Hello Monday with Jessi Hempel

We plan our careers like life is short. Go to school, climb the career ladder, retire. But as we live longer, the model doesn’t hold up.  London Business School professor Lynda Gratton joins Jessi to offer a model for the arc of a long career. After selling a million copies of The 100-Year Life, which makes the economic case for longer lives, Lynda found readers were hungry for an actionable plan. Her new book, Living the 100-Year Life, is the answer. In this episode, Jessi and Lynda discuss: Why the career ladder is disappearing, and what to replace it with The weave vs. the ladder: how thinking of your life as something you’re actively crafting changes everything The eight threads that hold a long life together: four for staying productive, four for nurturing yourself Why your employer is not your parent, and what it means to move to an adult-to-adult relationship with work The three questions to ask yourself during any transition: who am I, where am I now and what promises can I make to my future self? Why understanding your heritage is one of the most useful things you can do for your career How a seven-minute conversation can begin to strengthen the thread of friendship What’s worth mastering in an age of AI, and why finding an adjacency is almost always smarter than starting over Why identity is the hardest part of reinvention, and how to explore your possible selves without losing yourself Why pessimism is a bad psychological place to be right now, and how to choose optimism as an act of agency Follow Lynda Gratton and Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn. Continue the conversation with us at Hello Monday Office Hours! Join us Wednesday at 3 PM ET, live on Jessi’s page

How do you know when it’s time to stop? Most high achievers would say never. We keep going because quitting feels like failure. But Lindsay Crouse argues that sometimes the bigger failure is continuing past the point you should have. The four-time Emmy Award winner, four-time Oscar nominee and author of the new book The Case for Quitting spent 15 years at the New York Times covering endurance sports before walking away. This week she joins Jessi in the studio to make the case that sometimes stopping is the most courageous thing you can do, and that knowing when to quit is an essential skill. In this episode, Jessi and Lindsay discuss: Why quitting on time almost always feels too early The moment when perseverance flips into self-sabotage, and how to catch it before you crash Why the decision to continue always has costs, we just can't see them as clearly as the costs of quitting What Lindsay's own running career taught her about the difference between stopping and giving up Why women in particular are conditioned to override their instincts and keep going, and what it costs us The spotlight illusion: why we overestimate how much anyone notices when we leave Jessi on quitting Wired too late, and what it took from her before she finally walked away The five-to-ten year question: a simple way to know whether it's time to start building an off-ramp What Lindsay's 15 years at the New York Times taught her about identity, and why leaving felt like both nothing and everything How writing a book about quitting transformed her What’s next for Lindsay Crouse Follow Lindsay Crouse and Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn.

Ten years ago, Angela Duckworth wrote the book on grit. Now she's back with the advice you need to keep moving forward. The MacArthur genius fellow, University of Pennsylvania professor and bestselling author joins Jessi in the studio to make the case that individual effort only takes you as far as your situation allows and that changing your situation is one of the most powerful tools you have. Her new book is called Situated: Find the People and Places That Bring Out Your Best.  In this episode, Jessi and Angela discuss: Why grit isn't enough and what Angela has learned in the decade since she wrote her first book The three-box model: how your situation shapes your thoughts, and your thoughts shape your behavior Why changing your situation feels like giving up and why Angela calls it an act of heroism instead Status quo bias: the psychological reason we cling to circumstances we know aren't working The difference between quitting and job crafting and how to make smaller career moves before the big one What Taylor Swift moving to Nashville at 14 has to do with your next career decision Microfriction: the surprisingly small physical changes that do what willpower can't The Pygmalion Effect: why so much of what we believe about ourselves is borrowed from the people around us Three kinds of mentors everyone needs: mentors for a reason, a season and a lifetime The curiosity conversation: how Oprah got Maya Angelou to be her mentor, and how you can apply the same approach Why Y Combinator funds in batches and what that tells us about trying to go it alone Follow Angela Duckworth and Jessi Hempel on LinkedIn. This conversation was recorded live and broadcast to LinkedIn Premium members. Premium members can watch the extended version here.