About this episode

Tom Rath discusses the importance of purpose in work and challenges the conventional narrative of following one's passion.

What if the thing you spend the most time on at work won't matter at all when you're gone?  It's a confronting question, but it's the kind Tom Rath lives with deliberately. He walks past a 10,000-headstone cemetery near his home in Washington DC and has never once seen a grave mention social media followers, email response times, or job titles. Yet these are the things most of us spend our days chasing.  In this episode, I sit down with Tom Rath, one of the most widely read authors in the world of work and wellbeing and the man behind StrengthsFinder 2.0, How Full Is Your Bucket?, and his just-released book What's the Point? Tom challenges the "follow your passion" narrative head-on and makes the case that purpose isn't a grand discovery waiting for you someday. It's what you do for other people, hour by hour, throughout the day.  We get into the single question Tom uses every morning to reprioritise his time, how to escape the comparison trap that platforms like LinkedIn are designed to pull you into, and why he believes the so-called initiators are the ones who will thrive in the…

People in this episode

Host: Amantha Imber

Guest: Tom Rath

Topics covered

• work and wellbeing
• purpose
• career advice
• AI
• personal development
• strengths

Keywords

• initiator
• responder
• career path
• comparison trap
• strengths
• purpose
• AI

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: StrengthsFinder 2.0, How Full Is Your Bucket?, What's the Point?

Places: Washington DC

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