Iwouldn't have done that when I
was 20, 21, because you've gotyour tunnel vision on.
So it's just about casting anextremely wide net, all the
while being extremely honestwith yourself.
Buckle up and enjoy the ridebuckle up and enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
And well that, charlie.
Thank you so much for joiningus once again on the show.
It's been a really interestingconversation today and I hope it
sparked some useful food forthought for those listening.
So, charlie, if anybody'sinterested in learning more
about your work on working,where would be the best place
for them to go?
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So the book's called Is this Working the Jobs we Do?
Told by the people who do them?
Is this working the jobs we do?
Told by the people who do them?
Um, and it's in all goodbookshops, uh, and also on all
major e-commerce uh websites, uh, but maybe go into a bookshop
and support them if you can, uh,and I've got a sub stack, uh
called the administration ofthings, which I occasionally um
(39:39):
blog from, but no other socialmedia, and perhaps that's
another piece of advice.
I've felt a lot happier since,uh, stripping away all of that
stuff well.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Thank you so much once again, charlie, and an
extra little bonus bit of advicefor us there at the end, which
I think is um, I'd fully endorseuh, stripping away some of the
social media and I thinkexposure to the news media cycle
in the way that many of us arejust dialing all that noise back
a little bit in our lives, cando wonders for our day-to-day
wellbeing and our mental health.
So I wanted to share just a fewof my top takeaways from this
(40:14):
conversation, because I thinkthere are some points in here
that are really worthhighlighting and reiterating.
So the first one is just to saythat Charlie says that the
state of uncertainty is whenyou're most vulnerable to the
ideas of others.
These influences can bepositive, though not necessarily
.
So be especially wary and standguard at the door of your mind
(40:35):
when you're making choices.
In times of uncertainty, whenyou yourself feel a little bit
uncertain, unsettled, and besure that if you are being
influenced by external voicesand even you know very
well-meaning advice, that youknow just trying to have your
best interest at heart you knowreally take extra care that the
choices you're making in thosecircumstances are in line with
your values and where you wantto take your life.
(40:55):
Secondly, when you strip out thesuperficial elements of your
job, or perhaps the job you'reaspiring to what's left.
So if you don't get to paradearound in a suit or an academic
gown or lab coat or scrubs orwhatever, uh, and you're going
to get that glow of status inthe eyes of your community and
society at large.
You know, if you don't havethose after work socials, if, uh
(41:16):
, you don't have the littletreats and perks that some jobs
may offer, you know you don'thave the little treats and perks
that some jobs may offer.
You know you don't have the bigvacations that you may be able
to afford with your paycheck.
You know, if you strip all thatback, do you actually like the
fundamental tasks that you do?
Do they bring you somesatisfaction on some level,
maybe from the raw intellectualchallenge and the thrill of
problem solving or from helpingsomeone in some way?
(41:39):
Or is all the fluff around itsort of just a salve and it kind
of just numbs and distracts youfrom a fundamental set of tasks
you don't particularly enjoy?
Things that can lead to moreenjoyment of those tasks include
having that clear and immediateresult so you can look around
at the end of cleaning a houseor writing some code and see the
change.
(41:59):
Or maybe you've helped someoneor maybe you get some positive
feedback from somebody.
You know you've done a goodpiece of work and you know
you're in a work culture whereyour clients or your supervisors
or your line manager, you know,will turn around and kind of
pat you on the back and say youknow, great job well done and we
want to try and avoid too muchadmin load in our work.
(42:20):
That can you know.
Great job well done and we wantto try and avoid too much admin
load in our work.
That can you know.
Charlie's research shows thatfor many people, even when they
enjoy the core task, there's allthis kind of bureaucracy you
know, paperwork and meetingsabout meetings and all this sort
of stuff that gets in the wayof being able to just get on and
do the task that is your joband that can be quite
(42:41):
frustrating for people when whenthat admin load gets gets too
high.
And planning is helpful, but beopen to your plan evolving.
It's really interesting whencharlie said that in at no point
in all the people heinterviewed did anyone say that.
Well, actually the thing thatled me to get into my current
line of work was I was sittingdown with a skills matrix that
determined what I was good atand that determined the path the
(43:02):
rest of my life.
So it's kind of difficultadvice here, but sort of being
open to opportunities the worldputs in front of you, being open
to your interests evolving andemerging, and look out for doors
that seem interesting to pushopen, even if those aren't the
doors that you intended to pushon.
You know, 5, 10, 20 years ago,as your grandma or spiritual
(43:25):
leader might have told you manytimes, beware chasing money or
stasis.
There's nothing wrong withchasing either, and we certainly
need a layer of income to bestable in life, but beware
putting these idols above ourown well-being.
And finally, there's a reallyinteresting one for me about
crisis breeding satisfaction.
You know so, if you arecurrently going through
(43:47):
difficult times, either in your,your uh study, either in your
in the kind of world of studyingand academia, or in a kind of
professional context, if you, ifyou have a, a job or you're in
a career at the moment, and youknow, I think it's really
interesting what charlie wassaying about how, for many
people, having been through thatreally really difficult patch,
that kind of hit rock bottom andthen recovered from it and
(44:09):
pulled themselves back and youkind of develop a level of life
satisfaction that's.
That can be quite hard to getto otherwise if everything had
been plain sailing the wholetime.
So a silver lining perhaps offinding things difficult,
finding times hard, is that whenwe can get ourselves out of
that there is life at the end ofthe tunnel.
Hopefully, you know, once wecan kind of recover from that
(44:30):
and get out of that, you have asense of life satisfaction and
kind of appreciation andgratitude for what you have.
