What to make of a life?

It is a question we all wrestle with more than once: How do we find our way in the world? How do we make it past the cliffs, significant events that can radically change a life? How do we keep the inner fire burning bright, long and late? Inspired by relentless curiosity, Jim Collins devoted a decade to studying these questions and to minutely analyzing those moments when life flips from clarity to confusion and casts us into a befuddling fog.

His exploration follows various lives side-by-side, paired together at cliffs, and analyzes the different choices made and divergent paths taken. Two rock musicians confronting a future without the group that had brought them success. Two public figures tainted by scandal having to make decisions about how to rebuild their lives. Two suffragists achieving their epic goal and so left with the puzzle of what to do next. Two figure skaters seeking new purpose when their Olympic careers come to an end. What emerges from Collins’s extensive studies—of writers, actors, scientists, leaders and many others—is a framework for understanding how individual lives can be built, sustained and constantly renewed.

And for the first time, Collins movingly chronicles his own story to reveal how undertaking this project transformed him, changing his thinking and reshaping his emotions in fundamental ways. Surprising, story-driven, deeply researched, and uplifting, What to Make of a Life is a book like no other, convincingly showing how a richly fulfilled life is within reach of us all. 

In the following exchange, Collins shares what inspired the book, and how writing the book changed him. 

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In What to Make of a Life, you write about “cliffs,” or, major events that change the trajectory of one’s life. Can you talk a bit about that and how it inspired this book?

Jim Collins: I had my own first cliff event quite young, when I lost my father while he was still alive. My parents split up and my mom took me and my brother from San Francisco back to Boulder, moving into an arctic cold basement apartment with sleeping cots and a hotplate. We couldn't even afford a Christmas tree so my brother and I rolled in a boulder, we painted it red and green, and we called it our “Christmas rock.”

Even though I felt emotionally abandoned by my father, I desperately hoped he would return into my life and actually be a father. In my mid-teens, I made one last attempt to connect with him. My idea was to take a Greyhound down to New Mexico where my father was living in an adobe hut with a dirt floor. I brought a prepackaged turkey as a kind of offering with the idea that maybe we could share a Thanksgiving together and I might find a father. But that weekend shattered all of my illusions and by the time I got back on the bus heading back north, I knew once and for all, there will never be a father there.

I left New Mexico without a father but full of questions. I had no idea how to become an adult. I had no idea how to kind of carve a path out of this very foggy period. I had no idea what to do with this one amazing gift of a single life to live. Not only did I not know, I didn't even know how to know. That moment sparked a lifelong journey that has led to this book.

How did you get started on the project and what did it entail?

JC:  It's very hard for me not to get really excited when talking about our findings, as well as the way that we went about it! When I say “we,”  I mean my marvelous research team in Boulder. The study ended up looking at the long arc of 34 remarkable lives— the systematic study of more than 2800 years! We found these amazing pairs of people who faced their own cliffs and then we examined their lives. In total, it was 10 years of research and then two years of writing. It was a gigantic effort. 

Through the lives of the people we studied, my hope is that people will gain the kind of self-knowledge that enables them to answer for themselves, in very unique ways specific to them, what to make of a life.

But the marvelous thing, the thing that I just can't wait for people to wrestle with and talk about, is that there were common underlying patterns among the subjects, even though on the surface they all made very different decisions. Those patterns are available to us and they’re completely inspiring.

Can you talk about some of those patterns?

JC: The book explains in detail, but common patterns among subjects include things like “cliffs,” as I mentioned, and “hedgehogs” which readers of my prior books will be familiar with. Then there is the “fog” every subject went through when they were recovering from a cliff event. All subjects were able to focus their “fire” and engage with their “encodings,” which we describe in detail. Financial barriers were dealt with by doing what I call “flipping the arrow of money,” which anyone can do. Then there were things I totally did not expect to find, like how the Roulette Wheel of Life impacted the subjects’ lives, or how subjects often embarked on new endeavors by something I call Extending Out/Circling Back. Also important, many successful subjects chose their responsibilities freely—while the work was often hard, it was freely chosen (not foisted upon them) and that made a huge difference in framing. Finally, we discovered how our subjects fed their Inner Fire for the rest of their lives. 

