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Chapter 1: What unsettling realization do many people face in midlife?
Purpose is manufactured in the lab of our daily choices. It's about what you decide to prioritize because it is something that will be meaningful a year from now or 10 years from now. And asking why and asking what the point of spending two hours on this activity is or an hour investing in this relationship was. or this effort, or this company, or this product.
Just ask what's the point all the time during the day. If you do that well, that is how you turn purpose into your daily superpower.
So Tom Rath was diagnosed with a fatal illness at 16, average life expectancy 34. When we spoke, he was 50 years old already. But it was his 40th birthday that became the real turning point when he asked himself, did I choose this life or just go along with the current that's already running?
Tom has spent decades studying how careers shape well-being, authoring 12 books with over 10 million copies sold. His latest is What's the Point? Turning Purpose into Your Superpower. In this conversation...
We explore the inherited ambitions that we carry without even realizing it, why the latter is the wrong model for a life well-lived, and what purpose looks like when you stop waiting to find it. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Goodbye Project. And I want to start at the very beginning with Tom. We'll jump in there right after this short break. I have been following your work for quite a while.
I'm always fascinated to hear your take your lens on how to investigate big transitional moments in life. I want to take a step back in time, though, because you have lived with an awareness of your own mortality since your mid-teens. So, you know, this is probably a longer term exploration for you than it is for so many others.
Can you take us back there and share a bit of the story about how this awareness dropped into your life?
Yeah, it is a good place to start because it's been almost 35 years now since I had that initial challenge and diagnosis when I was 16 years old.
And it continues to shape the first hours of every single day and what I do and what I read about and what I learn in a way that was originally really beneficial to kind of keep myself alive a little bit longer, but has since transformed into something very different in terms of the intent and orientation around it. So To go back to that, I...
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Chapter 2: How does Tom Rath's personal health journey influence his perspective?
was diagnosed when I was 16 years old. I was living a real active, normal life and realized I was having trouble seeing out of my left eye in some dark spots and couldn't make sense of it. Went to an eye doctor after a lot of rounds of testing and trying to figure out what was going on. They said, well, you know, you have several large tumors on the back of your left eye.
And that's not the worst news. The bad news is we think it means you might have a rare genetic disorder that causes tumors to show up everywhere. And it essentially just shuts off the body's most powerful tumor-suppressing gene. So within a year of that initial diagnosis, I had lost my left eye and all sight in that permanently, which changed my day-to-day life quite a bit.
And I also realized that I was going to need to go through MRIs and CT scans every six months for the rest of whatever my life might look like at that point. So, I mean, you might think it's a real challenging diagnosis at that point and something that rattles a 16-year-old kid. But when I look back on it, I'm kind of amazed by how little it did to take me off that course.
I still kind of hung out with friends, partied more than I should have, played sports, did all the normal things. And I had the people around me that kind of kept me focused on what was going right and what worked. And so a lot of that was kind of testimony to that. Real good parenting and friends and family and being surrounded by the right people.
And it also taught me by the time I was 20 years old and the Internet and all this information was starting to emerge that I realized, even though the initial over-under on my life was 37 years when I started to read about it, That did two things. One is that it got me focused on I need to live as much of a life as I can in about 37 years, professionally, family-wise, and everything else.
And it also helped me to see that the more I learned about this condition, the more I could stay ahead of it and the more I could stay on top of it. And so that's when I mentioned...
the way it still orients my days today, I still wake up every morning and do at least one, usually two hours of reading on medical journals that are about health and cancer and my condition because it gives me the knowledge and the psychological confidence to know that I can get out ahead of this thing and do everything I possibly can.
And so I think when you ask that question, I probably haven't given that enough thought, but It really has been helpful to focus my energy. And then something interesting happened when the pandemic hit five, six years ago now, where it was fascinating to me how all of a sudden, all these Zoom conversations I was having with leaders and friends and people, I kind of got this taste of it.