That's quite hard to gainotherwise.
So thank you so much for tuningin today.
It's been a real pleasure tohave your company and, as I say,
I hope there's been some usefulfood for thought off the back
of this episode, whether thingsyou're thinking about in terms
(44:53):
of your own journey or your ownlife, or perhaps for those
around you.
You know, perhaps, especiallyif you're a parent, a teacher, a
mentor of some some kind, somethings that you might be able to
support, use to support otherswho you care about.
I look forward to joining,seeing you again next Sunday for
another episode.
Next time is going to be areplay episode.
(45:14):
We're going to be revisitingone of my absolute favorite
episodes from last year andreplaying that for you, so
really looking forward to that.
For now, I just wanted to wishyou every success, as always, in
your studies.
Thank you so much for joiningus today and I look forward to
seeing you again soon.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome back to the Exam Study Experts
podcast and to our summerschedule which, as in previous
years, is a nice excuse for usto bring back and resurface some
gems from the archives that youmay have overlooked or may be
well worth a re-listen, as wellas bringing you some fresh
conversations which I think you,dear listener, will find very
stimulating and inspiring butcan otherwise be maybe just a
(00:23):
little tricky to weave into ourregular broadcast schedule.
This week's episode is a freshconversation for you, a little
bit tangential to the core topicof studying smarter and passing
your exams, zooming out as wesometimes do in the summer to
look at your journey a littlebit more broadly.
Just to explain, I think thisis a great episode.
(00:43):
I think you're really going toenjoy this.
We are rejoined today, I'mexcited to say, by a former
student story star.
You may remember Charlie fromepisode 75, if you've been with
us for a while.
We met Charlie some years agowhen he was sharing details of
getting through his law schoolexams.
That was his student storyepisode in 75.
So if you're studying for lawexams or other exams that have a
(01:06):
lot of difficult information tolearn, there's a really nice
case study of how he appliedsome of the key ideas from this
podcast.
He'd been a podcast listenerfor a little while.
Since then, charlie has gonethrough something of a rebirth,
after struggling to enjoy thecareer in law that he'd striven
for for so long, and heultimately ended up doing a huge
piece of research, drawing onsome of his skills as a
(01:28):
historian, perhaps, to try andunderstand people's career
journeys and what can lead toenjoyment and satisfaction, and
this all culminated in a majorbook called Is this Working?
I know Charlie in real life,he's a friend in the real world
and he landed a reallysignificant publishing deal for
the book and he did really wellfor this.
(01:50):
So really really proud of himand kind of excited to showcase
some of his findings today and,I think, just to give a little
bit of my own perspective on, Ithink, why this conversation is
why I'm so excited to bring thisconversation to you.
Like, I know that the folktuning into this show do so in
order to achieve academic goals,but I also know that those
goals generally are means to anend rather than the end in
(02:12):
itself.
You're sure you might be kindof towards the end of your
career and maybe you're taking acourse just as almost like
literally a hobby.
You know you're at the oppositeend of your career, you've done
with the world of work and sortof in retirement you're taking
a course literally for your loveof learning and because you
enjoy it and because you wantthe learnings.
But I think for the majority ofpeople listening, you know we
(02:35):
are studying with a goal in mind.
So we're studying for exams atschool to get into our preferred
university or college.
We're studying for exams atuniversity to access our
preferred career path, likeCharlie was with his law exams.
Or maybe in order to earn aplace on a program of further
study or research and stay inthe world of academia.
Or, for many listeners, youmight be studying for
(02:57):
professional certifications inorder to advance your career and
get promotion, move to the nextstep in your career path.
But wherever you are on yourjourney, there's this sense of
kind of the exams forming partof your path, part of your
journey, and I think it's reallyimportant and something we
perhaps don't talk about enough,either on the show specifically
or society as a whole, sort ofwe don't talk enough about sort
(03:18):
of stepping back and taking thetime to think about where we are
on the journey, what our nextsteps are and whether we're kind
of making the next right stepfor us.
Charlie hit a little bit of arock bottom moment when he
realised like, after years andyears of working towards a
career in law, he really didn'tenjoy the work and that's kind
of what triggered him to go anddo this huge piece of work,
(03:38):
interviewing kind of about 100people about their careers, what
led them to them, what theyenjoy about their work and so
forth, and about their careers,what led them to them, what they
enjoy about their work and soforth.
And he was aiming, in thosehundreds or so people, to get a
representative cross-section ofall different kinds of jobs in
society, from the manual to thecreative, to the technical, to
the executive everythingrepresented.
And there are some reallyfascinating lessons in this and
(03:59):
the stories he tells and thethings he found out from talking
to all these people.
I think there's some reallyfascinating lessons in this for
all of us as we aspire to buildrewarding and fulfilling careers
and lives for ourselves.
And I've taken a little bit oftime because there's quite a lot
in this episode, so I've takena little bit of time and I've
summarised my top takeaways atthe end of this interview.
(04:21):
We're well worth tuning in forthat, because I've sort of taken
a bit of time to go through andpick out some of the highlights
and the key messages.
But I think it's worthlistening to the interview first
so you kind of understand thecontext and the stories behind
the ideas so that they land.
So without further ado, let mewelcome Charlie Colnup back to
the Exam Study Expert podcast.
(04:42):
I kicked off our conversationby asking him to give us just a
little of the backstory of hisjourney to date by way of
context to bring us up to speed.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Thank you very much, will.
So, yeah, the story of myworking life it's.
I suppose we'll start atuniversity, where I did a
history degree.
As with lots of people that dodegrees that they're kind of
passionate about and followtheir interests, I didn't really
know where it would leadprofessionally.
