One of the things that happens with me, with all of my work, is just like you, even if you discover

things that are timeless, you're thinking about them evolves, right? Your understanding of even

things that you still hold to as a true principle. Your understanding of that principle,

deepens, evolves, becomes more kaleidoscopic as the years go by.

Hey, everyone, it's Adam Grant.

Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the Science of What Makes Us Tick.

I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people

to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

Thank you. of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Jim Collins is one of the most influential leadership thinkers of our time.

His previous bestsellers, good to great and built to last, among others,

and focused on what differentiates exceptional companies and the people within them.

In his new book, What to Make of a Life, Jim's broadened his scope to examine individuals from

all ranges of life who found their callings, as he puts it, their encodings.

Along with interviewing and studying a wide range of people, Jim also shared his own journey toward finding his encoding,

and I loved the way he went about it. The process involved

an interesting little lab notebook. The place I have to start, and I think maybe my favorite

moment in the whole book, is when I learned about your bug book. Oh, yes, the bug book. Tell me the

story of the bug book. Okay. So we'll start with the bug book.

I was in the fog of youth in my 20s. In fact, I would say really up until about age 30, I was really

wandering, even though it might have looked I was kind of linear. I really wasn't.

What happened was that I had a wonderful teacher by the name of Rochelle Myers,

who co-taught a course on creativity at Stanford Business School when I was a student.

...