Bill Burnett

You wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive, would you? But we do this all the time with jobs and life changes. It’s crazy, when you think about it.

Mistakenly letting a great candidate go doesn’t cost a cool company a thing: they have plenty of spare great candidates, so letting a few spill on the ground is a much better mistake to make than hiring a bad candidate. Therefore, cool companies’ hiring processes are sometimes rather draconian. Great people get rejected frequently, and often with no idea why. It could happen to you. These companies often can get people who really are almost exactly like what their crazy job listing is asking for

Embrace the flaws, the weaknesses, the major screwups, and all the things that happened over which you had no control. They are what make life worth living and worth designing.

Reframe: Three-quarters

rode all the merry-go-rounds and grabbed for all the brass rings she would f

rode all the merry-go-rounds and grabbed for all the brass rings she would find happiness.

He had a solid career and a solid life

an “encore” career—work that combines personal meaning, continued income, and social impact.

What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The reframe for the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” is this: “Who or what do you want to grow into?” Life is all about growth and change. It’s not static. It’s not about some destination. It’s not