That kind of state ofuncertainty and insecurity is
(05:15):
when you're often kind ofvulnerable to the ideas of
others, and not so much thingsthat are kind of internal to you
.
So I ended up becoming a lawyernot wholly, because I knew lots
of other people that werebecoming lawyers and that seemed
to be a very sensible andpragmatic thing to do with a
history degree.
If you wanted to live in theSoutheast and buy a house and
(05:37):
have a family, then you ought todo a sensible thing and become
a lawyer.
And so, yeah, I was probablyled by external motivations and
not so much by what wouldactually probably make me happy
deep down.
I had considered going to theUS to do a PhD in history, but
(05:59):
for various personal reasons Idecided to stay in the UK and
that left a kind of well, whatelse am I going to do?
Type vacuum.
And then the thing withprofessional services, jobs like
law and accountancy is thatit's very much an extension of
university in that when you goto university there's a
structure laid out for you.
You know what you're going tobe doing in year one, year two,
(06:19):
year three.
That structure is marked byassessments, as you well know,
and there's a kind of comfortblanket nature to that.
With law it's exactly the same.
I did a law conversion courseand then a bar course and then
the next stage, year three,would be a pupillage, a training
year at a set of chambers, andthen after that you would be out
(06:42):
there practicing as a lawyerand then after that you would be
out there practicing as alawyer, still with clear markers
of success.
You know how much are youearning, how many years
qualified are you, what type ofwork are you taking on.
So you're on a kind of lazyriver, being swept along by this
very structured career, and Ithink I probably would have
carried on on that lazy river.
It wasn't that lazy, I suppose,because it was quite hard work.
(07:04):
The exams are very tough andthe work itself is, you know,
quite long hours andintellectually demanding For me.
I was doing a commercialpupillage, which is the training
year that barristers do, andthat involved reading huge
amounts of material sort ofconstruction contracts with
(07:26):
appendices that would go on to700, 800 pages, and then writing
very long documents about thosevery long documents that you've
just read.
But yeah, I started inSeptember 2020, which is
obviously during COVID.
I think COVID acted as a bit ofa kind of electric shock to the
(07:47):
system, where I was sort oftraveling down a particular path
.
That winter lockdown I don'tknow if you remember it, but in
January 2021, I was basically ina flat by myself staring at a
screen for very long hours andthen just going to bed and it
was dark outside the entire timeand it really stripped away all
(08:12):
of the kind of aspects of beinga barrister that I probably
would have found some comfort in.
So there's the kind ofcamaraderie, there's the status,
being able to wear a suit andparade around.
It left you with the core, coreelements of the job which, for
(08:33):
me, I just did not find veryfulfilling at all.
I became quite unhappy andquickly realised, through
talking to people that you knowthere was one clear source of
the unhappiness and that was thefact that I didn't enjoy the
work at all really, and this wasthe work at its most basic and
(08:53):
most stripped back.
So if I couldn't enjoy thisthen surely I probably wasn't
going to enjoy the next 40 years.
And so I decided to leave.
I said, well, I'll finish mypupillage so I've got some kind
of qualification, and then maybeI'll go back to law.
But I don't think I will.
At about that time, or maybejust before I'd started
pupillage, I'd read this book byan American oral historian and
(09:16):
radio broadcaster called Studs.
Terkel is a great name and it'scalled Working and he basically
traveled around Chicago puttingdown a tape recorder in front
of ordinary working people.
Well, not some ordinary, someextraordinary.
So there's baseball stars,waitresses, coal miners, people
(09:37):
that work in car factory plants,and this is in the early 1970s.
And he got them to talk abouttheir jobs, sort of describe in
detail what they do all day,tell them how they feel about
what they do all day.
And it's this wonderful kind ofchoral work of people doing
wildly different things withtheir days, whether it's strip
(09:59):
mining coal or being anaccountant or being an
accountant and yet sayingsimilar things about what they
experience at work and the kindof humiliations and
satisfactions of it all.
So I'd read this book and I'dloved it and I thought, wow,
it'd be really cool to do this.
You know, 50 years on in the UKand leaving my job as a lawyer
(10:21):
was kind of the trigger forthinking, well, you know, I
don't know what else I could,what else is out there.
Doing this book would be kindof interesting by itself, but
also it might tell me what Iwanted to do with my life.
If I spoke to enough peoplethen maybe I'd have a clear
answer about, you know, theperfect job for me, and I don't
(10:43):
think it gave me that.
But uh, it was certainly a yeah.
So I started traveling aroundthe UK, um, just talking to
people about their jobs, whetherthat's carers, mechanics,
doctors, lawyers, investmentbankers, the whole kind of sweep
of society.
The idea was it was a kind ofcross-section.
If you imagine the UK workingpopulation as a village, then
(11:05):
this was me walking around thevillage and just talking to
people.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
That's probably, yeah , a not very abridged account of
my working life so far.
That's a good point to pick upthe story.
So you were in this situationwhere you'd achieved your goal
of getting into law and passingyour exams and you were on the
path and kind of just findingthe fundamentals of the job.
This is dissatisfying and youmentioned you're quite unhappy
(11:37):
in it.
I'm sure it's an experiencemany people have when they
finally get into their ininverted commas dream career and
find actually, you know, maybethis isn't quite what I was,
what I was hoping for.
And I think possibly there's anexacerbating factor when it's
something you've worked so hardfor so long and had your sights
on for so long, and then it's abit disappointing, like I think
(11:57):
it doubles the disappointmentcompared to, you know, if you've
just sort of fallen into it,you've almost, you know, built
it up so much and put so muchinto it.
The disappointment, the stingis kind of even worse when
you're not enjoying it.
