#856: Jim Collins — What to Make of a Life and How to Maximize Your Return on Luck

Jim Collins has published multiple international bestsellers that have sold in total more than eleven million copies worldwide, including the perennial favorite Good to Great . His new book is What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire, and the Self-Knowledge Imperative .

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Timestamps:

• [00:00:00] Start.
• [00:02:43] More energy at 68 than 37: Jim’s mysteriously expanding battery.
• [00:04:57] Two mornings a day.
• [00:08:24] How Marcelo Garcia avoids the “simmering six.”
• [00:10:24] The portable coffee ritual.
• [00:12:44] Side passions of high performers: Disco dancing, the occult, and Sunday school.
• [00:18:20] Genesis of “ What to Make of a Life ” and the sage down the hall: John W. Gardner.
• [00:20:51] Joanne’s IRONMAN triumph: winning by 90 seconds on a shattered hamstring — then the cliff.
• [00:26:01] Cliff events, matched pairs, and the bigger question that swallowed the smaller one.
• [00:31:35] The fog-clarity inversion: clear on life, foggy on projects.
• [00:34:56] Fog happens to everyone — don’t freak out about it.
• [00:40:38] Jim’s wife’s one-word review of life with him.
• [00:47:29] When the fire went from red molten rage to a green-yellow warming glow.
• [00:54:18] Encodings vs. strengths: The window frame metaphor and John Glenn’s click moment.
• [01:01:49] My encoding candidates.
• [01:08:07] 70 points on trust: Discovering your encodings matters, but trusting them matters more.
• [01:12:43] Enneagram as an acceptable horoscope for tech guys.
• [01:15:21] The 1,000 creative hours rule and Warren Buffett’s punch card: Life is the ultimate finite resource.
• [01:23:37] “The most wonderful, disappointing answer”: How Jim’s team says no with grace.
• [01:27:14] Right people, right seats, encoded edition: When management angst shrinks to almost nothing.
• [01:38:23] Return on luck deep dive: What luck, who luck, and zeit luck.
• [01:46:24] Natalie moments: Not all time in life is equal.
• [01:46:52] Maximizing surface area of luck, return on luck, and Jim’s chain of who luck.
• [02:04:47] Cardiss Collins and return on bad luck: Cliff events that expose encodings you never knew you had.
• [02:08:33] A warning for founders: Sell your company, lose a decade — the cliff nobody plans for.
• [02:11:23] “An option to come back has negative value”: Irv Grousbeck’s counterintuitive wisdom.
• [02:14:22] Signing the Declaration as a death warrant: When there’s no option, the mind focuses.
• [02:16:01] The hunt for Roger Sherman: Choosing matched pairs and the man who saved the Constitution twice.
• [02:20:48] The mythology of youthful creativity: Jim’s rebuttal — Toni Morrison wrote Beloved at 56.
• [02:34:35] Flipping the arrow of money: Is money fuel for your work, or is your work fuel for money?
• [02:38:42] Commonwealth Club event: Jim Collins live in San Francisco, April 9th.
• [02:39:44] The ultimate definition of success: “My spouse likes and respects me evermore as the years go by.”
• [02:43:08] A plus-two day and parting thoughts.

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