They were jumping into my world for a little bit. And they had this taste of their mortality. And You know, as I'm looking at what's happening right now, I think I can see some of the residual of that where more people are asking questions about why am I even doing this? What's the point of it? How do I focus on what matters most?
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Chapter 3: What is the difference between a ladder and a garden in life frameworks?
Yeah, I mean, that's so interesting. Like this thing that was set in motion for you at 16 years old, getting you to look at the world a little bit differently, but also ask a different set of questions and also just be very acquainted with your own mortality from the earliest days, even in your mind saying, okay, I'm doing a bit of research.
The over-under, as you described it, or the potential, like the quote, average endpoint is 37 years old. So like, you're almost like you're working towards, it's almost like somebody has told you like, this is one, and I'm going to work backwards from there.
And then we fast forward to the pandemic, when now millions of people are becoming, you know, like, just deeply viscerally acquainted with their own mortality. It's almost like, well, you've had decades of training in living in that space already.
Yeah. And it's interesting because psychologists have studied for in recent years what they've called post-traumatic growth, where a lot of people who go through experiences that actually come out the back end more resilient and stronger, and they have a deeper ability, in my observation, to focus on what matters most. I mean, it's...
When you have that frame of mind, it's a lot easier to say, all these emails or all this stuff flying at me, does it really deserve my attention today when you've got limited time? For me, it's been kind of a good way to prioritize my effort within a day.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, at the same time, again, sort of just bring us back to those teen years. It sounds like you're living almost like these two different trajectories. Like on the one hand, you have this knowledge about what's going on in your body. And what the science says is, quote, likely or out there on the horizon.
And that also motivates you to just really deepen into research to stay on top of this. So it sounds like while one script was saying, okay, it is what it is. Let me accept this and live the best of my life now. There's another curiosity, a seed that was planted in you that said, but maybe as I close the gap between now and that date, things will change.
And I want to make sure that I'm on top of that.
Right. Yeah, that was the, I mean, the only, I think the thing that gave me hope in the midst of that initial diagnosis was that doctors and specialists said to me, you know, as long as you are getting full body MRIs and CTs of your brain and spine and abdomen every six months, as arduous as that is, because I mean, I just go, I call it tubing every six months.
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Chapter 4: What does the headstone test reveal about our true priorities?
Yeah. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. Tell me if this is too personal, but I'm curious, as you shared, you have kids now who are sort of like similar age as you were when you were first diagnosed. When you go back to the moment where you're making a decision about, do I have kids or not? I'm curious what that moment is like for you.
You know, that's interesting because my mom, who I was real close with, and parents and grandparents, the thing that they'd said to me really early on when I was probably 17 years old, and people kind of ask about that, and I was trying to figure out where life went and if I could live a relatively normal life and have a family and all that.
I think, I mean, maybe within a month of my initial diagnosis, I still remember my mom saying something to me about, you know, of course that doesn't preclude anything in the future because, I mean, the life I'd already had to that point was spectacular and about as good as it could have been. And I knew that I'd probably get to live another three, four, five, six decades, whatever it might be.
And so it didn't really cross my mind that that was something precluding having a family and doing all those things in the future.
And then, of course, as I got to learn more about the condition and was really involved with the national organization and getting into the depth and trenches of it and seeing so many people who did live good, long lives with the condition and with a lot of monitoring and scanning and testing, I didn't really think twice about that. And neither of my kids have the condition, but I feel like we're
We're at a point right now with genetic testing and monitoring, and now there's an FDA-approved medicine for the condition that I have, which was approved in 2021, and nobody saw that coming, which kind of prevents and stops growth of tumors as long as they've been testing it here.
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Chapter 5: How can we redefine purpose in our daily lives?
And all the things I've seen recently, to be very honest with you, the way that AI will change the speed of medicine, that's the one place where AI is going to rattle things in a good way, in a revolutionary way that no one really sees coming right now. But I spend so much time reading about it, I'm really confident about it.