So one of your motivations fordoing the book and doing the
exercise was a personal one, youknow.
I think you wanted to kind offind out a bit about sort of
(12:20):
perspectives, wisdom on theworld of work and maybe use that
to kind of inform your nextsteps and where you want to go
in your life.
So what did you learn?
What become some of your bigpersonal takeaways that are sort
of shaping your next steps andwhere you're going with your
working life next?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, it was interesting to see the lack of
plan and the sheer randomnessthat defined so many people's
careers.
So there was, you know, softwaredevelopers that only got into
working with computers because,well, there was one site
reliability engineer who hisboss broke his leg and he was
(13:02):
then allowed to start managingthe network and then that led
him from a career in you know.
I think he was working in IT ina school and that led him to
London and a kind of reallypromising career in tech.
There was somebody else thatwas working as a receptionist
and was playing the computergame Doom in her spare time and
(13:25):
loved it and was only introducedto that by an ex-boyfriend.
And then she realized that shealso loved working with
computers as a result of playingso much of that and was begging
the IT department at hercompany to let her have a go at
resolving some support tickets.
And it was only when one ofthem fell ill and she was
(13:45):
allowed to take over for a fewweeks that her career in
software started.
And throughout it there's justall these sort of
extraordinarily random careerstories where no one at any
point in all the 100 interviewsI did sat down and thought you
know what are my skills?
(14:06):
What job best accords withthese skills?
What career goals should I?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
have.
So I mean, that kind ofrandomness is really interesting
.
I mean, you know, so manypeople sit down and have that
plan and they kind of come upwith that.
You describe it.
You know any careers advisorworth their salt will say, oh,
what are your skills, what areyour strengths?
Okay.
You know any careers advisorworth their salt will say, oh,
what are your skills, what areyour strengths?
And you know, okay, well, whatsort of careers are going to be
most suited to you.
I mean, I guess I'm kind ofinterested in the kind of who.
(14:37):
If careers and working life is agame, you know, I think the
most important measure,certainly, as I see it, is kind
of your fulfillment, yoursatisfaction and how much you
enjoy it.
Like a certain level of moneyfor sure is important, like it's
vital to have a certain levelof needs met, highly desirable
to have some finance left overbeyond your basic needs to cover
(14:58):
some wants.
But I think you know, there'sincreasingly an awareness I
think perhaps from what I see,particularly from the generation
just entering the workforce nowthat money is not the end goal,
or certainly not the only endgoal.
It's necessary but notsufficient.
So from all these differentstories, I was just curious who
(15:21):
struck you as the most happy,the most fulfilled in their work
.
Is it the high-paid bankers andlawyers?
Is it the careersstereotypically associated with
job satisfaction, like peoplekind of some form of education
or caring for people, healthcarelike?
Is it those pursuing a kind ofa creative calling um?
Or is it just like totallyrandom, like were there any
patterns in terms of who hadcracked, being able to find some
(15:44):
satisfaction, some enjoyment intheir work?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, so, as you say, there was no real pattern as to
income and salary and happinessand satisfaction.
People that were working insort of truly precarious jobs,
um like, interviewed a gigdelivery rider and he also
(16:08):
worked part-time as a carer.
Just the fact that the moneywas so inconsistent and low
caused them a huge amount ofstress in life.
But beyond, as you say, acertain level, there was no
correspondence really in in theinterviews that I did between
salary and satisfaction at work.
I think in fact the people thatseemed most satisfied were
(16:33):
those that had gone through somekind of experience where they
hit some kind of rock bottomwith their career.
So I interviewed a joiner likea carpenter, who had been
working in a factory, was in ahuge amount of debt I think
something like nearly £10,000 ofdebt and had just had a child
(16:58):
and was completely despondentabout the direction that his
life was going in.
He then took a risk and decidedto borrow some of his friend's
tools and sort of strike out asa joiner and self-employed Was
doing, you know, living hand tomouth where for each job he
(17:18):
would use that to buy the toolsthat he needed for the next job.
And if he didn't have the tools, then he would put off the job
until he could do enough work tobuy the tools that he needed
for the next job.
And if he didn't have the tools, then he would put off the job
until he could do enough work toto buy those tools.
And then within a couple ofyears he had cleared the debt
and was working for himself.
And, um, there were lots offrustrations in his work in the
um.
You know all the thefrustrations that you have
(17:39):
working the constructionindustry.
Uh, in that it's hard work,long hours sometimes and people
aren't paying you, all of thatkind of stuff.
But having been through thatexperience of kind of looking
around at his life and thinkingI need to make some kind of
drastic change here there was akind of level of gratitude and
appreciation for where he wasand he didn't have any ambitions
(18:02):
to go much further beyond wherehe was.
And he was saying I don't wanta fleet of 10 vans and a million
pounds a year, I'm happy whereI am because everything is
balanced.
And likewise there were you knowI interviewed someone that had
come to the UK without any rightto work from South America and,
you know, had been working inone of those, one of those kind
(18:25):
of dodgy operators who drives aminibus full of cleaners and
pays them four pounds an hour,drops them off at various fancy
houses and then takes thewhatever the difference is from
what they're actually being paidprobably sort of 15 pounds an
hour for himself.
And then she had then since setout and started to find her own
(18:45):
work, um, and was then managingher own cleaning company.
And again, there's a that kindof great, deep sense of
gratitude, and so I suppose it'sthat old thing of like, well,
if you're, if you wouldn't behappy in a mud hut, then you're
not going to be happy anywherebecause, um, actually it's not
so much about your theenvironment you're in, but it's
about your perspective on it.