Importantly, these patterns are now laid out as criteria that everyone can apply to themselves.

What has the impact of this project been on you personally?

JC: What to Make of a Life turned out to be, so far in my life, the most satisfying and I think the best work that I've done. The research also had an interesting boomerang effect on me. It actually transformed me. There are so many ways that I used to think that life works at its best, and it turned out I was wrong. The research showed me different answers and I had to really recast the way I understand how life works at its best. But it also affected me on an emotional level. I'm a different person. I will never look at other people, I will never look at life the same ever again. And I will never feel the same ever again.

By doing this research I came to understand why my father's life never worked, and why he was never able to be the father that I so desperately yearned for. And as a result, I was actually able to reach a point of compassion and forgiveness for my father even though he had died decades ago from cancer. When I wrote the last two or three paragraphs of the book, where I reflect on how it all came together for me to have that reconciliation, I literally sat at my home office desk and I cried nonstop for nearly an hour. I never expected that that's what would happen doing a research project, but that is exactly what happened.

In fact, there's a whole section at the end of the book where I basically write out: “I used to believe” and “now I believe” and you can sort of see, step-by-step, all these different ways that my understandings have changed.

What surprised you in the research?

JC: There were many, many fascinating insights. One of the most uplifting and marvelous things to study was some of the incredible creativity and spectacular work that people did late in life. There's this view in society that our most creative years, our most productive years, our most energetic years, our most useful years, will tend to be our younger years. But when we look at people in the study, and look at the things that they did in their 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, sometimes even in their 90s—this study just really punctures that. You go through case after case of where people did really inspiring things quite late in life, even if they’d done remarkable things when they were young. So I actually have come to the conclusion that real creativity kind of begins at about 60. Before that, it’s all just kind of a warm up. 

What is your take on some of the lives studied? Any favorites?

JC: I feel like I have this marvelous collection of friends. I mean these 34 lives are so rich, they're so remarkable, and every single case is so different.

I loved them all—but the most impactful was my pair of writers, Toni Morrison and Barbara Tuchman. Naturally, I expected to learn what's the best way to go about writing? When we actually set side-by-side how they applied their own unusual encodings, Barbara Tuchman and Toni Morrison had different encoded modes for how they went about writing. It gave me this great confidence to kind of think, “I don't need to follow anybody else's recipe.” Rather, it's a reflection of bringing your own encoded modes into whatever practice that you have. I found that very, very freeing.

They also each had an interesting framing of the impact of their work. In the case of Barbara Tuchman, she just wanted her work to be read—that’s all. What’s interesting is she didn't know that President Kennedy would read her book The Guns of August, which influenced the way he managed the Cuban missile crisis. It's entirely possible that without her book, maybe the Cuban missile crisis would've ended in catastrophe. So imagine that: she's just writing her books and it goes somewhere she doesn't imagine, and has this huge impact. I learned you just have to do what's in front of you, and let the impact take care of itself.

Another delightful surprise was  the study of Roger Sherman, who is our match pair to Benjamin Franklin. As it turns out, Sherman is one of the most significant founders of the United States. He was there for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. He was the second oldest person at the Constitutional Convention. And he saved the United States Constitution, not once, but twice: once with the Connecticut Compromise, which is named after him, as he was from Connecticut. And second, when he successfully argued down James Madison, who wanted to integrate the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. Roger Sherman disagreed, suggesting listing the amendments separately in order to preserve the Constitution. This alone should spotlight his place in history. Yet his encodings were for unglamorous committee work behind the scenes and the logic of the law. With no flowery speeches for historians to cite, Sherman is lesser known—yet his encodings made as significant and lasting a difference as Benjamin Franklin. It’s this kind of discovery that made this book such a delight to write and I hope for readers to be inspired by.

About the Author

Jim Collins has published multiple international bestsellers that have sold in total more than 11 million copies worldwide, including the perennial favorite Good to Great. His writings and teachings are based on extensive research projects designed to uncover timeless principles of human endeavor and have had a lasting impact across all sectors of society. All of Jim’s books share a common thread: the study of people and how they navigate the big questions of leadership and life.