So I feel like I have a whole new lease on life in the last 12 months just because of what I've learned about that. Even if you have people who are the top minds on rare cancer research in the world, you get them together and so forth, As human beings, we're not capable of looking at all of the permutations of what's going on genetically, what's going on biologically.
And the combinations of different drugs and the new compounds that can be developed are It's just astounding what I'm seeing happen right now.
I mean, it makes me very hopeful for everyone in our generation that's dealing with life-threatening diseases or debilitating diseases and how we can hopefully... I mean, you already see this with some cancers in the last five years where we're turning them into more manageable chronic conditions like diabetes and the like.
And I think that's going to happen much more rapidly than people are anticipating right now. And so that's something for all of us to be hopeful about and...
One of the things I would say to people based on all of this experience I've had is that you've got to, and you hinted at this, knowledge and information can be powerful and help you to stay ahead of those things as long as you don't kind of put your head in the sand when it comes to your own health and medical treatment and so forth.
I think often, especially as we enter midlife, as we sort of like, you know, get a bit older, we start to get concerned. Like we're entering the season where, quote, things happen. We see it happening to friends, to family members. Maybe we feel something that's just a little bit off inside of ourselves in a gender sphere. And understandably, we're human.
And part of that response so often is, well, I don't want to actually acknowledge this. If there's something going on, I'm in that age window where there's probably something. Let me just put this off for as long as I can, rather than saying, well... Let's just get honest. Like, information is better than ignorance in every situation in my mind. You know, like, let's find out what is the truth.
Like, what are the numbers say? And then we can make more informed decisions from there rather than just hoping and praying and trying to say, like, there's nothing going on. I'm fine. Maybe there is nothing going on. But information is better than ignorance. It's just something I just keep going back to.
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Chapter 6: What is the legacy question that most people answer incorrectly?
Let's broaden the conversation out a bit. We're talking about being wise and getting information about our health. But part of what gets said in motion with everybody, with you at a much earlier age than a lot of folks, is this question of, what am I doing with my life? Like what is a good use of my time on this planet no matter how long or short it is?
And so often we're fed a series of questions and a series of expectations that we try and live into. And then we find ourselves at a certain moment in life saying to ourselves, I feel like I checked most of those boxes and I don't feel the way I thought I would feel. One of the words that so often comes up in this part of the conversation is purpose. And there's so much around.
And it's to a certain extent, I feel it's almost like a loaded word these days. You have an interesting take on purpose. Tell me more about your lens.
Yeah, and I think I learned the hard way as I was working on this book that purpose is too loaded of a word to even have in the book's title, so we'll come back to that. And so it changed at the last minute.
So as we talked about, I go all the way through life and I feel like I accomplish things I want to accomplish, have a family, my kids are in good health, everything's going good with my family, and then I hit the age of 40 where, I mean, that's past the over-under on the lifespan, right? And I kind of look back and say to myself, So what have I been doing and what's next?
Because I got there, right? And I look back and really try to think about it critically. And I had spent the first 40 years of my life essentially following in footsteps and expectations like most of us do of what our parents did, worked for the same company and started up as my family. and kind of felt like I checked the boxes and followed all those societal and familial expectations.
But I was asking myself, what was the point of that? And is it really what I want to be doing and how I want to be allocating my time and what I feel like I should do in the next half of my life, right? And so that's what led to this book that's now called What's the Point Here that's coming out. And
Originally, I thought that book was supposed to be about purpose and career, and so it was titled Purpose Unlocked. And the more I got into the research on it and talked to friends and family members about it, I realized that when most of us—and I'm in this boat, too—you hear the word purpose—
your heart clenches up a little bit and you're thinking, ooh, that's a big thing that people feel like they're supposed to find on a really sunny day or descends from the heavens. And it's just too much and it's heavy, like you talked about. So as I got into the work on it, I was kind of refreshed to learn that
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Chapter 7: How do inherited ambitions affect our life choices?