And yeah, by the same token,there are people working very,
(19:10):
very fancy jobs earningsignificant amounts of money.
I think of the trader in aninvestment bank who was saying
that she just felt like a numberhad been, uh, was sort of was
talking about children andwatching a toddler push a car
across a room and seeing thesmile that the child gets from,
(19:30):
seeing cause and effect soobviously, and she felt that she
didn't get any of that in thejob that she was doing.
So, yeah, the patterns aremaybe not the kind of in the
conventional sense of yeah, thejob you're the actual task
you're doing and the um, uh, themoney you're earning, but in a
more kind of uh, emotional sense, I suppose I think the point
(19:56):
about the difference betweenyour, your kind of rock bottom
and and then where you are now,that kind kind of contrast is
sort of a really interesting, areally interesting point.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And and and I obviously I don't mean to make
light at all of how terrifyingit can be when you feel like
you're, you're kind of in in, incrisis and and and can't
provide for yourself, for yourfamily, and you know I, I the
first bit, you know it kind bit,you know kind of there's an
element to which that sort ofrings true.
For me, the early years of exam, study, expert life, you know,
(20:30):
before I was sort of established, were financially quite
stretching as I was gettingestablished.
And the contrast between thatand now I I don't have a fleet
of 10 vans and you know millionsof pounds are in common, yeah,
but but I don't feel I need that.
You know I need enough to kindof take care of myself and my
(20:51):
family and and and and the, thesense of sort of satisfaction
and the kind of appreciation youget for that I think is a lot
higher, um, as a result ofhaving gone through that
experience.
So so I really do kind ofrelate to that.
I think that's a reallyinteresting insight.
You know I'm sort of curious doyou notice any changes in how
(21:11):
different generations approachthe idea of work?
And you were chatting justbefore we spoke and you
mentioned some careers advisorshave been reaching out to you
and perhaps the slightfrustration from careers
advisors in some quarters thateveryone's wanting to go for the
big salaries in the UK, tryingto aim for London life and
(21:33):
things.
I'm just curious are there anytrends you notice between
generations and how theyapproach the idea of work and
developing a career?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
and how they approach the idea of work and developing
a career.
Well, I interviewed quite a fewpeople in their 20s and early
30s, so I suppose that's latemillennials and early Gen Zs For
them.
It's been quite a kind ofinteresting experience at the
workplace In the time thatthey've been around, uh, in the
workforce.
(22:04):
You've had kind of siliconvalley at peak pump um and all
of the ideas about what workshould be and what a work an
office should look like.
Um seem to sort of come out ofcalifornia and traveled around
the world.
So the whole kind ofdiscussions about bringing your
whole self to work, the ideathat your job should be a kind
(22:27):
of core part of your identity.
And if you're not, you knowvery few people in that
generation are.
You know going to church andengaging in civic life because
they're, you know renting andmoving house every year, and so
work was kind of held out asthis place where you would.
(22:47):
I suppose the word isself-actualize.
I don't really know what thatmeans, but that's what everyone
the word everyone seems to use.
It leads to a kind of raisingof hopes about what work will do
for you when you go to theoffice.
You expect to, if people aresaying you know, bring your
whole self to work, this is,we're all a family, etc.
(23:09):
Then you expect to find thatwhen you enter the workforce and
for many of the late20-somethings and early
30-somethings that I interviewed, they kind of had believed that
.
And then they get into theworkforce and into their career
and you realize that that's justone part of the company talking
.
Often, you know HR departmentsuh, trying to advertise the
(23:31):
company out to potentialapplicants and to clients, but
in fact the internal dynamics ofthe company run very
differently.
So, for instance, there was amanagement consultant who had
they were doing some training onsexual harassment and the
firm's policy had been very much.
You know, we are zero toleranceto any kind of sexual
(23:53):
harassment and that kind ofthing.
And she'd had an experiencewith a client where the client
had been saying things along thelines of you know, women don't,
shouldn't be engineers, theybelong in the kitchen, all that
kind of stuff.
And she raised this at theworkplace training and one of
the partners that was managingthe training said yes, I know we
(24:16):
say zero tolerance, but it'svery difficult when it's a
client, isn't it?
Because you don't want tojeopardize the contract, and so
I think you did the right thingthere not saying anything or
reporting it, because we've gotto protect our relationships
with our clients and that'sprobably how these companies
have run for decades.
(24:37):
But it's a kind of interestingexample of the hopes and
expectations that have beenraised about what work should be
and then the realities thatpeople find once they begin
their careers.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yeah, there's another one that you raise in the
conclusion section of the bookwhich is about not too much
admin, one that you raise in theconclusion section of the book
which is about not too muchadmin.
So so many jobs now kind ofhave a whole lot of paperwork
and kind of effectivelyassociated with them, that's not
the core task of the job, it'sit's kind of work to do with the
work and I guess the lessonthere is well, we'll need some
(25:13):
of that.
If that takes over too much ofthe job, then that can get quite
frustrating for the peopledoing the job.
Um, I wonder if you could maybetalk to us a little bit about
that idea.
Speaker 2 (25:27):
Yeah, I suppose it comes back to this idea of
crisis.
Several of the interviews, orseveral of the interviewees were
considering maybe in the lastyear or two, were considering
leaving their jobs because theyfound it too overwhelming, too
stressful, they're burnt out.
And those were particularlypeople that were working in
(25:51):
vocational professions, soteachers and people that were
working in the NHS.
And there's a kind of parallelwith what we're talking about
earlier with Gen uh, gen z andmillennials where, uh, there too
, you have great expectations ofwhat your job will be because
you feel called to it, you feellike you're doing good and, um,
(26:15):
then when the reality and you'veset so much of your identity by
that job and when the realitydoesn't then live up to that or
is too difficult, then it's akind of extremely painful
experience because of that gapbetween the expectations and the
reality.
