Skip to main content

What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson

Po Bronson's What Should I Do with My Life? is a difficult to describe book. Calling it a book about careers would be an oversimplification. But yet it's partly that. Calling it a life-coaching book also oversimplifies, but it's partly that too.

It's unlike anything I've ever read, and yet it inspired me and--encouraged me--like few books ever have.

Bronson, who traveled all over the country seeking out subjects for this book, builds his story around several dozen people who struggle with "the question." There's almost every sort of person here: old, young, smart, dumb, confident, insecure, emotional, analytical, rich, poor, failures, successes. Bronson paints by anecdote, choosing everyday people, and the result is an insightful and textured portrait of how people go about figuring out what to do with their lives.

Some of Bronson's subjects can't figure out their passions. Some of them know exactly what their passions are, but they feel too fearful or too undeserving to reach for them. And some were absolutely certain of their passions--until they pursued them and found out their passions weren't what they thought they'd be. Bronson is unflinching, candid and honest about each person's path, and when you read these various short tales of how people grapple with their lives, you'll learn the right questions to ask to help you grapple with your own life.

Finally, the most inspiring and encouraging thing about What Should I Do With My Life? is the book's fundamental truth: You are not alone in struggling with this critically important question. Almost everyone finds that the answer isn't always what we think it is.

Highly, highly recommended.



Reading List for What Should I Do with My Life?
NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Bombardiers by Po Bronson
The First $20 Million is Always the Hardest by Po Bronson
The Nudist on the Late Shift: And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley by Po Bronson
The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama

More Posts

For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization by Charles Adams

Wide-ranging historical survey looking at major world civilizations through the lens of taxation and tax policy. It's a good read, a great review of world history, and it gets you to think about that history in a refreshingly unusual way. I've said elsewhere that one cannot understand history properly without some grounding in monetary history . Add tax history to the list! The author makes a robust argument that many if not most political instabilities and revolutions largely emerge out of resistance to punitive taxation. Likewise, this book will help deprogram readers away from the many schoolbook historical narratives we carry around, like the hypersimplified " Just say slavery " narrative of the American Civil War, or the pro-government narrative of the Whiskey Rebellion as "Federal law and order prevailed over frontier tax cheats." It is a surprisingly sentimental and romantic intellectual experience to hear the author describe bygone eras like the ...

Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky

History of the cod fishing industry across more than a millennium. The author begins with 10th century Viking and Basque explorers, and takes the reader on a roundabout journey right up to the modern era of global fishing moratoriums. In some ways this book is all over the place, its narrative at times only loosely connected to the cod industry, sometimes not at all. But it's okay: just enjoy the ride and let the author share what he knows. Which turns out to be a pretty interesting history on a subject you'd never expect would be so interesting. Each chapter has a postscript with one or two codfish recipes from a range of cultures and eras, some dating as far back as the 15th century. Once again it's more interesting than you'd expect: the preparation methods, the cuisine styles, even the recipe writing styles of these different eras. It adds an extra something to the book. [A quick  affiliate link to Amazon  for those readers who would like to support my work here: if...

The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker

A book about heeding the miraculous cognitive process we call intuition, "a brilliant internal guardian" that enables us to perceive things before they happen. This book give you a tremendous set of tools for assessing risks, making predictions, and understanding which things you should (and shouldn't!) be afraid of. This book is a wonderful navigational tool for modernity. I'll add that aside from being an insightful guy, author Gavin de Becker is quite an interesting guy. I recommend digging into any of the podcasts or long-form interviews he's done. See for example  this interview with Tucker Carlson , striking in part because Carlson (for once) hardly talks--he simply lets de Becker talk. [Again, please skip or skim these notes below, they are too long and life is short!] Notes:   Chapter 1: In the Presence of Danger 1) "Like every creature, you can know when you are in the presence of danger. You have the gift of a brilliant internal guardian that stand...