But just sorting that through took me several years and a lot of introspection because I realized that in the last years of my life, I mean, I... I say, well, you're supposed to do these purposeful things and focus on your strengths and all this stuff. But yet when I really looked honestly and clinically at what I was doing throughout the day, I kind of followed in my family footsteps for one.
And then I also spent an extraordinary amount of time in my day just kind of responding to clients and customers and emails and studying social feeds. And the thing I was most guilty of in the last five or ten years is I spent too much time watching stock tickers and finances, to be honest, and watching CNBC and following business stuff. And I...
acted on and did nothing based on that, but I just let it consume time and distract me, right?
So when I thought about a clinic, I'm like, tune out those distractions, see what you can get done, invest in a conversation with a colleague that matters, invest in an hour of writing, invest in an hour of having a good discussion with my kids, asking them questions, and realize that that's where all the meaning and purpose is really built, and that you just have to build more of that into your day.
And so that's where a lot of it started.
Yeah, I love that. I mean, that simple question, what's the point of this? Like if you stop at any given moment during your day and just take a beat, look at what you're doing or where your mind is or what you're not doing, what's the point of this?
I'm guessing for a lot of us, and I'm raising my hand here, solid chunk of my day, I'm going to be a little bit jarred by the way I answer that question. Or maybe I actually, I'm not even going to be able to come up with, I don't know what the purpose, like I literally... There's no reason. I don't know what the point of what I'm doing right now is, which is information right there too.
You touched on something else that I don't want to gloss over, which is this notion that so often we hear some version of, you've got to figure out, quote, your purpose. There is a singular unifying one grand purpose. And part of our work is we need to actually show up and do the work and investigate things To define or divine that singular purpose. And then we can finally live into it.
What I love about what you're saying is like, maybe some people actually do have that moment. Maybe some people actually can find a singular thing where they're just like, I want to pour everything I have into it. But in my experience, that is very much the outlier, not the rule. And for everybody else, you're giving them a way to say that you can still move through your days.
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Chapter 8: What steps can we take to live more intentionally each day?
Yeah, you know, it is an uncomfortable question that I had to wrestle with myself. I kind of looked back and said, you know, I felt like the story I told myself when I graduated from college was, you know, I had my own ambitions and wanted to do something new and different and all of that. And then by the time I hit 40, I kind of looked back and said, you know what, I grew up around that.
researchers and teachers and entrepreneurs. And not only did I fall into that same kind of default track, but I went to work for the exact same company and doing the same things with family. And that's really the default track over the last 100, 200 years. And some of it came about because of the
You have a laborer transferring a skill, whether it's being a cobbler or working in a field or being a dentist, whatever it might be, to the next generation. And so you have parents who kind of want to pass that along and see their kids, quote, follow in their footsteps and all that. So some of it comes about with good intentions.
Other spots are places where maybe the parents didn't succeed but wanted to and pushed the kids into that, and that's its own psychological thing.
Yeah.
But when you look at this across the labor force, what it leads to that is deeply concerning to me is kids get funneled into these paths when they're maybe 14 or 15 years old. And it hit me like a brick when I asked my daughter when she was 14 years old, I said, you know, what are you thinking about? What sounds fun to you when you think about the future?
And I'd been working on careers in some of this work. And she said, well, you know, I think maybe I could be a writer. That's a novel thought. Or maybe a teacher. My wife's a second grade teacher. So those were her two thoughts. So she's exactly two for two and didn't mention anything outside of that. So I realized in that moment, that most of us get all the way to the end of our life.
And if we're lucky, we've seen two, three, four careers in a good amount of depth. Yet, when I went to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and looked at all the jobs out there, it turns out that you would need to know about 50 jobs to see 50% of what's out there in the labor force. So most of us are forced right now to make big life choices. Where do you spend four years of your life studying?
Or maybe more. or go into a job when we're essentially looking out of a pinhole, if you think about a camera lens, and the aperture is at about 2% or 3%. And so even if we were to be able to see 10 or 20 jobs, you're still just getting a pretty small field of view of what's out there. So I think as we move to more of an information economy where people are doing different things,
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