And so the way that several ofmy interviewees managed to stay
(26:37):
on in those careers was by akind of conscious stepping back
and kind of looking at things inthe whole and saying I'm
extremely stressed and burnt out.
There's a huge amount of my jobthat I find deeply frustrating
and that part of my job is oftenirrelevant to the kind of true
(26:58):
purpose of my job.
So, for instance, a teacher wasspending a huge amount of time
responding to parent emails andmanagement emails and doing
marking and data drops and allof this other stuff that is,
when it comes down to it, isseparate from the job of
teaching and being in front of aclassroom and getting kids to
learn stuff.
And so she decided that she wasgoing to take her work email
(27:23):
off her phone, stop being a kindof goody two-shoes when it
comes to senior leadership,asking people to do things, stop
, I think, responding to parentemails with the same frequency
and just just kind of focus onbeing the best teacher in the
classroom that she could be anddoing marking as she went around
(27:43):
in the classroom and thatstepping back.
Then she said, you know, I feelcompletely different now in
terms of my relationship withwork.
So she was, I suppose, in somesenses caring less, but in other
senses, was kind of redirectingher care towards the kind of
true essence of the job.
Kind of redirecting her caretowards the kind of true essence
(28:06):
of the job, which is which isteaching.
Um, and so I suppose that's akind of broader theme that we've
been talking about a bit today,which is that there is this
kind of heart of one's job andso much of work gets in the way
of that heart.
Uh, so we talked about adminand worrying about money and
worrying about what other peoplemight think of you, or worrying
(28:28):
about status.
All of that is external to theheart of your job, and so all of
these are different ways ofkind of focusing on what really
matters when it comes to workyou say that when it comes to
that, you know if we can manageto find ourselves a job where
you know we are not swamped byall the admin.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
You talk about how a good task is one with a clear
and immediate result.
Could you give us some examplesof what that looks like?
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Yeah, this was a kind of comparison with I definitely
felt this when I was doing lawthat you're writing these
extremely long advice documentsand you send them out to the
client or to whoever and there'sno real sense of like was that
a good thing that I did?
(29:17):
Was it successful in its aim?
And doing these interviews andlistening to people.
So there was a cleaner who wastalking about the sense of
satisfaction she got fromcleaning a room and she would
say that she'd clean it and thenshe'd look back and think, oh
lovely, like that kind of ohlovely thing is such an
important thing when it comes tothe tasks that you're doing day
(29:39):
to day thing.
When it comes to the tasks thatyou're doing day to day and yes
, they're kind of associatedwith kind of manual work, in
that there you're kind of makingand shaping something in the
real world.
So perhaps it's easier to seethat the outcome does this, have
I done the task well?
Does this thing that I'vecreated do the job that I
intended it to do?
But also, you see it, withsoftware developers.
(30:01):
I interviewed a softwaredeveloper who was saying that I
intended it to do.
But also, you see it, withsoftware developers.
I interviewed a softwaredeveloper saying that he likes
it because it feels like it'sthe kind of closest thing you
can do on a computer to workingwith your hands.
You can test the code.
You can see if it works.
You've got this clear idea inyour mind of what you're trying
to call forth.
Yeah, it either works or itdoesn't.
It's a very difficult thingbecause so many of the jobs that
(30:21):
we seem to be creating in ourmodern economy revolve around
email and things like, I suppose, content marketing, hr.
When you're spending a lot ofyour time just responding to
emails and communicating, it'shard to see what in the real
world you have accomplished thatday.
(30:41):
And certainly the ones theinterviewees that could see that
were in some senses moresatisfied.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
I think I know exactly what you mean when
you're kind of removed from theend product and what you're
producing as reports andPowerPoints and emails and stuff
.
You know it can be a little bitharder.
You know from my own time inthat kind of of world pre-exam
study expert for me.
You know I, I, I was deeplyunhappy in jobs where for long
(31:11):
stretches I might not get any orbarely any kind of feedback on
the quality of my work.
You know I I need, you knowinternally from from the people
I was, from my kind of linemanager supervisors effectively,
you know I desperately need, Ihad a desperate need for that
kind of validation.
You know, if I'd spent maybeweeks putting a report together
(31:32):
or some analysis, you know Ireally needed that.
Like I had a real sort ofpsychological need to know it
was good and know they thoughtit was good and if that was the
case, then that was okay, wasokay, like I didn't need it,
didn't need much, it just neededthat.
You know that's a good job andif it wasn't good, that's okay.
Like you know, help me learnfrom that and I'll get better
next time.
And and you know I had there'squite a big variation.
(31:54):
Some people I worked with did agreat job of that, some not not
very good at all, and and itmade such a difference to my
kind of happiness at work and mysatisfaction when that was in
place, um, compared to when itwasn't, and and so I suppose a
lesson for anyone listening tothis who does have some
management responsibility ormanagement responsibility or
aspires to in future,particularly in a situation
(32:17):
where the end product is alittle bit more intangible, you
know giving that feedback toyour, to your reports can be,
can be huge for for theiroverall happiness and enjoyment
of work and life generally yeah,that cleaner that I mentioned,
she used to get texts from herclients um, afterwards, after
she'd been, and they'd say, oh,the house looks amazing, thank
(32:39):
you so much.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
it's kind of perfect start to the weekend, basically,
and she was saying how much sheloved getting those texts and
how buzzing she was every timeshe got them.
So all these things cost solittle, don't they?
But it means so much toeveryone.
We all crave that sense thatwhat we're doing has some level
(33:01):
of value and purpose.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
On which note, dear listener, if you enjoy the Exams
to the Expert podcast, do takea moment to leave us a short
review if we've been able tohelp you.
Hopefully, that's very clearwhy we love that so much.
So please do that.
And the same token, you know ifthere are any other kind of
creative products.
You know YouTube channels,podcasts.
(33:26):
You know books you've read.
You know taking that moment toleave that review just means so,
so much to the author, thecreator behind that, who, in
many cases, has poured so muchof themselves into producing
that.
Just taking that moment toshare what you thought and how
much you enjoyed it, how muchit's helped, just means the
world to us, to us creators.
Um, so, charlie, this has beenso, so interesting.
(33:47):
Is there anything, uh, youthink we haven't touched on that
you think would be interestingto to, to, to bring up before we
, before we start to bring thisto a close?
Speaker 2 (33:56):
um, I suppose it's the kind of practical uh side of
things that if you are in yourearly 20s or going through a
career change, or if you're 17,18, thinking about what to do at
university, how you can makethose decisions in a sensible
way.
(34:16):
I don't know if I've got muchto say based on my interviews,
but it's certainly a kind ofcrazy thing that when we make
our career decisions, we reallyknow very little about the world
and about ourselves.
And yet, as I was just talkingabout, you know, most people
don't really go in, go throughlife with a career plan, and so
(34:38):
often the decisions you makewhen you're that age with a
career plan, and so often thedecisions you make when you're
that age end up that being thekind of path you walk down for
the next 30, 40 years, I think.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Given the amount of time we spend in our working
lives, it's scary how littlethought we give to making that
choice, making that decision.
You know, if you add up thenumber of hours of time that the
average person spends in thesoul, searching, doing the
researching, trying things out,you know it's it's very, very
little time compared to the whatis it?
(35:10):
60, 70, 000 hours of your adultlife is spent at work.
It's, it's crazy.
I don't know, charlie, is thereanything that would have helped
?
Because I mean, in hindsightthe path looks clear, like doing
the law conversion course, kindof knowing how it would end up
for you.
But you know, with hindsightdoesn't seem like the right
choice.
(35:30):
But like, is there any way thatyou, the version of you
pre-doing that law conversioncourse, could have learned that
like?
Speaker 2 (35:37):
yeah, it's, um, that's a good question.
I so I I've done a huge amountof work experience and
preparation for it and um.
But the kind of human mind is avery powerful thing.
You can basically rationalizeyour way to any decision once
you've kind of uh, you'vedecided upon it.
Perhaps what we're talkingabout more generally is just
this kind of being extremelyhonest with yourself about where
(35:59):
these ideas are coming from.
Is it because you're pursuingsome kind of high status?
Is it because you want money?
All of those are kind of fairand valid goals and aspirations,
but often we clothe them inother things.
We say you know, I want to dothis career because it's a good
job, it's going to give me goodskills that I can then use to do
(36:21):
the thing that I really want todo down the line.
Well, the other lesson of thisbook is that people very rarely
make that leap.
You know, doing three or fouryears in a job that you know,
perhaps a corporate job, andthen doing something apart from
you will, I should add.
But, yeah, be sort of trulyhonest with you.
(36:42):
Know, know, don't talk toyourself like it's a job
interview where you need todress everything up in the
language that you think otherswould find acceptable.
If you want to pursue a highstatus job because you status is
something that really mattersto you, then fine.
But uh, be honest with yourselfin terms of things that I
should have done.
There's a book called Designingyour Life by, I think, bill
(37:03):
Burnett and Dave Evans.
I've just looked that up andthere's a good piece of advice
in there which comes back tothis idea of what constitutes a
good task, and they recommenddoing a good time diary.
So whenever you're doing you'rein your job or you're doing
work experience, kind of writedown a list, uh kind of table,
(37:26):
of how you're spending your timeand then how it makes you feel.
I did that, but only when I wassort of six months into
pupillage and I could see the.
Basically, you know I wasspending, you know, six hours a
day reading, reading umparticular documents, five hours
a day writing, and the scoresthat I was giving myself for
(37:48):
those were quite low.
Just as you should make a largelist, you should also just go
out there and try as much aspossible.
People like to talk aboutthemselves and their own careers
.
So if you message people onLinkedIn and say I'm really
interested to hear how you gotyour current job.
That's a great way of exposingyourself to lots of different
(38:10):
jobs, getting work experienceand things like that, and don't
just stick to jobs that someonein your position would be
expected to do so.
Last year, I worked as aconstruction labourer whilst I
was finishing off the book, fortwo or three days a week, and I
found that extremely, extremelyrewarding.
(38:32):
Like I love the work, I thoughtit was.
I learnt so much doing it and Iwouldn't have done that when I
was 20, 21, because you've gotyour tunnel vision on.
So it's just about casting anextremely wide net, all the
while being extremely honestwith yourself.
Buckle up and enjoy the ridebuckle up and enjoy the ride.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
And well that, charlie.
Thank you so much for joiningus once again on the show.
It's been a really interestingconversation today and I hope it
sparked some useful food forthought for those listening.
So, charlie, if anybody'sinterested in learning more
about your work on working,where would be the best place
for them to go?
Speaker 2 (39:16):
So the book's called Is this Working the Jobs we Do?
Told by the people who do them?
Is this working the jobs we do?
Told by the people who do them?
Um, and it's in all goodbookshops, uh, and also on all
major e-commerce uh websites, uh, but maybe go into a bookshop
and support them if you can, uh,and I've got a sub stack, uh
called the administration ofthings, which I occasionally um
(39:39):
blog from, but no other socialmedia, and perhaps that's
another piece of advice.
I've felt a lot happier since,uh, stripping away all of that
stuff well.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Thank you so much once again, charlie, and an
extra little bonus bit of advicefor us there at the end, which
I think is um, I'd fully endorseuh, stripping away some of the
social media and I thinkexposure to the news media cycle
in the way that many of us arejust dialing all that noise back
a little bit in our lives, cando wonders for our day-to-day
wellbeing and our mental health.
So I wanted to share just a fewof my top takeaways from this
(40:14):
conversation, because I thinkthere are some points in here
that are really worthhighlighting and reiterating.
So the first one is just to saythat Charlie says that the
state of uncertainty is whenyou're most vulnerable to the
ideas of others.
These influences can bepositive, though not necessarily
.
So be especially wary and standguard at the door of your mind
(40:35):
when you're making choices.
In times of uncertainty, whenyou yourself feel a little bit
uncertain, unsettled, and besure that if you are being
influenced by external voicesand even you know very
well-meaning advice, that youknow just trying to have your
best interest at heart you knowreally take extra care that the
choices you're making in thosecircumstances are in line with
your values and where you wantto take your life.
(40:55):
Secondly, when you strip out thesuperficial elements of your
job, or perhaps the job you'reaspiring to what's left.
So if you don't get to paradearound in a suit or an academic
gown or lab coat or scrubs orwhatever, uh, and you're going
to get that glow of status inthe eyes of your community and
society at large.
You know, if you don't havethose after work socials, if, uh
(41:16):
, you don't have the littletreats and perks that some jobs
may offer, you know you don'thave the little treats and perks
that some jobs may offer.
You know you don't have the bigvacations that you may be able
to afford with your paycheck.
You know, if you strip all thatback, do you actually like the
fundamental tasks that you do?
Do they bring you somesatisfaction on some level,
maybe from the raw intellectualchallenge and the thrill of
problem solving or from helpingsomeone in some way?
(41:39):
Or is all the fluff around itsort of just a salve and it kind
of just numbs and distracts youfrom a fundamental set of tasks
you don't particularly enjoy?
Things that can lead to moreenjoyment of those tasks include
having that clear and immediateresult so you can look around
at the end of cleaning a houseor writing some code and see the
change.
(41:59):
Or maybe you've helped someoneor maybe you get some positive
feedback from somebody.
You know you've done a goodpiece of work and you know
you're in a work culture whereyour clients or your supervisors
or your line manager, you know,will turn around and kind of
pat you on the back and say youknow, great job well done and we
want to try and avoid too muchadmin load in our work.
(42:20):
That can you know.
Great job well done and we wantto try and avoid too much admin
load in our work.
That can you know.
Charlie's research shows thatfor many people, even when they
enjoy the core task, there's allthis kind of bureaucracy you
know, paperwork and meetingsabout meetings and all this sort
of stuff that gets in the wayof being able to just get on and
do the task that is your joband that can be quite
(42:41):
frustrating for people when whenthat admin load gets gets too
high.
And planning is helpful, but beopen to your plan evolving.
It's really interesting whencharlie said that in at no point
in all the people heinterviewed did anyone say that.
Well, actually the thing thatled me to get into my current
line of work was I was sittingdown with a skills matrix that
determined what I was good atand that determined the path the
(43:02):
rest of my life.
So it's kind of difficultadvice here, but sort of being
open to opportunities the worldputs in front of you, being open
to your interests evolving andemerging, and look out for doors
that seem interesting to pushopen, even if those aren't the
doors that you intended to pushon.
You know, 5, 10, 20 years ago,as your grandma or spiritual
(43:25):
leader might have told you manytimes, beware chasing money or
stasis.
There's nothing wrong withchasing either, and we certainly
need a layer of income to bestable in life, but beware
putting these idols above ourown well-being.
And finally, there's a reallyinteresting one for me about
crisis breeding satisfaction.
You know so, if you arecurrently going through
(43:47):
difficult times, either in your,your uh study, either in your
in the kind of world of studyingand academia, or in a kind of
professional context, if you, ifyou have a, a job or you're in
a career at the moment, and youknow, I think it's really
interesting what charlie wassaying about how, for many
people, having been through thatreally really difficult patch,
that kind of hit rock bottom andthen recovered from it and
(44:09):
pulled themselves back and youkind of develop a level of life
satisfaction that's.
That can be quite hard to getto otherwise if everything had
been plain sailing the wholetime.
So a silver lining perhaps offinding things difficult,
finding times hard, is that whenwe can get ourselves out of
that there is life at the end ofthe tunnel.
Hopefully, you know, once wecan kind of recover from that
(44:30):
and get out of that, you have asense of life satisfaction and
kind of appreciation andgratitude for what you have.
That's quite hard to gainotherwise.
So thank you so much for tuningin today.
It's been a real pleasure tohave your company and, as I say,
I hope there's been some usefulfood for thought off the back
of this episode, whether thingsyou're thinking about in terms
(44:53):
of your own journey or your ownlife, or perhaps for those
around you.
You know, perhaps, especiallyif you're a parent, a teacher, a
mentor of some some kind, somethings that you might be able to
support, use to support otherswho you care about.
I look forward to joining,seeing you again next Sunday for
another episode.
Next time is going to be areplay episode.
(45:14):
We're going to be revisitingone of my absolute favorite
episodes from last year andreplaying that for you, so
really looking forward to that.
For now, I just wanted to wishyou every success, as always, in
your studies.
Thank you so much for joiningus today and I look forward to
seeing you again soon.
Thank you.
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